The stupidest thing is that Lesnar vs Velasquez doesn’t need a title to work.
1 Like
And for thoroughness I note Smackdown pulled 4 million on its Fox debut, making it the most-watched WWE show this year (don’t know how much further back as well).
No way that keep that many viewers though. They are going to put on a loaded show like that every week, and they won’t have The Rock showing up to increase viewers either
Wrestling just isn’t the same for me without The Rock. His charisma is off the charts
I thought AEW and Smackdown were mostly excellent shows, but we’ll see if they can keep it up. The Smackdown set has been a massive improvement on what they had recently. Kofi getting done in 5 seconds was hilariously predictible.
That ending to HIAC was complete and utter garbage
LOL.
Only WWE could run a 8 match PPV with half of them being unknown to the paying audience walking into the building; hot-shot a title change in a match with zero build to an act that have been catering regulars for 6 months; give the Cena of the women’s division yet another title run; and book your 2nd straight non-finish in a match that before last year was strictly designed so you couldn’t screw the audience out of a non-finish.
And they wonder why attendances are down, but hey…that FOX money.
Garbage end. Not only the end, but also Bray taking a 100 finishers and not even registering it, how will he ever lose again?
Seth hits 100 stomps and pedigrees and Bray gets up straight away like they’re nothing. Seth then covers him with weapons and hits the pile with a sledgehammer. He then gets DQ’d in a freakin’ Hell in a Cell. C’mon.
by all reports the crowd was chating AEW and Refund after the match
Also seth rollins is one of the worst wwe champions i have ever seen in my life. And seems like an absolute flog as a human being too
Sadly, WWE’s awful camera-nodding in sync with the action is not gone, on PPV at least.
The opening 23 minute Hell-in-a-Cell match was awesome, though you gotta let the heels win sometime.
Was hilarious when Sasha was throwing all the chairs into the ring, and every one of them was precisely placed to hurt Becky. That is craft.
Yeah, I watched the last match to see if it was as bad as claimed. Most of it was just regulation, nowhere near as interesting or creative as the women’s match, and the all-red-light-all-the-time will get boring/annoying quick.
Bwahahaha when Rollins is spamming finishers like a nutjob and the crowd turns on him, hard at first, then meh. Then literal minutes of nothing happening… before character beat.
Only a few seconds of strong AEW chant. And then again later.
In a way, I didn’t mind it as a character piece… pity about how boring most of the match was, how devastatingly kayfabe-killing it was, how the rules were ignored because they booked themselves into a corner, how it gives you nowhere to go with Bray in-ring, the “blood” at the end, the presumably fake booing for the whole last minute. I mean, apart from that…
OK, now that the three joshi are all heel-ish, put them together. I need more Black Lotus Triad in my life:
(Substitute killer clown Asuka in the middle.)
To recap the end of the last three “main roster” shows, comprising a season launch, a channel launch, and a PPV:
- an extended cuckold scene, where the usually hot-blooded protective Rusev had his big return… and then did nothing
- Kofi lost the title in a five second “match” and then his conquerer was scared by old Domenic Guerrero
- see HiaC comments above!
I would describe this as a sub-optimal response to competition…
Since AEW’s debut, WWE’s response has also been to screw over their own paying crowd at both shows.
The Cell debacle has been well covered and even for a B PPV they would’ve be paying more for tickets than a TV taping.
This was after SmackDown where they:
-
advertised Austin, Taker & Sting and delivered none of them even in dark segments for the live crowd (Sting was backstage but wasn’t used, Taker was legit told to stay home as they wouldn’t be using him and there hasn’t been any word on why Austin wasn’t used or even if he was flown it at all).
-
opted to cancel (at the last minute) 205 Live that every other SmackDown paying fan has received for the past 2.5 years because they wanted to end the taping with the Cain angle (so no dark match to make up for it either). Why you would persist airing 205 after SmackDown with dead crowds is beyond anybody with a brain.
@theDJR - re: Kevin Dunn. Fox is apparently much more hands on than USA, so I expect they have a specific vision of how they want the show shot (and may’ve brought in their own DP to oversee shooting) which leaves Dunn out in the cold (finally). I’d expect USA will still allow Dunn to play in their sandbox, but last week they may’ve been using RAW as a dry-run for this new way of shooting for the Fox debut.
It’ll be interesting who ends up on Fox post-draft as they’ve apparently been pushing hard for Bray Wyatt, Becky Lynch and Rey Mysterio (they have a Latino specific WWE show they want him for) in particular.
I feel like I’m one of about eight people in the world that understood the HIAC finish was a ref stoppage (no contest) and not a DQ.
Also I feel like the Cain Velasquez appearance would have been far more impactful if I, the dumb average WWE fan, had any idea who the bloke was. They should have cut-and-pasted the 2004 No Way Out finish (Goldberg comes out of the crowd and messes up Brock so Eddie Guerrero wins the title) to both keep the title on Kofi and show everyone what a big deal Velasquez is.
The WWE tweeted it was a DQ, then “corrected” themselves.
It makes no sense anyway; it was stoppage material way before then. Except of course Bray was just playing possum… or was he?
Best not to think too hard about it.
