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The rise of the WWE women's division and how we got a women's match to main event WrestleMania one time. Something that connects the McMahon family is that each member seems to be successful, but driven by what they don't have. Vince wants to be successful outside of wrestling. Linda, similarly, wants real political power. Shane wants to earn his father's respect and admiration. Triple H wants to be seen as a face on wrestling's Mount Rushmore. But Stephanie? Despite being rich, successful and enough like her father, Stephanie is a girl in a business that's inherently a boy's club. On some level, there is some resentment built from that. When they go to Saudi Arabia, she has to stay in the hotel room while the men get to touch the orb or whatever they do. I say this because despite Stephanie's many problems, I genuinely believe that she wants women's wrestling to be taken more seriously. Ever since the Attitude Era, women's wrestling in WWE has usually centered around the women who are more model like than the ones who are good at wrestling. Trish Stratus was the outlier here. Like for several years, WWE's top woman was Kelly Kelly, a woman who was hired because John Laurinaitis saw her in a lingerie catalogue and hired her. She had zero character and fans would point out how awkward it looked whenever she bounced against the ropes, like it was her first week in the business. Meanwhile, women who were about being good in the ring were usually treated as bitter antagonists, such as Beth Phoenix. Once WWE went PG and they stopped doing "bra and panty" matches and the like, things didn't get much better. Women's feuds were mostly about wrestlers calling each other "slut" or being depicted as lunatics. Then the matches would last about three minutes and end with a roll-up. Even if it was some kind of 5-on-5 tag match on a PPV. They also had the Divas Championship belt, which much of the talent hated and considered demeaning. Meanwhile, TNA, despite so many problems, was at least considered to have one over on WWE by having a popular women's division. The story of why Vince hired TNA's Gail Kim has already been talked about several times in this thread, but her disheartened reaction to how bad WWE was was legendary. So fed up with WWE, Gail decided to walk out at the very beginning of a battle royal just to see if anyone noticed. Nobody important did, at least. In the mid-2010s, the biggest act in the women's division was the Bella Twins. Despite them getting pushed because Vince saw them act as Price is Right models when Bob Barker guest hosted Raw (this was awesome, by the way) and realized they were hot, the two did at least make attempts to get better at wrestling. It was funny because Nikki was dating John Cena and Brie was married to Daniel Bryan, so they stopped being identical due to assimilating to their significant others. Brie was smaller and more about grappling while Nikki put on a shitload of muscle and did power moves. Now, with the developmental version of NXT in its infancy, the nice thing it did was allow women to wrestle and wrestle in long matches. With real finishes, too! The first real star to make her name in NXT and go to the main roster was Paige, otherwise known as the woman who got her own biographical movie Fighting With My Family several years ago. She mainly feuded with AJ Lee, a major part of the women's division who also took it seriously. Unfortunately, both of them would be wrestling on borrowed time as built-up injuries would destroy both of their careers soon enough. Around Daniel Bryan's ascent into the main event, Brie Bella started a feud with Stephanie McMahon. So started one of the dumbest strings of story in wrestling history. The two fought at SummerSlam, where Stephanie had no reason to lose other than ego. Nikki turned on Brie and helped Stephanie win. So then it became a feud between the twin sisters, featuring a promo where Nikki yelled, with the worst delivery, "I WISH YOU DIED IN THE WOOOOOMB!" Nikki won a match that made Brie her personal slave for 30 days. Obviously, we were meant to wait it out so Brie could get her ultimate revenge on her sister for everything. When the time was up, Nikki had a title match against AJ Lee and Brie helped Nikki because.......because. There was no explanation. Their rivalry was just over and now Nikki was champ. At this time, NXT was churning out some solid talent in its women's division. It gave us what fans refer to as the Four Horsewomen: Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Bayley. NXT kicked rear end and they were a huge reason why. As NXT was treating women's wrestling with respect, the main roster was not. After a lovely tag match that went 30 seconds happened on Raw, AJ went on social media and ranted about how badly women were being used. She got on Stephanie's case and started a hashtag #GiveDivasaChance, which got a lot of traction. For once, WWE seemed to actually listen. Also, there was an infamous women's tag match around this time where the crowd jeered it by chanting "[woman wrestler] SUCKS [male wrestler they were in a relationship with]!" So that was trash. Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, and Charlotte Flair were brought to the main roster in what Stephanie McMahon called the Divas Revolution. The women's division became a stable war between three trios. Alicia Fox joined with the Bellas to become Team Bella. Sasha Banks, Naomi, and Tamina became Team BAD (Beautiful and Dangerious). Paige, Charlotte, and Becky were also a team and were told that they would be "The Submission Sorority." They immediately told the writers that that was totally a porn thing and should not be their name. The writers shrugged and said they would look into it (they did not). So they appeared as the Submission Sorority for one week, the higher ups found out that it was totally a porn thing, and then they became Team PCB. The three factions wrestled each other a lot, but it really didn't feel like anything mattered. Even after a bunch of losses to her team, Nikki Bella pointed out that it was all moot because she was still champion. They kept her as champion just long enough to break AJ Lee's record because AJ was married to CM Punk and WWE is petty as gently caress. Going into WrestleMania 32, WWE was finally dropping the whole "Divas" moniker and went to calling the women "Superstars" like the guys. They also created a new women's title and had Charlotte, Sasha, and Becky wrestle for it. While an otherwise solid match and a great sentiment, the whole thing was stained by a part of the match where Charlotte's father Ric Flair forcibly grabbed Becky and kissed her. Yeah, sexual assault! Women's Revolution in full effect! Bayley eventually left NXT after dropping the women's title to Asuka. Asuka was an awesome talent treated as a straight-up force of nature. Not only did she dominate the NXT women's division as champion, but she remained undefeated due to receiving a major injury and having to drop the title. She then jumped to the main roster, where she continued to be undefeated. The women's division in WWE kept improving and getting more of a spotlight. They not only started to main event PPVs, but they started to take part in high-profile gimmick matches like Hell in a Cell and Elimination Chamber. All the while, Stephanie would not only take full responsibility for its success (not as a heel thing, either. Commentators would regularly credit her), but constantly boss all the women around with zero repercussions. She's very bad at being a heel authority figure. In early 2018, WWE finally added a women's Royal Rumble to the PPV of the same name. The inaugural match had Asuka win. Truly a major moment. It was then immediately undercut by "Bad Reputation" playing and UFC star Ronda Rousey making a surprise appearance. The PPV ended with Ronda showing up, shaking Stephanie's hand, and pointing at the WrestleMania sign. Truth be told, she was a huge get at the time. WWE was about to see their biggest star in years make her ascent. It just wasn't Ronda.
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Feb 23, 2022 04:16
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I still think that the follow-up to Joe being kidnapped by ninjas should have been him showing up at the arena months later with dried blood all over his clothes. Someone runs to him to ask him about the whole ninja thing and he just responds, "It's taken care of." "But... what happened? Why were you kidnapped? Are you--" "It's. Taken. Care. Of." Then they never mention it again.
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Feb 23, 2022 05:06
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Continuing with the WWE Women's Revolution thing, I mentioned how they would start doing women's versions of the big PPV matches like Royal Rumble, Hell in a Cell, Elimination Chamber, etc. I forgot to mention one they did that they did not think through: Money in the Bank. The first women's Money in the Bank winner was Carmella, the kind of egotistical midcard heel who should win one of these. Problem was, at the time, she had a henchman named James Ellsworth. Ellsworth was a jobber with no existing chin brought in to get crushed by Braun Strowman who was so charming that they kept him around for a while. Eventually, he turned heel and aligned himself with Carmella. At the end of the match, with everyone else too hurt and tired to get up the ladder, Ellsworth just did it himself, grabbed the briefcase, and threw it to Carmella. Lots of people facepalmed at this one. It's one thing to have the heel win in an underhanded way. It's another thing to hype up the first women's Money in the Bank match and have it won by the literal worst man on the roster. So they did a rematch on TV and this time Carmella won by getting the briefcase herself. WrestleMania was coming up and one of the modern traditions is the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal for all the men on the roster who have nothing else to do. This year they decided to add a women's battle royal and name it after Fabulous Moolah. On the surface, that made sense as she was Women's Champion for years and WWE likes to deify her. But being that this is the internet age, people are now aware that Moolah was one of the most horrible human beings to ever be involved in the business. Like forcing other women wrestlers into prostitution horrible. If there's a Hell, she's burning in it. Normally, WWE would ignore the response to that, but Snickers, the sponsor for WrestleMania, got wind of the situation and had them drop Moolah's name immediately. As WrestleMania is a million hours long these days, there were several women's matches. Most importantly, Charlotte was the first to give Asuka a loss and Ronda Rousey looked like a million bucks in a mixed tag match of her and Kurt Angle against Stephanie and Triple H. Later that week, Carmella cashed in her Money in the Bank briefcase on Charlotte and became the SmackDown Women's Champion, as each show had its own women's champion at this point. Now, I'm not going to pretend that WWE never pushed Becky Lynch. She was the inaugural SmackDown Women's Champion during one of the show's best eras. It's just that WWE didn't really see what they had in her and were too focused on Charlotte Flair. After all, Charlotte was the young, competent, flashy daughter of Ric Flair. What's not to love? Granted, her whole deal was talking about how she was genetically superior and maybe a face shouldn't be doing that, but you can see why WWE wanted to go all-in on Charlotte. Becky, on the other hand, was a charming, scrappy face who had a genuine connection with the fans. With Carmella as the champ, they were building Becky up the old fashioned way: have her win a bunch of matches and get fan support through it. Becky worked her way back up and got herself a title shot at SummerSlam. Then WWE decided to just throw Charlotte into the match and make it a triple threat. Charlotte was still a face at the time and in-story, she and Becky were best friends. At the end of the match, Becky had it won and Charlotte attacked her from behind and pinned her to become champion. As she celebrated, Becky snapped and angrily beat the everloving poo poo out of Charlotte. The fans lost their minds and cheered it louder than probably anything else that night. Vince and the other WWE brass looked at this and went, "Huh? No, they're doing it wrong!" In their minds, Becky was the heel. She was supposed to get huge boos for the attack. Everyone was supposed to cheer Charlotte. Instead, everyone sympathized with Becky and thought her actions were completely justified. On the next SmackDown, Becky came out to do a generic heel promo where she blamed "YOU PEOPLE!" for all the things that went wrong. The fans would not go with this and instead continued to cheer the hell out of her. While the commentators tried to drive it home that Becky was a heel, Becky herself relaxed on the idea and started playing to the fans. As Charlotte's dad had the whole "To be the man, you gotta beat the man!" catchphrase, Becky started calling herself "The Man." She wasn't just the best women's wrestler. She was just the best. Fans loved her rebellious streak and by the time she finally seemed to be done feuding with Charlotte, WWE finally relented. Notably, their feud initially came to end at a PPV called WWE Evolution. It was a PPV that was all women's matches. It was fantastic and it sucks that the company refuses to do a second one. While all of this was going on, Ronda Rousey was tearing through the Raw women's division. She was treated as a female Goldberg, only replace "constantly hitting Spears" with "constantly pulling her underwear out her butt." She really needed better gear. While Ronda had some in-ring intensity, her promos were a different story. If anyone here has played Mortal Kombat 11, you know what I'm talking about. As a wrestler, Ronda could only speak in two speeds: "gosh, this really means a lot to me" and "I WILL TEAR YOUR FACE OFF!" That's her entire range and if she wasn't getting the crowd response she was going for, she would fall apart. These days, Survivor Series is all about doing Raw vs. SmackDown matches for the bragging rights of brand supremacy. It really means nothing in the long run, but it does give us some cool Raw champ vs. SmackDown champ matches. That meant that they were setting up Ronda vs. Becky. It almost felt too early to do this match and fans went into it knowing that Becky was probably going to get thrashed. As it turned out, putting them together ruined Ronda. Becky represented a naturally popular champion that the fans got behind like a grassroots campaign. Ronda was someone WWE paid a lot of money to be their handpicked main character. Of course the fans wanted Becky to win. Ronda started to reveal that she's not actually very good at the whole pro wrestling thing. On social media, she would try to make fun of Becky by 1) claiming that she has a penis and 2) claiming that Ronda would beat her in a real life fight instead of this fake poo poo. Luckily, Becky had a great Twitter game to counter whatever this was. The match didn't end up happening. During a brawl at the end of Raw one night, Nia Jax (notoriously unsafe worker who got to stick around so long because she's related to the Rock) punched the gently caress out of Becky's face. Becky ended the show holding her title up with blood splattered over her face, which looked badass, but she was also suffering a big old concussion. She had to step down, so she had Charlotte take her spot in the match. Later on, Becky would lament how out of character that was. At Survivor Series, Charlotte got frustrated by her inability to put Ronda away, so she got herself disqualified and started using weapons on her. The crowd loved it, even if it was blatantly the writers trying to get Charlotte popular by repeating what made Becky so popular. Fast-forward a few months. Asuka becomes SmackDown Women's Champion and Becky wins the Royal Rumble. We're finally getting Ronda vs. Becky and at WrestleMania! At this point, you can put the feud on autopilot. It writes itself. Instead, WWE threw Charlotte into the match, because of course they did, had Charlotte beat Asuka so that both women's titles were on the line in this match, and did a really dumb thing where Becky was forced to publicly apologize to Triple H and Stephanie McMahon so she could still be allowed to take part in her match. She did apologize and was still punished. It was so unnecessary and counterproductive for someone who was being treated like the second coming of Stone Cold Steve Austin. Speaking of authority, they at least won the fans back with a segment where all three women were having such a brutal backstage brawl that they were arrested. While arrested and handcuffed, they STILL kicked the poo poo out of each other. The good news was that the match was going to be the main event of WrestleMania. The bad news was that the show was so long that they didn't even get to wrestle until after midnight. Though they botched the ending, Becky won. Then Ronda left the company, bitter at how the audience had turned on her. Becky Lynch started calling herself Becky Two Belts until eventually dropping the SmackDown one. Her post-WrestleMania feud was against newcomer Lacy Evans, who isn't very good. Months later, after Asuka won Money in the Bank, Becky handed her the Raw Women's Championship without a fight. Becky had to take time off as she was pregnant. In Becky's absence, a young woman named Bianca Belair ascended to the top of the women's roster and defeated Sasha Banks at the main event of WrestleMania Night 1 to become SmackDown Women's Champion. Months later, in what is considered one of WWE's stupidest modern moves, Becky showed up at a PPV, had an impromptu match with Belair, won in SECONDS, and turned heel. Jesus Christ, guys. Why?
