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Post by Lizuka #BLM on Apr 11, 2024 23:29:48 GMT -5
Everyone brings up Seth / Fiend but it's kind of forgotten how the previous year's Hell in a Cell ALSO ended in a random bullshit stoppage for no reason.
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Post by theironyuppie on Apr 11, 2024 23:36:51 GMT -5
Vince: "The Wildcard Rule is...three members of Smackdown could be invited to Raw, three members members of Smackdown could be invited...to Smackdown. You understand what I'm trying to say?" "I'm a genius!!!"
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Post by Cyno on Apr 11, 2024 23:46:10 GMT -5
This was also when the Saudi Arabia shows began. The first one was filled with some of the most awkward and obvious examples of propaganda and sportswashing ever. And then they went full speed ahead with the second show only a month after Jamal Khashoggi's assassination.
2018 was the year that killed off my WWE fandom. Even now, while I watch and enjoy WWE content now that Vince McMahon is gone (and hopefully stays gone), I still don't really think of myself as a fan of the promotion specifically, either. At least not to the same degree I was before 2018. I can't think of any years before or since (though 2019, 2020, and 2021 might've been even worse but I didn't watch them outside a handful of times, so I can't fairly judge) that was as consistently bad.
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Post by theironyuppie on Apr 12, 2024 1:34:37 GMT -5
Something else common in those years was undercutting wins so much that rather than just protecting the loser, they ended up benefiting nobody. The women's matches from the 2019 Survivor Series are good examples. Despite being the night after the amazing 2019 Wargames match, members of both sides of that match are randomly thrown into a NXT team, and while the previous night Rhea/Candice overcoming the 4-on-2 odds had indicated just why Rhea was being lined up for dethroning Shayna, in this match she's nerfed. She and Bianca (who at least gets to show more of her move set in the match) have to cheat together just to eliminate Nikki Cross, and then she only just manages to beat Sasha at the end due to repeated interference from Candice/Iyo, who just the night before had been on opposite teams. Speaking of Shayna, she beats Bayley in the (quite boring) triple-threat main-event, but then Becky beats her up after the match and poses to end the show, boasting about how "Raw is my show!!!!", which shouldn't be something to boast about as the only match Raw won that night was the tag one on the pre-show.
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Post by Lizuka #BLM on Apr 12, 2024 1:34:45 GMT -5
Looking this was actually 2017 but close enough, that time they hyped the everloving shit out of Cena being on Team SmackDown for Survivor Series then he showed up not wearing the SmackDown gear, did nothing, and got taken out in two moves.
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Post by Andee9001 on Apr 12, 2024 1:43:28 GMT -5
They f***ed up the stupid wild card rules shit the same day they announced it “Only 3 member of SmackDown are invited” 5 or 6 SmackDown superstars show up anyways Vince McMahon: "3 Superstars from Raw may appear on Smackdown. And 3 Superstars from Raw can appear on Raw. Do you understand what i'm saying AJ?" Cuts to a very confused AJ Styles
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john84
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Post by john84 on Apr 12, 2024 2:54:25 GMT -5
(Please nobody bring up AEW in this thread yall, this ain't that, take that elsewhere)
And yeah this era had some amazing things such as Kofimania. This had some really high points but let's talk about the bad points. Anyway, so I'm on Twitter and I see a random video of some bad stuff from these 2 years and wow it's way worse than I remember. Here's some of what happened then.
- Kofi losing to Lesnar. Just getting this out of the way - Roman/Corbin which had the dog food stuff, that dude in a dog costume, just dumb - Someone was attacking Roman backstage resulting in something almost falling on him, Roman accusing people, Bryan accused, 2 Rowans, just nutty - The Revival shaving themselves and them sliding their asses across the ring - Ambrose vs EC3 - Bane Ambrose Era which had him getting shots - Batista's last run. Him going "HUH" at the screen and shit - Lio and Lashley showing his butt to the screen because Vince apparently liked it - Angle's last match which was him losing to Corbin - 24/7 Title bullshit - *REDACTED* vs *REDACTED* at Crown Jewel. You know the one, the one where Rey got his homie to come fight and his homie lost - The Fiend/Rollins feud. You know, the one where Seth went too hard in a HIAC match and they had to stop it - Lashley's sisters. Yep - The Crown Jewel match that HBK/HHH/Taker/Kane all wanna forget - Lars Sullivan - Taker/Goldberg - Shane McMahon "Best In The World" and anything surrounding him - Lashley/Lana and hell anything focused around them including that Liv stuff which went nowhere - Mike and Maria K's "father of my child is-" storyline where embarrassed homie down week after week for no reason - (Roman recently said this was the worst time of his career)
This is just SOME of the stuff from then. God it was bad.
