The Official UKFF RAW Thread...

[Jazzy G]

They're desperately trying to get this whole "Wins and losses don't matter" thing over, aren't they?

[FailedPromoter]

It's amazing how much it's changed over the years. Benn watching some of the home video classics, in which they constantly put over the importance of superstars "ticking the win column" or "going home with the winners/losers share of the purse money". I love little nuances like that. 

Now it's pointed out pretty much that no-one could give a shit and as said in this thread, it mean fans don't give a shit. 

I miss the 80's/90's.

[BomberPat]

The worst thing to come of "wins and losses don't matter" is JBL's "THIS SHOULD BE FUN TO WATCH". It's one thing saying it about flashy high flyers and luchadores - though even then, don't tell me how much fun they are to watch, tell me how that style can help them win - but he said it about Lesnar/Strowman/Kane! The entire build to that match was about how it would be a car crash, how the arena couldn't contain them, how it would be destructive and violent, and what does one of their most prominent voices of the last few years have to say about it? FUN TO WATCH. Fuck off.

Another JBL thing that always stuck in my mind was him praising Ryback after a match he'd just lost, saying it was Ryback's best match to date. But it wasn't, was it, because he lost. Ryback's best matches are when he's wrecking three blokes at once, surely? In kayfabe, no one should care about a "good match", they should care about winning, and good matches should be a byproduct of that. It's the same thing as Dolph Ziggler's "Showstealer" shit, when he cuts promos about putting on the best match on the card - which is meaningless if you're not bloody winning them.

 

With Reigns, it's infuriating because he's clearly the Chosen One, he's been given every opportunity they can give, but because of that lack of commitment he still doesn't feel like he belongs, so he still gets that resentment. I think WWE have backed themselves into a corner where anyone they can be seen as hand-picking to be the next top guy will always get a negative reaction, but if they had just had Reigns go over Lesnar first time around, and then booked him strongly since then, I don't think the backlash would be nearly as bad. After his match with Daniel Bryan people were moving on from hating him just for not being Daniel Bryan, and at the time a hard-hitting match with Lesnar, and a win over Lesnar, was still enough to make people think that you were the real deal. If they hadn't had Rollins cash in for the sake of a "moment", I think Reigns wouldn't be in as a bad a position as he is now.

Similarly, failing to capitalise on retiring The Undertaker is one of the most short-sighted booking decisions ever. He beat Undertaker, then lost at Payback, lost at Extreme Rules, lost at Great Balls of Fire, then not only lost at Summerslam, but took the fall in a Four Way match that seemed purpose-built to protect him. Prior to The Shield reunion, the only PPV win he managed was against John Cena - and then we're back to "wins over John Cena don't matter any more" problem, aren't we?

[Loki]

I actually think the losses have made some fans resent him even more.  He keeps losing the big matches, but then turns up on Raw the next week being handed another opportunity!

I really like Reigns, I think he's an incredibly hard worker and can have good matches with almost anyone.  But this tweener thing they have going on isn't working.  Turn him heel or, as you say, push him properly as the no.1 face.

[tiger_rick]

Some fantastic debate and I can't argue with it. I completely agree that they've cooled Reigns in some misguided attempt to make him widely accepted. I still think the Shield reunion was shit and while it has eliminated some of the boos, it's put him on the level of Rollins and Ambrose and not vice versa.

I 50/50 blame the fucking virgins who don't want anyone to be a star unless they've tried to kill themselves in a school gym for ten years beforehand and the spineless cunts in WWE who bottled every chance to make Reigns a superstar. Even just what, 10 months ago, he came out the night after WrestleMania, said one line, and looked like the coolest motherfucker on the planet. Now he's supposedly heading into his crowning moment and he has no momentum whatsoever.

I actually agree with them that wins and losses don't matter. They should matter but they don't because they've fostered this environment where 20 people are 1/20th of a star and some will shine each week, albeit feintly. It's soul destroying.

[d-d-d-dAz]

It's beyond mental that this is his crowning moment. He should have been crowned so long ago the discussion should now be a premature one about who his replacement should be.

Making a star shouldn't be an attritional process, there should be an organic build on the undercard and then a single moment where the stars align and the wrestling Gods show us that that guy is the man. And yet for some reason WWE have become trigger shy. The obvious example is Ryback in the cell, but for my money what they've done with Reigns' is far worst. This is years now. Years and years of everyone expecting him to be anointed as THE MAN, and sort of half having been so before being pulled back, has led to a position where even if they book the perfect match at Mania, it's not going to feel special even to those of us that quite like Roman.

Come next month, literally nothing will be different and everyone in a suit will be scratching their heads wondering why Roman Reigns doesn't suddenly feel like a mega star and then next year he'll be dropping the IC Title just in time to win the Universal Title at Mania. Because then... then it will be different.

