Worst: John Cena’s Pre-Show Q+A
If there’s a worse way to spend 30 minutes, I’d like to see it.
I’ve got a Worst a little later for the Atlanta crowd and how dead they were, but who can blame them? Their night started with half an hour of John Cena calmly responding to Touts with sentences like, “CM Punk calls himself the best in the world, but Ryback says ‘feed me more,’ they will wrestle later tonight”. That was the most controversial thing he did or said. At one point he mentioned how he was excited to see the main-event because nobody can exploit a weakness like CM Punk. Didn’t you (YOU) arrange this match to see Punk get his ass beaten? Didn’t you say that out-loud? It was an impossibly pointless exercise in letting a WWE crowd see John Cena since they really weren’t going to “see” John Cena, and I can’t shake the feeling that it would’ve been better for all of us if they’d just let John wander out with a t-shirt gun during one of those 8-minute video packages.
Let me put it to you this way: John Cena stood in the ring and talked about stuff tangentially-related to him (at best) for 12 minutes, which is the same amount of time four over wrestlers got to compete for the tag team championships in the blow-off match to a tag titles tournament that lasted over a month. If that doesn’t work, try this: as a lot of people in our Hell In A Cell live thread pointed out, John Cena tossed Dolph Ziggler out of the ring, then got mad at him for not being in the ring. John Cena’s brain in a nutshell, everybody.
Best: Randy Orton’s Complete Inability To Function Or Handle It When Something Goes Mildly Wrong
I don’t know if it’s the voices in his head, “intermediate” explosive disorder or the natural tendency of his child-tempered, bag-shitting true self to shine through, but nothing brings me greater Botchamanic joy than watching Randy Orton lose control of his mind and body when somebody does something wrong. Remember when Kofi Kingston didn’t properly sprawl out for the punt, so Orton just yelled STUPID at him a bunch?
Alberto Del Rio went to the top rope to hit a heel’s favorite transitional move (I like to call it the “jumping nothing” … Tully Blanchard used to Jumping Nothing into raised feet on the reg), and Orton was supposed to turn around and dropkick him. That would’ve set up the finishing sequence and carried the very, very good match to its logical end. Instead, Orton just watusi’d for the enjoyment of nobody, ADR jumped and landed near him with VICIOUS NOTHINGNESS and Orton just shrugged and semi-dropkicked his way through it. It wasn’t the most terrible thing ever, but Orton’s “derp, okay WRESTLING MOVE” was great, and if it isn’t in the first 30 seconds of Botchamania 217 with the NES Thunderbirds shuttle launching music behind it I’ll eat my Internet.
I really enjoyed the match itself. Alberto Del Rio’s entire thing should be “I’m going to break your arm, and I can do it from anywhere,” so when he starts falling off the top rope into armbars and jumping and snapping your arm with his knees it really means something. Also, Ricardo Rodriguez continues to be my favorite part of any show and should be the highest paid person on the roster. Make-A-Wish kids should be requesting Ricardo Rodriguez.
Best: My Initial Reaction To That RKO, or
Worst: That Awkward Replay Hesitance
Best: I wasn’t expecting Del Rio’s corner enzuigiri to be the finish, so when he went up too high for it and came down into an RKO, I flipped out. Cutters out of nowhere — I’m talking cutters from ridiculous positions like this, not a guy getting beaten up for 12 minutes and busting one out for a lame win — make my heart swell, and Del Rio crashed and burned like a champ. If I was booking WWE (and I will not ever), I would construct Orton storylines based solely on who has something in their moveset that could unexpectedly end up as an RKO. For the longest time I wanted Orton and Ziggler to RKO/Zig Zag each other simultaneously for a double KO. Better yet, run Ziggler and R-Truth vs. Orton and The Rock and have them quadruple-KO each other.
