The Meltzer post Battleground Rant..you know I had to get to THIS

[R=G]

Going into the WWE Battleground PPV this past Sunday from Buffalo, N.Y., I had stated that if this was not my job, if I were merely a pro-wrestling fan and consumer, there was no way in hell I'd buy this PPV. At SummerSlam, Daniel Bryan beat John Cena to win the WWE Title, and then Randy Orton immediately cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase and took the title. I have no problem with that; a twist in an ongoing storyline is nothing to complain about. However, twist or no twist, I saw Bryan, a popular babyface and new top star, win the title and have it taken away from him.


Fast forward to Night of Champions. Bryan was getting another shot at the title held by Orton. Never mind the fact that for an entire month the storyline had been that HHH and Stephanie, the two in charge of WWE, made it very clear that under no circumstances was Bryan going to become WWE Champion, and that it made no sense for him to even get a shot at the title on PPV in the first place. (I know people will argue that guys are legally entitled to automatic rematches for belts, but the fact is that in the history of Money in the Bank, several guys have lost the title due to cash-in and for storyline reasons not gotten a rematch, so it's not a hard and fast rule in storyline.) So Bryan wins the title, and the next night they took the title off of him, again due to a fast-count storyline.


Fast forward to Battleground. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. For the third time Bryan was fighting for the title in a main event, and the company wanted us to believe that if we paid our $55, he might walk out as champion. Never mind that TWICE they'd given him the belt and taken it right off of him. Never mind that they'd never given anyone a single good reason why, if he won this time, he'd be allowed to keep it despite a two-month storyline where the people in charge insisted he'd never be the champion. Never mind the fact that they didn't even bother to add any sort of stipulation to the match, nothing that would convince even the most naive fan that, hey, maybe this time he'll get to be champion for a while if he wins. Bryan, the hero who'd had the title yanked from him twice, never brought any of this up in storyline either—he, too, naively went into the PPV apparently thinking that if he won this time he'd really get to be champion, with absolutely no evidence pointing in this direction, and in fact, all evidence pointing in the other direction.


So then, on this PPV that a portion of the audience for whatever reason decided to spend $55 on, not only did Daniel Bryan not win the vacant WWE Title, but Randy Orton didn't win it either. Nobody won it. The main event ended in—well, I don't know, because there was no bell, there was no announcement, there was no decision. Big Show came in, KO'd both guys, and then the show ended with his music playing.


There were fans so upset with the fast-count storyline at Night of Champions that they called their cable providers and asked for refunds. Once in my life I have done this, for a TNA PPV that was so atrocious that I legitimately felt ripped off and angry. But in the case of Night of Champions, it was a Dusty finish that has been done many times before, and fans, whether they liked it or not, got a finish even though the storyline rendered it null the next day. To me, asking for a refund the next day was like asking for a refund because you went to see King Kong at the movies and got upset that the ape fell off the building at the end.


With Battleground, though, I believe that anyone who called and asked for a refund was justified. I wouldn't even have been so upset if they'd rung the fukking bell. We didn't even get that. We got NOTHING. This would have been a bad finish on Raw, which is free. And not only was it a bad finish, it was a bad finish to the second bad WWE PPV in a row. Say what you will about WWE, but for over a year there hadn't been anything approaching what you would call a bad PPV. Maybe you had no desire to buy a PPV, but if you did buy it, you were at least guaranteed a pretty good show for your $55. Two bad shows in a row, including a second bad show with an infuriating main event finish, is the first step on the road to killing off your B-PPVs.

 

[R=G]

Do I think it's the end of the world? Of course not. WWE went out of their way on Raw to try to convince fans that if they bought Hell in a Cell, FOR REAL THIS TIME, they'd get their money's worth. And they probably will. I do think the show will end with a new WWE Champion, and all those John Cena fans will get to see their hero return and perhaps even win the World Title. Anyone who thinks this is WCW at the end—cheap plug alert—really needs to read Death of WCW, because I'm telling you, as someone who has written the book twice now, THIS IS NOT WCW AT THE END. This is not to say they aren't making some stupid mistakes and running the risk of temporarily hurting their PPV business (and they're going to pay for the last two months at Hell in a Cell, I'm just not sure how much), at the end of the day the company will roll along just fine as it has for years and years. Killing WWE will be extremely difficult, perhaps impossible. But they're going to have a really hard time growing past their current level with decision-making like this.


It was noted by several in WWE that ever since David Kratzert left the company following SummerSlam, the booking has gone all to hell. In a correction from an earlier edition of this newsletter, Kratzert was the writer who left after SummerSlam, not Eric Pankowski. Pankowski was hired in February of 2012 as Senior Vice President of Creative and Development after a long career working on a variety of programming in Hollywood, as a key cog in the creative wheel. He took over for longtime creative team head Brian Gewirtz last fall, and while he certainly had his detractors within the company, Vince and Stephanie McMahon were big fans. But he had major problems working with Vince, who would regularly get scripts over the weekend and force them to be totally re-written on Monday. Eventually Pankowski got fed up and quit, right before WrestleMania, in fact. Kratzert was a different guy, who I believe also tried to quit, but they talked him into staying through SummerSlam.


