Road To WrestleMania 31 - Royal Rumble

"This is Awesome!” Says King as the crowd violently boo’s at The Rock holding up the arm of 2015 Royal Rumble winner Roman Reigns. The look on Dwayne Johnson’s face just radiates worry as he realises even his pop from the crowd couldn’t save the slaughter of negativity that came from the fans. Coming into the Rumble, I was excited, I hadn’t been this pumped up for a PPV since WrestleMania 30. It felt fresh, the endless possibilities, rumours had circulated and changed, no one really knew what was going to happen. Coming out of the Rumble had the weight of sadness and anger on our shoulders as we all realised that WWE had bent us over and did things unholy to us once again, the same as last year.

Ok, so if you didn’t know already WWE fans immediately backlashed on the company during and after the Royal Rumble PPV after the fan favourite Daniel Bryan had been eliminated early within the Royal Rumble match. The rest of the match from that point onwards became a “We don’t care who your favourites are” as Dolph Ziggler and Dean Ambrose got thrown over the rope in the most squash-worthy way possible. This carried on with WWE’s own feud fillers in Kane and Big Show became part of the top four with Reigns and the hidden Rusev. From that point onwards nothing could save WWE. I wanted to start doing a series here where I talked about the “Road to WrestleMania 31″ especially coming into the PPV and being so hyped up for it. As of posting this will still be the case but the abandonment of the series is very plausible.

I’m going to talk about the whole PPV but the undercard wasn’t too important so let’s just say this: it was entertaining and very enjoyable until we got the Triple Threat Championship match which was the highlight of the night. Not only was the match extremely entertaining with a slow lug like Brock Lesnar and the Superman John Cena but it may be a Match of the Year candidate already. A lot of people thought that Lesnar would be at WrestleMania as the champion but people wanted to see Seth Rollins in a high profile match against the two competitors who’ve been battling all year. Rollins delivered, he delivered and cemented his place as a top dog. All year he has been leading up to this point and now it is obvious that Rollins can go with the main event guys. Saying that, should he have won? Or should he have at least left the night as the champion? I ask because Rollins may not be ready for the title but that means Reigns is no where near.

Lesnar won the match and left champion pinning Rollins not allowing him to cash in to get a second chance at gold but if Rollins had won dirty through his Authority links and then Reigns had won the way he did (being attacked by The Authority minions then being saved by The Rock) would we as a fan base be ok with that? For me I would love to see that match in hindsight but in the moment would it be a good idea? The main focus of the Royal Rumble was to see where they were going to go with WrestleMania, the two popular possibilities were the one previously mentioned Rollins vs Reigns or the huge favourite Lesnar vs Bryan. So after Lesnar had won, the automatic thought was “Bryan is gonna win! Here we go!” but it didn’t happen. Instead after the early elimination of Bryan the whole excitment filled vibe from the PPV turned into a horribly worse version of last year. Reigns vs Lesnar isn’t the match we want to see.

The criticism people have are “Reigns isn’t ready” and for the most part I agree, his in-ring isn’t exciting due to the fact that he already has his own version of Cena’s 5 moves of doom, his mic skills aren’t great and he doesn’t look strong at all. Is this his fault? No, Hell no. Reigns is capable to become the guy but they have booked him horribly and it doesn’t help that he’s been out due to injury too. But I think the reason why people are so annoyed is the fact they wanted to see Bryan take on Lesnar. Bryan got injured and deserved to get back on top for the year he missed plus with such an amazing match like that it would seem like a no brainer. But WWE seemed to think that Reigns is a bigger haul than Bryan. I could go on about this for ages. Comment what you think.

Tweet Me: @olikidsley

New Japan On AXS TV Episode 1 - Okada vs Tanahashi Wrestle Kingdom 7

Before I even start to talk about what I just watched I'd like to remind everyone that this is a match from 2013 but has recently been given amazing English commentary and Subtitles in AXS TV's New Japan show. If you would like more info and to watch this match (If you love wrestling you should) click here to be taken to TWF. You won't be disappointed.

My first exposure to NJPW was through watching Day 1 of the recent G1 Climax (A tournament held by New Japan Pro Wrestling that is considered one of the best events of the year). I only watched the one day. Not because it didn't interest me, it most certainly did. The wrestling was entertaining, the wrestlers and their gimmicks were also and I enjoyed watching it, I didn't really have enough time to keep up with it all, plus it was my first exposure to it and I was unsure about dedicating my time to it. Luckily for me, tonight I stumbled across AXS TV's New Japan while browsing TWF. To my delight Dave over at the site also linked the whole match. How could I say no?

Personally for me NJPW really is the best alternative to WWE, although I see huge similarities in the way that matches play out and just overall tone of the show I can't help but feel like NJPW paces the matches much better that WWE, they treat the matches almost with the same respect ROH does and it gives the show an overall bigger vibe than WWE does. But this is from a wrestling fans perspective, I love to watch wrestling and even live wrestling when I was a kid at holiday resorts which weren't the best I still loved to watch. From a casual watcher or someone who only watches WWE and isn't involved with all the internet behind-the-scenes news, they might not be into this. I only say that because although we don't like to acknowledge it, foreign things scare us, but I do like the idea of AXS TV bringing English speaking audiences this exposure to New Japan. Hopefully this show is just the first step of getting NJPW regularly broadcast on our TV screens with full English commentary. I'd love to be watching current NJPW or even the show live with fully English speaking commentary and subtitled interviews. But this is all still a dream. This match was brilliant and I suggest heading over to TWF for the match because it is some great wrestling.

Welcome!

Good day! My name is Oli, better known under the alias "ThatBlueFluffyDude". I am here to write about whatever I please, I'm an avid TV, Movie and Comic Book fan and don't forget Wrestling. I have written many articles on wrestling over at TWF and I will continue to do so. Here on this blog I will write about everything and anything I enjoy so expect Reviews on TV, Music, Movies and some good reads. This Blog is also going to be accompanied by my YouTube channel where some posts will be linked with videos I create. This is a bold aim for me in 2015 but I'm going to try my best to fulfil it. Most posts will be wrestling for a while and these posts will be uploaded to TWF first and reuploaded here later on. I'm doing this because I really enjoy the community over there and I've been doing this over there for a while. So havea look if you're a fan of Wrestling because they talk more about NJPW and ROH than any other Wrestling sites I've seen who just bombard you with WWE and TNA. Other than that I hope you care to keep up with my posts and I'll see you soon!