wrestling / Columns

Wrestling’s 4Rs: The Right, Wrong and Ridiculous of Raw & Slammiversary

July 3, 2015 | Posted by Jack Stevenson

How the 4Rs of wRestling Work!
Here is a quick explanation of the 4R’s. The column will run TWO times a week. We will group our feelings on the shows in various categories: The Right, the wRong and the Ridiculous. The Right is stuff that worked very well: a great promo, a great match and so on. PuRgatoRy is a section between the right and wrong. It shows equal traits from both sides that cannot be ignored and needs discussed. It is not a bad place per say, as things can get remedied or go the wrong way the very next week. The wRong is what it sounds like: bad matches, bad or boring promos and so on. The Ridiculous is stuff that had no right on TV: Stupid angles and so on. And there is always a possibility of a 5th R, which is as bad as they come. This column is supposed to be analytical, and at the right time very critical of the shows, it was the whole reason it was created. This is not a “mark” column, nor a “smark” column, our goal is to analyze the show from many different fronts, reward the good and call out the bad. We will not apologize for our opinions, they are as they are, whether positive or negative.


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By: Jericho Ricardi


TNA SLAMMIVERSARY 2015:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
– Tigre Uno def. Manik and DJ Z in an elimination match to retain the X-Division Title via pin (Leg drop to Manik) (Order of Elimination: DJ Z, Manik) @ 12:06
– Robbie def. Jesse via pin (Reverse DDT) @ 11:50
– Bram def. Matt Morgan in a street fight via pin (Brighter Side of Suffering) @ 9:35
– Austin Aries def. Davey Richards via pin (Roll Up) @17:25
– Awesome Kong and Brooke Tessmacher def. The Dollhouse via pin (Brooke pins Jade with a top rope X-Factor) @ 8:05
– James Storm def. Magnus via pin (Mutual knockout with Magnus falling first) @ 16:38
– EC3 and Tyrus def. Lashley and Mr. Anderson via pin (One-Percenter to Lashley) @ 10:14
– Jeff Jarrett def. Matt Hardy, Drew Galloway, Eric Young, and Bobby Roode in a King of the Mountain match to win the King of the Mountain Championship @ 21:00

THE RIGHT:
Pope’s Commentary: Pope has a great intonation and way of speaking that reminds me more than a little of Dusty Rhodes. That’s some high praise, if you weeell.

Tigre Uno is finally getting pushed: I spent most of the past year calling for Tigre Uno to be something more than a jobber-with-no-entrance. Finally, he’s winning matches, getting character development via commentary, and actually getting to have lines. If they’d treated him like this when he debuted, he’d probably be a merchandise-moving star for them at this point. As it is, he comes across as damaged goods due to all the times he got squashed, but at least it isn’t too late to repair his character. I’d like to see them start having him consistently win matches with his Phoenix Splash to get it over as a finisher. He didn’t tonight for some unknown reason. Matter of fact, finishers in general seemed de-emphasized tonight, something that TNA keeps going back and forth on.

X-Division Three Way: This was a fun match, and started things off with a bang. Having watched a fair amount of WCW recently, I appreciated that commentary was so focused on the X-Division match here. They didn’t even mention the main event until late in the match, whereas WCW commentary would pretty much just talk up the main event over the entirety of cruiserweight openers. It’s the little things that make a big difference, and if the company treats the “lightweight” wrestlers as important, the fans will too. Again, though, they’ve got an uphill road to climb with Tigre Uno due to their handling of him, and at this point Manik and DJ Z have been criminally wasted as well to a lesser extent. The fact that these three guys went out and put on as good of a match as they did, despite what they’ve been given to work with, is a testament to their abilities.

The BroMans Explode: Featuring Robbie’s new music that sounds like “Lapdance” by NERD. This lands in the Right due to the strong before-match promos from both guys. The abundance of bear hugs dragged it down a bit, though, and Jesse really needs to vary up his offense. I also think the wrong guys are playing face and heel in this feud. Robbie is a natural heel, and his sudden face attitude just doesn’t seem to fit. Jesse, on the other hand, comes across like he could be a natural Superman-type face if allowed to be. Also, the face winning this match doesn’t make much sense if the feud is supposed to continue. Jesse needs establishing a lot more than Robbie does, so there are definitely better ways for the company to handle this. Regardless, both guys took the ball and ran with it tonight, so this segment barely lands in the Right.

