Who watched Survivor Series?
I don’t think it’s going into the annals of great events, but there was enough on there that I liked (in addition to the great I TOLD YOU SO I got to throw into my friends faces who didn’t believe me when I said there was 100% cash of a MITB cashin).
We watched with one non-wrestling fan friend who happened to be over, and her reactions were super interesting. What I learned:
– The Wyatt Family/Brothers of Destruction storyline is completely impenetrable, and watching old men walk slowly is boring
– Dean Ambrose looks like a real person, and is fun to watch
– Paige/Charlotte was great, and why the hell wasn’t the crowd cheering for this?
– Sheamus looks stupid
– Roman Reigns is very wet. Why is he so wet?
– Tyler Breeze and the New Day are tied for best outfits
She legit seemed to enjoy the chaos of the survivor series match, the divas match and the main event; she was totally checked out from the Wyatt/Brothers match, and she liked the entrances for Ziggler and Breeze but was on her phone most of that match too.
I think they are missing the boat by no longer have Teams named after their captains.
Was last year the last time they did that?
I honestly think the thrown-together-to-fill-out-the-card Survivor Series match is the best kind, but yeah, at least a line about Team New Day vs Team Kalisto (cuz obviously he’s the captain) would have been nice.
Using the MITB cash in to put the belt on Shemus , who was an hour earlier the straight man for the new Day’s jokes strengthens no one. I’m not sure what that was about.
Paige and Charlotte can do better.
I still feel they should have put the belt on Sheamus during one of the European house shows with a dastardly Brogue kick to an on crutches Seth Rollins.
Also, I took a nap when the Wyatt/BoD promo started, texting my friend to wake me when the main event started.
The Undertaker stuff is absolute, pure fanservice for long-time viewers. If I was new to wrestling, and hadn’t grown up with the Undertaker, I’d have no idea what was going on, either. And Undertaker is looking old. For a 50-year old man he can go, but still, he’s 50 years old and it shows.
The Shaemus cash-in was so predictable, I don’t think any Vegas house would have even been willing to take bets on it. Not even Vinnie Vegas.
I wish someone would acknowledge Roman’s wetness and suggest it helps him slip out of holds. Some ridiculous kayfabe explanation. You know Bobby Heenan would have been on that immediately and how it was proof that Roman’s a no-good cheater. Man, I miss Bobby Heenan.
I think the problem with the Paige/Charlotte feud is that the build-up had no heat, until the heat went NUCLEAR with the whole bringing in of Charlotte’s dead brother. And that was the wrong kind of heat; no one was nearly as mad at Paige as they were Vince and the writing staff for going with such a classless, tasteless storyline as an asspull at the last second to build heat for a feud that hadn’t been able to build heat.
Watching Ziggler vs. Breeze was like watching the sad, afterthought Dolph fighting the young, still-promising version of himself. They have no idea what they’re doing with Ziggler’s character, do they?
I don’t know. I though the show was solid, but kind of predictably boring. I know there’s now a whole meta-level to wrestling that I’m not always a fan of, where you have the Russos of the world pulling swerves on the “smart” fans storylines and sense be damned, but I feel like everything since Seth’s injury has been telegraphed even if you’re new to wrestling. The things I remember are the things that seemed plausible but unlikely – Jericho’s win to become undisputed champion, Punk winning at MiTB and exiting through the crowd with an “expired contract”, Bryan actually pulling off the WrestleMania main event victory despite having been given a kayfabe reason to have lost and the meta-level belief they wouldn’t actually give him the belt. This PPV just sort of happened for me. Wasn’t terrible, wasn’t great. Just okay.
Yeah, I feel that. I was most surprised that there weren’t any surprises, you know?
Am I crazy in that I really liked the Divas match? I thought it was vicious and stiff as hell, maybe a couple minutes longer than it really needed to be, but everyone else is shitting on it.
I miss when the event was all, or at least mostly, actual Survivor Series matches. I always thought it best when it was a mix of two teams fighting for a feud/some reason, as well as some ‘random’ teams.
The Brothers/Family match was totally fanservice, so it being impenetrable to a non-viewer/fan is completely understandable.
I don’t understand what the gain is for Undertaker convincingly, cleanly and fairly effortlessly dominating the Wyatts. You’re getting over a 50 year old man on his last legs at the expense of a current performer who came in hot as a house on fire and still manages to get some reactions despite years of losing to pretty much everyone he faces. What on earth is the business plan with that?
