Paid Members LaGoosh Posted February 19, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted February 19, 2019 Rousey/Riott was a heck of a match. Some fans may be starting to turn on her and her promos are naff, but I bloody love Rousey. She's a killer. Didn't bother with the rest of the show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Supremo Posted February 19, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted February 19, 2019 This is the type of thing Ricochet should've had for at least a couple of weeks before coming in. That he just appeared randomly is such a waste. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members ColinBollocks Posted February 19, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted February 19, 2019 (edited) Such a repulsive view point is that women are taking the show down. Combat sports and fake wrestling will always be star driven. As such, it's always down to the promotion how stars are presented and delivered. As our Supremo pointed out, the NXT lot were butchered. Almost all of them are something but, realistically, nothing. Edited February 19, 2019 by ColinBollocks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Supremo Posted February 19, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted February 19, 2019 (edited) I don't think it's the end of the world that the NXT lads were introduced cold. Ricochet in particular is too flashy and has too much potential to not get over. Especially if they do the dream scenario of putting him on Smackdown during the Shakeup so he can mix it up with Mysterio, Andrade and the like. Ultimately though, seeing those guys come in two months before Wrestlemania? I just worry that'll likely add another twenty minutes to half an hour to Mania itself. We're one day going to have a ten hour Wrestlemania, aren't we? At this point, I wish they'd do it over two nights. Three hours Saturday, three hours Sunday. Lovely. Edited February 19, 2019 by Supremo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam O'Rourke Posted February 19, 2019 Share Posted February 19, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, ColinBollocks said: Such a repulsive view point is that women are taking the show down. Combat sports and fake wrestling will always be star driven. As such, it's always down to the promotion how stars are presented and delivered. Nobody is making the repulsive point though. It's totally down to the presentation, not trying to say women as a gender can't draw and it's bombing because we have women so strongly pushed, nobody is, that would be a stupid point easily disproven. That aspect would only have something to do with it if the presentation of them isn't resonating with the audience, and I do wonder if, until now, the talk of the revolution and the branding of it has hurt more than its helped women who could have been bigger stars a lot sooner. At the moment, with ratings being so important to the company, and with Becky as the focus and not moving numbers yet (not that I'd expect her to at this stage, there's a long game being played), I don't think its beyond reproach to discuss the viewership patterns, or debating how well wrestling works as a concept trying to make multiple megastars all on the same shows at the same time. It may be a structural argument about a roster of this size with this much content as much as anything else when you break it down. Edited February 19, 2019 by Liam O'Rourke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator Onyx2 Posted February 19, 2019 Awards Moderator Share Posted February 19, 2019 8 hours ago, PunkStep said: I'm glad I'm not the only one that keeps up with Raw in this manner. Me an' all. It's telling that I can't even stomach a 25 minute YouTube recap of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricc1PW Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 I watch Raw every week, generally in its entirety, partly out of habit and partly cos I've nothing better to do but I'll tell you what some weeks its an absolute chore.this weeks was a bit... boring...it was just..there. it happened. The NXT call ups are just bizarre - why in the world would you just present them like that? no back story, no reason for the fans to care, unless you happen to tune into the network every week to watch NXT, you might know their names, but you don't know anything about them or who they are. The booking is baffling aswell - I sat watching EC wondering why Balor and/or Kurt hadn't helped Brawn like on the previous Raw - on Raw i wondered where McIntyre and Lashley were. what struck me during that tables match was how quickly and sharply they've cooled Brawn - a couple of months ago he was one of the hottest acts on the show, and was on top of the card in the title picture - now hes treading water and stuck in the midcard, not in a title picture and still feuding with Baron, who hasn't been GM for ages now. I got the impression watching the show that they are just chucking shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. it's as if Vince has shit himself at the ratings, talked to HHH and gone "right, get me your NXT guys. people like them, right?" other than Brock vs Rollins, and Becky vs Ronda vs Charlotte I don't think I can tell you much of what else will go down at 'Mania.. that seems a bit weird with about 6/7 weeks til the show and about 8 more matches to announce.  