Best: Big Show Losing Because He’s Fat And Stupid
LOL
To once again quote Casey, good pro wrestling is putting Cody Rhodes into a match he has no chance of winning, then having him win. The Intercontinental Championship is back on the waist of the guy who changed its strap color to match his underpants and all is right with the world. Now Cody can get to the business of defending it (regularly) against guys who can go and Show can spend the next 6-8 weeks hip-hop dancing with The Great Khali until they win the tag team titles, break up and have the worst four matches ever.
Anyway, this match was shorter than Santino/Miz, but I found myself really enjoying it for a wonderful reason: at some point between x and y, WWE decided to go over “foreshadowing” with the boys and they loved it. So in a match that has to end with Big Show being sorta fat and dumb and breaking a table with his oafishness, that finish is foreshadowed by Cody Rhodes being nimble as f**k and Beautifully Disaster Kicking Big Show from a table. Daniel Bryan telling the referee he’s got until five, then getting DQ’d for knowingly keeping Sheamus in the ropes past five was another great example. Basic storytelling structure can make pro wrestling really kick ass, and whoever pointed that out before Extreme Rules went on the air deserves a raise.
Worst: Figuring Out Why Ryback Doesn’t Work (Right Now)
I mentioned it earlier, but the easiest character to get over is probably “dominant guy who shows up out of nowhere and destroys everybody”. It worked with the Road Warriors back in the day, it worked with Goldberg in the 90s and it worked with Brock Lesnar in the 2000s. That’s an important character to have, and “how will the new dominant guy do against a guy who has been great here for a long time” is easy money. The Road Warriors vs. The Fabulous Ones and the Freebirds in the 80s, Goldberg vs. DDP and Hulk Hogan in the 90s, Brock Lesnar vs. The Rock in the 2000s.
Right now we’ve got Brodus Clay, Lord Tensai and Ryback doing this at the same time. Mason Ryan and Ezekiel Jackson just finished up their attempts, and guys like Antonio Cesaro are showing up and beating Tyson Kidd in 60 seconds on Smackdown and Husky Harris pulling a Cape Fear version of the act in FCW, so who knows who else’ll follow.
That makes the act commonplace, and the only thing that makes that character work is how special and different they are. I remember specifically cheering for Goldberg because he’d just show up and f**k guys up and leave without talking and getting into soapy storylines like everybody else. Skip Sheffield is a talented, occasionally brutal pro wrestler and I feel bad that he’s cosmetically the least interesting of the “big 3″ … he’s not racist dinosaur with a crew of oddities and he’s not the big white penis lookin’ fella from Japan who spits Mountain Dew and has tattoos on his face. He’s just a really muscular guy in Rob Van Dam’s old clothes. It’s unfortunate, and hopefully they’ll have him go face-to-face with Wade Barrett whenever Wade’s healed, have them stare at each other menacingly for several seconds and then just have Ryback blush and go “awww man I’m just kiddin’, yip yip yip what it do” and they’ll go back to being undercard violence friends.
A Million Bests: TWO Is Greater Than ONE!
where was this jobber asshole for every raw main event between 2004-2008
Best: LAYLA EXCLAMATION POINT EXCLAMATION POINT
As the Internet’s #1 LayCool historian and enthusiast I am so goddamned excited to have Layla El back in the rotation, especially to mark the one year anniversary of one of the saddest moments of my modern fandom: Extreme Rules 2011, wherein she defeated Michelle McCool in a Loser Leaves WWE match that ended LayCool forever but hurt herself, so we didn’t see either of them for a year. That sucked.
Anyway, most people were expecting Kharma to sub in for the injured Beth Phoenix and start up that whole thing (I was one of those people too, mind you) so while Layla’s return and victory is underwhelming to most, it’s wonderful to me. I loved her in the Diva Search, she was my favorite member of Extreme Exposé (which is sorta like saying your favorite person at the Last Supper was Jesus), I loved her as the shoe-throwing girlfriend/familiar of William Regal and I loved her as the hoodie wearing, “real talk”-ing, Piggy James humiliating Lay.
Give her stories, let her do things, let her speak in her wonderful voice and don’t write “point at people and get roll-up victories over bitches” on her next cycle whiteboard.
