RAW is the Owens Era - Official Thread 9.5.16

[Ruien]

Little saddened by the absence of Dark One tonight.

[Ruien]

Fuck I don't want to go to work tomorrow.

[Ruien]

I just shaved too. This will give me 5 more minutes of freedom.

[Ol Dirty Dastard]

I like how Sasha was basically saying females were sex objects basically before. Sasha, you barely wear anything to the ring when you wrestle.

Well in fairness neither do the men.

It's not about what you wear it's about how you're portrayed.

[DAMN iNATOR]

Little saddened by the absence of Dark One tonight.

He's with the Oxy now... :'(

[Ruien]

Well in fairness neither do the men.

It's not about what you wear it's about how you're portrayed.

I feel if they would let her go out topless she would. But you are right.

[Frank Drebin]

Saw the comment about the new Sin Cara theme and went back to listen to it. Sounds like a generic theme that got rejected for the CWC.

[slik]

if Dark One was here this would be 10 pgs

[Ruien]

He's with the Oxy now... :'(

Oxy? I do not understand?

[DAMN iNATOR]

Damn...keep forgetting I won't be home for most if not all of SD! LIVE tomorrow night...sucks...probably going to be another outstanding show, too...:-\

[Ruien]

if Dark One was here this would be 10 pgs

He would have loved this Raw.

[Frank Drebin]

The Mark Henry "retirement" segment is maybe the most underrated thing in wrestling in the last 5 years.

[slik]

Has Roman appeared on the show tonight...

[Ruien]

You assholes better get this to 10 pages before morning for Slik.

[Ruien]

The Mark Henry "retirement" segment is maybe the most underrated thing in wrestling in the last 5 years.

Easily. And now every announcement is met with "Is this another Henry?" Because it was that good.

[DAMN iNATOR]

Oxy? I do not understand?

He was involved in a pretty serious vehicle accident some months ago, and IIRC he went to the hospital and was prescribed OxyContin painkillers.

[Ruien]

Oh okay. Is he still dating that girl? I hope they get married.

[Savio]

No Roman tonight? Cool :)

[Frank Drebin]

You know, I love Zayn. Love him. All his WWE main roster matches have sucked though. Gets beat up. Blue thunder bomb that has never been used to pin anyone, fights back, gets hit with a finisher and jobs.

[DAMN iNATOR]

The Mark Henry "retirement" segment is maybe the most underrated thing in wrestling in the last 5 years.

I'd say
http://pa1.narvii.com/6023/abab40acf16f145f5b61264038e0389d031aa3dd_hq.gif
might have something to say about that.

[Savio]

No Roman tonight? Cool :)

Fuck I jinxed it

[Frank Drebin]

No Roman tonight? Cool :)

This is your fault

[Ruien]

No Roman tonight? Cool :)

Haha suck it!

[Emperor Smeat]

Sami is soo good at faking being injured.

:lol: at the booing for Reigns. Huge mistake to put him right back into the title scene or even tease it.

[Frank Drebin]

I keep seeing some sort of illusion everytime i look at Owens' new shirt where I think it says Steen on it.

[DAMN iNATOR]

UGH...NOOOOOOO! We don't want Roman in the title picture!

[Ruien]

As much as I hate it because it buried Rusev, this new Roman character is kind of cool.

[owenbrown]

FUCK OFF ROMAN!

[KIRA]

Heel turn....no?....really?

[owenbrown]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MICK NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[DAMN iNATOR]

PLEASE let Roman lose next week. Only thing worse than a triple threat for a top title is a triple threat for a top title with Roman in it.

[Ruien]

Feel like Roman will be going against Y2J at CoC.

[owenbrown]

umDr0mPuyQc

[KIRA]

so....where is Rollins

Roman punched in Batistas code

[Lock Jaw]

You know, I love Zayn. Love him. All his WWE main roster matches have sucked though. Gets beat up. Blue thunder bomb that has never been used to pin anyone, fights back, gets hit with a finisher and jobs.