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Feb 23, 2022 16:40
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FilthyImp posted:Chyna was done dirty all through the attitude era. I *loved* watching her be this impossible towering figure that threw in with the general roster and wasn't just paraded out for arm candy. It made the D-X stable seem like more than rowdy dumbass mean boys. The Chyna/Eddie stuff was pretty charming. They made for a really fun couple when it was going on, then led to Eddie turning heel again due to his jealousy over her success and annoyance that she was posing for Playboy. The two split up when Chyna found out that he had been cheating on her. But that was the beginning of the end for Chyna. The Playboy thing put her in a feud with Right to Censor, specifically Ivory. They had a match at Royal Rumble where Chyna dominated, but then they did a spot where she "hit her neck wrong" and the match had to be called off so she could be taken out on a stretcher. For months, they played up Chyna's severe neck injury while Ivory consistently made fun of her for that. Chyna came back for a rematch at WrestleMania, destroyed Ivory with little problem and became Women's Champion. At this point, they no longer wanted her in the men's division and the women's division was so sparse and lacking in anyone who made for an interesting challenger. Chyna left the company after that and the title was made vacant.
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Feb 23, 2022 21:40
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Elephant Ambush posted:He forced Chavo Guerrero Jr. to take the gimmick of Kerwin White who was just supposed to be a super white white guy. Whoa, now. Kerwin White was a humiliating gimmick given to Chavo BEFORE Eddie died. They ended the gimmick immediately after. Instead, Chavo became increasingly bitter that Rey Mysterio was better at honoring Eddie's memory and turned into a vengeful heel over it.
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Feb 23, 2022 23:45
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Jamesman posted:I apparently significantly misremembered the WWE Juniors Division and was giving WWE way more credit for it than they deserved. If anyone would like to delve into more details about it, I would absolutely love to read a break down of it. All I remember was a tiny, greasy guy named Super Porky who was always shown eating an entire ham.
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Feb 24, 2022 21:48
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 Now’s as good a time as any to talk about how WWE just kind of wasted Claudio Castagnoli, AKA Cesaro. In the 2000’s, “Swiss Superman” Claudio was the one indie wrestler that people considered can’t-miss. It was only a matter of time before he got signed with WWE and he was going to be a big deal. He was super-strong, tall, agile, charismatic, and just a drat good wrestle guy. He was hired initially at the end of 2006, only to be fired a few months later before he ever actually wrestled. Then he was hired again at the end of 2011. He wrestled in developmental as Antonio Cesaro and came to the main roster with a gimmick being that he was a former rugby player who got blacklisted for being too violent. Sure, why not. Early on, he was doing fine. He ended up having a fairly long reign as United States Champion where his deal was that he liked the ideals of America, but thought Americans were fat, stupid losers. After losing the title (his only singles title), he went down to NXT for a little bit just for the sake of having kickass matches. Somewhere along the line, they tried giving him a yodeling gimmick for God knows why. He was put in a tag team with “All-American American” Jack Swagger called the Real Americans. They had a good run together as heels. Somewhere in this, Vince McMahon decided to change Antonio Cesaro’s name to just Cesaro because he didn’t think anyone would be able to accept somebody named Antonio as being tough. Which is a weird stance, since Antonio Inoki is the Hulk Hogan of Japan. At the WrestleMania 30 pre-show, the Real Americans lost a match and Swagger blamed it on Cesaro, causing the two to come to blows. That night was the first ever Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. Not only did Cesaro win it, but he won it in an amazing moment where he LIFTED UP the Big Show and threw him out of the ring. Big Show shook his hand out of respect and it looked like the beginning of a major face push for Cesaro. I mean, at the very least, he should have moved into a blood feud or something with Swagger, right? Another thing that happened at WrestleMania 30 was Brock Lesnar (with Paul Heyman in his corner) defeated the Undertaker. For those who weren’t watching around this time, the Undertaker had never been defeated at WrestleMania for decades and ending the Streak was considered the biggest thing a wrestler could ever do. Brock finally did it, which turned him into this unbeatable final boss character. Brock was only a part-timer, though, and wasn’t going to be around week to week. They needed a way for Paul Heyman to talk about how Brock was “the 1 behind 21-1.” So they kept Cesaro heel and gave him Paul Heyman as a manager. Cesaro had zero success during this time and Heyman did nothing for him. Cesaro was just there to stand around while Heyman reminded everyone that Brock Lesnar exists and beat the Undertaker that one time. One of Cesaro’s go-to moves was the Cesaro Swing, which was him grabbing his opponent by the legs and spinning around a bunch of times. Due to his strength and balance, he could do the move for an extensively long time, which would get him huge reactions. WWE told him to cut that poo poo out because they didn’t want him to be cheered at all. On the WWE Network, they would occasionally do live editions of Steve Austin’s podcast with a special guest. One such episode had him interview Vince McMahon. Austin asked him point-blank about how could they have dropped the ball on Cesaro. They set him up so perfectly at WrestleMania 30, then immediately poo poo the bed in every way. Vince blamed it on two things: 1) Cesaro is Swiss and has an accent, and 2) Cesaro didn’t “grab the brass ring.” In other words, Cesaro didn’t get pushed because Vince said so. Cesaro toiled in the midcard for years and was given a special opportunity when faced with new rival Sheamus. The idea was that the two would have a Best-of-Seven series and the first to get four wins would get a title shot. When it came down to 3-3, the two then wrestled to a draw. From there, they became reluctant tag team partners competing for the tag titles. This ended up working out well and they won the tag titles several times over as The Bar. But this is WWE and WWE cares little for tag teams. Going into WrestleMania 34, various tag teams competed in a battle royal where the winning team would face the Bar for the titles at the PPV. Angry, large man Braun Strowman entered himself into the battle royal and won it decisively despite being just one guy. For weeks, he was evasive on the answer of who is tag partner was going to be. Then at WrestleMania, he just walked into the crowd, chose a random kid named Nicholas (in reality a referee’s son), and easily won the tag titles singlehandedly. Oh, and somewhere during this run with the Bar, Cesaro got a loving gnarly injury where he was knocked face first into the corner post and his front teeth were shoved inches up his mouth. He still finished the match. Once the Bar split up, Cesaro floated around the midcard some more. With his contract coming up last year, WWE asked him to sign a one-year extension and promised that it would be totally worth his while by coming with a big push. He signed it and he did get a pretty big win over Seth Rollins at WrestleMania. After that, he challenged for the title against Roman Reigns, lost, and never had momentum ever again. As of today, he is gone from WWE. Already on a losing streak, he wasn’t interested in signing yet another contract. He’s good friends with Bryan Danielson, so expect him in AEW any day now.
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Feb 25, 2022 04:12
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Trollologist posted:Can someone explain for to me how Scott Steiner went from "strong man" to "chainmail clad manic ranting about numbers who appears to be the living embodiment of human growth hormone"? Somewhere around 98 or 99, Buff Bagwell was able to get into Scott's head and make him realize how strong he really was and how he didn't even need Rick to begin with. Scott started flexing more and started winning tag matches on his own without tagging Rick in. He finally turned on Rick and joined up with Buff and the nWo, which is when he underwent the transformation into the BIG BAD BOOTY DADDY!
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Feb 25, 2022 14:52
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Cornwind Evil posted:To really grasp what’s you’re about to see (if you don’t know), this was not only a big tough black man in performance, he was also renowned backstage as not only legitimately tough, but one of the toughest men there was, alongside the likes of Meng and Fit Finley. If you hosed with him, he would gently caress back 50x as hard: there’s a story where in-story and in real life rival Anthony Norris, who performed under the name of Ahmed Johnson, injured Summons due to being a sloppy, unsafe worker, putting Simmons on the shelf for months. Not only that, but Norris apparently didn’t apologize and was horrible to work with in every aspect. This was unfortunate, because there was a period during 1995 and 1996 when Norris was legitimately over with the fans and could have been pushed all the way to world champion. When Simmons returned, he legitimately kicked Norris’ rear end in a Madison Square Garden house show, breaking several ribs and so thoroughly destroying his image before the fans and backstage that not only was Simmons not punished, but Norris would be gone from the company within six months, never to come close to any degree of wrestling stardom again. Simmons, in essence, killed Norris’ career. Now, would he have done that if Norris had legitimately apologized? The general vibe I get is no, he would not have, but Norris not only did not, he was so far up his own rear end that it never occurred to him. Idiot. Ah, Ahmed Johnson. That's a guy who I'd love to write an effortpost on, but too much of it would be "and then he got injured and it sidelined him."
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Feb 25, 2022 20:59
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Fair enough. I'll get on that later. In the meantime, here's one of the great videos of early YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bGErn95VGQ
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Feb 25, 2022 21:21
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One of my favorite Steiner promos is from this brief time he and Bully Ray (Bubba Ray Dudley) were a tag team. They were thinking of getting Abyss off their back by getting him laid. Steiner: "Listen, I got freaks nine days out of a week. I can--" Bully: "There's only seven days in a week." Steiner: ".....LISTENYOU'RENOTBIGPOPPABUMPI'MABIGBOOTYDADDYI'MUNSTOPPABLE!" Bully: "ENGLISH!!"
