Views From The Turnbuckle: Hot Takes And Backlash Preview

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With WWE changing up their PPV schedule with the brand-split, I myself will be changing up my coverage of the events. I will now only be doing immediate previews/reviews for the large PPV events that feature both brands. For the other so-called “B” PPVs I will be doing short previews and reviews in my traditional Friday feature in addition to a more basic notes column.

-On Friday I wrote about how I was frustrated that Triple H had to get involved in the RAW main event and the burgeoning storyline involving the Universal Championship and Kevin Owens. With that being said I did like that on RAW this Monday, Owens did all of his own talking and came across as a star who won the title instead of someone playing second fiddle to Triple H. However, and I know this is kind of hypocritical, isn’t it kind of weird that Triple H wasn’t on RAW at all? I figured a lot of people tuning in would be doing so because they at least wanted to know about Triple H’s motivations for turning on Seth Rollins and aligning himself with Owens. The fact that he didn’t show up on RAW at all makes me worried that creatively WWE doesn’t have a solid explanation yet for Triple H’s actions, and that they just hurriedly booked the turn on the fly because they panicked about Balor’s injury and needed to do something big. You got to have some sort of long-term methodology behind the plan before you enact it because if you just book everything on the fly, more often than not you end up with nonsensical booking that varies week-to-week; aka the WCW formula.

-The Cruiserweight division scares the hell out of me right now. WWE’s inability to get some of the top stars from the Cruiserweight Classic, especially Kota Ibushi and Zack Sabre Jr. who have by far been the stars of the tournament and two of the best wrestlers in the world is troubling. Not because they won’t have top talent in the division because with guys like Cedric Alexander, Gran Metalik and TJ Perkins they have a lot of talent, but it makes me question the financial commitment WWE is willing to make towards the division. That means that they are already off to the wrong start because it shows that they don’t care enough about the division to pay for the top talent; which makes me think that they are not going to book it that seriously and it is going to end up being like it was before, guys working hard but with little storyline or character development the crowd will not care that much.

-I stopped seriously watching TNA around January 2014 and haven’t regretted it since. I still pay attention to the product and will watch a match if it interests me, but I definitely don’t know as much about the product as people who are watching it weekly. I can’t judge Drew Galloway’s work in TNA, but I’ve been really impressed with his work in EVOLVE as a heel. Always a big guy that could work well, I think his promos have improved greatly since leaving WWE and he does a great job getting real heat, something …

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