Monday, January 26, 2015

Royal Fumble 2015



I guess we might as well get it out of the way... the Royal Rumble event. Or, as I like to call it, the Royal Fumble... this was not a good show by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyway, let's get on with some thoughts.



The newest tag-team sensation, The Ascension, defeated the Old Age Outlaws in a... zzzz... seriously, this is what you're charging 9.99 for? For fuck's sake, man... this was a match I didn't even know was taking place. I thought this was a pre-show thing, but... yeah, this is on the paid show and it blew chunks. Major chunks.

So they aired a commercial for next week's live Steve Austin show podcast (or as they refer to it, a Stone Cold Podcast) and it's exclusive to WWE Network for one week before it appears on the Steve Austin show page... by the way, anyone expecting this to be hard-hitting and honest are kidding themselves. Austin asks the hard questions, does his part just fine, but on the other side of the fence, you'll have some "safe" PR answers. Nothing really worthwhile... which is the norm for WWE, I'm afraid.

WWE Tag Team Champions The Usos defeated the Miz and Damien Mizdow to retain the titles. The match was nothing special, but it had its moments and there was some decent action in there at least. If anything, the match was not boring, so credit where it's due.

There's a spot to promote that WWE Immortals game that nobody cares about because it's on mobile platforms... seriously, some of these game ideas that would've been perfectly suited for digital download services like Xbox Live and PSN and Steam... they put it on the mobiles? Seriously... Anyway...

There's a Divas tag match. It's shit. I don't even need to say anything.

WWE World champion Brock Lesnar defeated John Cena and Seth Rollins to retain the title... the match was alright, but knowing how it was going to end... it wasn't good enough for me to care... the only real bright spot was Seth Rollins being the air freshener added to the dirty smelly pair of rotting shoes that is Brock Lesnar and John Cena. Rollins didn't look like a third wheel, he looked like he could hang with the big boys, and please let this fucker cash in before Wrestlemania so that we don't have a shitstain of a main event in Wrestlemania.

So... you know, Roman Reigns wins the Royal Rumble. There's a couple nice moments; the return of Bubba Ray Dudley, DDP doing his thing and making young kids wonder why some old guy is RKO'ing everybody, and Daniel Bryan Danielson got a nice reaction when he came out... but he didn't last long and neither did the good will. This Rumble was BORING and the crowd simply shat on this. Really, once you had Reigns come out, they just BOO'ed the crap out of him. They'd only pop for guys like Ambrose and Ziggler and... even with the Rock came out and did his thing, but once the focus was back on Reigns, the crowd would just boo this shit out of him. Now mind you, this could be a Philly thing... but... then you'd have to take Twitter into account as the number 1 worldwide trend was #CancelWWENetwork... and you have people on Twitter posting pictures of the WWE Network cancellation page. And, you know, we'll see how much effect that has when the Network numbers come out in a couple weeks or so, but... WWE could take solace in some good news; I won't be cancelling my subscription to the WWE Network. Unfortunately for WWE, I don't have a subscription to WWE Network... because I live in Canada and my cable provider is not Rogers. Oops.

Oh and by the way, if your hesitation in cancelling your subscription is because of the Stone Cold Podcast next week, don't worry because it'll be on PodcastOne a week or so later. So, have fun.

For those who care, the list of people involved in order of entry.

1) The Miz
2) R-Truth
3) Bubba Dudley
4) Luke Harper
5) Bray Wyatt
6) Curtis Axel (taken out by Erick Rowan, never officially entered the match)
7) The Boogeyman
8) Sin Cara
9) Zack Ryder
10) Daniel Bryan
11) Fandango
12) Tyson Kidd
13) Stardust
14) Diamond Dallas Page
15) Rusev
16) Goldust
17) Kofi Kingston
18) Adam Rose
19) Roman Reigns
20) Big E
21) Damien Sandow
22) Jack Swagger
23) Ryback
24) Kane
25) Dean Ambrose
26) Titus O’Neil
27) Bad News Barrett
28) Cesaro
29) Big Show
30) Dolph Ziggler

