General Pro Wrestling News and Discussion Thread Part Deux!

[Mr Silver]

I correctly predicted almost every member of the Survivor Series teams. It really winds me up that WWE continues with this "black and white" booking, it's so 1980's...

What I'm talking about is the fact that heels get along with other heels and faces get along with other faces, regardless of their history. Like last night, Del Rio is applauding Punk, despite the fact Punk humiliated him and then took the WWE Championship from him. The impression given, was that Del Rio jumped at the chance to be on Punk's team.

Then you have Randy Orton, Kane and Kofi Kingston on Foley's team. Kingston and Orton weren't exactly the best of friends, Kane and Orton were feuding only a few months ago. Of course, this stuff isn't new, especially in WWE.

Even if one can get past the fact that mortal enemies are suddenly happy to work together, you then come to the realisation that each member of each team has his feud counterpart on the other. Suspension of disbelief doesn't appear to be that important.

Going with the idea that Heyman is a pretty influential guy and wants Punk to reign supreme, he would surely assemble a super team? With Ryback being on the other team, Heyman builds Punk's team with this in mind, so you get:

CM Punk
Brock Lesnar (the secret final member, not revealed until the PPV, Heyman pulls some strings)
Antonio Cesaro
Jack Swagger (making his return, sporting a new look and style)
Wade Barrett

 

[Admiral_Young]

Maffew from Botchamania decided to put together all the tweets he composed for "Hell in A Cell" in one convenient place to read. He promises to try and do this for every PPV. They're pretty fun.

http://botchamania.com/hell-in-a-cell-live-tweets/

 

[Satyrquaze]

After catching the CM Punk documentary on youtube, I decided to watch the Pipebomb promo and it struck me that here we are over a year later and we never did find out who was repeatedly cutting off CM Punk's mic.

Of course, the obvious money was on John Laurinaitis.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Of course not. That was one of many abandoned story lines that we've had to frustratingly endure since the original Punk leaving storyline happened without explanation. They could have done so many different cool things during that time period (a lot of them we pitched in the original thread...my own nWo obsession and fan rants aside) they never did anything remotely interesting after that. Just continue teasing without any explanation. It's almost as if they actually did have something awesome planned, but stuff kept interrupting or them not just able to do it for whatever reason.

 

[Defcon]

From wwe.com:

Brad Armstrong passes away
November 01, 2012

WWE is saddened to learn of the passing of Brad Armstrong, 51, one of four sons of “Bullet” Bob Armstrong. Brad Armstrong last participated in the ring for the ECW brand in 2006. WWE understands that Brad saw his physician last week for a medical issue and was found unresponsive this morning. WWE extends its sincerest condolences to the entire Armstrong family.

 

[Admiral_Young]

WWE had a conference call yesterday to talk about their network, which still doesn't have a launch date yet.

http://pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/WWE_News_3/article_66330.shtml

Anyone interested in this at all still?

 

[Mr Silver]

From wwe.com:

Brad Armstrong passes away
November 01, 2012

WWE is saddened to learn of the passing of Brad Armstrong, 51, one of four sons of “Bullet” Bob Armstrong. Brad Armstrong last participated in the ring for the ECW brand in 2006. WWE understands that Brad saw his physician last week for a medical issue and was found unresponsive this morning. WWE extends its sincerest condolences to the entire Armstrong family.

Truly a big loss for the pro wrestling industry. Armstrong was one of the greatest American Cruiserweights/Junior Heavyweights.

WWE had a conference call yesterday to talk about their network, which still doesn't have a launch date yet.

http://pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/WWE_News_3/article_66330.shtml

Anyone interested in this at all still?

Nope.

I have no idea how WWE can even launch this network, having lost a respectable amount of money via WWE Films and any of the other nutty outside ventures that they've engaged in, in the last few years. Sure, the WWE profits have increased for now, but they might not always be on the up, and launching a TV network is a very costly action.

Hell, Vince and Linda aren't even in pocket to contribute some of their personal wealth towards the venture. This was assured by Linda using the best part of $300 million (maybe even more) on two failed Senate bids (it's very likely she'll lose this time around too).

 

[Ghost Bones]

Raw and SmackDown were both bloody awful this week, so it's the worst TV week for WWE in a while. Team Punk vs. Team Foley? What the fuck? Who wants to see that? Yeah, that's a real draw, not having a WWE title match.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I'm guessing that this will eventually lead to Mick being named Raw General Manager at some point, but then I've been saying that since he returned. I'm kind of glad they're going back to the old school team vs team Survivor Series concept. Don't know if I really want to see Punk Vs Cena until Royal Rumble anyway.

 

[Ghost Bones]

God, I hope not so far as Mick becoming GM goes. He's not interesting. In fact, they've killed off WWE title interest until The Rock gets involved now. After SS is TLC which will means the defence will be a TLC match rather than a straight singles match (which I favour any time) and then it's The Rock at Royal Rumble. Bit bloody tedious.

 

[Admiral_Young]

That is one of the reasons why I've been so against them using the Rock in this way. It just kills the title picture all together until Royal Rumble. We pretty much have known that Punk is not going to drop the title until at least the Rumble. Putting it on the Rock does nothing in my opinion. I said this about the match with Cena, and I'm saying it again. It's one thing if we knew for sure that Dwayne was going to be sticking around, but we know he isn't, no matter what he says in his promos or otherwise. It's a gimmick match. What are they going to do if Rock wins the title? Have him drop it back to punk the next night on Raw? What does WWE or the fanbase have to gain from that? Far as I know the Rock isn't close to setting any kind of title record. He doesn't need to be champion. Punk doesn't need him to be put over, even as a heel. Again, sounds stupid to me. They changed the stipulations of the Cena/Rock match over time from when it was announced, but it doesn't seem like they're going to do it this time.