Worst: Maybe I’ve watched too much wrestling, but you can always kinda tell when a move didn’t go as well as they’d planned, because they don’t make as big a deal out of it as they should. When Shawn Michaels kicked Shelton Benjamin’s head off in the Gold Rush tournament, the announcers practically vomited blood onto the announce table and demanded 75 replays. When Orton hit the RKO on Del Rio last night and it wasn’t really what they wanted, they stuck with “WHAT A MOVE” and “RANDY ORTON IS DANGEROUS”. JBL sorta innocently snuck in a “I WANNA SEE THAT AGAIN,” and nobody responded to him. Then they jumped to the replay, but put like 4 unrelated clips of armbars and stuff before it. To me, that feels like code for “a producer need like two minutes to decide if it was okay to rebroadcast, because God,” with a side of “from our angle it looked like an asshole”. Something was off.
That spinning armbar into a powerslam was on point, though.
Best: Everything About The Tag Team Championship Match Before The Horrible, Horrible Finish
And then, the match we’d all been waiting for.
The first 12 minutes and 30 seconds of the Team Hell No versus (Team) Rhodes Scholar(s) tag team championship match was glorious. It felt like the first 12 minutes and change of a 40 minute classic, with the good guys trying to work together and running into problems and the bad guy team trying to isolate and destroy the champs but not being good (or lucky) enough to make it happen. Ideally the +Rhodes on Daniel Bryan would’ve been the beginning of an epic 15 minutes of Midnight Express ass-whomping from the challengers, building to Kane as a literal House Of Fire* and D-Bry using the last of his strength to help out an important moment and give his team the victory. It would’ve cemented Team Hell No as the Aces To Beat in the finally functioning tag team division, would’ve kept Rhodes Scholar as a threat for future title matches and would’ve given legitimacy to that number one contenders tournament you used to resuscitate a fourth of your roster.
Worst: The Horrible, Horrible Finish
Instead, the referee thought he was working Saturday Morning Slam and disqualified Kane for briefly punching his opponents. That’s it. Are we that worried about people taking pinfalls? How many times do I have to write the 50/50 booking paragraph? Wrestling isn’t real, so you can let a guy like Damien Sandow get beaten by a guy like Daniel Bryan and still make money with him in the future, you just can’t be wishy-washy about it and book stupid disqualifications and ref screwjobs, because then you live in a world with no consequences, and if we wanted to spend hundreds of dollars investing in a world where everything sucks and nothing matters we’d collect comic books.
I’m interested to see if they book a rematch for Survivor Series (in three weeks, which is totally enough time to create compelling, episodic stories), but I’m also interested in directly telling WWE that shit like this is why I do everything I can to avoid dropping 50 bucks on pay-per-views. I’m going to get the pay-off for free on Raw, right? You’d rather have my TV ratings than my PPV dollars, right? Enjoy me not having a Nielsen box, WWE.
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Prep for the FRANKENSTORM OF THE CENTURY left me wiped out and I slept through the vast majority of HIAC last night. Time to read through for what I missed (and probably thank my lucky stars I streamed and didn’t buy).
Excellent write up. Bateman coming by was AMAZING. Hated the ending to the tag title match/Punk-Casey Ryback match. Like you, Show/Sheamus almost put me into a coma but those last 5 minutes were pure wow. Excellent top 10 comments also. I was off my game and had only mildly interesting retorts. Thanks as always
I don’t know why, but for some reason, I’ve always liked screwy ref finishes. The ref being Maddox was a great piece of continuity, and one that I haven’t been trained to expect out of the WWE, so that alone helped it. I’m gonna wait and see where this goes™, because at least to me, it’s pretty interesting.
One of the commentors last night called it almost immediately as in why is that ref the guy for this and he will be involved in the ending.
Yeah, one of the people I was watching with pointed him out right away but we just figured he was going to be getting smooshed by Ryback or Brock or whoever at some point, not that he would be the key to the whole thing.
Truth. I genuinely didn’t expect it, and in this internet of Everything We Don’t Expect Must Suck we live in, I sort of marked out. I’m certainly excited for raw.
“The next time Ryder shows up and says “EVE YOU’RE A PUNT BUT WITH A C INSTEAD OF A P IF YOU GET IT, WOO WOO WOO YOU KNOW IT” she should kick him so hard in the balls he vomits sunglasses and choke him out.”
