Paid Members Jazzy G Posted March 22, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted March 22, 2021 I will admit that when I saw Riddle talking with Nakamura I marked out a little bit as they could have had a really good match if it wasn't a 7 minute WWE style match. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lenin Posted March 22, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted March 22, 2021 2 hours ago, Bohan said: Is this whole thing a remake of the road to wrestlemania 30 when we saw a face Batista win the rumble upon his return, turn heel the following month and then Bryan winning the title? I hope so!   It makes sense but for that reason I think the outcome will be different this time. I can't see them caving a second time and giving Bryan the belt. I really hope I'm wrong though. Edge winning achieves nothing. Reigns retaining makes sense but leaves the gaping whole of "no challengers" unless something drastic happens with young internet sensation Cesaro between now and then.  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Jazzy G Posted March 22, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted March 22, 2021 Unless Lesnar turns up the Smackdown after Mania? Edge costs Bryan the match, they feud for a little while, and Lesnar feuds with Reigns? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew "the ref" coyne Posted March 22, 2021 Share Posted March 22, 2021 1 hour ago, Suplex Sinner said: It makes sense but for that reason I think the outcome will be different this time. I can't see them caving a second time and giving Bryan the belt. I really hope I'm wrong though. Edge winning achieves nothing. Reigns retaining makes sense but leaves the gaping whole of "no challengers" unless something drastic happens with young internet sensation Cesaro between now and then. Â Oh you wait till we get the WWE Draft... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members WeeAl Posted March 22, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted March 22, 2021 Bryan Vs Reigns was a great match. Really, really good stuff. Until the very end. Just unnecessary, confusing, overcomplicated bollocks. If they wanted Edge Vs Roman at Mania, keep Bryan as far away from it as possible. If you wanted Bryan Vs Reigns? Edge didn't need to win the Rumble, or he could have faced Drew/Lashley. I can't see any reason why they would have planned for this to be a three way originally, so if they make it one it's because they know they have fucked it yet again when it comes to involving Bryan on the fringes of the title situation. That's where I think this lies - when Edge won the Rumble, it hadn't been decided yet what the role would be at 'Mania. Which is ridiculous really. Now they've done to Edge what they did to Batista at 'Mania 30. Bryan had a blinder here with Roman, that was never in doubt. He'll have one with Romans and Edge at Mania as well if he's included in that match. Yet to get there, it's abundantly clear that as a result of poor planning and ill-conceived ideas, WWE will have had to backtrack on what they wanted to do and hit the panic button to deliver what they should have done in the first place. The whole Orton/Alexa/Wyatt thing was every bit as shite as you would expect. Bray Wyatt, eater of world's? He's the soul sucker of WeeAl is what he is. He's bounced around the crap angle arcade like a pinball for about 7 years now. He needs his own Wrestlecrap book does that fella. Drew and Sheamus had a good aul battering match. I enjoyed that one. Other than the kendo sticks which were mentioned, the rest was very good, which you usually are going to get out of these two with anybody. Even moreso with each other, given their relationship. No idea what happened at the end of Crews/Big E. Not sure I even know who the champ is after that. Rollins and Nakamura was good as well, and other than the recent gauntlet match Nakamura had, it was his best outing in quite a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Jazzy G Posted March 22, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted March 22, 2021 I wonder whether Apollo forgot to kick out, but the ref had to count the 3, so they did the beat down after the match to keep things heated for another go round at Mania, rather than Crews winning the title in some kind of shitty heelish fashion so they get a rematch at Mania. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WyattSheepMask Posted March 22, 2021 Share Posted March 22, 2021 It looked as though Big E was supposed to reverse the small package, but he got himself into a position where he couldn’t roll. He then sort of bridges into something resembling a pin and the ref just counted the fall. It was a mess whichever you slice it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winston Posted March 23, 2021 Share Posted March 23, 2021 Blows my mind we've went from this Bray Wyatt to what we're seeing now with a burnt out Fiend having never really reached his full potential with any character. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted March 23, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted March 23, 2021 Bray Wyatt as a fiery ass kicking Southern-style babyface wrassler would be the absolute best use of Bray Wyatt. You could build a company around that Bray Wyatt. Alas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted March 23, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted March 23, 2021 when people were still raving about The Fiend after his first couple of matches, I went back and watched Wyatt's first Wrestlemania match, and it's night and day. They never committed to anything long-term enough to really make the cult leader gimmick work, and ruined it with magical bullshit, but it felt real. There was so much that could have been done with that character, and him seeming like a plausible human character made him infinitely more scary - the almost soothing music, the relaxed walk to the ring, the "fireflies" were all so much creepier than anything he's done since. There was, at first, enough of a question mark over what Bray Wyatt actually was - is he really possessed by some sort of supernatural entity, or is he just a lunatic who thinks he is, or a con man who's convinced others that he is so that they would