Just read the recaps for Raw and SD.

What in the hell are they doing? Is there any long term plan whatsoever with anybody?

I know they just brought in some new creative people, so the optimistic (lol) outlook is that this week was a bit of a revamp in response to declining ratings/fan response. I thought both shows were pretty good fwiw except for my complaining about the Becky/Ronda thing.

Can someone explain what the thinking is behind the Owens/Kofi/Bryan stuff that happened tonight? McMahon screws Kofi in favor of his chosen guy Owens, so Owens is a heel, except he isn't? Then Kofi who has pinned Bryan clean twice and has all the momentum spends 15 minutes getting absolutely destroyed only for Owens to come in, clean house, and go over Bryan relatively easily. Are they trying to make us forget about Kofi's run because they regret it? I mean it seemed like they were setting up a potential underdog story for Kofi but the show just kinda ended. I cannot for the life of me figure out what they are even trying to do here.

I'd bet that Kofi wins the title at WM for a feel good story. It seems odd but that's the only logical thing. They brought in KO to be the FL opponent because they realize how over Kofi is and what a moment it will be. Replicating the Benoit moment if you will.

That's what I thought too until the match started. I don't get why they would spend the whole match having him getting legitimately destroyed if that's the case. Just such a momentum crusher imo

No way. The reaction of New Day and the announcers made it clear that this was setting up a story and not them quietly retconning KofiMania.

The announcers also gave Kofi an excuse for struggling as he was mentally out of it from having his opportunity stolen.

Hopefully, the point of this story is Kofi at Mania, but I still don't understand why they brought back KO for this spot. As was mentioned previously, KO should be coming back to kick Lashley's ass, not to champion the old man he hospitalized last time they interacted on TV.

I like Kofi enough, and he deserves a push, but not a world title match at WM. I mean, come on.

I was thinking this but didn't want to be too negative. There's a huge difference between Benoit and Kofi getting the belt as a "thank you". Benoit was one of the best in the world for a decade. Kofi's a forgettable midcarder. It's essentially giving the belt to Santino in 2011 because he got a huge ovation as the runner-up in the Rumble and EC.

Though I haven't generally been a Kofi fan, he has only sometimes been a comedy character, and he transitioned out of it beautifully for that EC match. That match alone would dissuade me from equating it to Santino, who never really stopped being a comedy character (albeit a really good one).

Obviously I'm making a distinction between comedy characters and dudes like Rock or Austin who just happened to be frequently hilarious, but were beyond reproach in their ability to flip the seriousness switch.

There's a difference for sure. I was more equating them not being able to be taken seriously as a world champion than them being comedy characters.

edit: what I really mean is going from being low-midcard guys to instantly world champion. Both seem like ridiculous leaps.

Yeah I grant you that, though an additional point of difference that I might also offer in Kofi's favor is that he's often been tag-teaming and such, and a hotshot upon returning to singles is a bit easier to swallow than Santino just being some full-time singles JTTS for a long time.

No question that you're correct about the crowd perhaps loving the story of the title win but then not really being on board with a title reign of any length.

It's problematic, but I just loved that EC match so much that I seem to be willing to apologize the problems away in this case.

I think all of the Kofi stuff has been good. Giving The New Day a purpose and goal beyond pointless comedy bits is great for all of their characters. It's getting Bryan over more as a heel and Kofi over more as a face/singles guy. It doesn't have to sell the Mania card (it probably curtain jerks) so Kofi is fine in the spot, and it's either a really feel-good moment if he wins or an effective heartbreaking loss that keeps the DB character hot. I kind of prefer him losing atm because I'm a jerk and love what DB is doing.

This whole story was supposed to be Mustafa Ali. I guess they felt they had a story they didn't want to waste, so they picked a name out of hat. Still think it should have been Rusev.

I think it's pretty clear that the initial plan was to have Ali be the surprise of the EC before falling short. Then KO would come back and fight Bryan at Mania (which was rumored to be the match for at least 6 weeks).

Ali got hurt so they gave the spot to Kofi and planned to just move on. Except the crowd went bonkers for it. New Day shifted into serious mode, talked up all of Kofi's accomplishments, and the crowd got behind it for real. So they shifted and instead of doing a throwaway at fast lane and KO at Mania, they've swapped it so that Kofi will be the Mania match. The man is winning the title at Mania.

It likely won't last long but it'll be a fun couple of weeks or months and I think it's a great choice.




On another note: I got the biggest grin wrestling has given me when the crowd erupted in an OOOHHHHH AHHHHH for Roman before his spear. It was awesome.

Holy ****! Surprised nobody's posted this gem yet:

https://twitter.com/RondaRousey/stat...00661151014912

These two have quite the twitter exchange going....

idk, i can't get excited about two professional wrestlers trying to build a feud by acting like teenagers on twitter. it's interesting that Heyman's supposedly writing those for her.

I saw the tweets as they were happening.

Really odd stuff. IMO, did nothing for anything but make them both look stupid.

Unrelated-- not sure if it was posted or not, but Dana Warrior was hired to join the creative team.

lol wwe.

If Heyman's writing those, surprised they're WWE approved in the PG era. Wouldn't think they'd like mentioning a script either.

New era pal.

I don't get how two actors fighting with each other on Twitter about their TV show characters is supposed to get me excited about watching a scripted fight between those characters. They can't honestly expect anyone to believe they're going to shoot fight, can they? This is the kind of garbage Russo would have booked if Twitter existed when he was still alive.

I get why they do it. UFC and boxing feuds blow up over social media but the difference is those fighters use the same language when they see each other in person. If Ronda is going to start cussing and calling Becky by her real name on twitter but goes back to PG and reading a script on TV then what's the point?

I also prefer the best parts of a TV show to be on the TV and not twitter.

I think Becky handles Twitter extremely well (staying in kayfabe and generally adding new layers to the TV story while being reasonably funny), but Ronda is pretty out of control on there and I'm surprised WWE seems okay with it. I kind of enjoy the spectacle of Ronda going off and not being sure if she knows it's fake or if she's next-level working everyone, but I don't know if it's really good for business.

The one criticism I don't really agree with is the "they're acting like teenagers" thing. The Rock was the biggest star in wrestling and all he really did was call people jabroni and candyass. That's kind of what wrestling is, and I don't see this as super different.

Difference to me is Rock's addressing his foe(s) in person.
Becky/Ronda are doing what teenagers do when they have a spat at school.

edited from hilariously bad phrasing and I hope nobody saw it

I guess I don't draw a huge distinction there, but I get what you mean. The entire connection between wrestling and social media is still so new and I'm surprised WWE doesn't seem to put more thought into what their wrestlers are doing on there. But I also don't know how much of the audience is really looking at this stuff.