With the exception of the Shield vs. Rhodes Family tag team match, the rest of the PPV sucked, a glorified Raw (which is actually being generous in some cases). Dolph Ziggler beat Damien Sandow in a disappointing pre-show match where Ziggler worked it like it was, in fact, a pre-show match. Alberto del Rio beat RVD after overcoming two-on-one odds, winning via armbar submission in a hardcore match for the World Title. This was RVD's swan song until such time comes that he signs a new contract. Which, based on a lot of different things, may not be soon. It was a weird situation because they put him in a World Title program knowing his deal was coming due, and then when he didn't sign they got upset and started booking him like a glorified prelim guy, I guess thinking this would somehow compel him to re-sign. Instead, it appeared to just piss him off. We'll see if he returns. After the match, a fan at ringside yelled to him that at least this was better than TNA, and he responded by looking back at them, rolling his eyes and shrugging. That doesn't sound positive. Ricardo Rodriguez was also written out of storylines for the time being after a Del Rio attack on Raw. He's playing the masked El Local luchador on Smackdown and NXT. Real Americans beat Santino & Great Khali in a match where Cesaro pinned Khali with the giant swing. This swing was worth about $10, one of the only things of value on the show. Curtis Axel beat Truth in a Raw match. AJ Lee beat Brie Bella in a Raw match and suffered a concussion taking a bump into the corner, so she's out of action for a while. Goldust & Cody Rhodes beat Shield to win their jobs back in what was an excellent old-school tag team match, worth a good $20, and Cody came out of it a bigger star than perhaps he's ever been in his career. We'll see how the follow-up goes. Bray Wyatt beat Kofi Kingston in a WWE Main Event match. Punk beat Ryback via low blow. Apparently everyone in the entire world except the people who booked this match understood that it didn't make sense and that neither man should have lost. They could have done a DQ if they weren't doing an even worse finish in the main event. And then Daniel Bryan ??? Randy Orton in the main event. Orton was a gigantic, and I mean GIGANTIC favorite going into this match up until a half-hour before the show, so this awful finish may, in fact, have been a last-minute change to fool the oddsmakers, which would rank up there as one of the stupidest decision ever in pro-wrestling history if true. Orton worked the match like a guy pissed off, not wanting to go above and beyond for a match that would only be remembered for having a terrible finish. And I don't blame him. Bryan, on the other hand, worked his ass off.


The fans were infuriated leaving the building. They figured there was more to come, but there wasn't, and when the announcers stood up to leave they chanted "BULLshyt!" and "REFUND!"


Josh, who was at the show, noted to us that the best tickets were $400 each plus service fees, so the live crowd had good reason to be infuriated. "Booking at this show was an embarrassment. So much talent all squandered because of poor writing. I've lost all faith in the future—and present—of this company. This is why if I want a true wrestling experience I only support Ring of Honor, and encourage others to do the same."

 

[R=G]

The PPV was a mess backstage as they had the script for the show finalized on Friday (we were sent the times that day and they were for the most part accurate), but now creative isn't being told the finishes until about two hours before showtime, which is why the odds swings are taking place late. It's believed people in the company call or text friends or family and have them bet for them as opposed to people betting themselves from the building (which would be pretty obvious if they were messing around on their laptops right before showtime).


Vince and Kevin Dunn also flipped their lids when the power went out, and now Vince is super paranoid that the same thing is going to happen at WrestleMania (it happened during the Super Bowl in the same building that hosts next year's Mania). It was noted by someone in the company that power outages at sporting events actually happen pretty frequently, and WWE is actually lucky it's happened so infrequently to them given the number of live events they run each year. Vince's concern is that not only are they running in the same building, but WrestleMania utilizes more power than the Super Bowl between lighting, pyro, production, etc.


For post-Hell in a Cell, it's looking like the planned Big Show vs. Randy Orton program may end up as a three-way Show vs. Orton vs. Bryan program.

 

[Riley Escobar]

This is why if I want a true wrestling experience I only support Ring of Honor, and encourage others to do the same.

 

[Riley Escobar]

There were fans so upset with the fast-count storyline at Night of Champions that they called their cable providers and asked for refunds. Once in my life I have done this, for a TNA PPV that was so atrocious that I legitimately felt ripped off and angry.

which one yall think that was?

 

[R=G]

Why not?

In a big surprise, during the 10/7 Raw show in Pittsburgh, it was announced that Alberto Del Rio would be defending the World title at the 10/27 Hell in a Cell PPV in Miami against John Cena.


