Welcome! This is the seventh out of ten stops on “That Being Said: The WrestleMania Expedition”. For anyone unfamiliar with my work or recaps, I have disclaimers at the bottom of the article along with the “Expedition” schedule.
Sorry again that I had to cancel the TNA stops on my little tour. It sounds like I missed a pretty crazy show – I do think it would be fun to make up those shows on my summer break sometime. Someone should let me know what a fairly major PPV is that TNA has coming up over the summer, and I’ll do the same plan I originally had with recapping the Impact before, the PPV, and the Impact after.
So, the WrestleMania card has evolved in exactly the way everyone thought it would, with the exception of Swagger, which is not exactly an improvement, is it? I guess the angle has captured some attention, but that attention seems to be waning – and, it’s Jack Swagger. The thing about the card being predictable for me is not just that WM itself is a lot more predictable and boring (aside from what I’m anticipating to be a very good Punk / Undertaker match), it’s also that the RAW’s leading up to it are fairly predictable as well.
That actually speaks quite a bit to why it’s difficult for me to watch full shows in the past few years – aside, of course, from the fact that boring cookie-cutter wastes of time like Swagger, Miz, Ryback, Shaemus, Cody, Barrett and Sandow are featured prominently – how predictable all the TV is leading up to the PPV’s. The PPV’s can be okay, especially evidenced by how good I thought Elimination Chamber was (best one I’ve seen in a while, and far better than I expected.) But once the matches are all lined up, the builds all tend to be pretty much the same. One week will be interrupt an interview, next week will be interfere in a match, next week will be an attack backstage, week before the PPV will be some pull-apart brawl. Of course the order is up for debate, and it’s not like it’s always that simple – there are exceptions, but they all do seem to follow a similar pattern to it – and wrestlers are seemingly only able to focus on one thing in any given month.
In some cases, part of WWE’s skullfucked and pulverized corpse of a fanbase are so used to this type of thing that they can’t handle any kind of complexity in a plot. A few weeks ago, I read that Shaemus made fun of Wade Barrett’s “movie” AND worked with Orton against The Shield – and more than one person asked “what feud is Shaemus meant to be in?!?”
Is that really what it’s come to? Wrestlers can only be in one feud at once? That’s all they can handle? Shaemus can’t focus on more than one person at once? Dude must lose his mind playing lazer-tag.
Sorry. Tangent. The good news is that I had a chance to watch Californication after work before this show started. Here’s your recap. Choke on it.
That Being Said: The WrestleMania Expedition
Part 7 of 10: WWE RAW – 03.18.2013
Opening video package.
Cena music! He comes out with a fancy new yellow “Never Give Up” shirt. Cole and Lawler talk for a bit while he enters, and then Cena talks about how some fans “ride” with him and how some fans “ride” with Rock. Stuff like this is why people hate him. Cena claims the arena is divided, but that he has a message for The Rock’s fans – that The Rock’s time is up, and that Cena’s time is now. He says that all there is is now, and… okay, you know what? Fuck it. You know what the fuck he said. It’s the same shit he always says. Point at the sign, and then Prime Time Players come out – uh, well, one of them does, but Cena makes the same mistake I do and calls the other guy by Titus’ name, but Darren points out that it’s not Titus – apparently it’s Titus’ uncle, named Rufus “Pancake” Pattison. Holy sweet fuck. Why not just call him Uncle Jemima?
Cena makes some bad jokes, and people are having none of it – so he rattles off sports team names. This works a bit, and these poor stereotype fools dance around and go the ebonics route. Pancake (Jesus Christ I can’t believe I just fucking typed that) says people don’t want to see Cena at WrestleMania, and hilariously, some people actually cheer this. They go back and forth in a truly horrible skit, and then this turns into a match.
John Cena .vs. Darren Young
Cena kicks his ass, and Darren bails. CB JUST told me that Titus’ uncle is actually Titus, and I couldn’t even tell. I promise that doesn’t make me as racist as WWE is, it’s more that I don’t pay attention to anything these two fools have ever done.
