Afternoon, folks! This is the very first Degeneration Jax blog post, and I am currently sitting here being stared at by The Lunatic Fringe himself, as you can see in the photo I’ve attached to this lovely piece of writing. Today is a good day. And by that, I mean I finally received my Dean Ambrose autograph from the Stars 4 Hope charity fundraiser that was run pre-Wrestlemania, back in February. And so now I’ve got this guy to adorn my desk. To watch over me. To accompany on my daily adventures and maybe get me into trouble with the law. Anyway, I need to get a frame. Like I said, it’s a good day, but that’s really because I’m easily pleased.
Now, let’s talk wrestling. Because it’s been a weird week, hasn’t it? Firings, crazy fan attacks, and a very weak Raw have contributed to that. But maybe that’s my opinion (the Raw, that is, because there is no denying that some weird shit went down yesterday in the WWE Universe). As I sat there last night, watching it live, I couldn’t help but think that something was just really off about the production. Maybe it was the godawful Tampa crowd that seemed more interested in Ryback/Big Show than Cesaro/Owens (I mean, if that’s your thing…but where was the Cesaro section?!). Maybe it was the fact that Big Show was even fighting Ryback for the Intercontinental Title. Maybe it’s the fact that we almost saw Dolph Ziggler’s little ziggle wiggle as Creative tried to make the Rusev/Lana/Dolph/Summer Rae story line into a really bad fan fiction. I’m still not quite sure. All I know is that I’m a little “meh” on the whole thing, but not really mad about it. It’s probably just because we were coming off such a fantastic Raw the week prior, following one of the best wrestling weekends we’ve had in a long time, and I’m a little disappointed. Here’s a few things I want to get off my chest.
If you listen to our podcast, you’ll know that I am very vocal about the Divas Division and the “revolution” they’re trying to put on. This week’s developments in that storyline left me slightly satisfied, and still really uneasy about it all. Sure, the Beat the Clock challenge was a first for the division and something refreshing, right? But you ended up with two non-matches, and a pretty decent three and a half minute one that one of the non-winners gave us. Over all, we had about seven minutes of wrestling, right? Some individual promo time for each PCB member, cool. Promo time for Nikki Bella, not so cool. So, Charlotte is going to go after Nikki’s title. Alright. We could have told you that, I think we all saw that coming from a mile away. I’ll leave that whole decision alone, but I will share with you what I WANTED to happen. With Sasha out there for her match against Paige, it would have been a golden opportunity to have The Boss show everyone why she has that title; if you aren’t going to have Sasha actually beat Paige in under a minute, then have Sasha take the mic once Charlotte was proclaimed the #1 contender. She could cut a promo and point out that two Divas have already made the champ tap out – something that I do not think has been actually pointed out on Raw or Smackdown (if it has been, it’s been backstage segments, or just on Twitter). She would admit that one was Charlotte, but the other was her – the first, in fact (if I’m correct) – and that she demands to be given a title shot as well. Have her point out that she was already the number one contender before the SummerSlam match even happened, and she has a rightful shot. You could then have Stephanie McMahon come out and make the executive decision to have Sasha and Charlotte face Nikki in a triple threat for the title. That would give you a golden opportunity to showcase what Charlotte and Sasha can do in the ring together on an actual main roster pay per view, but also give Nikki the opportunity to shine, alone, in the ring with two amazing competitors. Then you have the chance to drop the title to either new woman – Charlotte or Sasha – and the lead up could be epic. Promos from each girl (Charlotte and Sasha only, preferably), tensions in the groups (I believe they’re already teasing a Paige heel turn), and the fans would be in the dark about which girl would be winning. It would have been extremely interesting, and a bit unpredictable.
Of course, though, that didn’t happen. That would have made too much sense!
The Lana/Ziggler storyline was way too strange for my taste. Yes, I agree that it’s the most progress that has been made with them in weeks, but it was just…creepy? Uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable, but my biggest problem is that it made Lana look so dumb. They have literally taken a strong, independent woman that was in control of this man-beast, completely self aware and confident, and turned her into a victim, a love sick sidekick in acid washed mini skirts, showing her ass on live television. And that is another thing that has been bothering me. Did you hear that crowd come alive for the cat fight? You heard them do the same thing last week, too. All the while they’re either silent or disrespectful during the actual Divas matches where women are trying to put on wrestling matches. Ah, ain’t it perfect? I digress. They’re really gonna need to explain the whole Summer Rae/Dolph/Lana thing either on Smackdown or on Raw, because it was just a little too weird, and left a lot to be desired. Except if you’re a fan of seeing Ziggler’s tan line. I’m sure many Ziggle fans (my sister included) were quite pleased to see that.
The positive, of course, was New Day. Always. New. Day. I’m telling you, these guys are absolute gold at all times. Xavier’s hair. The “Save The Tables” promo. Basically anything and everything they do. Having them fight The Dudley’s is so great, too, because they have finally made the tag team segments exciting again. I mean, New Day made it amazing, but there was only so much they could do with three, sometimes four other teams being so bland and boring. But The Dudley’s are great, and now they’ve got a win over the champs, and Prime Time Players have their rematch clause…I’m smelling a triple threat match at Night of Champions, and hopefully that means a TLC match! I mean, one can dream, right?
Sting (Staaaaang, as I call him) cut a pretty decent promo, and there they go teasing us with a rift between Seth Rollins and The Authority (mainly Triple H) again. I’ve been predicting this turn for awhile, and it hasn’t happened, so I’m not gonna hold my breath on HHH turning on his golden boy, but it can happen. I actually really like the idea of Seth having to defend two titles on the same night. This has a lot of opportunity to be pretty damn epic. I’m unsure of what is going to happen from here, though. We’ve had some pretty great theories as far as the Sting/Rollins WHC match is concerned, which I do believe we will discuss on this week’s podcast episode, but I’m not sure my feelings on it yet. I’d only rather have Cena get the US title again so we can go back to those epic open challenges, but at this point I’d love to see that title move on to someone new. Owens, Cesaro? Who knows! We’ll have to see where it goes from here.
Aside from Raw, this past weekend was actually really awesome. Two out of three of your DeGen Jax hosts got to attend live shows, and it was awesome. Myself, I attended the live show on Saturday in Orlando with my sister. It was a lot of fun, but it was definitely, without a doubt, a pro-Cena crowd. And by that, I mean there were tons of children. It was fun, for the most part, but I will say this – if you have never experienced a live event with a pro-Cena crowd, you have no clue what it really can be like. My God…the cheers. The chants. It was electric. They were kind of blah for a lot of the matches – I think the biggest reactions (both boos and cheers) go to Dean Ambrose, Kevin Owens, New Day, Paige, Becky Lynch, Seth Rollins, and John Cena – but that crowd was insane for the main event. And Rollins is just so great at being a heel at these events. Over all, really great matches. I thought it was a weird choice for them to start out (at ours) with such a popular match up like Ambrose and Owens – the four guys in front of us came just after Ambrose won, and were very upset to find that they had missed Owens’ match – but what are you gonna do. It was very fun, though, my second live event, and the first time I got to see a bunch of people. Oh, and the love of my life Becky was there, so I was pretty pleased with that.
Overall, we’ve got some things developing going into Night of Champions, so there is that to look forward to. Here is hoping that next week gives us a better Raw. They were doing so well for awhile there! But I guess that’s what we’re used to with WWE, right?
That’s our first post! Hope you enjoyed a few of my thoughts; I’d love to hear your feedback, ideas, questions, feelings, hopes, dreams, etc. so let us know in the comments!
– Katie
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