Welcome back to another Monday Morning Q&A where I toss out some questions to get a feel of how you guys and gals are feeling about certain topics.
So here are 5 questions I’d like to toss out for this week. I’ll give my answers, too, but the key here is that I want to know what YOU think! So make sure you chime in!
1) Which matches would you like to see on the lineup for AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door?
Above all else, give me cross-promotional matches and not “a series of AEW matches along with a series of New Japan matches.” I don’t want to see anyone who is regularly in AEW against anyone who is regularly in AEW.
Bullet Club versus The Undisputed Elite in some form has to happen, unless you can set up a pool of talent worthwhile to fight them in a team-up. Maybe Jay White is with Adam Cole and reDRagon against Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi and The Young Bucks?
CM Punk vs. KENTA is a must.
Jon Moxley vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi seems like it would be on the books.
Bryan Danielson has so many options that you can really leave it up to whoever is left when you sort out who fights a number of other talent. For instance, I’d rather book Adam Page’s opponent and leave Danielson with 6 other people to pick from, rather than to leave Page with no solid challenger.
Either you go with Page vs. Okada in a champion versus champion scenario, or you split the difference. In the latter scenario, I’d toss out Page against Tetsuya Naito and Okada against someone he can beat who is a big enough name that it feels special, like maybe Andrade (though that’s only if you built him up enough in advance).
Danielson/Okada is obviously on the list and arguably the top challenger for Okada if he isn’t facing Page, but a Danielson match against Will Ospreay or Zack Sabre Jr. would be just as great, if not better. Or do you just go with say, Jungle Boy, Sammy Guevara, Darby Allin and others like those against those two?
Orange Cassidy against Toru Yano? FTR against Jeff Cobb and Great-O-Khan or Guerillas of Destiny?
2) There are two different worlds out there. Did you love or hate the double wedding segment from Monday Night Raw?
I absolutely hated it. Not one part of it was funny to me outside of the fans completely hijacking it and R-Truth pitifully trying to get everyone to let him get through his lines.
This was a textbook example of not just poor comedic ability, in that the jokes themselves weren’t funny, but a failure in not understanding how to even craft that to begin with. Half of it wasn’t even an unfunny joke, but just a confusing “WTF is this?” situation.
Why did Tamina flip everyone around just to get back to the same spot? What was the purpose of that, other than to get the crowd to go “Huh?” for a split second? It wasn’t funny, nor fun or interesting to “tease” a swerve, since it immediately died as soon as it started by having it revert back to the normal pairs. It wouldn’t have made any sense for anyone to go with someone they weren’t supposed to be marrying, either, as that just makes all four characters look like they have zero brain cells.
And if your argument is that nobody really wanted to marry anyone anyway, as they were all just going for the 24/7 title, no shit! That was obvious from the very start of this storyline. For weeks upon weeks, the ending was incredibly predictable and not even worth the wait. All this time wasted just for R-Truth to run off with Dana Brooke and it’s all back to where it was before the Reggie stuff? Why?
Silly can be fun. Comedic can be hilarious if done well. But this was not an example of anything good across the board, in my opinion.
3) NXT Spring Breakin’ is the next special episode. What do you think of that name compared to something else like Spring Stampede or anything else you might have in mind?
I have second-hand embarrassment. It sounds like someone thought that would be the cool way to present the product as hip. I can just imagine a group of 40-60 year old guys saying “The kids these days are going Spring Breaking. Let’s take the G out and put an apostrophe, cause that makes it cooler.”
I may be the only person on the planet who remembers the Breaking Point pay-per-view and loves that name, so I’m probably the only one advocating that this could have been NXT Breaking Point with an implication of Spring Break and it would have worked better. Even NXT Spring Break would have been preferred. NXT Spring Breakout? Spring Breakdown? Or, maybe this could have just been NXT Fully Loaded or NXT No mercy or something that doesn’t have to tie it to that time of the year? What happened to In Your House, by the way?
4) Do you prefer WWE to announce something like Drew McIntyre vs. Roman Reigns and spend 4-5 weeks building that story at the risk of being repetitive, or do you prefer a scenario where McIntyre has been feuding with Sami Zayn as a transition to get to a Reigns match announced just several days before the pay-per-view?
Obviously a combination of things helps keep it fresh, instead of following the same formula every time. But in this case, I’m much more thankful for the Zayn feud (albeit how that, too, was repetitive in just “Zayn runs away every week until we’ve exhausted those avenues”) than the latter.
My problem with announcing things too far in advance is that WWE doesn’t know how to keep the variety going. All we ever see is the same promo rewritten several times. We don’t need Drew to talk about how he’ll beat Roman, then Roman to talk about how he’ll beat Drew, then both to have a “face-to-face” promo confrontation, then a contract signing (aka, they talk face to face again, but someone pushes a table over and they fight). At most, they do a series of tag team matches, but those get repetitive, too.
I’m sure we’ll see Drew and Roman fight again at Hell in a Cell, so WWE will have effectively done both of these strategies back-to-back. Watch out for McIntyre vs. Jimmy Uso one week, McIntyre vs. Jey Uso another week, and more McIntyre and RK-Bro vs. The Usos and Roman Reigns or Sami Zayn booking to come.
5) NXT and NXT UK have been swapping talent quite often lately. If you had to permanently trade one Superstar for another between brands, who would you swap?
Most NXT UK talent aren’t people I can imagine would have a ton of success on a bigger roster pool, even if I’m a fan of them (like Noam Dar or Ilja Dragunov). I thought about saying Jinny, but I’d rather her go to Raw or SmackDown and possibly be Carmella’s new teammate, rather than to go to NXT.
Ultimately, I’d pick Sam Gradwell going to NXT in exchange for Sanga. That might sound odd, but hear me out. Gradwell has impressed me with his advancements since the original tournament. He’s a big guy who has a lot of explosive energy and since he cuts promos with very UK-style mannerisms, that isn’t as abundant in NXT right now. He’d stand out, and his size would make sure he didn’t get lost in the shuffle.
Sanga didn’t get to be partnered with Grayson Waller long enough to truly benefit. Losing to Waller right after their random split hasn’t helped his chances of surviving a future cut, either. Since Veer Mahaan is in a much better spot on the main roster, he doesn’t seem poised to go to Raw or SmackDown in the near future and to accomplish anything there, too. However, Sanga could be VERY beneficial to Die Familie. As the heavy of that group, he would add a higher danger threat level to anyone who messed with Teoman than anything Rohan Raja or Charlie Dempsey (the current “bad ass” of the group) could offer.
Let us know your thoughts about these questions by answering them in the comments!
