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Posts tagged Kofi Kingston
Ring Rust: Really, is this what we want?
Aug 5th
Really is this what we want?
I saw this posted on another wrestling website and I had to comment.
Business Week recently did a story on WWE using the celebrity guest hosts on Raw. When discussing the use of the celebrities, Stephanie McMahon made the following comments…
“When Donald took over we realized that our audience wanted to see something new. We have the ability to change our story line to suit whoever hosts.”
She also said that they were talking to Freddie Prinze Jr., Bob Barker and the Reverend Al Sharpton about hosting Raw in the future.
Really Stephanie McMahon? I mean really? Do you and the other higher ups at WWE really think the high ratings on a commercial free RAW were for Donald Trump? Did you guys all forget that that show was advertized heavily for a week on every show you produce as being commercial free? I know for a fact me and several other Couch Pirates tuned in to see a commercial free RAW, not to see “The Donald”.
I also know for a fact we all hate these guest hosts. We are your customers, we buy the PPV’s, we buy the shirts, we buy your video games, we go to the live local shows, we even went to Wrestlemania 25, some of us (including myself) even buy your action figures. We are the customer’s voice, why aren’t you listening?
I say this. You guys run another two hour commercial free RAW, promote the crap out of it like you did before, advertize a World Title #1 contender tournament like you did before. But this time do it without a Donald Trump or a ZZ Top, heck let a WWE GM like Teddy Long guest host. Then let the people watch and enjoy and I promise you ratings will be high. You guys missed the biggest and best gimmick for ratings you have had to date, it’s not a celebrity guest host it is commercial free television.
Dr Octogon Brings the Squared-Circle: The State of Wrestling 07/27/09 Edition
Jul 29th
Well kids, we have had some pretty craptastic wrestling the past couple of weeks. TNA Victory Road 2009 was incredibly boring and very poorly executed. TNA Impact has been its fairly consistent up and down. RAW has mostly been a wild inferno of flaming turds for the last several weeks. ECW has been good except for the Bella Twins and Abraham Washington, he isn’t even good in an ironic way with his current gimmick. Superstars is usually one of the more entertaining shows, often taking the best from all three WWE brands. Smackdown is usually all good with only Jeff Hardy floundering, but I think that is probably due to his desire to take some time off. Ring of Honor, I really just don’t get. Sometimes they can put on a pretty entertaining show, but they seem not to have a lot of direction right now. I have to watch the same matches over and over and they have way too many pot jokes or pot related gimmicks.
TNA Impact 07/23/09
TNA was really bad this week. The whole thing was mis-planned, mis-timed, and completely out of whack. Victoria did a promo that sounded completely like she did not know she was about to do a promo. Kevin Nash looked like he needed to be wheeled to the ring. Kurt Angle and Mick Foley were both cutting great promos and are really the glue holding this promotion together right now. It seems the rumored Jeff Jarret drama may really be affecting the company. There was one moment in the program that I almost felt offended by the show though. LAX members and friends, Hernandez and Homicide almost got in a fight in the back with no explanation offered. It was if they were saying, Homicide and Hernandez are just a couple of stupid Mexicans and they are just going to fight for no reason. It just really didn’t sit well with me.
Smackdown 07/24/09
I thought this was a pretty good lead in to Night of Champions. Nothing on here made me care about the Women’s Title, but CM Punk made a really strong heel move, which probably should have been a tip off for Night of Champions. I don’t remember anything terrible about this show, and I have been really pumped about the direction they are going with Dolph Ziggler. Despite being saddled with one of the worst names in wrestling, that Vince certainly picked for him, Ziggler has been excelling in his “Mr Perfect”-esque routine.
