A Tale of Two Matches: A Royal Rumble Reflection

I feel compelled to weigh in on the fallout from the Royal Rumble. The results on paper were not all that surprising: Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania 31. The WWE had thrown a few curveballs out that suggested it might be otherwise, and that’s probably a good thing: nobody wants a wrestling show with a completely predictable outcome. The fact that the results went right back to what seemed to be the plan all along is reasonable enough when you think about it, but I can’t shake the feeling that the lead up to it was deceptive. Things were put in place, not to give fans a suspenseful show but to mitigate and manipulate reactions that they anticipated would be negative.

How do people feel when they see through tactics that are, as John Pollock succinctly put it on the LAW Radio Review-A-Raw podcast, “transparent”? Reactions ranged from fans cancelling their subscription to the WWE Network and launching a scolding hashtag campaign (#cancelWWENetwork) to reportedly impeding WWE talents’ vehicles from leaving the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

I am not here to judge any of the above reactions as appropriate or not, nor suggest what would be an appropriate level of outrage. To each his or her own. What I do want to do is explain why I think the way the Royal Rumble match was poorly devised and a sign of lack in vision currently dogging WWE programming, and in this instance leading to my most negative reaction to the end of a pro wrestling special event in some time. I think the best way to go about it would be to look at the elements that made the two principal matches on the card a smashing success and a wrath inspiring let down respectively.  Let’s start with the first.

Brock Lesnar VS John Cena VS Seth Rollins Triple Threat Match for the WWE World Championship

·      All three participants were made to look extremely impressive, highlighting their signatures maneuvers and physical attributes. All three did 1 or more moves worthy of ‘holy shit’ awe from the audience.  

·      All three participants appeared to be upping their game since previous outtings. If someone wanted to , they may be able to comb the archives and come up with footage to prove otherwise, but with a casual viewing, there was little doubt that these guys were performing at the top of their game.

·      Up until close to the finish of the match, all of the competitors had a likely chance of winning, to varying degrees. As most were going back and forth between the idea of a Lesnar or Rollins victory, the closing moments of the match had those two going back and forth for the win.

·      While all of the main participants in the match looked impressive, the eventual winner Brock Lesnar, clearly edged out his two opponents to come across as, without question, the most dominant in the match. An alternative might’ve been to have a victory by cheating, leaving a bitter taste in people’s mouth that is within the realm of the story and makes us want to see retribution. Going the other route makes sense as it will be Lesnar facing a different opponent at Wrestlemania.

While it may seem like comparing apples and oranges, a triple threat match with three wrestlers and a Royal Rumble match with thirty entrants joining the match at various times over the course of roughly an hour, there are enough attributes that they share to show how the Rumble match failed where the triple threat succeeded.

Royal Rumble Match:

·      While not all of the participants could be considered relevant – of course nobody is holding out that a Bubba Ray or Diamond Dallas Page, or even a Miz or Luke Harper is going to win. Among the highlighted entrants expected to win, though, there were hands down TWO names head and shoulders above the rest: Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns. You could even say that’s one less name to think about than in the preceding triple threat match. So, let’s look at how the two of them were treated. Bryan Daniels came in near the first half of the match and was in it for approximately ten minutes. He did a total of TWO impressive looking spots that I can recall with out rewatching. One that eliminated Tyson Kidd, a great wrestler but hardly someone with a huge name value right now, and one in which he took turns delivering kicks to a kneeling Bray Wyatt and Rusev. He was in the match at a completely uncritical moment and his removal was nothing special. In short, he stood there looking like a dork. Surprisingly and inexplicably, Reigns was not made to look all that impressive either. Other than removing Big Show and Kane at the same time, which basically came down to him pushing them out in one big tangle, I didn’t see him do anything special. I am not saying he can’t. But…he didn’t. I was looking out for this throughout the first viewing and again when the match was reshown on Raw the next night. There were no, count them NO superman punches that I can recall. No slides to the outside (all legal as long as its not over the top rope) to deliver one of those jumping drop kicks and landing on the ring apron. Not even any really significant eliminations other than Show and Kane, as mentioned, and the tossing out of Rusev, which came like an afterthought.

