Friday 30 September 2011

Hell in a Cell Preview

Instead of having about 3-4 weeks between Pay-Per-Views, we are only having 2 weeks between Night of Champions and Hell in a Cell. It might not have seemed it from my review but I thought Night of Champions was a decent event, I just wasn’t happy with some of the results, especially Cena winning the WWE title. Hopefully, Hell in a Cell will have more agreeable results.

Sin Cara versus Falso Cara will undoubtedly be a brilliant high flying encounter. I would like to thank Falso Cara for debuting a new costume because I’ll be damned if I can tell them apart. I don’t know about this one as I can see both winning but I’m going for Sin Cara to win this and the feud can continue from there.

Christian will take some time off from demanding “one more match” for the World Heavyweight Championship to take on Sheamus. This is quite a tough one to call as I can see both winning. I’m going to take a punt and go with Christian to win this one.

Beth Phoenix is going for third time lucky challenging Kelly Kelly for the Divas Championship. I believe that Kelly’s time as champion will end on Sunday and Beth has to win it, otherwise the Legion Divas of Doom would have been a giant waste of time. I’m going for Beth Phoenix to become Divas Champion for the first time.

Mark Henry defends his World Heavyweight Championship against Randy Orton in a hell in a cell. Mark Henry has been continually destroying people since he became champion, meaning that I believe that he will have a decent run. I can’t see the WWE giving the title back to Orton, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he regains it. Henry needs to take the momentum of being a monster heel into being a monster champion; therefore, I’m going for Mark Henry to win here.

The WWE Championship is on the line in a triple threat match with John Cena defending the title against Alberto Del Rio and CM Punk. It was weird Triple H just throwing Punk into this match but I assume it’s an attempt to prolong the feud between the two by giving Punk a title match. The way that Cena’s matches have been on PPV this year, I can’t see him losing. Therefore, John Cena will retain.

Once again, not many matches have been announced for this one. Expect a couple of bonus matches but hopefully Hell in a Cell will be a good show and I get to do well in my predictions.

Friday 23 September 2011

Why I’m Slowly Becoming a Cena Hater

At Night of Champions last Sunday, one of the things that had the Internet Wrestling Community going insane on Twitter was the WWE Championship between Alberto Del Rio and John Cena. Del Rio, who had been destined to win a World title since January, finally won it after cashing in his MITB contract at Summerslam on CM Punk. With the WWE holding RAW in Mexico in a couple of weeks, a lot of people were expecting Del Rio to retain the title. Unfortunately, Del Rio lost after submitting to the STF and Cena became the WWE Champion. I don’t see why they had to give Cena a 12th(!!) world title reign, 3 this year alone. I have nothing against Cena as I think he’s a good and entertaining wrestler. However, over the last 12 months, his actions have slowly started to turn me into a Cena hater. Let’s look at the evidence:

The Nexus
The Nexus, at the beginning, was an excellent storyline. They did seem to lose a lot of momentum after losing at Summerslam last year and they focused their attentions on Cena, the face of the company. Cena, through stipulations in matches, was forced to join the Nexus and then got fired by them at Survivor Series. I thought it was a good storyline and I honestly believed that it started to turn some of those people who were not diehard Cena haters back into Cena lovers. Unfortunately, that was all ruined soon after Cena gave his farewell speech. He attacked Wade Barrett during his WWE Championship match with Randy Orton. The next week, he was attacking other members of the Nexus virtually provoked, making Cena seem like a dick, especially since he was going back on his word. This resulted in more of a split than ever.

The Royal Rumble
The Royal Rumble had a good start to it with CM Punk and the Nexus entering early and ganging up on the other wrestlers. Occasionally, a wrestler might briefly fight back but the end result would be them getting eliminated and Punk and the Nexus being the dominant force in the Rumble. That all changed when Cena came in. He came in and eliminated all of the Nexus, except for Punk, within 30 seconds and, while I enjoyed bits of the Rumble match, it is unfortunately overshadowed by that moment.

