Latest PPV and weekly show discussion thread

@williamhenry: because nobody watched the week before.

The Sunny thing is... sad. $100 to whoever dresses like Elmo.

The little bit that Jake Manning talked about Freight Train on the AoW podcast made me smile. The man has been wrestling for over a decade and finally got his "big break" through Five Dollar Wrestling. Fantastic stuff. It also reminded me that I need to watch that Wesley Willis documentary.

For @turboman website names, here is a tiny braindump:

Future Endeavors

Sunset Flip

Thinking Man's Sport

Rollup of Doom

Cheap Pop

Swiss Death

Zigglypuff

Wrestling With Logic

Armbar Arithmetic

Burning Hammer

Broken Ring

People Power

Nothing sticks out as a particularly good name, but I figured I would put them all out there for consideration.

Good point.

The worse thing about this Sunny promotion is that this is how she looks in 2013:

@jewunit: I actually tried out cheappop.com, but to no avail.

Yikes Sunny looks 58 years old.

A bit of possible news: WWE had a house show in Delaware and Mark and Jay Briscoe was both spotted sitting in the front row. (note: Briscoe Brothers are from Delaware).

Excuse my French, but I am so fucking hyped for Bray Wyatt tonight. I hope it's as good as I've built it up in my head to be.

You guys still have the Raw chat? I stopped coming for health reasons (it's not good to stay up till 4AM. Who knew?) but I think I'll swing by tonight if it's still going.

I think it'd be good to have a chat, I need something to keep my mind off of today's news.

@gunslingerpanda: yeah, there'll be a Raw chat, I need a way to not be bummed out tonight and wrestling with the chat is the best way for that.

glad that there is going to be a wrestling chat tonight need some cheering up #rawforryan

I'm trying to get this post out before GiantBomb blows up again.

RAW IS RYAN DAVIS

• We cry on each others shoulders tonight and cheer each other up over our lost friend.
• Bray Wyatt Debut!
• Money in the Bank go-home show!
• Vickie's job evaluation!
• oh my!

http://tinychat.com/5hfhe

Site appears to be having trouble so I'll leave this here for anyone who manages to see it:

Raw chat: http://tinychat.com/hqk56

http://tinychat.com/3fshc

I guess I'll watch some wrestling because what the fuck else am I going to do?

In the middle of somewhere in Montana and just found out about Ryan. Really wish I could be in the chat tonight. This is kind of I shitty feeling to have with a bunch of people who wouldn't get it. Guess I'll just drink.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make the chat/watch Raw tonight. We got hit with a huge storm here in Toronto and a large part of the city lost power.

Husky Harris debut!

Raw was pretty great tonight. The opening and closing matches were a lot of fun, and those Wyatt Family pre-tapes were very cool.

It was a good distraction for an otherwise super shitty day :(

Fucking smark crowd.

Pretty good episode on an, otherwise, very awful day for all of us. The Bray Wyatt was unsurprisingly good, especially them pre-taped segments. The whole Vickie "job evaluation" thing though was awful. It was a very long, drawn-out affair that ended up making Vickie look like the most pathetic thing and made the "Powers That Be" collectively look like shit. BUTHOLYCRAP Brad Maddox is GM! I look forward to his 2 (maybe 3?) week reign.

NEVER FORGET

Yep. Smark fans can be pretty awful. Can't just let the new character come in and enjoy it for what it is

This really, really wound me up. I genuinely thought it wouldn't happen to Bray.

Maddox as GM.. I kind of marked out for, not going to lie.

There's been one constant to RAW recently, that I feel is very telling, at least to me. The show's would be so much better if any segment with a McMahon was just cut out. Aside from the awful family feuding, the last few weeks have been kinda okay, and last night's was maybe better than it actually was because of it being a distraction, but I did actually enjoy it.

I am on a pretty crazy sleep schedule at the moment that caused me to go to sleep a few hours before the news about Ryan broke. I just found out two hours ago and I'm in disbelief. If it weren't for Ryan I wouldn't be as big of a fan and a member and if it wasn't for Ryan we would never have this awesome thread and we wouldn't have this awesome community.

Sorry if I bummed you guys out again but I wanted to share my thoughts on my favorite corner of this site. I'm sure Ryan is up there with Randy Savage listening to some summerjams.

Pretty excited that they seem to be bringing the gimmick back. The last two debuts were a ballroom dancer and... Well, whatever the fuck the Wyatts are I'm enjoying it thus far. Hopefully the days of the generic guys are behind us.

Though this does make the decision to drop the El Generico gimmick from Sami Zayn incredibly weird.