Wolf Vs. Aries: Surprisingly even fight here, given that Aries has been hovering around the #1 contender spot for years now. Despite the barely-loss, they did a great job putting Davey over, especially if Aries is indeed on his way out (I hope not, I’d like to see him get one more title reign). This was the match of the night, easily. It got nearly 20 minutes, had a bunch of really believable near-falls, and was definitely something worth checking out.

Magnus’ Pre-Match Promo: This was more emotion than we’ve seen out of Magnus in a long time, and it was somewhat expected given that this was his last match in the company. Unfortunately, due to the taping schedule, they couldn’t really acknowledge that this was his last match (lest he appear on later taped Impacts, I guess). In the story continuity, he’s still around for another month, but in real-world continuity, this was his last night. …Whatever, I’ll get more into that later. Magnus made the best of a bad situation and cut a great promo here, and credit is certainly due. Best wishes to him in the future.

Magnus Vs. Storm: Good brawl here. The stuff with the power going out in the arena due to their backstage fighting was pretty awesome. The only real issue here is that the wrong guy went over; if this was the final match for both Magnus and Storm in the company, it stands to reason that the good guy should have won the feud. If Storm is staying, then the result makes sense, but that isn’t what it looks like at this point in time. There were other issues; the crowd wasn’t nearly as into this as I expected, and the cameras cut away too quickly afterwards. I’d have liked to see Magnus get a moment to take in the crowd’s post-match applause, but instead we’re immediately going to JB in the back. Sigh. Putting all of that aside, the match was good, and probably the second-best of the night. Both guys put a hell of a lot into this, and I liked the HHH/Austin No Way Out ending. Sidenote: Did anyone see what was on the sign that Storm went and tore up? I didn’t get a good look at it and it was only on camera for a second.

King of the Mountain: I like that this new title belt is part of the lineage of TNA’s old secondary titles. Question is, are we supposed to consider this as a new secondary title, or is it going to be GFW’s world title? Did GFW have a world title belt yet? If this is going to be their world title, isn’t it kinda bad to be using a TNA secondary title as your world title? If it’s staying with TNA, will Jarrett be around to defend it? And is it wise to name your new secondary title after one of the primary nicknames of a guy who is no longer part of your roster? Why not just call this the North American Title? That’d give it some old-school flavor AND make it technically superior to the WWE U.S. Title because North America is the U.S. plus more landmass. I’d be down with a North American Title as a secondary belt. All of these questions aside, the match was as good as you’d expect given how thrown-together it was. I’m not really a fan of the semi-convoluted King of the Mountain concept, but this was an acceptable match. The winner was fairly unsurprising and I was hoping they’d give us someone more out of left field, like Drew Galloway. I hope this belt stays with TNA because they’re in sore need of a secondary belt; they have been for a while now. Would have been perfect for Gunner or Magnus to run with, but oh well.

puRgatoRy:

Bram Collects Quickenings: Bram is the best thing TNA has that isn’t named EC3. I hope they realize that. I think they do, what with having Bram soundly defeat various “loose-end” guys who got huge pushes in the past but didn’t reach the title (Crimson, Matt Morgan…can Trytan be far behind?). Surprised they didn’t have him get a win over Gunner on the way out too. Having Bram take the quickenings of the monsters of the past can only get him over more, and Trytan aside, I hope they throw some money at Monty Brown to bring him in for a one-shot with Bram. All of that said, while I like the guy and like this loose-end killer storyline, the match he had with Matt Morgan was surprisingly mediocre. Both guys are really talented, but they didn’t deliver here. However, I’d say this is a case of the booking getting in the way more than anything the performers did. For a street fight, it was pretty tame, and might have been better served as just a regular match.