Super Cena
Can you name me one time that Cena has lost a match by quitting or tapping out? You can’t? That’s because he hasn’t or, if he has, it must have been very early in his WWE career. It seems to be one of the cardinal rules in the WWE: John Cena does not quit. Ever. Not occasionally or once in a blue moon; ever. Knowing that rule does make some of his matches a bit predictable because, if he is facing someone like Del Rio or Daniel Bryan, who have submission moves as finishers, there’s a good chance that they might not win. Although, Cena hasn’t mastered the art of winning table matches so, if you’re challenging Cena, don’t go for a match involving you having Cena do any form of giving up, do a table match.

Never Loses Cleanly
In every PPV this calendar year, Cena has been in involved in the WWE Championship picture. He was involved in the Royal Rumble and then was in the Elimination Chamber to determine the No 1 contender at Wrestlemania, which he won. After that, he was been either challenging or defending the WWE title. The PPV matches that Cena has lost have not been clean wins for his opponent. His losses were:
·         The Royal Rumble – Gets eliminated by the Miz who was not taking part in the Rumble.
·         Wrestlemania – Loses to the Miz after getting Rock Bottomed by the Rock.
·         Money in the Bank – Loses the WWE title to CM Punk after stopping Vince McMahon and John Laurinatis from attempting to screw Punk over.
·         Summerslam – Loses again to CM Punk after the referee Triple H misses Cena’s foot on the rope.

Playing by the Hulk Hogan Rules

Hulk Hogan was the face of the WWE throughout the 80s and early 90s. The fans loved him, although they were times where he would behave in a way that a heel would and yet the fans would cheer him for it. Two examples that spring to mind are Wrestlemania IV where he hit The Million Dollar Man with a steel chair to help Macho Man Randy Savage win the WWE title; and the Royal Rumble 1992 where Hogan, after getting eliminated by Sid Justice, help him get eliminated by Ric Flair. Cena this year has been behaving a bit like Hogan this year. Firstly, he was using gay slurs on the Miz and Alex “Virgil” Riley during their feud, to the point of the WWE getting complaints from gay rights charities. Secondly, so far with his feud with Alberto Del Rio, he was practically bullying Del Rio’s personal ring announcer, Ricardo Rodriguez, and then at Night of Champions, robs Del Rio’s car. While the fans loved it, I always believed that Cena is a person who plays by the rules, and he sometimes acts the way that would make a heel proud.

While I’ve listed all the evidence that is making me into a Cena hater, I will give credit where it’s due. He’s had some good matches this year and was the perfect foil to CM Punk in July and August. In that feud, he is the face of the company and therefore, the perfect person to try and stop Punk from leaving with the WWE Championship.

Whilst I’m slowly becoming a Cena hater, I can never see myself being a diehard one. As I have mentioned in an earlier article, Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Ken Shamrock are the only two wrestlers that I hate. The WWE need to realise that Cena doesn’t need to always win and be involved in the WWE title picture and, barring a heel turn of Hogan proportions, will always be cheered by the fans. If you make Cena a bit more human by losing cleanly or, god forbid, him submitting, I think those Cena haters might respect him more and maybe turn some of them away from the Cena hater camp.

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Night of Champions Review

Night of Champions was last night and, considering the last two PPVs have been really good, will it get to that same level? Let’s take a look.

The WWE Tag Team Championship was on the line first as Air Boom were challenged by The Miz and R-Truth. I’m a big fan of The Miz’s theme music but it’s very funny seeing him and R-Truth do their duet telling the Buffalo fans that they suck. The match was good but the referee Rod Zapata made 3 questionable decisions that annoyed Truth and Miz. The first was when the he was distracted by Truth missing the fact that Bourne didn’t get tagged in by Kingston. The second and third was when Zapata missed Miz tagging in Truth and while he was arguing with Truth, Miz hit the Skull Crushing Finale on Bourne and the referee didn’t get to make the count for a good 10-15 seconds, by that time Bourne had recovered and kicked out. At that point Miz spat the dummy (Scottish way of saying that he lost his temper) and shoved the referee, getting disqualified and giving Air Boom the win. Truth and Miz didn’t take that decision by Zapata very well and continued to assault him then went on ranting about a conspiracy against them. On the basis of the referee’s decisions, they kinda have a point.
Predictions: 1 for 1 (good start!)

