CM Punk; WWE Has Me Hooked Again (2012 Official Pro Wrestling Thread)

[brettac1]

They seem to have forgotten how to sell PPV's, and it shows in the buyrates.

[PrinceEatMeat]

kind of a blah final raw before wrestlemania. adding boker t as the final member of team teddy. will be interesting to see who replaces christain since he was ruled out.

 

Laurinaitis announced on twitter right after Christian was ruled out that it was McIntyre. And McIntyre was also out there with Team Johnny later on in Raw, so it should've been obvious. But yeah, Raw sucked. Too many video packages, the wrestling sucked. Didn't really do much to sell Wrestlemania. HHH and Taker didn't even appear. Pretty lame. The Rock/Cena promo at the end was pretty good though.

[patrickgpe]

kind of a blah final raw before wrestlemania. adding boker t as the final member of team teddy. will be interesting to see who replaces christain since he was ruled out.

 

Laurinaitis announced on twitter right after Christian was ruled out that it was McIntyre. And McIntyre was also out there with Team Johnny later on in Raw, so it should've been obvious. But yeah, Raw sucked. Too many video packages, the wrestling sucked. Didn't really do much to sell Wrestlemania. HHH and Taker didn't even appear. Pretty lame. The Rock/Cena promo at the end was pretty good though.

 

i was setting my fantasy baseball draft order up during raw so i wasn't paying full attention, christian must be hurt legitimately because mcintyre can't get me too excited.

[patrickgpe]

maybe this is why the great khali is on team teddy

 

http://www.sescoops.com/wrestling-news/wwe/wwe-star-looking-to-retire-soon-wwe-highlights-goldberg/

[PrinceEatMeat]

Yeah, probably pretty easy to not notice McIntyre, lol. As far Christian, his ankle isn't fully healed yet. Apparently they thought he'd be ready when they added him to the team.

[PrinceEatMeat]

maybe this is why the great khali is on team teddy

 

http://www.sescoops.com/wrestling-news/wwe/wwe-star-looking-to-retire-soon-wwe-highlights-goldberg/

 

Pretty sure that is referring to Mark Henry. He has said recently that he wants to finish up when his deal expires this year, and pursue acting possibly. Pretty sure Khali is only back for a short time though, so he'll probably be gone at some point too.

[brettac1]

Ratings were way down again. Awesome. The only way they quit bringing old guys back is if they quit making money on them.

[thablingster]

I definitely thought it was a blah RAW. The closing Rock-Cena segment seemed to lack any type of intrigue for me.

 

I had a feeling Booker would get the last spot on Team Teddy when he was slated to do commentary randomly. The best moment of the night was "Miz, welcome to Team Teddy ... Johnny!"

 

I'm sure they'll add some random unannounced filler matches for WM, like Brodius may get a squash. I wouldn't be surprised to see some random tag match with Primo and Epico facing Camacho and Hunico or something, either.

 

I'm not really that excited for WrestleMania this year, the card just seems kind of meh. The 12-man tag is really where a lot of the guys who I'd rather see go 10-15 minutes are. Maybe SmackDown will do a better job churning it up.

[brettac1]

I'm personally looking forward to it being over with. I'm not really excited about anything on the card. Punk and Jericho will have a decent match, but I didn't care for the build at all aside from the one week they had the face to face promo battle. They do so much garbage on the show that nothing will get the time it should, though Trips and Taker will get more than they should because that's the way Trips operates. I can't see Rock and Cena being anything more than 3 stars and I am not looking forward to them getting 30 minutes or more.

[PrinceEatMeat]

There's no way anything will get added to the card. Rock/Cena and HHH/Taker alone will take up a lot of the show. Especially if you include backstage stuff with them, videos, interviews, entrances, etc. That'll take up a ton of time. Then Jericho/Punk and Sheamus/Bryan will get a good amount of time too. That will leave little time for the other 4 matches. The Divas match will be like 2-3 mins, the Teddy/Johnny match will be like 5-6, and the Rhodes/Show and Orton/Kane matches will both be 8-10 mins max if that. I checked and last year's show had 1:42:51 of in-ring time. The top 4 matches this year may get almost that alone. We all know HHH/Taker will be at least 30 mins, and if the other 3 are 20 on average, that's 1:30 right there.

[brettac1]

Don't forget all the backstage "comedy" segments.

[thablingster]

I didn't even think of the Orton/Kane or Divas match as they were both so irrelevant to me, ha.

 

Yeah, I am sure there will be random celebrity cameos and other "comedy" stuff going on.

[PrinceEatMeat]

Yeah, which is why the actually amount of in-ring time will be limited as I said. I don't see a lot of time being left over after the top 4 matches. I have a feeling that none of the other 4 will be very long at all.

[brettac1]

I am catching up on the last three weeks of ROH TV. What a great show. They have me sold on buying their two events this weekend. I'm doing a 14 team fantasy draft during Mania and I'm not regretting it at this point. I can just download it and fast forward through all the crap on Monday before Raw.

[brwrsfan]

I am catching up on the last three weeks of ROH TV. What a great show. They have me sold on buying their two events this weekend. I'm doing a 14 team fantasy draft during Mania and I'm not regretting it at this point. I can just download it and fast forward through all the crap on Monday before Raw.