The Women: This was a match. Not a whole lot to it, though Jade impressed and Taryn was unbelievably hot as usual. I particularly enjoyed her sitting on the turnbuckle and directing the troops. She almost reminds me of a heel Shawn Michaels circa 1997; she could stay Knockouts champion for the rest of time and I’d be happy. The lack of reaction for the faces was somewhat troubling, and the match itself had nothing really to make it stand out. The Dollhouse are certainly making an impression, at least.

EC3 and Tyrus Vs. Lashley and Anderson: This was a pretty standard Impact match to set up a PPV main event… oh wait. The right guy won, and the crowd managed to make this entertaining with a variety of EC3-related chants (something that also happened during the between-match technical difficulty-related blackout). The match was there, nothing offensive.

THE WRONG:

The TNA/GFW Arrangement…Thus Far: As of right now, it feels like GFW is benefiting from this way more than TNA is. It’s like another Wrestle-1 situation where TNA is giving the rub to what (currently) amounts to an untelevised indy promotion and not getting any kind of long-term boost out of it themselves. Jeff Jarrett returning on this PPV helped TNA out with a bad situation, but this likely won’t boost the fortunes of TNA in any way long-term. All I see is them putting over the Jarretts in another ill-fated partnership, and nothing on this show utilized the new GFW partnership in any sort of way that enhanced the TNA PPV that we were watching.

THE RIDICULOUS:
TNA Itself: No matter how good this show was (and it was fairly good), a cloud was cast over it by TNA’s ludicrous bungling of their taping schedule. This PPV should have been main-evented by Kurt Angle Vs. EC3 for the world title, and the fans in attendance shouldn’t have already known who would be winning the matches. It’s tremendously bush-league and it might have flown in 1993, but not in 2015. TNA has done a great job building up EC3 as the new face of the company, and his wrestling Kurt Angle on one of the company’s two signature PPVs for the world title was a moment I was legitimately looking forward to spending my money on. Unfortunately, TNA decided that it was more important to squeeze out a few more tapings from their Universal back lot than it was to give the fans a PPV to remember. Why wasn’t the title match on PPV? Why wasn’t the live PPV held before the next set of tapings? Why wasn’t this show on the road in Chicago or Philly or Dallas where we could buy tickets to see it? Why won’t TNA let us help it stay afloat? It’s a shame for EC3 (and Kurt Angle, and everyone else who busts their asses to put on a good show) that the front office dropped the ball with Slammiversary 2015.

The 411:

Taken on its own, without any of the real-world TV taping drama surrounding the event, this was a decent show. Nothing extraordinary, and often felt like a glorified episode of Impact, but a fun watch nonetheless and worth checking out. That’s where my show rating comes in. Objectively, I think this was a 6.7 on our scale. It just bothers me to no end that with better planning, this could have been a 9.0 show and a highly-memorable event that showed us not only that we should have faith in TNA, but that the company has faith in itself. Sadly, that isn’t how things went. The real PPV is airing (taped) on Wednesday, for the few people who don’t already know the results. Again, it’s laughable in 2015.

In short… good effort from the performers as usual while the front office let them down.

Cheap plug time, support this site and this column by sharing it with your homies. Also, support my site Coronajumper.com by reading my musings on video games, including TNA Impact for the PS2/PS3. Featuring gratuitous Rebel.

Show Rating: 6.7

As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale…

0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9:Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect

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By: Jack Stevenson


Raw 6.29.15:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Big Show d. Mark Henry
* Ryback d. The Miz
* Paige d. Alicia Fox
* Cesaro d. John Cena via Disqualification in the U.S. Open
* The Prime Time Players & The Lucha Dragons d. The New Day & Bo Dallas
* Sheamus d. Neville
* King Barrett d. Jack Swagger
* Seth Rollins & Kane d. Roman Reigns & Dean Ambrose

