WWE Clash Of Champions 2019

So, in an effort to try and get some sleep, I watched the last WWE PPV and fell asleep right after the Women’s tag-title match… so that clearly got the job done. For the most part, the show was boring and sleep-inducing; hence why I preferred to talk about an old WCW PPV that was terrible for my Wednesday PPV musings over a WWE PPV that was boring. Not because it was better, but because the WWE write-up would’ve been  several lines of  “So-so beat so-so in a match to retain or win some title. Boring.”

Oh… so you want me to go through that? Okay…

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The World Of Perpetual Darkness Eludes Me

I’ve been staring at the ceiling in my bedroom for a couple hours. I don’t know how much sleep I got, but it couldn’t have been much. I’ve got this massive headache like none before. I tried a couple Tylenols and followed with some tea. Because I ain’t sleeping any time soon.

So I decided to pop up my dusty laptop. One that I’ve had for years and clearly haven’t touched in that amount of time. I dig in to see that it still has some juice, though the battery quickly dies in a couple minutes because it hasn’t been charged and I never got around to it. Desperate and with no other options, I dug into storage and pulled out a box. Inside the box was a tape recording device and a collection of cassettes labeled various things. One of the tapes was labeled HHH Promos.
Yes, in the event of a massive headache such as this, when all other remedies fail, I have a cassette tape that has nothing but HHH promos. I often said that HHH promos were the cure for insomnia and now I’m willing to see if that’s the case.
So I start listening to this tape; some of the most dull and uninteresting promos that McSon-In-Law has cut from the days when he ruled the top of the RAW food chain and the product was shit as a result. One minute, I was listening to HHH drone on about some accolades or whatever and then the next minute or so, my eyes were wide shut. By the time I woke up, light was creeping in from the curtains and my headache was all gone.
So thank you, HHH, for curing my headache with your boring-ass promos circa 2003.

A Compilation Of My Recent Thoughts On Seth Rollins’ Main Events

Seth Rollins claims that WWE has the best pro-wrestling on the planet. This is, of course, a total lie since WWE is not pro-wrestling, but sports-entertainment. Therefore, you cannot have the best pro wrestling if you don’t do pro wrestling, but I digress. In any event, I wanted to review the past year’s worth of Seth Rollins’ matches that I’ve seen… which isn’t much.

So I’ve copied-and-pasted the relevant pieces of business to this here blog post and added some annotations in bold for current day thoughts. Should be a fun experiment:

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What Did You Expect?

On July 13th, 2019, All Elite Wrestling will present its Fight For The Fallen event, in which all profits will be donated to victims of gun violence. The main event for the show (or at least, the one match heavily promoted) is a tag-team match between The Young Bucks and Cody & Dustin Rhodes. It will be broadcast for free on Bleacher Report Live.

Some time ago this week, WWE announced that they would air the EVOLVE 10th Anniversary show live on the WWE Network on, you guessed it, July 13th, 2019. This has caused some fans of AEW as well as AEW executive and top star Kenny Omega to cry foul at a move designed to hurt the upstart promotion’s showing.

To these people, I would like ask… what did you expect?

For all of their talk about competition being good for business, the last thing Vince McMahon or anyone within the WWE power structure would want is the presence of viable competition that has the potential to compete on their level as far as product goes. This sort of tactic dates back to when Vince was counter-programming against the Crockett shows back in the 80s. Why do you think events like the Survivor Series and Royal Rumble exist? For the explicit purpose of fucking with Crockett. I need not go into details regarding their tussels with WCW or TNA when those promotions were vying for a piece of that particular real estate.

Surely, the folks at AEW (and their fans) should’ve known that they’d have an uphill battle. Not only in trying to do what others have failed to do, but do so while fending off any potential attacks against WWE on that particular playfield. If anyone honestly thought that WWE would let AEW become a thing without resorting to underhanded tactics to undermine the whole thing, they’re more naive that I would’ve thought.

In any event, it should be an interesting night of wrestling on July 13th. And one has to wonder if this is going to result in a split in the audience… or maybe, just maybe, both shows might gain their own individual audiences. People cry foul when Nitro debuted… and then it turned out both Nitro and RAW got its own audiences. And really, if that ends up being the case, doesn’t everyone win?