 

[Icemizer]

The Team match allows them to have Ryback get his revenge without putting the title on him which is a good idea.

 

[Sheep]

Raw and SmackDown were both bloody awful this week, so it's the worst TV week for WWE in a while. Team Punk vs. Team Foley? What the fuck? Who wants to see that? Yeah, that's a real draw, not having a WWE title match.

My god, THIS.

If VKM really threatened to fire creative unless they got their asses in gear a few weeks back, there are going to be a lot of unemployed former WWE staffers in the not-so-distant future. They've managed to get worse in the time since he reportedly issued that edict which isn't any small accomplishment; they certainly haven't improved the product in any meaningful way.

 

[Icemizer]

^Or maybe VKM just doesnt get it anymore and his constant meddling is bringing the shows down. It may be that he shoots down way to many ideas and rewrites to many shows at the last minute to instill any confidence in any staffers. He may not realize that not only has his audience seriously changed since the attitude era but so have the staffers he employs.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Something just occurred to me...isn't this the second time this year that John Cena has been involved in a stupid "romance" (I can't think of another word for this stupid story arc)? Wasn't he involved in the Eve/Zack Ryder nonsense earlier this year that led to Eve's heel turn? Do they have to use Cena in everything? I know we've had this debate over and over again and his merch sells, yadda, yadda, yadda. But surely that shouldn't matter in this case? Who does this story arc even put over? AJ? Vicki? The two of them don't need it. I am assuming this is just filler because they're already running out of stuff to come up to fill all three hours.

 

[Ghost Bones]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1395807-wwe-vs-tna-whos-been-better-this-week-oct-28-nov-3-2012
Even Impact was shit. Pissing Impact. If there's one thing TNA can do, it's have a good match or two on TV, but not this time.

 

[Sheep]

^Or maybe VKM just doesnt get it anymore and his constant meddling is bringing the shows down. It may be that he shoots down way to many ideas and rewrites to many shows at the last minute to instill any confidence in any staffers. He may not realize that not only has his audience seriously changed since the attitude era but so have the staffers he employs.

Good point. I was thinking about it from the perspective of McMahon filtering Vince Russo's writing to produce some of the most memorable moments and angles of the Attitude Era with a relatively small amount of garbage. When he went to WCW, we saw just how awful Russo's ideas could be.

 

[tomalak301]

Of course not. That was one of many abandoned story lines that we've had to frustratingly endure since the original Punk leaving storyline happened without explanation. They could have done so many different cool things during that time period (a lot of them we pitched in the original thread...my own nWo obsession and fan rants aside) they never did anything remotely interesting after that. Just continue teasing without any explanation. It's almost as if they actually did have something awesome planned, but stuff kept interrupting or them not just able to do it for whatever reason.

That sucks. That was one of the best storylines in recent memory too, leading up to what happened at Money in the Bank. That was when WWE was interesting and Punk was cool. I haven't been watching Raw lately (Actually since the new fall season since my mom takes the TV to watch Dancing with the Stars) but are they still going with this "respect" angle or is it something different. Hopefully it's something different even though it sounds like it's not that much better.

 

[Mr Silver]

The latest rumour going around, is that John Cena was the guy who called out Vince for the major decline in the WWE product, as of late. If this is true, then it adds credence to my theory that Cena has filled the role that Undertaker once did - as locker room leader.

Cast your minds back to 04/05, a time where both Randy Orton and John Cena were in the process of being built towards the main event, with the idea that one (perhaps even both) would be the face of the company in the next generation. It could have gone either way intially, but WWE settled upon Cena, for many reasons.

Orton is an erratic individual. Prior to 2007 (when he began to sort himself out), he was prone to getting in trouble on a regular basis. It's well documented that Orton was accused of harrassing former Diva, Amy Webber, to the point she left the company. Orton also had a very well documented substance abuse problem, back in 2006 and has been suspended a further two times since then, after failing drug tests.

On the other hand, Cena is the model employee. His private life is sound (although there is speculation that he had a fling with Mickie James just prior to his marriage) and apart from an apparently amicable divorce, he's as clean as a whistle. There is no evidence to suggest that Cena has ever failed a drugs test, be it in WWE, OVW or his bodybuilding days.

I'd say that a lot of reasons why both men turned out so differently in WWE, is due to the fact that Orton was on Raw and Cena was on Smackdown. Think about it, Cena was surrounded by model employees, who took the professional code seriously, like The Undertaker. Smackdown also had a larger "new wrestler" presence than Raw, and it's well known that the newer guys don't party like the old school guys. In Orton's case, he hung around with Ric Flair and Batista (Flair is legendary for his partying, whilst Batista is prone to moments of lavish partying too) and didn't have the professional enforcement from guys like The Undertaker to keep him straight. Furthermore, Orton and Mark Jindrak would get up to all sorts on the road, and it's not a stretch to imagine that the reason Jindrak's inclusion in Evolution was aborted, was due to the bad influence he and Orton had on each other.

 

[Icemizer]

I would hope the rumor is true and that Cena did take him to task.VKM is the ultimate decision maker(although he keeps saying he is stepping down and letting Steph and HHH take over)and therefore the guy we get to blame, not some nameless staffers. Suck it up Vince and look in the mirror. Your product is sucking right now and running on vapor, time for something new and interesting and for goodness sake take raw back to two hours.