Cero's Mid-Week Wrestling Review (Feb 26, 2015)

[cero2k]

Good: It's the little things, I'm just glad Balor didn't do the floor crawl during his entrance. Also...Becky Lynch won!!! clean!! yes!!!.

Bad: I'm not sure if they made the announcement because the tapings were spoiled, but the Kendrick appearance should had been either a surprise tonight, or a surprise appearance last week to announce his match.

Change: In the end when Owens throws Riley over the table, I thought it wasn't as bad to take out Riley, and Balor should have been a bit more babyface about it and not just stay in the ring, At least go face off with Owens.

Good: Just putting aside the amazing match Aerostar and Drago had, where even the botches made the match look awesome. The good goes to the idea that this is now a Best out of 5 series is amazing! Perfect way to follow up with Drago after losing the feud with Cuerno.

Bad: I'm pushing it here because it wasn't bad at all, but I think they killed the Cuerno/Mundo match at the point where the fans became the hottest. Not bad because we all want more now, but hate ending a show with that feeling.

Change: I'm actually 50/50 on this, when Cueto tells Sexy Star that she is to face off against Big Ryk, a part of me wants for Sexy to have a look of concern and take the news as if she was fighting 1999 Kane, the other half of me likes that she (empowering woman that she is), doesn't doubt she can take on Ryk and is just happy that she's a step closer to getting her hands on The Crew.

Good: Having to choose from 3 great matches, Alberto vs ACH takes the good this week, awesome match up.

Bad: That Briscoe training video, god that was cheesy and bad, it's those videos that sometimes hurt ROH, they just look so low budget.

Change: I don't think they should have done that small brawl with the world title contenders and Jay, this being the go home show, I think they should just make it a staredown between all of them to make sure none of them is standing tall. I did like what Elgin was about to do to Mark Briscoe though.

Good: Time to look at the bright side and try to be optimistic about this coming lackluster WM. Bryan, Ambrose, Barrett, Truth, Ziggler, and ??? are going to steal the show at WM, even if the champ looks like a loser every week. Worth mentioning that Truth at the table kept calling Saxton, Coach, AMAZING!

Bad: Stop making it seem like Swagger is still a threat to Rusev. Swagger is an amazing talent, stop feeding him to Rusev already, it's been done.

Change: If Barrett was worried about leaving his title unprotected, pull off a WCW Jericho and wrestle wearing it!!

Promotion of the Week: Lucha Undergroud takes it. Awesome wrestling and some small storyline developments. NXT lacked inside the ring personally, and ROH, while it delivered inside the ring, just felt like filler matches from the last months. Smackdown was Smackdown.

MVP of the Week: Prince Puma from Lucha Underground, his match with Cage was amazing, and not to take anything away from Cage, but Puma's offense and sell was great. Honorable mention to King Cuerno too since this show was the first time he got over with me.

[Big Red Machine]

Change: I'm actually 50/50 on this, when Cueto tells Sexy Star that she is to face off against Big Ryk, a part of me wants for Sexy to have a look of concern and take the news as if she was fighting 1999 Kane, the other half of me likes that she (empowering woman that she is), doesn't doubt she can take on Ryk and is just happy that she's a step closer to getting her hands on The Crew.

I don't understand how you could possibly like this segment. The moment Cueto asked her if she had a problem with Ryck and she said "no," it just killed it for me. It would have been much better and much easier to have her go into Cueto's office and demand that she get a match with The Crew because she wants revenge for them hurting her friends, but Cueto tells her she'll have to face Ryck and only the winner will get to face The Crew, so that Cueto his having his lackeys' enemies fight each other and making it so that only one of them can get at the lackeys. You can still have Sexy Star do the strong, empowered woman thing by showing no fear of Big Ryck or of facing The Crew 3-on-1, but when you start the segment off with her being upset that a man came to save her last week, then ask her if she has a problem with said man and she says "no. I have a problem with some other guys instead," it just completely kills it because it makes the whole thing come across as them just beating you over the head with it constantly that "THIS IS HER GIMMICK!"
They might as well just write "I AM A STRONG, EMPOWERED WOMAN in big bright letters on the front and back of her gear, and make her carry a sign to the ring that says it and have the announcers refer to her as "strong and empowered Sexy Star" every time they mention her name.
The fact they felt the need to start this segment out with the whole "I don't need a man to save me" bit when it was completely irrelevant to the segment and was ignored a second later shows a completely and total lack of understanding on the writers' part. It's like they think "being an empowered woman means that you aren't afraid of fighting men and don't need hep from them, therefore we must ensure to bring both of these points up every time she is on the screen." It's like saying "this character is a mafioso. He runs protection rackets and fences stolen items and doesn't mind killing people," and leaving it at that, which gets old quickly, and shows no indication that the writers understand that the character can possibly have any motivations beyond the stereotype they have locked in.