Thought his match vs. Kevin Owens at Battleground was very excellent...... was very let down that they did absolutely nothing with Zayn afterwards to build momentum off of it......... I would have had him vs Rollins at Summerslam instead of Finn Balor........

[slik]

Boooo No Roman please.

Roman vs Jericho

Seth vs Kevin ONLY

[SlickyTrickyDamon]

who is the ring announcer now, I donut even pay attention to them

JoJo.

[slik]

Feel like Roman will be going against Y2J at CoC.

That would be a good match

[SlickyTrickyDamon]

lol coc

[Droford]

The Kevin Owens Show shirt is awesome but how many shirts has he had..it's crazy

[Tom Guycott]

Wonder how long these squash matches for Nia is going to last before she actually does something meaningful.

Doubt she's ever going to challange Charlotte for the title but going to get really boring if these last for a few more months or till someone beats Charlotte for the belt.

Never stopped them before with the stellar track record of Ryback, Big E, Rusev, etc., etc....

At least when Kong was doing it, she more or less was running down a "checklist" until she got preggers and killed that momentum. Nia is just sqashing nobodies in a female version of "LOOKIT THE SIZE OF HER!!!" and expecting that to be all she needs to get over.

[Tom Guycott]

Really wish Eden Styles was still around to announce OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWENS

Now she's busy being a personal ring announcer for "the star that left them in the dust".

[Droford]

https://streamable.com/3v6f

Wonder what Sgt Slaughter has to do with Seth Rollins.

[SlickyTrickyDamon]

Is he a maggot?

[Triple A]

This is NOT Sin Cara's birthday...he turned 39 one month ago on August 5.

Source:ProFightDB.com

His birthday is actually on SEPTEMBER 5, 1977.

Google / ProFightDB is INCORRECT.

I run the #1 wrestler birthday webpage on the internet......

[Droford]

Lol

[DAMN iNATOR]

His birthday is actually on SEPTEMBER 5, 1977.

Google / ProFightDB is INCORRECT.

I run the #1 wrestler birthday webpage on the internet......

https://media.giphy.com/media/cUENbkNb804U0/giphy.gif

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunico

Wikipedia backs me up as a secondary source, and whether you like it or not, Google as a tertiary source. You don't run SHIT, except your mouth, so fight me you son of a bitch. You'll lose.

P.S. - Submitted a correction to your "Wrestler Birthdays" section of the front page, which you blatantly stole the idea for from my Wrestler Birthdays and Deaths thread.

[Triple A]

The Wikipedia page says SEPTEMBER 5, 1977 my man.

If you visit his OFFICIAL Twitter page you will notice MANY birthday wish retweets....... https://twitter.com/sincarawwe

[Cool King]

Raw was meh this week.

• The opening promo was alright, but I just can't get into Kevin Owens. He's just so bad in my opinion. Everything about him just screams "indyrific".

• I'm also failing to get behind Bayley too. I find her to be a bit boring, but I'm sure some people will be confused by this, but I actually find Dana Brooke to be more interesting/entertaining. I feel like with enough investment in her, she can really be a big player in the Women's Division in the future.

• The more the weeks go on, I'm finding myself becoming less and less interested in the Cruiserweight Division.

• I'm happy to see Bo back and with a new side to him which is interesting. Also, with his new "Bo-Lieve In Bo" sign that's in the style of an election banner, I get the feeling we'll see Bo vs Darren Young before the Presidential Election, each with their own election style signs.

• Jericho/Rollins was pretty good, but then again, it was Jericho & Rollins.

• I was surprised that Cesaro lost, as now it means that if Cesaro is to win overall, he'll have to win four in a row. It just sucks that some matches from the Best Of Seven Series won't be televised or even shown on the WWE Network. I doubt that the house show from London will be shown on the WWE Network.

• The result of the Shining Stars vs Enzo & Cass was a surprise as I was really expecting Enzo & Cass to win, but I won't complain. I'm a big fan of Primo & Epico and seeing them win was most likely the best part of Raw for me. I was pretty happy.