The Intercontinental Championship was on the line as Ted DiBiase challenged the wrestler formerly known as “Dashing” Cody Rhodes. DiBiase throughout the match kept on attacking Rhodes’ mask. The end was when DiBiase took the mask off and tried to hit Rhodes. However, Rhodes countered it into a roll up for the win. Lawler was saying that Rhodes had a handful of tights, but it didn’t look like it and hey, what’s wrong with the bad guys winning clean occasionally?
Predictions: 2 for 2

Before the next match, Christian came out to demand a match against the winner of the World Heavyweight Championship. Christian, face it, you’re out of the title picture for now. Move on. Sheamus came out and struck a deal in that if Christian gets his match and wins, he will be the first challenger. Christian agrees and Sheamus proceeds to brogue kick his head off. I don’t know about you but I guess the deal’s off.

The next match is a fatal 4-way match between US Champion Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger, John Morrison and Alex Riley. Riley tried to do a crossbody on Ziggler, which turned out to be a bad idea as Ziggler stepped out of the way and Riley hit the steel steps. The rivalry between Ziggler and Swagger flared up for a while, then Vickie helped out Swagger by putting his foot on the ropes after he got hit by Riley. There was a really good bit near the end where Ziggler had Morrison in a sleeper hold and Swagger had Riley in the Ankle Lock. I thought that it would have been interesting if they both tapped out at the same time, making Ziggler and Swagger co-champions. The ending had Swagger powerbombing Morrison, and Ziggler, who must have reading Edge’s manual on how to be the ultimate opportunist, pushes Swagger out of the way and pins Morrison to get the win.
Predictions: 2 for 3

Next was Randy Orton defending the World Heavyweight Championship against Mark Henry.  Orton had a strategy at the beginning of frustrating Henry and slowing him down. Henry managed to start to get the upper hand when he stretched Orton’s body round the ring post. Henry was quite dominant throughout the match, which started to make me think that Orton would probably pull a RKO out of nowhere and win it. Orton kicked out of the World’s Strongest Slam and then a bit later on tried to hit a RKO but Henry pushed him off, hit him again with the World’s Strongest Slam and got the win. Wow! I know that I have predicted that Henry would lose in his PPV matches and it’s nothing against him, I just thought that it was going to be another failed push. However, I’m so happy that Mark Henry is now the World Heavyweight Champion. It’s a shame that due to the fact he’s now 40 years old, he might not be the champion again. I hope that he has a bit of a run with it. With the exception of the Undertaker, wrestlers that are over 300lbs and look physically dominating in the WWE either don’t become champion or rarely do. Regardless of whether I enjoyed a match or not, if I got the prediction wrong, I would be a bit gutted. Not this time. It might be because I’m not really an Orton fan but I’m happy I got this wrong. So once again, congratulations to Mark Henry on becoming the World Heavyweight Champion for the first time.
Predictions: 2 for 4

Next up was the Divas Championship with Beth Phoenix in her home town of Buffalo hoping for second time lucky by beating Kelly Kelly. Beth Phoenix seems to bring out the best in Kelly Kelly and it was a decent match. There was a good bit where Natalya pulled Beth out of the ring to help her recover. Eve attacks Natalya and Beth grabs Eve’s hair and slams her to the floor. The ending had Kelly Kelly winning by reversing a powerbomb into a sunset flip. Normally, that would be fine. However, the fact that a) she did a similar move to beat Beth at Summerslam and b) Cody Rhodes won with a roll up over an hour earlier did annoy me slightly. A lot of people were thinking that Beth would win this but she didn’t so it could do in a couple of different ways. Either Beth will go for third time’s the charm and possibly go the way that the Orton/Christian feud went earlier this year; or maybe Natalya will get a chance basically saying to Beth “if you can’t beat Kelly, then I will!” The fact remains that if the Legion Divas of Doom want to save the Divas division; their plan’s going to fail at the first hurdle if they can’t defeat the fucking Divas Champion.
Predictions: 2 for 5

