Another week of WWE's main roster shows has come and gone and for the second week in a row, I missed parts of each show. The question, "Why are you doing a recap of a show you're not watching in its entirety?" is probably something that's passing through your mind, and the answer is that this would be a much different story if I were getting paid. But since I ain't, and I'm not looking to monetize this in any way, and also if the segments I was missing seemed to be worth watching, I might feel differently. And I'm thinking a lot of you are feeling the same. And with a PPV just around the corner in less than 2 weeks, it's not looking great.
I'm going to be up front with you: this is going to be less of a recap and again, more of a general series of things that just don't seem to be working right now.
First off, and this is a dead horse that I'm nowhere near finished beating, but Shane McMahon has got to go away. I'm starting to think that it was a whole big monkey's paw thing that happened when I hoped (in one of my Hopes and Predictions column for Fastlane) that the heel turn would come from Shane rather than Miz, because since Mania, it's been taking up far far too much TV time. Meanwhile, you've got dozens of people in the back who you could give some screen time to instead of these protracted segments of egomania and pushing Shane as the top heel on TV. What's worse is that it's basically the type of thing that Miz was doing while he was a heel: he gets a bunch of lackeys to do his bidding and help him win matches, but the difference here is that Shane can't go like Miz can. If you look at any of Shane's matches, he gets sweaty, winded and lobster-faced within about three minutes. At least Miz's matches are fun to watch even if he doesn't have the best work rate. Shane is the guy who jumps off shit and that's it. I know that getting him real heel heat is the goal but it's been feeling like it's X-Pac heat for a few weeks now since he's been appearing on both shows every single week. Meanwhile, we haven't seen Asuka and Kairi Sane in a long time, or the likes of Shinsuke Nakamura, Rusev, Ali, we're barely getting any Daniel Bryan, Buddy Murphy hasn't had a match since he was drafted to Smackdown, and then there's the Aleister Black problem.
Aleister is getting TV time, but they're almost so self-aware that they have no plan for him, they literally having him cut pre-taped promos shouting out a door begging someone to fight him. The problem here is that kayfabe isn't really as much of a thing as it used to be. We know that Aleister doesn't have to scream into a void about how he wants someone to fight him; we know who books these shows and we know that Aleister is important. Aleister is having all the momentum he had leading up to Mania being ground into dust because they don't have a plan, and we all know it. His call up from NXT, as already discussed on Sheamus's Celtic Warrior Workout series, was a last-minute decision and initially, he and Ricochet were hotter than the sun. But since they split the two up, Ricochet had a strong series of matches against Cesaro and is looking to become a contender for Samoa Joe's US title. Meanwhile, on the one show that was supposed to bring us hope each week from the creative slog of Raw, Smackdown doesn't have a space open for Aleister. The only hope for him is to be the guy to defeat Lars Sullivan for the first time, because A: that's a good way to solidify Black as a serious threat in the ring, and B: Lars smooshing a bunch of luchadores and 40+ year-olds is not doing him any favors.
I'm also not really sure why the hell WWE seems to be doing a real victory lap after Super Showdown, and this was definitely not the case prior to the show. For all the weeks leading up to SS, they kept just referring to it as Jeddah, and not including the Saudi Arabia part. Now, though, they keep insisting that they're super-inclusive because they're doing shows in Saudi Arabia, which is inclusive from an international standpoint, but it's for all the wrong reasons. It's not like they're doing free shows for the people and trying to bring the joy of wrestling to the world. They're doing this because they've been paid a fuckton of money and not out of any altruism. And judging by the general consensus of Super Showdown, there weren't many highlights. Brock Lesnar flew 9,000 miles just to get hit a whole bunch with a chair that apparently Seth brought with him back from Jeddah only to open the show with it on Raw. That's actually the funniest kayfabe part of this: there's Seth and Becky sitting together on the plane back and Seth's in the middle, Becky's on the aisle, and the dented chair gets the window seat. Fantasy elements aside, I'm not sure they should be touting the "success" of this show, particularly since we're going to be getting a bunch of rematches from the same show.
Now one of the few things that WWE has going for it is they're making their top champs continue to look dominant. Seth and Kofi have been solid world-beaters at the big shows, even after suffering a lot of abuse at the hands of either Brock Lesnar and Dolph Ziggler respectively. But I have a feeling that this is going to change, because it seems that the rumors swirling around the dirt sheets is that the endgame for Shane's arc is to go after Kofi's title. I know that Sami, KO and Ziggler are all hovering around the title scene over on Smackdown, but if they're leaning toward a major heel to beat Kofi, none would piss more people off than watching Shane beat him. I know you might be thinking, "James, you nut; why are you talking about Sami Zayn circling the WWE Championship when he's on Raw?" That actually brings me to my next point.