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Feb 25, 2022 22:57
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Despite that lead-in by Cornwind Evil, I don’t know too many stories about Ahmed Johnson being a total rear end in a top hat. Then again, I cannot for the life of me remember anyone in wrestling ever having anything nice to say about the man. He remains a near-forgotten footnote who almost became one of the biggest names in the business. The era roughly in-between Bret Hart winning the WWF Championship for the first time in 1992 and Bret being screwed out of the WWF Championship in 1997 is the New Generation. It was a disastrous time for WWF and nearly ended the company, only to fix itself when it transitioned into the Attitude Era. There are certain people from the New Generation who were being pushed as potential future stars, only to be an overlooked shell of themselves by the Attitude Era. Guys like Vader, Marc Mero, Henry O. Godwinn, Savio Vega, and Ahmed Johnson. Ahmed first showed up in late 1995 with one of the all-time coolest debuts. If you’ve been following the retro Raw posts, you would have seen the whole Lex Luger/Yokozuna bodyslam incident. Yokozuna made a big challenge for somebody to bodyslam him and American hero Luger came and did it. Sort of. Yokozuna more ran and jumped into Luger’s arms as Luger awkwardly held him for a second, then dropped him. It took muscle, but calling it a bodyslam was a real stretch. With Survivor Series coming up, WWF tossed in a unique “Wild Card” match. It was your usual 4-on-4 Survivor Series elimination match, but with all the names mixed up. Faces and heels would take on faces and heels. Ahmed was set to make his in-ring debut there. He had shown up in a few hype segments that were just him sitting down and calmly talking about himself, but the first time he was in the ring was during a big brawl between people involved in the upcoming Wild Card match. As Yokozuna was standing tall, Ahmed appeared in the ring behind him. Yokozuna turned around and Ahmed BODYSLAMMED the poo poo out of him. Unlike Luger’s attempt, this one looked absolutely impressive. Ahmed’s team ended up winning with Ahmed and Michaels celebrating in the ring together. Vince tried putting the two together when possible for the sake of getting fans to accept Ahmed as a big deal. Not that they needed much help. The dude was huge, had a great look, was crazy agile for a guy his size while doing high-flying moves that you really didn’t see in mid-90s WWF. He had the Ultimate Warrior problem where he had awesome charisma, even though you couldn’t understand what he was saying a lot of the time. With Warrior it was because of his content. With Ahmed it was because his promos sounded like the Incredible Hulk transformed because Banner accidentally bit his tongue really hard. When he wasn’t teaming up with other major faces, Ahmed was gaining steam in the midcard and it seemed like it was only a matter of time before he hit the main event. He was put in a King of the Ring qualifying match against Vader, which came off as one of those “irresistible force vs. immovable object” matches where neither guy should lose. Owen Hart interfered on Vader’s behalf and knocked Ahmed out with an arm cast to the skull. This led to an early Attitude Era-type moment where Ahmed was wheeled out backstage and Goldust ran to his “rescue” and gave him mouth-to-mouth. Ahmed woke up from the sexual assault and went into a gay panic rage, just angrily beating the poo poo out of Goldust backstage. This led to a PPV match that Ahmed won and became the first black Intercontinental Champion. In the weeks leading up to SummerSlam, Ahmed was attacked by a debuting Faarooq. I don’t know the details of exactly what was being planned, but huge things were being set up for Ahmed. He had won a battle royal to become #1 contender for the WWF Championship and was supposed to defend the Intercontinental Championship against Faarooq at SummerSlam. Unfortunately, Ahmed’s kidneys basically exploded and forced him to vacate both his title and his #1 contender spot. Presumably, he was going to drop it to Faarooq at the PPV, Vader was going to beat Michaels for the WWF title, and we’d get Ahmed vs. Vader as a main event title program. Instead, they changed it to, “Faarooq attacked Ahmed and beat him so badly, Ahmed’s kidneys got destroyed. Ahmed entered and won that battle royal against doctor’s orders.” While Ahmed was recovering, Faarooq changed his gimmick to the more successful Nation of Domination one and so started a never-ending feud. Granted, the feud was fine at first. Ahmed and Faarooq were treated as relative equals, but Faarooq had henchmen in Crush and Savio Vega, along with an entourage of nameless goons who would get in the way (including D’Lo Brown). Ahmed would face them alone until teaming up with the Legion of Doom, who helped him get his big high-profile WrestleMania win over the Nation. This is also the same match where Ahmed injured the hell out of Faarooq. Ahmed was NOT a safe worker by any means and lots of people hated having to work with him because of how reckless he was. Somehow, this feud just kept going. Ahmed was put in a gauntlet match against Savio, Crush, and Faarooq, where he lost to Faarooq in the end. Sometime after, Faarooq was fed up with Savio and Crush and kicked them out of the Nation. He said that he would introduce two new members. On Raw, the main event was Ahmed and Undertaker (champ at the time) vs. Faarooq and a mystery partner. Said mystery partner turned out to be Kama, AKA the Godfather, AKA Papa Shango. As he and the Nation beat down the Undertaker, Ahmed ran in to chase them away...then hit his finisher on the Undertaker. Raw ended with Ahmed posing with the Nation after feuding with them for nearly a year. But hey, you know what? That’s fine. It puts Ahmed in a position to challenge the Undertaker for the title on PPV. That was absolutely the plan. So what happened? The very next week, in the segment where Ahmed was badly explaining his heel turn (something about not respecting the Undertaker due to how Paul Bearer treated him as a slave), the Disciples of the Apocalypse showed up and a big brawl commenced. During said brawl, Ahmed blew out his knee. loving WHOOPS! Months later, Ahmed came back to Raw, had a match against one of the DOA guys, won, and the Nation just beat him down. I don’t know if they ever explained why. So in review, Ahmed feuded with a faction for about a year, joined them for little reason, got injured before he could do anything, came back, won a match, and got kicked out of the faction. At least it worked out for the Nation as a week later, they would induct Rocky Maivia, who would start calling himself the Rock. Ahmed healed up from some nagging injuries, came back, and went after the Rock. As the two battled it out, Ahmed INJURED HIMSELF AGAIN by hitting his hand on a nearby table the wrong way and cutting up his hand. He continued to be active during this time, but he had his hand bandaged up to the point that he looked like he was part Q-tip. Ahmed continued feuding with the Nation, even though he didn’t really matter anymore. The story was more about the civil war brewing between Faarooq and the Rock. Ahmed’s final WWF match was being on the winning side of a ten-man tag match. The following night on Raw, he was involved in a gigantic brawl and that was it for him. At the time, WWE was trying to get behind Kurrgan, a new, super-tall heel monster. Ahmed was going to get beat down by Kurrgan and dragged up the ramp via his skull. Ahmed did not want to do that and walked out, later citing that his sister was on her deathbed and he didn’t want her to see him getting beat up like that. Either way, he was done. It was kind of nuts how close Ahmed was to reaching the top. During the Attitude Era, the intro to Raw was iconic, showing Steve Austin marching through a chaotic warehouse with explosions going off. Originally, Ahmed Johnson was the co-star of that intro, shown kicking fences while carrying a two-by-four and later brawling with Austin inside a burning wrestling ring. Then, at some point, he was dropped from it because nobody cared about Ahmed anymore. That wasn’t the end for him, though. As WCW was starting to collapse under its own weight, they brought Ahmed in in late 1999. The tag team Harlem Heat (Booker T and Stevie Ray) had broken up and Stevie brought in his new partner: Big T. “Big” was right as in the nearly two years since we had last seen him, Ahmed had gained a LOT of weight and was no longer the agile muscleman of yesteryear. Big T feuded with Booker T over the rights to Harlem Heat and the right to have the letter T in your name. His run was a fairly short one filled with extremely short matches, usually under four minutes. WCW couldn’t get him to drop weight and finally just cut him loose. At least he would go on to play Suge Knight in a TV movie about the life of MC Hammer. That's something!
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Feb 26, 2022 20:53
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Trollologist posted:I'm real curious if someone could do long form post about not Roman reigns shield tenure, but his failed face push by Vince I got you.
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Feb 27, 2022 03:15
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Trollologist posted:I'm real curious if someone could do long form post about not Roman reigns shield tenure, but his failed face push by Vince When WWE had the Shield going, their plans were obvious. While Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose had potential to become stars, this was a vehicle to make a star out of Roman Reigns. He was the heavy-hitter of the trio and the most protected. There was a time when CM Punk was booked to take on all three members of the Shield at the same time, somehow win, but at the same time was told to make Roman look strong. After the Shield turned face, they got a big feud against Evolution (Triple H, Randy Orton, and Batista). After Evolution lost two high-profile matches, Batista quit the company and Triple H convinced Rollins to turn on the Shield. It’s a fantastic moment as Triple H and Orton were on the outside, the Shield were in the ring, and as Seth wound up the chair behind Roman, you could hear one guy in the crowd scream, “NOOOO!!” right before it all went down. The stage was set afterwards. Dean Ambrose dedicated himself to annihilating Rollins while Roman wanted to move forward and try and become champion. Roman took on Randy Orton at SummerSlam and was definitely on his way towards taking on new champ Brock Lesnar somewhere down the line. Fans accepted this. Fans genuinely liked Roman. Hell, when Roman was the finalist at the 2014 Royal Rumble, they cheered him over Batista because Roman felt fresh and not as forced. Roman had to take time off for a herniated disc. To make up for lost time, WWE made sure people remembered Roman’s name and kept checking in on him during his time off. It was getting a bit overbearing to the fans. Roman was starting to feel entirely too forced. Then he came back in time to announce himself for the 2015 Royal Rumble. I talked about this in the Daniel Bryan write-up, but WWE made sure that Bryan was eliminated halfway into the Rumble so fans would get through their frustrations before it was time for Roman’s entrance. The fans’ rage did not subside. They HATED on the rest of the match. A match that had Kane and Big Show eliminate all the remaining popular acts so that Roman would eliminate them and be presumably cheered. Then the Rock came out to help his cousin. Instead, the fans continued to boo Roman. This became Vince’s pet project and he took control of Roman’s promos. This was an infamous time as Roman started saying poo poo like “sufferin’ succotash, son!” and rambling at Big Show about magic beans. It was a man in his 70’s trying to make a man seem cool. The PPV before WrestleMania had Roman take on Daniel Bryan for the #1 contendership. Roman won and Bryan made sure to point at him in the ring, as if to convince us how great Roman truly was. Fans continued to reject Roman and while Vince didn’t want to add Bryan to Roman vs. Brock, he wasn’t so sure about giving Roman his big win just yet. Roman vs. Brock was a really awesome match of a face getting the poo poo beaten out of him and laughing through it before getting his shots in. Then Rollins’ music started playing. Rollins had the Money in the Bank briefcase at the time and was choosing his spot. He entered himself into the match and pinned Roman, becoming WWE Champion. As Rollins spent months as a chickenshit champion working for the Authority, Roman cooled off a bit to feud with the Big Show and the Wyatt Family mostly. With Survivor Series 2015 coming up, they were finally going to have Roman vs. Rollins, but Rollins broke his leg during a random match and had to vacate his title. Instead, Survivor Series was a tournament to crown a new champ. Roman won by beating good buddy Ambrose in the finals. Triple H offered to shake his hand immediately afterwards. Roman refused. Instead, he got Brogue Kicked by Money and the Bank holder Sheamus. Sheamus pinned Roman, became champ, and Survivor Series ended with a shot of a distraught Roman laying in a pile of confetti. Roman took on Sheamus at the next PPV, TLC. He lost due to lots of interference and responded by getting his hands on Triple H and just beating the everloving poo poo out of him. Fans ate it up. For once, he actually looked like a sympathetic badass. They were absolutely behind Roman. Roman got a rematch against Sheamus where he punched out Vince McMahon before taking out Sheamus and getting the win. At this point, he had absolutely won over the crowd. WWE decided to press their luck. It was announced that the 2016 Royal Rumble would be for the WWE Championship and that Roman would be entered at #1. To get past the stamina that would be needed for him to last the whole match, they did a spot where he was dragged out of the ring and slammed through a table. That way he could spend much of the match backstage, “injured,” and come back later. Only they didn’t want him being wheeled to the back. That would make him look weak. Instead, he left on his own strength. That...made him look worse. If you can walk away on your own strength, why weren’t you simply in the match? It didn’t make sense. Anyway, Triple H came out at #30 to make it an easy victory. For a month or so, they played with it being a Triple H vs. Dean Ambrose feud, but nope: WrestleMania was going to be Roman challenging Triple H for the title. Fans jokingly referred to this feud as “the political hit,” as Triple H, despite being the heel, did everything he could to make himself look like a likeable badass and Roman to look like a loser. It was fascinating in how stupid this feud got. WrestleMania 32 was the first of many excruciatingly long WrestleManias and this main event went on for nearly a half hour. Nobody cared. Roman won. People poo poo on it. Rollins came back from injury soon after and challenged Roman. Shockingly, Rollins beat Roman cleanly at the Money in the Bank PPV. Then Ambrose – who won the Money in the Bank ladder match earlier that night – showed up and cashed in on Rollins, meaning that all Shield members were champion over the course of several minutes. It came out that Roman was being suspended for 30 days for a wellness violation. Hence, even though Roman vs. Ambrose vs. Rollins was the next PPV main event, Ambrose and Rollins had to carry the feud. Ambrose won in the end. WWE split the Raw and SmackDown rosters, Ambrose went to SmackDown, and Raw needed a new main title. Enter the Universal Championship. Roman spent several months feuding with Rusev. He feuded with Universal Champion Kevin Owens, but constantly came up short due to interference. Some of this interference came from Braun Strowman, a monster of a wrestler that WWE was building up as an unstoppable force. After eliminating the Undertaker at the 2017 Royal Rumble, Roman went on to face the Undertaker at the main event of WrestleMania. No titles were on the line or anything. It was an awful match, Roman won, and Undertaker hinted that he was retiring to end the show. The following night, Raw started with Roman in the ring. The crowd loudly booed him into oblivion, especially any time he was about to speak into the microphone. After waiting out the boos long enough, he finally said, “This is my yard now,” and walked off. Had this been the beginning of a heel turn, it would have been perfect. But no, WWE still wanted him to be a face. In response, Braun Strowman suddenly became the coolest motherfucker ever. But I’ll get to that next time.