Commercial.
And we’re back to relive the Nexus Invasion of 2010. Cena hits his shoulderblock, and dumps Titus and goes for the 5-Knuckle Shuffle. Crowd is dead for this. Pin.
Winner: John Cena
CB also says the WWE App has alternate choices for “Pancake’s” nickname. He says the choices are Porkchop, Porsnip, Pitstain, Pattycake. What the fuck is a Porsnip? Any kid watching this while doing math homework just had all the “+” signs on the paper ignite.
Cole and King wax about Punk and Undertaker, and then replay SmackDown where The Shield destroyed what would have obviously been a masterpiece between Ryback and Mark Henry. Shield kicked Ryback’s ass, then Henry waddled back into the ring to kick his ass some more and yell at him. Henry’s doctor advised against wrestling any more actual matches.
Commercial.
Oh fuck no.
Ryback .vs. David Otunga
This was a match between two guys who I believe would fall down a flight of stairs because their cell phones went off and distracted them. Crowd was dead for this, although they do seem to like chanting “Feed Me More”.
Winner: Ryback
Wow. Great episode so far, and I can only imagine it’s going to get better now that Ryback has a mic. Ryback talks about beating up The Shield with Orton and Shaemus, and continues to draw silence from the crowd until he asks them to chant “Feed Me More”. Then Mark Henry waddles his fat ass out there, with Vickie Gurerro and Teddy Long behind him. Henry’s doctor advised against him descending the entire ramp after climbing the ring steps TWICE last week, so they stop him before he gets too far. Vickie says that she’s taking Ryback out of The Sheild match and putting him up against Henry – so, that’s the next Botchamania ep done then. Ryback creams himself, even though he just said he wanted to fight Shield. He gives Otunga the move that almost killed Punk. Segment over.
For some reason, they play Lawler’s entrance music while Cole and King talk about HHH and Lesnar’s “contract signing” that’s taking place tonight. Then we get a Fandango ad.
Commercial.
DID YOU KNOW? SmackDown was the most “socially active” app on Friday. What the fuck does that even mean?
Now, the entire entrance ramp is done up like a high school dance. Fandango comes out with some girl he gets in the ring and strikes a pose, and some lights go off in his shape behind him. Cole calls it a Lite Brite and talks about someone butchering Fandango’s name on SmackDown, but funnily enough Cole butchers Fandango’s name as well while he’s talking about it. Either that or I actually don’t know how to pronounce it either. They replay this long and painful skit from SmackDown while Khali enters.
Fandango (w/ Random) .vs. The Great Khali (w/ Natalya)
Rather than have a match, Fandango wants Natalya to pronounce his name. So it’s just not a skit. There’s some kind of a storyline here about the pronunciation of this guy’s fucking name now. Holy fuck man. What a ridiculous show so far. Natalya doesn’t go for it. Fandango bails. He walks out. Khali is almost as fragile as Henry, so he can’t follow.
Winner: What The Fuck?!
I think the crowd is supposed to be really mad about this. But no one seems to care to see this fucker anyway, so it goes nowhere. Although he does get a nice “you can’t wrestle” chant. I’m sure some morons are going to claim that “THIS is how you build a heel” or something really dumb like that. Someone check 10 Thoughts On RAW, I’m sure it’s already up there.
Wait, no need for that:
Matt Harrak via Twitter: I completely just marked out for Fandango’s entrance.
Commercial.
Sawyer: Eat a dick, society! America has Cool Ranch Tacos! Fuck you guys, I’m going to the Bell!
So, from the commercials I learned that if you buy over $30 worth of shit at K-Mart, you can get a WrestleMania folding chair worth $18. And, you can buy tickets for WrestleMania that include taking home the chair.
That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.
Dave: Have you ever wanted to sit on Brock Lesnar’s face? Then get down to K-Mart. Bring money.
Okay, this show has been shittier than even I could have imagined so far. CB says it’s only this bad because I’m recapping it. But they gotta have something decent up next, right?