Something was said on commentary by Tom Phillips this week and was even echoed in KO's promo on Smackdown regarding the "Wild Card" rule, and that's something that just needs to go. If Vince is looking to find out why the ratings are in a decline since Mania, first of all, he should be looking at himself to blame, and the next part is that they sent Roman over to Smackdown in the Superstar Shake-Up in order to give that show some real star power, but they haven't given him anything interesting to do and when you don't give your top guys something interesting to do, people start changing the channel. And maybe the worst problem is this continuing winning streak by Shane. It's giving him more reasons to throw stupid, time-wasting, wheel-spinning celebrations where he has Greg Hamilton wear out his voice by introducing him over and over of louder and longer. You honestly think that's keeping people tuned in? Man, every time I see that, I am tuning the fuck out because I don't give a shit, and neither do most people. And by having a "Wild Card" rule, it's throwing consistency out the window. People tune into WWE because they want to see a story being told to them, but if the stories are shit, then the audience stops caring. It's not just about tuning in to see who's going to be on what show; it's about the stories you can tell, and right now, most of them are really boring.
As just one example, one story that makes absolutely no sense became crystalline this week as Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville were backstage throwing magazines at Ember Moon again. This week, though, Ember got really pissed and threw a trashcan around. Meanwhile, Mandy accompanied Sonya out for her match with Carmella, and other than Mandy providing the distraction to allow Sonya to pick up the win, nothing happened with Ember. This would have been a 100% perfect opportunity for Ember to charge in from the back, and start beating the hell out of Mandy or Sonya or both. Ember is called the "She-nom", and you have to give her a reason to be called that. She shouldn't be standing for Mandy and Sonya's "Mean Girls" bullshit; she should be fucking people up and she's not. It's the perfect absence of story that is so fucking indicative of where WWE is at right now from a storytelling perspective, which seems to be, "Look, here's a story/character beat that we're going to give screen time to, but let's have it go nowhere". I don't know if this is Vince as troll, but it sure feels like it. I can't remember the last time I saw Ember in a match; all I know is that the story beat they gave her was a textbook example of how to book a run-in, either during or after the match but it just went nowhere.
The only storyline that is working right now, and working far better than I could have ever predicted, is the wild ongoing saga of the 24/7 Championship. As long as R-Truth keeps getting locked in boxes or hiding under the ring or trapped in an elevator where we find out that EC3 apparently keeps a fork up his ass, and Jinder Mahal tries to imitate Carmella's voice, I'm shockingly down for all that shit. And continuing it on the road, during a flight, or locked in road boxes has actually made the story more compelling. Although they can't hope to keep this momentum up for long. As soon as Truth drops it for a while, they don't have anyone else that can carry it with the same gusto as he can. It's a silly title and you need someone who can do all the silly shit with it, and R-Truth is the only singles competitor that I see really running with this. Elias is a maybe, but again, he's too much a part of Shane's story to stretch it out beyond that.
I know I keep harping on Shane, and I don't mean to, but the best way to fix him is to make him a manager, because he more or less is one right now. The whole "Best in the World" moniker is something that he can apply to being a manager. He can manage people that are great heels and need a good talker. Nakamura would be a great choice for him to manage. It's the only real fix I can think of for him.
So what does any of this mean for the future? I know that we have Boots on the Ground or Stomps.com or whatever they feel like calling this PPV and directly after that, they need to start paying off some shit. Aleister has to officially debut. Buddy Murphy should saunter in for a match. Rusev and Nakamura should come back ASAP. But most of all, and it's even a little hard for me to believe it, Bray Wyatt has got to actually get back in the fucking ring. Firefly Fun House is bizarre and funny and gross and stupid and weird and silly but I need to see what this new version of him is in the ring. Is he going to be a heel? Is he going to be a babyface? Is he going to be a tweener? Get him in the ring with an opponent, and let's get going with this! It's gone on long enough. Get all these unused or underused talents in the ring and have them do what Vince is actually paying them to do.
