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March Wrasslin' |OT| Forecast for Wrestlemania...cloudy with a heavy chance of Reigns

notworksafe

Member
You've clearly not seen how they treated the IC champion the past 7 years.

Perhaps they now see that that've got to make that belt mean something because post-WM they won't have the WHC title on TV except for once a month or so.

mma_e_lesner_b1_576.jpg


Keep the US title relevant on Raw with Cena and the IC title relevant on Smackdown with Bryan.
 

Hasney

Member
Seriously. Post the .gifv link with a description. Chrome is hemorrhaging right now.

Nah. While I agree on not posting massive gifs, coming in here with Chrome is suicide. It's either adapt or die.

There are extensions to block gifs if you want to continue using Chrome.
 

jmdajr

Member
Rock and Brock are Bros.

Think Rock is helping Reigns squeeze in on some bro friendship with Bork?
You know....invite him to a little BBQ cookout or something.
 

UberTag

Member
Perhaps they now see that that've got to make that belt mean something because post-WM they won't have the WHC title on TV except for once a month or so.

mma_e_lesner_b1_576.jpg


Keep the US title relevant on Raw with Cena and the IC title relevant on Smackdown with Bryan.
It's a nice thought but this is a company that treats its mid-card champs as jokes and didn't bother to build up either division since Brock won the WWE WHC title at Summerslam.
That won't change regardless of whether you delude yourself into thinking Brock is holding the belt championship three weeks from now.

Nah. While I agree on not posting massive gifs, coming in here with Chrome is suicide. It's either adapt or die.

There are extensions to block gifs if you want to continue using Chrome.
This thread chugs constantly on Chrome. I can't see any value in people who post colossal animated .gifs with reckless abandon.
Might as well brag about your gamerscore or penis size or something equally useless. I should really start making use of GAF's ignore filter.
 

imBask

Banned
Perhaps they now see that that've got to make that belt mean something because post-WM they won't have the WHC title on TV except for once a month or so.


Keep the US title relevant on Raw with Cena and the IC title relevant on Smackdown with Bryan.

but Brock ain't winning, he's leaving
 

notworksafe

Member
It's a nice thought but this is a company that treats its mid-card champs as jokes and didn't bother to build up either division since Brock won the WHC title at Summerslam.
That won't change regardless of whether you delude yourself into thinking Brock is holding the belt championship three weeks from now.

In my head-booking they were continuing business as usual with the midcard titles because they didn't know if Brock was staying.

But if they've got him re-signed then maybe that's why they're now pushing up those titles as something worth having and showing off on TV?

I dunno, you're probably right and I'm delusional but I prefer to keep it positive.
 

Recall

Member
So 2010 WWE gave us HBK vs Undertaker and The Nexus were pretty hot before being fed to Cena. Was there anything else worthwhile about 2010?
 

FyreWulff

Member
Perhaps they now see that that've got to make that belt mean something because post-WM they won't have the WHC title on TV except for once a month or so.

mma_e_lesner_b1_576.jpg


Keep the US title relevant on Raw with Cena and the IC title relevant on Smackdown with Bryan.

It's so silly that they're NOW fine with Brock keeping the title off TV for extended periods of time, but hit the panic button and aborted the Summer of Punk after so little time with the belt off TV :/
 

Cagey

Banned
It's so silly that they're NOW fine with Brock keeping the title off TV for extended periods of time, but hit the panic button and aborted the Summer of Punk after so little time with the belt off TV :/

Two major differences:
1) Pre-WWE Network. They had a PPV coming up and needed to generate sales, rather than relying on the direct-to-WWE $9.99 payments of subscribers regardless of PPV quality.
2) The PPV was Summerslam. Not some two-bit random show like Fastlane, but their #2 show of the year.

In the end it was still probably stupid because of the shortsightedness, but those are major factors.
 
With potholes on the road to Wrestlemania striking yet again I decided to try and use the network to get my mania buzz going.