R-Truth .vs. Damien Sandow
Sandow goes all Dean Douglas / The Genius, which is something else that morons will call cutting edge heel work (again, check 10 Thoughts On Raw, I’m sure it’s there) and then R-Truth makes some bad jokes.
Sawyer: Too bad Damien can’t wrestle, because it’s cool that he looks like Raffi from The League, and he wears purple and pink gear.
Crowd is totally dead for this… like, REALLY dead. It’s mostly Sandow hitting his lame offense.
CB: This episode of Raw has more holes in it than the cops’ game plan on The Following.
Is that a good joke? I don’t even know. I don’t know what The Following is. Fortunately, even a reference I didn’t understand was far more entertaining than this match.
Sandow eats the Booker T kick, and bails out of the ring and refuses to finish the match. Which is totally different than Fandango walking out.
Winner: R-Truth
Backstage, Twin Magic is all over Cody. Kaitlyn comes up and says she can’t hang out with Cody later tonight, and The Bellas say that nobody cares. Kaitlyn tells the Bellas “you can have him” referring to Cody, because Cody is a loser.
Up next… Undertaker.
Commercial.
Undertaker comes out with his own custom graphic, and says Punk sealed his fate by making their match personal. He says Punk is going to get hurt.
Punk then does a Paul Bearer impression moving the top of the urn around like a mouth. It’s pretty funny, but it seems like people may over-react to this. He then coughs on the ashes – and is pretending Paul is talking to him from the urn. The rest of the promo was pretty forgettable, but that first part certainly caught my attention. After this, he tosses the urn around like a Globetrotter, then drops it and says “shit”, but they censor it. That’s the end of the promo, oddly – crowd seemed pretty dead for this as well. Punk should have drank Paul Bearer’s ashes and assumed his soul, like when Cartman thought Kenny’s ashes were chocolate milk mix:
Commercial. When we get back, they IMMEDIATELY replay the Punk thing.
Primo & Carlito (w/ Burn Victim) .vs. Daniel Bryan & Kane
Bryan and Primo volley for a bit, then Bryan does his corner kicks and the crowd chants along. Other than that, they’re dead for this as well. Primo tags in Epico, but Bryan takes him down with an armdrag. Primo distracts Bryan from the outside, and Epico knocks him out of the ring. He takes him back in and pins him, but gets 2. Primo tags in, hits a dropkick and gets another 2. Primo stretches Bryan out, he escapes but gets double-teamed in the corner.
Bryan eventually makes a tag, and the crowd finally fires up a bit, but not much. Kane comes in and cleans house, and hits a sidewalk slam on Primo. Chokeslam, and then AJ’s music hits and she comes down to do her skip. This results in nothing, as Kane and Bryan still wreck these fools.
Winners: Daniel Bryan & Kane
AJ goes all EMO on the outside, and skips off.
Chris Jericho pretends that winning the Intercontinental Title would mean something to him, as Fandango walks up. Jericho then makes fun of his name, and Fandango looks mad and says that Jericho will learn his name. Holy fuck. This is stupid.
Harrak just told me via Twitter to HAVE SOME FUN WITH WRESTLING!
Dave: That would likely require the said wrestling to be “FUN”.
Sawyer: Listen to Matt Harrak! He’s the inanimate carbon rod of Inside Pulse!
Matt Harrak (via Twitter): I like character based wrestling. It’s been too long & one or two over the top characters doesn’t hurt anyone.
Blair: So… this is really considered “over the top” then?
Dave: Harrak can’t keep to 140 characters. Therefore he shouldn’t be using Twitter.
Commercial.
Alberto Del Rio (w/ Ricardo Rodriguez) .vs. Cody Rhodes
Cody is still rocking some S&M gear for his entrance, I see. I feel like the Ricardo intro is not holding up to babyface Del Rio, who is awesome. He does have a remix to his entrance music, which is an improvement, although a new song entirely would probably be more in order.