↑THIS! Thank you, Brandon.
I will pay $5 of my own money to make this happen!
I’ll toss in a ten-spot.
“Better yet, run Ziggler and R-Truth vs. Orton and The Rock and have them quadruple-KO each other.”
OMG
It’ll be like the setup for Duck Duck Goose at Trios. Only shitty.
Praying my power stays on long enough to read all of this. Hurricane Sandy Orton is raining down chinlocks and blowing off peoples pants as we speak.
Saw the opening caption, and I yelled BIG APPLE, 3 AM at my computer.
+1
That’s a good point, Batemax. What happened to the great Big O (replacement) last night?
Wrestling Bros costume share time? I was the Doctor (though my hair is more Tennant-length than Smith-length =( ) [instagram.com]
STOP IT! STOP IT!!
YES YES YES
I don’t know how to post mine, but I was Savage, my girlfriend was Elizabeth, and my buddy, in a completely unplanned move, was Flair.
Your costume is. . . . AWWWWWWWWWWWWESOMMMMMMMMMMMEEEE!!!!
I didn’t wear a costume, but I did pretend to be Macho Man on a Halloween episode of my friends radio show.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Or is the appropriate response No! No! No! ?
Based on the garter-looking jazz on Antonio Cesaro’s legs, he went as a Sexy Claudio Castagnoli.
Is there anybody at home watching, rubbing their hands together going “AW MAN I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL HE SAYS DAMN”?
NOPE!
/turns “DAMN!” t-shirt inside out
I didn’t mind the Punk-Ryback finish all that much. I expected nothing except for a screwy finish, and since they HAVE to do HIAC despite no blood and no build for the match, they were especially limited on ways to do it. The press into the cage was pretty awesome too. Whatever, tonight we get John Cena back and we’ll never have to speak of this unpleasantness again.
And the plancha into Swiss Death? Here, just have all my money.
….. I also mark out super hard for a DAMN. I got your back, 85.
same bro, same
In general, I liked the PPV. I mean, it wasn’t fantastic, but I didn’t hate it. After reading this review, I sort of understand why everybody seemed to be so down on it; but I still thought it was OK.
Brandon is right that they totally painted themselves into a corner with Punk/Ryback. I didn’t expect a clean ending; but when I saw who the ref was, I thought “Wow, why didn’t I think of a ‘crooked ref’ ending until just now?” So at least it wasn’t the “somebody runs in” ending that everyone sort of assumed we’d get.
I was also OK with the non-ending of the tag match. Yes, the DQ finish was dumb, and they didn’t *need* to protect anyone. But it all but insures we’ll get a rematch.
I don’t know… I guess my expectations weren’t that high, so I wasn’t disappointed. The crowd was totally shit though. Total agreement on that.
A far, FAR better way to do it would have been a ref bump on another ref, maybe by Punk intentionally to prevent Ryback from pinning him, only for Maddox to run in as the 2nd ref. It’d look like he was going to cost Punk again, then do the screw job. Boom, better ending.
I don’t know, ref bumps are about the most overused thing EVER in a PPV main event.
…OH, also, I was going to say that I liked the added touch of Maddox not only doing a fast count, but also putting his body on top of Ryback’s legs to help hold him down. I thought that was clever. It’s the little things.
Not disagreeing, but if you’re gonna do the screwy ref ending, don’t slap the neon HEY REMEMBER THIS GUY FROM THAT OTHER TIME? sign on Maddox from the first minute of the match.
Since it was three or four weeks ago (I don’t remember), there was zero follow-up after his apology, and he’s successfully worked a number of matches since then, I didn’t think it was super-obvious.
And it’s still runs the risk of being stupid when they explain it. Did he decide to help Punk because he ‘owed’ him after the blown call? Was he an AJ hire who figured he was in danger with Vickie in charge? Etc.
