Tag: wwe

Fare thee well, NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

We hardly knew thee.

It’s evident that a change of eras is occurring in the WWE currently, because when blets start changing across the board, it’s a sure sign that we’re about to embark on a new era, that won’t officially be named, because they tend to happen organically based on the trend of whatever is going on.

At this point, there’s been a new big gold blet introduced, Roman Reigns’ two world championship blets have been merged into a singular gold variant of the same blet and called Undisputed, and just this past week on Smackdown, Asuka was awarded a brand new women’s championship, which was basically the women’s variant of Roman Reigns’ gold variant, but with a white strap, because as the E has established over the last era, black strap = men, white strap = women.

Obviously, I’m stoked that Asuka is the first one to hold the new women’s gold logo blet because I’m a fan of hers, and it seems inevitable that Rhea Ripley will be getting a new championship blet to replace the blue Smackdown variant, which if I had to guess will probably be the same thing as Seth Rollins’ new big gold blet, but with a white strap.

The United States and Intercontinental blets were re-designed in the middle of the last era, so they will probably stand pat for a little while longer, and I suspect that the Unified tag team blets that are currently held by Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens will probably be consolidated sometime soon.  But apparently the women’s tag team blets are on the docket next, because we’re getting this seemingly random and out of nowhere program pitting the WWE Women’s Tag champions against the NXT Women’s Tag champions who were drafted to the main roster without any resolution to what was going to happen with their NXT titles.

It’s not often where an outcome seems so overwhelmingly foregone, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s about the layup of the century that Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler are going to defeat Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn, and merge the NXT Women’s tag blets into their own, with a new design possibly to come soon, or maybe not, if scuttlebutt is accurate and Vince McMahon has more influence than is believed because he clearly doesn’t give a flying fuck about women’s wrestling and probably won’t bother redesigning their blets.

And a part of me hopes that doesn’t happen, because it’d be nice for the blets that I have replicas of for my daughters actually lasts a substantial amount of time, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, the NXT Women’s Tag Team championship barely lasted two years, so it really is genuine to say, we hardly knew thee.  Created because of a potential feud that went nowhere involving main roster talent versus NXT talent, the reality is that it was probably more for the WWEShop to have another replica to peddle, which reminds me that if they ever reduce the cost of these I might have to pick up a pair for my daughters, but what could’ve been a great championship to the brand, was kind of bungled around over the last two years, primarily due to the re-branding, management changes, personnel changes, injuries and just a lack of good booking.

In a way, I understand why the WWE is pulling the plug on the NXT Women’s Tag Team championship, but as someone who has always kept a close eye on the women’s division and the growth of women’s wrestling throughout the years, it doesn’t come without a feeling of good riddance from the company, which makes me a little melancholy about it.

All the same, going back a step, I wish there could’ve been a little bit more buildup for the match between the two teams, to at least give the ol’ college try to sell Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn as threats to Rousey and Baszler.  Most fans are aware of Kay Lee Ray, before becoming Alba Fyre, and how she’s a phenomenal worker in her own right, way stronger than anyone else in this match and if I could get more granular, it also goes without saying that Isla Dawn is the one who’s going to eat the L in this match, with the only question being whom she taps out to between Rousey or Baszler. Continue reading “Fare thee well, NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship” →

WWE’s new blets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I have to say, I’m very entertained by what the WWE has been doing over the last few months, with their management of their slew of championships.  Roman Reigns has had such a chokehold over the two world championships that the company is forced to introduce a new world-equivalent championship.  The RAW women’s champion is on Smackdown and the Smackdown women’s champion is on RAW.

And now, in honor of Roman Reigns’ aforementioned chokehold over the company’s world championships having surpassing 1,000 days, the WWE has decided to fold his two blets into a singular championship, and awarded him with a brand new, gold variant of The Logo blet, and are calling it the Undisputed Championship or at least that’s what the blet itself says.

I guess the Universal championship is kind of dead at this point, but I’m sure the WWE will rewrite the history books in some convoluted manner to make sure all holders of all variants of the title that have ever been folded in are accounted for except Chris Benoit.

