gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 14, 2016 7:31:01 GMT -5
She only had four singles wins on TV before Tamina came along by the looks of things, and two of those were by distraction when she briefly had Layla with her. I'm not sure Nikki ever won a title match clean, but they certainly gave her the odd clean non-title victory against quite a few different people, she usually came out on top except in 'X has pinned the Divas champion!' title match set-ups, whereas even tainted wins in non-title singles matches were hard to come by for AJ at one point. Neither were booked as dominant wrestlers in spite of their long reigns, in fact when the Divas Revolution started the storyline was basically that Nikki wasn't as good as the new arrivals, but Nikki was kept slightly stronger before that than AJ was at the same point in her reign. If I recall correctly, AJ beat Kaitlyn clean at Payback & MITB, as well as in a tag match prior to SummerSlam, beat Natalya clean following Payback, won clean at NOC in a F4W match and won clean against Naomi following NOC. It really wasn't until Tamina joined her following NOC, where AJ stopped getting clean wins at all. Yeah I think you're right, she had those two clean non-title wins and then the other two with Layla's help. NOC was kind of the beginning of her squeaking victories since she hid on the outside the whole match after getting triple-teamed at the start then sneaked in at the end to tap out Natalya after Nattie had done the hard work of taking out Naomi and Brie. It seems like she was more-or-less 50/50 booked at that stage, she lost clean to Natalya, and Kaitlyn (I think Nattie's win was in an intergender tag but AJ took the fall) in non-titles during the first three months of her reign.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 14, 2016 3:54:25 GMT -5
She was basically Seth Rollins during his title reign (they both had a losing record on TV while they were champ). Spend all month on TV jobbing to anyone and everyone, sell every offensive move from a babyface like death, retain the title at the pay-per-view through cheating, opportunism or outside help, repeat. The only thing that made her seem like some kind of tyrannical overlord was that she got to talk every now and then and basically no one was ever put in a position to talk back. Nikki was booked as a way stronger heel champ from a wrestling point of view, fairly sure they made sure she got at least a couple of clean wins a month and she certainly never went out of her way to sell her challengers' offense. I don't even think Nikki got any clean wins during her title reign. Even during that month where she was Face against Naomi, she still needed Brie's interference to beat her. I think the only person that Nikki beat clean was Emma, who was on the very bottom of the Diva pecking order. AJ actually had some clean wins during her title reign, though most of it was in the beginning before she got paired up with Tamina. She only had four singles wins on TV before Tamina came along by the looks of things, and two of those were by distraction when she briefly had Layla with her. I'm not sure Nikki ever won a title match clean, but they certainly gave her the odd clean non-title victory against quite a few different people, she usually came out on top except in 'X has pinned the Divas champion!' title match set-ups, whereas even tainted wins in non-title singles matches were hard to come by for AJ at one point. Neither were booked as dominant wrestlers in spite of their long reigns, in fact when the Divas Revolution started the storyline was basically that Nikki wasn't as good as the new arrivals, but Nikki was kept slightly stronger before that than AJ was at the same point in her reign.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 13, 2016 20:18:48 GMT -5
eh Aj's gigantic reign was worse. I honestly remember nothing from AJ's reign besides her losing way too much on RAW. She was basically Seth Rollins during his title reign (they both had a losing record on TV while they were champ). Spend all month on TV jobbing to anyone and everyone, sell every offensive move from a babyface like death, retain the title at the pay-per-view through cheating, opportunism or outside help, repeat. The only thing that made her seem like some kind of tyrannical overlord was that she got to talk every now and then and basically no one was ever put in a position to talk back. Nikki was booked as a way stronger heel champ from a wrestling point of view, fairly sure they made sure she got at least a couple of clean wins a month and she certainly never went out of her way to sell her challengers' offense.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 13, 2016 3:12:06 GMT -5
I'd say she has about the right level of respect, really. The 'she can't wrestle and she's only here because of who her boyfriend is' crowd are the definite minority now. Most people acknowledge she's improved, but also that she's not on the level of the generation who have come after her, not in the ring and DEFINITELY not in terms of character work. I think her title reign showed her flaws (though WWE are just as much to blame for allowing it with their booking), she was so committed to proving she could do things and addressing her critics that she just flat out refused to play the bad guy for longer than she had to.