Okay, so that's it for this non-recap of this week in the main roster shows! I'm hoping I'll have something about NXT and NXT UK over the weekend. I'm thinking about changing over to a YouTube channel for some of this, but we'll see. For right now, I'm going to stick with this and hope that I get my point across and that someone out there somewhere is reading this and thinking, "Well, this guy's a fucking weirdo, but he's got some valid points".
Until next time, kids...
I'm going to be up front with you: this is going to be less of a recap and again, more of a general series of things that just don't seem to be working right now.
First off, and this is a dead horse that I'm nowhere near finished beating, but Shane McMahon has got to go away. I'm starting to think that it was a whole big monkey's paw thing that happened when I hoped (in one of my Hopes and Predictions column for Fastlane) that the heel turn would come from Shane rather than Miz, because since Mania, it's been taking up far far too much TV time. Meanwhile, you've got dozens of people in the back who you could give some screen time to instead of these protracted segments of egomania and pushing Shane as the top heel on TV. What's worse is that it's basically the type of thing that Miz was doing while he was a heel: he gets a bunch of lackeys to do his bidding and help him win matches, but the difference here is that Shane can't go like Miz can. If you look at any of Shane's matches, he gets sweaty, winded and lobster-faced within about three minutes. At least Miz's matches are fun to watch even if he doesn't have the best work rate. Shane is the guy who jumps off shit and that's it. I know that getting him real heel heat is the goal but it's been feeling like it's X-Pac heat for a few weeks now since he's been appearing on both shows every single week. Meanwhile, we haven't seen Asuka and Kairi Sane in a long time, or the likes of Shinsuke Nakamura, Rusev, Ali, we're barely getting any Daniel Bryan, Buddy Murphy hasn't had a match since he was drafted to Smackdown, and then there's the Aleister Black problem.
Aleister is getting TV time, but they're almost so self-aware that they have no plan for him, they literally having him cut pre-taped promos shouting out a door begging someone to fight him. The problem here is that kayfabe isn't really as much of a thing as it used to be. We know that Aleister doesn't have to scream into a void about how he wants someone to fight him; we know who books these shows and we know that Aleister is important. Aleister is having all the momentum he had leading up to Mania being ground into dust because they don't have a plan, and we all know it. His call up from NXT, as already discussed on Sheamus's Celtic Warrior Workout series, was a last-minute decision and initially, he and Ricochet were hotter than the sun. But since they split the two up, Ricochet had a strong series of matches against Cesaro and is looking to become a contender for Samoa Joe's US title. Meanwhile, on the one show that was supposed to bring us hope each week from the creative slog of Raw, Smackdown doesn't have a space open for Aleister. The only hope for him is to be the guy to defeat Lars Sullivan for the first time, because A: that's a good way to solidify Black as a serious threat in the ring, and B: Lars smooshing a bunch of luchadores and 40+ year-olds is not doing him any favors.
I'm also not really sure why the hell WWE seems to be doing a real victory lap after Super Showdown, and this was definitely not the case prior to the show. For all the weeks leading up to SS, they kept just referring to it as Jeddah, and not including the Saudi Arabia part. Now, though, they keep insisting that they're super-inclusive because they're doing shows in Saudi Arabia, which is inclusive from an international standpoint, but it's for all the wrong reasons. It's not like they're doing free shows for the people and trying to bring the joy of wrestling to the world. They're doing this because they've been paid a fuckton of money and not out of any altruism. And judging by the general consensus of Super Showdown, there weren't many highlights. Brock Lesnar flew 9,000 miles just to get hit a whole bunch with a chair that apparently Seth brought with him back from Jeddah only to open the show with it on Raw. That's actually the funniest kayfabe part of this: there's Seth and Becky sitting together on the plane back and Seth's in the middle, Becky's on the aisle, and the dented chair gets the window seat. Fantasy elements aside, I'm not sure they should be touting the "success" of this show, particularly since we're going to be getting a bunch of rematches from the same show.
Now one of the few things that WWE has going for it is they're making their top champs continue to look dominant. Seth and Kofi have been solid world-beaters at the big shows, even after suffering a lot of abuse at the hands of either Brock Lesnar and Dolph Ziggler respectively. But I have a feeling that this is going to change, because it seems that the rumors swirling around the dirt sheets is that the endgame for Shane's arc is to go after Kofi's title. I know that Sami, KO and Ziggler are all hovering around the title scene over on Smackdown, but if they're leaning toward a major heel to beat Kofi, none would piss more people off than watching Shane beat him. I know you might be thinking, "James, you nut; why are you talking about Sami Zayn circling the WWE Championship when he's on Raw?" That actually brings me to my next point.
