"The Wrong Guy Went Over"

[Arch Stanton]

 

You can't get a babyface over just by them winning loads of big matches like they tried with Reigns

 

When did Reigns win loads of big matches?  If anything, he was/is getting pinned far too often.

 

I don't think this can be true. I think Roman has only actually been pinned about 3 times in his entire main roster run, dating back to 2012 and that includes the WrestleMania finish. Can anyone confirm?

 

 

 The terrible predictability could have had as much impact on fan backlash as anything Reigns himself did or didn't do.

 

Nailed it right on the head with that closing statement, this is absolutely the case here. Sometimes your posts are a lot longer than they need to be to get the point across, Raid!

[King Pitcos]

 

 

You can't get a babyface over just by them winning loads of big matches like they tried with Reigns

 

When did Reigns win loads of big matches?  If anything, he was/is getting pinned far too often.

 

I don't think this can be true. I think Roman has only actually been pinned about 3 times in his entire main roster run, dating back to 2012 and that includes the WrestleMania finish. Can anyone confirm?

 

I think the only people that have pinned him on TV are Bray Wyatt (twice), Rollins (twice), Big Show, Cody Rhodes and one of the Usos. 

[hallicks]

Big Show pinned him on Raw about 6 weeks ago.

 

How many of those were singles matches? Big show was one.

[Vamp]

I'm going to name two from outside the federation. The first was in TNA (perhaps unsurprisingly) when Jarrett beat the red hot Monty Brown, it was a chance to make a new star at the time but I guess they wanted a familiar face on top. Not the first time in TNA they made that mistake, nor the last, obviously.

 

The second is more obscure and so bizarre that I'm in half a mind as to whether I've actually remembered it right. AAA were running a seemingly never ending (it did indeed never end, sadly, the heat for the hair vs mask match would have been huge) feud between LA Park and Jarrett and put them in a big tag match at Triplemania. They then managed to book Kurt Angle as Jarretts partner, I think they'd been after him for a while. Park teamed with Electroshock because, well, they presumably decided they had to get him on the card some how. The result? Electrostar over Angle. The big feud doesn't factor into the finish and the big guest star puts over someone entirely irrelevant at this stage. The finish should have meant Dorian, the rudo boss, got his head shaved but the technico boss got his head shaved anyway. I watch AAA and I couldn't decipher it. On the other hand I seem to remember LA Park wearing a very snazzy blue number and coming out with.a predator or something. So the match was worth having at least.

[tiger_rick]

I'm going to name two from outside the federation. The first was in TNA (perhaps unsurprisingly) when Jarrett beat the red hot Monty Brown, it was a chance to make a new star at the time but I guess they wanted a familiar face on top. Not the first time in TNA they made that mistake, nor the last, obviously.

I'd put an early TNA one alongside that. When Raven came in, it was their first acquisition that felt genuinely big and a great surprise. They then booked him like a superstar leading into the match with Jarrett which again felt like their first big match. Losing cut Raven's legs off.

 

Similarly last year, they did a fabulous job of telling the story of Gunner going into his World Title match. They had a TNA original, they had a US serviceman and they made people believe he was worthy of the title. Then he lost. And he's done shit all since.

I know not everyone can win the title but if you're going to build them to the point where winning it makes them a star for you and failing kills them dead - then they've got to fucking win!

[Carbomb]

 

I'm going to name two from outside the federation. The first was in TNA (perhaps unsurprisingly) when Jarrett beat the red hot Monty Brown, it was a chance to make a new star at the time but I guess they wanted a familiar face on top. Not the first time in TNA they made that mistake, nor the last, obviously.

I'd put an early TNA one alongside that. When Raven came in, it was their first acquisition that felt genuinely big and a great surprise. They then booked him like a superstar leading into the match with Jarrett which again felt like their first big match. Losing cut Raven's legs off.

 

Similarly last year, they did a fabulous job of telling the story of Gunner going into his World Title match. They had a TNA original, they had a US serviceman and they made people believe he was worthy of the title. Then he lost. And he's done shit all since.

I know not everyone can win the title but if you're going to build them to the point where winning it makes them a star for you and failing kills them dead - then they've got to fucking win!

 

 

Another one to add: James Storm losing to Bobby Roode at Lockdown. He spent ages chasing the bastard, getting fucked over by him, and then TNA does a pretty decent job of building up the fact that it's going to be in Storm's home state, that he absolutely HAS to win this and - pfffft. That's it. And Storm's been fucked by it ever since - he never really got back to the main event, and that one-week reign is all he's ever had, I think (I haven't watched since about halfway through the Aces & Eights storyline).

[Liam O'Rourke]

Just wanted to thank everybody in this thread for the awesome suggestions - the podcast discussing a lot of the matches mentioned in this thread where the Wrong Guy Went Over is now available to listen to at the following link:

 

http://http://squaredcirclegazette.podbean.com/mf/play/nqmshk/SCGRadio36-TheWrongGuyWentOver.mp3

This ended up being a really fun show, talking the many examples provided by Hulk Hogan and Triple H, main event pushes gone awry in Ryback and Lex Luger, perfect endings ruined by overthinking, and some outright travesties. Give it a listen and, as always, let me know what you think!

