Minor PPVs that don't deserve a thread *Spoilers*

[PSF]

I liked the Ambulance hokeyness after the match, but surely Roman should have won the match, because it just made him look like a sore loser.

If Braun had literally tried to kill Roman during the match, buy trying to drop something on his head or throwing him from a height, only for it to really piss off Roman, it would have made sense. Roman could have lost his shit, throw him in the ambulance and the rest could have happened as it did and reigns wouldn't have looked like a mardy spoilt bastard.

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, PSF said:

I liked the Ambulance hokeyness after the match, but surely Roman should have won the match, because it just made him look like a sore loser.

If Braun had literally tried to kill Roman during the match, buy trying to drop something on his head or throwing him from a height, only for it to really piss off Roman, it would have made sense. Roman could have lost his shit, throw him in the ambulance and the rest could have happened as it did and reigns wouldn't have looked like a mardy spoilt bastard.

In fairness Braun did tip an ambulance over with Roman inside after he flung him off a ledge on a stretcher

[Otto Dem Wanz]

The Braun/Roman feud has no right to be as entertaining as it is, loved that image of Braun and his blood smearing over the white truck as he staggered round backstage.

Lesnar and Joe was very good too.

[The Cutting Edge]

Braun vs Roman is the wrestling version of Peter Griffin vs The Chicken

[LaGoosh]

38 minutes ago, Otto Dem Wanz said:

The Braun/Roman feud has no right to be as entertaining as it is

Why does it have no right? Both men are fucking amazing so it makes sense the feud is entertaining. I could watch them try and kill eachother forever.

[Wrasslin]

9 hours ago, The Cutting Edge said:

Braun vs Roman is the wrestling version of Peter Griffin vs The Chicken

I would love it to actually be booked this way. Both go off and have other feuds but every now and then just have a massive brawl after seeing each other in the hallway or Strowman pulling up in an ambulance. 

[BomberPat]

I loved Brock vs. Joe. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of a physical slugfest early on, but mostly it was great. Someone else said it earlier, but Lesnar's matches really feel like a heavyweight MMA fight, the psychology of them is just completely different to anything else in WWE, and they feel like a sprint more than a marathon. It's always just two blokes fighting like their life depends on it to win, rather than going for flashy moves, and that's great.

Lesnar gets a lot of stick for being formulaic and samey, but his matches are more varied, and have more nuanced storytelling, than anyone else in WWE right now. They're also a lot more unpredictable - for as much as people complain about "Suplex City", who else has given us as many "holy fuck, what?!" moments as Lesnar? From beating the Undertaker to squashing John Cena to losing to Goldberg in under a minute, you go into every Brock Lesnar match genuinely thinking absolutely anything could happen, and not in a Russo swerve-y way, but in a "fights sometimes don't go as you thought they would" legit way.

And it was a star-making performance for Samoa Joe - if you listen to the announcers all the way through, they're barely talking about Brock. The entire story of the match was Samoa Joe.

 

I didn't like the Strowman/Reigns stuff. I'm a firm believer that a babyface settles his scores in the ring, and it's the heel who takes liberties outside of the ring. I don't know why we should be expected to root for a guy who loses a match and is such a sore loser that he actually tries to permanently injure, if not kill, his opponent moments later. I get that they're trying to give Reigns an "Austin moment", but there was a lot more to Steve Austin than attempted vehicular manslaughter.

When they finally got the ambulance door open, I was hoping Braun would just be stood there bellowing, get out and just beast Jamie Noble across the car park and go off looking for Reigns again. That they had Strowman walk out, refuse help, and get to his feet - a routine long associated with the fiery "never-say-die" babyface - made the whole thing even more baffling as now not only am I questioning why we're expected to cheer Roman Reigns, but why would anyone boo Braun Strowman after that?

Beyond that, what's the pay-off? What can possibly live up to expectations and be a rational blow-off for a feud where attempted murder is the set-up?

Edited July 12, 2017 by BomberPat

[Snitsky's back acne]

5 hours ago, Wrasslin said:

I would love it to actually be booked this way. Both go off and have other feuds but every now and then just have a massive brawl after seeing each other in the hallway or Strowman pulling up in an ambulance. 

They eventually reach an impasse and then Braun accidentally spills a drink on Roman and the feud starts all over again.

I'd be cool with that.

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Beyond that, what's the pay-off? What can possibly live up to expectations and be a rational blow-off for a feud where attempted murder is the set-up?