 

 

It gets even more depressing if you try and look beyond Roman and see who the next guy is...

Edited February 7, 2018 by d-d-d-dAz

[UK Kat Von D]

They fucked up with the next guy so badly it’s hard to understand. Jason Jordan was literally in the perfect spot upon getting called up. He was handed to them from NXT with an incredible foundation to build on.

No idea how it all went so wrong. 

[BomberPat]

Ryback in Hell In A Cell was a rock and a hard place moment - they had CM Punk's "record breaking" title reign to consider, and the plan to have him go up against The Rock with the belt on the line, and way too many moving parts in play. I think if they'd pulled the trigger on getting the belt on Ryback then, they'd have only had to get the title off him again and shuffle him out of the spotlight by the time Wrestlemania season came along, which might have been even worse. I think they did the best job they could under the circumstances but, again, their failure was in what they did with Ryback after the fact, and how to rebuild the lost momentum or capitalise on anything he had going for him.

 

With Reigns, the blame ultimately has to lie with WWE, but I put some of that blame on the storylines they ran with CM Punk and Daniel Bryan. For years, WWE have had this bizarre set-up where the promotion itself is the heel. Yes, there's the evil authority figures who come and go, but overall, we're given this impression that WWE is somehow - and I'm quoting someone here, but can't remember who - "an evil corporation that everybody still wants to work for". When the ECW reboot happened, it was triggered by Joey Styles cutting a "shoot" promo in which he criticised the company, its creative direction, and so on, yet he was presented as being in the right. And we see those moments scattered through the last 20 years or so. Nothing gets you more cheers in WWE than telling the audience that WWE's rubbish and doing wrestling wrong - how mental is that?

So that all comes to a head with Punk and Bryan, where Punk, first of all, does one of those shoot promos - he becomes one of the biggest stars in the company by saying that the company don't know what they're doing, and receives a massive push for it, where, again, he's presented as being in the right, and the company as being the heel. Daniel Bryan, after that, is the fan favourite that the company says isn't good enough - and then he gets the big match and wins, because the fans put him there.

 

So the cumulative effect of all that is that fans have been conditioned, for years, by WWE to see WWE as an evil corporation that holds down their favourites. And, with the Daniel Bryan story, they've been told that the fans can undermine WWE's decision and choose their own guy. So can they blame anyone but themselves when someone seen as "hand-picked" and anointed for greatness by that same evil corporation gets booed and rejected by a significant portion of the fanbase?

 

 

In spite of all that, I will add that we never know exactly what goes into who does or doesn't get pushed, and we don't have access to a lot of metrics WWE will be using to determine that - the internet fan favourite that everybody wants to see succeed and nobody can understand why he isn't getting a bigger push might be carrying nagging injuries, or management might know they have a tendency to crumble under pressure, or they might just be a dick. And on the other side of the argument, we only see a small fraction of the audience's response to the likes of Roman Reigns - tickets to WWE TV shows and PPV are expensive, so a large part of the casual audience aren't going to be spending that kind of money, meaning that the TV audience are more likely to be the diehards, that are more likely to reject the likes of Roman Reigns. They may not be (and likely aren't) representative of the fanbase as a whole, even if it might seem that way week to week on telly.

Edited February 7, 2018 by BomberPat

[FUM]

Roman needs to maul Brock at Mania. Totally maul him, no messing about.

I totally agree with the sentiments of most posters and it was a point I actually made to my mate last night as we both had The Main Event on.

Hulk Hogan was presented as a superhero. Him losing leaked before that show and people were so into how they were going to have this superhero lose to Andre that the show done a record wrestling rating.

Roman loses all the time. Hogan practically never lost, Austin protected his character and rarely lost, Rock only really lost to Triple H and that was generally because it was Rock against 6 folk, even Cena rarely lost when he first got going. 

Another thing is every top dog had their well known enemy or someone who was recognisable as an opponent. Hogan had Andre. Austin and Rock had each other. When Austin wasn't around, Rock had Triple H. Cena had Punk and to an extent, Orton. Who does Roman have?

Brock is the closest thing for Roman but you can't have your big rival as a part timer. I felt like Braun was heading that way for Roman and Braun v Roman would have been a far more beneficial Mania match for both guys.

Edited February 7, 2018 by FUM

[Onyx2]

3 minutes ago, FUM said:

Another thing is every top dog had their well known enemy or someone who was recognisable as an opponent. Hogan had Andre. Austin and Rock had each other. When Austin wasn't around, Rock had Triple H. Cena had Punk and to an extent, Orton. Who does Roman have?