They start out strong, with Del Rio in control with chops. Irish whips, hip-tosses, and backdrops, all by Del Rio, are countered by Cody with a suplex. Leg sleeper by Cody, as the crowd chants “si” for him to get up in probably one of the first positive chants for anyone so far tonight. Del Rio powers up and tries a charge, but Cody moves and Del Rio does more damage to himself on the ring post than Cody is capable of doing to him with a sledge. Cody tries some stomps (he’s run out of moves again) but Del Rio gets up and tosses him out of the ring.
Commercial.
Back from commercials, and they replay Cody easily doing the coolest thing he’s ever done – a springboard kick off the barricade. Why’d he wait 10 years into his career to bust that out? Del Rio is in control now though, but he misses a moonsault and hits a clothesline. 2-count, and Del Rio is favouring his already-injured knee that Swagger took out on SD. Cody puts Del Rio on the ropes, but Del Rio hits a front suplex on Cody from the second rope.
Crowd is a bit excited for this, but Del Rio is still trying to fire them up and it’s not working all that well, which is sad because I like the dude a lot. Superkick by Del Rio, and I thought Del Rio had this, but it was only 2. Del Rio works on him some more, and a “USA” chant starts… I can’t really tell what that’s supposed to mean? Is that good or bad for Del Rio? Backstabber off the ropes by Del Rio, and this gets 2 as well.
Cody with a moonsault, then he powers up and tries a clothesline, but Del Rio hits the armbreaker for the tapout.
Winner: Alberto Del Rio
Not a great match, but I think it was better than the crowd gave it credit for, at least. Certainly good for a Cody match – the crowd seems dead tonight, ALTHOUGH let’s not pretend they’ve had a lot to get excited about. Or, maybe the rest of the show just lowered my expectations.
Swagger comes out to attack Del Rio, but Del Rio kicks his ass because Swagger sucks – Del Rio overpowering a dude after having a 15-minute match is a nice touch, to make him seem like a bit more of a badass at least. Del Rio then goes up to Zeb, but Swagger jumps him from behind and tosses him into the steps and over the announce table.
Crowd chants “USA” again… what the fuck?!?! Is that actually a chant for Swagger? Mania sign pointing, and Swagger starts to walk out, but then he knocks down Ricardo and hits him with the Non-Angle Lock. After Swagger releases it, Ricardo screams like he’s on fire.
Commercial.
They replay the injury to Rodriguez, then we get a Booker T Hall Of Fame induction. Very cool. I always thought Booker T was a great wrestler, and should have been a bigger deal in WWE. Great career either way though. This year seems like a stacked HOF ceremony – you’d think they’d stretch these guys out a little more over time, though, since they’re kinda running out of bigger names. I’d think Booker should be the main inductee one year, but that’s me.
Randy Orton & Shaemus .vs. Heath Slater & Drew McIntyre (w/ Jinder Mahal)
3-Man Band is like a “Who’s Who” of “What The Fuck”. Orton gets his usual batshit reaction and Shaemus gets his usual… well, he gets his usual. Shaemus starts by beating up McIntyre, who were both destined for BIG THINGS a couple years ago, and a couple years later… this. Orton tags in and people like this, so he takes his turn kicking Drew’s ass. Shaemus does his retard clubs, and the crowd likes counting almost as much as they like chanting “Feed Me More”. Shaemus tags in and hits his usual diverse offense, and McIntyre clotheslines him after Mahal distracts him from the outside.
Slater tags in and tries some lame offense, but this doesn’t work. He tags McIntyre, who jumps into a CLUB from Shaemus. Shaemus tags Orton, Drew tags Heath… Orton kicks his ass and goes all Viper on him before hitting a hangman’s DDT from the ropes. Jinder tries to come in, but Shaemus hits his retard kick and he goes to the outside. RKO on Slater and we’re out.
Winners: Randy Orton & Shaemus
Lame match. The Shield’s music hits and they make their way through the crowd. They surround the ring, but Big Show’s music hits… hahaha, Big Show’s running, that’s hilarious. The crowd actually seems into the Show involvement, surprisingly. Big Show gets in the ring and Shield debates whether to get in or not. They don’t – Big Show does some SIGN POINTING, probably signifying that he wants to be Orton & Shaemus’ partner. Didn’t Shaemus and Big Show try to murder each other with chairs a few months ago?