Order of Eliminations:

1) The Miz by Bubba Dudley
2) R-Truth by Bubba Dudley
3) Bubba Ray Dudley by Bray Wyatt
4) Luke Harper by Bray Wyatt
5) The Boogeyman by Bray Wyatt
6) Sin Cara by Bray Wyatt
7) Zack Ryder by Bray Wyatt
8) Tyson Kidd by Daniel Bryan
9) Diamond Dallas Page by Rusev
10) Fandango by Rusev
11) Daniel Bryan by Bray Wyatt
12) Adam Rose by Rusev
13) Kofi Kingston by Rusev
14) Goldust by Roman Reigns
15) Stardust by Roman Reigns
16) Damien Mizdow by Rusev
17) Titus O’Neil by Roman Reigns & Dean Ambrose
18) Big E by Rusev
19) Ryback by Big Show & Kane
20) Jack Swagger by Big Show & Kane
21) Bad News Barrett by Dolph Ziggler
22) Cesaro by Dolph Ziggler
23) Dolph Ziggler by Kane
24) Bray Wyatt by Big Show
25) Dean Ambrose by Big Show & Kane
26) Big Show by Roman Reigns
27) Kane by Roman Reigns
28) Rusev by Roman Reigns

Wrestlemania is going to be fun this year. No, I mean it, just to see how people will react to this Lesnar/Reigns main event... because you got a guy who's the champ until that show and he's fucking off back to UFC after that... and then you got a guy that's touted as the next big thing in WWE, but the crowd is reacting to him like he's the next Damien Demento. I'd go so far to say that he has the best chance of being the modern-day Diesel... he's a guy that supposedly has "the look..." if the look means looking like a gay porn star who raided the late Big Bossman's wardrobe - he's got that over Kevin Nash, at least... and I don't want to sound like one of those people who say that "he's being pushed too fast" or "he's not ready" or anything like that because Roman Reigns is... that's kinda funny, actually. Because last year, he got an amazing reaction at the Rumble... but I guess now that he's being pushed as the next big thing, everyone hates him... I don't really hate the guy, though, for being the chosen one. Because in order for me to hate him, I have to care... and I simply don't care about the guy beyond... well, I don't know.

See, here's the kicker; if you want to push a guy as a major star and as a big deal on your product, you have to give the audience a reason to care about this talent, this character, whatever you want to call him... and right now, I don't care about Roman Reigns as a character. He's going to be the next big guy... so what? Why the fuck should I care? From my vantage point, he feels bland, he has no personality, his promos are cringe-worthy, his matches are so-so, and most importantly, there's no story to him... nothing about this guy excites me or interests me. He's just sorta there... there's nothing about him - in terms of presentation or performance or creative - that makes me want to buy into what he has to offer. And if you're going to have a guy be your big thing, he has to have something that makes people want to buy into his supposed starpower or aura.

Whether it'd be a charisma and presentation of a Hulk Hogan or a relateable intensity of a Stone Cold Steve Austin or an electricity and gift of gab of a Dwayne Johnson or even just a good story like Daniel Bryan's rise to the top last year or the Summer of Punk in 2011. Things that will make someone go "that guy might have something. I wanna jump on that bandwagon." I don't get that with Roman Reigns... maybe he doesn't have it, or maybe he's not a position where he could show he had it... I don't know, all I know is, as far as next big things go, Roman Reigns has nothing that I can buy into. There's nothing about the guy that makes me want to care... and if I don't care about the guy, why should I care about his story or his conflicts? It is, unfortunately, an issue to be had with many talents on the roster.

The Rumble show sucked... and you'd figure that they would've learned from last year's Royal Fumble that they would try not to piss off the audience... but instead the show was crafted in such a way that they were going out of their way to do just that. Well, mission accomplished. #CancelWWENetwork was the number 1 worldwide trend on Twitter and WWE's own Facebook poll asking what people thought of the Royal Rumble event had over 20,000 thumbs down versus only 6,000 thumbs up... let's see if that point gets advertised on WWE television with those Did You Know segments they usually like to pull out of their asses.

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