Something was said on commentary by Tom Phillips this week and was even echoed in KO's promo on Smackdown regarding the "Wild Card" rule, and that's something that just needs to go. If Vince is looking to find out why the ratings are in a decline since Mania, first of all, he should be looking at himself to blame, and the next part is that they sent Roman over to Smackdown in the Superstar Shake-Up in order to give that show some real star power, but they haven't given him anything interesting to do and when you don't give your top guys something interesting to do, people start changing the channel. And maybe the worst problem is this continuing winning streak by Shane. It's giving him more reasons to throw stupid, time-wasting, wheel-spinning celebrations where he has Greg Hamilton wear out his voice by introducing him over and over of louder and longer. You honestly think that's keeping people tuned in? Man, every time I see that, I am tuning the fuck out because I don't give a shit, and neither do most people. And by having a "Wild Card" rule, it's throwing consistency out the window. People tune into WWE because they want to see a story being told to them, but if the stories are shit, then the audience stops caring. It's not just about tuning in to see who's going to be on what show; it's about the stories you can tell, and right now, most of them are really boring.
As just one example, one story that makes absolutely no sense became crystalline this week as Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville were backstage throwing magazines at Ember Moon again. This week, though, Ember got really pissed and threw a trashcan around. Meanwhile, Mandy accompanied Sonya out for her match with Carmella, and other than Mandy providing the distraction to allow Sonya to pick up the win, nothing happened with Ember. This would have been a 100% perfect opportunity for Ember to charge in from the back, and start beating the hell out of Mandy or Sonya or both. Ember is called the "She-nom", and you have to give her a reason to be called that. She shouldn't be standing for Mandy and Sonya's "Mean Girls" bullshit; she should be fucking people up and she's not. It's the perfect absence of story that is so fucking indicative of where WWE is at right now from a storytelling perspective, which seems to be, "Look, here's a story/character beat that we're going to give screen time to, but let's have it go nowhere". I don't know if this is Vince as troll, but it sure feels like it. I can't remember the last time I saw Ember in a match; all I know is that the story beat they gave her was a textbook example of how to book a run-in, either during or after the match but it just went nowhere.
The only storyline that is working right now, and working far better than I could have ever predicted, is the wild ongoing saga of the 24/7 Championship. As long as R-Truth keeps getting locked in boxes or hiding under the ring or trapped in an elevator where we find out that EC3 apparently keeps a fork up his ass, and Jinder Mahal tries to imitate Carmella's voice, I'm shockingly down for all that shit. And continuing it on the road, during a flight, or locked in road boxes has actually made the story more compelling. Although they can't hope to keep this momentum up for long. As soon as Truth drops it for a while, they don't have anyone else that can carry it with the same gusto as he can. It's a silly title and you need someone who can do all the silly shit with it, and R-Truth is the only singles competitor that I see really running with this. Elias is a maybe, but again, he's too much a part of Shane's story to stretch it out beyond that.
I know I keep harping on Shane, and I don't mean to, but the best way to fix him is to make him a manager, because he more or less is one right now. The whole "Best in the World" moniker is something that he can apply to being a manager. He can manage people that are great heels and need a good talker. Nakamura would be a great choice for him to manage. It's the only real fix I can think of for him.
So what does any of this mean for the future? I know that we have Boots on the Ground or Stomps.com or whatever they feel like calling this PPV and directly after that, they need to start paying off some shit. Aleister has to officially debut. Buddy Murphy should saunter in for a match. Rusev and Nakamura should come back ASAP. But most of all, and it's even a little hard for me to believe it, Bray Wyatt has got to actually get back in the fucking ring. Firefly Fun House is bizarre and funny and gross and stupid and weird and silly but I need to see what this new version of him is in the ring. Is he going to be a heel? Is he going to be a babyface? Is he going to be a tweener? Get him in the ring with an opponent, and let's get going with this! It's gone on long enough. Get all these unused or underused talents in the ring and have them do what Vince is actually paying them to do.
Okay, so that's it for this non-recap of this week in the main roster shows! I'm hoping I'll have something about NXT and NXT UK over the weekend. I'm thinking about changing over to a YouTube channel for some of this, but we'll see. For right now, I'm going to stick with this and hope that I get my point across and that someone out there somewhere is reading this and thinking, "Well, this guy's a fucking weirdo, but he's got some valid points".
Until next time, kids...
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