Official WWE/TNA Wrestling Thread

A very early buy projection is that WM28 did a 1.9 million buy rating. For comparison sake WM27 did just over 1 million (the WWE was hoping for a 1.5 buy for WM this year). So yes those unhappy wrestlers could shut up now as the figure was no doubt because of The Rock/Cena match. The WWE ain't getting 1.9 buy for a Jericho/Punk or Undertaker/Triple H as the main event.

 

So rough estimate they raked in around 121 million in PPV dollars. It's good to be Vince McMahon. There's no denying half of those buys were because of Rock/Cena.

 

And that's not even factoring in the actual gate, merchandise sales, advertising, and all the money they made at Axxcess this weekend too. They probably made close to 300 million if not more in just 3 days.

 

Agreed, but find it funny because they were much better matches IMO. My friend from work was there and he actually agreed heavily that Cena/Rock was the third best of the night, and said the crowd was way more into HHH vs Taker as it was happening.

He also was at Raw, and said everyone in the arena who was able to see it started laughing at Jericho when he slipped. Funny because I was able to tell him things he couldn't see live and he told me things I couldn't hear/see on TV.

 

Brock is apparently getting a guaranteed 5 million dollar 1 year deal from the WWE, which would be one of biggest, if not the biggest contracts ever signed.

Also the rumored early WM29 matches (it's almost silly even to speculate so far in advance) are Brock/Rock for the WWE Title, CM Punk vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin and Undertaker vs. John Cena. All of those matches obviously make sense and I would approve of all of them.

 

now would they let cena take undertakers record?

 

Nope. No one is beating The Undertaker at WM ever. It would be them flushing money down the toilet. You keep the streak alive because that's one of the major selling points of WM now.

Plus what would be the benefit of Cena beating The Undertaker? It's not like Cena needs the rub to help him get over.

 

pissing off ray finkle would be reason enough for me. And every other cena hater. Imagine? People would hate cena after that.

 

Why the hell would Cena and Undertaker have a match? That makes no sense to me. Undertakes doesn't need another match after this last HIAC match.

 

Well, now that WWE can rest knowing that you approve, they can move forward.

I'm..kind of over The Rock. I get what he brings to the business, and this year was better for him being in it. But he will lose a lot of steam if he sticks around.

Undertaker should retire. I never want to see him wrestle again. Have him go into the Hall at WM 30 and be done with it. 20-0 is a perfect send off. Don't let him ruin it like Ric Flair did with his.

As for next year, it is hard to predict, but I really think, outside of Brock (whose diverticulitis could flare up at any time and kill his match at WM), there needs to be an emphasis on the next generation. Cena will be there, as will Orton since they are the flag bearers. But if Punk, Danielson, Ziggler, Kofi, Miz, Swagger and other younger guys aren't near or in the main event scene, than WWE has a major problem on their hands.

I save Austin's match until they go to Texas. A texas crowd for Punk-Austin with Punk as the obvious heel? Count me in.

For next year in New Jersey, I say you have Mick Foley headline the HOF. Hometown boy makes good and caps off his legendary career back at home. Sounds good to me.

 

It wouldn't piss me off if Cena ended the streak. It would just be bad business.

Because it's one of the few dream matches left. Cena and Undertaker wrestled each other I believe only once in 2003. People would be interested in that.

 

Well the main difference between The Undertaker and Flair is that The Undertaker only wrestles once a year now and when he does he puts on a hell of a match. Flair is whoring himself out there night after night with his old man body not even being able to do his signature moves anymore like his turnbuckle flip. I agree to a certain extent that he should retire but part of says that if the guy can still manage to put on good matches what's the harm putting him out there once a year? Again if The Undertaker never wrestles again it's fine with me but if he is, certainly a Cena/Undertaker match would be interesting.

As for Austin's match until they go to Texas, I believe the rumor is WM30 will be in Texas so yes that makes the most sense to hold back on that, especially if you're getting Brock/Rock at WM29 it would take away from Austin's return to the ring.

 

John Cena is my favorite wrestler.

 

Pretty good article just posted on CNN.com about the feud between Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler in Memphis.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/07/us/kaufman-lawler-wrestling-match/index.html

It did occur to me that I've never once heard Lawler mention that feud on WWE television. It seems strange since that helped him achieve a certain level of fame outside of Memphis. It also says at the end of that story that Lawler declined to comment.

