Showdown Buildups & Ricochet Beating

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.