Worldwide Wrasslin’ Focus: Extreme Rules and Raw

Best WWF broadcast team ever!

Warning: Spoilers follow for Extreme Rules and the May 23 edition of Raw.

While Extreme Rules didn’t really feature any surprising results or title changes, it was a solid show of good wrestling with an awesome post-main event angle, thanks to the return of Seth Rollins. It came after yet another cluster-eff match between Reigns and Styles, with interruptions from the Usos and “For Legal Reasons Definitely Not The Bullet Club.”

Speaking of, it’s amusing to me how horrible the reaction still is for Reigns. The WWE seems intent on going down the John Cena path with him though, since they had chances to turn him heel during the Styles feud, and by the promo that Rollins gave. However, Rollins basically did his absolute best to be the heel, even as the crowd booed Reigns out of the building. (For the record – I’m of the mindset that Reigns is an OK wrestler, but he’s not sympathetic or an underdog in the slightest, and I have no idea why the WWE is so insistent on keeping him face.)

By the way, Kevin Owens is a great, big bright shinin’ star. He would be my pick for the Money in the Bank ladder match. I always think the briefcase works better when a heel or tweener has it, and he’s probably the best one on the WWE roster right now. While his matches and confrontations with Zayn have been really good, I think it’s time for the WWE to move on from that.

Regarding the rest of the MitB field, in order from least likely to most likely in my mind…

5) Cesaro just feels like filler, assuming that they don’t remove him from the match for a feud with The Miz. I’d give him zero chance to win the briefcase, since he’s mostly been winning and losing in equal doses with his current James Bond Stripper gimmick.

4) Chris Jericho has a non-zero chance of winning, because he’s an experienced veteran in the ring. And hey, he’s also my favorite wrestler! But it’s hard to see how him with the briefcase would make a lot of sense, since he’s mostly a part-time wrestler now.

3) Sami Zayn. While he’s had some incredible matches, especially with Kevin Owens, I just don’t feel like the WWE has enough faith in him to win the briefcase. He hasn’t even been a serious contender for the IC belt, as he’s mostly been used in multi-man matches for that with Owens.

2) Dean Ambrose really needs a proper push, and this could be a way to do it. Unfortunately though, they already mentioned the most obvious angle for him to win on Raw – that he could use the briefcase to setup a Shield triple threat for the belt. Since they mentioned it on TV, I don’t think it’ll happen. Still though, I think it’s more likely that he wins than the other guys on the list.

1) Kevin Owens. He’s the best heel on the roster, and he’s been kept pretty strong, as he hasn’t been beat cleanly all that often. He would be the strong favorite to me, as long as someone with a stronger C.V. isn’t in the match (Lesnar, Cena, Orton).

The only other significant thing to happen on Raw was Charlotte kicking Ric Flair to the curb, which I honestly thought should have been done much earlier. Still, the angle had a decent amount of punch to it, plus it managed to shut up the Baltimore crowd from chanting “What?” for a little bit. I’m intrigued to see what happens next in the division, since Sasha Banks has been off TV, nursing an injury, if I recall correctly.

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Excuse Me While I Talk About Wrestling

My one vice, even more so than listening to Lisa Loeb, remains professional wrestling. Yes, I still watch Raw every Monday night, and I’ll even tune in to TNA Impact if I feel like hurting my brain, and if something better (Archer, Always Sunny, most of NBC’s Thursday night lineup) isn’t on.

And my favorite pro wrestling event each year is always the Royal Rumble, and the rumble match itself. For those of you uninterested in pro wrestling, let me go on in GREAT detail about this!

The rumble match itself consists of 30 superstars fight in an over-the-top battle royal for a title shot at Wrestlemania. Two superstars start off, one-on-one, and every 90 to 120 seconds (it varies depending on the year), a new wrestler is thrown into the mix.

Basically, the match serves as a sort of poo-poo platter of wrestling. Most everyone in the match gets a chance to get some offense in, and because there are 29 eliminations, you get plenty of drama and storylines created and furthered by what happens in the rumble.

