andrew8798
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Post by andrew8798 on Sept 5, 2015 20:34:17 GMT -5
Didn't help that he ran from the Nexus Losing to Triple H at Mania after a worthless title reign that ended a month earlier did him in way before that. Also getting beat up by HHH hurt him too
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Post by Some Guy on Sept 5, 2015 20:36:05 GMT -5
There is a pretty significant pattern of Triple H and Cena being involved in nearly all of these, with a cameo here and there by Taker.
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andrew8798
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Post by andrew8798 on Sept 5, 2015 20:37:12 GMT -5
And people believe HHH will be better once Vince is gone lol
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Post by idislikeeverything on Sept 5, 2015 20:41:41 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2015 20:48:36 GMT -5
And people believe HHH will be better once Vince is gone lol As an on-screen character, he's pretty terrible. But in terms of scouting talents, developing talents and booking talents? I think he's a much better fit for this day and age.
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andrew8798
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Post by andrew8798 on Sept 5, 2015 20:52:20 GMT -5
We see how he deal with USA
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Emmet Russell
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Post by Emmet Russell on Sept 5, 2015 20:52:54 GMT -5
Ryback should have been a massive top level star by now and it could've happened if they put the title on him at Hell in a Cell.
Punk could've won it back in the TLC match because Ryback didn't need to get pinned and they could've done the Shield interference leading to that feud heading into Wrestlemania.
Instead he was pinned repeatedly, turned into a heel, lost to Cena for months on end and found himself in a tag team with Curtis Axel as two of the failed Paul Heyman guys.
He's getting back on track now, but they really missed the boat on capitalizing on his popularity at its peak.
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Post by psychokiller on Sept 5, 2015 22:46:32 GMT -5
Booker T at Mania 19. Booker should have won the title, no excuses for that.
Goldberg should have won the title at SummerSlam 2003. When he won it the next PPV, it didn't have anywhere the same impact it could have had he won it at SummerSlam.
They definitely dropped the ball with MVP when they turned him face. He was one of the best heels in the company in 2007, than he turns into some awful face character that lost every match. Than he finally had enough & asked for his release.
Vader in 1996. Vader should have been a main eventer & won the title, not some mid-carder that lost most of his important matches.
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Urethra Franklin
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Post by Urethra Franklin on Sept 5, 2015 23:02:12 GMT -5
Rob Van Dam in 2001. You can't really say it for Bryan because WWE actually did main event him at WM, and Punk certainly had a long title run as well (even if the execution was somewhat botched). RVD though? During the Invasion the guy was outpopping The Rock at various points and in a matter of 2 months became massively, crazy over. Instead of having him go where the booking seemed to be going, namely quitting the Alliance and beating Austin for the title, he lost at No Mercy 2001 and then after the Invasion ended he was semi depushed into the IC division. I will still say today that Van Dam should have been the top star in the company during the dark post Attitude Era/pre Cena/Batista era of WWE (2002-04). I was at the SD taping back in 2001 when Austin vowed to beat and make an example of the next person who came into the Alliance locker room and it ended up being RVD. The pop that RVD got that night in Toronto was INSANE. The place lost its shit for him. He looked like a surefire superstar and two months later, nothing.
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Post by Captain Stud Muffin (BLM) on Sept 5, 2015 23:14:50 GMT -5
Currently Enzo and Big Cass not winning the tag belts in Brooklyn. I know this is the strike while the iron hot and not to get off topic but just like Finn IMO they don't need the belt for their act. However, I agree with you and I have stated before in threads I think they are going to give them the belts and call them up essentially giving them the angle who's the better tag team with whoever is champs at that moment.
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Post by benstudd on Sept 5, 2015 23:18:17 GMT -5
Just thought about another one: Matt Hardy. When he was on Smackdown as Matt Version 1.
Or when there was this whole internet hooplah after he had been fired cause of the whole Lita with Edge situation. The second time he was red hot when he came out of the crowd and even confronted Vince. Crowd was behind him. He was mega over. But it's as if they only brought him back to job to Edge.