Vince was WILDIN.
Never watched Crown Jewel since I won't watch the Saudi stuff but I know the stuff you've mentioned with HBK/HHH v Taker/Kane and the Rey Mysterio's buddy match were panned. As well as Taker v Goldberg being universally panned as well. Kanellis ''father of my child'' was just a classic case of stupid Vinceisms for me. Shane's best in the world schtick was not entertaining. The Lashley sisters segment still makes me shiver at how bad it was. Dog food stuff was more dumb Vinceism shit. Turning EC3 into a mute was dumb af since that's his strength as a performer and they took that from him for no apparent reason except maybe he sneezed in Vince's presence maybe? And don't get me started on how Ambrose was booked on his way out... But yeah, there was definitely stuff not to like in 2018/2019.
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Post by Famous Rocking Chimes on Apr 12, 2024 3:34:15 GMT -5
The Rollins-Fiend HIAC was so bad that the world turned on it immediately and Seth Rollins scrambled as fast as humanly possible to disavow it. And this was Peak WWE Buttlicker Rollins. X-Pac ripping into the finish and the idea of a Hell in a Cell match being stopped due to kicking too much ass on WWE’s official watchalong stream was a highlight at least.
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Post by Citizen Snips Has Left on Apr 12, 2024 4:18:32 GMT -5
Would the Corbin dog food stuff be the historical rock bottom point? Given that it was that angle that made Roman decide “Things are either changing drastically or I’m just retiring”, things changed drastically when he returned in the summer of 2020 and those changes were the beginning of the company’s massive upswing.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Apr 12, 2024 4:23:03 GMT -5
This period includes Lars Sullivan, accused of racism, booked to beat three Lucha guys at once, right?
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PKO
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Post by PKO on Apr 12, 2024 5:42:45 GMT -5
Vince: "The Wildcard Rule is...three members of Smackdown could be invited to Raw, three members members of Smackdown could be invited...to Smackdown. You understand what I'm trying to say?" I love that the WWE.com article trying to describe the concept of the Wild Card rule has to desperately explain why they immediately broke the rules they only just set out www.wwe.com/amp/article/raw-smackdown-live-wild-card-rule-explained
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J is Justice
Wade Wilson
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Post by J is Justice on Apr 12, 2024 6:44:56 GMT -5
I've gone back to watch some of it, and I can't believe how dead the crowds are, lol
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Post by government mule on Apr 12, 2024 7:01:31 GMT -5
The Erick Rowan push, with the planet champion Daniel Bryan partnership, doppleganger Rowan, different metal band shirts every week, attempting to murder Roman Reigns like Wile E Coyote, a PPV win over ROMAN f***ING REIGNS and reuniting briefly with Harper, was all f***ing amazing TV and I will f***ing die on this hill.
then they gave him a pet spider
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Post by OGBoardPoster2005 on Apr 12, 2024 8:13:03 GMT -5
I'll say it again, WWE declined after Summerslam 2014.
The Brock/Cena match was a great moment for the fact it symbolized the end of Super Cena and whether you like Brock or not, this was the best version of him, better than his run 10 years prior.
Raw got to a point where I fast forwarded through segments, Tag Matches and Womens matches because they all had the same formula. Segments were drawn out and the promos got to a point where the dialogue started becoming more awkward and jarring in places. Tag Matches had the hit the same formula of a babyface team dominating early, losing control midway and getting the hot tag at the end. The only differences was whether or not the heel team or face team won. Womens matches had already been skipped because the talent level was low at the time and the characters weren't that great.
3 Hour Raws became 10-20 minutes for me depending on the night. I stopped watching at the end of 2015/early 2016. Smackdown I already had stopped watching for the same reasons.
So by 2016 it was down to Pay-Per-Views and a occassional Raws and after Wrestlemania 33 that became just Pay-Per-Views. I stayed tuned in throughout 2017 and was enjoying the product and the potential with AJ, Joe, and Angle on board. Wrestlemania 34 was the last show I recall watching in 2018. It was about the time my mental state deteriorated and wrestling was on the backburner entirely.