GI Joe advert. WrestleMania advert – I’m ready for it to happen already. The buildup is about as predictable as it can get.
Dolph Ziggler (w/ Big E & AJ) .vs. Kofi Kingston
They replay some SmackDown shenanigans with Dolph, Big E and Team Hell No, before Kofi takes control with an armlock. Ziggler powers out and keeps Kofi in a headlock, and hits a shoulder. Kofi jumps Ziggler off the ropes a couple times and hits a dropkick. He then crotches himself on the ropes, and Ziggler goes for a cover and gets 1. VERY nice dropkick my Dolph gets 2. Sleeper by Dolph, and he does a handstand. He releases, Dolph tries a charge but misses, and Kofi hits a couple elbows. Dropkick by Kofi, but he misses an odd jump-clothesline but hits a Russian legsweep before hitting a slingshot splash for 2.
Kof powers up, and hits the Boom Drop to literally no reaction. He tries to power up the crowd, and does get some “BOOM” chants going. VERY nice exchange where Dolph counters and goes for his finish – but Kofi powers THAT and does his awesome corner matrix kick. He’s stalking Ziggler, but AJ distracts the ref while Kofi tries a dive on Ziggler, but he dives into Big E and goes head-over-heels in what looked like an awkward spot, and goes down. Ziggler tosses him in the ring and hits his finish. Pin.
Winner: Dolph Ziggler
Not much of a match until that sequence near the end, and these two had an okay outing at the PPV. Oh well. Kane and Bryan come out, and Bryan congratulates Dolph on getting he and Kane on the same page. Kane says he’s “not in a good place” which is kinda funny, and he says that Big E should try something inside the ring instead of outside. Kane challenges Dolph and Big E to fight Bryan & himself. AJ does some rough mic work, and accepts the match on their behalf, as long as the World Tag-Team Titles are on the line at WrestleMania. Bryan says “let me think about that” and the he, Kane, and the entire crowd go batshit with the “YES” chants, easily the biggest chant of the night.
The Miz’s movie gets a long advert, and this looks like a shit sandwich.
Commercial.
They replay Punk from earlier again, and Cole and Lawler are crying about it. Then we get a Cena / Rock video package. Apparently Rock beating Cena last year “destroyed him and sent him into a tailspin” according to Cena, and then they show Lesnar kicking his ass, Punk kicking his ass, Big Show and Johnny Ace kicking his ass… even though Rock had nothing to do with any of that, and anyway, Cena beat ALL those people. Then they show a headline about his divorce, implying that Rock is responsible for Cena being so horny all the time that he had to bone a porn star, which caused his wife to leave him.
Matt Harrak (via Twitter:) Wow… this WrestleMania theme song sucks.
Okay… I’m with you here, Harrak.
Intercontinental Title Match
Wade Barrett (c) .vs. Chris Jericho .vs. The Miz
Holy SHIT. THIS is the last match of the night? Miz gets his usual non-reaction, and Jericho does okay… still not great. Wade doesn’t even GET a TV entrance. Dead crowd tonight. That’s WWE’s fault for failing to entertain them though.
Crowd chants for “Y2J” and Wade hits some lame standing spin-kick. Jericho takes him down and clotheslines him over the rope. Jericho bounces Miz off the ropes, and Miz slides to the outside and kicks Barrett, then Jericho dives on them both and tries to fire up the crowd. In the ring, Wade eats a dropkick and Miz takes Jericho out before trying some roll-ups. Miz hits his corner clothesline and hits the top rope, but Wade knocks him down. He hits some strikes and a knee – Wade goes up with Miz on the ropes, and Jericho hits a tower of doom.
Commercial. Miz showing up at a kid’s birthday party in his underwear is… unsettling.
