Monday’s Raw from from Kansas City was the final Raw leading into the Survivor Series featuring a big angle involving the women of SmackDown storming the ring, Brock Lesnar making his first appearance since Crown Jewel, the men’s and women’s teams for Raw are finalized, two attempts at a silly tag team battle royal, and Ronda Rousey has no time for millennials. John & Wai run through Sunday’s ROH Global Wars event from Toronto at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.We also discuss TODAY’S TOP STORIES with Cody providing an update on his knee injury, the incredible finish to the Chan Sung Jung vs. Yair Rodriguez fight, the winners of the Mixed Match Challenge receiving the #30 slots in the Royal Rumble & more.
Becky needs take an Armbar and never tap out and run back the Austin Brett Hart finish. She can claim she’s never been beat. She can taunt Rousey can’t tap her out.
Is Becky forcing her way into the Ronda Rousey v Charlotte Flair WM match?
Does anyone else find Ronda’s facials and promo skills to be close to unbearable? She sounds so robotic and her angry face makes her look unlikable in my opinion. I read an interview with her where she said she didn’t know house shows existed until she joined WWE. It doesn’t seem like she was as big of a pro wrestling fan as she made herself out to be knowing that detail.
Yeah I read that too and was shocked. I hear she also writes all the cringe stuff in her promo herself. Nobody who was a student of wrestling would think half the stuff she writes in her promo would be good.
Love that finally that during a promo segment a babyface looks cool and a heel looks like a awkward dork. Elias came off looking so great last night. Usually WWE writes for the heel to look like the cool guy and the face just looks like a dork. So glad they finally got it right. I think this is the first time since the Rock in his prime that I can remember a babyface looking this good compared to a heel.
I think for someone who has been in the business for such a short time, didnt wrestle on the indies, didnt wrestle in NXT, she has a better delivery than she should. Shes a lot better than some that have been in the business for years. I do think some of the stuff she says is cringe worthy.
Her facials…I came out of the show thinking she looked super cute at the end, than super pissed.
Her facials to me come across like a combination of someone who is pouting and pissed off. She hasn’t been very likable on screen. She came across as arrogant in some of her old UFC interviews as well. She is pretty good in the ring, especially considering the minimal training and experience. She might serve better as a ruthless heel or tweener down the line. I’m thinking a gimmick similar to Kurt Angle’s “Wrestling Machine” character towards the end of his WWE run.
I’ve been saying Ronda’s a ready-made heel since day one. She’s a great athlete, but I don’t think she’s ever been what one would call “likeable”.
Her in-ring & on-mic style just come across as heelish to me, especially when contrasted with Becky Balboa. Even when she’s being real in her promos, her delivery feels whiny & entitled. I think they should lean into that.
Atmosphere aside, the ROH show was a good time. Like you said, not a bad match on the card. Everyone involved in the main event deserves a lot of credit for managing to milk as much drama from the match as could be expected given the limitations alluded to on the show. Both wrestlers worked hard and seemed to enjoy solid chemistry. I thought King’s prerecorded promo was excellent and that, combined with his rushing Lethal before the bell, effectively conveyed what a huge moment in his career this was a real sense of urgency. It made for some nice last-second motivation to want to believe King could win, if not reason to actually believe. The finish was booked about as well as you could hope. A lot of cheap heat - close counts, false three counts - but at least they were somewhat creative about it.
My only complaint was that the action across the matches felt kind of uniform. Not a lot of variety in style and aside from the Bucks match, even the ratio of high spots to matt work and strikes seemed almost identical.
Ronda’s expressions and mannerisms to me convey a sort of adolescent earnestness that I can’t help find endearing. It pairs nicely with what she does in the ring, which is sell and work in a way that gives you the sense of her expending maximum effort, both to hurt her opponent but also to avoid getting hurt. She doesn’t fit the unstoppable force mold, which I think is what the WWE wants to us to see her as. Rather she feels like something closer to what Tommy Hearns was: an incredibly dangerous fighter who at all moments is both equally lethal and vulnerable. Tommy had those sad droopy eyes which seemed incongruous with his shotgun right hand, the same way Ronda pairs her girlish pout with a finely tuned ability to break your arm.
Her promos have been a problem. She’s reasonably convincing for someone so new at this, but I get the impression she lacks much in the way of wit or creativity. Two times now she has fallen back on either stale tropes or borrowed insults, in both cases resulting in promos that are not only unoriginal but problematic. Slut shaming and conservative memes are not what the babyface leading star of the “women’s revolution” needs to be associated with. Not only does she lack the chops to trade barbs with someone like Becky, but even worse is that she knows it. Her promo Monday was filled with the telltale signs of someone who was shook and lacked the confidence to fire back: weird, out of place verbiage that suggest she was trying overcompensate (cracked porcelain?) and the type of straight up brain farts that can only come from someone feeling anxious and unsure (accusing Becky of being offended … but to what? is she mistaking Becky for someone else?).
I think a good percentage of the empty seats at the ROH show was due to people opting to stand and get a better view than their assigned seat.
Also, that was the first ROH show I’ve been to without an intermission, which really tested my bladder (I finally ran to the washroom after realizing that there will likely be no break).
I doubt it. Transplants from flanking sections of the grand stand on either side of the arena may not have helped matters, but I can tell you for certain that the central sections, where my tickets were located, had been an absolute sink hole of sales from day one. The arena had no one checking tickets and with acres of empty space where we were, a genuine seat upgrade in view on not only the vertical, but also horizontal axis was available to anyone who bothered to try.
An unreasonable spike in ticket prices was cited up-and-down my local wrestling group chat the day of the event when I brought it to them that of the sixteen of us, only one other member beside myself was attending. I assume part of what makes that spike seem unreasonable was the growing sense of over-exposure to the brand in here Toronto and the underwhelming contribution to the card by NJPW. Naito, the show’s potential saving grace in terms of exotic star power, was booked way below his station as part of a tag match that followed the opener. The good news is that amongst attendees who left their purchase until the week of the show, there may have been a few for whom the fact that Naito was there at all qualified as a Jericho-at-All-In level surprise. In what I suppose was a classic bit of indie ingenuity, Tetsu’s name and face was mysteriously scrubbed from the Toronto section of the ROH website, just in time for the final sales push. It never reappeared.
Good show, though. Only complaint would be re: Jay Lethal’s parting message to the crowd. “Always remember, the real Global War is being waged inside all of you, in your hearts and in your minds. Google QAnon. Goodnight.” Kind of weird. Granted the stream had ended so it might not have been kayfabe, and either way he did in the Macho Man voice, so it’s like it was incongruous with his character. I’m not sweating it.