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Feb 27, 2022 05:03
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Continuing with Roman Reigns’ face push, it’s important to talk about his rival Braun Strowman. Braun was originally introduced as a member of the Wyatt Family and practically got to skip NXT and developmental completely due to his impressive size. He got better over time, as good as someone his size can get, really. He started going as a solo act where he was like a cross between Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds and the Juggernaut. To WWE, they wanted him to be this overpowered beast...but they never wanted to make him a top guy. It was weird, since he had everything you’d presume Vince wanted, but Braun always seemed to be just loving around during WrestleMania season year after year. At WrestleMania 33, he was thrown into the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal and didn’t even last all that long. A week or so after WrestleMania, where Roman had seemingly beaten the Undertaker into retirement, Roman was being interviewed backstage at Raw. Braun – who had been feuding with Roman before the Undertaker thing overshadowed it – ran out of nowhere and brutalized Roman while screaming, “I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU!” So began one of the funniest bits in recent memory where you’d see medical personnel putting Roman on a stretcher, only for Braun to reappear and fling Roman off a platform. Later still, Roman would be placed in an ambulance. Braun would once again show up, repeating, “I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU!” and repeatedly clobbered the half-dead Roman before exiting the ambulance and FLIPPING IT ONTO ITS SIDE. Through that summer, they appeared to be cooling down on Roman quite a bit. He and Braun would trade wins while Universal Champion Brock Lesnar would power through any and all challengers. In the fall, the PPV No Mercy had Roman vs. John Cena as well as Brock vs. Braun. Cena absolutely annihilated Roman on the mic throughout the build-up too. It was kind of sad. Some felt that these matches should have been saved for WrestleMania, but by looking at the two matchups, you could see what Vince really saw as the one true WrestleMania main event. Roman defeated Cena (who also hyped up Roman post-loss) and Brock crushed Braun. That’s right, get ready for the WrestleMania rematch. Roman spent several months focused on a Shield reunion and a forgettable Intercontinental Championship run. Once that started to wind down a little, he got second place in the Royal Rumble and won the Elimination Chamber. Going with the theme of how Braun was being treated, Braun eliminated everyone in that Chamber match until it was down to him and Roman. Then he beat up Roman after he lost. Braun would go on to compete at WrestleMania in a joke match where he and a random child became Raw tag champs. WrestleMania 34 was another lengthy show and it ended with Brock vs. Roman. The crowd would have been against Roman if they had any energy left. It was just pure apathy and since Vince wanted Roman’s big win over Brock to mean something, he changed his mind last minute on the ending. The match was just Brock hitting the F5 over and over and over again until the bloody Roman was finally just done. The end. They had a rematch in Saudi Arabia in a steel cage. As even the crowd over there didn’t care for Roman, Vince still held back on Roman’s coronation. The ending had Roman spear Brock through the cage and Brock was deemed the winner due to escaping first (note: Roman absolutely touched the ground first). Roman built himself back up over the next several months, beating guys like Jinder Mahal, Bobby Lashley, and Samoa Joe. Roman vs. Joe was the main event of a PPV and the moment Roman got the pin, the camera showed people just walking out in droves. Roman earned the right to challenge Brock YET AGAIN at SummerSlam. Meanwhile, Braun won the Money in the Bank briefcase and successfully defended it at SummerSlam. He appeared before the main event to state his intentions of cashing it in. So now the crowd was PUMPED for this match! Except it was a ruse. Brock attacked Braun and threw his briefcase up the ramp. Then as he reentered the ring, Roman speared him and got the win. Roman was the champ and there would be no cash-in. Braun made another attempt at a cash-in on Raw, but Roman’s Shield buddies kept him at bay. That was followed by Braun turning heel (the worst idea) and getting Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler to be his counter to the Shield. Braun also announced that he would cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase to take on Roman in a Hell in a Cell match. The match itself was an absolute disaster that focused on their allies beating each other up and doing the crazy stunts while Roman and Braun remained unconscious in the ring for like ten minutes at a time. Then Brock showed up, tore the door off, and gave both guys F5s. The match was considered a no-contest. Somehow it was better than the next year’s Hell in a Cell, but that’s another story. At the Saudi show Crown Jewel, it was going to be Roman vs. Brock vs. Braun. In the lead-up, Roman announced on Raw that he had leukemia and that he had to step down. He vacated the title and it was decided that Crown Jewel would have Brock vs. Braun to decide a new Universal Champion. Braun started a new feud with Baron Corbin, who jumped Braun right before the match and Brock took advantage. The entire match was just Brock hitting F5s, Braun getting up, repeat until Brock won. Brock vs. Braun was going to happen at Royal Rumble, but Braun was pulled due to story reasons. In actuality, Vince didn’t want Braun as champion, but wanted him to seem like he could be champion. So he didn’t want Braun to win, but he didn’t want Braun to lose either. Braun instead got second place at the Royal Rumble and spent the build of WrestleMania trying to murder the Weekend Update guys from Saturday Night Live. Roman returned in February of 2019 with the fans’ sympathy due to being in remission. Roman moved to SmackDown and spent the year away from the title situation. He faced Drew McIntyre in the midcard of WrestleMania, which set the stage for the rest of the year. He spent much of his time feuding with Baron Corbin, another wrestler that Vince was very insistent on pushing. The feud was centered around the two dumping dog food onto each other. While all this was happening, WWE’s new top heel was Bray Wyatt as the Fiend, his invincible final form. They went all-in on making this demon clown gimmick look like the Undertaker with a Super Mario invincibility star. Guys like Rollins and Daniel Bryan would do anything and everything, but could not stop him and nothing worked. It was suggested that there was a special secret to taking down the Fiend and all signs pointed to Fiend vs. Roman at WrestleMania. If anyone could figure out the secret to defeating the Fiend, it would be him. Then at some point the Fiend vs. Goldberg was signed for the Saudi PPV Super ShowDown (two years ago to the day!). While this was a throwaway dream matchup to make the prince happy, Vince looked at the implications and changed his plans. Goldberg took down the Fiend with a handful of spears and pinned him in three minutes to become the new Universal Champion. Screw all the build and planning, Goldberg vs. Roman was the real money match. On the following SmackDown, Roman simply stepped out and challenged Goldberg for a WrestleMania title match. Goldberg shrugged because who needs build up? Then Covid kicked in. WrestleMania 36 had no crowd, so they taped it in advance. Apparently, the Miz showed up with some cold symptoms and Roman completely lost his poo poo over it. The man who had recently survived a bout with leukemia rightfully walked out on the WrestleMania tapings. WWE replaced him with Braun Strowman, who had nothing going on around that time despite him being Braun Strowman. Since Goldberg didn’t want to do any more matches and absolutely had to drop his title, Braun became the Universal Champion at WrestleMania. Braun went on to feud with the Fiend in a loving weird series of events that I can’t even get into. Finally, Roman returned as a heel and took on Braun and the Fiend in a triple threat match for the title. Roman won and has been ruling SmackDown since.
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Feb 27, 2022 21:21
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Hell, I'm married and have two jobs. I don't have time for a podcast. Though I was once a guest on a podcast based around a guy who was watching Mortal Kombat: Annihilation every day for a full year. That was neat.
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Feb 27, 2022 21:39
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FilthyImp posted:My biggest WWE mysteries are how tf JBL was a thing and how Cena went from Wrestling Marky Mark to a legit talent. JBL became a thing out of necessity. WrestleMania 20 just happened and in the direct aftermath, Brock Lesnar was suddenly gone and they did a storyline to write off Kurt Angle and Big Show so they could heal up from nagging injuries. They had Eddie Guerrero as the fresh champion, but no heels for him to defend against. Booker T had been a bland face for a while, so it was easy to turn him. The APA act had grown tired and Faarooq was too old and broken down to continue, so they had GM Paul Heyman get rid of Faarooq and tell Bradshaw to get his poo poo together. Bradshaw rebranded himself with the rich rear end in a top hat gimmick and immediately jumped into the main event because there was really no other options at the time. Eddie's championship run wasn't doing great ratings and it was bad for Eddie's mental health, so he dropped the title to JBL. With so many top faces on the roster, it was easy for JBL to coast on that until it was finally time to pull the trigger on Cena.
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Feb 27, 2022 23:15
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Trollologist posted:(If there was a Bray / Roman feud I'm curious how it was received) There were mainly two. First was just Wyatt Family vs. Shield. At the time, it was insinuated that the Wyatt Family was working for the Authority, much like the Shield, but the two factions kept getting in each other's way. Finally, we got a heel vs. heel six-man tag match between the two teams that is considered one of the best WWE matches in the past decade. They had a couple rematches, also fantastic, but the story was more about the Shield breaking apart and then banding back together. After Roman's first failed attempt at Brock, Bray Wyatt targeted him with a meta catch phrase of, "Anyone but you, Roman." I don't remember too much about it other than the two having a pretty good Hell in a Cell match. This does remind me of this one point about a year later when they were trying to turn the Wyatt Family face. At the time, WWE had a stable called the League of Nations, made up of foreign heels (Sheamus, Alberto Del Rio, Rusev, Wade Barrett) and for whatever reason, Wyatt started a feud with them. We got a Raw main event of Roman and Wyatt vs. Sheamus and Del Rio. The match ended with the raddest visual of Wyatt pinning Del Rio as Sheamus tried to run in and break the pin. Wyatt put his hand up like a gun pointed at Sheamus and an instant later, Roman came out of nowhere and speared Sheamus. Unfortunately, Wyatt got injured a day or so later. By the time he came back, the League of Nations had split up and there were no heel teams to oppose, so the Wyatt Family went back to being heels.
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Feb 28, 2022 14:53
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wesleywillis posted:Who the poo poo is JBL number one, and number two, was the one hour match between Micheals and Brett Hart really not as good as I'd hoped it would be? Opinion differs on that match, but I kind of hate it. It's a boring match where the two guys pace themselves, but don't really do anything until the very end. Trollologist posted:Or the time that the Undertaker died cannonically and then just, came back later. I got this one. It's part of just the strangest long-term storyline in wrestling history. It involves everything from Undertaker delivering pizzas, Undertaker fighting his evil double, and various celebrity appearances.
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Mar 1, 2022 03:26
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Back in 1993, the top feud in WWF was all-American hero Lex Luger vs. America-hating champ and Samoan-pretending-to-be-Japanese Yokozuna. Survivor Series was on the way and it was going to be Luger and his American friends vs. Yokozuna and his evil foreigner friends. It was going to be Luger, Tatanka, and the Steiner Brothers vs. Yokozuna, Ludvig Borga, and the Quebecers. Then tragedy struck as the undefeated Tatanka lost to Borga and Yokozuna made sure to put him on the shelf with multiple Banzai Drops. Luger needed a new partner at the last minute. Luckily, he got one in the most unexpected form. The Undertaker appeared (fresh off of finishing his feud with a tall, naked man), trying to come up with a vague explanation for how he was patriotic. As he ended his promo with, “LET FREEDOM RIIIIIIING!” he opened his jacket to reveal a 1776 flag was stitched into its insides. This zombie ate brains for Uncle Sam! At the PPV, Undertaker showed to at least be on Yokozuna's level and shrugged off all of his attacks. The two ended up being counted out during their brawl, leaving Luger to defeat Borga and win the match. Soon after, Undertaker started to target Yokozuna and a match was set for the 1994 Royal Rumble PPV: Undertaker vs. Yokozuna for the title in a casket match. First to shove the other guy into a casket and close the lid won. Undertaker made an extra large casket to fit Yokozuna’s gigantic rear end. Undertaker seemed to have the match well in hand, but then Yokozuna’s buddy Crush interfered and started attacking the Undertaker. More and more heels from the back ran out, all working for Yokozuna. Apparently, none of the faces gave a poo poo and let it all happen. Overcome by about 12-to-1 odds, Undertaker’s body finally gave out. It probably didn’t help that the heels also opened up Paul Bearer’s urn and poured out its contents. The beaten Undertaker was thrown into the casket and it was shut. As it was wheeled up the ramp, the Titantron started to wild out. A mystical camera showed the Undertaker from inside the casket, cutting a promo about how he was the fire that could not be extinguished. He would never rest in peace. Then, as the image of the Undertaker rose up the giant screen, it took the form of the Undertaker (or Marty Jannetty dressed as the Undertaker) on wires, lifted into the heavens. Then they had to follow that up with a goddamn Royal Rumble match. In the months that followed, Paul Bearer had nothing to go on. “The trail went cold.” Ted Dibiase, on the other hand, claimed to have found the Undertaker. This was interesting continuity as the Undertaker debuted as Dibiase’s mystery partner at the 1990 Survivor Series. Dibiase introduced a new Undertaker who looked plenty like the original, but was controlled by money instead of the urn. After a few weeks of this new Undertaker beating jobbers, a SummerSlam main event was announced: Undertaker vs. Undertaker. But...how could this be? Even though they made the match official, the higher ups didn’t know how an Undertaker mirror match was possible. They needed somebody to get to the bottom of this. And so, they hired Leslie Nielsen to investigate the mystery. He appeared in a series of Naked Gun-style vignettes where he tried to make heads or tails of the situation. As the PPV was sponsored by Dominos Pizza, one of the segments involved the Undertaker delivering a pizza to Nielsen without Nielsen noticing who it was. At the PPV, Nielsen was joined by Naked Gun co-star George Kennedy to do more schtick. The main event had the real Undertaker (now wearing purple gloves) defeat the Underfaker via a series of Tombstones. He pinned his doppelganger and dumped him into a casket. Later on, Nielsen and Kennedy opened the casket backstage to find it empty. But Vince was tired of the storyline already, so it was never mentioned again. Undertaker went right back after Yokozuna, who had lost the championship months earlier to Bret Hart. The two would have another casket match, this time at Survivor Series 1994. To make sure that there would be no interference from a heel army again, they hired Chuck Norris to be the special enforcer. When Jeff Jarrett tried to make his way to the ring, Chuck kicked him like 20 feet. Undertaker won the match and Yokozuna went missing for months, presumed dead. As WrestleMania 11 was based around bringing in as many celebrities as possible, this included NYPD Blue’s Nick Turturro. To hype up the show, they had a segment where Turturro questioned Paul Bearer (dressed in drag in an attempt to hide from the law) about Yokozuna’s disappearance while Mr. Fuji cackled nearby. Undertaker shut off the lights, had Paul and Fuji switch clothes, and for some reason Turturro decided to let Paul off free. Yokozuna did return at WrestleMania to be Owen Hart’s mystery partner and win the tag titles off the Smoking Gunns. Undertaker continued feuding with Ted Dibiase’s stable, culminating in a boring-rear end match with Kama the Supreme Fighting Machine. Undertaker was mad because Kama stole his urn, melted it, and turned it into a gold chain to wear around his neck. The Undertaker would be murdered again about nine years later, but as that storyline involved Vince McMahon screaming on TV that he wanted to see a biker gang rape the Undertaker's wife, I just don't have the strength to talk about it right now.
