Wednesday, April 23, 2008

2008 King of the Ring Thoughts

On April 21, WWE ran a three hour RAW on USA Network. It was during this show that a new King of the Ring was crowned. At one point, the King of the Ring was a WWE Pay Per View event. For the last couple of years, the WWE has stretched the KotR tournament over a few weeks on RAW. On Monday, they returned to the single night format.
I believe King of the Ring has found its identity on RAW.
Now, to the gripes. It would have been nice to have the KotR determine the #1 contender for a title. It seemed like most of the superstars in the tournament already had storylines going for them. CM Punk was the winner of the Money in the Bank ladder match at WrestleMania XXIV. MVP has a feud with Matt Hardy. Chris Jericho is the Intercontinental Title holder and will be the special referee for the Michaels/Batista match at Backlash. William Regal is the current General Manager of RAW. It would have been nice for some of the talent who didn't have ongoing storylines to participate in the KotR.
William Regal winning the tournament isn't horrible for me. I can see how the new title could play into his role as GM of RAW. I was really pulling for Finlay as this could have been the start of a new angle for him as his WrestleMania XXIV opponent JBL is working the fatal four way at Backlash. We'll see what King Regal does at the PPV.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Y2J Added to the Mix

The fallout of Rick “Wooooooo” Flair’s retirement story comes to a head at WWE’s Backlash. Scheduled for the show is RAW’s Shawn Michaels versus Smackdown’s Batista. HBK is doing penance for winning his WrestleMania XXIV match with Flair, thus retiring the Nature Boy. WWE began an angle between HBK and Dave “The Animal” Batista the next day. Batista’s beef with Shawn is that the Heart Break Kid should have “thrown the match” so that Rick could continue to be in the ring, performing. Batista is blaming HBK for taking Flair away from him.
This is a very organic way to develop a feud from the retirement angle. I was hoping that this would continue through out the summer and then culminate with the SummerSlam PPV. On the April 14 edition of RAW, the feud took a different turn. Thanks to some pointed jabs at HBK during Chris Jerico’s Highlight Reel (and sweet chin music to Jerico’s jaw), Y2J is now the special guest referee for the match between HBK and Batista. During the match, Shawn will have the upper hand against The Animal. At some point, Jericho will administer the Code Breaker finishing move on HBK, giving the win to Batista.
Here now is the real SummerSlam marquee event… HBK vs. Y2J. Now, will this be a battle for the Intercontinental Title or just a straight grudge match? I will have to go with “grudge” on this one as Shawn is a little above holding the IC Title. But it will be one hell of a match.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

WrestleMania 24 is over, now what?

WrestleMania is in the books for another year. The spectacle of all spectacles is the culmination of storylines and feuds that started with the Royal Rumble or before. The Royal Rumble begins the Road to WrestleMania, No Way Out should continue the WrestleMania storylines, WrestleMania is the biggest event of the year and then Backlash serves as a postscript to the big event.

The week after the Backlash PPV should serve as a fresh start for the company. On each of the three flagship shows (RAW, ECW, Smackdown), the WWE should conduct a weeklong draft. Each show gets five draft picks. The draft picks would come from the two other shows.

I was very against the brand separation when it began a few years ago. Lately, I’ve been seeing lots of WWE superstars crossing over. Is this due to the brand separation not working out or was it because of the lead-up to WrestleMania? Now that the three shows have their own identity, it makes sense that the superstars keep to their own shows. So when a superstar does go on one of the other shows, it means something.

New faces and new storylines would be a great new start for WWE fans.