Brock is the closest thing for Roman but you can't have your big rival as a part timer. I felt like Braun was heading that way for Roman and Braun v Roman would have been a far more beneficial Mania match for both guys.

That's a really good shout actually. He hasn't yet had his career rival but Braun seems like the best choice. Such good stuff last year, we could go round that again a few times especially as Braun gets better month on month.

I also agree that Roman should batter Brock - maybe he ducks out of the way of a takedown (standard Brock match opener) so Lesnar hits the post, giving Reigns the opening.

[BomberPat]

The Reigns/Lesnar match should go one of two ways - Reigns completely beasting his way through Lesnar in a matter of minutes, or a long, drawn out slugfest.

The former might piss off a few people for being too short for a Wrestlemania main event (assuming it does main event), and who think it's Reigns being pushed too strong - but it could capture the kind of shock value that they only seem prepared to take with Lesnar matches; something like his first match with Goldberg, or the Summerslam match with John Cena, that just throws you off-guard for not being what you expect.

The latter I think would work best, so long as it looks like a fight, and not a WWE main event melodrama. It's been a long time since Brock Lesnar really showed up and put a shift in, and this is the time to do it. Remind people that he's a double-tough bastard, and make Reigns look on his level just for being able to hang with him. On some level, while not as much as they might have done, people still believe in Brock Lesnar as the real deal, and if they can capture that feeling at Wrestlemania, Reigns can be made to look shit hot for beating him in a fight.

But, again, the problem is how do they capitalise after the fact?

[ColinBollocks]

I'm glad to read it's not just me that's completely underwhelmed and somewhat put off by the idea of having Reigns main event 'Mania v Lesnar (and the idea of him on top for a while). Thing is, a year ago when he was taking subtle digs at the crowd and heeling it up (slightly) against the Undertaker he was my favourite part of the show, but they've just made him so unbelievably dull ever since the HEAT he received the day after 'Mania, which was wasted almost immediately. He had so much momentum and potential after he "retired Undertaker", but just going back to his default hasn't done anyone any good.

Of course, it doesn't help The Shield reunion turned into a bit of a botch job, with people get injured or ill, seeing as that was probably their last decent chance of getting the crowd to cheer Roman - I think it worked for a couple of weeks too, before it went to hell.

It's just a shame they've basically built this match for a couple of years and I could not give a care about the story of Roman Reigns winning the title by finally besting Lesnar.

They can play the ultimate swerve by having him lose in the Chamber, of course, because pretty much everyone sees the train coming down the tunnel.

As a side note, it's worth remembering Lesnar's contract ends soon after 'Mania and the UFC really want/need him back for a few fights (and there is a good chance he'll be offered a title shot) as their telly deal is up and their PPV business is needing some stars.

Edited February 7, 2018 by ColinBollocks

[Otto Dem Wanz]

35 minutes ago, ColinBollocks said:

Thing is, a year ago when he was taking subtle digs at the crowd and heeling it up (slightly) against the Undertaker he was my favourite part of the show, but they've just made him so unbelievably dull ever since the HEAT he received the day after 'Mania, which was wasted almost immediately.

From Wikipedia:

"WWE commentators labelled the post-WrestleMania 33 crowd as "non-traditional WWE fans" who may cheer for those they normally boo and boo those they normally cheer "all in the name of fun", which echoed similar comments a year prior for the post-WrestleMania 32 crowd."

They had no intention of ever framing it like real heat.

[ColinBollocks]

Well, clearly. They pretty much ignored it and had Roman come out like normal the week after.

Edited February 7, 2018 by ColinBollocks

[FourtyTwo]

Isn't part of the big problem with Reigns the fact that there is no-one on the other side of the face/heel divide to truly draw out the reactions that you want for your top superstar.

2 hours ago, FUM said:

Another thing is every top dog had their well known enemy or someone who was recognisable as an opponent. Hogan had Andre. Austin and Rock had each other. When Austin wasn't around, Rock had Triple H. Cena had Punk and to an extent, Orton. Who does Roman have?

Brock is the closest thing for Roman but you can't have your big rival as a part timer. I felt like Braun was heading that way for Roman and Braun v Roman would have been a far more beneficial Mania match for both guys.

That to me is the crux of the matter - fans are never going to cheer a face just because you're told he's the face, they need a heel to hate on, so they cheer the face.  WWEs inability to get anyone over as a true heel in a long time has meant lukewarm reactions to faces across the board - the closest recently was probably Daniel Bryan with HHH, but HHH can't keep playing the evil corporate overlord.

 

I wonder how well cheered Reigns would have been if they'd capitalised on the Cena-hate a few years back and turned him into an all-conquering heel, and then have Roman as the one to take his top spot?