The best part is though, with the Roman’s two blets now merged into one blet, he or Paul Heyman are looking a little inadequate when it comes to hardware.  So it’s good that the WWE introduced another world championship blet, because that way Roman can get back to being a dual blet holder in due time.  And I am here for it, for when Roman Reigns inevitably becomes WWE Undisputed World Heavyweight Universal Champion.

The funniest thing about all this blet shuffling is that I have no doubt in my mind that a lot of it is driven by the need for fresh merch.  Prior to the introduction of these two new blets, the WWE had basically made replicas of every active blet in the company, and had nothing new in the pipeline.  I’m guessing the parade of bullshit tribute blets, SEC college blets, and like the three MLB collaboration blets haven’t exactly been lighting the world on fire, so if WWE Shop wants to have some high-dollar items to peddle, they need to start developing some new shit, which is exactly what they’ve done.

My knee-jerk reaction is that I don’t have much interest in either the new big gold blet, or the new big gold blet, especially with their $499 price tag at full retail.  It’s like AEW fucked the market with their ridiculously high-priced replicas, so WWE Shop has taken that as established market and are selling their newer shit accordingly.  But never say never, and if in the 1-2 times a year where they sometimes have some deep price cuts, anything can happen if the inspiration and the financial means lines up just right.

Someone is clearly a Shinsuke Nakamura fan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Credit goes to mythical wife for turning me onto this story, but out of the blue she asks me if I’d seen these baseball uniforms.  Obviously the answer is no, because I’m so buried in either work or parenting that I see practically nothing that isn’t spoon fed to me through social media, and I’m disappointed in the algorithms that didn’t feed me this one, because it’s basically tailor made for my general interests.

But the Nippon Ham Fighters of NPB debuted some brand-new alternate uniforms, and naturally my first reaction is wtf, but very closely followed with the very obvious parallel that these look basically like one of Shinsuke Nakamura’s signature ring attires.  I mean come on, the two-tone red and black everything, the plunging V neckline with the weird collars on it, it’s straight up Shinsuke Nakamura all over it.

It turns out that these uniforms were “designed” by manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo, who’s a pretty flamboyant guy in his own right, but I think it’s safe to assume that he’s probably a Shinsuke Nakamura fan, because there’s absolutely no reason at all for a design like this to ever manifest from a baseball brand whose colors are primarily blues and golds.

Either way, upon seeing these horrible uniforms, it was inevitable that I couldn’t avoid brogging about it, as well as photoshopping Shinsuke Nakamura onto pictures of the team in these hideous kits.  But apparently, new uniform luck still applies to these as well; from what I understand, the starting pitcher for the debut game ended up throwing a complete game shutout.  Perhaps the Lotte Giants hitters were confused about stepping into a batters box against a professional wrestler, and by the time they realized they were up against a pitcher, they were already behind in the count.

Maybe Shinjo can go ahead and get started with designing the kits for the 2027 World Baseball Classic, because nothing would be a bigger power move than seeing Japan’s best players winning another WBC, all while cosplaying as Shinsuke Nakamura.  Imagine Mike Trout and Bryce Harper striking out to Shohei Ohtani wearing this get up. 

Legend status.

Yeah, not going to change my mind on this one

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Spoiler alert: Trinity Fatu confirmed to have signed deal with Impact Wrestling, will debut soon

As much as I appreciate and find enjoyment in the post-TNA era of Impact Wrestling, there’s no denying the overall perception of the promotion is that they’re very much no higher than third-tier.  WWE and AEW are the easy #1 and 2 promotions in America, and Impact is basically where anyone who is unable to land a job in the big two end up.  The roster is full of quality talents and strong workers, but there’s no denying the fact that nearly all of them have experience with  WWE and/or AEW and have landed in Impact mostly out of lack of better options.

It’s still a means to remain on camera, and in lots of cases, it’s a good low-pressure environment for workers to reinvent their characters and put in work, while still getting paid and keeping a foot jammed in the doors to bigger opportunities.  But there’s no denying that the overall perception of Impact still has the stink of Dixie Carter’s and Jerry Jarrett’s TNA all over it, and such alone is one of the highest hurdles for the brand to overcome on a daily basis.

The bottom line is, professional wrestlers don’t perform in their careers with the dream and intention to land in Impact Wrestling.  They all dream of getting to the top of the industry, or doing their best to make themselves into the top of the industry; love them or hate them, but that really means, making it to the WWE or joining the hopes and dreams hype train of AEW.

