Wrestling With Mediocrity #3

HELP! Andrade Cien Almas has lost two thirds of his name! If found please return to the owner immediately. Reward to be paid in full by common sense, who is outraged.

So another week in wrestling has came and went and along with it was a bunch of news. Finn Balor is now the number one contender and will face Brock Lesnar at the Royal Rumble after Strowman lost his title shot on RAW while being dressed down by Vince McMahon like a child. Had Strowman stuck up for himself after the 73 year old tried to put him in his place it may not have came across as bad, but he didn’t. Instead for the second week in a row the guy looked like anything but a monster. If I didn’t know how bad they were at booking I’d honestly suspect they were trying to bury the guy.

According to those in the know Balor has been the plan for Lesnar at the Rumble dating all the way back to just after the embarrassment of a show in Saudi Arabia. But wait you might say, that’s before they even announced that Strowman would get the shot. Well that would be a keen observation but as the story goes Vince is fully aware that selling out a baseball stadium was going to be a challenge given the quality of product he has been putting out recently and he felt (falsely) advertising Lesnar v Strowman would sell more tickets than being honest and saying it was Balor getting the shot.

Now while I disagree (I actually think Balor would sell more tickets), this new main event does lack the gravitas you would hope for in a world title match at a “Big Four” PPV. Balor is one of my absolute favourite wrestlers over the last ten years, but this notion Vince has that you can just treat someone like dog shit for a year and then heat them up whenever you want just doesn’t fly with me. Balor has lost matches to the likes of Jinder in recent months and now all of a sudden I am supposed to believe he has a shot against Brock? No doubt he will come out next week with some of that new fire that every pushed performer in the company is using since it worked for Becky.

Seriously, we have Charlotte, Seth Rollins, AJ Styles and more all basically doing the exact same thing. Funnily enough, it is caused by a lack of creativity from the “creative team”. Actually, that might not be fair, they could be coming up with some outstanding ideas for all we know as Vince is regularly still ripping up the script day of the show and pushing out a nonsensical product. This was evidenced this week by the terrible exchanges between Ronda Rousey and Sasha Banks, the Heavy Machinery kinda-debut, EC3 popping up and being an afterthought and the fact that all the new call-ups are just allowed on both shows for the time being… because Vince.

The Revival clearly see the writing on the wall and asked for their release on Monday night. Presumably after Kevin Dunn cut away from their match for a backstage segment. Clearly a team like Revival, great workers but pretty bland in the charisma department would be better off away from the WWE main roster, but the chances of Vince releasing then in the current landscape is very slim. Who knows though, it isn’t out of the realms of possibility that they get a big push out of it. Andrade [missing] had expressed his desire to leave a few weeks ago and now he is being featured and beating Rey Mysterio on TV.

One last thing I wanted to mention on RAW was about the IC Ttitle 3 way between Ambrose, Rollins and Lashley. Now I have no problem with Lashley winning, I like the direction. Ambrose’s heel turn unfortunately hasn’t taken off (largely due to poor scripting) and something fresh with Lashley and Leo is welcome. However while I liked the match, my most hated moment on the entire show was when Seth and Dean worked together against Lashley. The psychology of two smaller wrestlers working together against the larger guy is a good one, but these two are supposed to be the bitterist of rivals and for them to ignore that is terrible continuity and storytelling.

I enjoyed the Becky Lynch promo to kick off the show. She carries herself well (minus the ridiculous swagger) and she comes across as a star. Unfortunately at least the last few weeks the crowd reaction hasn’t matched her presentation. She talks about being the hottest person in the industry but other than a half arsed Becky chant the crowd were pretty dead. Also while far from a big deal I would have booked her much stronger against Peyton. Going 8 minutes with someone that isn’t regarded as a serious wrestler felt like filler to keep a star on screen for ratings.

Also on that opening segment I cringed the whole way through Asuka’s “promo”. I know Vince has this obsession with all his wrestlers being able to stand in the ring with a mic but he has to realise how badly that part of the segment came across. If I was running SmackDown I would stop her talking altogether and have her actions in the ring speak for her.

SmackDown was overall a good show this week. It’s hard to give any show with that Andrade/Rey match a thumbs down right enough. The show also hosted the worst segment of the week though. That Naomi and Mandy Rose thing was awful. I mean properly awful. Mandy and Jimmy Uso both act like the camera in the hotel room filming the LIVE TV show isn’t there, then Mandy has a photographer jump out of a closet and snap pictures of them in an attempt to make it look incriminating for Naomi. Apparently they don’t have TV’s or Internet in the Uso penitentiary that she could review the footage.

The whole thing was designed to portray a more sexualised product. Many have an issue with this, but I don’t. What they do need to do is decide on their direction. If they want to sex up the show that’s fine, but they need to go a lot further than what they did on RAW & SmackDown this week. WWF back in the attitude era was seen as raunchy and returning to that even a little will certainly boost younger male viewers. But half steps like what we saw this week just comes across as really lame. Mandy wears less on Instagram than she did on Smackdown.

I wanted to finish this week on the debut of Walter. I didn’t watch NXT Takeover UK. I just don’t have the time. I am however a massive fan of Walter and will watch any future big matches he has on the brand. I do think WWE may hold off the big title match with Pete Dunne and put it on the US Takeover on Mania weekend. Vince originally really wanted Walter on the main roster but the big Austrian didn’t have any interest in moving to America. I think Helmsley is smart enough to know that particular UK title match is big enough for the biggest NXT show of the year and Vince may even believe bringing Walter in and integrating him into the WWE machinery during such a high profile time could sell him on a full time move.

Well that’s us for another week. I have always intended this to be a shorter article, picking out only two or three talking points per week but as I have only begun watching the show again I end up with a lot to say. I imagine as we progress I will be able to cut the length down a little. Until next time hit me up on Twitter @VizualDze with any comments or thoughts.