The final title to be defended was the WWE Championship, John Cena (yet again!) challenging Alberto Del Rio. Del Rio walked out to the ring with Ricardo Rodriguez announcing him as usual. Wait; hang on, what’s wrong with this picture? Isn’t Del Rio supposed to come out in a luxury car? Well, he would have if Cena haven’t stolen it and drove it in himself. Ok, then, that’s more heel behaviour but you’re Cena, you can do what you want. This match was pretty good and then Del Rio had Cena in the cross armbreaker. Normally, that would be great and thought that it was over but this is Super Cena we’re talking about here who never submits. Ever. It was pretty cool how Cena got out of it by basically lifting Del Rio up in the air into a modified powerbomb. Cena then put Del Rio in the STF and he tapped out, making Cena a 12-time champion at the age of 34. Ok, really?! Really?! Really?! What. The. FUCK?!?!?! It’s shit like this that the WWE Creative department pull that fuck a lot of people off! I’m going to stop for a second before I go on another rant like I did at Summerslam. Give me a minute...

...Ok, I’m back. As you can tell, I don’t think that (along with the fucking majority of wrestling fans) Cena should have won the WWE title. I’m not a big Cena fan and it’s because of shit like this. Due to the fact that the WWE are going to Mexico in a couple of weeks, it was generally thought that Del Rio would still be the champion then. Anyway, I could go on and on but I need to focus on the rest of the article so, congratulations to John Cena, the prick.
Predictions: 2 for 6

Now to the main event of the evening, CM Punk versus Triple H in a no-disqualification match, which seems ironic that the main event of Night of Champions is not a title match. This had an interesting beginning with Punk attacking HHH during his entrance. Punk, I know I’ve recently become a big fan of yours, but you can’t do that to my favourite wrestler. The match went in and out of the ring. Punk managed to elbow Triple H through the Spanish announcers table, and start to get the upper hand. This is where the match becomes a massive clusterfuck and a lot of shit happens, so read this carefully and try to keep up. The Miz and R-Truth come out and take out both Triple H and Punk, draping Punk’s body over Triple H. However, HHH kicks out and, understandably Miz and Truth get into it with the referee Scott Armstrong and beat the crap out of him. John Laurinatis comes out and Triple H and Punk temporarily join forces to get rid of Miz and Truth. Triple H hits the pedigree on Punk and when another referee comes out, Laurinatis gets him to tend to Armstrong instead of making the count. However, when Punk recovers and hits the GTS, Laurinatis gets the referee to make the count, in which R-Truth stops by pulling Punk off him. Yes, you read that right. R-Truth, who 2 minutes ago, tried to get Punk the win then does the complete fucking opposite. That makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Punk then kicks out of another pedigree. Laurinatis decides to stop tending to Armstrong and starts texting someone on his phone. Gee, I wonder who that could be? Yes, you guessed it; Kevin Nash comes in through the crowd and attacks both Triple H and Punk. Nash goes after Triple H again and gets hit by a sledgehammer to the head. Triple H then hits another pedigree on Punk and gets the win.
Predictions: 3 for 7

I was enjoying this PPV until the Divas match then it started to make no sense to me. Firstly, hometown gal Beth Phoenix loses another chance to become Divas Champion; Super Cena becomes a 12(!!) time World Champion, and the main event became more similar to TNA main event with the amount of interference that was going on.

After Money in the Bank and Summerslam, they have gone a massive step backwards with this one. There are only 2 weeks until Hell in a Cell in New Orelans, and the question has to be whether they can bring it back up to that level again.