• Nia Jax vs Alicia's Friend was your usual squash match. I'm still behind Nia Jax though. I like her and much like Dana Brooke, I see Nia Jax being a big player in the Women's Division in the future. The backstage segment with Nia and Alicia was good to see for many reasons:

Nia actually spoke.
Alicia is getting TV time and possibly even ring time soon.
Crazy Alicia could be back.

I do really hope we see a Nia/Alicia feud now as personally, I like both women but also that it would open up the Women's Divison a bit, as right now it seems like the Women's Division on Raw is just Charlotte, who is permanently there (but that's not really a bad thing, as she's good) and then Bayley and Sasha Banks just take turns facing her. That's it.

• Gallows & Anderson are good. The "Old Day" segment was not. The less we talk about that, the better.

• Jinder Mahal vs Darren Young was what it was. It sucks that Mahal has just returned to be a jobber. The guy is good. His new theme is good. Why would you give someone a new theme, which is really good, only for him to be a jobber? More focus on Jinder, less on the Young/O'Neil atrocity, please.

• I was really hoping that the Braun/Sin Cara match would be the start of Braun moving away from squash matches, but I think this match only happened because of last week when Braun ripped the mask off the jobber. A part of me thinks that maybe Braun decided himself to rip the mask off to get more heat, but once he went to the back, he got told not to rip masks off luchadores unless told to, and the WWE saw the opportunity to get a match out of it for this week's Raw.

Also, I miss Hunico.

• Sasha Banks' promo was obvious from the start that she was good to go and everything would turn out alright, but what I don't get is that she spoke about the Women's Revolution and how there's no more Bra & Panties matches or "Butterfly Titles" and how the women are referred to as Superstars and not Divas anymore and so on. Basically, she spoke about how women in the WWE have achieved equality and respect, but then she ends it all by called Dana Brooke "Miss Piggy".

To me, calling Dana Brooke "Miss Piggy" kinda shits all over what she had just said previously.

• As for Zayn/Owens, I skipped it. As I've mentioned before, I tend to skip singles matches with Owens in it. But anyway, it looks like we'll be seeing a Triple Threat Match at Clash of <s>the</s> Champions.

[Big Vic]

• I was really hoping that the Braun/Sin Cara match would be the start of Braun moving away from squash matches, but I think this match only happened because of last week when Braun ripped the mask off the jobber. A part of me thinks that maybe Braun decided himself to rip the mask off to get more heat, but once he went to the back, he got told not to rip masks off luchadores unless told to, and the WWE saw the opportunity to get a match out of it for this week's Raw.


Was that not scripted?

[Simple Fan]

Pretty sure him tearing Americos mask off was scripted. Americos is not a Mexican luchador that keeps his identity hidden and wrestle a lot unmasked going by his real name.

[Cool King]

Was that not scripted?

I don't know.

I was just assuming.

[Frank Drebin]

Not really sure how you dont like Owens after that promo. Turning the smarks chant back onto them in a heel way is what he's so good at. If there weren't reports of him being very friendly outside the arena and at meet and greets you would almost think he honestly hates his own fans.

I'm way more understanding of your inability to get into Bayley than I am Owens.

[Cool King]

Not really sure how you dont like Owens after that promo. Turning the smarks chant back onto them in a heel way is what he's so good at.

Owens just comes across as highly generic to me.

I don't get why people love that promo as much as they do. He turned a chant back onto the fans, but he did it in the most generic way. Smarks were chanting that he deserved it, so Owens turns it back onto them by calling them idiots and saying that he already knew he deserved it and doesn't need to be told. That's just basic Heel stuff.

The rest of his promo was pretty basic/generic Heel stuff too. "I belong at the top", "This is my show". All pretty basic Heel material.

I'm way more understanding of your inability to get into Bayley than I am Owens.

Yeah, I'm not really "getting" her gimmick. I feel it needs to expand.

At the moment, is it that she's a long time fan who's always happy and likes to hug?

Because, that's just Eugene but without the disability.