In any event, I’m looking forward to the Fyter Fest show this Saturday… and even the FFTF show is piquing my interest… the EVOLVE? Not so much, but I’m not familiar with them… and it’ll be on the VOD anyway, so…

Thing are definitely heating up.

HEAT!

AEW Sells Out… Uh-Gain!

AEW All Out just sold out in fifteen minutes.

What? You mean to tell me that a nothing promotion with a bunch of hasbeens and never weres were able to sell out another show in record time, while WWE has troubling selling tickets to their upcoming PPV featuring the anticipated rematch between Seth Rollins and BARON CORBIN for the “prestigious and highly coveted WWE Universal” Champion?

Are you seriously telling me that a show whose only two features each feature a jabroni from Winnepeg was able to get scalped in less than a quarter-hour while nobody is buying tickets to see anticipated rematches between Kofi Kingston and Dolph Ziggker as well as Becky Lynch and Lacey Evers?

That’s impossible. Get outta here, Ryan.

In all seriousness, kudos go out to the boys. One major show was a thing, two major shows was a thing, but three major shows? That’s something worth paying attention to…

Anyone know tickets are doing for Fyter Fest and Fallen Fighter 2 Turbo?

WWE Blood Money III… as reviewed by Ralphie

While I haven’t seen the recent show from that country we’re not supposed to talk about, my buddy Ralphie did and volunteered to give his thoughts on this show. Thanks, dude. You’ve saved me the effort in watching what I’m told was a truly terrible show. Have fun.

Sidenote: I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up the text a bit, as he sent me one block of text in email. You’re welcome.

Continue reading “WWE Blood Money III… as reviewed by Ralphie”

Not Watching Blood Money III

So, the first show that came along was the Oil Rumble last year. At the time, I had a leg injury that kept me in bed, so I ended up watching what was ostensibly a glorified house show that was televised. For what it’s worth, I didn’t think it was a bad show or anything like that, but it ran longer than it needed to and for all the hype that was put behind it – mostly for the benefit of WWE’s new Saudi partners – the show certainly didn’t live up to it.

The second show, the WWE Crown Royal show which was the subject of heated controversy due to the assassination of a journalist that the Saudis were involved with, was a show that I didn’t – and to this day, still haven’t – watched. Taking the Saudis out of the equation, I had no real interest in watching a meaningless tournament conclude, nor did I have any interest in watching four old men fumble through a match and making a mockery of themselves. Even the Age In The Cage match between Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper at Halloween Havoc 1997 had more dignity than this farce.
And so here were are with WWE Blood Money III, featuring a main event dream match between Bill Goldberg and the Undertaker where people have speculated what would last longer – the matches or the entrances. As luck would have it, this weekend is going to keep me very busy with family business and things of that nature, so that’s going to keep me from the nonexistent obligation of watching yet another Saudi propaganda piece by our friends at World Wrestling Entertainment.
This has nothing to do with any moral high ground or whatever malarkey you wish to throw out there. This is strictly a lack of interest at play here. The truth is that I missed quite a few WWE shows from the past year, owing to the fact that the few that I’ve seen as of late (with some exceptions) have been pretty mediocre showings. The WWE Network has a fantastic backlog of classic wrestling shows that I’ve been slowly, but surely catching up on… and the results of those viewings will be cataloged ever so briefly in future weekly wrestling musings… but when it comes to the more recent stuff… I find myself writing blog posts about my lack of interest in the shows than the actual shows themselves.
I’ve been reviewing some old blog posts in the past year and when it comes to the WWE product that’s currently on the air, I find that I’ve said more negative things about the shows than positive. In fact, as I’ve been archiving some of the old DTM Blog material for future reference, I realize that a lot of my writings on the show have been about how much WWE programming has sucked. Some of these going as far back as 2002.
That was not a pleasant revelation, kids.
At some point in time, I’ll probably elaborate on this subject a bit further. It could very well be the subject matter of a future DTM Rambles video… but as far as the main topic of this post goes, I’m probably going to skip out on this third Saudi offering. Lack of time and lack of interest being the main culprits… besides, there’s that Stomping Grounds PPV to look forward to.
Maybe… we’ll see.