Despite stronger options I was drawn towards rewatching Wrestlemania 26 in particular, I find this particular WM event such an anomaly and I felt the need to satiate my curiosity.
Now going back to 2010 I recall this being an event where unsurprisingly the build ups leading into the PPV weren't as strong as one would hope, yeah we had the "running up that hill" promo for HBK/Taker and Heel Batista being here to make money and not kissing babies and hugging fat girls like one John Cena so it wasn't without its merit yet I remember there being something of a buzz centred on the the card itself and not so much the build.

If you take a look at the WM26 card on paper it actually looks pretty darn good if I say so myself with a well rounded card, at the very least it should have been a very consistent WM event yet there's something about WM26 that squandered the potential of most of its matches and thus relegating it to being just another Wrestlemania.

So taking it from the top...

Show-miz vs Morrison and Truth for the tag team titles
Remember Show-Miz? geddit it's like Show Biz! oh well anyway Big Show was doing the tag rounds at this point coming off the much more successful Jeri-Show team up, effectively his team with Miz was seemingly thrown together to get the tag belts off DX.
Still this would be Miz' standout year and I'd like to think that both Morrison and to a lesser extent R-Truth were coming more into their own at this time.
Unfortunately instead of being a solid opener this match hits an abrupt end via a flimsy knock out punch, I can't help but think Miz and Morrison got a bit short changed with this one, they even had a rivalry to build off if I'm not mistaken.
Really this match was a sign of things to come.


Randy Orton vs Cody Rhodes vs Ted DiBiase
So Legacy was a bit of a dud in my opinion, Orton's faction of third and maybe second(?) generation stars never truly took off (shout out to the forgotten Sim Snuka and Manu) and I never found Rhodes or DiBiase to be elevated much by association with Orton, instead they felt like what the Edgeheads were to Edge, disposable mooks.
This could've been a chance to kick start the singles run for either Cody or Ted, instead Orton decisively takes them both out via punt and RKO to win quite decisively.
Considering the slow burn to reach this point (friction in Legacy going back to before the Rumble of 2010 if I recall) it felt like a bit of a waste to hand Orton such an easy win.


Money in the Bank Ladder Match
The once reliable spotfest of Wrestlemania taken to its final and most clusterfuck level cramming in 10 wrestlers from MitB mainstay Shelton Benjamin and vets like Kane and Christian to more newer blood like Drew Mcintyre, Evan Bourne and Ziggler.
With such a number of combatants you had the likes of MVP and even former spot king Shelton lost in the shuffle (Kofi had ladder stilts, its his role now).
The likes of Kane, Matt Hardy and Christian tend to try and be the glue to keep the match together but ultimately it was one of the sloppier MitB matches with a very weak winner.
So Jack Swagger after jobbing to the likes of Santino pre WM, doing bugger all in the match itself and taking a painful amount of time to unhook the case (edited on the network for my sanity) gets the win and it just falls flat.
A perfect example of WWE's nonsense booking as Swagger would cash in like a week later and the crowd goes mild, a title run that doomed him to midcard hell instead of building him up properly, a shame really.
Hey Kane was still over back then, good times!


Triple H vs Sheamus
Workout buddies! Sheamus gonna get that rub from ol' Trips right? wrong, a serviceable yet flavourless match that has Triple H win with and I quote a "pedigree out of nowhere!", the Pedigree just doesn't work that way dammit!
Similarly to the Legacy triple threat I remember thinking this was an opportunity to try and cement Sheamus after his jumping the gun lacklustre title run, while not quite burying time Trips winning this felt like the wrong choice here.
Sheamus has to resort to pipe clobbering shenanigans the next month to finally topple Trips and even then he struggles, no wonder we still feared him possibly going over Bryan last year.


