Agreed with Punk and Bryan. I'm intrigued with how they are going to be in the ring, especially Punk knowing he has 7 years of ring rust (although it could help that he did that MMA training for the few years he was focused on that venture). I'm more intrigued with whether he can continue providing fantastic promos, he's got a lot riding on his shoulders and a lot to prove to the viewers. As Corny and Last said in their Experience segment, they have full faith in Punk doing great work... it's all on AEW to not let things go south. For Bryan I worry that he will do too much in the ring and jeopardize his health. I really don't want to hear about someone like him pulling a stunt or have an opponent botch a move that becomes the career ender (or worse). Speaking of Cena... how much ring credibility do you all think he has lost now? He definitely doesn't hold the Superman power anymore, I can't even think of the last time he won a match and it feels like the last few major appearances he has had they have been one sided squash matches and now Lesner destroyed him again to go back to his acting career. When he comes back, they will have to hit the repeat button and have him question his worth and to "Never Give Up: Part 2".
I don't know anything about Lesnar squashing Cena this weekend (I do not follow WWE anymore: was it a match or did he just come down and attack him?), but I wouldn't worry about Punk and promos. Being a great talker is not something that goes away. I did notice how much gray he has on his face now, haha. I expect Bryan to do more mat wrestling again like he did in his pre-WWE days.
Everyone knowledgeable in wrestling knows Cena is losing matches because he is being asked to put people over and being the pro he is, he’s doing it. Nothing to do with losing ring credibility or being squashed.
True, but Cena's case is a bit unique. They haven't even written him in to win a couple of side bouts before a major face off to put someone over. It's gotten to the point where when he comes back, they may need to give him a redemption angle to work with. The guy has to win at least a few matches to look credible and become a number one contender.
Reigns had a clean win over Cena to retain the Universal Title and after the win, Lesner made his return and had a stare down with Reigns who walked away with Paul Heyman. He then did the Suplex City/F5 routine to the battered Cena, basically an easy way to write him off and head back to Hollywood.
So much for NXT focusing on young talent to feed the other two brands. They put the belt on Samoa Joe. Their PPV, as usual, topped SummerSlam in quality. No Eva Marie or Goldberg junk.
I guess this means Cross will be promoted full time to Raw and get to lose to Jeff Hardy a few more times.
The champ dropping the belt in NXT used to equal imminent promotion, but it seems that stopped being the case a while ago. Who knows at this point. Adam Cole may just have limped off into the NXT sunset.
Well, it's certainly looking like CM Punk's debut at AEW Rampage has helped the rating out (up 57% from the Rampage debut episode) with a number sitting around 1,160,000 viewers. WWE Smackdown hit 2,237,000 viewers, down 10.5% from the week prior... I wonder where those viewers went to? So it looks like Punk's debut brought back a large number of curious fans who stopped watching wrestling to see what he could do. I would imagine that they are hoping this is the new bar for viewers tuning into the program and maybe see an increase going to the PPV event in September. Heck, if the reviews are positive I may very well tune into a wrestling program for the first time in who knows how long.
Those are likely the overnight predictions, the actual ratings won't come out until today or tomorrow for Friday shows. Last week's overnights started off with Smackdown at 2.5 million which had WWE fans going crazy, then they had to eliminate all of the NFL pre-season games preemptions from that overall total and it knocked Smackdown down to 2 million by the time the real ratings came out. If there were a lot of NFL pre-season games on Fox then that could cut into that number as well. On a related note...free ice cream. CM Punk footed bill for ice cream bars at AEW Rampage
I think either way Cole is gone. We'll find out soon enough if it's to Raw, Smackdown or AEW. I need to see the Walter vs Dragonuv match.
LOL at the ice cream bars. I don't think I ever had the chance to try a WWF ice cream bar (I'm honesty not sure they even sold them in Canada).
