Midnight and still no RAW thread? You'd think this show was Smackdown!
The show was pretty much all build-up to the PPV, which oddly enough only has 4 matches announced so far (Cena vs Authority, the 4-way tag, Ambrose/Wyatt and the Divas match). I fully anticipate Rose vs Bunny to be announced on Smackdown though.
Shaemus got shelved (maybe he's off to go film a movie like Orton?), meaning Team Cena got to play musical chairs again this week. Rowan showing up really came out of nowhere, since we'd had no indications they were planning on turning him face. I guess they're just abandoning the 'Creepy Stalker Rowan' angle and are gonna have the two former Wyatts feud for awhile. Ryback joining in was very expected but not unwelcome. Also Cena actually cut quite the good promo, showing he still can talk the talk when he has a mind to.
I kinda enjoyed Cesaro coming out just to troll Cena, especially since Team Authority was already full
I was sad to see Ziggler lose the Intercontinental title, but even without the belt I have hopes that he'll continue to be pushed. Plus, it means that Harper picks up his first gold, and he's definitely one of the most impressive rookies WWE's had in awhile. I hope to see more good things from both these guys, even if it looks like Rowan will probably be Harper's first IC challenger.
Grumpy Cat was thankfully understated. On the other hand, I may boycott RAW entirely next week, because fuck Larry the Goddamn Cable Guy. He wasn't entertaining even when he was relevant, and that was about a decade ago.
So the premise of the entire show was the Authority systematically taking out Cena's team, while John Cena stood backstage watching HELPLESSLY! Or you know... he could have maybe GONE OUT AND HELPED THEM??? This, in a nutshell, is why John Cena the character is such an unlikable douchebag, right?
If you had told me ten years ago that we'd be getting a PPV (and one of the big four, no less) completely free of charge and I would be completely ready to pass on it, I'd have said you were crazy. Even at my most jaded in the last decade, I could never have imagined wanting to skip out on a free PPV, but that tends to happen when they book a main event 5-on-5 Survivor Series elimination main event and the only players of consequence are John Cena, Triple H, and Stephanie McMahon. In six days, if you pointed out that Erick Rowan was replacing an injured member of Cena's team, would you even be able to name who he's replacing? Probably not, because Cena's team has become a bunch of interchangeable parts. They're a bunch of geeks that stand no chance against the heels and are basically there to fulfill one purpose: get destroyed by the heel team (who, themselves, are also a collection of interchangeable parts) so that John Cena can valiantly try and overcome the odds for the hundredth time and Rise Above Hate in a 1-on-5 situation before just falling narrowly short. John Cena will shrug and smirk to the camera afterwards like it doesn't mean anything. Triple H and Stephanie will kick off the next Raw with a 20-minute promo segment gloating over their win. And the endless cycle will continue.
On the one hand, one can make the case that there's no point in complaining, since the show is free. But that represents the true sad state of The E right now. Because now the mentality is morphing from "Why would I pay for this crap?" to "Why would I waste my time watching this crap?" and that's a very dangerous jump, because there's no coming back from that for a lot of people. I'm very concerned about what's happening.
Tonight was one of the deadest crowds I can remember, not surprising given what was trotted out there tonight. I can only wonder how many more crowds are going to get taken out of the show before they stop paying for the insanely expensive ticket prices and stop coming out, period. I really am afraid of how close the tipping point is.
Originally posted by Blind_GuardianI kinda enjoyed Cesaro coming out just to troll Cena, especially since Team Authority was already full.
Joke's on Cesaro. He isn't booked for the PPV at all. Nothing made me sadder than watching Team Authority and Cesaro all have a huge laugh when Cesaro's indirectly the butt of the joke.
(edited by It's False on 17.11.14 2353)
"Playing guitars. It's hard to sing while playing...guitars."
Originally posted by Blind_GuardianI kinda enjoyed Cesaro coming out just to troll Cena, especially since Team Authority was already full.
Joke's on Cesaro. He isn't booked for the PPV at all. Nothing made me sadder than watching Team Authority and Cesaro all have a huge laugh when Cesaro's indirectly the butt of the joke.
(edited by It's False on 17.11.14 2353)
I think the joke is on us as fans too if that's the case.