·      This point is sliding into my next, which is about the principal players being or at least appearing to be at the top of their games. This would appear to be especially important for new talent and those in their prime; less so than say a John Cena who is a veteran by now. So is this what happened with Roman Reigns? Couldn’t have been farther from it. The guy who had a huge streak of eliminations in his first Royal Rumble match last year didn’t top his previous record; he didn’t even come close. That could’ve been the story of the match right there. Listen to people that know far more about wrestling than myself, like Jim Ross. Matches tell a story. Wrestlers don’t get worse, not without something being up, and Reigns is certainly not unlearning anything, but just like with his promos being so obviously scripted to be uncharacteristic fluff, his performance here seemed to be totally hamstringed by people behind the creative vision of WWE. Were they afraid that a dominant Reigns would reveal to Daniel Bryan fans what’s up and cause them to jeer early on? So what? They got jeers anyway, and after a performance that could not even be argued to have been at a top level.

·      While it was only three in the triple threat, I again point to how important it is that ALL THRE looked strong going into and coming out of their match. Did Bryan Daniel look strong? No. Did Roman Reigns look strong? Still no! In a move that was insulting to audiences, the WWE brought The Rock in to mitigate disappointment, because everyone loves The Rock, right? And in some ways it made sense, as he and Reigns are blood relatives. But his role turned out to be nothing more than coddling the guy who we are supposed to see as the baddest man on the planet going into the main event of Wrestlemania. The notion of The Rock holding Reigns’ hand through matches and turns on the mic, the latter being his real weak point, is sickening. I go back to the idea of the motivation behind the WWE’s movies being completely transparent. To have such blatantly manipulative decisions being made right before the audience’s eyes made it all go down far worse.

·                        Lastly is the point of the results seeming to be able to go in more than one direction up to the end of the match. This might’ve meant Bryan staying in it to be one of the last competitors in the ring. Would this have lead to a major bad vibe in the audience and a terrible reaction? Maybe. But the same thing happened, maybe to an even worse degree by WWE taking him out of the match early on. It was, again, nothing more than a deliberate strategy to make us forget about him being there. This is a sad alternative to delivering a kick ass finish without compromise, just like we saw in the triple threat match. Bryan would have been capable of it. So would Roman Reigns. I think a far better WWE would be less sniveling, bite the bullet, and deliver the best possible simulation of competition and let the chips fall where they may. What we got instead was Reigns taking on two members of The Authority: The Big Show and Kane. Other than that affiliation, they are the farthest thing from significant or imposing opponents as it gets. This isn’t my doing. That’s what the WWE has programmed. While Kane used to be an imposing monster, and Big Show an un-droppable Giant, they are kept from that status by two things: 1) their age 2) the WWE booking them as nothing more than bumbling stooges. Have they had strong periods in their respective careers? Yes. But if WWE is going to lessen their value, then making them the final options for the winners of a main event match is not the kind of thing to captivate the audiences’ attention.  Wait, there was Rusev. That went by in a blink of an eye. Why didn’t they have Rusev knock Reigns around for a bit and make it a close 1 on 1 bout between two impressive wrestlers before Reigns got the win? Why didn’t they let Reigns fend for himself during the match, and have The Rock come out afterwards to congratulate him?

If the answer to one of the above questions is that they feared Rusev would get more cheers than Reigns than that is sad. That is a SERIOUS wake up call to WWE to evaluate their direction. It doesn’t mean Reigns is not the guy to put in the top spot. Though maybe not yet? And maybe not the way they…or is ‘they’ essentially Kevin Dunn and Vince McMahon??....insist on doing it. Reigns was on fire last year. Wrestlers like that don’t suddenly become untalented. Forcing him into a squeaky clean please all persona that doesn’t fit him, and trying to bury a fan favorite wrestler like Daniel Bryan in relative obscurity is not going to work. The audience is too smart for it.  

