It's been a non-active month here at SCW online, but I check the site daily, hoping for a Poncho rant or Rusty Report. I don't have anything real pertinent to share, but feel nonetheless compelled to leave a blog post here, if for no other reason than to mark the passage of time.
So, wrestling, eh? Yup. I haven't watched Smackdown in months, and I'm several weeks behind on NXT. I've given up on Main Event, and don't even remember if Superstars is still a show. That being said, I wouldn't think of missing Raw, and it's had some cool highlights lately.
The Shield's face turn has been dope. They haven't lost their badassness, and I'm glad they still enter through the crowd. Their characters and promos are cool and their wrestling is super fun to watch. I'm stoked they're still a trio.
The Authority-Bryan feud has been pretty good. It's hard to fawn over it too much, since I thought it could have been SO much better, but even though they can't fully redeem themselves for the Rumble debacle, at least they're trying. HHH has probably been the most fun heel to watch on TV for the past month.
The Lesnar-Taker build has been fun also. The pen-stabbing will almost surely be the high-water mark, but Heyman's promos are as good of wrestling promos as I've ever heard, especially his opening segment from the Chicago Raw when he came out to Punk's theme, got booed, won the crowd over, then turned on them and got booed all over again. That was simply magical.
Speaking of Punk, what's up with that?
Also, what's up with the tag division? A few months ago it was fiery hot, and now there's a Mania tag title match set with no feud whatsoever. The Rhodes' are having singles matches, WTF? How can there be so many awesome teams and there be no stories? How can there be so many singles guys having matches every week with no stories? How can there be a 3 hour wrestling show with just a few stories going on? Wrestling stories are the easiest stories to come up with, especially the mid-card ones which aren't expected to draw anyway. Here's how easy it is to write a mid-card wrestling feud in one minute, ready, go:
You slept with my girlfriend. You're pants are too tight. Your haircut is a copy of my haircut. I'm really smart and you shouldn't be more popular than me. It's no fair that you won our match so I'm going to attack you all the time.
That was just a minute's worth. Come on, creative!
Getting back to the good stuff, the Cena-Wyatts feud is cool. I appreciate how Cena's not doing his corny schtick, he's actually selling the Wyatts being scary. He'll overcome his fears at Mania and make all the kids happy by defeating the monster, which is a great story, and it's been fun to watch it unfold. The promos and some of the visuals have been terrific on the part of the Wyatts.
I think that's it for Raw, at least as far as the bigger names go. Maybe the undercard will get more attention when Mania season subsides.
The Steve Austin podcast is great, I haven't missed very many episodes. A recent one reminded me of a Rusty Report because his phone started going off, and it wasn't edited out. Of course, an authentic Rusty Report moment would entail the answering of said phone call on air. Cabana had a good Podcast the other day with Ricochet, one of my indie faves. I don't care for Talk is Jericho or the Ross Report, so no further podcast comments.
I'm curious about the WWE Network. You guys have it, how about a review? My main questions:
-Does it include non-WWE/WCW/ECW stuff like AWA, Crockett, Stampede, WCCW, or any of the other territories like Georgia, St. Louis, or Memphis? If so, how much of that stuff is available?
-Does it include Nitro, Thunder, Power Hour, Hardcore TV, FCW (pre-NXT), etc?
-Legends House? Seen it?
That is all.
And by the way...
I hated the NWO.