I said last week that this Survivor Series was a shitty booking. Now we are in the middle of a second Ryback push (that went soooo well the first time), the Wyatts splitting and facing each other for no reason (why would Rowan oppose his fellow Wyatt?), and the fact that Cena helped NONE of the guys on his team during their time of need yet when his back is against the wall before a punch is thrown everyone including two new members are at his side.
He literally helped no one, but these dummies saved him at the end from fighting alone. This is the first time in a long time I've felt like an idiot for watching WWE programming.
I expect Adam Rose's bunny to replace a member of Team Cena before this Sunday due to Cena's negligence.
Cole: "Yeah, thanks to Kane. You should buy Kane a Rolex watch for what he did for you."
Rollins: "Oh don't be silly, Kane doesn't wear watches."
I honestly feel Rowan was trotted out there simply because when Sheamus got hurt, someone just up and suggested the next guy with a lot of bright red facial hair. Maybe a killer promo on... ah who am I kidding. I really don't mind Erick Rowan, he's definitely a hoss so to speak, and he's a rookie, so maybe his game hasn't been honed. It'd be nice to hear from him, and on the plus side, if it turns out to be some full on, old fashioned, Sid/Steiner/Warrior nonsense, it's within the gimmick. As cynical as the average WWE audience has become, with CM Punk chants EVERY RAW and Mizdow getting huge pops for making everybody else on the show look like a dink by hip tossing himself, I earnestly believe someone holding a microphone who would deliver good ole' crazy hollerin' while not knowing what they're talking about would get someone over big, maybe even go viral.
What's funny is in an effort to prevent those kind of mindboggling promos that you actually pay more attention to because you almost need to confirm what you're hearing, you get stuff like a kid with a synthesized Mr. Microphone voice scaring John Cena back into a cage.
Heath Slater is awesome. Whenever he shows up, I know he's going to get beat up and lose horribly, but I'm always happy.
(edited by Lexus on 18.11.14 0603) "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Frown and the world laughs at you." -Me.
Originally posted by Blind_GuardianI kinda enjoyed Cesaro coming out just to troll Cena, especially since Team Authority was already full.
Joke's on Cesaro. He isn't booked for the PPV at all. Nothing made me sadder than watching Team Authority and Cesaro all have a huge laugh when Cesaro's indirectly the butt of the joke.
(edited by It's False on 17.11.14 2353)
I think the joke is on us as fans too if that's the case.
Yeah, here comes that guy you like, to do stuff in the Main Event of Survivor Series! Nah, just joshin'! We're giving him nothing, and instead you get a warmed-over Ryback face run.
It felt like they had a real good laugh at my expense. Seriously, I've never seen so much wasted potential as the Survivor Series teams. There are a lot of good guys on the roster, but these two teams suck. It's a bunch of big guys who aren't great, and no particular reason to care about anybody except Cena, and maybe Rollins and Ziggler. How is Cesaro not in this thing? Either team, how is he not in this thing? Whose cornflakes did he piss in?
Now begins the ascension of Luke Harper, Swamp Jesus. Ziggler lost in a throughly credible way, breaking finisher pinfalls after getting double-teamed and briefcase blasted. At least it wasn't a distraction roll-up.
This PPV will be my first with the Network, and I really am hoping for a great main event despite the involvement of Show and Kane.
"To be the man, you gotta beat demands." -- The Lovely Mrs. Tracker
Let me get this straight, you give away your Network free in the hopes that people will like what they see and spend money to renew. Or it could be they hoping that maybe people forget about renewing and get stuck in some sorta Comcast customer service hell. I am thinking its option two.
I have zero faith in anything they are doing. I don't want to hear about hosses or crazy eyes or Cena. Especially fucking Cena. This company needs a complete and total overhaul. From the top down. They are resting on their withering laurels. They have found ways to make everything boring. Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt should be an amazing feud, so far nothing. Ambrose/Wyatt could have an excellent match at Survivor Series since its one of the few on paper that looks good if not the only one. They have a tremendous triple threat on Smackdown and two of those guys are not going to be on this PPV, the other lost his title and is looking at the Ryder push in his near future.
