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Post by eJm on Jan 18, 2024 4:42:58 GMT -5
Yeah, I agree with the Jafar/Iago comparison Swerve made. Nana’s the “Go get ‘em bawse!” type where he’s goofy but can he devious when needed and Swerve’s the guy who will shoot him a look or tell him to shut up when the moment calls for it.
It’s one of those things where it feels like something is being made of nothing.
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Post by eJm on Jan 17, 2024 17:18:19 GMT -5
That had no right to be as tense a final two as that was but yeah, as Lizuka said, what a great lineup so far.
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Post by eJm on Jan 17, 2024 7:58:31 GMT -5
somehow simultaneously exploded into confetti out of existence Between the Rock and Jinder Mahal, I've actually seen this happen to one of these men. In the main event at Wrestlemania 29. And again, that doesn't mean the best choice is "Dude whose title reign caused Smackdown to lose ratings and cancel a date of the tour he was supposed to be the figurehead for". He'd literally be the only choice in the scenario I mentioned.
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Jinder rn
Jan 17, 2024 5:05:03 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by eJm on Jan 17, 2024 5:05:03 GMT -5
If we're talking about who shouldn't be wrestling main event matches for world titles in 2024, then maybe. Absolutely. I'd rather Jinder be champion and in main events than The Rock. I mean, in a scenario where the whole roster somehow simultaneously exploded into confetti out of existence and those two were your only options, sure.
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Post by eJm on Jan 16, 2024 16:23:50 GMT -5
I caught up with SYM this morning since I was out last night so at 10:17pm I checked expecting to either catch the middle and tail end and literally got the graphic saying Taz won.
But I'll be here watching tonight!
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Post by eJm on Jan 16, 2024 16:20:50 GMT -5
There is not a world in the multiverse where Jinder, a guy who hasn’t had a single match since December 2022, winning the title tonight is a good idea. Not even the one where Priest cashes in on him afterwards. What are we doing here? I'd be okay with it--if only because we live in an actual world where the Rock, a guy who hasn't wrestled, period, since 2016 (and that was only a six-second match) and who last wrestled an actual match in 2013, has a greater-than-zero chance of actually beating Roman Reigns for a world title some time in the next 12 weeks. And whatever happens is going to eat up more TV time than anything Jinder will do. I find myself asking the same question, what are we doing here?, and yet, here we are! But, like, that doesn't mean you give it to the meme guy. That just means you give it to someone you've put more time into and established more instead of a guy who got "over" online (because the crowd didn't react to him from what I heard) because someone else high profile called out his win/loss record.
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Jinder rn
Jan 16, 2024 15:46:48 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by eJm on Jan 16, 2024 15:46:48 GMT -5
I don’t think he’ll actually win, but why is it that crazy if it were a one time shock win and he gets cashed in on? It elevates him, doesn’t hurt the title, elevates Priest, doesn’t hurt Rollins (Jinder wouldn’t win clean). He’s a former world champ and looks the part and hasn’t been jobbing recently. If they were going to do it, they weren't going to do it last night. Jinder vs Seth felt like a "We need to put something on this card so we're not completely phoning it in, but we're not doing anything real important directly against Eagles vs Bucs." I was going to say, the time to do something like that would be with Finn during his feud to give the Judgment Day angle some more oomph but that never happened.
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Post by eJm on Jan 16, 2024 13:16:23 GMT -5
I will say, having watched from afar, basically building CM Punk’s entire WWE run around a) how he left the first time and b) everything that happened after that with his comments feels like a real weaksauce way of doing things. Like, it’s hard for me to get invested in feuds that involve stuff that fans watching aren’t too privy to which makes me feel like this Cody/Punk thing will be dorky as all hell with comments that’ll only get over from the usual too online crew of Twitter.
That’s just me, though.
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Post by eJm on Jan 16, 2024 6:53:24 GMT -5
He was responding to GUNTHER's name potentially being in reference to a Nazi, which was news everywhere at the time, we even had a large thread about it here That whole thing was overblown. People were acting like it was some well known Nazi like a Himmler or Hess, it was some no name u-boat commander. And pick out a random German name, there's a better than average chance there was a Nazi with that same name. I mean, the issue was more that a company with the resources to research that stuff and find out whether the name is owned or has representation didn’t do that rather than the name itself. Like, if a random person can do a Google search and find out Gunther Stark was a U-Boat commander, why couldn’t the billion dollar company? EDIT: The answer, by the way, was that they fired everyone whose job was to do that in 2020.
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Jinder rn
Jan 15, 2024 18:00:56 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by eJm on Jan 15, 2024 18:00:56 GMT -5
I don’t think he should win tonight, but atleast Jinder is a former world champ. We had several former MITB holders in losing streaks before they won a world title So’s Bob Backlund but I’m endorsing him to win because it’d make things more “exciting” or whatever.
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Post by eJm on Jan 15, 2024 17:36:46 GMT -5
There is not a world in the multiverse where Jinder, a guy who hasn’t had a single match since December 2022, winning the title tonight is a good idea.
Not even the one where Priest cashes in on him afterwards.
What are we doing here?