Worst: The Kharma Situation Is Giving Me Total Anime Teardrop Head
To catch you up:
1. Kharma signs with WWE, is one of the best wrestlers in the world, can have good-to-great matches with women who are way worse than Kelly Kelly (Velvet Sky, I’m looking in YOUR direction).
2. Kharma starts a fun storyline where she may or may not end up having fearsex with Kelly Kelly.
3. Kharma gets pregnant in real life.
4. Kharma bursts into tears, announcers her pregnancy, gets called fat by the Bellas and bails.
5. Kharma tells her employers that she had a baby and everything’s cool.
6. Kharma shows up at the Royal Rumble, is awesome, Implant Busts Dolph Ziggler and is about to be a thing again.
7. It turns out that Kharma’s baby didn’t survive the birth, which is a horrible tragedy … and then you remember the whole “she said everything was cool” part and you make a face like you just watched your grandma fall down, because how the f**k else are you supposed to react to finding that out.
8. Kharma starts tweeting about how she’s returning.
9. Kharma doesn’t return, the Bellas get another weird push, Kelly Kelly starts screaming and then goes silent for three months and Eve becomes a whore at some point and nobody really knows what’s happening.
10. Nikki Bella gets a mystery opponent at Extreme Rules, and hey, Kharma promised she’d return and get the Bellas in a year. The Bellas contract is up on the 30th of April, so this is basically your last shot.
11. Kharma tweets about how she’s gonna show up at Extreme Rules and destroy the Bellas.
12. Layla shows up at Extreme Rules and destroys the Bellas.
So … what the hell is going on? Is she fine? Is she still employed? Is she a liar? Is she just mentally f**ked up from the thing that would obviously f**k someone up mentally? If she’s coming back, why didn’t she come back? If she isn’t, why does she keep saying she’s coming back?
And more importantly, why did it take somebody until 1 day before their contract was up to figure out you could beat Twin Magic by just attacking the second Bella?
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WELCOME TO THE WWE RAW OPEN DISCussion. . . . wait where am I?
Too many coconut Rockstars my friend
OR NOT ENOUGH DRANK???
Definitely not enough, *taps empty can* . . . . bone dry.
Ryback is actually what you get when you take the DVD to Record Exchange after a few months.
If I can’t make the Top 10, and at least I can say I +1′d two of the Top 10.
I was watching this at about 2am last night, and I reverted to a 10 year-old kid when Big Show fell through the table. That with the Beautiful Disaster off the table made that the match of the night for me.
Sorry Brandon, but Velvet Sky > Kelly Kelly (practically everyone not named * Bella or Jenna Morasca > Kelly Kelly). Of course that’s basically like saying this turd tastes better than this turd.
In other news, HELL YES LAYLA IS BACK!
I can not adequately describe my love of Velvet Sky. I apologize for nothing.
As well you shouldn’t the THESTINGER, she gets all my love and I’ve never even seen her wrestle.
Velvet Sky is the worst wrestler I’ve ever seen wrestle regularly as a professional wrestler. I’d rather watch Lacey Von Erich wrestle.
@Brandon – My reasoning goes like this: Both Kelly and Velvet are absolutely horrific in the ring and neither of them can run the ropes to save their life, however I present this piece of undeniable scientific evidence: Pigeons being let loose > squint, smile, and point.
@Brandon: Von Erich and the Von Erich claw? Over Velvet Sky? Yeah, that sounds about right…
But, seriously, fellas, Tessmacher or GTFO.
@Brandon Lacey Von Erich was greatest match was in that POV wrestling she did in her bra and panties DVD
“Of course, if Cameron wakes up at the beginning of Raw and finds Hornswoggle’s head in her bed it’ll be the greatest thing ever.”
Holy shit did that make me laugh – great as always, Brandon.
+1 to this PPV.
I was there last night, and the crowd was electric the whole night. Chicago deserved a best!
That fucking Yolo sign and the crowd’s obnoxious “CM Punk” chant after the fire extinguisher make me disagree.
I missed the +Rhodes sign while watching last night. I can only assume it was because I was blinded by rage by that damn Yolo sign.
You’ve been bitching about the Yolo sign, what the fuck is YOLO for goddamn sake?
You Only Live Once from some Drake song.
If your listening to Drake you’ve already fucked up your life.
Which sucks, because YOLO.
What was done there…it was seen.