Friday 16 September 2011

Night of Champions Preview

Night of Champions will be this Sunday and like the last two Pay-Per-Views, I’m quite looking forward to it. Six (maybe seven) matches are on the card and, after Summerslam; I hope I do a lot better in my predictions. Let’s look at the card:

Kofi Kingston and Evan Bourne, also known as Air Boom, defend their Tag Team Championship against The Miz and R-Truth. I like the team of the Miz and R-Truth and, while I would love them to win it, I don’t believe that they will. Therefore, I think that Air Boom will retain their titles.

Dolph Ziggler will defend his US Title against John Morrison, Jack Swagger and Alex Riley in a four corners match. Dolph has been an enjoyable champion and I think it’s time for a new champion. While the push has been stalled slightly, I think that Alex Riley will win his first championship.

Beth Phoenix has a second chance to win the Divas Championship against Kelly Kelly. I have nothing against Kelly Kelly because I keep on predicting that she will lose and she goes on to win. However, it’s time for the Legion Divas of Doom to rule the roost and I think that Beth Phoenix will win.

Randy Orton will defend the World Heavyweight Championship against Mark Henry. I’ve been impressed with Mark Henry over the last few months and, if it wasn’t for Christian continually getting rematches, he would have probably had his chance a bit sooner. However, I don’t think that he will win and while I’m not an Orton fan, I think that he will retain although I won’t be too gutted if he loses.

John Cena will be challenging Alberto Del Rio for the WWE Championship in what will most likely be the main event. This is a tough one to call and I see Cena being WWE Champion again (yawn) but I don’t think that will happen and I’m going for Alberto Del Rio to still be the champion.

And now the match has been the main focus on RAW for the last few weeks, CM Punk vs Triple H in a no-DQ match. This is also a tough one to call. There is no doubt in my mind that Kevin Nash will be involved. However, he could go out to help Triple H or hinder him making him an X factor in this match. I’m a big fan of both these guys but I did say in an earlier article that Triple H will win and I still think that. Expect the Game to win and continue this feud for a bit longer.

While it’s been not announced when I wrote this, I think that Cody Rhodes will defend his Intercontinental Championship against Ted DiBiase. It wouldn’t be Night of Champions if all the titles were not being defended. I like DiBiase, however, his attempt to be the 21st century version of the Million Dollar Man failed miserably when they could have done something different with it instead of rehashing the same gimmick that they did with his father. I think that it’s too soon for DiBiase to be champion so I think that Cody Rhodes will retain.

The last two WWE Pay-Per-Views have been thoroughly enjoyable and I hope that this one will continue in that vein.

CM Punk: We’re Still Talking about Him

The summer period is sometimes a time when the WWE would experiment with new things with the Nexus being a recent example. This year, we have had one of the most exciting storylines in recent memory with the feud between CM Punk and John Cena. The main thing that I have liked with the main storylines on RAW over the summer is that they seem to have gone in a really good direction involving so many people and it seemed so organic the way that they have gone with it. It has now slightly branched out with the feud developing between Cena and Del Rio having its origins in this storyline.

Now that Punk is focusing on what happened to him at Summerslam, I have been seeing people talk about the fact, while Punk has been talking about change, it hasn’t really happened. The personification of this has been John Cena, who has been involved in every PPV main event this year, and is at Night of Champions will be involved in his 7th consecutive WWE Championship match as champion or challenger on PPV.

While I agree with some of that, Cena is not the main storyline on RAW despite the fact that it involves the WWE Championship. RAW has started over the last few weeks with the aftermath from what happened at Summerslam between Triple H, CM Punk and Kevin Nash. That has been the main storyline and they are still articles being published about Punk all over the internet.

Night of Champions on Sunday is the only event of the year where all the championships in the company are on the line. However, the main talking point of the event is not any of the title matches, it’s CM Punk vs Triple H, which has no title on the line. That shows to me how highly the WWE regard CM Punk in that he can be in a storyline that has no championship to fight over with two of the best storytellers in wrestling. Yes, CM Punk is not involved in the WWE title picture for now but he doesn’t need to be to be what everyone is talking about and that shows what a good wrestler he is.