So all that being said, I can’t imagine that the hopes of Naomi, when she walked out of the WWE along with Sasha Banks, was that she was going to land in Impact Wrestling.  I imagine she hoped that the impact of her and Sasha walking out would cause a movement in the WWE creative machine to where they would be welcomed back with open arms, and some more legitimate respect would be put onto the women’s division, the women’s tag division, and maybe some more money would be thrown in their direction too.

However, what they failed to realize was that Vince McMahon was still the head dick in charge at that time, and he doesn’t even care about the Intercontinental championship much less the women’s division, and not only was their bluff called, the situation was even brought up on the air, just to punctuate their general unimpressed nature of what they had done.  Sasha would go on to Japan, become Mercedes Mone, immediately win the IWGP Women’s Championship, and is supposedly making six-figures per appearance, while Naomi has been on her ass since. 

Personally, this was not surprising to me; as much as I like Trinity Fatu and think she’s a strong performer, she was no real loss to the WWE.  Sasha Banks however, was a game changer, a franchise player, and a woman whom the division could be built around; but her conduct and general perception of her attitude put them both into a position where an old unapologetic fuck like Vince McMahon had no choice but to call their bluff and let them walk, because doing anything else is an L in his book, putting two performers above the business that nobody is bigger than.

The thing is, from the moment it happened, beyond thinking it was just a work, when it was confirmed that it wasn’t, the first thing I thought was that this was entirely Sasha’s idea, and Naomi went along with it.  Sasha has already demonstrated her willingness to walk out like a spoiled brat when things weren’t necessarily favorable for her, but when she decided to do it again, it’s clear she felt that she had to bring Naomi with her in order to feel like she was strengthening her leverage, even it if meant potentially harming another person’s career.

When the bluff was called, Sasha knew she still had demand and options, and cashed those in.  But unfortunately Naomi wasn’t as fortunate; this isn’t to say that she doesn’t have the capability of being a franchise player, but over the last decade, she’s been portrayed as nothing more than a good team player and a transitional champion at best, and no promotion is going to offer premium dollar for such perception.

And now, Naomi is now in Impact Wrestling.  The third-tier promotion that most wrestling fans don’t even know what channel to tune into in order to watch.  Even if she is shot to the top of the card to go up against the likes of Deonna Purrazzo and Jordynne Grace, she’ll still be making a fraction of the money that she would’ve been making as a WWE mid-carder.  Now I doubt her and her husband Jimmy Uso are ever going to sweat on the financial front, but there’s no denying the trajectory of her personal career has been seriously derailed, by a decision that wasn’t necessarily her own.  And as much as I like Impact now, the detour through Impact usually takes a good bit of time to reroute through.

Which brings us back to the image above, I most definitely believe that Sasha Banks screwed Naomi, and I don’t really think that I’m going to change my stance on that opinion.  The intentions of their actions weren’t bad, but the execution of it was something that you just don’t do in any line of work and expect positive results, and there’s not a single part of me that doesn’t think this wasn’t solely Sasha’s idea from the start.  I feel that she used Naomi like a pawn to try and strengthen her objective, but when it failed, she basically poisoned Naomi’s career, while she went onto to find a lucrative alternative.

Even before she married into the ultra-loyal Anoa’i family, Naomi was the consummate pro who got the business and seemed to understand that at some point, everyone in history eats shit sandwiches from time to time.  She may have been a former Smackdown women’s champion before, but she’s also done her share of jobs to the IIconics, Lana, Mandy Rose and other weak workers she could wrestle into knots if she wanted to.  There’s no part of me that believes she would ever think to walk out of the company on her own accord.

Of course, nobody will ever admit to any finger pointing or sour grapes, at least not while careers are still active.  But inevitably, both Sasha and Naomi will be back in the WWE, because on a long enough timeline, everyone comes home eventually.  They better pray that Vince McMahon is entirely out when that day comes, because that man holds a grudge like no other, and he would 100% resume whatever he had in mind for them prior to their walkout, just to prove a point, before he jobs them around for a minute, as a receipt for their past transgressions.