[Emperor Smeat]

• Sasha Banks' promo was obvious from the start that she was good to go and everything would turn out alright, but what I don't get is that she spoke about the Women's Revolution and how there's no more Bra & Panties matches or "Butterfly Titles" and how the women are referred to as Superstars and not Divas anymore and so on. Basically, she spoke about how women in the WWE have achieved equality and respect, but then she ends it all by called Dana Brooke "Miss Piggy".

To me, calling Dana Brooke "Miss Piggy" kinda shits all over what she had just said previously.
Another website had a possible explanation for the "Miss Piggy" jab as Sasha was making fun of her puffy looking face than just body shaming her.

Dana's been called "Miss Piggy" a few times before about her face but don't think she's ever had it as an insult to her body like when Layla and McCool kept making fun of Mickie James for being fat in their eyes.

[Cool King]

Dana's been called "Miss Piggy" a few times before about her face but don't think she's ever had it as an insult to her body like when Layla and McCool kept making fun of Mickie James for being fat in their eyes.

That's all it reminded me of when I heard it.

[Ruien]

Another website had a possible explanation for the "Miss Piggy" jab as Sasha was making fun of her puffy looking face than just body shaming her.

Dana's been called "Miss Piggy" a few times before about her face but don't think she's ever had it as an insult to her body like when Layla and McCool kept making fun of Mickie James for being fat in their eyes.

Are we at the point where little jabs are about things that occur inside the locker room and need to wait for the reason it was said? That is stupid. How the hell is any fan going to know that? Hated the entire segment too. Sasha scored a 2 out of 10 Mark Henry.

[Emperor Smeat]

Not really some sort of insider jab since she's been called Miss Piggy several times going back to her NXT days and usually gets blurted out whenever someone wants to punch her in the face. Only reason I referenced some other website (NeoGAF's wrestling thread I think) was because a bunch of people had the same issues Cool King had when Sasha used the line.

It does feel counter productive for Sasha to say it after her speech but those types of insults are probably going to be the last thing that gets changed from the Women's Revolution.

[Triple A]

The male wrestlers insult each other's appearance all the time

[Frank Drebin]

Owens just comes across as highly generic to me.

I don't get why people love that promo as much as they do. He turned a chant back onto the fans, but he did it in the most generic way. Smarks were chanting that he deserved it, so Owens turns it back onto them by calling them idiots and saying that he already knew he deserved it and doesn't need to be told. That's just basic Heel stuff.

The rest of his promo was pretty basic/generic Heel stuff too. "I belong at the top", "This is my show". All pretty basic Heel material.



Yeah, I'm not really "getting" her gimmick. I feel it needs to expand.

At the moment, is it that she's a long time fan who's always happy and likes to hug?

Because, that's just Eugene but without the disability.

She needs to be explained to the new crowd. If you didn't watch nxt, then yah...female Eugene.

I'm not saying Owens dropped a pipe bomb. But it sure is nice to hear the champ acknowledge the crowd and play off them rather than just going with what the script calls for an ignoring their reaction. Owens has a more natural feel to his promos and gets to drop little truth nuggets in from time to time. So much better than an "I'm the guy" promos.

[Frank Drebin]

As far as the insults go...it's pro wrestling. I don't want it turned into a feminist body image thing.

Also what else would we expect from WWE who openly made horse face jokes on air at the expense on Lilian Garcia?

[Tom Guycott]

Are we at the point where little jabs are about things that occur inside the locker room and need to wait for the reason it was said? That is stupid. How the hell is any fan going to know that? Hated the entire segment too. Sasha scored a 2 out of 10 Mark Henry.

This is from a company that expects us to watch Total Divas and use the mobile app commercial break vids as legit supplimental viewing for angles.

So, yeah... we're "at that point."

[Mr. Nerfect]

I only caught a few segments of RAW this week:

* Kevin Owens in a suit is pretty hilarious. Great subtle heel stuff. He's overall a great performer, but it is very hard to get excited about the environment he inhabits.