Thursday 8 September 2011

It's Not Over Yet

Last Monday on RAW, Triple H managed to find out, via security footage that the Staples Center people had forgot about, who had texted Kevin Nash on Triple H’s phone with orders to “stick the winner for me”. That person was...Kevin Nash. Yeah, Kevin Nash texted himself to beat up the winner of the CM Punk /Cena match. Does that make sense? Of course it doesn’t. I find it bizarre that, after Triple H gave him tickets to Summerslam, that Nash decided to “make the WWE cool again” by carrying out this plan. Therefore, Triple H fired him and CM Punk wished him luck with his future endeavours.  Kevin Nash’s firing was also reported on wwe.com.

However, two things make me think that we have not seen the last of Nash. The first is that John Laurinatis is still supporting Nash by the fact that they left the arena together. There is still the possibility that Laurinatis will find some way to keep him and Nash in the picture.

The second thing is you didn’t see the security footage and the whole crowd are basing it on Triple H’s word. While I agree that Triple H has been a good guy as the COO so far, let’s not forget that this is the cerebral assassin that we are talking about here. This could be a ploy between Triple H and Nash to get at Punk for all the things that Punk has done to him. For those people that think that Nash’s firing was real because it was reported on their website; don’t forget that Punk’s suspension was reported on their website as well. The WWE are using their website to help build their storylines as they are doing with the Legion Divas of Doom.

This has made Triple H’s match with Punk at Night of Champions all the more interesting and it seems to have more hype to it than all the other matches on the card. A lot of people are thinking that, with Triple H’s COO position on the line, Punk will lose. However, the last two PPV matches involving Punk have had stipulations added to it that make you think that WWE are going the safe route with Punk losing and he won. I think Triple H will still win, not because of the stipulation of his job, but because I can see Nash coming in to help him.

Saturday 3 September 2011

Wasn’t it Supposed to be CM Punk vs Kevin Nash?

The events of last week’s RAW determined the main event of Night of Champions with Alberto Del Rio defending the WWE Championship against John Cena. Cena defeated CM Punk to become the No.1 contender. However, the way that Cena wasn’t exactly a clean win with Cena taking advantage of CM Punk being distracted by Kevin Nash to get the AA.

With Nash costing Punk the WWE Championship and then the chance to become the No. 1 contender, you can understand that Punk wanted to get revenge. Unfortunately, Nash was not (in storyline) a WWE employee until it was revealed on RAW that John Laurinatis gave Nash a contract. Punk was thinking “problem solved” and it seemed a match between Punk and Nash was on the cards.

At least that’s what we thought. At the end of RAW, Triple H said that he would face Punk at Night of Champions instead. Wait, what?! As a big Triple H fan, I was looking forward to seeing him wrestle again although I didn’t think that I would see that for another month or two. However, I was struggling to see how we had gone from Punk vs Nash to Punk vs HHH.

Luckily, instead of waiting til Friday to see Smackdown, we only had to wait 24 hours instead at the contract signing between Punk and Triple H, which hoped to explain things. Triple H explained that he made the decision after speaking to the board of directors. Then he goes to explain that he’s not happy with the way Punk has been acting towards himself, his family and the comapny. That seems fair especially since Triple H could have told Punk to get out when he gave him the contract before Summerslam. It seems to go down to the basic fact that Triple H, after all he’s done to try and make it work, is feeling a bit unappreciated by Punk, a fact that the crowd seem to understand judging by the reaction.

There are rumours going round that Nash might not be ready for a full-on wrestling match. That may be true since he hasn’t properly wrestled for almost a year (the Royal Rumble doesn’t really count) and he’s 52 and will be wrestling against a man 20 years younger.

When it was going to be Nash vs Punk, it was obvious that we would cheer Punk and boo Nash. Now it’s different. I think that Triple H is one of those few people (Ric Flair is another) that, it doesn’t matter if he’s a good guy or bad guy; you’re not really going to boo him.

What about Nash, you wonder? Well, he will be a X-factor in this match. I have no doubt that he will try to interfere but will he be stopped by Triple H, or will he let it happen in order to get the win? Only time will tell but I, for one, will be really looking forward to this match.