CM Punk vs Rey Mysterio
Hot damn, this is some good stuff, fast flowing, good use of Punk's lackeys and wait, it's over already? yep, this match drew the short straw on time limits, what could've been a hidden WM classic became a brief footnote instead running just over 6 minutes.
Now while you could also pull the wrong man won card here seeing as there was a stipulation where Rey had to join Punk's straight edge cult if he lost for a dynamic to help the future feud booking I can let it slide as Rey overcoming the odds for the kids or whatever. No the real issue here is that while this match got too little time the next got faaaaar too much...


Bret Hart vs Vince McMahon
Sweet jesus what a shit show this is.
What should've been a minute long sharpshooter squash was mindbogglingly stretched over 10 minutes where Vince's master plan is to bribe the Hart family to screw Bret only for the inevitable backfire and thus you get 10 minutes of McMahon being clobbered by the family to the point you almost want to root for him instead.
I mean the fact that Bret wasn't capable of wrestling at this point makes things even more puzzling, why was this as long and tedious as it was? the crowd get deflated completely leading us nicely into the next match.


Edge vs Jericho for the WHC
Okay so Edge makes a hero's comeback from injury winning the rumble and slotting nicely into a logical ready prepared feud with former team mate Jericho.
There's just a few flaws with this angle, firstly Edge has been a mega heel for years thus his face turn is weak and he never really has the fans full backing, it doesn't help that the match SPEAR was built up SPEAR with this rather SPEAR slapdash SPEAR gimmick to try and SPEAR get the fans to chant SPEAR. Secondly Edge is still a bit rusty, understandable but it doesn't help.
So really what you have here is a decent match that falls short of what it could've been like so much else on the card, the crowd just don't get into it. They play Edge's leg difficulties into the finish for a Jericho win that seems to catch the crowd off guard (keep in mind they're still reeling from Bret/Vince at this point), Edge gets a post match SPEAR spot to keep the feud running which then gets buggered somewhat by Swagger's cash in a week later.


Divas toilet break tag match
Vickie Guerrero wins for her heel team and botches the pinfall in the process, nothing more to be said really.


Batista vs Cena for the WWE championship
This should be huge when you think about it, only the second time the modern faces of the company would clash now with an actual heel dynamic courtesy of the lovable lug that is Heeltista and now at WM to boot. Problem is it doesn't feel big, even using Cena's injury in the last encounter between the two to springboard off from there doesn't seem to be nearly as much heat here as there should've been.
While Batista makes a decent case in his role of wanting to be the main man in the company Cena is just Cena as usual going through the motions of UNDERDOG and I LOVE THIS BUSINESS MORE.
The match itself doesn't overstay its welcome which is nice, they clearly try to throw in some mania worthy counters and the like to help the big match feel but in the end Cena's inevitable victory is as bland as expected, it's not like he had to chase the belt seeing as he lost it under unfair circumstances the month prior.
But hey it gave me this lovely gif that sums up the John Cena experience.
fydzU.gif



HBK vs Taker, Streak vs Career
I can't deny that this is a strong match, it has that main event factor, the stipulation adds some more drama to the proceedings, it's just that for as good as it is it's kind of like the expansion pack release to the previous years WM classic.
You've got the same pieces, just rearranged, it's a bit faster paced yet just a bit too familiar.
Don't get me wrong, until WM30 it was like the last great WM main event, it's just that I find it lurks in the shadow of the WM25 encounter even with the added stipulation and glorious jumping tombstone.

And then there was no mania highlight reel video at the end for the first time in years, I still wait for its return.

So WM26 was a card with potential that just managed to fall short in nearly every area to me through poor time engagement and some odd booking decisions, it's an oddity, it's not so much a bad WM event as it's one that feels like it could've been much more if handled with more care. Thing is following WM26 there was the horrific WM27 and then you had the almost as weak 28 and 29. With that in mind I ended up looking back at WM26 with more fondness than it probably deserved, it was sloppy yet solid seeing what followed it, until WM30 I would think of this as the last WM that actually felt enjoyable to watch, just goes to show that even as a missed opportunity it still fared better that the three that followed.