* Seth Rollins...man was the crowd cold for him. Dueling chants for Rollins/Y2J. This is why you strike when the iron is hot. I'm already predicting this face turn for Rollins falls flat and that Triple H's match with him gets moved up, because Hunter has to have it.

* Chris Jericho is a tremendous man.

* Roman Reigns looked weird at the end of RAW. He looked like a video game creation. Did anyone else think he looked weird? Is it because he's shaved?

* I didn't hear the opening promo before I caught the last few clips of the Owens/Zayn match. It makes sense for Zayn to immediately want a piece of Owens. A good introductory match to the reign of Owens. But after the clean win on Zayn, and Reigns coming out to pick a fight with an exhausted man, I really felt like they could have done a subtle double-turn heel. Owens looked ready to go and hungry to prove himself until he left the ring. But Reigns didn't look bad-ass chasing off a smaller, fat, sweating, exhausted man. Jericho strolled out like he was a hero standing up for Randy Orton against Brock.

* I'm pretty sure they'll go with Jericho vs. Reigns and Owens vs. Rollins, but in a weird sort of way, it'd make sense for Jericho to throw the match with Reigns and then help Owens out in the Triple Threat. If we're trying to make booking sense of this. This is hurt by this basically being the AJ Styles vs. Dolph Ziggler stipulation after AJ Styles vs. Dolph Ziggler.

* Further reflection on Seth Rollins -- he seemed like a little bitch during his interactions with Owens. Seemed like emo hour. His intensity turned up during the match with Jericho, but they didn't seem to really click on a face/heel dynamic. This is another reason as to why you should have brought Seth Rollins back as a babyface when he was over.

* The show felt long even just coming in at the end. That crowd was fucking dead.

* Owens new shirt is cool.

* The new stage is awesome.

[Mr. Nerfect]

Going over the other stuff, in theory:

* I get what they are trying to do with Enzo/Cass & Epico/Primo. I love Epico y Primo. This is not the right way to go about it. I fear you are going to bring Enzo/Cass down rather than pull The Colons up.

* Nia Jax vs. Alicia Fox...okay. They needed something for Jax and this gives Fox something to do as well.

* I actually like the story behind Strowman and Sin Cara on paper. Sin Cara getting more in on Strowman makes him look gutsy. I heard Jim Cornette say that you don't beat latino stars because people lose faith in them though. This is evidently true. I think Gran Metalik is going to be true Hispanic star of WWE, but Sin Cara could at least be given a shot over a piece of shit like Darren Young. Have Bob Backlund point out to the live audience that he came to the WWE to make Darren Young great again, but no one gives a shit about him. Have Backlund go around asking "Do you give a shit about Darren Young? Do you give a shit about Darren Young?" and when the answer is "No," he gets a distant look on his face (if he can emote that well) and turns heel on Sin Cara, shows off a new side to himself, but ultimately fails because Hunico is the fucking man.

* You know that thing we tried with Bo Dallas that didn't work. We should try that exact same thing AGAIN! I was never a big fan of Bo Dallas just being thrown into The Wyatt Family because of his family connections to Bray, but at this point it really makes sense to do so. He's not over, he's not going anyway -- you're not leaving much on the table by having Bo be the "worker" (not named Harper) of The Family. Either that or release him for New Japan and let him stretch his chops a bit.

* Sasha's back, just in time to take focus away from Bayley. Why didn't they do this after Clash of Champions?

* I FUCKING HATE challengers pinning champions in non-title matches! Ugh. Well, now that I don't care about Bayley and already know that they aren't going to use her as well as they did on NXT...

* I am souring on Luke Gallows big time. I was thinking the other day that I'd rather Chris Jericho & Karl Anderson win the belts from New Day with Gallows as their enforcer, with the group having a loose allegiance to Kevin Owens. The Lionheart Foundation or whatever.