We’re back, and Wade is working his oh-so-diverse offense on Jarrett. A lame knee gets a 2 now?!?! Crowd is totally dead, and Wade eats a boot and shoulders by Jericho. He hits the ropes and a cross-body for 2. Jericho still trying to power up the crowd, with not much results. Miz takes Jericho to the outside, and hits a couple clotheslines, but after a backbreaker runs into Wade’s backbreaker which he calls the “wings of change” – haha, good God that’s horrible.
Miz hits the Figure-4 on Miz, but Jericho hits a moonsault on them both in an okay spot. After an exchange, Miz ends up outside the ring and Wade ends up in the Walls Of Jericho – Miz slides in and tries his lame finsiher, but it doesn’t work. Wade gets tossed and Jericho gets a near-fall on Miz with a rollup – then he hits a Codebreaker. Miz is down – Wade takes Jericho out from behind but only gets a 2 on Miz. Jericho takes Wade out of the ring and tries the same, and still only gets 2. Crowd is chanting “Y2J”, but Jericho runs into a DDT from Miz.
Miz tries his corner clothesline again because he doesn’t know a lot of moves – Jericho ducks and then hits a springboard dropkick knocking Wade off the apron, but then runs into a big boot from Miz for 2. Both men up, chops from Jericho, then they volley and Jericho gets a rollup for 2 – Jericho tries an axe-handle, but Miz hits him with Jeff Jarrett’s lame finish – Wade comes in and rolls up Miz from behind and pins.
Winner & Still Intercontinental Champion: Wade Barrett
The match was shitty until the end, no doubt about that – the near-falls at the end were kind of suspenseful and went on longer than one would have suspected, though. The Miz and Wade Barrett are two really shitty wrestlers.
We get a “red carpet” video of David Otunga’s movie. It looks almost as bad as Miz’s movie.
Now, we get to see wrestling fans on Tout that make the rest of us embarrassed to be wrestling fans.
Time has lost all meaning. I pray this is almost over.
Are you ready for more RAW action? I said… ARE YOU READY FOR MORE RAW ACTION?!?!
Contract Signing
Well, too bad. We’re getting a lame contract signing instead.
DID YOU KNOW? I had time to proof-read this entire article during Triple H’s entrance.
Jonah Kue: (via Twitter): I would have figured you’d have time to reply to 7 of Flaming Wombat’s comments as well.
Aw, he’ll be so touched that we thought of him!
Okay… in a nutshell, Triple H and Heyman insulted each other, until Heyman made a joke about HHH’s wife. HHH then kicked his ass for 5 minutes in an awkward torture-ish segment that the crowd didn’t really know what to do with. Then he signed the contract, and Lesnar came out but Heyman stopped him, saying that HHH signed the contract, so they won.
Lesnar and Heyman leave, and at the top of the ramp, Heyman grabs a mic and announces that the match at WrestleMania is “No Holds Barred” (duh) and that if HHH loses, his career is over.
Well, if there were any way to make it MORE predictable, they just found it. Congratulations.
Show over.
So, overall this was a pretty lame and boring show. And this isn’t even one of those shows where I feel like I have to justify why I say that, because there honestly just wasn’t a lot to it. As I said at the beginning, WWE is so predictable that you may as well not even watch the shows leading up to the PPV’s unless it’s a milestone show or something.
On paper, you’d figure Dolph and Kofi would be the best match, but it wasn’t good at all. Cody and Del Rio was (not that that’s saying all that much, because this wasn’t much fun either) yet the crowd seemed to hate it. The only thing the IC match had was the near-falls, and that was kinda ALL Jericho. There wasn’t really any advancement or any kind of development that anyone wasn’t already expecting anyway, aside from the career-stip on HHH / Brock, but all that does is make the winner more obvious.
The main-event was an awkward contract signing, and almost everything else was a total waste of time. Not totally sure what was going on with the crowd – I think they may just have wanted to do some chants and count.
And Fandango sucks. Sorry.