Mondo Pro Wrestling on Twitter: @MondoCurryMark

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Royal Rumble Forecast

Couple of quick thoughts before the 2015 Royal Rumble kicks off. I have a combination of predications and wishful thinking of things I'd like to see happen, yet could be considered realistically in line with the direction that WWE has been moving in.

Coming out of the Royal Rumble match and triple threat title match, I would like to see and consider it plausible to see a Daniel Bryan Vs Seth Rollins for the WWE World Championship main event Wrestlemania 31. The seeds for this idea were planted firmly while listening to Jim Ross' excellent podcast where he envisioned the same scenario. He has no apparent inside track, just a lot of experience and knowledge about the business, and many other scenarios involving Roman Reigns and/or Lesnar in the mix have arisen as well.

What I like about the idea of a Bryan/Rollins setup is that it puts two wrestlers who are on the rise in the spotlight. Both have been over with the fans, Bryan's momentum only hitting the brakes after time being taken away for surgery, in their respective roles as baby face and despicable heel. Both can put on an extremely impressive technical match with years of indie experience to draw on, and this is widely known to audiences watching them for the past 1 - 2 years. It would be a credible win for either of them, and would show that WWE is putting a concerted effort on promoting the future instead of constantly falling back on the past. Whether all of the powers that be at WWE are really down with that last sentiment, I'm really not sure.

So where does that put the others in the main event picture is the next logical question. Reigns seemed the next most likely to be pushed to the number 1 spot, but signs suggest that WWE  is aware of what other insightful fans have been saying: He's not ready. I look back to the amazing feud between The Shield and The Wyatt Family, and think this would be a perfect time to rekindle heat between Reigns and Wyatt, leading to a match between them at Wrestlemania. The 6 wrestlers involved in that series of matches brought so much energy to it, bringing down the house each time. Reigns and Wyatt were always positioned as the clear leader of each group. WWE could play it smart and bring those past battles into focus as a partial cause for whatever may lead Wyatt to attack Reigns, like say screw him over in the Royal Rumble match tonight. Bray has such a strange peripheru role, sometimes just kinda being there until he decides to go after someone based on some half-baked philosophy he is given to justify it. But looking at his eventual win in that unfortunate program with Dean Ambrose, he did come out on top showing that he is in one of the top heel slots. I echo the sentiment of others that it would be interesting to see a Roman Reigns heel change, but don't see it happening with WWE putting so much spotlight on him as a face.

It's been suggested that Cena go on to face, and probably defeat Rusev at Mania. It makes perfect sense to me, keep Cena out of the main event where smart marks will groan, and give him a through and through heel like Rusev to vanquish and make it a feel good moment. At the same time, if they put Rusev over Cena, even better.

Brock Lesnar is the trickiest part of the puzzle. In my ideal world he would be winning and moving on to main event Wrestlemania. He is the most compelling talent to watch and by far the most phsysically impressive. But his days at WWE would seem to be numbered with no sign of him staying with the WWE instead of going with offers from the UFC. Still, this still would seem to have a question mark at the end of it, especially with Brock coming across like a face at the end of the last RAW. Could that have just been to give Rollins the come back victory after being knocked around by Lesnar?

Well, going with the idea that his days are numbered, it would make sense to take him out of the main event picture. 'Have heard the possibility of Heyman turning on him. I hope that doesn't happen. It could be interesting, but to me Heyman has always been loyal - even when he turned on CM Punk, it was after CM Punk said he wanted to go in a direction without Heyman. I don't think a betrayal would really make sense. Phasing Brock out as a face could leave the door open for a huge eventual comeback that would get fans clamoring for it. At the same time, he could make another star. If, for instance they put him in a program with Ryback....I don't love it, and cannot imagine Ryback winning, but if they are as high on him as it seems, a solid match with Lesnar would make him appear stronger.

