Before we get going, I offer my sincerest halfhearted apologies for things around here being so slow lately. Not only have Carin and I been making up for the last year sucking so badly by trying to make something good out of this one, but to be honest, nobody comes here this time of year anyway. There are literally parts of the summer when site visits drop off worse than they do at Christmas, so there’s not a lot of point in putting in a whole lot of effort. If you’re not going to stay inside to read it why should we stay inside to write it, to make a long story I’ve already told short. Things should start picking up again now that everyone is shackled to their offices and the weather will soon blow thousands of goats, however.
With that bit out of the way, it’s time to talk some wrestling, because who doesn’t like wrestling? Judging from some of the television ratings lately the correct answer to this question is basically everyone, but ahh well, I’m doing it anyway.
1. You are excited for Seth Rollins vs. Sting at Night of Champions.
You mean Sting as in the man who made a surprising debut at last year’s Survivor Series to help even the odds for the good guys and remove the evil Authority from power in one of the cooler moments of the year only to have the whole thing nullified a month later? The Sting who lost his first and only WWE match like a complete geek before shaking hands with his sworn enemy at Wrestlemania, no less? Sting who disappeared for months basically without explanation only to return for an angle where he hangs out backstage or appears out of nowhere while the champion of the fucking world drones on and on in the most boring, whiny and annoying manner possible for 5 straight hours on every 3 hour Raw about some stupid statue? No. I am not excited about this whatsoever. Furthermore, if you are, you are a moron. Feeling nostalgic for Sting does not give this shit a free pass. End of discussion.
2. The finish to the Undertaker vs. Brock Lesnar match, while creative, would have meant more if WWE hadn’t ran a shenanigan filled finish to the Cena vs. Rollins match.
This is one of the rare cases where I fixed the typos in somebody else’s quote so that the question would actually make sense. Your welcome, Larry.
I’d given zero thought to that aspect of things because shenanigans are what WWE does now. I expected screwy finishes to both matches, so it really didn’t bother me. At least, as the question says, the finish was different and creative rather than being the same silly distraction or outside interference we see in every other match because nobody’s allowed to get too many clean wins in a row just in case someone might get over. It also leaves things open for another match between the two probably at Mania, which I hope will be Taker’s last match because watching him wrestle is starting to legitimately make me fear for his safety.
If you haven’t seen how the match ended, here’s what happened by way of WWE.com.
3. NXT Takeover: Brooklyn was a superior show in comparison to Summerslam, and it wasn’t even close.
Oh god yes! Summerslam was a 4 hour show that didn’t need to be 3 hours, whereas the 2 and a half hours of Takeover just flew bye. The worst thing on Takeover (I’m not even sure what that would be) felt more special than anything I saw on Summerslam the next night. When was the last time you saw wrestling fans so emotional at the end of a match that some were legitimately crying? And it was the Women’s Title Match, for god’s sake! When the hell do those ever feel even the slightest bit important in WWE? NXT felt like a happening, while Summerslam came off to me like a Raw with a couple of good matches and an extremely long overrun.
4. You would be interested in seeing a Stephan Amell vs. Stardust singles match down the line.
If it weren’t for WWE I would have no idea who Stephen Amell was. But hey, at least he didn’t embarrass himself out there, so I guess another match might be ok. Would take some TV time away from something worse, if nothing else.
5. Bayley vs. Sasha Banks from NXT Takeover: Brooklyn was the best women’s match in WWE history.
That’s a bold statement, but as I sit here thinking about it I can’t remember a better one. Some of the other NXT ones have been very, very good, but as a complete package of storytelling, action, psychology and pure emotion this one is way up there. I’ll say it’s the best ever until I stumble across something I haven’t seen. This is going to be hard to top, though.
6. WWE made the right call to bring back the Dudley Boyz.
Absolutely. Yes they’re kind of a nostalgia act, but as nostalgia acts go they’re one that still has a lot to offer. Wrestling guys who have been around as long as they have is only going to help make the younger guys better, plus they’re a team that a lot of people know and love so make the tag titles feel more important simply by virtue of their wanting to win them one more time. I’m also interested in how long it’s going to take for the geniuses in creative to make them feel just as unspecial as everyone else and whether they’ll be able to finish the job before the Dudleys say fuck it and leave again.
7. The main roster “Diva’s Revolution” has been handled extremely poorly.
Oh yeah. They done fucked this thing up from day one, and they’re going to have fun fixing it.
It started out simply enough. Paige keeps talking about the divas division needing a change, and says she wants the other girls to stand with her to knock the Bellas off the top of the mountain that they don’t deserve to be on top of. Nobody does, so she keeps getting beaten up by Bellas over and over again.
Now, what a smart storyteller would do is after a while, new girls would show up to save the day. They’d clean house and all celebrate together before Paige explains that since nobody around here was going to help, she had to go outside the box and find some people who gave a damn about women’s wrestling. But because WWE is not staffed by smart storytellers outside of NXT, here’s what happened.
Stephanie McMahon, who is the biggest heel in the company by the way, just comes out one day and says yo Bellas, I want some change around here. Keep in mind that the Bellas, as heels, have done favours for Stephanie in the not so distant past. She then proceeds to basically say to Paige and Naiomi “You get a partner! And you get a partner! And you get a partner! And you get a partner!…And it’s revolution time!” while bringing up 3 of NXT’s most popular girls and creating 3 person teams that are now all best friends for no particular reason. It also doesn’t help that at every turn, the commentators are forced to tell us in the most corporate robot tone they can muster that we are watching the divas revolution right before our eyes. It’s all so very forced and stupid and lame and the complete opposite of what makes these same people so beloved in NXT, and it’s a shame that yet again the WWE main roster is made to look like a serious downgrade for people who had so much potential.
That’s it for now. I’ll talk to you all later, now that there are some of you to talk to again.