Speaking of receipts, to me, the real telling point would be the inevitability that Sasha Banks steps in the ring for a match against Naomi.  I would be ohhhhhh like I were watching a dunk contest if Naomi absolutely potatoes the fuck out of Sasha with like a kick to her head that’s a little too snug, as retribution for the likely 2+ years of her prime that were squandered on a really foolish idea.  Because again, nobody will ever say what they really feel, but the actions will definitely speak for them, and I’m sure Naomi is smart enough to have realized, Sasha screwed her.

Let’s talk about the new WWE World Heavyweight Championship blet

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I guess I can’t say that I’m really that surprised that the WWE went ahead and introduced a new World Championship into circulation of blets.  Roman Reigns has the WWE and the Universal championship on lockdown and doesn’t look like he’ll be losing them anytime soon, Walter Gunther is bringing generations of prestige back to the Intercontinental championship, the United States championship seems like it’s the youngster’s title, with Austin Theory wielding it, and I have no idea what to predict what they’re going to do with the unified Tag Team championships.

But because Roman has both of the company’s top prizes, and it doesn’t make sense for him to relinquish either, there is a modicum of sense in introducing a new World title equivalent, for a pool of upper-card talents to vie for, without getting inevitably squashed by Reigns.

I also like to think that the WWE made a new blet, just so that they could have another blet to sell, considering they’ve kind of caught up and released just about every single blet in the company’s existence, and I don’t imagine business is great on patsy fake replicas with the Boston Red Sox logo or for whatever reason, every single SEC school.  And at an aggressive $499 price point for a replica, they’re probably grateful for AEW for inflating the cost of replicas to where they could justify upping their costs as well.

Anyway, let’s talk about the blet’s design, seeing as how I am the ultimate blet collector that I know [I know nobody else who collects personally] and my opinion holds the utmost weight on replica blets of a fake sport of mostly sweaty dudes crashing into each other in soap opera storylines.

Knee-jerk reaction: meh.  Leaning not liking it, 48-52.  I get what the WWE is trying to do with this, in that they’re trying to take the classic big gold blet from the NWA and WCW and make it inherently WWE’s without just straight up re-releasing the old big gold blet.  Most likely because they wouldn’t be able to justify the $499 price point, but also because the origins of it will never be native to the WWE.

The sheer amount of flourish and the thickness of the plates, and all the swirly designs with practically no contrast to give it any sort of visual separation just kind of make it look like a massive golden turd, smashed and shaped into the general shape of a gold center plate, and then slapped with a WWE logo in the middle.

Speaking of which, because the globe behind the logo lacks any sort of, you know, land masses on it, it’s not really a globe anymore, and doesn’t really say “world” about it.  But that’s okay I guess, because they have “WORLD CHAMPION” on it in a spiky, LA Angels-type font that is supposed to look intense and menacing or something.

It’s like, the classic World championships of the past, and all championship blets for that matter, the WWE logo was always subtle, but present.  It allowed for the actual title of the championship be the focal point of the blets, from the old World championships, all the way to even like the European championship.  There’s a reason why those older blet designs are all so revered and respected and seen as the benchmark of blet design.

The current WWE and Universal championships held by Roman Reigns work, because that’s the WWE going full heavy handed and making the blet basically nothing but the company’s logo.  It’s gaudy and intense, but because they went so ham and committed to it, it works.

This new World Heavyweight championship is one part trying to be big gold, but at the same time, one part WWEEEEEEE, that it’s like two conflicting forces colliding and we’re left with this weird bastardized golden turd of a blet where it’s stuck in the middle of two alpha objectives.

It’s not the worst blet ever released by the WWE, but it’s also not one where I see it and immediately go mmmmmmm I want it.  But I could be swayed, be it through an intense discount/sale opportunity, or as simple as being happy with whom is holding the blet, and it making me want it.  But considering the introduction of this blet screams, Cody Rhodes will be the first holder of it, I can’t say that holder of the blet is going to sell me on it any time soon.

Fuckin’ Cody.  I hope he beats some transitional schmuck for the blet in Saudi Arabia, just so we can go ahead and get his bullshit contractually-obligated World title reign over with, but it mean relatively nothing in the grand spectrum of things.

And then next Spring, lose it to Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania, to great lol’s for me.