I completely agree on JBL’s weird thing during the Divas match. I really didn’t understand what the fuck was going on. I still think JBL’s been great since he came back and a huge step up for the announcing team but yeah, just….strange.
I’m going with it was an homage to the King. When Lawler shouts puppies we are skeeved too, but it doesn’t stop it from happening. We just expect JBL to be classier.
“Hey, you know what that PPV needed? More Cena-logue!”-said no one, ever.
“Ryder being a “witch” because he was dressing up as Eve was terrible. The dialogue with Eve being a witch “but with a letter changed” or whatever was misogynistic, backwards-ass slut-shaming WWE horseshit.”
….Again?
Eve is a BAD GUY. Good guys tend to say bad things about or to bad guys, and then the crowd goes “yeah!” Eve caused T-Lo to get fired and Zack Ryder to almost get murdered by Kane a couple of times, but how dare they insult Eve.
Losing argument.
Losing argument. It’s the choice of feminine-specific insults. Men ganging up to insult women is the worst possible heel vs. face dynamic, especially when the faces are the ones doing the insulting. They can insult her for what she’s done, but not because she’s a woman, and that’s what “whore” and “bitch” suggest. Sorry.
Even if it doesn’t offend you, calling Eve a “witch” is just fucking lame. It’s an insult written by a 6th grader.
…the WWE’ new target audience.
Anyway, You think Ryder likes this? May I refer you to ep. 86 of Z True Long Island Story. It’s a little bit of a break from the usual shenanigans for some truth.
“It’s the choice of feminine-specific insults.”
Now don’t get me wrong. I feel it’s wrong to just call all women whores and bitches and sloots, but wasn’t the point of Eve storyline with Zack was that she used her looks to further her career. (Which makes no sense being a former champion, but still) Isn’t that the closest thing one kind be to a whore without fluids being exchanged?
“Men ganging up to insult women is the worst possible heel vs. face dynamic, especially when the faces are the ones doing the insulting.”
It’s a storyline. Jarrett spent a whole year being a misogynistic asshole, and then Chyna beat him up-bad guy got there comeuppance. Didn’t Sara Del Ray do at least one storyline in ROH where she was told she had no shot since she was a woman, and then proved herself by beating up said naysayers?
Faces can’t insult people? Or just women? (Rock,SCSA,Jericho)
“They can insult her for what she’s done, but not because she’s a woman, and that’s what “whore” and “bitch” suggest. Sorry.”
1) “Hey, you almost got me killed. You’re mean”
2) If Eve was a man could Zack call Eve an asshole?
3)Bitch is for women only? I’ve told guys to stop being bitches, I just consider it to be an abrasive person. And see above for whore.
“Update: Wrestling fans are still upset that I don’t think it’s cool to call a woman a bitch. ”
Update:Guy reading comedy recap of wrestling wants comedy and not a weekly “STOP BEING MEAN TO WOMEN WWE”
I enjoy reading this column and agree with you to an extent about Eve-Ryder and 100% with you on Shaemus’s love for being racist, but I just want a laugh about the wackiness of wrestling. If I went to see Dave Chapelle at a concert hall, I wouldn’t like it if he stopped his set to argue women’s rights for 5 minutes. I may listen to him talk about it in an interview though.
“Eve is a BAD GUY”. A bad guy is defeated, not insulted because of her gender. Call her a asshole if you want (I wouldn’t), and more than that, root for her to lose.
AlexisW is correct (In my opinions). The BADS GUYS should use (false) words, while the GOODS GUYS uses “I am going to kick you are butt” and then does kick are butt to silence the falsehoods.
You know those examples you listed, of a woman triumphing against people who told her she didn’t have a shot, and Jeff Jarrett being a prick to women until he was beaten by one? Those worked because the person we cheer was being good, and the person we boo was being bad. Here, what’s the comeuppance? The good guys call the bad guy a bitch. If it was bad guys calling a face Diva a bitch, I’d want her (or someone on her behalf) to beat the shit out of them.
Previous examples you listed of WWE stars like Austin, Rock and Jericho being verbally abusive to women are also horrible, I just wasn’t writing a wordy column when they were doing it.