 

How exactly does one go about downloading it? Is that free? I have 3 buddies I normally would order this with and all 3 are traveling for work on Sunday so I likely won't be watching it this year for the first time in a long time. Not really all that disappointed either...says a lot about the crappiness the WWE is throwing out there these days.

[brettac1]

It is free, though not exactly legal. Similar to watching a live stream but in better quality.

[PrinceEatMeat]

Yeah, I either watch live streams or download every WWE PPV, except WrestleMania. I always have my friends over, and we order that, splitting the cost. Mainly because WrestleMania is usually the only PPV worth paying for, and even then it doesn't cost me a lot because it's a shared cost. Although, sometimes WrestleMania doesn't end up being the best PPV of the year sadly.

[brettac1]

The match of the year just happened in the main event of the ROH show this afternoon with Elgin and Richards. Wow.

[brettac1]

If Lesnar re-signing is mainly to screw the finish of the main event tomorrow, that sucks. Meltzer says he will work "more than Taker and less than Goldberg", so I assume that means Summerslam, Survivor Series, Rumble, and Mania 29. Would seem that he would be involved in the match for next Mania that has been rumored to get announced on Raw this Monday. Not that I don't find Rock/Lesnar to be a good match, but I'd hate for Rock's loss tomorrow to not just be a clean job in the middle of the ring.

[PrinceEatMeat]

I agree. Anyone, including Lesnar, interfering in the main event would be incredibly stupid and cheapen a match that they spent an entire year building. There's also the possibility he interferes in the HHH/Taker match though, as it's long been rumored that he would return to face Taker at WrestleMania. Maybe he comes in and screws HHH, and follows up by saying he wants to be the one to end the streak. Taker accepts, and go from there. Then he could feud with someone else in between now and WrestleMania 29. But as you said, the only other option I see is The Rock. But with the rumors that he will face Cena again, I'm not sure I see that happening. Guess we gotta wait and see.

[PrinceEatMeat]

I thought about it, and another possibility if that after either Cena or Rock win, doesn't really matter who, Brock comes out and attacks them. Then the next night on Raw he says Rock/Cena has to beat him before they can proclaim themselves the best. It fits in well, since neither fared well against Lesnar in the past. So that's another option that would also avoid having interference in the match.

[brettac1]

I'd rather see him just call out Taker on Monday if that is who he works with. Or when Taker is celebrating his win, Lesnar slides under the ropes and hits him with an F-5 and stands in the middle of the ring looking like a crazy dude. I guess the moral of the story for me is that I don't want interference at all, especially in the two big matches.

[BrewCrewForever]

Yeah, I want to see Lesnar attack someone after a match is finished. That would be best.

[jerichoholicninja]

I still maintain anyone who interferes in the Cena/Rock match immediately becomes the biggest heel in the company. Do you think Vince really cares about "ruining" a match that's been one year in the making? He's made his money come 7pm tonight. "Ruining" that match tonight is just setting up another big buyrate in the future.

[brettac1]

I don't think he should ever be counting his eggs before they hatch as far as getting a big buyrate on any show without the Mania brand on it. No one buys the shows and no one watches the TV, except Mania. Buyrates for every other PPV over the past year were down quite dramatically, aside from Summerslam (which was up slightly) and MITB (which popped a nice number thanks to Punk being hot). Survivor Series flopped big time with Rock on it, which should be a good indicator for this show. They just had their lowest rated Raw since February 13th. I'm thinking Dewayne isn't as big of a draw as they thought he was and that they burned out all the novelty there was to having him back by having him work in November (teamed with Cena, no less) and have him do his tired, played out cliches and chants on several Raws in a row to diminishing returns. He popped a number at Mania last year because he hadn't been on in seven years but it's gone now.

 

Then, underneath you have the Taker/HHH match which they did last year. This time it has a fence around it. Great. Punk/Jericho will be OK (hopefully it opens the show so it doesn't get time cut). Sheamus/Danielson has zero heat to it as a result of them doing nothing with Sheamus post-Rumble, unfortunately. I was very high on his potential coming off of that show. I loved his win. Then he proceeds to come out and cut the same promo every week and not work at all at the Chamber, where he should have squashed someone. Bryan should keep the belt at this point, I believe, but what a waste of the Rumble that would be. Rhodes and Big Show hopefully serves the purpose of getting the IC belt off of Cody and allow him to move up the card, and has been a good source of laughs thanks to the video packages. It's going to be probably a five minute match, though. The Divas match with the woman from Extra (Access Hollywood?)... who cares? The 12 man match is going to do nothing but allow guys like Ziggler to at least get a payday. And Orton vs Kane... again, who cares?

 

Plus the show is $65. That is ridiculous. It just shows how brazen Vince is when it comes to robbing the marks blind. The product is cold, the buyrates are dropping, etc. - you would think they would change the business model and drop the price. Instead, it's like "we have 150 K marks that will buy any garbage we throw out there, so screw it". This show is not worth that money.

 

Personally, I hope this show bombs and they actually feel scared enough to make some changes to the product.