COMMENTARY – I don’t believe what I just saw. Actually, I’m still reeling from the events of WWE Fastlane from last night. On an evening when the Red Team had every opportunity to take the ball and run with it as the company heads toward Wrestlemania 33, the common theme was predictability on every level.
It’s going take a while for me to get this out of my system. Maybe two fingers of scotch will help. Actually, scratch that, as I may need more than one drink to restore my faith in this business. How the McMahon family can think the product that was put on display in Milwaukee on Sunday night was enough to get us excited about the biggest event on the wrestling calendar is beyond my comprehension.
But at least the company had both Renee Young and Charly Caruso on air, so that was a positive thing.
Jokingly, I told one of my friends last night that my nine-year-old daughter could have booked a better pay-per-view.
Now that the dust is beginning to settle, and my frustrations are starting to subsiding, the best thing to do is to move forward, if that’s possible. We have a new Universal Heavyweight Champion in Goldberg. Oh wait, we expected that. We have a Raw Women’s Champion in Bayley. Oh wait, we expected that. Charlotte’s streak of 15 pay-per-view wins has ended. Oh wait, we expected that.
If this company wanted us to continue to believe that it’s moving in the right direction, it had better come correct and explain itself Monday night. While I can say the match between Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman was better than I anticipated and the cruiserweight match between Neville and Jack Gallagher was solid, I can’t find any other redeeming success story.
Oh wait, we expected that.
WWE pay-per-view events before Wrestlemania are supposed to set the tone for what is about to happen. The Blue Team, with all its wisdom and proper booking, did that at Elimination Chamber and has been doing that on a weekly basis with more compelling matches and better storylines. Stephanie McMahon if you were listening to me, take a page out of your big brother’s playbook. Right now, he is winning the battle and if everything goes according to plan he will win the war in April.
[DavidL]
You can’t take a knife to a gun fight. In this case, somebody was attempting to play Rock, Paper, Scissors and forgot that they needed to put forth a little creativity and a lot of effort. This is bad. This is Eva Marie bad. This is Giant Gonzalez and Glacier bad. What this amounted to was fans paying $9.99 for seeing another version of WWE Monday Night Raw. And my question now becomes what the hell happens tonight to make it all better?
I suspect there was a meeting of the minds Sunday night with management figuring out how to save someone’s ass. I figure the Undertaker will make an appearance on Monday night. I figure Brock Lesnar will make an appearance as well. I figured there will be some fireworks backstage with Mick Foley being fired. I suspect there will be a Samoa Joe sighting. And there may even be Seth Rollins coming out and threatens his mentor, Triple H once again.
Where was all of this last night? Where is the fire? Where is the passion? Where is the understanding this is professional wrestling, not some production put forth by the Children’s Television Workshop? I’m baffled. I’m mad. I can feel my blood pressure rising again. This isn’t the business I grew up watching. For everything, the McMahons put together to create compelling story lines, lots of drama, and great matches, this has to be considered one of the most epic fails in the WWE era. It’s true. It’s damn true and the only thing that is going to correct this problem is for people to take their heads out of the sand and fix it.
There are 27 days until Wrestlemania. I don’t have a lot of faith and what’s going to happen next. We have a part-time company champion who will face a part-time wrestler for a company title in Orlando. We have four women who continually play hot potato and wrestle each other. We have a cruiserweight division that also has great potential but isn’t as exciting as the Cruiserweight Classic was. How do we fix these things? How do we get back to making wrestling great again?
I’d love to hear how the McMahons smooth this over tonight. Hopefully, by then I’ll be a lot calmer. I think I’m going to need another scotch because images of predictability are making my blood boil. Someone has to answer for this and why we all suffered a huge letdown.