The problem is that you’re right, these are storylines. You like to emphasize that a lot. The problem is WITH the storyline. The storyline shouldn’t involve a guy calling a woman a bitch, no matter what the angle, especially not when he’s the one we like. End of story.
The column is my opinion on what happens, and that’s how I feel. If you knew Dave Chapelle gave a shit about women’s rights going into his show, it might not be such a surprise when he uses whatever stage he has to say “stop treating women like shit for being women”. Treat people like shit for gender-nonspecific reasons if you want. If you just say STORYLINE it doesn’t erase the fact that some storylines are hurtful and regressive toward an extremely impressionable audience.
Also, please don’t FJM me.
Alexis W, it would be really hard if not impossible for Ryder to directly defeat Eve, all he really has is words. (Nice avatar)
Lobster, I slightly disagree. Good guys have used words very well and they should. Getting into a war of words with Punk/SCSA/Rock/Jericho is always a bad idea. McMahon appreciation night was nothing but people using words to destroy Vince’s ego.
Brandon, slightly bad example with SDR/Jarrett in hindsight I admit. But like I told Alexis, Zack really can’t straight beat Eve so all he can do is mock her. I wouldn’t say bitch=women are bad, it’s more like Eve is clearly a bitch because she used Zack and messed with his show and cost Teddy his job.
I didn’t mean SCSA/Rock/Y2J being abusive to women verbally was okay (SCSA’s Stunner on Keibler is still horrendous) I meant that their whole stick as both heels and faces were to insult their opponent and sometimes they were up against women. Y2J’s constant calling Steph a whore I’m not a fan of as much as I was, which is also my point. Steph was never whorish, but you could make a case for Eve.
Didn’t mean anything by FJMing, it’s how I’ve always replied to messages, by chopping up the message and replying point by point.
Sorry that we disagree on this point, still love the column and can’t wait for to get out of college in time to get home and read tommorow’s.
May all be and stay well.
JackBando, you seem like a pretty together guy, so I urge you to consider what the words bitch and slut actually mean, and how awful the “she’s a bitch because she’s being a bitch” or “she’s not a slut because she’ s not acting like a slut” talking points sound.
While I understand your argument that saying NO WOMAN SHOULD BE INSULTED EVER is silly, you can’t deny that segment was just plain dumb.
To this day, it baffles me why people get hung up on ONE EFFING PARAGRAPH of the report.
Maybe you agree with Brandon. Maybe you don’t. If you do, nod your head while reading it. If you do not, shrug your shoulders and scroll on to the part where he talks about Sheamus getting his GOTDAMN capillaries exploded. It’s really not hard.
The great thing about these reports is that there’s something for everyone. Maybe that part isn’t for you. Find the parts that are, and enjoy them. If there are not enough for your taste, then find a report that DOES have those things. But telling someone to not write how they feel about something, WHEN YOU COME HERE TO FIND OUT HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT SOMETHING, is just stupid and asinine.
It’d be one thing, I think, if it was a random arbitrary insult in a meaningless backstage segment, but it’s part of a pervasive pattern of this sort of behavior. The women in the company are routinely marginalized, ignored and/or denigrated. Who have been the most powerful women in WWE for the last year or so? Eve, Vickie, and AJ. The first was thrown into a roughshod “using her looks to get ahead” angle — thank god no male wrestler has ever done that! — because somebody had to be blamed for that debacle of a storyline and Kane, the heel in it all, wasn’t responsible. John Cena kissed her back, allowed her ex (and Cena’s BFF) to be murdered by Kane, then called her a slut for her participation. The second was regularly put down for her looks and weight (which is normal if not ideal) until somebody told Jerry Lawler to shut the fuck up because they were promoting an anti-bullying campaign. The third had something interesting going until it became “crazy chicks, man, amirite?” and she randomly became GM, after which she turned into the world’s tiniest Stephanie and got fired for going on a date/business lunch with a single male wrestler and then ran crying to that wrestler to protect her when it all went wrong. Does something seem amiss here?