Of course, the last word regarding Cena, was after he had surgery to re-attach a partially torn left triceps on 8/21 in Birmingham, AL, under Dr. James Andrews. At the time, it was said that he would be out of action four to five months. Instead, he’ll be coming back in nine weeks.


That leads to a lot of questions, and very few answers. Those at WWE are always quiet about Cena. They were quiet when the injury first happened and kept the idea that he was going to have surgery a secret because it would have given away that Cena couldn’t retain his title at SummerSlam.


Once again, with this story, WWE would not respond to anything with an official statement. The only thing we were told is that he healed very quickly.


Many jumped to the conclusion that having both Cena and Shawn Michaels appear at Hell in a Cell was in response to the terribly negative response to the Battleground PPV, among the worst WWE major shows in years. But that isn’t the case. As noted here, Michaels was scheduled to return for an angle several weeks back. We’ve since learned that the plan for Cena vs. Del Rio was secretly on the books for about two weeks, dating back to the announcement of Cena appearing on the late December show in Madison Square Garden.


It is not clear whether Cena is back full-time, part-time until November (he is advertised on the European tour), or only wrestling this show and just making appearances at the house shows but not wrestling. The belief is he will be wrestling Del Rio to headline one tour while Daniel Bryan, Randy Orton, C.M. Punk and Ryback would headline the other tour starting with the European swing.


But that asks the obvious unanswered question regarding how does this make sense. Cena’s surgery was not a work, as the scars on his arm clearly showed. It was not a minor operation that one would come back from in two months. Some people will jump to the conclusion that PEDs are the answer, because GH and steroids do increase the speed of healing from those type of operations. Cena, of course, has always claimed he has never done PEDs. But you can say PEDs all day long, the fact, is , athletes who make as much or more money than Cena, who get operations for torn triceps and are going to have every bit as much access to PEDs, and in particular GH (since none of the major U.S. sports test for it, nor does WWE), are not coming back in nine weeks after surgery for a torn triceps.


Now, in the old days, would wrestlers come back from such an injury like that? Well, that’s a weird one. Torn triceps were basically unheard of in athletes until the steroid era. And wrestlers in other eras who tore triceps, because of the nature of the business, just drank and took pain pills and kept going, usually avoiding the expensive surgery in the first place and ended up with the somewhat deformed looking arms as far as normal musculature is concerned. Cena himself worked several shows overseas after tearing the triceps, and then delayed the surgery, and took a few weeks off before working a hard SummerSlam match with Bryan three days before his operation was scheduled.


The point being, if PEDs are or aren’t involved, that’s not the compete answer as to why he’s back in nine weeks. The answer has to be that he’s either rushing back far too early, or the injuries were exaggerated publicly.

 

[Reality Check]

which one yall think that was?

Safe bet would be Sting/Jeff Hardy Main Event when Hardy was high out of his mind.

 

[Ed MOTHEREFFING G]

Safe bet would be Sting/Jeff Hardy Main Event when Hardy was high out of his mind.

which one yall think that was?

This rant @R=G posted is Bryan Alvarez and not Dave Meltzer, and its either Victory road 2011, or Destination X 2009, i'm pretty sure its the latter and he actually made the request while on the air with Vinny


EDIT: it is definitely destination X 2009. his review is on youtube under the user "randyHEADLOCKorton" [no, that is not me, nerds, and I found it looking for his Souled out 97 review]. I'll post it later.

 

[R=G]

Who cares..same type.

 

[Ed MOTHEREFFING G]

Who cares..same type.

it wasn't a diss fam, just a correction. Its the same website lol

 

[R=G]

I dont care..they pretty much spin off each other in routinely the same agreements. Either...or.

 

[Ed MOTHEREFFING G]

I dont care..they pretty much spin off each other in routinely the same agreements. Either...or.

You made a mistake. I corrected it. don't get smart.

 

[Riley Escobar]

This rant @R=G posted is Bryan Alvarez and not Dave Meltzer, and its either Victory road 2011, or Destination X 2009, i'm pretty sure its the latter and he actually made the request while on the air with Vinny


EDIT: it is definitely destination X 2009. his review is on youtube under the user "randyHEADLOCKorton" [no, that is not me, nerds, and I found it looking for his Souled out 97 review]. I'll post it later.

 

[The Great One]

Meltzer has been wrong about RVD from the beginning.

At first he reported a short term deal for like 6 months.

Then he reported the deal was for 90 days, then they would "see where they were after that and re-negotiate"

Then he said he only had to work 90 days at a time and had to come back within a certain period of time.

Now it's he works every 90 days, then gets a break and gets to come back on his own terms, a deal put together by Triple H and signed off by Vince.

So I have been REALLY losing respect for him as far as news breaking lately.

 

[StatUS]

My nikka Meltz would never go on a rant of this type like that lame Alvarez.

Play the fukking music