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steelcurtain29

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We all knew you couldn't have The Fiend win the title. We all knew you couldn't have The Fiend lose. The match was totally pointless and there was no way it could have ended well and yet they still made it. SMH.

The PPV literally ended with booing and "AEW" chants. That's pretty crazy and well deserved. 

Edited by wgbeethree
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8 minutes ago, wgbeethree said:

The match was totally pointless and there was no way it could have ended well and yet they still made it.

Actually, I think there was a great way to book this but they wouldnt do it because Seth needs to be protected despite the fact that by doing so they buried his finisher 6 feet deep for the second straight title match. 

 

Have the roles reversed. Have the Fiend going to far but for the love of god dont have the ref stop the match. Have the Fiend NOT ONCE go for a pin and just continue to brutalize Seth after its clear the match is over. Do the bloody mouth spot DURING the match. Then, have the Fiend disappear from the ring and turn the lights up to a confused ref, a laid out Seth, and the laughing track. 

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49 minutes ago, Deadpulse said:

Actually, I think there was a great way to book this but they wouldnt do it because Seth needs to be protected despite the fact that by doing so they buried his finisher 6 feet deep for the second straight title match. 

 

Have the roles reversed. Have the Fiend going to far but for the love of god dont have the ref stop the match. Have the Fiend NOT ONCE go for a pin and just continue to brutalize Seth after its clear the match is over. Do the bloody mouth spot DURING the match. Then, have the Fiend disappear from the ring and turn the lights up to a confused ref, a laid out Seth, and the laughing track. 

That would have made a lot more sense, so of course WWE wouldn't go for it.

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13 hours ago, solidvikingfan said:

It was  a terrible decision  the one caveat I'd say is it wasn't a DQ it was more ref stoppage for cocern of health and welfare like a submission match stopping because the wrestler passes out from the pain without actually submitting.

This was my first reaction as well, except that leave it Vince to find a way to put his foot in his mouth - they had to make it "Twitter Official" and the @WWE account put out a tweet that credited The Fiend with a win via DQ.  It would have made things more salvageable.

Ultimately the entire affair was a bad decision.  Hotshotting Bray into the title picture when his character had had one match since returning was a bad decision.  Never making it clear why The Fiend would even have interest in having a championship was a bad decision.  Up until they had Seth - with his overacting - go into Murder Mode, aside from having Bray sell a little more on the outside that I'd have preferred, they were actually pulling off a really good story in spite of the bad decisions they'd made.

If they didn't want to take the belt off Seth (besides just not booking the match in the first place), they should have just had The Fiend rise after showing that he simply could not be kept down (achieving supernatural status), obliterate Seth, then kick/rip open a gimmicked cell door and walk out.  Still leaves the match, in effect, "un-concluded" but it would have provided much more development for Bray's character.  I'm not getting into any debates with people about whether this "killed" their product (they've survived worse - when there was stiffer competition going at the time); I don't believe it did (it definitely hurt them, make no mistake), but people are entitled to their opinions on the matter.

@PARROTHEAD, i feel like they should have handled this similarly to how LU handled Matanza's or Mil Muertas' early title reigns (just without actually putting the belt on Bray).  It's a prop and one that we're not even clear fits with the Fiend character or how it would be used - in fact it would likely have oversaturated the character.  Instead, they gave us a scenario that feels like one of those that years from now Bruce Prichard will be indignantly defending (even though it's obvious he doesn't believe in what he's saying beyond it being "Vince's idea" and the cardinal sin in WWE being "Thou shalt not criticize Vince's ideas") on a podcast years from now.

Long story short is this was just ***-backwards execution.  Which we've kind of come to expect when Vince tries to do what he's so confident they're able to do at any time for any guy and that's "re-spark" the fire they once had that cooled off because of short-sighted booking.  Sadly, that because the primary approach he takes in that effort is to force the person he's trying to re-ignite into a feud with whoever is the most organically hot roster member at the time - it's a vicious cycle that keeps repeating itself.