*raging “civil debate on the internet” boner*
Seriously though, that was awesome.
Obligatory “good job, enjoyed reading” comment.
As a person who was in attendance last night I’d like to add this: There was a “We Want Ryder” chant during the dope Cesaro/Gabriel match. It was pitiful and made me shrink down in my seat and thank my lucky stars I’m not from Georgia. You couldn’t be more dead on that these kids don’t want to see wrestling, they want to see wrestler even if they are god awful, fake tanned ones.
Yep, a “Woo Woo Woo” chant could be heard on TV during the match, that was disappointing.
I was there too. If you want you can see me losing my shit cheering for Antonio (I’m right next to the ramp with a white spotlight shining on me [seriously]). Please don’t equate being-from-Georgia as some sort of derogatory thing because not everyone in the city you were in liked what you liked.
Brandon, how could you not put Bateman’s A/S/L question/comment up for the top 10? Creepin’ Bateman is fantastic.
Everything about that question/answer was my tops for the night.
I half thought about answering truthfully, because, come on, it’s D-Bates!
I couldn’t just give Bateman all the top 10 spots, those things are supposed to be for you guys. He is a RICH TELEVISION TYPE.
What is this “a/s/l”?
oh…OH! Nice.
Truthful A/S/L – Braeburn, Moosejaw, Baikal.
I think, out of respect, we should all gather our A/S/Ls and put them in a message for him to choose amongst us. Come on, it’s D-Bates!!
Sounds like a plan, Lester! Just to remind me, it stands for Apostrophe, Sobriquet, Limerick, right? Or Anastrophe, Synecdoche, Litotes?
Around when did he do that? I’m tempted to scroll through thousands of comments to find it.
chudley – the timestamp is 9:59
I was really excited for HIAC last night, but even though I was distracted for a good chunk of it doing other stuff, it all just felt very unsubstantial and not terribly exciting.
I didn’t watch HIAC and I just got through 2 questions of Jort Cena’s Q&A. How odd does it feel that Cena is saying he “gave” Ryback a title shot and people are accepting this. It almost feels like he’s the higher power Undertaker was talking about all those years ago.
The thing is, the PPV felt so unimportant. Orton doesn’t seem to give a shit about his match, Dragonfire’s dysfunction doesn’t cost them the title, the HIAC match could just have been a No-DQ… if no one cares, why should I? And to not make me care, the crowd did a great job by the way.
Oh and although they probably couldn’t do anything else than a ref interfering to get out of the HIAC match, that’s just a short-term solution: they still have to find a way for Punk to fight (and defeat) Ryback without ruining one of the two characters. If only there was a way to have a violent match where CM Punk gets destroyed, then manages to get the win despite being a bloody mess. You know, like in a real Hell in a Cell match, not a 10min match where absolutely nothing happens.
“Make-A-Wish kids should be requesting Ricardo Rodriguez”
That’d be #2 on my list, falling just behind AJ Lee showing up in her attire that she wore when she won the divas battale Royale before her character got Spayed.
That RKO on ADR looked sicked. I’m pretty sure I would have jumped up and down screaming if I saw that in real time.
“The next time Ryder shows up and says “EVE YOU’RE A PUNT BUT WITH A C INSTEAD OF A P IF YOU GET IT, WOO WOO WOO YOU KNOW IT” she should kick him so hard in the balls he vomits sunglasses and choke him out.”
I would have also accepted ” she laughs, and slaps on 5 different BJJ holds, each one more painful than the last, making Ryder tap out 5 different ways, for which Eve screams that she will only stop when she has done more moves on Ryder than Ryder actually knows.” So maybe she puts him into 3 submission holds, followed by racooning Ryder.
This is what death feels like, Zack.
+Renzo
Oops, I forgot to say that this was a very good B&W, B Stro. I’m saddened to hear that JBL was acting like a certain Memphis King during the divas match.
I disagree about the end of the Tag Team match, but another wonderful write up Brandon.