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Mar 1, 2022 04:19
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The thing that sticks with me with Cornette is his whole deal with this guy Brian Zane. Zane is a fairly level-headed wrestling YouTube host who also does stuff with ROH. He also happens to look a LOT like a young Jim Cornette, so Cornette would occasionally pop up on his YouTube show to play up the running gag that he's Zane's long-lost father. Then one day, Cornette was ranting about Orange Cassidy or comedy wrestling in general on Twitter. Zane calmly disagreed with what he said and believes that there's room for all kinds of wrestling in the business. So Cornette blocked him and cut ties. Dude just goes 0 to 60.
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Mar 1, 2022 20:21
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FilthyImp posted:IIRC there was a three-way match with Charlotte, Becky, and Asuka where Asuka got concussed and the match was sloppy and Charlotte got flak for not noting/caring Asuka was hosed up. Not quite. What happened was there was a tag match between Charlotte/Becky and Asuka/Kairi. Kairi got concussed and Charlotte did not seem to notice or care. She insisted on getting her poo poo in and forcing her into spots even though Kairi was in no condition to, so Charlotte started slapping her around. Becky and Asuka ended up having to hide Kairi from Charlotte to save her.
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Mar 3, 2022 00:54
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AEW is really good.
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Mar 4, 2022 00:06
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Orange Cassidy is great because his "serious gimmick" is him dressing up like an angry ant man.
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Mar 4, 2022 04:52
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Like, no one reminds me of Vince more than Judge Doom. This is who reminds me of Vince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vFTMjYJTnY
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Mar 4, 2022 14:36
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I'm actually working on a CM Punk effortpost, though I'm giving it a prelude by explaining the history of "WWECW," which is its own fun story.
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Mar 5, 2022 01:49
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One of the things with Cena is that he had a real "Homer Simpson through the eyes of Frank Grimes" deal going on. Like back in the day, we had Bobby Heenan and Jesse Ventura to straight-up call out Hogan and Warrior for their character flaws. We were meant to disagree with them, but at least it was something. The company was so all-in on Cena that not even heel commentators could say bad stuff about him. Everything he did was great and right and none of his decisions could be questioned. Add to this that despite being considered the nicest guy ever, Cena's stories inadvertently made him look like a total rear end in a top hat, especially to his friends. Like one story people always go to is when the WWE title was vacated. On Raw, they started doing an eight-man tournament to crown a new champion. An episode of Raw started with the tournament finals, where Rey Mysterio defeated the Miz. Then backstage, as Mysterio celebrated, he was told that he would be defending it against Cena in the main event. Cena, who hadn't wrestled in over a week. Nobody mentioned what a dick move this was. And if one of Cena's allies did finally start pointing out his lovely actions, Cena would say, "Nice speech," and start rambling about how the other guy is a weak crybaby who will lose this Sunday at WWE No Mercy. There's also how afraid Vince was to show Cena in a weak state. There was a big story where he lost to the Rock at WrestleMania and got his win back at the following WrestleMania. The year in-between was supposed to be this soul-shattering time where Cena was dealing with being a gigantic failure. Only... not really. He was still doing great! For instance, the night after Rock's win, Cena got attacked by a returning Brock Lesnar. They had a match at the next PPV. Instead of going the sensible route and having Brock win, Cena still won. Then he kept winning PPV main events despite not even being champion. WWE simply couldn't commit to their own plot because they were afraid of Cena actually losing.
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Mar 5, 2022 15:34
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AEW Revolution is tomorrow night. It's probably going to kick rear end. Here's a post about it. HANGMAN ADAM PAGE (C) VS. ADAM COLE AEW Championship Adam Page and Adam Cole were both part of the Elite, a faction born out of the Bullet Club. Years ago, Cole left to sign with WWE, where he became a major part of NXT and led the stable Undisputed Era. As AEW started, Hangman spent years going from the self-hating, alcoholic weak link of the Elite, to being kicked out and rebuilding himself to the point that he defeated Kenny Omega to become the company’s champion. Since defeating Omega at the last PPV, Hangman has successfully defended the title against the likes of Bryan Danielson and Lance Archer. Since showing up in AEW a few months ago, Adam Cole has been undefeated in singles action (not counting an unsanctioned hardcore match) and has earned his way into a title shot. Cole has been followed to AEW by his Undisputed Era buddies Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly. While he wants to have all of his allies working on the same page as part of his plan to become the top guy, said mission hasn’t been working out so well. Still, he has since gotten the best of Hangman by duct taping him to the ropes while beating up his buddies from the Dark Order and then smacking Hangman around. JURASSIC EXPRESS (C) VS. REDRAGON VS. THE YOUNG BUCKS Triple Threat for AEW Tag Team Championship Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy recently became tag team champions after defeating the Lucha Brothers. Since then, they have been taking on all comers, though they’ve been light on actual feuds and storylines. Luckily, even though they’re stuck in a three-way match, their opponents might be too focused on each other and let the Jurassic Express succeed. As mentioned, Adam Cole is friends with both the Young Bucks (Nick and Matt Jackson) and his teammates from his NXT days reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly). As much as Cole wants the two teams to be on the same page, there’s too much tension and distrust. To crown new #1 contenders, AEW had two contests. First was a tag team battle royal. In the end, reDRagon won after betraying the Bucks. The second contest was a tag team Royal Rumble. This time, the Bucks won. Now it’s all going to come to a head. DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD (C) VS. THUNDER ROSA AEW Women’s Championship About a year ago, Baker and Rosa had a violent feud that led itself to a “Lights Out” match, where anything goes, but it’s unsanctioned and doesn’t count towards your win-loss record. Thunder Rosa won the bloody match and the feud. Baker sprang back from her loss by going on a streak of wins that got her into the title picture. Since then, she’s been a dominant champion, thanks in part to her henchwomen Jamie Hayter and Rebel. Recently, she sent Mercedes Martinez after Thunder Rosa as another hired gun. When Rosa won their match, the two showed each other respect. Baker didn’t like that, so she and her crew laid them both out. JADE CARGILL (C) VS. TAY CONTI TBS Championship Jade has been undefeated since appearing in AEW and shows no signs of stopping. The inaugural TBS Champion has been growing bored with her lack of true competition, but now fan-favorite Tay Conti has answered the call and hopes to be the first to take Jade out. She probably won’t, though. FACE OF THE REVOLUTION LADDER MATCH Winner Becomes #1 Contender for the TNT Championship It explains itself. It’s a ladder match with six entrants, all of which had to earn their way into the match. They are: Keith Lee (defeated Isiah Kassidy): Former top guy in NXT, WWE dropped the ball on him and fired him. He made his AEW debut in his qualifying match, where he showed off his insane strength. Wardlow (defeated Max Caster): MJF’s long-suffering bodyguard is the favorite to win the match. The War Dog has been threatening to overshadow (or even just beat up) his boss for a long time and this is his window to success. Powerhouse Hobbs (defeated Dante Martin): Representing Team Taz, Hobbs adds to the muscle in what is normally a match filled with high-flyers. Luckily, Hobbs has an ally in the ring with him... Ricky Starks (defeated Dark Order’s 10): Taz’s main protégé has been getting confrontational with Keith Lee going into this match, which is easy when you have someone the size of Hobbs watching your back. Orange Cassidy (defeated Anthony Bowens): A trickster god in the form of a slacker, Orange Cassidy barely understands what a ladder match even is. He’ll try anyway. Maybe. Whatever. Christian Cage (defeated Ethan Page): Helped innovate the ladder match in his younger days and has definitely been in more ladder matches than everyone else in the match combined. CM PUNK VS. MJF Dog Collar Match CM Punk and MJF have had many a war of words since crossing paths. MJF was ducking Punk quite a bit, but when they did have a singles match, MJF won via cheating, the match got restarted, then won via cheating again. As far as he’s concerned, he beat Punk twice in Punk’s hometown. Punk earned a second match with MJF and got to name the stipulation. Inspired by an old match between Roddy Piper and Greg Valentine from the 80s, as well as an old match he had with Raven in Ring of Honor, Punk chose a dog collar match. The two will wear collars connected by a chain so there is no escape for MJF. MJF reacted to this news by baring his soul to the audience. He talked up how when he was younger, he dealt with a learning disability and being bullied for his Jewish heritage. When his hero CM Punk walked out of WWE, MJF took it badly and it turned him into a sociopath. Punk showed compassion for this admission, but once he let his guard down, MJF punted him in the nuts, busted him open, and hung him over the ropes by the chained collar. CHRIS JERICHO VS. EDDIE KINGSTON Chris Jericho led his faction the Inner Circle for quite a while, which includes the tag team Santana and Ortiz. The two have long been friends with Eddie Kingston, who isn’t so keen on Jericho. Eddie feels that Jericho’s been holding the two back and Santana and Ortiz have come to agree with him, annoyed by their lack of tag title opportunities. The Inner Circle has started to implode and Jericho has lashed out at Eddie for his meddling. The two have agreed to face each other at Revolution, but Jericho has made a point that Eddie is a career failure. He’s been at many AEW PPVs and has yet to win one. Jericho feels that Eddie really needs to win a big match for once in his life and promises to show him some real respect if Eddie wins. BRYAN DANIELSON VS. JON MOXLEY So, funny thing. They were setting up Jon Moxley to go through a heel turn and challenge for the title. Then everything stopped in its tracks as Moxley left to go do rehab for his alcoholism. When he came back, there was no way they were going to have him continue his heel turn. Instead, his spot was given to Bryan Danielson, who became more of a violent rear end in a top hat in his attempts to dethrone Hangman. When Moxley returned, Bryan seemed to be scouting him. Bryan told him that he was not interested in just having a match with Moxley. He wants to give back to the AEW locker room by joining forces with Moxley and mentoring the young talent so they could hone their skills and become increasingly violent. Moxley seems somewhat interested in this suggestion, but refuses to fight alongside somebody unless he can bleed with them in the ring. Bryan reluctantly agrees to this showdown. ANDRADE EL IDOLO, MATT HARDY, AND ISIAH KASSIDY VS. DARBY ALLIN, STING, AND SAMMY GUEVARA Tornado tag match HFO (Hardy Front Office) recently became AHFO after Matt Hardy started to work with Andrade El Idolo. Andrade has been very interested in buying the services of Darby Allin, who he both believes to be a child and also an employee of Sting (as opposed to his partner/protégé). Andrade has had little luck in purchasing this "child," so he made sure to beat him up and teach him a lesson. Andrade got involved with Darby Allin’s attempts to defeat Sammy Guevara for the TNT Championship, which culminated in a triple threat between the three. Sammy retained his title, though Darby seemed too frustrated to shake his hand afterwards. There have been some cracks showing in AHFO’s side as well. Matt Hardy doesn’t like how Isiah Kassidy has been losing lately and even walked out during one of his matches. Andrade, meanwhile, has been supportive of Isiah and even made sure to tag him in during a six-man tag match just so Isiah could get the pin. HOUSE OF BLACK VS. DEATH TRIANGLE The Lucha Brothers lost the tag team titles in a match where Rey Fenix busted up his arm. While this was going on, their stable the Death Triangle had already made enemies of the sinister Malakai Black. Black had spit his cursed, black mist into both of Pac’s eyes and blinded him for a while. He also spit his mist into Penta’s face, poisoning his soul or whatever it does. Black also introduced Brody King as his personal muscle to have his back. Pac and Penta returned, more devious than before, but focused on making the House of Black pay. While they were able to win a tag match, the two guys from Death Triangle were then attacked by House of Black’s newest member, Buddy Matthews. With Fenix still on the mend, they challenged the House of Black with a different third man: a debuting Erick Redbeard (formerly known as Erick Rowan in WWE). LEYLA HIRSCH VS. KRIS STATLANDER (Pre-Show) The tiny grappler Leyla Hirsch and alien weirdo Kris Statlander used to team up every now and then, but Leyla’s ego started to get in the way and she insisted on getting the pin whenever possible. Soon she turned on Statlander and smashed her with a chair. Statlander is pissed about that and has even gone to claim that Leyla was adopted because her birth parents thought she was too much of a piece of poo poo to keep around. Wow. HOOK VS. QT MARSHALL (Pre-Show) Ever since debuting on Rampage, “The Handsome Devil” Hook has been unstoppable. He’s also been going through a handful of QT Marshall’s students. QT was one of Hook’s trainers and doesn’t seem to enjoy the kid’s success. He has been getting in the rookie’s face over and over again and so far it hasn’t exactly worked out well for the veteran.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:35