I believe The Fiend is salvageable, but I don't think you salvage him by (as some folks are suggesting) putting the title on him tonight.  If you're going to ask for the suspension of disbelief that Seth would even be cleared to compete tonight after having gushed blood from his mouth/throat courtesy of the mandible claw, you need to have Bray beat the snot out of him but never enter the ring, thus never actually winning the title, but leave Rollins in such a state that he has to forfeit the title (never going to happen since he's captaining Team Hogan at Crown Jewel 2: Blood Money at the end of the month; smart booking would say you pull Seth and insert Ali since it works organically off of what transpired last night, but that's too logical for Vince).  You want to make Seth sympathetic again, instead of trying to make him Hogan/Cena you make him Shawn (and make some of those crappy situations Shawn put the company in in the past work for you), make him try to recover in time to meet the 30-day defense of the title (not like you're going to have him defending at Blood Money anyway), but fail and then not even be able to speak without serious pain when he forfeits the title (stripping away the babyface's opportunity to give the "I don't want to do this, but I have to, I'm coming back I promise" speech).  Then throw something like a fourway - or, but for Vince's hatred of tournaments, God forbid bring Deadly Games back at Survivor Series - to establish a new Universal Champion.  This is the conservative version of what I'd do - I left out stuff I know that Vince would never in a million years do but would substantially help stories, like Bray ripping a gimmicked Universal Title belt in half (it's a very comic booky thing, but I feel like that's something you can get away with with his character and as long as he stays on RAW - the more "entertainment than sport" program and Smackdown runs as the "more sport than entertainment" program - it works and is effective).

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1 hour ago, Deadpulse said:

Actually, I think there was a great way to book this but they wouldnt do it because Seth needs to be protected despite the fact that by doing so they buried his finisher 6 feet deep for the second straight title match. 

 

Have the roles reversed. Have the Fiend going to far but for the love of god dont have the ref stop the match. Have the Fiend NOT ONCE go for a pin and just continue to brutalize Seth after its clear the match is over. Do the bloody mouth spot DURING the match. Then, have the Fiend disappear from the ring and turn the lights up to a confused ref, a laid out Seth, and the laughing track. 

Great minds think alike.  I think I'd have gone a bit more movie monster with him than Taker Redux, like I just mentioned, have him bust open a gimmicked cell door, on his walk out have him stand as a barrier and taunt/attack "medical" staff trying to get to Seth, then stand at the top of the ramp admiring his carnage before the lights go out and he disappears.

But I agree, the Stomp is dead as a finisher - which I'll be honest, I'm fine with because he doesn't do Super Dragon's Curb Stomp (and wouldn't be cleared to do, anyway).

Sadly, the sellout for Saudi money is going to make this even harder to overcome because they've already booked themselves into a corner by having Seth captain Team Hogan, so he'll no doubt be back for Halloween, so they can't/won't write him out for any sort of reasonable time to sell that he's been legitimately injured.

Side note: I was generally opposed to Bray speaking much while in Fiend getup, but he did manage to pull it off well.  Does anyone else get a very Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal feel from him?

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3 minutes ago, The LBC said:

Sadly, the sellout for Saudi money is going to make this even harder to overcome because they've already booked themselves into a corner by having Seth captain Team Hogan, so he'll no doubt be back for Halloween, so they can't/won't write him out for any sort of reasonable time to sell that he's been legitimately injured.

Im hoping they roll it into the storyline for this weird team match by Seth keep insisting that he will be ready but not being able to prove it/being cleared. Have Hogan lose faith and invest in other options only for it to blow up in his face at the show, have the match start Hogan down 4 to 5 and when it looks like team Hogan hit the "BURN IT DOWN" and have him save the day. Ta-da he gets a big pop and rehabs his persona a bit without killing the fiend's threat.

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14 minutes ago, Deadpulse said:

Im hoping they roll it into the storyline for this weird team match by Seth keep insisting that he will be ready but not being able to prove it/being cleared. Have Hogan lose faith and invest in other options only for it to blow up in his face at the show, have the match start Hogan down 4 to 5 and when it looks like team Hogan hit the "BURN IT DOWN" and have him save the day. Ta-da he gets a big pop and rehabs his persona a bit without killing the fiend's threat.

True.  Unfortunately, Vince will feel the need to cater to the Saudi audience (and financiers) instead of realizing that he already has their money so you don't need to throw everyone out there on the bill and keep assuring everyone that they'll be there.

I honestly feel like if they want Rollins to get over organically again, they need to distance him from "Burn it down."  Yes, it's catchy, but he oversaturates it by hamfistedly working it into every promo (because Vince has gotta script catchphrases in whether they fit or not - and just because Rocky could make them work seamlessly doesn't mean every top babyface can (which has actually been one of the refreshing aspects to both Becky's and KO's babyface characters to me, though Becky's pushing the limit with her Johnny Cash lyric recitation).  You want to get Seth putting out good promos you put him against someone like Orton who actually makes him work, because Orton will actually cut down the things that a babyface just said and tr to make them eat their words.  Seth is being walked down the same path they took Braun - which has Braun a one-strapped singlet  and a bunch of crying segments away from being the new Big Show.

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