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Post by eJm on Jan 15, 2024 11:04:31 GMT -5
Dave said this last night: “Roman Reigns is not on the Australia show (Elimination Chamber). He's not on the Paris show (Backlash) either by the way for fans over there. He's gonna be wrestling at the Royal Rumble, and then his next big match,he could do a TV match, but he's gonna wrestle at the Royal Rumble and then his next match is gonna be his WrestleMania match. And after that, I would presume it's gonna be Saudi and SummerSlam." If it's the case and this just isn't a future marketing tactic...man, what a weird way of booking these new or returning international shows. Backlash in Puerto Rico didn't have Roman either, hence the need for Bad Bunny and Cody/Brock. "All the stars of WWE are here in your country, except the main champion and the guy we pay the most money."
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Post by eJm on Jan 15, 2024 10:38:11 GMT -5
As others have said, it's both a marketing opportunity and a way to give people their flowers. It's always weird when there are big arguments about rules and what should be the standard for inductions when the "committee" has always been one dude making the final call with, like, zero campaigning. There are other HOFs that actually have those things if you want that.
Having said that, Rey is very much in the category of "If he doesn't go in the HOF, it's not in any way respectable" because he's arguably one of the most influential luchadores since El Santo and I don't say that lightly.
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Post by eJm on Jan 15, 2024 9:16:46 GMT -5
This is only a good thing and honestly, as the defecto industry leader, if there is one thing their influence should be doing is taking care of their talent. If it can make alternatives and smaller companies realize the same thing or at least have some people with first aid experience on hand, it’ll make for a better business overall.
By the way, it also means they shouldn’t be doing the BS like Cody competing at HIAC with a torn shoulder. No, I don’t care if he was still keen to go, if you want that guy to main event WrestleMania the year after, you cancel the match and tell him to go to the damn hospital and get the surgery.
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Post by eJm on Jan 15, 2024 5:04:36 GMT -5
Matt Riddle and now Jack Perry. Can’t say I’m loving NJPW for this rn That's That's a real harsh comparison for Jack, really I mean, for one, Jack Perry probably has a better lawyer.
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Post by eJm on Jan 15, 2024 4:45:31 GMT -5
As I said before, the key thing you need to do for a Jinder to make them more ready for a main event match, or even a Midcard match, is progress them beyond just having short squash matches where either they get a quick win or they put over someone quickly. This obviously takes time because there’s a difference between “I need to make this guy look good in 3 minutes” to “I need to make myself and this guy look like we want this win in 20”.
You don’t decide that the next person to run the Disney empire is the intern that brings Bob Iger his coffee when he arrives in the office.
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Post by eJm on Jan 14, 2024 8:46:30 GMT -5
1. They wanted a big ending/moment for their 40th mania, like how Bret won the title at 10, Benoit/Eddie at 20, and Bryan and the Streak ending at 30. If Cody won at 39 that would overshadow anything that happens this year. A lot of that is speculation but even then, that’d have some kind of context if most of those were planned. Vince hoped the crowd would cheer for Luger and didn’t, hence what happened with 10, I don’t need to go into how much WWE pushed back against Bryan (maybe I’d give the streak, but even then Taker was concussed, hence the rematches the next year) That feels like a weak argument considering how much the dude drew at the time and still does. Like, it probably was the reason, doesn’t make it any less illogical to do. That still feels less of a story than Roman snapping on the Usos for not helping him win the title after losing their titles. You could do everything they did without Roman as champion. And honestly, I think doing a triple threat waters down the story of Cody winning the big one because you’re adding extra context that isn’t as important. Do Roman/Rock in Perth because they’re allegedly willing to pay and build a Rocky story around Cody. I’d say Roman/Cody II in Philadelphia writes itself if it wasn’t already done in Rocky II with Rocky/Apollo II. Like, come on!
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Post by eJm on Jan 14, 2024 1:53:35 GMT -5
Nothing in the 8 months since WM has proven a Roman win was remotely necessary and not pulling the trigger on a Bloodline meltdown last year is going to hit as one of pro-wrestling’s bigger misses in retrospect. Everything Roman and Cody have done since seems like busywork until the inevitable, save for maybe the Jey Uso stuff and even that folded in on itself by going around in circles. It still drives me a bit mad that they had Brock/Cody go at it for a few months and there was zero context or story to it whatsoever. Neither man had much to chew on story wise and the only thing we got was a throwaway Wade Barrett commentary line that makes no sense if you look at a WrestleMania 4 years beforehand.
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Post by eJm on Jan 13, 2024 19:46:24 GMT -5
I feel like if they want to test how much of WWE's on a roll, Cody'll get the main event and lose again.
But, I mean, if I were a part of a merger that desperately needs a win and something to set up future angles with both Cody and The Bloodline where you can have an active champion and a top guy who can come in during the big shows to finish up the big stable in the company...well, you know.
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Post by eJm on Jan 13, 2024 19:38:38 GMT -5
Even better, I'm locking this thread too.
This topic is going around in circles and the people who want it to be true, I'd honestly respect them if they just said "I want this to be true because I hate Chris Jericho/Tony Khan/AEW/Whatever".
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