Thursday, October 19, 2017

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 209

Can he be interesting again? MAYBE
Photo Credit: WWE.com
It's Twitter Request Line time, everyone! I take to Twitter to get questions about issues in wrestling, past and present, and answer them on here because 140 characters can't restrain me, fool! If you don't know already, follow me @tholzerman, and wait for the call on Wednesday to ask your questions. Hash-tag your questions #TweetBag, and look for the bag to drop Thursday afternoon (most of the time). Without further ado, here are your questions and my answers:

As much as I'd like to say he'd have to leave, I am inspired by the last time a wrestling company made a mostly abhorrent wrestler interesting. From January through May in 1999, Sid showed up in Extreme Championship Wrestling just to do nonsensical run-ins and powerbomb people before leaving. Orton doing the same as a chaos agent with the RKO would be pretty amusing. I don't know how long the novelty could last, but at this point, man, what does he have left to do before just becoming a drain on the company and nothing else? It also makes me appreciate John Cena a little bit more, because at least Cena kinda stayed interesting, maybe even got more interesting as his career went on. But that's a whole other question.

I would be all hipstery and eschew the Roddy Piper/Scott Hall/Jake Roberts core and say Cesaro, but that would contentiously hinge on how one would classify the Pro Wrestling Guerrilla Championship. On one hand, it's not technically a World Championship because it's only been defended, to my knowledge, in California. On the other, PWG is pretty much the trendiest indie and a place I would bet more casual fans know of now than any other sub-national indie in history outside of classic Ring of Honor and pre-pay-per-view ECW. That being said, maybe Cesaro's not the answer.

Maybe the answer is really Dustin Rhodes/Goldust. He's had a checkered career, sure, with a lot of lows. However, whether it be his run as The Natural in early World Championship Wrestling (THE VIEW NEVER CHANGES) or his peak runs as Goldust, either in 1995-96 or his most notable nostalgia return to WWE in 2013, he could have conceivably won the title and backed it up with character work and especially in the ring. Sadly, if not for the various things going down in his life throughout his career, he might have been given the ball and had a quality chance to run with it. Ah well, the world may never know. But he could have been a great Champion.

I could speak anecdotally and say that I've liked the Young Bucks since 2009 because they were exciting as a tag team and effective as faces or heels. They're also really cool guys to their fans, which goes a long way with me. But since 2009, the Brothers Jackson have garnered a lot more fans thanks to the burgeoning popularity of the Bullet Club. Since joining New Japan's outlaw group, they've dumbed down their matches a bit to include lots of tribute spots, meme generation, and other shtick. While I will always prefer their prick heel work in places like PWG and Chikara (seriously, their Team ROH run to the finals of King of Trios '12 with Mike Bennett, with Maria Kanellis managing, was PRISTINE), I'm not hating on the later work. But it has been a change in style. Is it wish fulfillment for fans to be able to do DX shtick and get paid lots of money for it? I'd say that's a part of the equation. I do think that many fans like them because they're still entertaining and talented workers though. Wrestling fans, or fans/people in general, are hard to generalize, and trends are hard to explain away quickly and dirtily. But yeah, I think some people see the Bucks and think "I can do this too" or "I did this for pretend, and they're doing it for real!" and are drawn to them.

Hoho Lun starts showing up on RAW in the crowd and the commentary booth starts to notice him, saying "Hey, didn't he get fired? Why is he here?" But he insists that he's just there to watch and that he bought a ticket like everyone else. That is, until he starts verbally harassing superstars from ringside. Again, he insists that everyone else gets to do it, and no one pays attention to them because they're just fans. One episode of RAW, the main event is a mixed tag match fallout from a pay-per-view, the heels are irrelevant, but the face team has Bayley and Roman Reigns. Reigns is on the outside of the ring, chasing his opponent when Lun drops his soda on the floor, causing Reigns to slip. His team loses by countout. The heels celebrate and leave, but Reigns gets in Lun's face with Bayley imploring him to stop. Then, out of nowhere, Leo Gao and Tian Bing show up from under the ring and jump Reigns. While Bayley is in shock, Xia Li appears shortly after to kick her in the face. Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose come out to make the save, but it's too late, as the Chinese contingent escapes through the crowd. This will eventually lead to a trios match main eventing the next Network special, Lun, Bing, and Gao vs. The Shield. The Chinese team wins when two more Performance Center recruits appear and interfere. I won't go further from there, because it would take a lot more bandwidth than what I want to spend on a single TweetBag question, but it's a solid, old-school setup.

I wish I could be more than cynical about this, but my guess is that WWE wants Roman Reigns to be universally cheered, both now and in advance of his big WrestleMania main event match against Brock Lesnar. In the short term, it seems to have worked, as the boos he got Monday night when he came out solo for his match against Braun Strowman were there but lessened in volume. It's also a good way to boost the lagging popularity of both Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, but I feel like it's a Reigns vehicle all the way. Of course, it also leads the way for some beneficial side effects, like perhaps a proper Shield matches vs. the Not-Quite-Bullet Club, British Strong Style, New Day, and possibly even SANitY and the Undisputed Era down the road. But of course, that's all contingent on whether WWE pulls the trigger on a heel turn again and how soon it'll happen.

Protected user @adamsgroove asks:
Chances for Celtics to contend and/or win the EC with Gordon Hayward out?
Gordon Hayward is a good player, but I'm not sure he's a make-or-break superstar for a team like Boston. If anything, that'd be Kyrie Irving. Fortunately for the Celtics, Irving and Hayward play the same position. Additionally, the team has Al Horford and Jaylen Brown to shoulder some burden, so it's not like if this injury happened to Hayward when he was in Utah. That being said, it's still bad to lose a player of his caliber, especially since the Celtics were counting on him to produce. Maybe this injury will allow the Cavaliers to win the East a bit more easily? Maybe it'll allow the Raptors or Sixers to make up some ground in the Atlantic Division for seeding purposes? I don't know. I guess it all depends on Irving. But I don't think it makes the Celts a long shot to win the East now, even if it tips the scales more heavily towards the Cavs than it did before Hayward's injury.