I didn't watch but the times I checked in were some of the worst television I ever watched from WWE. The Raw 25 was a flop of a show, the talent seemed like they were all misused and the camera work coupled with announcing made the matches unbareable.
I tried jumping back in at different times but every time it seemed promising, I'd see one thing that turned me back away.
Seems like I didn't miss a lot, all of this sounds horrible in retrospect and was the closest WWE ever was to being WCW on terms of booking. It was like Vince died and suddenly the WCW Booking Committee of 1995 took over.
The seeds were planted in late 2014 and by 2018/19 the issues that started emerging with WWE and Vince's philosophy at that time started to be more on the surface.
The right creative and you have a thriving promotion in that era but Vince's mind went all over the place and no one was willing to interject and it led to a lot of bad creative and almost killed my fandom entirely.
There was a point in 2019/20 where I questioned if my fandom was truly over. The last two years have been a lot better but this era had me out of wrestling entirely in spite of the AEW hype at that time. Just seemed like the industry was heading in the wrong direction entirely.
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Post by BorneAgain on Apr 12, 2024 8:19:46 GMT -5
Miz actually becoming a decent underdog babyface (in contrast to his lackluster 2013 attempt) only to be undercut by the Shane McMahon feud which completely buried him is yet another example of the awful misfires from this time period.
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mcstoklasa
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Post by mcstoklasa on Apr 12, 2024 9:42:25 GMT -5
Brock Roman feud then was dreadful
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Post by theironyuppie on Apr 12, 2024 12:18:16 GMT -5
The Erick Rowan push, with the planet champion Daniel Bryan partnership, doppleganger Rowan, different metal band shirts every week, attempting to murder Roman Reigns like Wile E Coyote, a PPV win over ROMAN f***ING REIGNS and reuniting briefly with Harper, was all f***ing amazing TV and I will f***ing die on this hill. then they gave him a pet spider
A mysterious pet spider at that.
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john84
Fry's dog Seymour
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Post by john84 on Apr 12, 2024 12:27:22 GMT -5
The Erick Rowan push, with the planet champion Daniel Bryan partnership, doppleganger Rowan, different metal band shirts every week, attempting to murder Roman Reigns like Wile E Coyote, a PPV win over ROMAN f***ING REIGNS and reuniting briefly with Harper, was all f***ing amazing TV and I will f***ing die on this hill. then they gave him a pet spider
A mysterious pet spider at that.
That killed any momentum he may've had at the time as well which makes the whole pet spider even more awful.
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Post by Slingshot Suplay on Apr 12, 2024 12:57:45 GMT -5
I stopped watching wwe after that terrible Raw 25 episode. I realized that the product wasn't gonna get any better with Vince at the top. They even botched the nostalgia feeling that they tried to give off with terrible planning, and i felt terrible for those at the Manhattan center that night. 2018 was the nail in the coffin for my wwe fandom and almost killed my love for wrestling. If it wasn't for mlw with the hart foundation, contra and the dynasty, then eventually nwa and aew in 2019, I would be done with wrestling.
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Post by saneiac on Apr 12, 2024 14:24:39 GMT -5
The Erick Rowan push, with the planet champion Daniel Bryan partnership, doppleganger Rowan, different metal band shirts every week, attempting to murder Roman Reigns like Wile E Coyote, a PPV win over ROMAN f***ING REIGNS and reuniting briefly with Harper, was all f***ing amazing TV and I will f***ing die on this hill. then they gave him a pet spider Rowan's final few months is kind of a summary of the entire 2010s. Rowan debuts a mysterious cage and squashes jobbers for about two months while everyone speculates what's in it. Then he inexplicably loses clean to Aleistair Black, the cage is opened to reveal a dumb looking mechanical spider, and Rowan is fired. In other words, Vince had a "brilliant" idea, put it on TV without having any idea of what to do or where to go with it, then quickly got bored with it and tossed it aside, leaving everyone else scratching their heads and wondering "The hell was that about?". See also: Retribution, RAW Underground, the main roster runs of EC3 and Sanity, no fighting during commercials, Nakamura's Rumble win, a lot of The Fiend + Alexa stuff, MVP with Omos, The Bludgeon Brothers, spooky Judgment Day, etc.
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