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I want to do some posts on the history of CM Punk in WWE. It’s a good look at a guy who gave a lot of himself in hopes of reaching his dreams, and certainly was given many accolades over the years, but still felt betrayed and bitter in the end. But before I can get into all of that, I need to talk about the bizarre history of WWE’s ECW, otherwise known to fans as WWECW. Extreme Championship Wrestling existed for several years before succumbing to debt and being bought out by Vince McMahon. ECW was part of the ill-fated WCW invasion storyline, where Stephanie McMahon was depicted as its in-story owner and leader. Once the storyline was finished, ECW was completely defunct. A few years later, WWE released a 3-hour documentary on DVD called the Rise and Fall of ECW. For a WWE documentary (they love rewriting the history that they won), it was especially good and it made them a lot of money. Vince decided to test the waters on ECW’s fanbase by doing a PPV in 2005 called One Night Stand. It was a big ECW reunion show and people loved it. It did so well that not only was there going to be a second one, but it was going to springboard the return of ECW in the form of a third brand, coexisting with Raw and SmackDown. Instead of Superstars and Divas, it would have Extremists and Vixens. WWE’s ECW was a Frankenstein monster when it came to ideas and talent. Various ECW stars of yesteryear were brought in like Sabu, Sandman, and Balls Mahoney. Certain members of the main roster went to ECW with the idea that they could feel at home as ECW talent, such as Kurt Angle, Hardcore Holly, and Big Show. Hell, Big Show appeared at the second One Night Stand to interrupt a throwaway six-man tag and wreck poo poo and the hardcore ECW fans there were completely psyched for it! The brand was also a way to introduce new talent to WWE audiences. This included CM Punk, but I’ll get to him in the next post. To build up the new show, they did a pretty crazy main event at One Night Stand. Rob Van Dam had won the Money in the Bank briefcase at WrestleMania and instead of blindsiding the champion like most would, he announced that he would be taking on Cena at One Night Stand, on what amounted to his home turf. The scene was memorable for the rabid anti-Cena crowd, including a sign saying, “IF CENA WINS, WE RIOT!” There was nobody cheering Cena here and when he tried throwing his shirt into the crowd, it got thrown back repeatedly, usually with some middle fingers gestured his way. In the end, RVD won, thanks in part to interference from Cena’s rival Edge. RVD was WWE Champion and was given the ECW Championship. Unfortunately, it didn’t last too long, as RVD and Sabu were pulled over by police. The wrestlers were high as gently caress and that immediately led to a suspension for RVD and him losing both titles. The ECW Championship went to the Big Show, now considered “The Extreme Giant.” Though Big Show was in horrible shape at the time, there was some charm to his run as champion. Having him shrug off weapon shots, only to slam his opponents through tables was pretty cool. He even did open challenges, where people like Ric Flair would show up on ECW to challenge for the title. It was surreal. This also led to a major strike against the devoted ECW fanbase as they did a show in the Hammerstein Ballroom with a main event of Big Show vs. Batista. The fans poo poo on this extremely hard, including chants of, “CHANGE THE CHANNEL!” Vince was not happy with this and stopped giving ECW its own venues. It became a pre-show to the taped episodes of SmackDown. The big moment of the poo poo hitting the fan was when they decided to give this brand its own PPV. December to Dismember aired on December 3, 2006. It’s considered to be one of the all-time worst wrestling PPVs and while I don’t quite agree with that (I mean, I would if I paid for the PPV as it happened), it was a cocktail of bullshit. 1) It aired ONE WEEK after Survivor Series. Two weeks before Armageddon. 2) Going into the show, only two matches were announced. One was the Extreme Elimination Chamber main event for the ECW Championship. The other was the Hardy Boyz vs. MNM, a match where neither tag team was on the ECW roster. 3) Other than the solid Hardyz/MNM match, the undercard was made up of forgettable matches that would feel like filler on a regular episode of ECW. 4) ECW Original Sabu was found beat up backstage and was replaced with Hardcore Holly in the Chamber match. Nobody liked this idea. This meant that the only ECW people that the fans actually cared about in the match were CM Punk and RVD. 5) Punk and RVD were eliminated from the Chamber match fairly early in hopes that fans would cheer on Vince’s golden boy Bobby Lashley. Paul Heyman, who booked the show, wanted to have CM Punk tap out champion Big Show in the opening minutes only for Lashley to win in the end, but was vetoed. Instead, Lashley was the last man standing with Big Show still in his pod. Then Big Show stepped out and Lashley beat him moments later. 6) This entire PPV was just over 2 hours long. 7) This PPV did the lowest buyrate in WWE history pre-WWE Network. Paul Heyman was the fall guy in this and was fired. ECW ended up embracing its spot as the C-show in WWE. This was arguably a blessing in disguise. The show was better off without trying to relive ECW’s glory days under the WWE umbrella. Instead, it became a prototype for NXT’s best years. It was a place for new talent and older talent in need of a fresh coat of paint to have awesome matches. It was a place for guys like Sheamus, Jack Swagger, and Zack Ryder to figure themselves out in. Where Matt Hardy and Mark Henry could get a new lease on life. Of course, there was still some silly poo poo and controversy. See, Lashley got involved in the big Vince McMahon vs. Donald Trump WrestleMania feud where proxies would battle it out and the losing billionaire would have to shave their head. Vince had Umaga and Trump had Lashley. After Umaga lost and Vince had his head shaved, Vince became obsessed with ruining Lashley. This led to the hilarious stretch where Vince used Umaga interference to help him WIN THE ECW CHAMPIONSHIP. For a wonderful month, we got elderly Vince McMahon wearing a doo rag and carrying the ECW title belt, trolling the remaining ECW fanbase. Lashley did win the belt back, but then got traded to Raw. Since the belt was explicitly about ECW, he had to vacate it. A tournament was put together to crown a new champion. The finals came down to the dream match of Chris Benoit and CM Punk. An episode of ECW ending with the two staring each other down, preparing for the upcoming PPV. Said match would remain a dream. At the PPV Vengeance: Night of Champions, Punk instead faced Johnny Nitro as Benoit no-showed. Commentators used an excuse of a “family emergency,” but they didn’t know the reality of the situation. They wouldn’t until the following night during the infamous Chris Benoit memorial episode of Raw. One night later, ECW would open with Vince explaining that due to the context of Benoit’s death coming to light, there would be no more mention of him ever on WWE TV. ECW remained kicking for the next few years and was a very solid show. Unfortunately, it was still treated as the red-headed stepson of WWE and would rarely get representation at PPVs. At WrestleMania 24, the pre-show had a battle royal to crown a #1 contender, which ended up being Kane. On the main show, he destroyed ECW Champion Chavo Guerrero with a single chokeslam in 11 seconds. Christian carried the show in its latter days, getting to be featured in solid PPV title matches. Even Tommy Dreamer, the heart and soul of ECW itself, got a brief run on top. But all things must come to an end. As Dreamer stepped down from action, there were no ties to the ECW of old. Vince announced that ECW would be closed down and replaced with the fake game show version of NXT. The 193rd and final episode of ECW aired on February 16, 2010. It ended with Christian dropping the belt to Ezekiel Jackson, who went on to do absolutely nothing with the notoriety of being the final ECW Champion. Man, I’m going to have to do a post on the game show era of NXT soon. What a loving weird time to be watching wrestling that was.
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Mar 8, 2022 04:38
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Something I remember with Kevin Thorn and Ariel was that at an ECW house show, whenever he would go for a pin and the opponent would kick out, the crowd would yell "ONE! TWO! AH-AH-AH!" Also, the fans chanted "SHE'S GOT HERPES!" which at first annoyed Thorn, but then he got concerned. He pulled the referee away mid-match, pulled down his bottom lip and had the ref inspect it.
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Mar 8, 2022 14:35
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Ghost Leviathan posted:WWE turned into Street Fighter so gradually we didn't even notice AEW is a bit more Street Fighter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXFrDpQl2uk They also have a weird relationship with Capcom where they keep releasing limited edition Street Fighter X AEW t-shirts. Stuff like Chun-Li vs. Britt Baker, Sagat vs. Bryan Danielson, Zangief vs. Miro, Dhalsim vs. Darby Allin, etc. But in terms of AEW video game references, Kenny Omega's Halloween entrance is the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnKpL_sv2PI
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Mar 9, 2022 06:03
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Here's the first part of a look at CM Punk in WWE. His beginnings and initial run to the top. Phil Brooks/CM Punk signed with WWE in 2005. As he was in Ring of Honor at the time, CM Punk took part in an innovative storyline where he was the company’s heel champion and relished in how he was selling out. He made a big deal about how he was going to go to WWE as ROH Champion and even signed his WWE contract over his title belt. Of course, he dropped the title in his final match, a four-way, and broke down immediately as beloved fans buried him in streamers. WWE is usually demanding about wrestlers changing their names when signing. They want to own your identity so you can't make as much money outside of the company. You could be called General Johnny Chainsaw or Silas Skullcrusher in the indies, but the moment you’re in WWE developmental, you’re Theodore Utah or Jerry Spice. Paul Heyman, who was part of creative at the time, was very adamant that CM Punk could continue to be CM Punk. After some time in WWE’s then-developmental league OVW, Punk was introduced in WWE’s incarnation of ECW. He did well for himself and was built up as a future star. Luckily, the ECW audience was made of the kind of people who knew him from ROH and cheered the hell out of him. Philadelphia had the same kind of audience and when CM Punk was part of a Survivor Series team with Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Jeff Hardy, and Matt Hardy, the ovation was over-the-top. Triple H had Punk do the D-Generation X intro with him to capitalize on it and some fans speculated that Triple H was legit annoyed that this C-show rando was stealing his thunder. It would be a silly assessment if it wasn’t for... *gestures at Triple H’s history* A week later was ECW’s December to Dismember PPV that went so, so badly. Paul Heyman wanted Punk to get a big push out of the six-man main event by eliminating Big Show by himself, but it was vetoed and Punk was the first eliminated. Heyman was fired soon after and Punk lost his biggest political cheerleader. It didn’t help that he was popular for stuff that happened outside of WWE. Vince hates that poo poo and other guys in charge wanted Punk humbled for his popularity. The only thing keeping him from being buried was Shawn Michaels, who spoke up on his behalf and told the old men in charge to try working WITH him instead of against him. Punk remained in ECW for a couple years, notably being a footnote in the Chris Benoit double-murder/suicide. He eventually did get to be ECW Champion and had a fairly decent reign, but it was nothing too special. In 2008, Punk won the Money in the Bank match at WrestleMania. At the same event, Kane won the ECW Championship. The two were played as allies who were constantly side-eying each other, but there was no betrayal in the end. Instead, when WWE did one of their draft episodes and Edge boasted that he was leaving Raw with the World Heavyweight Championship, Batista beat Edge half to death and left him in a heap. Seconds later, Punk ran out, cashed in his briefcase, and became World Heavyweight Champ. Not the most honorable way to do it, but the fans enjoyed Edge getting his comeuppance. Punk’s title reign was not handled well. At all. He immediately feuded with JBL, which wasn’t great, but was better than what followed. They put him in a match against mega-face Batista (double DQ finish), which was a bad idea, considering Punk hadn’t built up enough of a following to counter Batista’s popularity. Then when WWE did the PPV Unforgiven, a show based around the short-lived 5-man Scramble match*, Punk was attacked backstage by Randy Orton and deemed too injured to compete. * I’m going to need to do a Mike Adamle post one of these days. Orton wasn’t even in the Scramble match. They just wrote Punk out of the title match for the sake of giving the title picture a clean slate. Afterwards, Punk moved to the midcard and had some success as a tag champ with Kofi Kingston and then Intercontinental Champion. At WrestleMania 25, he once again won Money in the Bank. It should be noted that he was not initially intended to win the Money in the Bank ladder match. Jeff Hardy had been getting extremely popular around this time and although he couldn’t quite reach the main event just yet, he was the obvious winner for the Money in the Bank match to propel him into the title picture. It’s just that once again, Jeff Hardy got caught with his hand in the drug jar and was suspended long enough to completely miss WrestleMania. Punk became a two-time winner instead and his second cash-in was far more interesting. As Jeff Hardy finally defeated Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship, Punk came out and cashed in. He quickly beat Jeff and won the title. He played it innocent at first. Why were fans on his side when he cashed in against a hurt Edge, but not a hurt Jeff? When he defended against Jeff and punched the referee to get himself disqualified, he admitted that his vision was messed up and he thought he was punching Jeff. Eventually, Punk went full heel, took his drug-free mantra, and used it to make himself into a gigantic rear end in a top hat. Jeff was an addict who was only going to fall into that pit again and again. Fans loved Jeff, but Jeff existed for no reason but to disappoint everyone. As the two traded the belt back and forth, a special cage match was put together with the stipulation that whoever lost would leave WWE. Jeff’s contract was coming up and while he did intend to re-sign, he simply wanted some time off. The plan was that Punk would win and Jeff would return down the line to pick up where they left off. Punk did indeed retain the title and Jeff left WWE, but about a week later, Jeff Hardy was arrested due to drug trafficking. WWE did not want anything to do with him after that. That’s right, due to Jeff Hardy’s personal screw-ups, CM Punk not only ended up winning that feud decisively, but he was deemed 100% correct despite being a heel about it. On the next episode of SmackDown, Jeff Hardy’s theme played and Punk came out dressed as Jeff, including facepaint. It took a few moments, but gradually, the fans started to understand what was going on and they were SO MAD it was great. Now the champion on SmackDown, Punk was set to feud with the Undertaker. Unfortunately, the Undertaker genuinely did not get along with Punk backstage and Punk was going to pay for it...