1 Like
I’m so glad I’ve given up WWE
To be fair to the WWE, they did put out a show called “That’s Gotta Be Cain*” in the week leading up to this.
*Kane. Shut up.
I’m assuming that this was the only good bit in RAW. And now you’ve seen this use of their new set, never need to do so again.
1 Like
If you’d like to watch something not WWE, AEW are putting last week’s Dynamite dark matches on Youtube every Tuesday (Yank time). Goes one hour. Most of this one is a bit meh, but it is certainly not insulting to the viewer.
NXT’s audience still hasn’t stabilised they were down another 100k and slipped to a .2 in the 18-49 demo. New shows always slip in Wk 2 so its no surprise AEW also shed 250k and were down to a .5 in the demo. All up 20% of the audience that watched the shows last week didn’t return.
WWE/Fox/USA seems to be presenting the draft like an actual draft for the first time in eons with a lengthy list of Fox sports presenters and NBCUniversal stable actors/reality stars announced for the 2 shows. Per the press release “USA and Fox executives will have direct influence” over who ends up where.
STAMFORD, Conn. – October 10, 2019 – A star-studded celebrity lineup of FOX and NBCUniversal personalities including Alex Rodriguez, Michael Che, Colin Jost, Christian Slater, Troy Aikman, Joe Buck and Jim Cramer will be part of the two-night WWE Draft airing live tomorrow on Friday Night SmackDown® at 8 pm ET/PT on FOX and continuing this Monday, October 14 on Raw® at 8/7c on USA Network.
For the first time, executives from FOX and USA Network have direct influence over the WWE Draft as it will determine the Superstars competing for either Raw or SmackDown.
Additional celebrities include: FOX MLB Analysts Kevin Burkhardt and Frank Thomas; Curt Menefee, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Jimmy Johnson and Tony Gonzalez from FOX NFL Sunday; FOX NFL Analysts Ronde Barber, Charles Davis, Chris Spielman and Daryl Johnston; Big Noon Kickoff Analysts Rob Stone, Brady Quinn, Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart and Urban Meyer; FOX NFL Kickoff cast including Charissa Thompson, Michael Vick and Peter Schrager; FOX College Football Analyst Joel Klatt; as well as stars from NBCUniversal including Dulé Hill (Psych, Suits); James Roday (Psych); Marcus Lemonis (The Profit); Margaret Josephs and Melissa Gorga (Real Housewives of New Jersey); Football Night In America Analysts Rodney Harrison and Chris Simms; and Rebecca Lowe, Robbie Mustoe and Kyle Martino from Premier League Live.
WWE Draft Rules
- More than 70 Superstars, including Tag Teams, have been placed into this year’s WWE Draft pool.
- 30 Superstars will be eligible to be drafted tomorrow night while 41 Superstars will be eligible on Monday Night.
- Since Friday Night SmackDown is a two-hour show and Monday Night Raw is a three-hour show, for every two SmackDown picks, Raw will get three.
- Tag Teams will count as one pick unless FOX or USA Network specifically wants to pick one Superstar from the team.
- Any undrafted Superstars will immediately be declared free agents and able to sign with the brand of their choosing.
For the interested, here are the assigned nights - it is unclear whether people can be drafted outside of this (205/NXT) as recent NXT shifts like Balor aren’t listed and some 205 guys are listed (Luchas, Tozawa, Carrillo) but not others (Gulak, Nese, Gallagher, Singhs etc).
Friday Night SmackDown – Draft on 10/11
WWE Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch
Roman Reigns
The O.C. (United States Champion AJ Styles, Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson)
Bray Wyatt
Drew McIntyre
Randy Orton
Sasha Banks
Ricochet
Braun Strowman
Bobby Lashley
Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross
Lacey Evans
The Viking Raiders (Erik & Ivar)
SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Revival (Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder)
Natalya
The Street Profits (Montez Ford & Angelo Dawkins)
Lucha House Party (Kalisto, Gran Metalik, Lince Dorado)
Cesaro
Kevin Owens
Humberto Carrillo
Akira Tozawa
Sin Cara
Eric Young
EC3
Chad Gable
Heath Slater
Drew Gulak
The B-Team (Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel)
Tamina
Raw – Draft on Monday 10/14
WWE Universal Champion Seth Rollins
WWE Champion Brock Lesnar
WWE Smackdown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair
Titus O’Neil
WWE Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura (with Sami Zayn)
Aleister Black
The New Day (Kofi Kingston, Big E & Xavier Woods)
Daniel Bryan
Bayley
Luke Harper
Erick Rowan
The Miz
Ali
King Corbin
Elias
WWE Raw Tag Team Champions Dolph Ziggler & Bobby Roode
Samoa Joe
WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions The Kabuki Warriors (Asuka & Kairi Sane)
Rusev
Cedric Alexander
Rey Mysterio
R-Truth
Carmella
AOP (Akam & Rezar)
Heavy Machinery (Tucker & Otis)
Apollo Crews
Andrade
Liv Morgan
Jinder Mahal
Buddy Murphy
Mojo Rawley
No Way José
Dana Brooke
Shelton Benjamin
Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder
The IIconics (Billie Kay & Peyton Royce)
Sarah Logan
Fire & Desire (Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville)
Drake Maverick