* Darren Young vs. Titus O'Neil is the drizzling shits and they keep going forward with it. These men have 12 years main roster experience between them. Titus looks like a beast and Darren Young looks like John Cena. That they overcome such possible aesthetic attributes to suck so bad says something about how terrible each one is. O'Neil has had ONE good match in a 6 year career. Young has had fewer than that. I'm partially convinced that a large reason The New Day has held the Tag Titles so long is because the WWE doesn't have any "positive African-American role-models" for kids since Young & O'Neil suck so much and Apollo Crews is a wet blanket of personality. Cut them and bring up Cedric Alexander and Rich Swann.

* Oh, and I'm not sure how I'm feeling about the Cruiserweight Division either. It just feels like a lot of it is being thrown out there. I'd still rather there be two divisions if they were going to do it this way. I don't expect it to be long before cruiserweights are being used to keep Braun Strowman's momentum on life support, etc. Gran Metalik should be the first champion after winning CWC. I don't know if that will happen. There's part of me that thinks they should just bring them up as integrated acts.

[Evil Vito]

I still love Gallows and Anderson, but this program has been fucking horrendous and cringe worthy. Both guys are hilarious in podcast interviews but it just feels so unbelievably forced trying to turn them into a comedic act on screen. They should just be beating the piss out of people and reminding everybody why them being in WWE is supposed to be a big deal.

I really fail to see how anybody other than Vince McMahon found that "Old Day" shit funny.

[Evil Vito]

Stumped as to why Young and Titus are still feuding. What is the end game? Are they that pressed to fill time at Clash of Champions that they're going to send them out on PPV to die? It wouldn't even be the first time they've booked them in a PPV match against each other (Elimination Chamber 2014) and nobody gave a shit about it then, either.

[Evil Vito]

Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens
Roman Reigns vs. Chris Jericho
The New Day vs. Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson
Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte
Cesaro vs. Sheamus
Alicia Fox vs. Nia Jax
Enzo and Cass vs. The Shining Stars
Sin Cara vs. Braun Strowman
Cruiserweight match to showcase the division

That's already 9 matches, which should be more than enough to fill a 3 hour PPV even with a few of those matches being squashes considering there will also be backstage interviews and video packages. And that's not even booking Sami Zayn on the show because I genuinely have no idea what is coming up for him next...maybe he'd just be in the cruiserweight match with Neville or something.

So what the fuck do they need to have a Young/Titus match for? You can't even make it the Kickoff match because the general purpose of the Kickoff match is to wake the crowd up.

[Mr. Nerfect]

I was thinking yesterday, if the WWE really wanted to make a stir and get people into that program, Gallows & Kofi should conspire to work the internet. But not in a Vince Russo shoot way. You can't make people believe wrestling is real again, but you can make them believe that the politics are.

The WWE should have leaked a story about being upset that Luke Gallows didn't catch him on that dive. Kofi and Gallows are friends, but Kofi apparently went to Vince and had a big bitch session about how he will drop the belts to Anderson, but he's not going to do it for Gallows. The story states that Kofi told Vince he's been on the roster for 9 years now and still doesn't have the pull of a top guy despite never failing in a top spot, and this era needs guards, so he's stepping up as one and pulling the veteran card.

Leak a story about Gallows being pissed off, but feeling that he's "too fresh" to really throw much weight around backstage. This doesn't make its way to television in any other form than when Jericho, Anderson & Gallows beat New Day in a six-man tag and Jericho & Anderson are announced as the challengers for the tag belts at the next PPV, making a few people go "hold on." Gallows plays enforcer and people might suddenly get into him a bit more.

I'm starting to think that having a big ego in wrestling in necessary to being a real top star. If guys don't get cut down, then no one really stands tall. The WWE's become such a "safe place" to work. Everybody's "good" and no one is great. Let's get some cerebral edge back into this product and make guys really strive to get their head above water by demanding people watch them.

No one believes that the belts are actually contested, but we can believe that they are valued by the performers as symbols of legitimate status within the company.

[Dewidi]

there aint no way in hell owens is 266 he's well over 300 plus

[Mr. Nerfect]

Nah, the dude is pretty short.