After thorough bashing of my own skull against a wall, I am able to entertain everyone with this week’s edition of The WWE-Ek. Sure it is a play on WWE, but we cover everything because entertainment, stupidity, and lessons never learned from history are not exclusive to one organization.
WWE
Let’s start with WWE. Remember when Wade Barrett was Intercontinental Champion about a year ago, and he kept losing, and losing, and losing. Keep in mind this was pre-“Bad News” gimmick. Well, it seems WWE suddenly had a memory lapse, and instead of the original plan to turn him face since the crowd loves the “B-N-B” gimmick, they opt to return him to a heel persona.
Which is fine. It works. Edge was a heel yet fans always cheered him. Hell, Mr. Kennedy was a heel and his gimmick was beloved by fans. So seeing Barrett continuing his arrogant a-hole ways is of no bother to me. What DOES bother me is WWE once again giving him a goddamned losing streak as Intercontinental Champion, AGAIN! Now, I don’t like to use swear words. Because it is not me… BUT WHAT THE F**K WWE? He loses to Sin Cara/Hunico on SmackDown? Are you kidding me? Okay, so now after he loses he beats people up. It does not matter! You want the Intercontinental Championship and United States Championship to be titles which matter? When Dolph Ziggler had the title, it was all about “next step to WWE Championship” and “future WWE legend” talk. Suddenly, Barrett has the title and he’s subject to a calligraphy of creative crud?
Christ.
Speaking of crud, how about Cesaro and Tyson Kidd? As a team, they can probably steal shows. But we can’t just have them doing that yet, because someone decided it would be a great idea to pair them amongst Adam Rose’s Rosebuds! All in order to feud with The New Day. Another terrible gimmick. WWE is really close to rejuvenating the tag team division again, but shit like this is going to be murder.
The Usos, as champions are what we need right now. Yes, the shtick from them is getting boring since it’s the same stuff every week, but keep in mind at one point fans couldn’t get enough of it. What’s the phrase, “too much of a good thing… is never good.” Or something stupid like that. However, the novelty here is we are always used to watching the babyface teams and wonder who will be next to be champs? This time around, I think there is more anticipation as to which heel team will take the titles from The Usos. We have Miz & Mizdow, we have The Dusts, and now we have the Ascension slowly climbing the ranks by defeating jobbers transported from 1991. Their promos are turning sour faster than bad cheese, and I guess since all they can do is berate teams from the 80’s and 90’s, they might as well defeat the same jobbers from a bygone era. It doesn’t help the commentary team continues to trounce the Ascension, so I guess they’ll be shipped back to NXT soon enough.
Speaking of NXT, this seems to be the only worthwhile program WWE has right now. WWE was on a roll up until the last RAW of 2014. Suddenly, all the writers, or at least their brains went on a permanent vacation.
In order to make sure people either don’t forget or actually opt to watch, Daniel Bryan will compete on the first episode of SmackDown in the new Thursday night time slot.
Royal Rumble is on January 25th. The last time the Royal Rumble was on that specific date, was back in 2009 with Randy Orton winning. The time before was in 2004, and some Canadian Wrestler who I know won the title at WrestleMania XX, also won the Rumble that year, but his name escapes me… oh wait, CHRIS BENOIT.
Those facts mean nothing. Or could mean everything.
Impact Wrestling
Over in TNA/Impact-land, their first show was a solid outing. Austin Aries reclaimed the X-Division title while Bobby Lashley defeated Bobby Roode to reclaim the Impact Championship after a number of surprising heel-turns. It seems new stables and angles are quickly being put together, hopefully this time with some stability to them. A lot of talent showcased, let’s hope it continues on. Unfortunately I do not get the Destination America channel, so I am one of many who have to rely on finding an online stream or reading results afterwards.
Speaking of angles, let talk Kurt Angle who re-signed with the company and even competed I a Street Fight against MVP. I was surprised how well he could compete, and even tossed MVP around with a decent number of suplexes.
Rumors flying around at the NYC tapings Jeff Hardy got hurt pretty bad while taking a fall of a cage. Head on over to TMZ to see the video, but it looks like the guy got knocked out cold.
Global Force Wrestling
I didn’t cover this bit of news regarding Global Force Wrestling earlier since the hype was all about New Japan and WrestleKingdom 9, but Jeff Jarrett has also negotiated a deal over in South Africa for GFW wrestlers to appear there. Except there is one hitch… are there any official GFW wrestlers on the roster yet? Is there a roster yet? It’s great Jeff Jarrett is doing what he can to make a worldwide network here, but don’t you need a product to stock the shelves with first?