THE Right:
Raw is Friendship: Things are different now, in the Authority. Everyone likes each other. Where there was discord, now there is now harmony. Where there was doubt, now there is faith. Where there was despair, now there is hope. Where there was Seth Rollins being rude and unappreciative towards Kane and J&J Security, now there is Seth Rollins buying Kane and J&J Security Hawaiian vacations and Cadillacs and Apple Watches. Essentially, the opening segment of this week’s Raw was a big long infomercial for an array of products that I assume WWE has a commercial interest in promoting, but good performances from all the wrestlers involved made sure the segment was more fun than it sounds on paper. I particularly liked Rollins insisting Jamie Noble was his “mentor” having treated him as glorified cannon fodder for months, and it was nice to see Kane appear genuinely happy, given that he spends most of the time cycling through his three default emotions, which are “frustrated,” “angry,” and “vengeful.” Strangely, J&J’s Cadillac made it through the entire night completely unscathed- at what point is Dean Ambrose going to trick The Big Show into eating a tainted burger which causes him to defecate all over the hood or something? Anyway, overall this was one of the dafter opening segments on Raw for a while and was all the better for it. It felt like they were going out and having fun without worrying about needing to shoehorn in plot recaps or general exposition. It was a little long for what it had to offer, I suppose, but I thought it still worked well.

Paige vs. Alicia Fox: This was a rock solid outing from two of the main roster’s most talented Divas. Paige and Fox have fine chemistry together and strung together an exciting match with a particularly lively finishing stretch. And there’s more good news as well! The Bella Twins resisted the urge to do nine heel and face turns while they were watching the action from ringside. This is real progress. On commentary, JBL hinted that he may join the terrible twins and turn them into triplets as “John Bella Layfield.” I’m sure we can all agree that this would be a tremendously exciting and refreshing development and that Bradshaw would be the sexiest Bella of them all. JBL also pointed out for the umpteenth time that, yes, Paige did once wrestle her own mother, and this made me think how cool it would be if Saraya Knight barged into WWE and became her daughter’s one ally against the whole of the Divas roster. Once they’d wiped all the other females out, Saraya would turn on Paige, jealous of her success, and then we could have a Loser Leaves Town, Mother vs. Daughter match for the Divas Championship at a significant PPV, which Paige would of course win. I’m genuinely quite pleased with my little piece of fantasy booking, I think it would make for great TV. I am a nerd.

John Cena vs. Cesaro: You have already been told that this John Cena-Cesaro match is really really good. Any wrestling fan capable of accessing the internet will have been confronted by a maelstrom of voices rightly proclaiming the utter greatness of this match, and even if you were living under a particularly isolated rock, you’d still have heard mutterings from a particularly dark and mysterious corner of your brain, suggesting that something really good had happened on this week’s edition of Raw and there might have been a certain Swiss superman involved. I have no new insights to add to the discussion, really, I can only reassert the obvious- it was an outstanding match, and probably the best one that Raw has hosted this year, opening up the intriguing possibility that the Monday Night Match of the Year for both 2014 and 2015 will be John Cena vs. Cesaro. This will be particularly noteworthy if Cesaro signs off this year by losing in two minutes to Titus O’Neil. It wasn’t just the action in the ring that delivered though; Kevin Owens was an entertaining presence on guest commentary, berating Michael Cole and Byron Saxton at every opportunity while putting off this sweet, soft little intonation whenever he was chatting with JBL. Despite having apparently arranged the match in the first place, Owens decided he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone other than him taking the United States Championship away from John Cena, and so he attacked both competitors when a title change started to look a bit too close for comfort. In most other circumstances this would be an infuriating cop out finish but it just seemed to work in the context of this match, possibly because Cesaro wasn’t really a credible candidate to dethrone Cena and so it was actually a pleasant surprise that he didn’t lose clean. All of this was fabulous, fabulous pro wrestling.