follow him? Tying that into crowds cheering him and rejecting John Cena could have been a masterstroke - they should have had audience plants representing members of his "Family", so he wasn't just the worst cult leader in the world with only two mates. The moment they removed that question mark, and made him literally magic, and just a vehicle for all the worst matches and special effects ever, they killed whatever promise he had. The Firefly Funhouse version of Bray could have been interesting, but it has the same problem as so many gimmicks before it - it doesn't translate to a wrestling match. The creepy overly happy kids' TV presenter works fine for vignettes, but what do you do with him as a wrestler, especially if he's still going to wrestle exactly the same as the previous iteration of Bray Wyatt? They had a real opportunity to salvage something with Bray when they had him briefly work face - the spot where he points at an opponent and Roman Reigns spears them was one of the most organically cool things WWE had done in years. It went nowhere. I honestly felt that the best thing they could have done with Bray, prior to The Fiend being introduced, was a rehash of the Raven/Kanyon angle where Raven was exposed as a spoiled rich kid - have someone do some investigating into Bray's background, and find that he grew up in a really rich, privileged area, that he was living off dad's money (hell, even use IRS as his dad), and that all the spooky magic stuff was him having an in with the production/special effects department. Just actively strip him of that mystique and build him back up as a broken shell of himself, driven crazy by having been exposed, and make him genuinely dangerous as a result. Instead we got a cartoon character ripped from a sub-Liefeld Spawn rip-off, just every lazy, edgy horror cliché imaginable. Shit nu-metal music and spooky clown trousers with red mood lighting. We're meant to take him seriously as a scary monster, when he's walking around with a giant comedy hammer. The worst thing. Even by the standards of wrestling, it's completely devoid of subtlety.  I only watched the last two matches of Fastlane. Randy Orton vs. Alexa Bliss is, I honestly believe, the single worst wrestling match I have ever seen. Rehashing Ultimate Warrior vomiting Papa Shango's magic goo, despite the fact that's been routinely mocked for decades now, like trying to earnestly repeat The Shockmaster. Only he has to spend a ridiculous amount of time wiping it all off with a towel, otherwise it would lead to continuity errors in all the obvious pre-recorded bits, most of them shot from impossible angles that make them even more jarring than the shit editing does. Alexa Bliss is doing the best she can with what she's been given, but what she's been given is utter dogshit seemingly based on nothing more than "looks a bit like she could be Harley Quinn" and fan-wank booking, but written by people who have no idea what Harley Quinn's character actually is, and coming up acting like a complete idiot. The match made both wrestlers look like idiots. Despite having a huge budget, and the freedom of being able to use special effects and pre-recorded footage, the fire effects in this match were appalling. Under those circumstances, I would be more embarrassed if I were responsible for them than AEW were for their explosion. And then just flat-out stealing Kane's pyro effects for the end, to remind you that they've done "heel masked monster with a burned face" already, and much better. Followed by the two heels just standing/squatting over Randy Orton for an inordinate amount of time, doing nothing, which somehow managed to be worse than the match that preceded it. One of the worst things I've ever seen in wrestling, and that covers some fucking ground. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Gaffer Posted March 23, 2021 Share Posted March 23, 2021 I think in terms of character work he did reach his full potential with Wyatt family V1. He mightn't have gotten the run he deserved out of it, but that character for me was as good as it ever could have been in early 2014. Right amount of True Blood spook without being too carny. He should have went over Cena at WrestleMania XXX and went straight into a program with Daniel Bryan next month for the title. Or at least a better series of returns with Cena - which from looking up Extreme Rules that year did seem to happen but fucked if I can remember it, which says it all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Blog Posted March 23, 2021 Share Posted March 23, 2021 Hindsight and Bray Wyatt go hand in hand sadly. I loved his initial run as the cult leader and feel that is the path they should have continued down. The trajectory could have been the same but with an eventual face turn. Seeing Brodie in AEW showed he had the chops for being a bullying cult leader in his own right. Harper could have lost faith in Bray because of his inability to get the job done which would have led nicely to a returning Bray smashing his way through the Family to get to Harper. Pad it all out so that we have a few months of Harper recruiting some scrubs and even picking up a title. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidB6937 Posted March 23, 2021 Share Posted March 23, 2021 Original cult Bray was fantastic, as he was at times on the main roster. However there's only so many rants and rambles you can sit through without a point. He never got to the point. He never went anywhere with any of it and that was always the problem for me. There needs to be an end game for something like that and there just wasn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitalversicolor Posted March 23, 2021 Share Posted March 23, 2021 Waylon Mercy did it better in that short run than Wyatt has in the seven plus years he's been on the main roster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheffbag Posted March 23, 2021 Share Posted March 23, 2021 Really enjoyed the show, drew and shamus kicking the crap out of each other, Seth and nakamura was better than expected, great main event bar the finish  orton and bliss was awful but I bet Randy didn’t mind with the way Alexa pinned him Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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