The only mostly-retired veteran they’ve allowed to lose to an up-and-coming wrestler recently is Sting, and that was against the WWE Champion, so whether Rollins should be considered an up-and-comer is questionable. And given WWE’s tendency to do a victory jig on WCW’s long-buried grave, I suspect it has more to do with Sting being a representation of WCW than actually wanting to put over the young talent.
Nostalgia sells, and right now they seem to be banking on overly-rosy memories of the Attitude Era to prop themselves up, but if you kill off the present-day product to feed that nostalgia, you’re cannibalizing your own product. One day they’ll be dead or truly and totally done with in-ring action and you’re left with a roster of people you’ve taught the fans aren’t nearly as good as the old guys. So why watch at that point?
Yeah, it’s fan service, pure and simple.
I think the WWE severely overestimates how much they’re getting out of the nostalgia appearances. Remember the RAW with Michaels, Stone Cold AND Taker? It was in the middle of the recent ratings slide (which didn’t end until the tournament started, by the by).
I’m sure a component is Taker doing whatever the hell he wants on the way out, but I’m also sure that Vince or whoever thinks that this is all selling tickets that would be sold anyway, you know? They’ll be selling Undertaker DVDs and shirts forever regardless of whether he’s performing or not.
As for the Divas match, I thought it was fine. It’s no Bailey vs. Banks, either I or II, but it was a passable match. Stiffness was definitely turned up, which is good. I think the problem for me was the build didn’t give me a whole lot to get invested in the match. And until they botched with the attempt at heat last Monday, it was just another “jealousy” story for the women on the roster, which seems to be the only story they let women have.
I think part of the problem is the positioning of Charlotte as a face. The woman is a natural heel. I felt like her heel work in the BFFs in NXT was great. Her having an attitude that she’s “genetically superior” than other wrestlers, that she’s entitled to success and fame, is a perfect hook for a heel. I don’t think she works nearly as strong as a face.
Honestly, my biggest question is how on earth they can position Sasha Banks as anything but a face given the crowd reaction to her. Hell, even her entrance music is an underdog, come from the bottom to reach the top tune. A face Sasha (keeping the Boss attitude) vs. a heel Charlotte I think prints money.
Charlotte/Paige had a good match. I felt the storyline needed some Face/Heel post match interaction to sell the finish and angle though.
James Malone I couldn’t agree with you more re: Charlotte and Sasha. Charlotte’s dad was best as a heel (who was popular with a large part of the crowd even at his most heelish, and I suspect that would be the case if they made Charlotte a heel, too.)
I was thinking of promos like this when you say that about Daddy Flair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To7061dWIgg
Listen to that audience. Especially the women. He’s hard not to like, even if he is an arrogant jerk. And yet I guarantee you, when that match went down, the crowd was rooting for Dusty Rhodes 100%. Because I don’t think Dusty could have gone heel even if he tried, the people loved him so much.
I know that Taker is as close to wrestling royalty as anyone who’s still wrestling can be, but the Wyatts needed to go over – and badly – to build themselves back up. Having Taker and Kane win that match was bad booking from my perspective.
I’m so tired of really, honestly expecting the next step to be up for the Wyatts that I’ve just stopped caring entirely. I can barely even remember anything about that match I was so checked out.
The horrible part is that the Wyatt gimmick is so awesome, and the crowds always get into the act so well…why would you not push that and have them just maul and overwhelm people. Every member of the team looks like a dangerous psycho, and Bray plays a perfect apocalyptic cult leader. The setup is so good, it hurts to watch the bookers blow the whole thing so terribly.
The only “monster” heel I can remember being booked to lose more often than they won and not losing their heat entirely was the early run of Mankind, and that only worked in that situation because Mankind was billed as a masochist and the threat wasn’t so much that he would beat you, it was that you couldn’t make him stay down and you might lose your career even if you beat him. That’s a very particular booking and I’m not sure someone who’s not at Foley’s level can make it happen even if the bookers aren’t goobers.
Also, let it be said Mankind actually beat the Undertaker on several occasions. I don’t know how I can prove it, but he might have the most 1-on-1 victories over Taker, especially in a PPV setting.
They totally dropped the ball on the Wyatts. They’d have to go on a Lesnar-like streak of dominance, become a combination of the Ministry of Darkness and the Four Horsemen, to become legit threats again. Right now they’ve been booked as all bark and no bite.
They’ve spent about a decade teaching the fans the Divas matches are when you go get popcorn or hit the bathroom. I thought it was a good match, but there’s a lot of institutional momentum they’re fighting against.
The real problem with both the Women’s match and the Family/Brothers match was that they didn’t have enough time. Give either of them ten more minutes and they could have been, well, at least something to remember.