Keep in mind, Randy Orton is very likely to be somewhere in the mix, as this would be the time for him to return. Do they trust him? He did seem to be getting a lot of positive buzz as soon he put his hands on Rollins and Hunter. Would they have enough faith to enter him in the Rumble as a surprise entrant and go all the way, for a match against Rollins at Wrestlemania?? If we get Rollins/Oron at Mania, I really think it's not fresh enough to be the main event. Put it ont he undercard and move forward with Bryan and Lesnar, a match I'd love to see but don't expect. Otherwise, look to hear a lot of 'No! No! No!' coming out of Philadelphia.

Smackdown Sweep Up 1: August 29, 2014

While everything that matters happens on RAW, there is a show called SMACKDOWN, which does have its moments. With RAW demanding a solid 3 hours of your time plus the numerous WWE Network distractions and goings ons in other wrestling companies, here's an effort to keep you in the know about what was interesting...or not...and what is worth tracking down and checking out in case you missed the number 2 show.

This SMACKDOWN kicked off with Bray Wyatt facing Roman Reigns. Immediate thoughts going off in the brain: whoah, this is way too big for SMACKDOWN. This is the stuff of potential main event angles. You could sense this was not going to culminate in any actual win or loss situation, but even teasing at it seemed a bit too much like giving away something of premium value. A win over Bray would surely help Reigns solidify his stature as legit championship contender down the line. And Bray doing even just ok in a feud between them would solidify him as a major player. This should've been advertised. Perhaps it was and I missed it. In any case, unsurprising run-in by other Wyatts to give the DQ finish. Big Show and Henry come to the rescue, leading to classic SMACKDOWN main event booking: throw 'em all in a six-man tag match.

Seth Rollins vs Rob Van Dam. I wanted to see this when I learned this would be RVD's last match in the WWE...at least under this current contract. He won in a count out finish against Rollins on Main Event making the finish of this even  ore obvious. A good match. Nothing special, but seemed as though RVD worked ever so slightly more to get some interesting maneuvers in. I really feel RVD could've been booked much stronger, even if he wasn't going to do anything substantial, he could've been promoted as someone difficult to beat, making up and coming heels' victories over him more meaningful. The way things have been, you could smell 'nothing of any importance is going on here' from miles away. I had even been thinking, considering RVD's past dealings with Heyman, he could've been someone to put against Brock a few times on TV. Even if the outcome would be predictable, they could've done some entertaining hardcore stuff with Brock still dominating even if RVD got in a spot or two. Oh well.

Jack Swagger vs Rusev. At this point one must note that this is solid booking with an emphasis on wrestling, a nice reprieve from RAW and all its filler. This would be a submission match. Victor must win by making opponent give up. Cole or maybe it was JBL declare this to be the most important match between the two. Perhaps he forgot it was a SMACKDOWN taping? In fact, from the stipulation down to the quality of the match, it was what one might say is too good for SMACKDOWN, more suited for RAW. (But hey, for those of us who want to keep enjoying a little extra wrestling on throughout the week, keep it coming!) They did some good back and forth, and the submissions really brought out a heightened sense of suspense, despite the predictable outcome. You could hear fans really popping for Swagger narrowly escaping the Accolade.

Fantastic heel booking of Bo Dallas found him throwing in a towel, thus confusing the referee, and tripping up Swagger for Rusev's ultimate victory. Bo was an effective antagonistic jerk. Rusev was victorious. Swagger lost due to interference. All 3 players came out looking strong. Bo furthered his psychological bullying of Swagger with his injury making him unable to respond to the taunts, making an eventual match between the two something I will look forward to. This is a match to seek out and watch.