Oh yeah I forgot, wasn’t Ziggler supposed to cash in? He could have come out while Show was walking away from the ring and get KO’d or declare via Titantron that Show better be careful and stuff, it’s not as if it was really hard.
When someone guarantees they’re going to cash in their briefcase, that’s the biggest signpost ever that they’re not going to cash in their briefcase.
Except if his name is John Cena.
A little sad Kaitlyn’s noggin knocker didn’t at least warrant a minor supplemental best
I was there too and the crowd seemed particularly dead.
Heard a “We Want Ryder” and a muted “USA” chant during the US Championship match (dopes)
Speaking of dopes, guy behind me proclaimed “Wow, Rey can’t be 6ft tall”. If he was Darren Young would be 7ft and Titus would be Great Khali-sized.
Last 5 minutes of Big Show’s win was A1
At least JBL acknowledged he sucked on commentary during the Diva’s match. But he could’ve been worse, I thought the Big Show/Sheamus match was gonna be half an hour of “POKE THE BEAR, POKE THE BEAR”
As much as I always enjoy these write ups, it sucks when you try to find something that will give you the chance to say “then again it is kinda wrong that they are saying the black guy is from the jungle.” Seems like the Wildcat thing is just trying to give Kofi something other than “Boom” as a hook. But that could just be me.
Pretty good points about everything else though. I too am hoping this Raw is post WM-like and gives us something to look forward to going into Survivor Series. I’ll find out after Monday Night Football.
Immediately after Gabriel hit the springboard moonsault, I paused my TV, got up from my chair, and went outside to get a little fresh air. I had forgotten how beautiful that move can be, to the point that it was alarming seeing a proper one. Justin Gabriel can go, and I’d like to see him take Kofi’s spot as “Jumping Guy”, because he can add some legit drama to it. And, the suicide leap into Swiss Death was absolutely terrific.
I know Gabriel isn’t the largest guy around, and Cesaro’s Feats of Strength have been lauded in this forum previously, but the way he gut-wrench dead-lifted Gabriel back into the ring, and then dead-lifted him into the Neutralizer was awesome. That is a strong, strong dude.
Enjoyable recap per usual. See you folks tonight.
Brandon – your idea about a Punk-led stable or team is, from my understanding, very close to the plans pre-HIAC. Just remember that Survivor Series is coming up…
HEY!
I collect comics, you jerk.
The Wildcat Kofi thing was weird and awkward and adorkable.
Dude, you’re insane. That Big Show/Sheamus match was fucking great long before the finish. About 4 minutes before the end, I sent a message to two friends saying it was edging past great and bordering on “near-classic.” Then it had the White Noise, the first WMD kickout, the first Brogue kick kickout, and then THAT finish and is an easy MOTYC, Show’s best match since Mayweather, and Sheamus’s best match… ever.
Great write-up as always – to the point of saying everything I was thinking.
I hated how dead the crowd was for the US Title match. It might be my Cesaro-boner, but I can’t believe a guy with his athleticism, strength, and ever-expanding moveset doesn’t get more of a reaction. I get that the language barrier hurts his heat (god, I feel dirty using that word), but he might be the second best technician in the company right now.
I feel whiny typing this, but I just don’t want him to be Euro-screaming with Heath Slater next year. The 3MB is awesome, but Cesaro should be closing Smackdown episodes next year.
Gold!
This is great Brandon. Pumped to have made a debut in the top 10 of a B/W.
Nights like HIAC come with the territory of following the WWE. They just do. Going in, most of the matches were more interesting than exciting, but they found a way to sour the most slam dunk part of the past 2 months of TV in the tag teams.
You read my mind on the Show-Sheamus match Brandon, I was barely awake through most of it but the finish was great.
Great stuff Brandon.
I missed the PPV but Kane got DQ’d for punching… then later Show wins with a punch? hmm
Another brilliant read.
Just got around to watching HIAC and reading B/W. Obligatory “great read, thank you!”. Lesnar busting into the cage would have been an awesome finish. Then again, most things would have been better than a ref low blow.