[WinterPhoenix]

Just got through Extreme Rules, not a terrible PPV, Jericho on the thumbtacks was great and the Intercontinental Title match was solid as hell, though the outcome could've been better literally any other way.

Honestly though I'm not sure why I bother watching any Reigns match now, each time I convince myself it won't be another care if LOLSUPERREIGNSLOL again and each time I'm am handed forthrr proof that Vince learned no lessons from Cena and is insistent on a similar decade if dominance for Reigns - who is a decidedly sub-par Cena replacement, at least Cena had some talent to destroy with terrible booking, Reigns has none!

Even the awesome return of Rollins was made decidedly sour by that predictable ending, frankly a carbon copy of Payback. I honestly don't care how "good" AJ looks in defeat, there's no way someone of his talent should be loosing to such a no talent hack! It is impossible too look anything but a scrub loosing to that man, he no sells all offense and puts everyone down with the same lumbering 2 moves of doom! They are burying any chance to make AJ the star he should be at this company, he will need done serious run to look anything but a scrub to the casuals now!

I want to see AJ vs Rollins not Reigns burying yet another far superior talent! Honestly though I expect to see Reigns beat both Cena and Brock clean at major PPV's within the next 1-2 years just to assert his 'Reign' of dominance! Even if Rollins beats Reigns they won't give him the clean victory he damn well deserves!

Honestly considering cancelling my network subscription, any company that so hangs their hopes and highest accolades on such an undeserving talent, with so, sooooo many greater talents on the roster, doesn't deserve my money. God Vince needs to be declared senile or sonething!!!

[Gorefest]

This evening will be the first draft since 2011. The GMs for Raw and Smackdown wereannounced on Raw. Daniel Bryan was no surprise in teaming up with Shane McMahon on Smackdown, but I did not see Mick Foley coming for Raw with Stephanie.

Should be a very interesting draft. Raw gets first pick and, because it is an hour longer, it will get three picks for every two picks for Smackdown.

And Raw will get the new cruiserweight division, which surprised me quite a bit because I thought that would be more of a Smackdown thing. Interesting to see if that means that all the cruiserweights need to be on Raw, or whether there is some sort of crossover taking place for the CW division.

[WinterPhoenix]

Am actually quite buzzing for this draft, cautiously optimistic for the future of Smackdown, assuming the draft isn't too weighted in favour of Raw with the to be expected weighting of draft picks in Raw's favour.

I was a little surprised about the Cruiserweight announcement as well, but it's increased my interest as well just as you say. Mick Foley surprised me as well! Foley and Bryan should be great, it's not the Bischoff/Angle dream team that I was hoping for but that was craziness lol

I think I'm most interested to see who the 6 NXT draftees will be. I mean at this point I'd say that Balor, American Alpha and probably Bayley as well are locks, that leaves 3 others. I suspect it might be Joe, Aries and Nia Jax (god I hate Nia Jax!!) because Aries hasn't taken off with the crowd like he should have done - outside of Style and Nakamura, Aries is probably my favourite wrestler in WWE at the moment - so they can safely slot him in the Raw/Smackdown midcard. As for Joe, I think he's loosing to Nak at Takeover: Brooklyn 2, I can't see anyone beating Nak in NXT for a good while not even the monster that is Samoa Joe!

[Gorefest]

I was thinking american Alpha, Revival, balor, Asuka, Aries, Bayley.

[WinterPhoenix]

I would prefer Asuka over Jax any day, I'm just not sure they'll actually raid the show of it's champions, hence why I don't think they'll bring up Joe and Nak, just whoever loses in Brooklyn - though I suppose that ruins all suspense for the fight, so perhaps neither is a good shout as well. I was thinking perhaps Itami, but he made his comeback at NXT Full Sail tapings just the other day, I think he is showing up on NXT again on the same show as Bobby Roode's debut. That the same reason I don't think they'll bring up The Revivial either, but again I could be wrong - I prefer your 6 anyhow, simply because no Nia Jax!!! I'm desperate to see Joe on the main roster at some point though!

