A couple of things which I like with these changes - I think the Miz needs to get into a similar feud that he has been doing with Daniel Bryan with Kurt Angle - including stealing his moves (I haven’t watch Angle so what are they?) while still using the Yes kicks he picked up in the last year leading up to an actual match between them at Wrestlemania 34.
Bray coming to Raw solves one problem I had with the Hardy Boyz being Raw tag team champs - When the Matt hardy breaks again we can definitely have the Broken Matt Vs Bray feud I want. Whatculture did a good video on why they can take their time to let the legal things settle down before they break Matt again.
Primarily it would be the Ankle-Lock and Angle Slam. This might help. However I kind of disagree. For one the personal connection is missing. The Miz and Daniel Bryan go way back. Secondly The Miz can’t really tell Kurt “why won’t you wrestle? Because the doctors won’t clear you?” because Angle has wrestled with a broken freaking neck plenty of times, not just winning his gold medal but also at Wrestlemania. It would also be a rehash, which isn’t necessarily bad but would be bad so close to his last feud.
I just want to say that I am very excited to have Zayn, Owens, Styles and Nakamura, my four favorite wrestlers in WWE, all on Smackdown. Then add in guys like Harper, Dillinger, Ziggler and Corbin this could go quite some places. I guess Orton and Rusev are okay too, and I could even see Jinder be a good performer. Perhaps a revival of the days of the Smackdown Six coming though I am not sure who the remaining two would be in that equation.
Also nice to add in Charlotte to the Women’s division and The New Day to the Tag teams. It’s unfortunate that The Miz, Bray Wyatt and Alexa Bliss are gone, but considering that most of what was passed back was enhancement talent like Slater & Rhyno, Apollo Crews and Calisto, I think the additions definitely outweigh the subtractions for Smackdown.
However, one thing displeases me about Smackdown, and that is JBL. I knew he was a shit before, but the recent revelations are kind of astonishing and I hope he gets fired, preferably into the sun, soon.
Outside of Zayn and Owens, I feel like Smackdown got the short end of the stick in the draft.
That said, Zayn is one of the few guys that I enjoyed the most on Raw. If they had just kept Dean Ambrose on SD and moved Cesaro over, I could pretty much stop watching Raw and save a few hours a week.
JBL is the worst, and I guess there were a ton of ‘Fire Bradshaw’ chants at Smackdown, and one guy was thrown out of the show for holding up a “JBL Bullied Me” sign right behind the announce table.
I could have gone to SD last night, but I was so burned out from Mania weekend that I just couldn’t bring myself to go to more wrestling. Tonight there’s even a local indy wrestling show that I go to often, but I don’t know if I can even commit to doing that just yet.
I never liked JBL when I watched wrestling when I was younger, but I always figured that was just his character. What are these recent revelations that make him so despicable?
Basically it has been known for a while that JBL is kind of a dickhead and was constantly playing “big man on campus” during his active career. This includes one incident where during a big melee in the ring at ECW One Night Stand 2005 he beat up The Blue Meanie for real, causing him to suffer a head wound that needed 12 stitches to close.
Recently professional wrestler Justin Roberts published his autobiography. In it he accuses JBL of all sorts of bullying and hazing, e.g. just throwing the luggage of other wrestlers down the street or forcing people to join the heel bus even when they are faces so they remain within JBLs grasp. He also accuses JBL of stealing Robert’s passport during a european tour, causing him all sorts of trouble. Wrestlers John Morrison (now Johnny Mundo in Lucha Underground) and Joey Mercury confirmed in interviews that they were involved. They were themselves bullied by JBL and were supposed to steal the passport, but both said they didn’t do it. Meanwhile JBL’s response to Roberts was, and this is a quote from twitter: “I didn’t take Justin Roberts passport … he was hated by the whole crew. He’s an idiot.” Which is, you know, the kind of thing a bully would say.
Almost at the same time it was revealed the the recent departure of Mauro Ranallo from WWE and the Smackdown commentary team specifically was because of bullying by JBL, including statements to the effect of “You don’t deserve this and nobody cares” when Mauro won an award for his commentary. Ranallo also suffers from clinical depression, a fact known to the entire locker-room which makes things all kinds of worse.
