If you or anyone else says they shouldn't have brought Goldberg back, you aren't going to get an argument from me. My feelings about Goldberg are on a "darO's feelings for Balor" level. My post was looking at things from the WWE's POV.

As for juicing buy rates, that is just something that has been done in pro wrestling forever. Even in the old territory days they would bring in outside talent to help juice ticket sales. It's a different era now, but in some ways it's still the same

I was at the raw after mania you referenced and it was awesome. Highlight of the show when he f5'd cole.

Since you asked:
Given where they were at entering the rumble after survivor series. I wouldn't of squashed brock last night again. I'd probably had them dominate a bit like they did against scrubs, then take each other out at same time and continue fighting outside the ring. Have security/refs maybe even other wrestlers break it up(like they did brock/taker before SS couple years back). Use that to build mania match, power vs power, etc. Then when brock goes over at mania, he can say he was caught off guard by lucky goldberg spear(like getting caught off guard by punch in a real fight) and he is still billed strong and consistently. Now it just doesn't carry much weight, as goldberg as beasted him twice.

Also I probably wouldn't of gone Lesnar vs Goldberg to begin with at SS. I' would of gone Goldberg vs reigns to keep building reigns, and have fans get behind goldberg more cause they hate reigns. Then when goldberg signed on for multi, i'd have him beat reigns at SS and reigns goes over at mania. In a spear vs spear rivalry.

I'm curious to see goldberg at mania as well, as even in his prime he couldn't wrestle 10 min matches well. If somehow he goes over lesnar at mania, I'm done watching. Ending network subscription that night, not going to anymore shows, no more merch and getting on with my life.

I had an interesting conversation today and was curious on takes here. We've got a good mix of indy and wwe watchers.

The discussion began around the obvious comparisons of Cena/AJ (which was my match of the night by a large margin) vs Omega/Okada. A lot of the indy people had Omega/Okada >>>>>>> while a lot of the WWE had it the other way around. Personally, I found them both incredibly enjoyable and very similar (Ima hit a bunch of big moves and big spots, then you're going to, and at the end we'll both have the crap beaten out of us).

The discussion then turned to WWE vs NJPW and if they were comparable entities. Someone mentioned apples and oranges, someone replied NJPW was more of a minor leagues on a global scale than an equal yet different competitor (citing things such as being the place where indy people go to try and get noticed by WWE - such as AJ, gallows, anderson, nak, asuand a handful of others). Which turned the conversation more negative and no real result came.


So, since again this is a good mix with people whose opinions are rather solid/unbiased, whats your take?


Mine was:

Can't compare to the NJPW match that I haven't seen, but I didn't even have Cena/AJ as better than Reigns/Owens last night. It was fun for what it was, but I certainly don't think it was special.

Maybe it was just because it was the one match I really felt invested in (just like at summerslam). Felt like a lovable little mark last night letting out sighs of relief at kickouts and then feeling sad after he lost haha. Which now that I mention it, really explains to me how people that weren't just watching the matches in isolation at WK and instead were invested were so amped for it.

ETA: And hot damn is the in ring action in todays wrestling across multiple companies just so damn elite now

I unsubscribed from the network. Since they make it so easy it wasn't like a rage quit;I'll probably jump back in for Mania, but I'm tired of the Olds, the tired of the lack of direction, and the heel authority figure stuff.

To some extent the SummerSlam match took the piss out of this one because it set a certain superhero kickout level and made it so this one had to meet or exceed that one. That basically forced this match to do things like "here's the first AA, this is an automatic kickout obv, now let's do AJ's forearm and Styles Clash and kick out on those too so that we can get on with the more believable false finishes"...I don't remember falling for a false finish in that match last night. AJ had already kicked out of the AA off the ropes at SummerSlam, so that didn't feel believable either.

I definitely liked the summerslam match more, and that is a big reason why. The avalanche AA ko at summerslam blew my mind because I was so damn sure that was it. But the summerslam match was also one of my favorites of the entire year (that, zayn/nak, and revival/diy #1 were my three favorite wwe matches of 2016 off the top of my head)

Also, man I hope the earlier post didn't come off as hating or fanboying or anything. I really, really, really have enjoyed everything ive seen from njpw

This.

I didn't think that last night's match was > 2.5 stars. It was bad. The only redeeming thing about it was AJ showing off some of his arsenal in the beginning. This was a standard Cena match and one that he's held onto for years now. It's exactly what Undertaker matches at WM devolved into. Finisher fests because finisher kickouts = good matches in Vince's mind. Not once was I excited during the match and obvious finish was obvious.

I got Reigns vs Owens at ****1/4 fwiw. Great match.

It's nice having more and more people into indies/NJPW now, especially on here.