Bad: That Briscoe training video, god that was cheesy and bad, it's those videos that sometimes hurt ROH, they just look so low budget.

It's supposed to be low-budget. It was filmed by the Briscoes using their own equipment. No one is going to see the entire show and decide that it is low budget based off of one segment filmed far away when the rest of the show doesn't look low-budget.

ROH, while it delivered inside the ring, just felt like filler matches from the last months.

I've been considering buying the Winter Warriors shows on VOD, and I got this feeling, too. Aside from the Jimmy Jacobs vs. Tadarius Thomas match in Dearborn (which I assume was used to write TD out of the promotion), and the Tag Team Armageddon match in Atlanta (and, theoretically the AJ vs. Fish and Roddy vs. Kyle matches if those wind up leading to a tag title shot), none of the matches on THREE ENTIRE SHOWS, felt in any way like important matches...
And yet I still am very interested in seeing all three shows, purely for match quality. This week's TVpushed the Dearborn show over the edge for me, with Roddy vs. Lethal seeming like it'd be awesome in full, and Del Rio vs. ACH as well (plus Taven vs. Sydal should be very good, as should Mark vs. Elgin if they play off of what happened this week), Dayton supposedly had three awesome matches, with someone on the ROHWorld forum describing Roddy vs. Del Rio as "one of the best matches I've ever seen," and the Atlanta show has Kyle vs. Roddy and AJ vs. Fish, which should both be amazing, Sydal vs. Delirious, which should at least be good, and the Briscoes-Kingdom blowoff, which apparently had an AMAZING finish. It's mostly filler, but it's filler made up of AWESOME wrestling, which is a great place for ROH's undercard matches to be.

[cero2k]

Change: I'm actually 50/50 on this, when Cueto tells Sexy Star that she is to face off against Big Ryk, a part of me wants for Sexy to have a look of concern and take the news as if she was fighting 1999 Kane, the other half of me likes that she (empowering woman that she is), doesn't doubt she can take on Ryk and is just happy that she's a step closer to getting her hands on The Crew.

I don't understand how you could possibly like this segment. The moment Cueto asked her if she had a problem with Ryck and she said "no," it just killed it for me. It would have been much better and much easier to have her go into Cueto's office and demand that she get a match with The Crew because she wants revenge for them hurting her friends, but Cueto tells her she'll have to face Ryck and only the winner will get to face The Crew, so that Cueto his having his lackeys' enemies fight each other and making it so that only one of them can get at the lackeys. You can still have Sexy Star do the strong, empowered woman thing by showing no fear of Big Ryck or of facing The Crew 3-on-1, but when you start the segment off with her being upset that a man came to save her last week, then ask her if she has a problem with said man and she says "no. I have a problem with some other guys instead," it just completely kills it because it makes the whole thing come across as them just beating you over the head with it constantly that "THIS IS HER GIMMICK!"
They might as well just write "I AM A STRONG, EMPOWERED WOMAN in big bright letters on the front and back of her gear, and make her carry a sign to the ring that says it and have the announcers refer to her as "strong and empowered Sexy Star" every time they mention her name.
The fact they felt the need to start this segment out with the whole "I don't need a man to save me" bit when it was completely irrelevant to the segment and was ignored a second later shows a completely and total lack of understanding on the writers' part. It's like they think "being an empowered woman means that you aren't afraid of fighting men and don't need hep from them, therefore we must ensure to bring both of these points up every time she is on the screen." It's like saying "this character is a mafioso. He runs protection rackets and fences stolen items and doesn't mind killing people," and leaving it at that, which gets old quickly, and shows no indication that the writers understand that the character can possibly have any motivations beyond the stereotype they have locked in.