Who the hell is Drake? Is it sort of like a ‘Bieber’?
A friend of a friend commented how Chicago is the best crowd for WWE currently which I disagree with. MSG is and always will be #1 until they consistently fail to show up. With that being said it was an excellent crowd last night but MitB ’11 gave me chills , last nights did not.
1. Kharma signs with WWE, is one of the best wrestlers in the world, can have good-to-great matches with women who are way worse than Kelly Kelly (Velvet Sky, I’m looking in YOUR direction).
2. Vince sees her backstage for the first time and says, “oh, f–k. Why didn’t anyone tell me she’s black???”
3. Kharma gets pregnant in real life.
4. Vince has his out.
/fixed
End of story
I’ve been really down on the WWE lately but last night went a long way towards making me feel like the happy 8 year old boy I want to feel like when I watch wrestling.
I say this a lot but this should be so easy. Make us care about the wrestlers and then let them wrestle. The rest will take care of itself. They largely did that last night.
I’ll nitpick more later and elsewhere, but I was very happy last night. I also got to spend the PPV last night with some great With Leather Daddies and it was a lot of fun. If you’re in the DC area you should hit me up and we can organize something!
I actually thought the Lesnar/Cena finish was pretty good, and well-sold by Lesnar stumbling around punch-drunk, pretending to nearly punch a fan who slapped his back, etc. I mean Lesnar DID jump face-first into a swinging chained fist, then was slammed kidney-first onto a piece of what we should all pretend is steel, even if it’s not.
I’d read someone in the thread last night saying the AA onto the steps was like a paramedic gingerly laying someone onto the ground but I thought it was pretty well executed, watching it in real time/subsequent replays. Cena got a little lift on it and Lesnar’s back came down pretty flush on the metal. Not exactly powerbomb through the ceiling of the HELL CELL brutal but not bad at all.
I’m with you for the most part. Cena winning that way didn’t really bother me. Had he gone through his full routine it would have been the worst, but he sold it well.
The only thing that bothers me is that both Cena and Sheamus won the same way: Got their asses kicked and only once their opponent got a little too cocky were they able to get some momentum back and pull off their finisher before leaving with massive arm injuries.
Interestingly, it seems Sheamus is joining Cena as the “guys WWE really really really wants everyone to cheer for and tries way too hard to sell as stand-up guys/badasses.”
I like how Brandon left out my response of not sharing vegan pizza…pretty sneaky sis.
“He should be exactly like Clavicus Vile in ‘Skyrim’ … he’s all “Raaaandyyyy, RKO BARBAS”, and whether Barbas gets R’d-KO or not he becomes a part of the statue and we go finish a different quest somewhere else.”
WOW.
I just hope Layla says ‘fuck it’ and starts speaking in her awesome London accent, instead of the weird hybrid florida one she had going on.
Also:
“And more importantly, why did it take somebody until 1 day before their contract was up to figure out you could beat Twin Magic by just attacking the second Bella?”
This. Forever. I legitimately stood up and applauded my computer.
Now, I luvs me some Funkasaurus, but damn–I SO did not need to see him from that angle. *reaches for the brain bleach*
Question: Am I the only one that thought Lesnar legit went off the rails and just wanted to come and legit beat the shit out of Cena because he’s an insecure asshole who just wanted to prove some point? I seriously thought it was real for like 5 minutes last night.
Also, the DBry v Sheamus match felt like a 45 minute match and I mean that in the best possible way.
I was genuinely surprised to read it was 23 minutes.
I’m totally with you on both of those things, STINGER.
The Miz was announced today as the replacement in The Marine 3. Lets hope that like last night the movie ends 4 minutes in due to a cobra strike.
As much as we like to joke about the Miz’s career being on a downward spiral the picking him to try out the “pre-show” match was not a demotion as much as it seemed like a company asking their “go to” guy to try something new. Now he is off to do one of their Direct to DVD movies…
Oh indeed. When it comes to the professional part of what he does, ‘Hey Miz, we’d like you to take a few weeks off from flying around the ring and taking bumps to go sit in a trailer and say lines for a bit everyday’ doesnt sound like much punishment.
I was something like sick and slept for the better part of 18 hours. Catching up on watching the show itself but stopped doing that to read the b/w because seriously. Feel like I let people down by not being in the discussion thread.