 

Lawler mentioned it once while they were filming the "Man On The Moon" movie but it was just a passing comment and it had more to do with Jim Carrey. Of course the main reason why Lawler never mentioned it on WWE TV is because of the old WWE rule where if it didn't happen in the WWE, it didn't happen at all.

 

It's just like....there will be no topping what he did this year. There is no reason to ever have another match. 20-0 is fine and he just needs to leave it alone now.

I missed Smackdown did anything of interest happen?


Oh also good read.

 

[video=youtube;dXPT8qBM6Gs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXPT8qBM6Gs[/video]

 

AJ needs acting lessons.

 

They should have had AJ kick him in the nuts from behind

My prediction: Bryan gets his rematch and AJ comes out to try and help him, but ends up costing him the match.

 

they all do... Eve is terrible...

 

Yeah Eve is especially bad. She can't even work the crowd. Last Monday the crowd totally threw her off of her scripted promo.

 

LOL Could Cena have looked LESS like he was trying to fight that F5?

 

Cena gets his first ever credit from me. That Lesnar brawl was pretty good, especially the blood.

 

Yeah WWE make Ryder lay down for Del Rio now. Vince can go lube up a battle mace and shove it in his F'ing ***

 

3 stooges? get this off my tv.

 

Kane agrees.

Did nothing for his character though. A real badass doesn't waste his time on the three stooges

So did that Lesnar punch really connect? If not it was the best fake punch ever.

 

It had to have landed, there's no way the WWE would have let Cena or anyone other than Triple H or The Undertaker bleed on TV now that they're PG.

 

His lip looked split open in the Otunga match so it's probably real. Someone needs to tell Lesnar this isn't UFC.

 

That split lip probably did wonders for the build up though.

 

I thought the overall DIRECTION of things was great tonight all around, the matches were pretty bad though.

 

Lesnar's punch is/was legit. Hard transition back to pulling punches to 3/4 speed/power after being in MMA. I remember I competed in an MMA tournament and ultimately lost in the semis to an absolute stud of an amateur wrestler who...literally hit me so hard in the stomach with his shoulder as he shot in on me, that I ripped a tremendous fart in the middle of the fight. We were both laughing histerically when his hand was raised in victory.

Anyhow, I suggested he get into pro wrestling since...MMA was sort of a dead end (whoops). He did and a couple of weeks later...he threw a punch that put my tooth through my lip.

The bottom line is that when you are a trained fighter...it is hard to turn off. The entire Ken Shamrock "snapping" character was based off of him actually snapping during a PPV and completely annihilating Davey Boy Smith after Davey shoved a the dog food a little too hard in Ken's face. Brock just went a little too hard on Cena, but I doubt Cena cares too much, as long as it was a one time thing and not chronic.

As for tonight, the Cena-Brock stuff was great, although I think the pull apart should have happened at the end of RAW, but maybe that would be a little too cliche. And I liked where the Punk-Jericho stuff WAS going, until Punk got a little too emotional. But whatever, they are working with what they got.

Three Stooges stuff sucked, but Sasso tries his hardest and is a fan of performing and wrestling, so the effort is appreciated by me.

Also, I don't give two craps about Zach Ryder, so I am okay with him getting squashed. At this point, given Edge's HOF speech, it might make sense to run something with Christian where maybe Christian starts watching Ryder's matches from the stage. Ryder continues to lose, Christian shakes his head in disgust and walks off.

Eventually, Christian does an intervention, telling Ryder that he is an embarrassment to Edge and Christian and challenges him to a fight. Edge corners Ryder but turns on him "for his own good." They can explain that Edge/Christian liked to have fun when they went out there too (with the five second poses, etc.) but when it came down to business, they got it done. Eventually Ryder becomes more serious of a character and maybe then...I would give a damn.

Daniel Bryan is on fire right now. The WWE would be dumb to not put the full court marketing press behind him right now.

Oh, and Dean Ambrose is coming...

 

I love the Funkasaurus. I must own that shirt, oh...and the women...

 

I'm actually surprised that Bryan didn't even get mentioned on RAW last night.

By the way his YES shirt is already on back order and actually was 30 minutes after Bryan tweeted it was available on Friday. Only the WWE can screw this sure thing up.

 

In a move that makes zero sense, the WWE is going to be releasing a Zack Ryder DVD over the summer. My question is why or how? He only has like one match where he won (his US title match vs. Ziggler). There's no chance this thing doesn't bomb and I like Ryder and all but he doesn't have enough content to get his own DVD (unless they're just going to put his YouTube videos on it which would be kind of dumb and pointless) and the WWE is slowly making people care nothing for the guy. The WWE does some funny things sometimes.