Bad: That Briscoe training video, god that was cheesy and bad, it's those videos that sometimes hurt ROH, they just look so low budget.

It's supposed to be low-budget. It was filmed by the Briscoes using their own equipment. No one is going to see the entire show and decide that it is low budget based off of one segment filmed far away when the rest of the show doesn't look low-budget.

i just don't see what's the big deal with Star saying she doesn't have a problem with Ryck, it's not like she wants to kick his ass or anything, she just doesn't want guy meddling in her business, completely understandable. And the thing about repeating the gimmick over and over again, it's not like it's just her, most wrestlers in most promotions do this. We still get reminded every monday that Ambrose is unstable and that the new day is really positive. is it annoying? yes, sometimes, but it's such a common thing i just give it for granted that it will happen.

about the briscoes, the problem is that this is not just them, most of the backstage/outside vignettes and promos look cheap as fuck, like recorded on a camcorder, not even a phone. the arena still looks indie as fuck, and if you cut to videos like that, you just give more bullets to all the indie haters that just wanna see WWE production values. I'm ok with them because i've been a fan since they were a shitty low budget indie promotion, but as a company trying to grow, it doesn't look good.

[Big Red Machine]

Change: I'm actually 50/50 on this, when Cueto tells Sexy Star that she is to face off against Big Ryk, a part of me wants for Sexy to have a look of concern and take the news as if she was fighting 1999 Kane, the other half of me likes that she (empowering woman that she is), doesn't doubt she can take on Ryk and is just happy that she's a step closer to getting her hands on The Crew.

I don't understand how you could possibly like this segment. The moment Cueto asked her if she had a problem with Ryck and she said "no," it just killed it for me. It would have been much better and much easier to have her go into Cueto's office and demand that she get a match with The Crew because she wants revenge for them hurting her friends, but Cueto tells her she'll have to face Ryck and only the winner will get to face The Crew, so that Cueto his having his lackeys' enemies fight each other and making it so that only one of them can get at the lackeys. You can still have Sexy Star do the strong, empowered woman thing by showing no fear of Big Ryck or of facing The Crew 3-on-1, but when you start the segment off with her being upset that a man came to save her last week, then ask her if she has a problem with said man and she says "no. I have a problem with some other guys instead," it just completely kills it because it makes the whole thing come across as them just beating you over the head with it constantly that "THIS IS HER GIMMICK!"
They might as well just write "I AM A STRONG, EMPOWERED WOMAN in big bright letters on the front and back of her gear, and make her carry a sign to the ring that says it and have the announcers refer to her as "strong and empowered Sexy Star" every time they mention her name.
The fact they felt the need to start this segment out with the whole "I don't need a man to save me" bit when it was completely irrelevant to the segment and was ignored a second later shows a completely and total lack of understanding on the writers' part. It's like they think "being an empowered woman means that you aren't afraid of fighting men and don't need hep from them, therefore we must ensure to bring both of these points up every time she is on the screen." It's like saying "this character is a mafioso. He runs protection rackets and fences stolen items and doesn't mind killing people," and leaving it at that, which gets old quickly, and shows no indication that the writers understand that the character can possibly have any motivations beyond the stereotype they have locked in.

Bad: That Briscoe training video, god that was cheesy and bad, it's those videos that sometimes hurt ROH, they just look so low budget.

It's supposed to be low-budget. It was filmed by the Briscoes using their own equipment. No one is going to see the entire show and decide that it is low budget based off of one segment filmed far away when the rest of the show doesn't look low-budget.

i just don't see what's the big deal with Star saying she doesn't have a problem with Ryck, it's not like she wants to kick his ass or anything, she just doesn't want guy meddling in her business, completely understandable. And the thing about repeating the gimmick over and over again, it's not like it's just her, most wrestlers in most promotions do this. We still get reminded every monday that Ambrose is unstable and that the new day is really positive. is it annoying? yes, sometimes, but it's such a common thing i just give it for granted that it will happen.