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Mar 9, 2022 23:03
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Jamesman posted:It's just that, WWE is already a place where dead men and fire monsters and leprechauns roam the halls, and maybe that's why I look at something like Alexa Bliss and I'm on board with the idea, because I feel like it's just an extension of that. What's the difference between a magic doll and a magic urn? What's the difference between Alexa setting Orton on fire and Kane setting everyone on fire? In premise, I'm totally on board. I think what separates them is focus. The stuff with Undertaker has never been well-defined in any way. It also tends to exist in the background of the character. He doesn't shoot lightning bolts during matches. It's theatrics for promos or post-match stuff. He'd constantly get up, but that seemed to blur the line between supernatural and just being a tough bastard. With Fiend and Alexa, the weird poo poo was too in your face to ignore. Not only is it all unexplained, but it's also inconsistent. The Fiend is invincible from ridiculous weapon beatdowns/finisher spam, but gets taken down by a couple Goldberg spears. Something that comes to mind is this storyline where after a big PPV loss, the Undertaker was randomly attacked by the Wyatt Family, who beat him down and dragged him off. That's how the show ended. Sometime after, they did the same to Kane. Bray Wyatt started cackling about how he had stolen the Undertaker and Kane's powers somehow. Then a week or so before Survivor Series 2015 (the 25 year anniversary of Undertaker's first appearance), Undertaker and Kane simply walked out and started fighting the Wyatt Family. This led to a 2-on-4 tag match at Survivor Series, which Undertaker and Kane won. At no point did they explain the kidnapping, stolen powers, or anything else. Silly stuff happened and they moved on.
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Mar 10, 2022 04:37
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Jamesman posted:Do you think the emphasis on theatrics was related to the pandemic in any way? The lack of a live audience and them trying to adjust leading to playing too much with the style of the show? I wouldn't say so. Everything up to the Goldberg loss was pre-COVID. quote:As for the Goldberg thing, what I looked at said this was one of those Saudi Blood Money events, so WWE deliberately tanked Wyatt's character in favor of Goldberg doing Goldberg things to appease those princes. But would you mark this as the beginning of the end for him, the final nail in the coffin, or just something in the middle of a clusterfuck? I think it was more that Vince realized that Goldberg vs. Roman was a better money match, so he changed his mind on the Fiend's direction. It was a head-scratching moment, but they made good on it by having the Fiend/Cena match shortly after. It was the Braun and Orton feuds that really started to hurt the Fiend, especially because that's when Wyatt and the company started butting heads. The Fiend was making them a LOT of merch money, so it had to mean something that they cut him loose. Wyatt knew that if he could come back from being set on fire, he probably shouldn't be getting pinned from RKOs and that made him a problem.
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Mar 10, 2022 05:23
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Hollismason posted:It boggles my mind a little bit that Goldberg is still a thing in 2022. Like dude has been involved with wrestling for more than 20 years. You would think they'd come up with something new or somebody new but no they still drag out Goldberg. WWE tried to remake Goldberg with their own creation Ryback, but they refused to commit to him, so he ended up being damaged goods. By the time he was finally let go, the company was only a few months from bringing Goldberg back for the first time. Yeah, Ryback is another guy who will need an effortpost down the line. But at the very least, he'll be part of what I'm writing on CM Punk.
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Mar 10, 2022 05:34
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CM Punk was fresh into his second reign as World Heavyweight Champion and was thrust into a feud with the Undertaker. Having a gimmick of “I’m straight edge and therefore better than you” is great when you’re up against a recovering addict, but doesn’t really work when you’re challenged by a zombie wizard. It didn’t help that the Undertaker wasn’t a fan of Punk’s attitude backstage. Like how WWE wanted its wrestlers to show up to the arena wearing suits all the time and Punk was both reluctant and questioned why the Undertaker was exempt. After Punk retained the title at one PPV due to bullshit, he faced Undertaker at Hell in a Cell. This was part of WWE’s unfortunate decision to start making PPVs out of match types. Sure, it works with Royal Rumble, but not for grudge match stuff. You end up with guys doing Hell in a Cell matches, not because they want to annihilate each other after months of hatred, but because there’s a show called Hell in a Cell coming up. Punk ended up losing the title to Undertaker at that show, in what was the opening match and went about ten minutes. Punk rebounded by going full-on crazy Jesus in his rants about the straight edge lifestyle. He started a faction called the Straight Edge Society, made up of his followers. At one point, he lost a mask vs. hair match to Rey Mysterio and followed it up with his own sinister luchador mask to cover his shaved head. It was pretty cool. He remained in the upper midcard during all of this until the SES wore out its welcome. Then Punk went and led the New Nexus in that faction’s last attempt to hold onto relevance. It didn’t work and ended with Punk losing to Randy Orton at WrestleMania. At least it did give us a segment where Punk beat up Orton with Orton’s “wife” watching from behind a locked bus door. Punk blew her a kiss and instead of looking horrified and/or angry, the actress came off as incredibly horny. Punk’s contract was coming up and at the time, he was ready to leave. As WWE was running out of good challengers for Cena (R-Truth of all people main-evented a PPV against him), it made sense to feed Punk to him as Punk was on his way out the door. Punk won a #1 contender’s match and at the end of one Raw, he distracted Cena so that R-Truth could take advantage and put Cena through a table. Punk went on a rant later called the Pipebomb. He made it known that he was leaving WWE, that he resented Cena's status in the company, resented the fans, and especially resented the people in charge. The whole thing was planned, but it was filled with so much stuff that was surprising for him to get away with. For instance, bringing up Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar, who were long gone from the company at that point. The show ended with Punk’s mic being cut off and him screaming at the camera. This got major buzz. Cena was still the good guy, but he was also the handpicked winner because Vince was afraid of Punk winning the WWE Championship and leaving with it. Fans loved Punk for being so outspoken and calling Vince and his underling John Laurinaitis out on being out of touch morons. One of the cooler moments was when Vince offered a new contract to sign and Punk started going on about his demands. One demand was for them to bring back the old WWE ice cream bars. The crowd went nuts and started chanting, “WE WANT ICE CREAM!” Vince angrily growled, “I don’t care what you want!” and Punk immediately followed with, “And that’s the problem!” He became known as the Voice of the Voiceless. Punk vs. Cena was to happen at the Money in the Bank PPV in Punk’s hometown of Chicago. Wrestling fans did not know what to expect. Punk claimed he was leaving with the title, attempting to remake his classic ROH storyline from yesteryear. Cena was told that if Punk did so, Cena would be fired. There was also the x-factor of there being a new Money in the Bank winner that night, who could conceivably ambush the winner regardless. Money in the Bank 2011 is considered one of the all-time best PPVs. Even matches like Big Show vs. Mark Henry were absolute bangers. The main event of Punk vs. Cena delivered and while Punk’s victory wasn’t 100% clean, he did defeat Cena and become WWE Champion. Vince called out Money in the Bank winner Alberto Del Rio, but Punk took him out with one kick to the temple. Punk looked to Vince, blew him a kiss, and escaped into the crowd with belt in hand. It loving ruled. In actuality, Punk had signed a new contract. It was the most exciting thing in wrestling for years. We even got social media stuff of Punk keeping his title belt in the fridge. They would have to go out of their way to screw this up. So. How did WWE screw this up? Vince decided to put together an eight-man tournament to crown a new WWE Champion on the next Raw. At the end of the show, he was going to publicly fire Cena, but then Triple H showed up to explain that the Board of Directors couldn’t allow that and were instead forcing Vince to step down. Raw ended weird with a crying Vince slowly convincing the fans to chant, “THANK YOU, VINCE!” For a time, this was supposed to be Vince retiring the Mr. McMahon character and moving on, as he felt that he was too old to be on TV. The next week, Raw started with the tournament finals of Rey Mysterio vs. the Miz. Mysterio won and was announced for a title defense against Cena that very night. Remember, Cena hadn’t wrestled in eight days and Mysterio was going to be facing him as double duty. This could have been a PPV main event, but whatever. Cena won and suddenly “Cult of Personality” by Living Color started playing. It was Punk’s theme from his days in the indies. Punk showed up with his WWE Championship and compared it to Cena’s version. SummerSlam was only a few weeks away and WWE wanted this rematch immediately. They rushed Punk’s storyline and killed the mystique, but whatever. Also, Triple H made himself the special referee. Punk won the rematch due to Triple H not seeing that Cena’s foot was on the rope during a pin. After the match, Kevin Nash of all people stepped into the ring and rushed Punk. He powerbombed Punk and allowed Alberto Del Rio to take advantage by cashing in his Money in the Bank and beating Punk in an impromptu title match. Um... so... CM Punk vs. Kevin Nash? That was certainly a direction, but okay. Nash claimed that Triple H texted him to take out the winner. Punk didn’t trust Triple H to begin with, so he was okay with that explanation. Triple H insisted he was innocent. This ridiculous mystery got really stupid and it ended up being that Nash broke into Triple H’s office, picked up Triple H’s cell, texted directions to Nash’s phone, and then played along. FOR REASONS. How was Punk vs. Nash? Well, it never happened. Nash bowed out, claiming health issues and there was no match. Instead, we got Punk vs. Triple H. Triple H won the match cleanly. Yes, Triple H put himself over the hottest act they had in years for zero reason and Punk was suddenly treating him as a friend afterwards. Triple H ended up getting the match with Nash instead, which he won. In review, CM Punk’s hot storyline was tripped up when Kevin Nash screwed him out of the title for unclear reasons. In the follow-up, Triple H beat up both guys. Punk got his rematch against Del Rio at Survivor Series. There, Punk regained the WWE Championship. This happened to be in the undercard, though. The main event was John Cena and the Rock taking on the Miz and R-Truth in a very one-sided match. You see, ever since the previous WrestleMania, it had been written in stone that Cena vs. the Rock was going to be the main event of the next one. That sucked for Punk. The one last bucket list thing he wanted in his WWE career was to main event WrestleMania. Even as champion, he would be stuck in the undercard. The good news was that Punk was about to start an impressively long run as champion. The bad news was that WWE still wouldn’t treat him as the top guy.