[air_raid]

Random thoughts, trying to not to bother refuting any arguments which I've already done in this thread :

 

* Nailed it on Nexus at SummerSlam - while many of the guys involved were actually marginal players in the end and might not have amounted to anything, at the time it would have opened up more possibilities if Nexus had won.

 

* Kieran's line to the effect of "it's tough to come up with ways for three heels to lose without the three heels looking weak, so let's split them up so they can all lose" was excellent.

 

* Carl's argument for Hogan winning the 1989 Rumble was excellent, and I can't believe the thought never crossed my mind.

 

* "Knock knock, Triple H is at the door." - Brilliant.

 

Thoughts on Cena/Lesnar from Extreme Rules -

 

Not to repeat myself from the "looking great in defeat" thread, but Brock Lesnar loses nothing in that defeat. The way that match is booked is perfect in that you establish Lesnar as an incredible wrecking ball by the lengths Cena needed to go to in order to beat him, and in turn make Cena look hard as nails in surviving Lesnar's assault. Going in, I felt like it was a no-win situation since Cena winning in theory cuts Lesnar off immediately, whereas Cena losing would have meant him losing to two guys with one match between them in the previous 8 years in two consecutive big fights, but in practice it was superbly executed. Is there anything to gain from Lesnar winning? Would it have added anything to the build for the eventual Lesnar/HHH match at SummerSlam? I don't think so. Would Cena have lost anything from losing that match? Probably not, but in winning, I think it added a tough edge to Cena's character which was a little on the floor from being called Barney The Dinosaur or a Fruity Pebble for over a year and then failing to get revenge on his antagonist on the biggest stage of all.

 

Tell Luke that the reason Lesnar was capable of splattering Cena at SummerSlam 2014 after going down in a really competitive match in Extreme Rules 2012 is the same reason that a football team can lose 1-0 at home to a rival one season then beat them 5-0 the season after - Brock Lesnar in August 2014 was better than he was in April 2012. Whatever reasons you want to attribute - shaking off some rust, attitude/focus, having a better gameplan, knowing better what to expect from Cena (who he had not wrestled prior since 2003) - there shouldn't be an issue with this. I can't get my head around any problem with a match between two guys being completely different from a match they had 16 months earlier. If anything, people constantly complain about pairings that have the same match over and over again, so we're getting dangerously close to "damned if they do, damned if they don't" territory if there's a problem with the differences between these matches.

 

I also think that while the match they had at SummerSlam has the same effect in the watching whether Lesnar ends The Streak or not, I think the logic is still sound in that World Champion VS the guy that ended The Streak is the unbelievably gigantic main event when you want to pop a huge buyrate/grab your Network sign ups.

[tiger_rick]

Tell Luke that the reason Lesnar was capable of splattering Cena at SummerSlam 2014 after going down in a really competitive match in Extreme Rules 2012 is the same reason that a football team can lose 1-0 at home to a rival one season then beat them 5-0 the season after - Brock Lesnar in August 2014 was better than he was in April 2012. Whatever reasons you want to attribute - shaking off some rust, attitude/focus, having a better gameplan, knowing better what to expect from Cena (who he had not wrestled prior since 2003) - there shouldn't be an issue with this. I can't get my head around any problem with a match between two guys being completely different from a match they had 16 months earlier. If anything, people constantly complain about pairings that have the same match over and over again, so we're getting dangerously close to "damned if they do, damned if they don't" territory if there's a problem with the differences between these matches.

 

I also think that while the match they had at SummerSlam has the same effect in the watching whether Lesnar ends The Streak or not, I think the logic is still sound in that World Champion VS the guy that ended The Streak is the unbelievably gigantic main event when you want to pop a huge buyrate/grab your Network sign ups.

Also, Lesnar hit an F5 right off the bat. That was the (admittedly poorly told) story of that match. If you wrestle 1000 matches that start with a feeling out process, two guys being fairly defensive and then suddenly a guy attacks righ away and hits his finisher, it's going to change the dynamic of any match. It was totally believable.

[ColinBollocks]

Heyman spent last year telling us that Lesnar was now a 100% after finally overcoming his diverticulitis. By the story they were telling, the Lesnar that was losing to Triple H and John Cena (and Velasquez) wasn't healthy, despite still looking like a monster. This new healthy Lesnar is the one that has been bossing the competition for over a year.

[air_raid]

Oh, and I'd be amiss if I didn't mention that the (admittedly spur of the moment) statement of belief that a WWF PPV didn't end with a heel waving the belt around until SummerSlam '97..... was DEFINITELY not fair to Flair.

[Liam O'Rourke]

I did caveat it with "Wrestlemania or Summerslam", so not technically wrong, but you're right in that Flair winning the Rumble to end a show on top of the world is the first example of a heel ruling the roost at the end of a PPV...

 

As for the Lesnar/Cena debate - I agree here that I don't subscribe to the "MMA Maths" approach to wrestling. In any sporting endeavour anything can happen on a given night. Great form, bad form, injuries, momentum, whatever you want to say. If you want to be really tactical you can say Lesnar has 6 months to train for one match and Cena didn't, all sorts of arguments against the "Why is this happening now" kayfabe point of view.

[air_raid]

Ah, the Vader debate, was it?

 

Shawn chasing Vader to get the belt back (with Vader holding the belt from SummerSlam to Mania) would have been a decent fallback plan if they thought they weren't going to be able to persuade Bret Hart to come back for the planned rematch with Michaels.