Well, that’s all the time we have for this week. Again, any and all comments and thoughts are always appreciated, or you can feel free to e-mail me at bdouglas@4sternstaging.com. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter @BDInsidePulse if you’re into such things.
The 8th stop on That Being Said: The WrestleMania Expedition will take place next week, where I will review WWE SmackDown. I’d say that if RAW was this dull, then SmackDown must be like a coma, but last time it surprised me. Fingers crossed.
This has been “That Being Said”. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week.
I’ll be in my trailer.
Disclaimers:
DISCLAIMER #1: These recaps should in NO way be treated as a professional and unbiased play-by-play of whatever the show in question is. Inside Pulse has no shortage of professional and live coverage, so if that’s what you’re looking for, I refer you to Mike Gojira, Scott Keith, Justin Czerwonka, or another of their ilk. Rather than a recap per se, I look at this as an ongoing 3-month narrative from someone who doesn’t normally watch full shows beginning to do exactly that for WrestleMania season. The reason this idea sounds like fun to me is that this time period is usually when many casual or former fans will tune back in anyway. So I know that as I’m tuning back in, many others will be as well.
DISCLAIMER #2: Quite often, when myself or another writer rips on a show (justifiably so or otherwise), they will get their fair share of people believing or commenting that they believe the recapper thinks that wrestling now is worse than it’s ever been. Usually it’s something like “WHAT, SO THE ATTITUDE ERA WAS SO GREAT?!?! THOSE MATCHES SUCKED TOO!” or something like that, even when you haven’t mentioned the Attitude Era at all. In fact, that’s a popular opinion out there right now in general – that wrestling is worse now than it’s ever been. Me personally, just for the record – I definitely think 2007-2009 and 2003-2004 definitely hold up worse than the current product. Not MUCH worse, mind you – and I do believe that current shows are pretty lame. But if I’m being honest, it’s not as bad as it’s ever been, much as it may feel that way sometimes.
DISCLAIMER #3: In the spirit of Disclaimer #2… I am going to do my best to go into these shows with an uncynical and unjaded eye. I’m hoping to like what I see – there is some stuff going on that COULD be promising depending on where they go with it and who they decide to feature prominently. But I promise nothing in terms of what’s going to come out of me if I don’t like the shows. Anyone who read any of my TNA recaps or the odd WWE recap that I did knows that I have very little tolerance for stupid or boring stuff. If, an hour into a 3-hour RAW, they decide to give me Shaemus against Cody Rhodes for 20 minutes while Michael Cole tells me they’re the future of the business and that I still have Ryback against Wade Barrett to look forward to in the second hour, then I’m going to feel like putting my fucking dick through a bone decalcinator, which means that me feeling like putting my fucking dick through a bone decalcinator is something you’re probably going to hear about.
DISCLAIMER #4: The obvious one – the opinions and views I express are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Inside Pulse or it’s owners, staff, or numerous writers.
DISCLAIMER #5: Regardless of how it all turns out, weather I find the shows good, boring or bad, if nothing else, I’m going to try my best to to have fun with these recaps over this 3-month period. I’m a guy who can usually have fun with a recap even when watching a show I don’t enjoy. For me, that’s the point of this experiment – or of anything else I may write for Inside Pulse – to have fun. Worst case scenario, I lose all patience and have a rage blackout like I’ve done on on the odd recap before, and sometimes even that can be entertaining. Regardless, the point is – this is for fun – and I hope you have as much fun reading this season as I’m hoping to have writing it.
“That Being Said” WrestleMania Tour Schedule:
PREMIERE – Jan 14: WWE RAW (20th Anniversary)
Jan 23: WWE Main Event
Jan 27: WWE Royal Rumble
Feb 01: WWE SmackDown
Feb 14: WWE NXT
Feb 17: WWE Elimination Chamber
Mar 07: TNA Impact CANCELLED
Mar 10: TNA LockDown CANCELLED
Mar 14: TNA Impact CANCELLED
Mar 18: WWE RAW
Mar 29: WWE SmackDown
Apr 01: WWE RAW
FINALE – APR 07: WrestleMania