:( Feel better, brobaum!
Let me put on my gigantic wrestling nerd hat and explain why I feel Cena winning last night was a bad way to book it. Granted I have zero influence nor will I ever have any influence on pretty much anything but I digress:
-They skipped over the 1st & 2nd act of storytelling 101 and went straight to the Ewoks ending.
-If Cena had already planned on taking an extended break before Brock kimura’d his arm for 20 minutes they could have worked that into the storyline. I can’t recall the last time they went babyface with his status getting the “legit” injury at the hands of the monster heel. Work that in, give Jeeeeeern the time off he needs/deserves while feeding Brock everyone but Punk/Danielson in the meantime. Have Marine 3:Marine with a vengeance come back at the Vengeance PPV and AA Brock off the roof. WWE needs to allow their feuds some time to simmer for a true payoff.
-Passion of the Cena has gotten old. Everyone expects the kickouts, the 5 moves of doom, all that crap There has to be a time where hustle, loyatly blabbity blah won’t/can’t work. This was that time. No one else is coming down the pipeline. There aren’t any huge indy workers coming in that Vince won’t bury ahead of time and no Japanese star will risk coming here out of fear of being name Kawasaki Hiroshima Godzilla or whatever the fuck Vince thinks is funny.
I did enjoy the PPV though and thought it was well done and glad to see the “I HAVE TIL 5!” make a comeback. Great writeup Brandon
fantasy booking is never not terrible
I missed the live discussion because I was watching with friends and didn’t want to be a weird nerdlinger with a laptop.
Lesnar’s first kimura made me laugh since he had no body control. Maybe if he was trying to use it as a sweep to get on top of Cena, it might work. The idea of him using a kimura at all seemed a little odd to me, but I figure it’s a little more of a brute-force move than some other submissions. I would have liked to see him use some catch-as-catch-can techniques, though. See what Josh Barnett pulls off, maybe some toe holds.
Also, Lesnar’s attire of board shorts, 4oz gloves, and shoes, made me miss PRIDE (Never die!)
I want to see Lesnar versus Del Rio, with Lesnar fishing too hard for a kimura, then Del Rio spins to an armbar, just like Hughes/St. Pierre 1 and Maguire/Johnson.
Don’t want this to be me just rambling my thoughts from last night, so I’ll say GOOD REPORT, BRANDON! YOU ARE SNAZZY!
But I like your rambling thoughts!
Thanks, THESTINGER!
I often miss your THESTINGER third person thoughts, but that was before the live discussions came about, so perhaps they had their place in the long-long ago when we could only talk about RAW after RAW was over?
I miss them, too. Brandon told me to cut it out, though. :(
I need to bring them back once in a while, though. When’s Sting’s birthday? Shit, it was March 20th. I need to write him out a card. brb
jeeze, what kinda fan are you, man? not knowing his birthday, not sending him a birthday card because you don’t know his birthday, it’s like, jeeze, man, jeeze!
Has anyone ever did that thing where you’re signaling to a pretend timekeeper to ring a pretend bell because something awesome just happened. That was me reacting to Cody Rhodes winning last night. It was the hardest I’ve marked in a while. I was just so damn excited when Big Show stepped through that table like a damn oaf. Kinda reminds me why I watch rasslin to be honest. That, plus Daniel Bryan and Sheamus being the match of the night.
How do they even pull off ‘Twin Magic’ when you can clearly tell them apart?
Because Twin People
My favorite person at the last supper was Judas.
“What’s got two thumbs and just betrayed the son of God? THIS GUY!”
-Judas I.
I’m waiting for Ryron and Rener to provide the Gracie Breakdown on not only Brock’s performance, but the Jericho/Punk match, too.
It’s rather sad and scary that the post-WM PPV is turning in to the better PPV every year. Last year had a good Cena/Miz/Morrison cage match after the terrible WM main event (plus Christian/Del Rio in a ladder match). WrestleMania is designed for Hornswoggle to rap and Snoop Dogg to show up in backstage segments and 13 seconds, whereas XTREME BACKLASH or whatever ends up being where you’d want to put your money for professional wrestling.
+Rhodes to everyone for the love on my sign. It did for the lulz.