Night of Champions 07/26/09
I thought Night of Champions was a much better effort than their usual show this time of year. The Women’s and Diva’s Title matches were pretty much throw aways but at least they stopped trying to make Michelle McCool ugly. Maryse was absolutely terrible, even garnishing looks of disgust from her opponent, Mickie James. They are trying to put the performance off on a knee injury but Maryse just really isn’t very good. I did not have a problem with the results but I thought the finishes were poorly done in some spots. It was great that The Legacy finally started acting like a heel faction at PPV, but I still think the Orton/Cena/HHH finish was still mis-booked. Cena and HHH both had Orton in submissions, Orton tapped, the Ref didn’t know how to call it, Legacy jumps in, Orton ends up RKO-ing Cena for the win. I think this finish made Orton look weak and the Ref look stupid. I understand that they wanted to have Orton retain but still put over Cena and HHH. Legacy just should have jumped in before Orton tapped. I thought the Mysterio and Hardy wins both failed for similar reasons. These are two guys that I like a lot when they are booked correctly. Mysterio’s previous feud with Jericho showed how entertaining Mysterio matches can be when his relatively small scale moves are not considered uncounterable and uber-powerful. Hardy suffers from this same phenomenon, we are supposed to believe that his rather run of the mill finishers are supposed to be something special. I would love to see a wrestler simply not have finishers, but that is not the way Hardy and Mysterio have been presented. I simply cannot believe that the 619 or the Swanton Bomb would really do any damage to most of their opponents. I enjoy all the unorthodox pushes coming out of Smackdown and hope they keep it up. But if Jeff Hardy is going get a Main Event push, he is useless to me unless he does the extreme stuff we are used to seeing from him.
RAW 07/27/09
This was one of the technically better RAW shows than I have seen in a long time. There was good wrestling, good production besides another Lillian Garcia slip, and a good guest host in Shaq. The only problem I had with the show is the general way the WWE handles these Beat The Clock matches. They qualify 5 men for the #1 Contender but they ignore their opponents. For the matches to be logically consistent, they need to qualify all 10 men involved. After all, Evan Bourne really beat the clock the Monday night when he pinned Jack Swagger and should be the #1 Contender. I thought that Legacy is finally congealing as a real faction and that the HHH/Cody Rhodes match was a great display of classical mat wrestling for the most part. Cody attacking the same knee of HHH was reminiscent of his father’s time and I thought it was a great change from the norm today. For the most part, I really watched the Beat the Clock challenge closely and would only have changed the result slightly. Even up until the end, I was hoping that MArk henry would make it all the way to the end and face Orton at Survivor Series.
ECW 07/28/09
I thought ECW put in a really strong performance tonight. I like the mix of veterans on the show to help mentor and train all the young talent they bring up. I think this is the best mix they have yet and the formula is showing results on other shows where Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger, Kofi Kingston, and CM Punk are all doing great in the spotlight. I think I am falling in love with the General Manager Tiffany, she is so f-ing cute. Anyway, no Abraham Washington Show, big plus. Unfortunately, I think they spoiled yet another black-on-black feud featuring Shelton Benjamin, so that will keep him away from yet another title run. All the new guys, Sheamus, Tyler Reks, and Yoshi Tatsu are doing good so far. But watch for the Champ, Captain Charisma. He is awesome.
Here are the RAW guest host rankings so far:
1. Ted DiBiase
2. Shaq
3. Seth Green
4. Batista
5. ZZ Top
6. Trump
Dr Octogon Brings the Squared-Circle: WWE RAW 07/20/09 Edition
Jul 21st
Ok, the ZZ Top hosted RAW tonight was f-ing terrible. You could tell their stuff was pre-recorded and there were so many production mistakes, I thought I was watching TNA. Lillian Garcia even announced that Hornswaggle was going to win the match when she introduced him. WOW. These guest hosts have been hit and miss so far and I really don’t understand this ZZ Top thing. I believe they live around this area so they were not local flair for NC and they are far from topical like Seth Green. I am going to start ranking these guest hosts, so we can keep track. I am purely ranking Trump at the bottom because I did not watch a single second he was on the air and of what I did watch the two weeks he was involved were the two worst weeks of RAW I have ever seen.
1. Ted DiBiase
2. Seth Green
3. Batista
4. ZZ Top
5. Donald Trump
Shaq is next week. At least he will probably make a relevant live appearance and has charisma beyond only having stupid hair, unlike the two bottom dwellers of our list. I expect him to take the #2 spot. There is no way we will do better than the Million Dollar Man.