It is because of images like this that I wish WWE Raw Japanese edition should have come to fruition:

Guess in retrospect, raw wasn't so bad. Maybe it was just all the Vickie stuff. I was browsing classic quick looks during that 600 hour firing segment.

It feels like the go-home Raws are never that good, even though I do like the card for MiTB.

@roomrunner: I guess it's hard to make a go-home show work because everything is laid out in front of you and the last thing to do for each of your feuds going into the PPV is to give somebody the last bit of momentum, and then the interesting part of the PPV's is to see if the momentum back fires or not (thus, Reverse Momentum Theory).

It's also about how well of an angle that last piece of momentum, for instance for the Punk/Taker feud, Punk rubbing ashes all over himself and pouring the rest over Undertaker was a great bit of entertainment. Mark Henry generically blindsiding Cena and doing his finishing move was more of the same, which is bland.

Shows after PPV's are generally much better because we get that clean slate again, and stuff like the Mark Henry retirement segment can steal the show.

I don't know if any of you guys pick up on this in the chat.

I think the weirdest part of this whole thing has been realising that over the last ten years I've spent more time watching/listening/reading stuff with the Giant Bomb guys than my own dad.

Anyway, man I was wondering how they would get Bray Wyatt's rocking chair onto Raw, and fucking hell they did damn good. Overall that was a good Raw, I'm now excited for Money in the Bank and Ryback giving Vickie was adorable. Ryback gets some love from me for being a god damned human being in the weird WWE Universe.

This week's Backstage Fallout is pretty good. It features the 7 WHC MITB competitors delivering some pretty good promos. Rhodes does a pretty well paced spiel, while Fandango utilizes the comedic capabilities of his accent exceptionally.

But the real standout is Ambrose at the end giving (unsurprisingly) the best promo of the lot.

In additional MITB news, WWE.com posted a story about how Kane was injured from the Wyatt's stair shot in their glorious debut, so as of now he's out of the RAW MITB leaving an open slot. Please let it be Bray Wyatt who fills it in AND LET HIM WIN EVERYTHING.

----

... and as a little aside, I was so happy that at least 2/3's of RAW was able to be entertaining enough to distract me from the tragic news yesterday. I'm surprised at how hard it hit me.

@damswedon: That's awesome.

Apparently, Samoa Joe is a duder:

@cmblasko said:

@damswedon: That's awesome.

Apparently, Samoa Joe is a duder:

That's amazing. Joe is my new favorite wrestler.

@cmblasko: I just saw that and was speechless. Samoa Joe is ****ing great

It also continues to amaze me how the absolute best promo material WWE are putting out right now is on their website, and never gets to TV. They really need to air that backstage fallout stuff on Smackdown. It's more often than not the source of their best promo's.

Man, right in the feels Joe.

Yeah, if I had to guess it's most likely because that stuff doesn't go through Vince or Stephanie. Also, they probably have a lot more creative freedom doing these videos than cutting a promo during Raw.

Just got out of Smackdown. Pretty great show this week

That Samoa Joe tweet made my day.

Main Event Spoilers:

Updated Smackdown Cliffnotes:

I went to the arena today and was going to buy some $50ish seats, then a guy came up to me and sold me his ticket for 10 bucks. I then went to sit at my seat and the section was tarped off! Long story short, they moved me towards pretty close to the entrance way to make the arena look full.

Dark Match was Yoshi Tatsu vs. Darren Young, so I preceded to spend the rest of my Smackdown money on drinks. (Disappointed that I didn't get to see a Wyatt in the Dark Match, Titus Oneil wasn't even at ringside).

That stuff is all taped as well, which allows them to redo lines or fix things in post.

@williamhenry: @cmblasko: Yeah, that's why I figure it'd be best aired on Smackdown. That show's not live, and doesn't air till Fridays, so they'd have time to run it past management or whatever they'd need to do to get it okay'd. Those segment's are nearly always good, and it's kind of a shame they're not seen by more people.

@damswedon said:

I don't know if any of you guys pick up on this in the chat.

How did we all miss this, too busying chatting?

SD is practically 50% Raw recaps these days anyway, so I don't know why they don't air it there.

@humphreys: to be fair, if Cena was on the screen, there's a good chance I was paying attention to the chat.

Man, did any of caught Flair's appearance in celebrity wife swap? Geez, he is such an idiot. He was acting on the show like he is a multi millionaire. And the episode opened with the narrator saying how Flair has been having financial troubles.

If you don't listen to the Steve Austin podcast this week is a good week to start.

Steve Austin interviews Stone Cold Steve Austin.