Wow… I did it*
Congrats on getting it on and screencapped
are you frank miller? of course batman would like cena. hes good to kids and fights for good
I agree. I don’t know about karate, but I’m pretty sure Cena is a master of friendship for everyone in addition to being a champion of the sun.
I would bring a sign to the next WWE event in Las Vegas except I am usually in the back. Can you nonchalantly walk to the front row, show off your WithsLeather-related sign for the cameras, then nonchalantly walk back to your seat w/o being kicked out of the arena?
At some point there is usually some guy that does a walking sign by. I’ve never seen Security beat them to death.
Best: Alopezb5′s “poopies” sign!
Worst: Get well soon Alopezb5, *shows pic of me in hospital w/full body cast*
As long as it doesn’t say, “Fuck the FCC” you should be ok.
Great PPV, that I agree with. However, I disagree with a few of your points:
-Cena going over Brock makes no fucking sense. At all. It’s not the right call in any way whatsoever. You spend $5 million dollars bringing back this monster, and you job him like that!? In less then a month!? To a guy who’s leaving!? WHY!? And it wasn’t even a cheat win; Brock gave EVERYTHING to Cena, and Cena still won. That killed the heat, dead. Brock should have won, Cena should have left, Brock continues to dominate until superhero Cena comes back to save the day in the blow-off match. You don’t job Brock now! Nobody gives a damn about Cena/Brock anymore, Cena won! Absolutely terrible booking.
-The fire extinguisher was funny. I laughed. It’s dumb, but its the kind of dumb I can roll with. Those clothes however…
-Cena’s absence is so HHH can come in and feud with Brock now. And probably beat him, too.
Quick, what’s the difference between a Chicago Street Fight, an Extreme Rules Match, and a Falls Count Anywhere match?
The answer is apparently “jeans.”
Also, the location of where falls count.
Did anyone else think Cena/Lesnar was awesome from start to finish? We just found a bar in my hometown that shows the PPV’s, so I’m worried that I can’t properly judge these things anymore due to the socializing and poor sound, but I left thinking it was incredible.
I meant to comment on this earlier: but how DARE you leave Todd Sinclair out of the discussion of good refs?! FOR SHAME SIR
As a Brit who spends his Tuesday mornings trawling back through the Open Thread to read EVERY SINGLE comment, it’s great to now be in Australia, where it’s a civilised hour and where I can follow this as it happens. You guys are the BEST. I won’t be commenting myself much though, because (a) I’m not actually watching RAW and (b) I’m supposed to be reading about Einstein.
Wrong thread. Rookie mistake.
I actually liked the end of the Lesnar/Cena match. I saw it like this…
It wasn’t Super Cena that won the match. It was a thoroughly beaten Cena beating a dazed, (after trying to kill himself with that flying lariat) overly confident, Brock, who should have ended the match five minutes in, with a desperate, chain-wrapped, sucker-punch.
My secret best of the show was Johnny just up and leaving Eve’s celebration. I would love to spend six months watching Eve try to seduce JL, only to fail because he’s either too oblivious or too disinterested.
I’ve gotten a lot of grief for what’s being called “the Sheamus Hate” (sample comment, “I don’t get all the Sheamus hate!”). The wrestling fan in me hated him for giving me the closest thing to a “Jim Cornette screwing the Rock n’ Roll Express out of the tag team titles and making six year old Brandon cry” since I was seven.
I think Sheamus was an unfortunate bystander to the whole “screwing Bryan” thing. He wasn’t really unlikable before that, and then he beat Bryan in 18 seconds, and all of a sudden he gets booed mercilessly. Yeah, the 18 second match wasn’t necessarily a great thing that happened, especially in the eyes of Bryan fans, but does Sheamus deserve the boos for that? I don’t know, it’s like booing Nash for ending Goldberg’s streak, even though Scott Hall did most of the damage. It’s not Nash’s fault. Well, it is, but not in a bad way.
Best: Random guy yelling “I hate you Jericho. You give Fozzy a bad name. He’s the best muppet” very audibly during the Street fight.
have you ever been shot in the face with a fire extinguisher b.c i have and that shit sucks it gets in lungs and expands so it’s hard to breath and it burns the fuck outta your eyes go ahead try it
Sorry I’m late to the party, working on finals. I just have to say that I’ve been hit in the face with a fire extinguisher spray and that will seriously mess you up.