The Lucha Dragons & The Prime Time Players vs. The New Day & Bo Dallas: I also liked this match! It had a nice range of styles and for the most part a good pace, though it slowed down a little too much during the heat segment on Darren Young, which fell a little flat as a result. I loved the spot where Xavier Woods launched Kalisto into a Big. E bear hug, which the big man then tried to turn into a suplex only for the luchador to flip out of it and hot tag Sin Cara in. Such a smooth sequence! Titus O’Neil doing the “LUCHA! LUCHA” dance was also a sight worth seeing. On the whole, this was a good time!

puRgatoRy:
Roman Reigns & Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins & Kane: This was a perfectly fine tag match, as you’d expect, but I was a bit annoyed with its billing as a No Disqualifications Match. It certainly wasn’t wrestled as one, as the competitors obeyed the traditional rules of a tag match for the vast majority of the bout, and the only weapons usage in the match itself was Reigns caning Kane a couple of times, but mostly just Joey Mercury. The stipulation was trotted out merely to add a veneer of anticipation to a main event that sounded incredibly stale on paper, and it cheapens the whole idea of the ‘No DQ’ match to use it for that purpose, rather than just, you know, booking an interesting main event. However, like I say the action itself was respectable, and there were some nice moments outside the body of the bout as well- I enjoyed J&J Security proudly and unnecessarily driving their Cadillac out to the entrance stage, and post match Seth Rollins delivered a super cool powerbomb to Roman Reigns through a table, it looked spectacular. Worryingly, Reigns was attacked by Bray Wyatt, Seth Rollins, Kane and Joey Mercury and very nearly fought them all off; if this becomes a regular thing it’ll be a regression. A mixed bag of events, destined for purgatory.

THE wRong:
The Boring Saga of the Intercontinental Championship: The Miz is trying so, so hard to make this angle between himself, Ryback and The Big Show work. He’s not quite pulling it off, but his efforts are still commendable. I enjoy his complete and utter cowardice and attempts to slay two imposing giants through mind games and hit and run attacks, and would quite like it to work at some point. It didn’t happen this week though, as his attempt to perform precisely one kick on Ryback and then run for the hills was thwarted and lead to a pretty dull match between the two of them. This followed a pretty dull match between The Big Show and the lifeless Mark Henry who is a shell of his former self and is living off former glories in a most depressing way. Sparks do occasionally fly in this storyline, but not nearly often enough.

THE Ridiculous:
Dolph Ziggler and Lana are the worst people: Vapid, preening, awful fuckers, the pair of them. Stick them in Los Angeles in the 1980s and they could be characters in a Bret Easton Ellis novel. Their decision to take their relationship “public” (and the opportunity to find out what “going public” actually meant) was one of the focal points of the show, and turned out to be its nadir. Quite frankly, I’d have been happy if this relationship remained private. Ordinarily I’m deeply distrustful of privatization programs but Ziggler and Lana and their boring fucking romance should have stayed right out of public ownership. Denationalize it, that’s what I say. If I had to choose who I loathed more out of the two of them, I’d have to go with Dolph. Lana is incredibly infuriating because of her complete lack of personality and her blind willingness to romance and indulge the self-professed ‘Show-Off,’ but at least she doesn’t unironically use phrases like “smoking hot babe.” As a wrestler he’s superb, but as a character Ziggler tries way too hard and comes off as fake and cloying and just enraging. I would like to eject both of these people into the sun, but it appears instead Rusev and Summer Rae might just fight them a bit, which I guess will have to do. Summer Rae’s reasons for sidling up to the Bulgarian Brute have not been adequately explored, but they tried to adequately explore why Lana had the hots for Ziggler and it just trampled all over her character, so maybe that’s for the best. Right now WWE’s newest Macbeth/Lady Macbeth seem moderately likeable as long as Rusev isn’t literally stalking his ex-girlfriend around the backstage area. I didn’t like any of this. I was actively glad that the fans started chanting “WHAT!” This storyline has somehow become worse than the “WHAT!” chant. Think about how bad that makes it.

The 411:

I feel fairly positive about this week’s Raw, although I think a lot of that is the afterglow from the tremendous Cena-Cesaro match. Otherwise, there was a good eight-man tag, a good women’s match, and then a lot of things that were middling to bad, including the excruciating Ziggler/Lana/Rusev/Summer Rae angle. Really, it was just your average, blandly inoffensive episode, but with one match that was genuinely compelling, must see viewing.

Show Rating: 6.7

As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale…

0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9:Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect

The 1003rd edition is over…

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