Something else that strikes me about the way they are presenting Swagger and his injury is that this is EXACTLY how post-SUMMERSLAM Cena SHOULD be booked!! After the unprecedented one sided beatdown by Lesnar, Cena should've been...still should be...showing signs of trauma, be them mental or physical, and losing matches or at least just squeaking by; then getting stronger little by little to try for a sympathetic comeback against Lesnar. It's been documented that the decision to do 'Super Cena' on last week's RAW was a decision made by Vince. Perhaps they'll course correct in the weeks to come.

Paige vs Emma. I blinked and this was over. But considering how little we've seen of Emma lately, it makes sense. Paige should be shown as a strong champ. I have more to say about the followup: the new direction of her feud with AJ Lee, which has me...confused. AJ switching things up and playing the role of the fake friend...or real friend...giving Paige chocolates and professing her love, i mean 'like.'

This might make sense except Paige isn't even playing along -- she spit the chocolate in AJ's face. AJ acted upset, which makes her look like an idiot. If this is "mind games" it doesn't make sense because Paige has the title and no reason to care if AJ is her friend or not. She called her own bluff already and took the title. This is very frustrating bad booking because AJ and Paige are clearly extremely talented PRO WRESTLERS, head and shoulders above most of their peers. They stand a chance to make an impact. Is this going to make for the next Lita and Trish?? No. But could it? Yes Yes Yes. When you have two very strong wrestlers and a faltering story, ditch the story and make it about their competition with one another, plain and simple. Have them cut old school tried and true biting, pissed off promos on one another and give us a wrestling match to look forward to.

AJ left and came back to CM Punk chants and neither the writers nor her has given reasons to cease them. The confusing psycho or not psycho character is not moving forward and not befitting a face. Ditch it and bring something new, without delay.

Sheamus vs Damien Mizdow. Yeah, this has lasted more than one day. After a bit of time the gimmick actually grows on you a bit. It helps Miz to be a somewhat more over even more repugnant heel. After the match, Sheamus won (as if you needed me to tell you that), Miz even got to run in to get a petty cheap shot in. Fun stuff. I just don't see what poor once a very credible heel himself Damien Sandow gets out of it in the slightest. Perhaps if the gimmick continues, they could find some way to have Sandow interact with Miz in a way that gets Sandow over as a heel a bit too? Perhaps even explain WHY Sandow would be doing this in the first place??

Ziggler caught Miz and gave him some grief on the ramp, so expect a tag match with these four on the next RAW.

Jimmy Uso vs Stardust. First off, I really like the heel turn of the 'Dust Brothers.' Since Cody turned into Stardust, I've always felt the two took on a resemblance to corny classic Batman villains from the BAM! ZIFF! POW! show back in the day. And now that I think about it, the Conquistadors. So the heel role makes sense and feels right. The match ended in a hot minute with Jimmy getting a roll up for the win. The match is worth watching for the classic heel antics: Golddust apologized before the match for the attack on RAW, said they lost it in the moment. Then after this match, another attack from out of nowhere. This should lead to a very fun match at Night of Champions.

Reigns, Big Show, and Mark Henry vs The Wyatts. I can't remember too much about this match but it was good. It was good in that way that all those matches with the Shield were. A lot of moving around. High impact moves. It reminds me why Reigns was so impressive to me as a team player: he would come in and break up the action with some very fast high impact moves...but as a singles competitor, I'm feeling a bit lethargic. Reigns and company won. This could continue in a number of ways. I'd like to see Bray in a program with Big Show. Keep Bray strong and give him a devious way to bring a giant sized Show down, who really hasn't been up to much of anything lately. And the thing with Jericho seems pretty cold. That or get the other Wyatts back into winning mode and show them as a force to be reckoned with in matches against Show and Henry.

Overall this was an entertaining SMACKDOWN. No earth shattering events, but storylines were supported, wrestlers were made to be strong, and there was little filler between people with nothing going on.

Feel free to hit me on twitter with suggestions, criticisms, trash talk, and the like at @mondocurrymark.