[Gorefest]

Well, that was distinctively underwhelming. Just a bogstandard split that doesnt seem to bring any particular flavour to either brand, the backstage wrestler reactions replaced by naf interviews (although Cesaro delivered quite the pipebomb; there is one distinctly unhappy dude), rubbish NXT picks (Eve f-ing Marie? Alexa Bliss? Mojo? Ffs, you got Nakamura, Aries, Bayley, so much gold, and you bring those ones up?!), even Baron Corbin drafted before Cesaro, the Wyatts split up, and not even bothering to show the full roster draft on air but doing half of them on the aftershow. Meh. Just meh.

#onemanbrand, surely the hottest new hash tag of 2016!! Poor Heath.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 20 July 2016 - 10:55 PM

[WinterPhoenix]

The Cesaro shoot was far and away the best part of the night, he obviously realises that he'll never get near the main event scene on that roster, neither will Owens or Zayn - and seriously the entire continuation of the Zayn/Owens feud was predicated on the idea that it'd be the end because of the draft, and then they drafted them to the same damn show??? God, Smackdown, really needed Owens and Cesaro, switch em for Kalisto (RAW has the CW's anyhow) and bloody Corbin! I would say dump Kane as well, but seeing as Big Show was the alternative I think SD did well there, besides the potential interaction between Kane and D Bry could be gold anyhow. Also I would have preferred Rusev and Darren Young over The Miz and Zack Ryder - it seems clear to me they are doing a title swap at Battleground, frankly I don't see how you justify Ryder going over Rusev though :/ I'd made my peace with Rollins and probably Balor being on RAW, but I was really hoping I wouldn't have to watch the overproduced 3-hour show anymore, there's always an hour of crap I just don't care about at all, I guess Vince realised if they turned SD into the true workrate show, RAW would lose even more viewers.


The NXT picks were so odd I agree, I mean I didn't think Nak was coming up yet, not even for a second, but Aries and maybe even Joe I was surprised not to see! I mean with Roode coming in next month as well (and Eric Young somewhere in the back still!) NXT would barely even feel the loss of Aries, Joe would have been a bigger blow (especially with Bayley) but I think it would have been fine. The thing is not only have they not brought Bayley up (though I think she will be Banks' mystery partner at Battleground to be fair) they bought up all other established female talent, meaning either it's Asuka/Bayley for the next few months, or they are bringing in a good number of new female signings/performance centre talent.

I am ready, willing and gable to see American Alpha on SD though

[WinterPhoenix]

WELL HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS! Ambrose beats Reigns clean at Battleground and now Balor beats him clean for the #number 1 contendership on RAW, perhaps this new era is finally here! I mean wow, has anyone ever become #1 contender and booked their place in the Summerslam Main Event on their debut before?!?! God, why couldn't Reigns fail a drugs test months ago and save a so much absolute shite!

As you can no doubt tell I am over the moon with such developments, however, I can help but feel a tinge of sadness as well. I mean Balor goes over Reigns clean but Styles couldn't? Sucks, I mean don't get me wrong Balor should be beating Reigns, Reigns has nothing but the look he is awful in almost every other regard, and boring and stale as Balor's face persona has been he is still easily one of the top wrestlers the company has to offer - heel Balor Club turn would be absolutely awesome, heel Balor/babyface Seth is pure gold! - and as such he should go over Reigns every damn time. The only issue is the list of people that is true for is huge, and Reigns has already won matches he has no business winning. It's sad that it took a drugs scandal to - seemingly, I still don't trust it fully yet - open Vince's eyes :/

[Gorefest]

Reigns seems to have been moved out of the main title race now, focussing on the American belt. Seems like a far better place for him and hopefully means he can slowly recover from the stupid and utterly detrimental push that he was given in the past year.

RAW has been great two weeks in a row, sadly the first Smackdown didn't impress me overly much in comparison. Haven't seen last night yet, so hopefully they'll up their game. Otherwise it is already very clear who is the 'winner' in the brand feud. Raw has the far better roster and the creative decisions are much better too.

[edit]Going to the house show (RAW) in London in September and to the televised RAW and Smackdown in Glasgow in November. Phyched to (hopefully) see Mick Foley!