Bron Breakker looks like a Costco rotisserie chicken

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Was watching a summary of the most recent episode of NXT, and when they got to the segment where a freshly heel-turned Bron Breakker got in the ring to get up in the business of Chase U, all I could think of was just how fucking orange Baby Steiner was.

Like, we’re talking even more orange than the former president guy, so orange that he looks like he belongs on Jersey Shore.  My knee jerk reaction was that he looked like a Costco rotisserie chicken, but one that was left in the oven four minutes past the timer, and whomever was in charge of the cooker at the time went on break to let it simmer in residual heat even longer.

There can’t be any way he thinks he looks good like this.  Sure, he still has the body and musculature of an Adonis, and there’s no denying the in-ring talent and he’s only going to get better with experience.  But the fact that he still looks like overcooked poultry certainly can’t help his career where appearances aren’t everything, but they still do hold a tremendous amount of weight.

And considering the tremendous heat on his family’s name with his dad going full bigot at a wrestling convention during Wrestlemania weekend, Steiner Jr. should be avoiding all possible sources of negative perception, including the ridicule and embarrassing things, like being the exact same color as a Costco rotisserie chicken.

Seriously, zero color correction went into these images.  I screen capped NXT, and shopped in an unedited photograph of a Costco chicken on top of it.  133 and 1/3% color match.

Wrestlemania: suck it, Cody

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was chatting with some of my bros over the two-night extravaganza, and I explained that no matter how much my level of involvement to professional wrestling ebbs and flows and wavers throughout the passage of time, there’s always a conceited effort to watch Wrestlemania.  It always comes back during Wrestlemania, and Mania and the Royal Rumble are the two shows a year that I feel very strongly about watching live.

This year’s Wrestlemania had a pretty stacked card on paper, and I felt that the WWE had done a pretty decent job of building up a respectable card from top to bottom, and wasn’t going to be anchored solely by Roman Reigns and then everyone else.  The Rey and Dominic Mysterio feud caught fire real late, and went from a cliché match to one that had some heat behind it, and as much as I hated the relegation of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens because of the existence of Cody Rhodes, there was still a large amount of interest with their match against the Usos, because the Usos can have great matches against anyone, much less the level of talents that are Sami and Owens.

On paper, I was actually looking forward to night 1 more than the second night, because I thought that the card was better quality than then night 2’s card.  But after both shows, I actually thought night 2 was the stronger show, and it really wasn’t even close.

I thought almost all of the matches on night 1 were underperformed by all those involved, which was a little head-scratching considering the level of talent that was on the card.  John Cena had a pretty uninspired match with Austin Theory, and was disappointing, Rey and Dominic had too many people get involved with their match which watered things down, Charlotte and Rhea had an uncharacteristically below-par match, and despite it being the best match of the night, I genuinely felt that the Sami/KO vs. Usos match could’ve been better.  They were the best by default, because most of the matches prior weren’t as good as they could’ve been.

Night 2 was heavily weighted by the Intercontinental championship match, with Gunther continuing his torrid 2023 defeating both Drew McIntyre and Sheamus in a brutal shit-kicking smack-fest everyone knew it was going to be, and despite my tendency to think that the main event matches are typically predictable and academic, the Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes match served up the drama of genuinely not knowing who was going to win, which made it that much more exciting as it played out.

But speaking of Cody Rhodes, one of the things holding back the anticipation of the show was the almost seemingly inevitably that he was going to be the guy that was going to dethrone Roman Reigns, which as a fan irked the shit out of me, because of all the speculation that he has a world title reign baked into his contract, which is what was a big draw in being able to bring him back from AEW.

So seeing him take the L was kind of surprising to me, because I thought for sure it was going to be the night where the Roman Empire came to an end.  Not just because of Cody’s ludicrous contractual obligation to be WWE champion at some point, but Roman had been carrying the company for over 900 days at that point, and Joe Anoa’I probably was due for a long-needed vacation.

No matter though, because unlike a lot of wrestling fans out there, I was over the moon that Roman retained and the greatest championship run since Bruno Sammartino continues on.  I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m just not a fan of Cody Rhodes, and I’m quite pleased to see him finally lose a match since he returned to the WWE.

Continue reading “Wrestlemania: suck it, Cody” →