Today’s match, on paper, figures to be a bit ho-hum. My favorite wrestler, Chris Jericho, just returned to action this month, and the rumble will be his first actual match back. ([Right] Him in his over-the-top, fan pleasing persona right now.) He’s one of the favorites to win because he’s one of the few major WWE wrestlers lacking a regular feud right this second. Meaning, him winning would automatically propel him into a major angle / storyline.

For whatever reason, the best rumble of all-time, the 1992 edition, is available on YouTube in its entirety. Yes, it is totally 1990s wrestling, but if you like wrestling at all then you should be a big fan of the action. Plus, it has Bobby Heenan at his peak on the microphone! And Ric Flair! (If you want some awesomeness from both, skip ahead to about 9:15 in the match for his entrance, and 33:30 for the introduction of Roddy Piper.)

TNA great when it sticks to wrestling, promos

You may have noticed that I don't really write that much about TNA in this here blog. I'm not a regular watcher for one big reason - the storylines.

Frankly, if you miss an episode, it is nearly impossible to follow what is going on. Now, in a normal network show like LOST, this would be a reason to make sure you watch every week. However, the storyline logic in TNA is so shitty that I have the opposite reaction. In any given week, there are crosses and double-crosses, mixed with angles based on one wrestler overhearing two others in a bathroom. yikes. I think this is part of the reason why TNA had to admit failure and switch back to Thursdays, after trying to compete with Raw on Mondays for a couple months.

In contrast though, the in-ring product is normally excellent for TNA, which is why I normally like watching the PPVs. For example, the first hour of Sunday's, Sacrifice, was awesome. There was a really good three-way tag team match between Team 3D, Beer Money and the Motor City Machine Guns for a title shot, followed by the European Championship (or whatever they call it) being defended in a decent match between Rob Terry and Orlando Jordan, of all people. This was followed up by another really nice match between Doug Williams and Kaz for the X-Division title, which thankfully ended clean. (Another consistent TNA problem is a ridiculous amount of false and contested finishes.)

Unfortunately though, storyline issues reared their ugly head for the next two men's matches. Scott Hall should not be wrestling anymore - He is obviously fat and out of shape, and as a result, he seemed to miss several spots in the match. The Band's match vs. Ink Inc., a grossly tatted up team, ended in a contested finish with a run-in by Team 3D. This match was followed by a decent women's match between Tara and Madison Rayne, even if you could tell that Rayne wasn't going to do much in the ring because her breasts were basically held in place by a microscopic layer of cloth.

But after this, we got the "bathroom spying" match, Desmond Wolfe vs. Abyss. I would try to explain the story for this, but I honestly have no idea of why they're fighting, except that it involves a Hulk Hogan Hall of Fame ring, Lacey Von Erich spying on another hot girl in a bathroom, and a redux of a stupid WCW angle involved Miss Elizabeth and Goldberg that sucked 10 years ago. Also, apparently the ring gives Abyss the special powers of Hulk Hogan, as the end of the match featured TNA's Mankind / Catcus Jack-like character hulking up as if he was a god damn cartoon.

Thankfully though, they segued from this match to one of the best promos I've seen this year, by Mr. Anderson (a.k.a. Mr. Kennedy). It would be nice if TNA didn't have to rely on the brittle and the drugged leftovers from the WWE, but hey, if they're willing to swallow the risk in employing them, I suppose I should enjoy the match. Hardy won after a really good, back-and-forth 20-minute match, which kind of stinks to me given how great Anderson's promo was.

This was followed by a ridiculously bloody squash between Sting and Jeff Jarrett. Hulk Hogan eventually broke it up. Like the Abyss thing, I have no idea what the eff is happening here; maybe Hogan wants to be the face in a Sting match, making up for the year-long stalking Sting had of him in WCW.