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 03 August 2016 - 12:31 PM

[WinterPhoenix]

Gorefest, on 03 August 2016 - 12:08 PM, said:

Reigns seems to have been moved out of the main title race now, focussing on the American belt. Seems like a far better place for him and hopefully means he can slowly recover from the stupid and utterly detrimental push that he was given in the past year.

RAW has been great two weeks in a row, sadly the first Smackdown didn't impress me overly much in comparison. Haven't seen last night yet, so hopefully they'll up their game. Otherwise it is already very clear who is the 'winner' in the brand feud. Raw has the far better roster and the creative decisions are much better too.

[edit]Going to the house show (RAW) in London in September and to the televised RAW and Smackdown in Glasgow in November. Phyched to (hopefully) see Mick Foley!

Yeah it kinda sucks that I have to agree with you, thus far RAW has been better by someway, and I can only see the gap widening once RAW gets the Cruiserweight division going, even if they don't get the bigger names in the CWC (not sure what's happening with Ibushi, Tozawa, Perkins, Noam Dar and Zack Sabre Junior for example) it will just be another element RAW has going for it that Smackdown does not. I was banking on the main event scene being better on SD; with Styles, Cena, Wyatt, Orton and Ambrose they have a good number of fresh feuds just between those five and the rosters wont stay the same forever. But on the first episode they give #1 contendership to Mr. Irrelevant himself Dolph bloody Ziggler (I mean why not push him 2 years ago after Survivor Series when he was hella over with crowds???) and not only that, they have Styles eat the pin from a move that hasn't been putting people down for a 3 count since Dolph's inspiration Shawn Michaels was still wrestling.

I'm still not convinced how long Reign's punishment will last tbh, but here's hoping he can spend a good amount of time in the midcard and actually build up a character worth watching, not to mention improve both in-ring and on-mic. Nor am I convinced that Vince will ever push Zayn, Owens or Cesaro as much as they deserve, which makes me worry about the RAW Main Event scene in the long run; Balor's rocket push will only captivate so long and Rollins needs good feuds to keep up his momentum - and he should so obviously be a babyface, it's not even funny.

[Aptorian]

Have you guys been catching the Glorious Bombs?

http://www.wwe.com/a...us-bomb-twitter

I've been listening to Roode's theme all day. It is pretty glorious.

[Gorefest]

Oooh, missed that! Need to send that to the missus, she'll mark out

[WinterPhoenix]

Those Glorious Bombs are amazing, and the heel Bobby Roode is such a fantastic addition to any company, plus that theme, so sweet

Gorefest, did you see the Gargano/Ciampa match in the CWC?

[Gorefest]

Not yet, we have had some busy weekends so we are still catching up with lots of stuff. Loved t.j. Perkins vs da mack.

[WinterPhoenix]

Ah you're both in for a treat when you get to episode 4, Gargano/Ciampa is a really, really great match. I'm one ep behind, haven't seen the start of round 2, as it was the night before I went off to Bloodstock, going to watch it today at some point, Kota Ibushi is so damn good.

This post has been edited by WinterPhoenix: 16 August 2016 - 02:18 PM

[Gorefest]

I must confess I was a bit underwhelmed about Ibushi in his match against Maluta. Though that is probably partly because I've heard so much about Ibushi but never really seen any extended matches of his. I've seen Gargano and Chiampa in action on NXT of course, so I know what they can do and I expect nothing less than a quality match from them.

[WinterPhoenix]

I actually thought Kota was quite good in the Maluta match, his selling really made Maluta look a million dollars as they say. That having been said it's not his best work, you should check out Ibushi/Nakamura from Wrestle Kingdom 9.

[Gorefest]

I'll definitely put that one on the list, sounds like a treat! Absolutely love Nakamura.

[WinterPhoenix]

Alot of people believe it's even better than Nakamura/Styles at this years Wrestle Kingdom, I'm not sure about that, but it is damn good.

[Macros]

I just don't get the love for wrestling once past the age of... Like 14/15/16.
I mean its clearly not actual fighting, its just really really badly acted soap opera.

I used to love watching it was a kid on sunday mornings I think it aired with us, jake the snake and hacksaw jim duggan era, but it wore off pretty quickly when my brain equated punch plus foot stamp.

Not trying to make fun, Im just genuinely baffled what the appeal is to grown adults?