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We're now only 13 days from WrestleMania XXVII, but if last week was any indication, things are headed in the wrong direction. For the first time in ages, despite an extended overrun, John Cena who is traditionally WWE's strongest rating draw facing off against fellow WrestleMania main eventer Alberto Del Rio, and the promise of The Rock (which of course was The Miz), the 11:00-11:15pm segment dropped from a 3.77 to a 3.59 rating losing 270,000 viewers. And keep in mind, the previous segment involved Snooki. We can make whatever excuses we want for The Miz, but the bottom line is he is not clicking, and when Vince looks at dipping ratings in his segments, it means that Miz won't be champion for much longer. I blame a lot of it on how he has been booked. If fans have a long enough memory to think back a year and a half ago to when Cena completely embarrassed The Miz week after week, then why should they take him seriously now? And even with The Miz getting the better of Cena for the past few weeks, we had another example of terrible booking with The Great Khali of all people basically squashing The Miz in a minute match before Alex Riley had to run in and save The Miz. What the hell was the point of this? The Miz should have gone out and beat Khali clean in the middle of the ring.
The other thing really hurting Miz is just who he is. With some of my friends who haven't followed wrestling in years starting to pay attention because of The Rock's return, when I tell them The Miz is WWE Champion, their first reaction is "What, the guy from MTV?" followed by laughing at the fact he's champion. I don't think anyone sees The Miz as a legitimate tough guy who they buy as champion. And from seeing him on Tough Enough years back, and even on MTV's reality shows, we know he's not a legitimate tough guy. He's a person who plays his character well and was the right man at the time to become WWE Champion. Your core audience will always be watching, but it's the casual audience that tunes in for things like The Rock and Snooki that you have to get to buy into The Miz as champion, and that just isn't happening. I hope they don't pull the plug on The Miz before WrestleMania because of the ratings dips. At least keep him strong for the next two weeks, and then what WWE does with him after Mania is up to them. My guess, and almost guarantee, is he drops back down the ladder to an upper midcarder who may get an occasional main event spot on Raw, but he won't be headlining PPVs again in the foreseeable future.
The segment that drew the biggest rating of the night was the Michael Cole/Jerry Lawler/Brian Christopher/Jim Ross/Jack Swagger segment. Despite Christopher completely blowing himself up dancing on his way to the ring, the entire segment from top to bottom was excellent and easily the best thing they have done to build WrestleMania. When Jim Ross came out to stand up for Lawler, it went from a very good segment to a great segment. With Swagger coming through the crowd and laying Lawler out before applying the ankle lock on JR, it made fans more than ever want to see Cole get his at Mania. I honestly think Lawler finally putting Cole in his place at Mania may get the biggest pop of the night. And of course now that JR is involved and most likely calling at least a few matches at Mania, it makes it only that much better.
I wouldn't use JR again before Mania. I think last week was perfect, and if you bring him out again, it will only dilute things. Just have Cole hide inside of the Cole Mine at ringside and verbally harass Lawler for the next two weeks. Cole is plenty good on the mic to do that. And Lawler should cut one more promo emphasizing that this will be his one and only WrestleMania match. That fact has kind of fallen by the wayside the past few weeks. And PLEASE, do not have Lawler get his hands on Cole before Mania.
The Rock opened last week's show in a segment that started great and quickly turned due to stupid post production by WWE. The Rock was again in his home to cut a promo, but this time had a little kid there playing the role of Cena. The kid was great and really made the promo, specifically the line when he said he wasn't that talented. The Rock went through his usual great routine once again making Cena's promos look like amateur hour. However, then The Rock turned his attention to The Miz. The promo itself was fine, but WWE just had to pipe in stupid evil sounding background music like they did for Kane, and it completely ruined the segment. There was zero reason to do this. The Rock is more capable than every guy on WWE's roster combined of cutting an entertaining and meaningful promo, so don't screw it up with this post production music crap. WWE really needs to stop this practice, because it makes them come across so low rate.
Presumably Cena will address The Rock again this week. Fortunately for us (unfortunately for Cena), after GLAAD's complaints, Cena has to drop all of his homophobic material. With that gone, I expect Cena to go straight "comedy" on The Rock and die another horrible death in the ring with his awful material. First first time Cena rapped. The second time it was hip hop. Maybe this time he can confer with R-Truth and Tennhouse and get crunk.
In a change of plans, The Rock will be live at Raw next week. They really needed him for the go home show for Mania, so it's good he'll be there. Plus, by having him there live, AND PROMOTING IT AHEAD OF TIME, it guarantees a big rating before Mania.
Quickly the other big items from the show were Sheamus finally getting over his losing streak and defeating Daniel Bryan clean to win the US Title in a very good match. One would assume a rematch at WrestleMania, probably with some sort of stipulation. Randy Orton defeated Mason Ryan and thankfully punted him back to FCW. Orton has now eliminated every member of the New Nexus, leaving it just him vs Punk one on one at Mania. And Vickie Guerrero defeated Trish Stratus with the help of Laycool to regain her job on Raw. This lead to the eventual setup of Laycool and Dolph Ziggler vs Snooki, Trish Stratus, and John Morrison at WrestleMania. Whatever, I'm fine with that match. Snooki was much less annoying than I expected her to be.
This is the first I'm mentioning HHH vs The Undertaker, and that's because I really don't feel any hype for this match. It's two old guys wrestling with The Undertaker's streak on the line. I'm glad they chose not to have HHH put his career on the line and have HBK get involved because they just didn't have enough time to build those stipulations properly. If they want to do it next year, fine. We've had past wrestlers putting over just how great both HHH and Taker are, but they really need to do something between these two to give him a reason to care about this match. Saying Taker is the only challenge that HHH has left doesn't do it for me.
There have been no matches announced for tonight's show as of yet. Abdullah the Butcher will be the latest announced to the WWE Hall of Fame. He will be inducted by Terry Funk.
And now it's your turn, [color= rgb(255, 255, 0)]Club29[/color].
Listen son. I'm not going to come out here and bury the rest of the talent in the NTWT because God knows we have a lot of it here. But I'm not going to cut some goofy promo like Hypercutter. I'm not going to dance around like a fool like Tennhouse. With me, there's no gimmicks needed. I'm going to shoot straight with you, so listen up.
You come in here running your mouth, making brash posts, thinking you're the big boy on the block. I got news for your Club, no one is knocking me off my throne at the top of the Niketalk Wrestling Thread. I built this place. The Niketalk Wrestling Thread is 4wrestling, and 4wrestling is the Niketalk Wrestling Thread. Neither exists without the other, and without the other, neither can exist.
No one here likes you. Don't kid yourself. You may think you play the cool, cocky bad guy, but really, you just come off as a rat bastard. There's a reason you post in yellow. It's because you're a [color= rgb(255, 255, 0)]coward[/color]. No one has ever respected a coward, and respect is one thing you will never have. I've built my name off dedication and hard work in this thread, month after month, year after year. I will NOT let you come in here and disrespect me like you have. You may think this is a game, but trust me son, this is not a game. I take the Niketalk Wrestling Thread damn seriously.
You can play in fantasy land pretending you're Anderson Silva or Jack Swagger, but come April 3rd, I'm going to knock you back to reality. No more excuses. No more running. In two weeks, you're mine.
