The Official UKFF RAW thread (part 2)...

[Slapnut]

32 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

The issue is that cackling, dressing like a twat and being annoying alone isn't a character. It's as lazy as it gets and it's absolute shite. 

I guess this is the issue I don’t fully understand. Is this any different to 90% of wrestlers in WWE? I don’t see how this is really any different to “man who comes to the ring with a sword and counts to three”, “man who is is almighty”, or “woman who likes Eddie Guerrero”. To me, his character doesn’t necessarily have any less depth than any of those. I know he’s not the most popular on here, but he seems to cop a lot of flack for somebody whose character is pretty much on par with the majority of the roster. It’s very on brand for WWE.

I don’t particularly enjoy it either mind, please don’t think my tastes are that bad!

@BomberPatI completely agree with your response on the last page, but I don’t think he’s unique in that regard, I could name a handful of WWE wrestlers I’d apply that to.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Slapnut

[LaGoosh]

6 minutes ago, Slapnut said:

I guess this is the issue I don’t fully understand. Is this any different to 90% of wrestlers in WWE? I don’t see how this is really any different to “man who comes to the ring with a sword and counts to three”, “man who is is almighty”, or “woman who likes Eddie Guerrero”. To me, his character doesn’t necessarily have any less depth than any of those. I know he’s not the most popular on here, but he seems to cop a lot of flack for somebody whose character is pretty much on par with the majority of the roster. It’s very on brand for WWE.

I don’t particularly enjoy it either mind, please don’t think my tastes are that bad!

@BomberPatI completely agree with your response on the last page, but I don’t think he’s unique in that regard, I could name a handful of WWE wrestlers I’d apply that to.

Not sure that most the people in WWE having little/no character or bad gimmicks is much of an endorsement of Rollins. Thing is you absolutely can be a one note character with no depth and be successful as long as that character is clear and well defined. Most the popular acts from the 80s and Attitude era were as one note as you can get but it worked because it was obvious what they were and the crowd immediately caught on to it. Rollins does not meet that criteria. Equally if you're going to be a top act that drives stories long term there needs to be something more substantive to your character. Rollins jumps from gimmick to gimmick and has had a ton of different nicknames and none of them have really made any sense or have any consistent internal logic.

[JFFC]

8 hours ago, Factotum said:

I actually think Seth Rollins' cackling like an arsehole nearly killed Cody's return at 'Mania. Just shut the hell up and and sell it.

I saw it in a different way, to me his reaction said;

"Vince could have sent me anyone, he could have sent Hornswoggle, he could have sent Santino Marella, Val Venus... Etc. But no, he sent me the big name free agent signing that the world is talking about, he didn't let me down and this is my big Wrestlemania moment. I'm excited, Let's enjoy this!"

He shouldn't exactly be doing the "oh shit, it's the Undertaker I'm scared face" 

[Guest]

Rollins I was never able to take seriously, as he was a heel who wrestled like a babyface, and as a babyface acted like a heel. Had about as much width to his repertoire as he does between his legs 

[Factotum]

3 hours ago, JFFC said:

"Vince could have sent me anyone, he could have sent Hornswoggle, he could have sent Santino Marella, Val Venus... Etc. But no, he sent me the big name free agent signing that the world is talking about, he didn't let me down and this is my big Wrestlemania moment. I'm excited, Let's enjoy this!"

He shouldn't exactly be doing the "oh shit, it's the Undertaker I'm scared face" 

But he cackles all the time, at every bit of random shit, so it has no impact

[Chili]

Rollins character is a wrestler imagining what Jared Leto did for method to play the Joker on a trip to Home Bargains.

I don't see why it's such a debate. 

[air_raid]

On 1/6/2022 at 8:23 AM, air_raid said:

Anyway, the real reason I’m in this thread is to ask ; did WWE do an episode of TV where champions lost a non-title match? Yes they did.

What a fucking joke. Right before a unification match. Why bother unifying these belts now? Throw them in the bin.

[Loki]

Raw is in an interesting place right now with no HW Champion on the roster.  Theory (still called Austin at least once this week btw) is now the top champ on the brand!  Good match with Balor at least but the top belt changing hands on the tv show, shows how little they value it/Balor atm.

The Ezekiel/Elias thing is the best bit right now, although it was weird to see Owens then pulling a second duty in the main event.  I was half expecting a bearded Elias to interfere.

Cody is being pushed HARD... is he going to be the next challenger for the unified title then?  Or challenging for the US title?

Some good wrestling but the show lacks a focus.

[uklaw]

The Cody push is interesting. As said, he’s being pushed hard and the live crowds appear to be playing along for now.

But we know how a section of the audiences can be. Whether there are any creative missteps or not, some will start seeing a hard push as him being ‘forced down their throats’ (a la Cena and Reigns) and do their best to ‘ruin’ his perception, thus forcing the live crowd sweetening to be even more overbearing than it is now.

[BomberPat]

I'm not sure he will get the Cena/Reigns reaction, at least not in the short-term, because much of the justification for that reaction was always that Cena and Reigns felt like the hand-picked WWE corporate choice for top babyface, and much of Cody's appeal is that this current iteration of Cody Rhodes isn't a product of the WWE system, and his star power was built on its own terms. That will sustain itself for a long time, in terms of preventing the crowd from actively turning on him, and because while they obviously want to present him as a star, I don't see them seeing him as the top babyface, so they likely won't have any objection to turning him heel if the crowd to start to react more negatively. 

[Tsurutagun]

I see that WWE are carrying on the Sonya Deville vs Black women feud. 

And people say WWE don't do long term stories

[Nick James]

Just watched the two returns and if there was any crowd sweetening, they must have forgotten to turn it up because both barely got any reaction at all, the crowd were dead. 

Mind you, attend a Raw taping in 2022 and more fool you I guess.

[d-d-d-dAz]

The dirty little secret of the #FreeAli movement is that no one ever really gave a shit about him in the first place.

Social media amplifies things - you’d have sworn this guy would be a huge star when he returned. But he’s not. Because social media isn’t real. He’ll be gone again in a couple of months.

Edited April 26, 2022 by d-d-d-dAz

[DavidB6937]

26 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

The dirty little secret of the #FreeAli movement is that no one ever really gave a shit about him in the first place.

Social media amplifies things - you’d have sworn this guy would be a huge star when he returned. But he’s not. Because social media isn’t real. He’ll be gone again in a couple of months.

As is the case with a lot of people that they actually do release. People kick up a fuss even though they really didn't give a shit about them when they were actually employed.

[Chris B]

4 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

As is the case with a lot of people that they actually do release. People kick up a fuss even though they really didn't give a shit about them when they were actually employed.

It's almost like people's opinions about cutting people from their contracts in the middle of a pandemic (and while the company was posting record numbers) wasn't about how well they wrestled.