Because bringing it up was completely irrelevant. If you go into Dario's office and the first thing you do is complain that a man came and saved you, and then Dario asks you "so do you have a problem with the man who saved you?" and you answer "no," it makes you sound like an idiot. And that is literally what happened.
If she has no problem with Big Ryck, than the fact that he saved her last week is completely irrelevant to the segment, and so her randomly bringing it up is like that one girl in your math class who stands up and declares that women are just as good at math as men are, totally out of the blue. No one likes that girl. She's the girl who inspires the parody feminist character on sitcoms. It's not that people disagree with her. It's that it's SOOO F*CKING ANNOYING that she has to stand up and loudly proclaim her beliefs in a way as to imply that the rest of us are doing a moral wrong by not also standing up and loudly proclaim that we share her beliefs as well because even though we all share those beliefs, it somehow doesn't count unless you get up on a chair and shout it and insert it into every single conversation you have. There was no reason for her to say it, so her saying it is just obnoxious.
As for the whole "it happens all the time in wrestling" thing (and trust me, I wish that it wouldn't, which is one of the reasons I enjoy ROH commentary so much), the difference is that the angles that Lucha Underground has done with her (in my opinion) do a poor job of supporting the things she claims to believe in.
In her first appearance, they book her against Son of Havoc and set it up by having him be a sexist... but rather than just get into the ring with him, they have her pretend to not want the match, then jump him from behind when he turns his back on her. If she is supposed to believe in equality and be a babyface, she should face him head-on like an honorable person. Instead they start her off with a spot that every wrestler learns in Heel Spots 101 class... and have her lose, to boot.
Then, the next week, she teams with Chavo, and it's Chavo doing all of the work against Son of Havoc, and then being nice and letting her get the pin. Meanwhile, when Son of Havoc gets offense in on her, the announcers are making him out to be some sort of disrespectful misogynist who is stuck in the caveman days, when he really isn't doing anything to her that he wouldn't do to a male competitor in the same situation. Then, later, when Chavo hits a bunch of men with a steel chair, that's okay, but when he hits Sexy Star in the same exact situation, they start making him out to be Adolf Hitler.
Then they go and they do this revisionist history crap. They say Son of Havoc is a jerk for wanting to fight her, when in reality, he didn't want to fight her, and they ignore her cheating but criticize others for doing so. They try to make her seem extra brave by claiming that she was the first person who came out to help Blue Demon Jr. when she was about the fiftieth. They deliberately ignore the fact that a bunch of men just did something, but make it into a big deal when she did it just because she is a woman. When someone does something heelish to her, it makes them a terrible person, but when the same thing happens to a man, that's just normal wrestling stuff.
On paper, the gimmick is that she's just as tough as the men, but the way it is portrayed when she's in the ring it's like they want us to find every move someone hits her with as extra-heinous because she's just a poor, weak, defenseless woman, and when she's on offense everything she does is extra impressive because she's just a mere girl, and any shortcut she takes is justified because she's just a weak defenseless woman. Every time they say it, it comes across as them pressing something on me that my eyes are telling me clearly isn't true, and they want me to buy into their lie, and that takes it from standard wrestling fare to utterly infuriating.

about the briscoes, the problem is that this is not just them, most of the backstage/outside vignettes and promos look cheap as fuck, like recorded on a camcorder, not even a phone. the arena still looks indie as fuck, and if you cut to videos like that, you just give more bullets to all the indie haters that just wanna see WWE production values. I'm ok with them because i've been a fan since they were a shitty low budget indie promotion, but as a company trying to grow, it doesn't look good.

What other videos do they do? They're not that bad. And all of their TV arenas usually look like real arenas (small ones, but not like they're wrestling in nightclubs or gymnasiums). People who go in with the mindset that they will only accept WWE-level production values are setting themselves up for disappointment because no one else has that, and no one else will have that. Not even TNA or New Japan. Because WWE puts tons of money into crap light a 400-zillion lightbulb stage set-up and ROH or New Japan or TNA or whoever would rather spend that money on talent or marketing. If you can't see the action or hear the announcers, that's a problem. If you can't see what color shirt some fan in the front row is wearing, who gives a sh*t?