In all fairness, it didn't hurt Rock vs. Hogan. But I do understand that that was probably in spite of the angle, rather than because of it, and more down to the sheer star power and the fact that people were just up for it anyway.

[LaGoosh]

I can understand people being miffed at Roman's post match attack and seeing him as a sore loser but to me it was came across more as "this feud is bigger than the matches" type of thing. Both guys hate eachother, Braun has hospitalised Roman several times, tried to kill him and left him battered and bloody over and over. Roman wants his revenge. Why, after being thrown into the back of an ambulance, would he just sit there and say "Dang, I lost the match. Oh well." and just sit in there. He wants to fucking kill Braun. Him attacking him almost immediately after made sense to me.

[boytoy]

The attack afterwards isn't really out of keeping with Reigns' character, he has pretty much been a full blown heel for at least 6 months.

[Pinc]

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

In all fairness, it didn't hurt Rock vs. Hogan. But I do understand that that was probably in spite of the angle, rather than because of it, and more down to the sheer star power and the fact that people were just up for it anyway.

But that was the heel doing the attempted murderizing.

[Carbomb]

Just now, Pinc said:

But that was the heel doing the attempted murderizing.

That too! But I was more referring to the degree, i.e. BomberPat's post about "Where could it go from there?"

[BomberPat]

18 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I can understand people being miffed at Roman's post match attack and seeing him as a sore loser but to me it was came across more as "this feud is bigger than the matches" type of thing. Both guys hate eachother, Braun has hospitalised Roman several times, tried to kill him and left him battered and bloody over and over. Roman wants his revenge. Why, after being thrown into the back of an ambulance, would he just sit there and say "Dang, I lost the match. Oh well." and just sit in there. He wants to fucking kill Braun. Him attacking him almost immediately after made sense to me.

It's a broader issue of how WWE book babyfaces for me. The key difference between a face and a heel, to me, should always be that the face's way of resolving an issue is to beat the heel in the ring, while the heel will do whatever is necessary to further their own interests. While there are select instances in which a face attacking a heel outside of the match are acceptable, I don't think beating up the heel after losing to them cleanly is one of those instances. Nor should a babyface ever take disproportionate revenge over a heel. 

But WWE have been doing that for years - the most egregious for me was the Punk/Heyman feud. CM Punk won a match that meant he got his hands on Paul Heyman, and we could understand that, despite Heyman being utterly defenceless, it was morally justifiable to let CM Punk beat him up and get a measure of revenge. But then a couple of weeks later, Punk beats him up again just because. At which point he's just beating up a middle-aged non-wrestler for fun, so why is he the hero?

Similarly, if we move away from the concept that a babyface's resolution should always be an in-ring victory, and say that Roman Reigns was justified in attempting to kill Braun Strowman outside of the match, it doesn't just raise the question of why Roman Reigns is the babyface, it raises the question of why we bother having matches at all if the babyface is prepared to physically attack his rival outside of the confines of a match and, crucially, to receive absolutely no punishment for doing so. If you're able to commit vehicular assault on the bloke you don't like, and there be precisely no ramifications for you, why would you spend all your time dicking around in wrestling matches with him?

14 minutes ago, boytoy said:

The attack afterwards isn't really out of keeping with Reigns' character, he has pretty much been a full blown heel for at least 6 months.

He hasn't, though. He still very much wrestles as a babyface, his matches are structured around him working face, and the announcers still sell him as a babyface.

 

1 minute ago, Carbomb said:

That too! But I was more referring to the degree, i.e. BomberPat's post about "Where could it go from there?"

For the record, I thought it was bloody stupid then too, particularly given that (as we'll most likely see with Strowman too), the angle didn't write The Rock out for more than a couple of weeks. We see people out for half a year with a rib injury, but someone getting crushed inside an ambulance, with untold internal damage, are back wrestling at the next pay-per-view.

You're right that it didn't hurt Rock/Hogan, but I'd say it did absolutely nothing to build to Rock/Hogan either. That match stood alone, and didn't need the build - taken as a product of its build, the match they had makes absolutely no sense if you approach it as a match between The Rock and the man who ploughed a truck into the side of his ambulance and tried to kill him.

Edited July 12, 2017 by BomberPat

[HarmonicGenerator]

The idea of an 'Austin moment' was mentioned above - Stone Cold regularly used to do all that stuff Pat mentions there and became even more of a babyface for it!* Times have changed.

 

 

*not with me, but generally speaking