The Authority angle will not end like this especially if supposedly retired HHH is eyeing up a Mania match with Rock. Unless, Rock's movie schedule will keep him away from Mania which maybe the best for all parties involved. I am sure they will make it Cena/HHH with the fans behind HHH. Nothing has changed with this company since 2006 where HHH and Cena were the top stars.
Liked Ryback-Cesaro. If nothing else, Cesaro's a lock to have an enjoyable match on WWE TV; he's my current favorite WWE wrestler.
Heath Slater borrowed Xavier Woods' old ring gear.
I would have laughed so hard if the payoff to Sheamus-Show had been a time-limit draw(also ensuring that neither gets a title shot), THEN they did the heel beatdown.
Survivor Series was a no-brainer in 1998; not so much this year. I want a bunch of elimination tag matches with captains, team names, and wacky matching ring attire and gimmicks.
Jim Cornette's appearing at an indy show in my area next month and another local show just announced ACH vs. Ricochet, so WWE is the least of my wrestling priorities at the moment.
Glad everybody's hitting on the John Cena: Worst Human Being In This Business character points. That was astonishing, even by their standards. He's let Jack Swagger and Sheamus be beaten so savagely on his behalf that they've both been hospitalized and will be out indefinitely and he did nothing. (I can't remember if he was around to help Swagger, but we know for a fact he was just standing backstage, watching on TV, while the Authority jumped Sheamus after the match, when "good guys don't interfere" wouldn't be the excuse.) Ziggler, the one guy to stand with him all the way through even though Cena has literally dumped shit on him in recent history, got attacked before the match, attacked after the match and had his title stolen from him. Big Show was also attacked on Cena's behalf. And the only thing he could be bothered to do was hang around backstage and then call Ryback selfish for not siding with him!
The promo at the end was the real amazing part, though. Like, let's assume the motivation on the part of the writers and therefore the characters is that Cena doesn't want to "cheat". He still comes out and says, literally, who needs those losers anyway, because I can just grab two dorks in the audience and two children and still win. Character wise, he is the worst.
I think I was actually more annoyed with the part at the beginning where they tried, again, to co-opt the the souls of former Cena victims Punk, Bryan and (most-damningly, because he's still there) Ambrose by having the announcing team refer to him as the company's "greatest malcontent". Come on! This is Dean Ambrose's angle all the way and you can't just pretend that the guy who straight out said last year that he'd rather quit the business than not wrestle for this specific company is this anti-establishment iconoclast.
No one will buy it.*
Meanwhile, it's amazing how they've screwed up with Ryback this fast. Cena's already claimed him once, murdering Ryback's push the last time around when Ryback was insanely over for attacking Cena for the very things that Cena has done this past month (leaving allies who have helped him hung out to dry) and they decided to turn Ryback instead. Now, Ryback improbably returns with a new head of steam and they go out of their way to paint him as a possible heel, muting his response. That should have been Ryback triumphantly putting HHH through the table at the end of that show, not Cena.
Re: THE BIG GUY/Cesaro, it took them a while to gel, but I thought they got it together at the end of the match. Of course, the crowd was dead because they once again sent Ryback out after having him refuse to do something cheer-worthy and they've absolutely trained Raw audiences to not care about Cesaro, which as other have noted, played off in that bizarre "Ha ha ha, Cesaro isn't even on the PPV, what a great joke!" bit at the end of the show.
Instead of the truly baffling Rowan appearance at the end, why not have THAT be where Harper - who just recently had vignettes painting him as someone abused by the system - picks a side? Or have it actually be Cesaro, angry at not being chosen by the Authority? We just got weeks of Rowan doing a weird stalker gimmick and those Creepy Eyes promos for Harper, and both have seemingly been abandoned out of nowhere.
(I mean, right? Harper's Eyes vignette seemed to imply he was stalking Ziggler with his own agenda, but they toss that out and instead have the title switch happen by random Authority fiat, because I guess the Authority has to be as or more important than every other heel? Here we are, by the way, 7 months after Daniel Bryan conquered the Authority and our shows repeatedly open and close with 10-20 minute HHH/Stephanie promos, just like we're still in the year 2000. And damn, did HHH bomb in that promo at the end or what? It was like he was having a nervous breakdown for a few minutes there, with no clue of what he was supposed to be saying. Also, if HHH is willing to lay hands on people like he did last night, why isn't he actually in the match himself, since it is the most important match ever, stipulation-wise?)