Finally, there was the world championship match. I must say though, it is a shame what they've done with Styles' character. They have basically turned him into a poor man's Ric Flair, between the tanning, the frilly ring robes, Flair as a valet and lame heel promos. You can tell he's not really comfortable with the character, and the sooner they dump the whole god damn thing, the better.

Also, what does it say about TNA that their current world championship programs involves 1) a wrestler synonymous more with two ECW and WWE/F than TNA and 2) Flair, who I don't think anyone even wanted to see involved with wrestling anymore after his Wrestlemania sendoff.

Oh yeah, the match itself. Flair went on commentary about 10 minutes into the match, which was kind of neat - He should just replace the overrated Tazz, although I doubt he's interested in a commentary job. The match was really good until the final three minutes, when Flair tried to interfere, which led to Jay Lethal (the company's Randy Savage clone) interrupted him. Hey, TNA! Why are you taking the emphasis off your title match with a fight outside the ring involving the champion's valet? Thanks to Lethal's help, RVD was able to win clean, which is nice, I suppose.

The frustrating thing about TNA to me is that they have a talented roster. All the pieces are there for them to be a legitimate challenge to the WWE. However, it is all compromised by the obvious backstage / veteran politics (prominent roles for Hall, Nash, Flair, Hogan, and Sting despite them being shells), the ridiculously bad storylines, and the over-reliance on former WWE stars.

Grade for Sacrifice: C

The Monday night Raw doldrums

Unrelated to the rest of this post but always important to mention - Chris Jericho is the man.

I shamefully enjoy professional (fake) wrestling, which normally surprises others and forces me to mount an awkward defense of my interest. Yes, it's fake, but so is everything on television. Yes, it's a bit like a soap opera, and yeah, it is kind of homoerotic that guys are clutching each other, and yes, that's weird. But there is something oddly entertaining about it to me, to the point where I've never really been able to stop, even when the programming is in a down cycle.

I think there is something primal in wrestling that gets pretty much every guy interested in it at some point. I was substituting for an elementary school gym class last week, and casually commented on a CM Punk shirt a kid was wearing. This was a bad decision from a class control standpoint, but good for me personally, because soon every kid was asking me about the wrestlers I knew and (somewhat comically, somewhat scarily) trying to put their friends into the Go To Sleep (you put the person up on your shoulders, then swing them down toward a knee to the face).

All the kids I knew growing up watched wrestling, but pretty much all of them dropped it as we got to middle school and high school. I didn't really advertise that I watched it, but it never came up in casual conversation, except for a few times when "Stone Cold" Steve Austin was fighting with The Rock and the corporation and Mick Foley (1998, 1999). From conversations in college, when I grew a little less ashamed about my habit, I found out that there weren't really many people watching it in secret like I was.

Enough with this trip down memory lane, though - The current product leaves something to be desired. The most pressing issue to me is what has happened to Monday Night Raw. This week's episode was OK, with a bloody, intense confrontation between Randy Orton and Ric Flair to hype up this Sunday's meeting between Orton and Batista. However, even the hilarious Santino Marella and a solid MVP-Kofi Kingston match couldn't keep the hour I watched from dragging a bit.

After the draft, it seemed like Raw would become the dominant brand, because of all the star power - HHH, Batista, Orton, HBK, The Big Show, John Cena - in the top tier. Oddly though, this has made most of the booking predictable. After a slight push to MVP, involving him in the Orton-HHH--Batista-McMahon family angle, he is back to the midcard, in a feud with the pedestrian William Regal and Matt Hardy. All of the big names force the WWE to book formulaically at top, since HHH and Batista and Orton aren't going to be losing often to the likes of MVP and Kofi Kingston.

Meanwhile, Smackdown and ECW lost a lot of their marquee talent, and both have been great since the draft. Because there aren't really any talent "tiers" on the shows, the only focus is on good angles and good matches. Both of the shows, and to a lesser extent Superstars, are normally my focus in a given week as opposed to the normal flagship, Raw.