She played a powerhouse in the ring despite being A. positioned as a weasly heel and B. the same size as most of her opponents and smaller than the likes of Charlotte. And whenever she didn't have a script to read from (commentary, backstage fallout) she seemed to be on a mission to undo anything that had taken place in the storyline that had make her seem weak or unfair. I don't know if things like her 'all women are awesome' Slammies speech and that interview with Cole where he congratulated her for her record title reign that she'd (kayfabe) cheated her way to were her idea, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Her desire to be the female John Cena and to counter every criticism thrown at her seemed to override any attempt to tell a story with her and establish a character which, ironically, is a big reason why she'll never reach the level of acclaim and adulation she strives for. The slings and arrows she's received over the years seem to have cut her deep, which on the one hand has probably made her strive to improve, but on the other it's given her a level of insecurity and defensiveness that is detrimental to everything she's involved in.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 21, 2016 13:23:45 GMT -5
RIP, she was clearly a very troubled woman and if nothing else she is at peace now. In the first half of the Attitude Era when there was nothing whatsoever in WWF for a female fan to look to for inspiration and validation, she was a hero to millions, and crossed over into the mainstream in a way few performers of either gender have managed. Which makes it all the more sad (if somewhat understandable on WWE's part) that she was scrubbed from history due to her later indiscretions. If she'd stayed on the straight and narrow she'd be a Hall of Famer no question, and more importantly would surely still be with us for many more years. Very sad.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 21, 2016 13:15:04 GMT -5
I don't know if NXT in general needs more characters, but boy does Finn Balor need one. He always delivers on the wrestling front, but when I'm way more invested in WWE champion Roman Reigns as a character and the builds for his defences than I am for the world-travelled wrestling ace from my ancestral homeland that holds the title on the other brand, something really must not be right. During the hype video for Balor/Joe at Takeover Dallas I was watching it thinking 'I watched every week and I don't remember any of this.'
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 19, 2016 16:45:15 GMT -5
Yes, ideally she'd be kept off our screens (at least in a wrestling capacity) until she either achieved competence or decided to take her showbiz dreams to a medium more suited to her, but for the time being it's entertaining as hell watching NXT skilfully book around her flaws and troll the Full Sail audience. It's not like she's being booked as anything other than what she is. Plus virtually every WWE talent spouts empty buzzword-heavy PR soundbites in interviews with the mainstream media, it's how they're trained.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 14, 2016 2:57:04 GMT -5
He kayfabe-sneezes at the end of an early episode of Raw, I'm amazed he allowed himself to look so weak/didn't ask for it to be removed from the Network.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 14, 2016 2:54:54 GMT -5
With how people respond to her looks on the internet, particularly on her own social media accounts, I'm amazed Charlotte has the requisite self esteem to even get out of bed in the morning, let alone perform in front of thousands of people.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 7, 2016 16:35:25 GMT -5
This has just reminded me to how awesome it would have been if Charlotte, Sasha and Becky had come in as a female Shield intent on ripping the division apart and taking it into a new era. They could have done the exact same Mania match and have even more heat and meaning behind it than they did anyway.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 7, 2016 16:29:42 GMT -5
The majority of Divas champions during the post-LayCool, pre-Total Divas 'smart, sexy and powerful' dark age.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 5, 2016 18:35:34 GMT -5
Just read a report that the cast has officially changed for season six. Alicia, Mandy and Rosa are out, while Renee, Lana, Naomi and Maryse are in. Looks like they want as many people with wrestler husband/boyfriends on the show as possible. Also, I don't see how this won't lead to Lana dropping her Russian accent unless they want to abandon all pretence of TD being 'reality'
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 4, 2016 9:11:49 GMT -5
As someone currently working their way through the weird and wonderful world of 1993 Raws on the Network, this was a wonderful surprise.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 4, 2016 9:04:57 GMT -5
At Wrestlemania 27 the only women's match had two men in it plus a reality TV star and a woman who'd been retired for five years and went straight back into retirement afterwards. It went 3 minutes and 17 seconds.
