May 25, 2019 - Evan Luebbe

Showdown Buildups & Ricochet Beating

May 25, 2019May 25, 2019 by Evan Luebbe

Ricochet took a beating in the men’s Money in the Bank ladder match, so it’s impressive he could do much of anything, but the real story is Cesaro and how WWE is building him up for what one might imagine would be a major push. Maybe it could play a role in boosting TV ratings if WWE were to give deserving superstars opportunities who may not ordinarily get them such as Cesaro. There is no doubt he is one of the best in-ring performers in the company.

Fans who pay even a little attention could see Reigns vs. Shane coming from a mile away given how heavily involved Shane was in the altercations between Roman and Elias leading up to MITB. Props need to be given to Shane McMahon because he is still capable of putting on a gripping performance in matches, despite the fact that he fell to his victory against The Miz.

Speaking of Miz, WWE may be building towards a match between he and Drew McIntyre at Super Showdown, given that they had a match on Raw. Miz is also turning into a surprisingly good protagonist considering this is one of the first times in his career where he is not a heel. He briefly turned babyface in 2013 and was given the figure for leglock by Ric Flair, but that quickly fizzled out and he went back to being a heel because of his mic skills.

Mick Foley’s announcement of the 24/7 Championship was a little bit underwhelming to say the least, because in all honesty it is just an attempted resurgence of the Hardcore Championship from back in the day, which failed to garner much interest from fans. The rules were exactly the same with that championship.

Honestly, it doesn’t even matter that much who the champion is because fans will forget if it changes a couple of times every week. I like to have an optimistic point of view, but it’s almost impossible with this title, which seems doomed to fail just as the Hardcore Championship did about 17 years ago.

The last somewhat relevant Hardcore Champion was Kane when he won the title at WrestleMania X7. A TV title may be more appropriate, a championship which is defended each week on a televised show, either Raw or SmackDown, each week albeit never on pay-per-views. That would generate interest because it would be something new and different, but it would still be easy to keep track of who the champion is because people would see it defended in a marquee segment on TV each week, rather than just being defended anytime anywhere.

Daniel Bryan Promo Extraordinaire

May 25, 2019May 25, 2019 by Evan Luebbe

It’s great to see Dolph Ziggler resurfacing after a few months off, courtesy of a rather brutal attack on Kofi Kingston. Dolph claims it should have been him winning the WWE Championship. I stand corrected – because now there are two matches that garner interest based on history at Super Showdown.

Andrade also had a beautiful match with Ali. It’s very hard not to appreciate these two after one sees, for about two minutes, what these future champions are capable of in the ring. The roster is full of guys like Ricochet, and WWE is extremely fortunate to have right now what is probably its most talented roster ever. From this perspective, it’s a shame that the creative team is struggling this much to create good stories and make good on the fact that there is this much talent. They did not struggle like this in the Attitude Era with less talent

Vince McMahon has been featuring the women in the less prominent roles the last few weeks, surely in an attempt to increase viewership and attention on the product. What he doesn’t realize is that the women are not the problem, it’s the creative team’s lack of good storytelling. Perhaps some new people need to be hired to bring in some fresh ideas.

My God Daniel Bryan cut a great promo, and he showed why at Money in the Bank, hinting that there are major changes coming to the tag team division and that’s Vince McMahon would like for tag teams to be taken seriously as opposed to being more of a fun novelty act. Maybe this change will increase TV viewership with Daniel Bryan and Rowan spearheading this proverbial injection of legitimacy back into the tag team division.

NXT Revitalization

May 25, 2019May 25, 2019 by Evan Luebbe

Hopefully, the return of Tyler Breeze to NXT on a seemingly full-time basis will be the start of Triple H sending some people who have fizzled out on the main roster back to NXT. It could be a big help to a brand that is already doing very well.

It’s also important for superstars to not necessarily view this as a demotion, even though that would be a natural thought process since they would have already competed in NXT previously. But it’s not a case of WWE completely giving up on them but instead pressing the reset button and taking some extra time in the character development process.