Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
On Monday night the Raw crowd at the Brooklyn Center turned on the WWE Diva’s segment. They begun to perform the usual antics of a bored crowd, Mexican waves and unrelated chants. Yet, only 48 hours beforehand a similar crowd had come unhinged when Bayley pinned Sasha Banks to win the NXT Women’s Title. So did the crowd change in that 48 hours? Or does it point to all the ways that the WWE is failing the Diva’s Revolution? It’s hardly a spoiler to claim it’s the latter.
In the build up to the biggest show in their history, Fear and Loathing VIII at the SECC on the 15th of November, ICW made their way to Edinburgh for a run of shows at City Nightclub. I was lucky enough to have a season ticket for the event. Having previously been a bit of a part-time ICW fan, it’s fair to say that this particular run has seen me fall in love with this Scottish wrestling company.
For the first time in a long time, WWE seem to have decided to make Summerslam a big deal. Always seen by the fans as one of the bigger events. Recent years have failed to live up to those expectations. There have been some big moments, Lesnar demolishing Cena for example, but the event has always felt a few notches below Wrestlemania. This year it feels different. Not only has the show been expanded to four hours, but we have a huge main event and the kind of celebrity participation that is usually reserved for the biggest show of the year. Summerslam feels like a big deal and what goes down this Sunday, could well shape the WWE all the way up to Wrestlemania.
If John McClane had been fighting against a faceless bad guy in Die Hard it’s a safe bet that it, like hundreds of other action films, would have been forgotten instantly. Hans Gruber made him, because a good guy needs a bad guy. Roddy Piper was that bad guy. He was the ying to Hulk Hogan’s yang and it’s a pretty safe bet that without the Hot Rod, Hulk Hogan would never have reached the height of celebrity that he did. On the week that it came out that Hulk wasn’t the squeaky clean American hero that he wanted us all to believe, Roddy had to upstage him once again. Sadly, this time he did it by leaving this Earth behind.
Battleground is very much a B + PPV. Coming just ahead of Summerslam, it is one of those classic middle of the road WWE shows, which is more likely to set up Summerslam than do anything spectacular itself. However, with rumours swirling last week about who might show their face. Battleground suddenly became a lot more interesting to a lot more people. So let’s have a look and see exactly what went down. Unsurprisingly, this will contain spoilers.
Raw this week finally saw the debut of three of NXT’s Four Horsewomen, as Charlotte, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch were introduced by Stephanie McMahon to shake up the Diva’s division. It’s a moment that has been long overdue and almost instantly elevates the Divas division. However, we have seen NXT women being called up before and lost in the shuffle, so is it going to be different this time?
TNA is a mess at the moment. Over the last couple of weeks we have seen some of their biggest stars decide to leave the company and they seem to bounce from disaster to disaster. Sunday night’s Slammiversary, seemed to sum up all of those problems at once.
Money in the Bank always manages to be one of the better WWE events. The Money in the Bank matches tend to deliver and in the past we’ve had iconic moments, like CM Punk walking out with the WWE title. However, this year we came into the event just two weeks after Elimination Chamber and such a short build meant that outside of a select few feuds, mainly Cena and Owens, a lot of the build was lacking and felt rushed. However, WWE was still able to scrape a decent show out of it.
We all like to moan about wrestling. I myself do it on a regular basis. We particularly like to bash the WWE. If you were to go by forums and Twitter, you would believe that they were at an all time low. However, that’s not actually true. In fact, I would argue that WWE is actually in the middle of a golden period.
Something’s going down in the world of TNA and it doesn’t seem to be a positive thing. With rumours suggesting that Destination America are set to cancel Impact, the company’s future is on, at best, shaky ground and with the further announcement that ROH will be getting a six month deal to appear on a Wednesday night. It looks more and more likely that the network is moving on to a cheaper product. So where do TNA go now?
Ramblings About Wrestling 