Well that's me contributing something for a change, now back to whatever is going on in the Wrasslegaf universe, oh we're talking about 2010? well this post was timely.
I'm sure Recall who loves his Kane posts so dearly wiill be chuffed to remember 2010 also being the year of WHC Kane and his smiting of Taker.
Ah yes Barrett and Kane, 2010 was quite dear to me at least.
 

Recall

Member
Watching the Fatal 4 Way PPV from 2010 for the first time and the opening match between Drew McIntyre and Kofi Kingston was surprisingly good yet full of shenanigans. It had this whole Teddy Long being Drew's bitch storyline and the match was far more drawn out than a standard PPV opener but it totally worked and the crowd were totally behind Kofi and Teddy standing up to Drew.

Totally acceptable wrestling.
 

Hasney

Member
Watching the Fatal 4 Way PPV from 2010 for the first time and the opening match between Drew McIntyre and Kofi Kingston was surprisingly good yet full of shenanigans. It had this whole Teddy Long being Drew's bitch and the match was far more drawn out than a standard PPV opener but it totally worked and the crowd were totally behind Kofi and Teddy standing up to Drew.

Totally acceptable wrestling.

Are you doing the PPVs in any kind of order? Elimination Chamber 2011 is Drews best showing in WWE. Incredible intensity.
 
If you entered the wrasslin thread with Chrome, you already fucked up.

Nah, Chrome handles multiple reasonably sized gifs fine, but when someone posts a single huge gif it goes entirely to shit. The large file limit of certain hosts has allowed people to not bother resizing a gif, or record it in 30fps when 10 would suffice. There was a Roman/Rock gif earlier that was 20mb. It took me five seconds in gifcam to turn it into a 3mb gif.
 

Recall

Member
Are you doing the PPVs in any kind of order? Elimination Chamber 2011 is Drews best showing in WWE. Incredible intensity.

I'm just picking and choosing based solely on shows I've never seen. 1992-2006 I'm all clued up on, onwards not so much.
 

Data West

coaches in the WNBA
If I was a bigger dude, I would dress like Superstar Billy Graham every single day.

Smith Hart says what I said for years
I never had the occasion to meet Bill Demott, but I have seen his work both in WCW and WWE and was not impressed. With all the accusations prevalent, many questions remain unanswered. What the hell did Bill Demott ever accomplish to warrant being placed in charge of WWE’s developmental system? How did this fat, out of shape, mid-card jobber get the leading training position in the largest sports entertainment entity on the planet? What could such an oaf possible know about strength and conditioning let alone wrestling instruction?

In a system that includes former world champions like Ricky Steamboat, Dusty Rhodes, William Regal and Terry Taylor what qualified Bill Demott? How were notable trainers with proven track records like Dory Funk, Lance Storm, Dr. Tom Pritchard, Les Thatcher or my brothers Bruce or Bret passed over in favor of General Rection/Hugh Morrus? Why did the esteemed co-trainers of developmental cow-towed to such a reprobate? And why were the well-recruited select and qualified aspirants subjected to such abuse? This whole situation seemed baffling to say the least.
 

Pizoxuat

Junior Member
I don't want to rep for Roman Reigns, so I'm going to change my avatar in hopes of Tyler Breeze getting a Wrestlemania moment.







There's already too many people in Wrestlemania.
 

notworksafe

Member
WM27 was depressing enough to put me off of finishing up my Wrestlemania marathon but I think I'll pick it up again tonight. Since 2012 Raws are on the Network, I'll probably watch the Raw after WM for the last couple WMs as well.

Anything I should know about WM28 before tonight? Should I try and watch the go home Raw before for the last couple as well?
 