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Post by mysterydriver on Sept 5, 2015 23:32:20 GMT -5
Here's a random one, Nunzio on the ECW revival. He had a good solid month where he would appear and lose to guys but was so charismatic he was unintentionally becoming the Mikey Whipwreck of the reboot where people were actually recognizing and cheering him. He even had a special Christmas episode where he dressed as Santa, threw out toys, got a chant, and then was destroyed by...I want to say Kevin Thorn. Then...he just kind of faded away and Cena started using the Sicilian Slice.
There was the time with Legacy where Orton did something so heelish that it 'froze' Cody Rhodes on whether or not he should continue or fight back against Orton and the crowd ate it up (Cody has such great ring acting) and began chanting "Cody! Cody! Cody!" but the WWE wasn't ready to break up Legacy yet (And apparently wanted Randy to be the face when it happened) so they edited the replays to be chants for Cena.
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Post by An Old Villain on Sept 5, 2015 23:43:21 GMT -5
Young rapper Cena should have gone over Lesnar for the title in 2003.
I feel dirty for typing that.
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Jonathan Michaels
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Here since TNA was still kinda okay
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Post by Jonathan Michaels on Sept 6, 2015 0:00:14 GMT -5
Santino.
Think of how much the crowd was behind him at the Rumble in 2011 and even more so in the Chamber match the next year.
Hell, I remember the Raw after Mania when he was forced to put the U.S. Title up against Ziggler and Swagger in that triple threat and he managed to beat them, new had momentum even then and they blew it.
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Post by CATCH_US IS the Conversation on Sept 6, 2015 0:08:01 GMT -5
Young rapper Cena should have gone over Lesnar for the title in 2003. I feel dirty for typing that. Heel rapper Cena was basically a glorified lower carder who had the benefit of the brand split keeping half the top stars from eating up all the TV time. It wasn't until he turned face that we were supposed to "take him seriously".
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Post by Rolent Tex on Sept 6, 2015 0:34:14 GMT -5
Mizdow. Dude was crazy over and they waited... and waited.... and waited to do the Miz feud, and instead of wrestling at WM, they throw them both in the Andre Battle Royal... And don't even have Mixdow win! The freaking blow off to the feud was a match on Raw for the Miz gimmick and it didn't even go 10 minutes and ended with Summer Rae costing Mizdow the win. Next he gets that obnoxious copycat gimmick for a few weeks before turning into Mandow and now he's nowhere to be seen. Granted I think he's absolutely nothing special in the ring, but he works every shit gimmick he gets and got one wayyyy over. He should have at least gotten an IC Title feud by now. Mizdow finally having enough of Miz and kicking his ass should have been his star making moment. Instead, he loses and runs off to do bad Macho Man impressions. How about Diamond Dallas Page? Listen to that pop when he unmasks. Then he stalks Taker's wife, gets pinned by Taker's wife and then he and his Jersey Triad buddy Kanyon get treated like glorified jobbers by the Brothers of Destruction.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Sept 6, 2015 1:29:14 GMT -5
The thing that fascinates me is that a whole bunch of these (mostly Barrett, Punk, Ryback, Wyatt, Rusev, Owens) are likely based around "Should have beaten Cena in this match, but didn't". And it kind of gets me thinking of what would have happened if they all DID beat him (or in Punk and Owens's case, definitively won the feud). Would there have been a situation of diminishing returns over the years by virtue of essentially turning your top star into a glorified jobber for all these guys in the matches that count? Would there have been a massive logjam at the top of the card, forcing a lot of them back down anyway? Not all of them can be World Champion or the #1 Contender at the same time. How would it affected guys who rose up in other ways? Like, if someone like Ryback was firmly established as a main event face, would there have been any need for pushing Bryan? Well ideally, you would have a top star who can sometimes take breaks from being at the utmost top of the card, developing other main events, and then you can in turn have them put over other people. Someone like Punk would have been worth a lot more to the product had he a) actually main evented shows that Cena didn't miss due to injury b) met the end of his year-long title reign with a loss to somebody who would have benefited from it, as opposed to The Rock. Rather than just trying to farm diminishing returns on the investment in John Cena, there could be a wider range of people who are in prominent positions and career-making losses/matches could be a little more spread out as opposed to it only being Cena at the top. In terms of top full-time heels, there is a really steep drop off after Seth Rollins, because every heel not at the bottom of the card has been fed to Cena. Every person who got hot and had the crowd behind them