From what I can see, NXT is going through a re-branding. It's not like they are eliminating young talent altogether (yes the purge has affected the current NXT roster hard). From the statement Nick Khan made, it is clear that they are investing in young talent in a brand new way (WWE stardards are now going to be zero indie talent filtering into their system). So basically they are going to tailor and groom kids out of high school, college, etc. to go directly to their performance centre and have no outside influence affect them from learning the wrestling business that WWE envision. It seems absolutely ridiculous but at the same time not entirely shocking. More or less a natural progression of Vince's standards being forced down the companies throat (although they clearly list HHH as the head guy in charge of the re-brand). End result is you are going to have young talent in WWE that are not allowed to create their own identity and have zero control over the ownership and development of what is provided to them.
CM Who? Greatest part of the show was how AEW sling-shotted 2.0 aka StrikeForce into the main event picture. "You want a TASTE!"
Speaking of putting talent over, I have always thought NXT should have had a gimmick when anyone who wanted to leave for RAW or Smackdown had to beat Triple H first. And if Triple H really liked you, then he would screw you week after week using DQs, count outs, faking an injury and doing anything possible to delay the rematch. And then it would be a real event when Triple H finally did the job. And the talent moving on would be super over from the start having just beat Triple H.
Tacky and kitchy maybe, but a damn good ice cream bar. I ate a bunch of them and there is absolutely nothing like them around these days. A quarter inch cookie(printed with a wrestler) a half inch slab of vanilla ice cream and a layer of wax chocolate on a stick. Mmmmmmmm. I could go for one right now!
Honestly, I like the way NXT used to do it. Their fans are far more intense and "smart" than fans of the other 2 WWE brands, so the crowd would generally know when an NXT star was doing the honors on their way out the door and up to Raw or Smackdown. They'd salute the wrestler who would often get emotional. With Asuka they didn't even bother with the doing the honors part, just let her hand over her title and receive the crowd's appreciation. Since NXT became a somewhat equal brand, with established talent (Finn Balor and Ember Moon, for example) returning there, it's become a total guessing game when and if talent will "move up". The "vanilla midgets", however over they are, don't seem to want to go and don't seem wanted on the other two brands anyway.
who is the last long term main event level talent WWE did that with? somewhat cena ? he was even in indies prior for a short time
Braun Strowman and Roman Reigns, they have pretty much been exclusive in the WWE system from day one. But it makes more sense when you look at the bigger picture, WWE are in their own little world and want to control every bit of the experience humanly possible. They probably think it will be easier to pick someone off the street who has good credentials in sports and brand that person an opportunity to get into sports entertainment rather than re-educating someone on the indie circuit to conform to WWE standards. I'm laughing at it a bit because it reminds me of a program that was started up in Canada by a banking company called RBC called "Training Ground". They basically scout for talent aged 14-25 who are good at any sport, put them through a rigorous benchmark test and decide what sport they would be good at to represent the company at the Olympics and support them through the process (one of those prospects won a Gold Medal at the Tokyo games for women's track cycling). It sounds like WWE are going to follow that exact same method. Don't know how well it is going to work out for them but it sure gives other companies like AEW to continue fishing talent out of the indie circuits. I can't imagine them getting NXT back up and running quickly if they are starting from the ground up, it would have to take a few years I would think to train new recruits.
If NXT is going to stop being the WWE's version of an indy promotion and become an actual training ground for green wrestlers, then take it off TV. They should visit the New Japan Dojo's in Tokyo and L.A. and take notes on how to train, develop and start out people from scratch. They are constantly turning out top level wrestlers. Once they are trained they are opening match wrestlers who wear black tights and boots and they just do basic moves until they have them down perfectly. After a year or two of opening matches, they send them away to the US, the UK or Mexico for a year to develop their personality and learn a new style. After that they come back to Japan and ready for a new name and gimmick.
Those were amazing. There wasn't an ice cream bar like it at the time. When they stopped making them, I was surprised another company didn't buy it and continue them but without the wrestling label attached to it.
That would be awesome, but highly doubtful WWE would follow an approach like that. They only seem to be interested in the "entertainment" side of the sports entertainment label. They seem to be pretty content with breeding a new generation of actors to go off to Hollywood and boast about the greatness of the WWE. If they were concerned with actual wrestling they wouldn't have someone like Alexa Bliss in the company using telepathy and a bloody doll as a weapon against opponents.