This whole thing now has also been picked up by several large publications that don’t cover Wrestling specifially, like Sports Illustrated and Deadspin. Meanwhile Dave Meltzer, the most respected reporter in the wrestling business, has deeemed this to be a natural outgrowth of the WWE corporate culture and Vince McMahon’s personality specifically. Meltzer said that in any other company JBL would have been fired a long time ago. Also notable is that CM Punk during his infamous Pipebomb promo was cut off right before launching into a rant over the WWE’s hypocrisy in supporting an anti-bullying campaign.
It is a shame that Miz and Maryse went to Raw - Rusev and Lana Vs Miz and Maryse could of been a fun “Who is the better couple” storyline they could do without it being something to push Total Bellas storyline forward.
Just finished watching the Talking Smack for this week and they mentioned that the superstar Shake up is continuing next week so I think this isn’t all the transfers which are going to be announced. One thing I think is likely to happen is a Stipulation for the House or Horrors match might involve bray bringing Eric Rowan over to Raw if he wins - One of the worst thing they could do with the Wyatt family as a stable is separate him from the family and having Eric on smackdown to build up the feud at payback is good but after that Eric should be on raw.
I just wish they would do something with Asuka. She is faaaar to good for the NXT roster but they will keep her their to build up ‘divas’. All Becky really needs to catch a break, she is so badly booked.
WWE has been pretty so-so since the Superstar Shakeup but it’s interesting who they are giving title shots to at the moment, particularly on Smackdown. It is also interesting that the story-lines involving the secondary titles are actually closing the shows currently.
Very much true. Plus Orton wasn’t even on SDL this week. It makes me kind of sad really. However, it is quite interesting what they are making of the situation, not only moving the secondary titles up on the card, but also throwing a curveball in regards who the contenders are for various titles. Breezango being the #1 contenders for the SDL tag-team titles, and the six-man #1 contenders match featuring Luke Harper, Erick Rowan, Sami Zayn, Dolph Ziggler, Mojo Rawley and Jinder Mahal who won the freaking thing. RAW is more conventional I guess but seeing The Golden Truth this week featured in announcing a tag-team turmoil match is kind of weird.
Also some interesting changes in character dynamics. The Singh brothers were turned heel and lost their “Bollywood Boys” moniker, acting as backup for Jinder, the Shining Stars were repackaged as “The Colons” with slightly changed music and losing the goofy timeshare-salesmen gimmick, T.J. Perkins turned heel, A.J. Styles and Charlotte were turned face because they are just too damn popular, and most recently de-facto face Shaemus and actual face Cesaro both turned heel.
I guess there is actually a lot of interesting changes, but it all seems like a lot of setup with no real payoff yet.
Jinder’s push is an obvious attempt at pushing into the Indian market, as that’s what the other promotions are doing right now.
AJ Has always been a tweener, so I didn’t really notice him being face. But you’re right.
Shaemus and Cesaro are obviously turned to turn the Hardy’s back to their Broken gimmick, I fully expect them to become champions. I do want them to stay heel though, as they are doing a great job of it.
I am so glad that Breezango is getting a push. I have enjoyed their gimmick since becoming a tag team and the Fashion police gimmick just made it even better.
The Universal and World titles have basically been put into a holding pattern since Wrestlemania and It is Strange that the neither of the main belts were on the line at payback and now we have the Intercontinental belt is the main belt on raw since Brock Lesnar isn’t going to defend the universal title it until July at “Great Balls of Fire”. I am hoping that the Randy vs Jinder match for backlash is built up well these next few weeks - The belt stealth on last weeks show was fun but I don’t think there has been enough storyline yet.
I’m pretty much done with WWE at this point. I think I got 3 matches into Payback before deciding I’d rather play Overwatch with randos. I’ve been watching more New Japan and CMLL of late. New Japan is of course available on New Japan World, but you can watch live CMLL shows on their official Youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/VideosOficialesCMLL and Thecubsfan, long time lucha enthuisiast, restreams the big Friday night shows on his account, https://www.youtube.com/user/thecubsfan
Lucha is harder to get into, at least for me, than Japanese wrestling because the style is so different. For one, almost all of the matches are 3 falls to a finish, and it looks more pre planned to my eye than Japanese and American wrestling, but the athleticism is pretty crazy.
If you want to watch two absolute madmen have a great match, here’s a Kamaitachi(now Hiromu Takahashi) vs Dragon Lee match that was part of their amazing series in CMLL over the last few years https://youtu.be/fD0Ddp1V-xg?t=195