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Mar 10, 2022 07:36
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This next CM Punk post is all over the place, so bear with me. With CM Punk climbing back to the title picture, it's worth noting one of the more unique, if utterly dumb storylines WWE did around that time. To paint the picture, Triple H was supposed to be the cool face authority figure. The Miz and R-Truth were rebellious and anarchist heels who believed there was a conspiracy against them. They were enough of a threat to get a PPV main event against John Cena and the Rock, even though Cena was already shown to be capable of beating them up on his own. Third, Occupy Wall Street was going on and WWE decided to capitalize on that in their own confusing way. The roster whined about how unsafe they all felt under Triple H's rule due to Miz and R-Truth existing and an episode of Raw ended with everyone walking out, including commentators and camera men. A week later, Triple H cut a promo about how everyone on strike was a cowardly loser. So as not to paint everyone as a weenie, Cena, Sheamus, and Punk were the only ones who didn't walk out. Despite the last year, Punk stuck with Triple H and acted like going on strike was wrong. After a few minutes of Punk and the rest kissing Triple H's rear end, Vince made his big return to take Triple H off TV, welcome back all the wrestlers, and introduce John Laurinaitis as the new authority figure. While I'm sick and tired of the whole heel authority figure trope, Laurinaitis was a perfect foil for Punk. He was a total square and crusty old dean type. Now, the good news was that in an era where title runs would last a few months at most, Punk got to be WWE Champion for well over a year. That was a huge deal. The problem was that Punk was still constantly in Cena's shadow throughout all of this. After winning the title back, he main-evented the next PPV because Cena wasn't on it. In the many months that followed, as long as he was a face, Punk never got to be in the main event. That was saved for Cena vs. Kane matches or whatever. To compound on why this was bullshit, after losing to the Rock at WrestleMania, Cena was supposed to be going through the worst year of his career for the sake of redemption. Said worst year meant winning a bunch of PPV main events because Vince was afraid of having him actually look bad. They even moved Laurinaitis to Cena's corner just so Cena could be the one to take him down, robbing Punk of the conclusion to that story. But you know who did really like Punk? 2K Games. They were putting together WWE '13 and they wanted to center the marketing and cover art around Punk. WWE was infamously reluctant to go through with this and kept insisting to the company, "No, you want Sheamus!" They went with Punk anyway. Speaking of insisting on Sheamus, there were these weird avant-garde videos that were showing up on Raw about a child prophesizing the end of the world. People rightfully suspected them to be about reintroducing Chris Jericho. Jericho came back and things continued to be weird as he'd walk out in a light-up jacket, soak up all the cheers, rile up the fans, then leave without actually saying anything. He was being really enigmatic and interesting and the belief was that he was going to win the Royal Rumble and have a readymade WrestleMania feud with Punk. Instead, it was decided at the last minute that Jericho winning was just too obvious. So Vince had Sheamus win for the sake of challenging for Daniel Bryan's World Heavyweight Championship. Jericho was still penciled in as Punk's WrestleMania opponent, but they had to build the feud from the ground up and throw away all the crazy poo poo he was doing for his return. What were those "end of the world" videos about? Who knows! Anyway, Punk spent many months going through various heels and constantly defending his title. He eventually turned heel and brought back Paul Heyman to be his manager. He started acting like a total chickenshit and escaped various matches with Cena as champion. As they got ready for another PPV match, Cena had to step down due to injury. Enter Ryback. Ryback was an attempt for WWE to recreate the magic of Goldberg. He was this beefy dude in a Rob Van Dam singlet who was constantly talking up how hungry he was. He was definitely popular and WWE decided to throw him into a main event feud with Punk. There were two problems when it came to Ryback: 1) WrestleMania was already planning on doing a Cena vs. Rock rematch, this time for the title. That meant there was no room for pulling the trigger on Ryback and having him become champ. Having him constantly fail against Punk killed his momentum in turn and he never fully recovered. 2) Ryback was not very safe in the ring. Punk had been accumulating damage this whole run, but Ryback matches were like a multiplier. Punk told the story years later that after being thrown through a table badly, Punk screamed at Ryback and wanted to know if he was doing this out of malice or if he was just dumb as gently caress. "…….I'm dumb as gently caress." Punk eventually dropped the title to the Rock and lost the subsequent rematch. Cena won the Royal Rumble, setting up his WrestleMania rematch with the Rock. He did put his #1 contender spot on the line against Punk in a match on Raw and retained. It's considered possibly Cena's best singles match ever. Punk went on to be the Undertaker's next victim at WrestleMania 29. Sadly, Paul Bearer died during the lead-up and Punk was able to capitalize on that by being the hilarious WORST during this. Like telling Undertaker that it was a good thing because Bearer would not live to see the WrestleMania streak end ("You will always be perfect in his eyes."). Or beating Undertaker with Bearer's urn and dumping Bearer's remains onto the Undertaker's head. In the following months, Punk started to become a face again. This led to a falling out with Paul Heyman, who had Brock Lesnar destroy Punk. Punk lost the big match against Lesnar (which was exceptional), but went on to continue the feud by going up against Heyman's other clients: Curtis Axel and... *sigh* ...Ryback. Punk was very banged up around this time. So much that when something snapped in his wrist, he said he was happy because it meant he could take time off and recover. Vince was always able to talk him into coming back early, swearing, "I'll owe you one!" After getting his revenge on Heyman, Punk was put into a feud against Triple H (now a heel authority figure), Corporate Kane, and the Shield. He was tired and broken down both physically and mentally. He had some kind of painful growth in his lower back the size of a baseball. Rather than deal with it in any meaningful way, WWE's doctors just gave him a z-pack. Due to this, Punk literally poo poo himself during a match on SmackDown and used Twitter to invite everyone to tune in and check it out! For real, you could see the referee flick a turd nugget out of the ring. There was still a light at the end of the tunnel. He was penciled in to win the Royal Rumble and face Randy Orton for the title at WrestleMania 30. He was finally going to get that WrestleMania main event! Or, he was, until WWE brought back Batista. Now all Vince could see was Batista vs. Orton as his big money match. Punk was entered into the Rumble at #1 and stayed until nearly the end. Early on, he received a concussion and was loopy throughout. As the fans realized that Daniel Bryan was inexplicably not in the Rumble match, Punk was seen as the most acceptable alternative. And so, once Corporate Kane reached into the ring, pulled Punk out, and chokeslammed him through a table, fans lost hope. Batista won to a chorus of boos, despite him being a face. Punk was instead going to be facing Triple H somewhere on the WrestleMania 30 undercard, which Triple H insisted was a very big deal. Daniel Bryan was going to go take on Sheamus. Of course. Those plans fell through too. The next day, before Raw, Punk was still feeling the effects of his concussion. Doctors told him to just run the ropes for a bit and shake it off. Furious, Punk had finally had enough. Completely fed up, he yelled at Triple H and Vince for a bit before walking out of the arena and going home. Between this and the fans making GBS threads on Batista's Rumble push, WrestleMania 30 ended up being a very different show, culminating in Daniel Bryan winning the title in the main event. Up next: the aftermath, featuring a broken friendship, the biggest wet fart of a return, and CM Punk's butt being treated like the Kennedy assassination.
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Mar 10, 2022 19:59
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Even though CM Punk walked out of WWE like Scarface in Half-Baked, he claims that he was just blowing off steam and was planning to come back. He was even in contact with Triple H over it. Regardless, they fired him in June. I'm not going to blame them on that one, as he did basically quit to begin with, but to have the documents delivered on the day of his wedding? That's cold. How did Punk's disappearance affect the main WWE product? Outside of WrestleMania 30 being radically changed, not too much. Fans would chant "CM PUNK!" for years, especially at Chicago shows, but it was either because his wife AJ Lee was wrestling or because they were trying to flip off the promotion. Punk's absence was seen across different kinds of WWE media, though. - WWE did a documentary on the Ultimate Warrior's final days. For those who don't know, after years of being on the outs with the company, Warrior was brought back as the head of the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2014. Over a weekend of making amends with Vince and Hogan, Warrior was inducted on Saturday, appeared at WrestleMania on Sunday, cut an inspirational promo on Monday's Raw, then keeled over on Tuesday. Anyway, there was a part where you could see a framed 2014 Royal Rumble poster in the background. Noticeably, there was a yellow post-it note obscuring Punk's face for the sake of pettiness. - WWE 2K15 had a special Showcase mode that had you play through the entire Cena vs. Punk rivalry. The wheels were in motion already so they couldn't cancel that part of the game, but this was also a year where they were scanning everyone's faces for visual accuracy. While Cena looked fantastic, Punk and (for some reason) Vince looked hilariously off. - WWE was doing animated movies with Hanna-Barbera properties. Over the years, we got two Scooby-Doo movies, one Flintstones movie, and one Jetsons. The main villain of the Flintstones one was CM Punkrock and WWE told the HB people to fully remove him from the movie. HB rolled their eyes and ignored the order. Unfortunately, the second Scooby movie was going to feature a lot of Hulk Hogan and THAT one they had to do a lot of editing on after his video got leaked. - Punk was going to be a major part of the animated series Camp WWE, so that got reworked. Presumably, Hogan was initially going to be a camp counselor on the show, so that was done away with too. - A publisher called Papercutz was doing WWE comics co-written by Mick Foley. The first issue came out around Punk's departure. The first two arcs (8 issues) heavily featured Punk. At the end of the eighth issue, there was an abrupt scene of Daniel Bryan talking up all of Punk's accomplishments and wishing him well as Punk walked off, waving goodbye. After months of silence, Punk finally told his story on his best friend Colt Cabana's podcast. One big reveal was that after leaving WWE, he went to a real doctor and found out that the growth on his lower back was a nasty MRSA. Had he continued wrestling with it, it could have gotten really bad for him. WWE responded in a most bizarre way at first. A video was put online of CM Punk performing at the 2014 Rumble. There was no audio whatsoever. It was just slow-motion zoom-ins of Punk's rear end for several minutes, as if asking the fans, "Do YOU see a nasty growth the size of a baseball on his rear end? Do you?!" Soon after, Punk and Colt were sued by WWE's Dr. Amann for defamation. It was very much just WWE suing him by proxy to piss Punk off and make him bleed money. Even though Punk won, WWE got what they wanted out of it. More than just screwing with Punk's money, it ruined his relationship with Colt. I don't know the full details, but the belief is that Punk told Colt that he would take care of Colt's legal bills. Then Colt was seen chilling backstage at a WWE event, hanging out with the talent there. Punk felt betrayed and rescinded his offer, killing their friendship. Punk spent the next few years writing comic books, getting destroyed in MMA fights, and starring in horror B-movies. Apparently, Tony Khan came to him years ago about his plans for AEW. Punk didn't think much of the offer at first, but did watch AEW when it started up and it started to reignite his interest in the business. Enough that he went to a Chicago ice cream place and warned them ahead of time that at one point he's going to be ordering thousands of wrapped ice creams for a big event. The funny thing is, CM Punk actually did get rehired by WWE... sort of. A couple years ago, WWE had a show on FS1 called WWE Backstage. It was an unnecessary and not very popular show about people just discussing what's going on in WWE. Fox hired Punk to appear on the show for several episodes. In other words, Punk's great return to WWE was just him walking onto the set of a show nobody watched unannounced. Nothing much happened with that. Seth Rollins tried to call him out in a promo, but it led to nothing. Punk remained very critical of WWE on Backstage. It should be noted that even though it was a WWE show, Punk was working as an employee of Fox. Once the show was cancelled, he was gone. Punk's interest in returning grew the more he watched AEW to the point that he was hyping up various midcarders on Twitter as guys he'd like to wrestle IF he ever came back. The thing he claims put it over the top was their treatment of Brodie Lee, especially in terms of keeping his lengthy hospitalization under wraps. Punk showing up on AEW became an open secret, especially when they announced a near-impromptu episode of Rampage at Chicago. Fox was furious at WWE, wondering why they didn't at least TRY to hire him away. And so, Punk showed up on AEW Rampage. And he brought ice cream for everyone. Nobody knows how things are between him and Colt, who is also part of the AEW locker room, but otherwise, Punk has been making the most of his new lease on life.
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Mar 11, 2022 16:46
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I can't wait!
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Mar 11, 2022 17:33
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Reminds me of this time one Tough Enough winner immediately committed career suicide. This guy Andy Leavine won the contest and was in the ring with Steve Austin and Vince McMahon. Vince welcomed him to the company and then slapped him. Leavine went down. Upon getting back up, Austin dropped him with a Stunner. Leavine rolled out of the ring, fell down to one knee, got back up, and happily walked up the ramp while slapping hands with the fans. Other than a backstage segment, that was it for him. It's harsh, but come on. If one of the top guys in wrestling history hits you with his finisher, you should probably sell the move for more than three seconds.
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Mar 12, 2022 15:14
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