 

So... step 1) give a guy a decent push

step 2) wait for him to get over with the crowd

step 3) bury his character and turn him into a complete idiot

step 4) release DVD and wait for profits to roll in!!

 

Actually it went more like this:

1) Have the guy debut as a member of a future HOFer's stable
2) Give him the tag team titles
3) Have him lose the tag team titles
4) Ignore him
5) Forget he's still part of the company
6) The guy starts a YouTube Channel with hopes it will get him over so he won't be fired during the WWE's year roster crunch release
7) Gets over on the internet with his videos
8) Have the WWE continue to ignore him
9) Fans continue to want to see the guy get a push
10) WWE starts making merchandise for him
11) WWE continues to refuse to push him
12) WWE starts to give him cameos on TV
13) WWE gives him a match here or there on TV
14) Give continues to get super over with the crowd and his merchandise continues to be a hot seller
15) WWE refuses to give the guy a title match at a major PPV in his hometown, the crowd totally pisses on the match they wanted to see him in and cheer for him during the whole match
16) WWE sends him out AFTER the match and the fans go nuts
17) WWE continues to make more merchandise for the guy
18) WWE finally lets him win the US title on a PPV
19) RAW closes the year with him and the two world champs celebrating their titles
20) WWE takes his YouTube show and puts it on their YouTube channel
21) WWE decides to let a returning veteran who hasn't been over or a draw with the company for 10 plus years continue to beat the guy up on TV week after week
22) WWE gives him an on air girlfriend
23) WWE has Kane badly injury him and take him off TV and a major PPV
24) Guy returns only to get beat up again by Kane
25) Guy comes back in wheelchair and loses his girlfriend to one of his on air friends
26) Guy gets beat up by Kane again
27) Girlfriend dumps him and admits she was using him
28) Guy comes back from "injuries" and does nothing for awhile
29) Former girlfriend kisses him and he thinks they're dating again
30) Guy loses
31) Loses again
32) And again
33) WWE puts him in a WM match
34) He loses that WM match when his ex-girlfriend turned re-girlfriend turns on him AGAIN
35) He loses on RAW
36) WWE continues to put out more merchandise
37) He loses on RAW again
38) He still hasn't gotten revenge on Kane or Eve nor has he won a single match on TV or PPV since he won the US title
39) He loses again (and doesn't even get an entrance for the match)
40) The WWE decides to give him a DVD that won't sell since he hasn't won a match since December and has been completely buried at every opportunity and once the DVD doesn't sell and the WWE milked every last dollar out of his gimmick, they will release him and claim the fans didn't buy into his character anymore.

Only the WWE can screw up a golden opportunity like that. They didn't have to do a single thing to get him over (he did everything himself) and because of that they job him out because they want to be the ones to control who the fans should be cheering for.

 

It's ridiculous. Vince prefers we cheer for someone dishonorably discharged from the Marines. I still can't get over that. As a vet myself I know how hard it actually is to get dishonorably discharged. People who were booted from the military for being fat, gay [before DADT was repealed], even 'failure to adapt' chapters are not discharged dishonorably. You have to be a real ***hole on a consistent basis for that to happen, or you have to get court martialed for a pretty serious crime. I've seen guys repeatedly get in trouble and not get discharged that way. But I digress, a Zach Ryder DVD right now is a stupid idea.

 

Hey I'm a big Ryder fan and I think the DVD is just going to be a huge flop. And you know when it does flop, Vince is going to turn around and use that as an excuse to continue the depush of Ryder. While ignoring that the Randy Orton DVD that came out last year flopped and all of their WWE "movies" starring Triple H do horrible as well.

Oh and it's nice that Dolph Ziggler is getting de-pushed now too for no reason. This was a guy coming into the year (like Ryder) red hot and really getting over as a heel with the crowd. They give him a title match with Punk at the Rumble and he hasn't won a singles match since. I realize that the main event scene is kind of crowded right now but they could at least try to think of giving Ziggler something to do.

That's the whole problem with the WWE, the consistent start and stop of pushes, that's why it's so hard for them to create new stars because of all the false starts. That's why Punk cooled down a bit in September and October because instead of keeping him as champion and a hot act they had him jobbing to Triple H and being wasted in a feud that went nowhere with Nash.