At Wrestlemania 28 the only women's match saw the Divas champion pinned by a TV presenter. It went 6 minutes and 49 seconds.
At Wrestlemania 29 there was no women's match, and the Divas champion only appeared in a pre-taped commercial.
At Wrestlemania 30 every woman on the roster was involved in a 6-minute clusterf*** that went on while the crowd was still reeling from the most shocking result in Mania history.
At Wrestlemania 31 we had another 6-minute filler tag match where the champion lost.
At Wrestlemania 32 we had a 16-minute barnburner with a hot crowd, pyro and memorable spot after memorable spot.
It was a rocky road, but it looks like we got our Revolution after all. For once, WWE promised change and delivered.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 4, 2016 8:53:22 GMT -5
He's like one of those monster heels from the 80s that exist only to be fed to babyfaces but everyone still buys them as a threat because they still sort of think it's real. You can't book someone like that in 2016 and expect people to care. The Wyatt Family became the Heenan Family (minus Bobby) so quickly I didn't notice it happening.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 4, 2016 8:50:11 GMT -5
Alicia Fox deserves a Title Shot at some point Not even joking, that girl does not get enough credit for how much she has improved in the ring, she can go toe to toe with anyone in this division... Aside from Natalya, she's better than everyone still under contract from her generation (i.e. pre-NXT), and that includes both Bellas and Naomi.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 4, 2016 8:39:49 GMT -5
About the booing of Roman. There were 100,000 people there, right? Well, safe to say that well over 50 percent were straight up marks. So, when people are saying an entire arena was out to derail a show...? That's not accurate. For instance, I rolled my eyes (stayed silent though) at the Foley, Michaels, Austin bit. Of course it got a big pop. I knew where I was. WMania is the place to be for the ultimate WWE Kool-Aid drinkers. So it is to be expected. Good for them and I'm glad they enjoyed it. My eye rolls were the minority and I'm the one in the wrong in that situatIon, so I just watched respectfully. But on the flipside, Reigns getting booed like that? Not a derailing. You had the below 50 percent who were boo'ing and the above 50 percent too. Yes, there were some for him. Definitely true. But what you heard was not Internet smarks. The marks who popped for The Rock and the baldies weren't getting Reigns' back. Yeah, I'm reading all this 'oh they hated Roman' stuff yet I thought it was a lot more mixed than people want to believe. I think it's mostly confirmation bias. Live videos of the title win on social media sounds actually more pro-Roman than anything else. But I definitely thought his pop didn't sound as impressive as many others. It was definitely mixed. And I'm guessing the WWE is good with it because they're motivated enough to react. Absolute silence would've been so much worse. Isn't the OP saying that even the majority of the casuals who popped for the legends appearances were booing Roman so it wasn't just smarks being smarks? There was audibly at least 65-75% of the audience booing him (and that doesn't account for those who just sat in silence bored out of their minds for everything apart from Steph getting speared and the finish, who may have accounted for the majority based on the pictures).
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 1, 2016 2:11:44 GMT -5
Last year I saw Velvet work a tag match at a local indy show where she was comfortably the worst wrestler of the four women despite having more experience than the other three combined and being the only 'name' in the match. I don't think anyone has demonstrated such a passion for wrestling and had such a lengthy career while picking up so little. Even Rosa Mendes has the excuse that she's barely had a decent-length singles match since developmental and goes through long periods where they take her out of the ring and make her a valet, so isn't really the 10-year veteran the stats suggest. Velvet has been wrestling near non-stop for 14 years and is still almost as lousy as when she began.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Mar 31, 2016 12:46:36 GMT -5
Possibly the best all-round British talent of his generation and a phenomenally nice guy. Was a pleasure to have known him and followed his career. RIP Trav.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Mar 31, 2016 12:40:03 GMT -5
No way does WWE not know people hate Eva, else she wouldn't be booked like she is in NXT. But the Total Divas audience doesn't hate her, and that's who this match is for.
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