also, what was with Triple H saying that Becky's invasion of EC, and the beatdown he laid on his top female stars was "pretty cool"?? that seemed an absolutely bizarre thing to say for his character. I would have imagined he'd be furious about it and threatening legal action or what have you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam O'Rourke Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 (edited) Some bloody hilarious notes from the latest Observer Radio about this week's Raw. Vince feels the ratings are down because the show is stale and they've scorched the earth with the current roster and can't make stars out of them, so he made the call to bring up the best NXT guys to get great new wrestlers on the show and to push them hard. HHH didn't know about this plan at first, there was a communication issue. Raw was written last week, designed to be heavily built around Seth. There was a plan for Ronda to beat Alexa in a minute to continue the megapush after beating Ruby at the PPV, and to do Balor Vs. Ricochet to have an awesome match on the show. When HHH found out he got the match changed, thinking it was bad to have Ricochet lose in his debut or to beat Balor. Then, on Monday, Vince rolls in late, between 1-2pm, and says they have to rewrite the entire show because Seth hasn't been cleared from his back injury. So they rewrote it, the script wasn't finished until 30 minutes into the show, and wasn't finalised and with people until into the second hour, Nitro style. To cap off how frazzled Vince and crew are, there was a Mania card in place back in December, but now everything is in a state of flux, and there is no Mania card in place. "It's never been like this before", Meltzer stated, questioned about that being the case this late in the game. A lot of this has apparently been brought on by Undertaker doing Starrcast, which has really hit Vince hard, and the lingering prospect of a major AEW TV deal making him very unhappy with the state of the show with the ratings looking bad. Edited February 20, 2019 by Liam O'Rourke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted February 20, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted February 20, 2019 Surely The Undertaker would come running back to Vince at the first phone call, though? Unless there's been some behind the scenes falling out we're not privy to, I'd have thought Vince still holds all the cards in that one. If anything's flustering him, it should be Seth's injury and Becky Lynch having thrown a curveball into his Charlotte/Ronda booking. I really can't bring myself to believe that WWE, having signed the most lucrative TV deal they've ever had with FOX, are running around panicking because of rumours that an unproven promotion have a TV deal. That doesn't chime with anything we know about Vince McMahon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 Which NXT call-ups have been any good? I feel like they're almost always rubbish, especially with the mainstays whose gimmick is "wrestler." Elias and Enzo & Cass were alright, because the acts were one-note enough that you could 'get' them straight away. Owens and Zayn had a good platform with the John Cena open challenges as well. But what others were decent? Balor? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bohan Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 (edited) 9 minutes ago, King Pitcos said: Which NXT call-ups have been any good? I feel like they're almost always rubbish, especially with the mainstays whose gimmick is "wrestler." Elias and Enzo & Cass were alright, because the acts were one-note enough that you could 'get' them straight away. Owens and Zayn had a good platform with the John Cena open challenges as well. But what others were decent? Balor? Becky? Charlotte? The Shield? I think this argument about the success of NXT callups keeps going around in circles. Most have played their part in some way or another, some people seem to be under the belief that every callup needs to go on to megastardom to be deemed as a success story. Edited February 20, 2019 by Bohan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dart Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 (edited) Yeh reading some of the comments about Tye Dillinger is comical. People think every call up from NXT should be world champion within 3 weeks otherwise they're a failure of the WWE system. They're always going to need people on the undercard and opening matches and those guys are still going to come from NXT for the most part. But because Tyler Breeze, Tye Dillinger and No Way Jose haven't been world champions that means all NXT callups are wasted. Edited February 20, 2019 by The Dart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 27 minutes ago, Bohan said: Becky? Charlotte? The Shield? The Shield was definitely a good one, but I was meaning callups from NXT in the Network era - before that, there wasn't the expectation that we should already know the developmental talent. Becky and Charlotte's introductions were crap, there was just a speech about the women's revolution and then they were assigned to awkward stables. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members PunkStep Posted February 20, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted February 20, 2019 I seem to remember Joe's first main roster appearance being decent. He appeared out of nowhere and destroyed Rollins and looked a beast in doing so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 Poor fucking EC3, he's not even been assigned to a brand and he's already last year's news. What happened to Sanity?  Or Jose? Nikki Cross? At the rate they're burning through development talent, NXT'S summer PPVs will be headlined by Kona Reeves v Jaxson Ryker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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