had the heat sucked out of them by a loss to Cena. Not everybody needed to be a main eventer, but they definitely needed to not lose the only match ever given a shred of importance, because John Cena is the only person who they put a year-round effort into having something to do that is presented as "mattering". If more people mattered, he wouldn't have to be the persistent gatekeeper at the end of everyone's stopped push. But not all of them just needed wins over Cena. Punk needed to just not play second stringer to him during the face portion of his title reign; he and Bryan fought for the WWE title in a match that went on third to last at Over The Limit, while the actual main event was Cena in a comedy match against Laurinaitis. He never even got to end the night on the B PPVs, and it hurt him because he always felt like the number two guy even during a lengthy title reign. They then did very little with him after he lost the belt; lost to Taker, lost to Lesnar, beat up Rybaxel a bunch, and then got fed up and left. After setting an unprecedented record-long reign for the modern era, he got kicked down the card hard. Ryback was squandered before he even feuded with Cena; they had a guy who had gotten over and was hot, and through screwy finish after screwy finish had him lose to Punk because they didn't mean to get him over, but him getting over ruined their Wrestlemania plans so they did nothing with him. Then Ryback got jobbed out to Mark Henry at Wrestlemania for reasons so baffling that I have to believe it was spite for getting too over by accident. Barrett is a guy who has had his legs cut out from under him every time he gets even a little over. It's repeatedly throwing water onto the iron because it's heating up and they want it to stop. Nexus is a bomb, The Corre is a bomb, he goes through several gimmicks and repackagings that go nowhere, including the months of warrior poet fight club vignettes hyping his return. Bad News Barrett had him monstrously over, but they didn't want him to be so they told him to stop doing all the things people liked, then they made him King of the Ring and let him wallow in shit storylines against R-Truth. Wyatt's damage in the Cena feud wasn't from losing to Cena anywhere near as much as it was the way Cena buried his gimmick and crapped all over him. He made Jimmy Buffet jokes and only actually sold the headgames Wyatt tried playing two or three weeks intercut throughout their three-PPV feud. Then he, too, got shunted down the card and has done very little of note ever since, undermining his gimmick and making him feel like he was mostly intended to be a Wrestlemania snack for John Cena with no plans for what would come afterward. Someone like Cesaro gets damaged without even feuding with Cena. They undercut his overness, removed all of his big spots that popped the crowd, stuck him with a mouthpiece who by and large ignored his presence, and then Vince had the f***ing gall to complain about he never connected with the audience. A lot of the times, it isn't necessarily that they lost to John Cena, even if in a lot of cases it would have been a major moment that made their careers had they actually won that feud. It's more that they're seen as not worth bothering with once they've been run through by John Cena, and join the shuffling masses of people who the powers that be don't want over and who just fill time. If the office doesn't want you to get over then they'll cut your legs out from under you and sabotage you at every step they have to. And the last step in that is usually getting fed to Cena, which is why he's seen as the focal point for a lot of it.
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Post by alexwrightspackage on Sept 6, 2015 2:25:50 GMT -5
Does Adam Rose count, post ESPN documentary?
I'd say otherwise not giving Booker the WM win and Cesaro after the ATGMBR (Paul Heyman Guy Cesaro could've been fun).
Also, I would've loved a Mr. Perfect world champion run.
Something I thought about over the years...Vince v HHH for Armageddon after HHH ruined the wedding. I know he kinda sucks, but why wasn't Test the one to go against HHH? Everything (including the result) could've been the same, but nothing wrong with feeding Test there then maybe McMahon later at the Rumble or something.
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Madagascar Fred
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Post by Madagascar Fred on Sept 6, 2015 2:33:55 GMT -5
For me personally the most frustrating time was summer/fall 2001
I LOVED face Angle and kinda-face RVD, the total destruction of their characters (retarded Angle heel turn, RVD getting downgraded to the midcard, whole status quo reinstated at/after Survivor Series) was a big part of me tuning off for over a year
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Post by Mid-Carder on Sept 6, 2015 2:59:42 GMT -5
I think it's very harsh to put the blame on Cena for a lot of this, despite the fact his name keeps coming up. I think as top face, Cena winning is usually the right business move.
Cena isn't responsible for how WWE books and treats these guys before and after their match.
edit: as neither the top face nor the guy drawing the fans, Triple H is an entirely different matter
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