Data West

coaches in the WNBA
You think Vader and Graham were neighbors when Graham was preparing for his return? They were both in THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, daddy!
Not only was Dr. Tom passed over for the job, he was the guy DeMott replaced. JR's decision, which might explain why he's been so quick to defend Bill.

Simon Dean shit all over them for that. Basically said he'd put his life on the line for Dr. Tom and why they rehired DeMott was a mystery to everyone who was there in the office. That he was one of the people that contacted Dr Tom because they went way back and had him move out then basically said 'lol nevermind'
 

Carnby

Member
Madusa's in great shape for the HoF this year. Good on her. Ain't easy at 51 years old. Sure there's a little work done...

84ushzx.jpg

A little? Her face looks photoshopped, and I don't think the picture was photoshopped.

It looks like her head was transplanted onto that body.
 
WM27 was depressing enough to put me off of finishing up my Wrestlemania marathon but I think I'll pick it up again tonight. Since 2012 Raws are on the Network, I'll probably watch the Raw after WM for the last couple WMs as well.

Anything I should know about WM28 before tonight? Should I try and watch the go home Raw before for the last couple as well?

It has one good match, and the overall build was awful

heel daniel bryan however, was great
 

RP912

Banned
WM27 was depressing enough to put me off of finishing up my Wrestlemania marathon but I think I'll pick it up again tonight. Since 2012 Raws are on the Network, I'll probably watch the Raw after WM for the last couple WMs as well.

Anything I should know about WM28 before tonight? Should I try and watch the go home Raw before for the last couple as well?

The buildup to WM28 was actually good beyond the Cena/Rock circle jerk. It's worth watching the raws beforehand.
 

Nice write up and thoughts on WM 26, It wasn't until I see you write about the matches that I could even remember what happened in it. I had forgot that Miz and Show were partners, likewise Truth & Morrison. Yet, as soon as I saw that I seem to remember Truth and Morrison having a pretty good dynamic.

I totally agree with you about the poor end to the Legacy build up.

We can start with WM2000. Have you watched it?

Should we start a WWE Network PPV Club OT?
 

Recall

Member
Who do I need to shake hands with to politely ask who can give my Jay Lethal avatar a transparent background?

I'm clearly letting everyone down.
 
WM27 was depressing enough to put me off of finishing up my Wrestlemania marathon but I think I'll pick it up again tonight. Since 2012 Raws are on the Network, I'll probably watch the Raw after WM for the last couple WMs as well.

Anything I should know about WM28 before tonight? Should I try and watch the go home Raw before for the last couple as well?
On the upside, nothing is as weak as WM27, on the downside this still wasn't much better.
Just know that the Hell in a Cell match is almost like a parody of WWE style main events, it's kind of fascinating in that respect.

Nice write up and thoughts on WM 26, It wasn't until I see you write about the matches that I could even remember what happened in it. I had forgot that Miz and Show were partners, likewise Truth & Morrison. Yet, as soon as I saw that I seem to remember Truth and Morrison having a pretty good dynamic.

I totally agree with you about the poor end to the Legacy build up.
I remember me and the friend I watched the PPV with live being really for the Morrison and Truth team, they were pretty fun for a thrown together team.
 

Zach

Member
What's on your backlog?

Oh, jeez. I'm not at home right now, but let's think...

PS4
Alien: Isolation
GTA V (played it on PS3, though)
Shadow Warrior
Valiant Hearts
Octodad
Transistor
The Resident Evil Remake
There are probably at least five more I can't think of right now...

Wii U
Earthbound
Bayonetta 1 & 2
Super Metroid
Metroid Prime Trilogy
Yoshi's Island
There are definitely a few I'm not thinking of here as well...

Xbox One
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Volgarr (but s is impossible)
Rayman Legends
Probably one or two others...

PS3
Final Fantasy VII (I've never played it)
That Sherlock Holmes game I haven't tried yet
Probably something else...

Gamecube

Killer 7
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (again)
 
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