Anyway, forget naming the teams**, this angle should 100% be Dean Ambrose's team of malcontent misfits vs. the Rollins-branded, corporate approved Authority. How much better and how much more sense would it make to have the guy who might actually end the The Authority be someone who doesn't actually care about the power structure but just wants to "watch the world burn" and the only reason he's doing it is because they paid his buddy off to turn on him? Ambrose/Orton/Cesaro/Ziggler/Harper vs. Rollins/HHH/Rusev/Kane/Wyatt, with Cena either facing Brock or being forced to defend his #1 contendership against a bought-out Sheamus/Henry or a face but hungry and independently-motivated (and thus fully over) THE BIG GUY would be better than this, right?
*It = the Network
** OK, let's not forget the team names. The Rollins-led team would be ROLLINS BRAND and the Ambrose/Orton-led team would be AN-RKO.
If they hadn't wasted Wyatt in order to get themselves out of a booking corner last month, he would have been PERFECT for the surprise can-we-trust-him addition to Team Cena in the last segment. "Oh look at you, Luke. I set you free for this - a shiny belt and a spot as an establishment lapdog?" Then we could have had lots of spots on Sunday of Cena not trusting him, freaking his own team out with the spider-walk, and so on. Of course, this would never happen, as if Wyatt turned face in such a fashion he'd immediately be more over than Cena, and we can't be having Cena teaming with someone more over than him.
One of the saving graces of the show? "Ding ding". You heel great, Rusev, but Slater's a great heeler.
Originally posted by Blind_GuardianHarper picks up his first gold, and he's definitely one of the most impressive rookies WWE's had in awhile.
Originally posted by LexusI really don't mind Erick Rowan, he's definitely a hoss so to speak, and he's a rookie, so maybe his game hasn't been honed.
I realize they're relatively new to the WWE, but Erick Rowan has been wrestling for seven years now and Luke Harper made his professional debut over a decade ago, a year before Dolph Ziggler.
The Cena stuff is so frustrating, compounded by the fact that they constantly portray him as this irreproachable saint and the mean old vocal minority of the fanbase hates him for no reason. See, look at all the Make-A-Wish stuff he does! Do you hate kids with cancer? John Cena doesn't!
The Cesaro thing at the end just seemed like the latest in a string of smark-trolling...
"Look, this guy is HUGE on the Internet. Our hardcore fans love him." "Great," Creative responded. "Then we don't have to do shit with him ever."
EPIC trolling from Cena last night - to actually come out and GUARANTEE a 1 vs. 5 Cena win is some brave, super self-aware stuff.
I had what I thought was a hilarious theory that when Vince requested "Larry the Cable Guy" for a guest shot, he was actually trying to book yet another week of Larry King and, as a result, will spend a lot of next week's show asking "who the hell is THAT guy?" but either I didn't compress it to 140 characters in a way that made sense or Twitter just wasn't biting on it being as funny as I thought it was.
Originally posted by CRZEPIC trolling from Cena last night - to actually come out and GUARANTEE a 1 vs. 5 Cena win is some brave, super self-aware stuff.
It sets up a defeat and Humbled Cena angle, right? Instead of the future running through him, he has to beseech the future for assistance. They won't get over by beating him (like Bryan and Punk), they'll get a diminished rub via association.
"To be the man, you gotta beat demands." -- The Lovely Mrs. Tracker
Originally posted by CRZEPIC trolling from Cena last night - to actually come out and GUARANTEE a 1 vs. 5 Cena win is some brave, super self-aware stuff.
It sets up a defeat and Humbled Cena angle, right? Instead of the future running through him, he has to beseech the future for assistance. They won't get over by beating him (like Bryan and Punk), they'll get a diminished rub via association.
You know, for a brief moment that's where I thought they were going last night -- to the future. I thought this was going to be a way to introduce the next NXT call-ups as Cena's only team members, in a face-ish version of Nexus, claiming they've been held down in NXT too long by HHH and thus felt moved to join the fight.
Long could always point out that Goldberg is Jewish and claim that it's just another case of The Man forcing two minorities to fight one another in order to keep their focus away from himself.