Okada/Omega > AJ/Cena SS > AJ/Cena RR

Agree with LKJ that a lot of the match was "let's get past the unbelievable false finishes so that we can get to the believable false finishes." Although I think they could have avoided that by working a longer match. If Cena's Canadian Destroyer was 25mins in and there hadn't been any AA's before that and then they went into an AA or Avalanche AA spot I could see a first finisher being believable.

Hasn't NJPW > WWE from a work rate and match quality perspective been true for something like 30 straight years at this point?

Definitely not in the early 2000's. NJPW almost went bankrupt because it morphed into a mostly shooter vs real wrestler kind of deal for the majority of cards. Everyone hated it. It wasn't until Tanahashi beat Nagata at the G-1 in 05(maybe 06) and Tanahashi became the man that NJPW even became a little more wrestling based. Even the WWE in 07 is probably > NJPW because they were still rebuilding. NJPW became great at work rate again in 2010 when The Golden Lovers (Ibushi/Omega), Apollo 55 (Finn/Taguchi), Bad Intentions (Albert/Anderson), Tanahashi, and the rise of Naito and Goto* started happening.

*before anyone might correct me, I'm aware that Goto's coming out party was 07 but he wasn't on a real main event level until 2010.

Call me crazy, but I think its a bit unfair to compare the main event of one promotion's biggest show of the year to a match that was on the third best show of another promotion.

I agree to an extent. This was the blowoff to whatever feud AJ/Cena had and was marketed as a huge match, and a match that was highly anticipated so it being on the 3rd biggest show of the year makes almost no difference. Mania differences may not even be there considering that this event was held in a stadium, just like Mania.

I agree in that we can't expect Cena vs AJ to top Omega vs Okada (or vice versa to other people) in the different environments that they have. People are going to favor one environment or the other and that may just shape their opinion of both. One is a plodding match that had high spots in the first 20 minutes but was mostly deliberate mat/chain wrestling where the first finisher was done ~45 minutes into the match. The other had its first finisher done in about 7 minutes and ended in 24 minutes and even within that first 7 minutes it was a bunch of flying around.

One other way I disagree is that WWE fans tend to think WK isn't **** compared to the WWE big 4 because it's in Japan and "lol they didn't even fill the Dome" so they'll always say w/e WWE has.

Orton beat up his dad, that made me lol

Yeah I'm so confused on AJ/Cena. Seems like everyone here agrees with me: It was at absolute BEST the third best match of the card (possibly 5th), and ****ing Bayley legit outworked Cena, but other sites are calling it 5 stars. Strange.

Also on Strowman... having Reigns/Taker at Mania, with Strowman interfering just as Reigns is about to win, beating the crap out of Reigns, and Reigns just going over anyway would be intense level 100 troll booking.

Attendance at RR was 52k (twice that of WK 11). I think it's safe to say that the Rumble is bigger than Summer Slam.

There was a part of me that thought that would happen in the Rumble match vs Owens only because of how funny it would've been.
tbf, they just don't put SS in a big stadium. If they did, it'd get the around the same. IIRC, the only stadium show they did was 92 which got 80k+ people. I was thinking though that in terms of anticipation it's probably WM > RR > SS.

Yeah, I should have said that. It's more than just attendance. RR is the kickoff of the WM season. Rock won his comeback title at RR. I think RR is bigger than SS, at least to casual fans.

Kayfabe importance of SummerSlam might be a bit more because it's a stand-alone PPV and its main event is purportedly the second-biggest match of the year, whereas the Rumble exists largely as a launching pad to another show, but I agree that RR is a bigger deal than SummerSlam to more people.

RR is definitely more of a name than SS. My publisher was in Texas for PAX and when they saw a RR was on they managed to get a group of like 15 people together. None of them watch Raw or know who current wrestlers are but they knew exactly what the RR match was all about and they loved it just because of that. I doubt the same could be said for SS. I know that's just one example but the gimmick of the RR match is a pretty big selling point for casuals.

It seems obvious it would be easier to get super casuals to attend RR over SS because of the nature of the event-- rumble is a giant gimmick and needs no storyline to understand, etc

I don't know that that should be the barometer of which is more important in the wrestling world or whatever.

I don't disagree with any of what you guys are saying. My point was that in the, and forgive me for using this term, the WWE universe, the order of importance is:

1. Wrestlemania
2. Summer Slam
3. Royal Rumble
4. Survivor Series

That was why I said it's unfair to compare the main event of NJPW's biggest event of the year to a match on WWE's third biggest show. It also doesn't mean that I am disparaging Pkada/Omega at all, I seriously doubt we will see a better match this year.

I think everyone knew what you meant (i did at least) but just extrapolated from it. You are, of course, correct.

I don't really understand the framework. The main event of WrestleMania is rarely WWE's best match of the year. Seems the comparison was NJPW's best match compared to (though I disagree) WWE's best of the year-to-date. Not biggest.