Dave, Hank, and Brett continue their weekly chatter about wrestling with the recent changes to the Royal Rumble and Brock Lensar’s role therein, NXT’s 2016 return and number one contenders, before capping things off with the inaugural question of the week topic about taped event spoilers.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What’s a wrestling spoiler you read that you wish you had just seen live instead? DO NOT INCLUDE SPOILERS FOR EVENTS THAT HAVEN’T AIRED YET!
So this time last year, I went to a NXT show in Jacksonville, and I’ve been excited because I had never been to a wrestling event before. So at the time, the Lucha Dragons were the tag champs, and then Kalisto and Sami Callahan (nee Solomon Crow) had a match, and I thought it was weird because I didn’t see him with the belt nor did I see Sin Cara, but then I was like, whatever. Then they announce that there was going to be a Tag Team championship match and I was purplexed. I leaned over to my buddy and I said, “Oh man, I guess you get to see Kalisto again,” and then out came Blake and freakin Murphy, and I literally shouted out, “Wait, when did they become champs,” to which this lady leaned over and said, “Oh, it was at the tapings last night, it will happen on tv soon.” I was super upset, and I get that NXT is almost like a weird NWA show were the tapings happen before the house show, and there is a whole cannon, that I guess I need to know, but at the same time, I really didn’t want to know that, especially since there hadn’t been any title changes on the NXT tapings before that.
Also, we used to have viewing parties and bet on Elimination Chamber matches, but we had this one idiot friend who would read all of thespoilers, and would spoil the match, and we eventually just lost that part of the whole thing, to the point were the host would tell him to shut up or get out.
The two biggest incidents recently (Sting’s debut and Brock beating Undertaker) I was lucky enough to see organically. Thankfully I can’t really recall any meaningful spoilers that I saw before a match that had a big impact on my viewing. Not sure if that says something bad about the quality of the “swerves” or not.
I got the 2015 Royal Rumble spoiled that Reigns won and EVERYONE was angry and threatening to cancel their network subscription. Knowing this, following the negative 2014 Batista rumble, it became a depressing slog as I knew that the audience was only going to become more and more hostile no matter what, watching a disaster in slow motion, tainting the mood before the rumble itself despite the great triple threat match. This is even when the rumble in the past had usually been my favorite PPV, but now rather “sign… here we go again WWE creative”. At one point I even said to myself: “Henry is not going to like that”… you know which point.
I’ve been spoiled a few times. The first that I can recall was in June of 2004. One of the wrestling news sites was reporting that Jeff Hardy was debuting on that night’s TNA show. This was the first time Hardy had wrestled since leaving WWE in 2003 (not counting his abysmal Ring of Honor appearance as Willow the Wisp). And he was facing AJ Styles! It was a dream match come true! This “spoiler” caused me to order my first TNA weekly PPV.
In January of 2006. WWE.com revealed that Kurt Angle (at that time, a RAW superstar) had won the vacant World Heavyweight Championship at the SmackDown tapings. It made me excited to see the show as it was still in a time when WWE cared about the brand split and a wrestler jumping shows was rare.
Another recent one that I can remember is the Seth Rollins heel turn. I was watching RAW at my brother’s house. He usually DVRs it and begins watching an hour late so we can skip commercials. I forgot this and stupidly checked Facebook just before the main event segment and saw everyone talking about the turn.
I’ve had the 2014 Survivor Series ending spoiled for me via FB. WWE PPV’s air live on Monday afternoon instead of Sunday night. I was at film school at the time and when I went to check FB on the way home. I saw an image of Sting face to face with Triple H. A part of me was excited but the other half of me was super annoyed that I didn’t see this live on the Network.
Geeze Henry to get that pissed off at the result of a Superstars taping. I mean it usually says it all that you’re on Superstars the result doesn’t matter as I can’t imagine the heels have a great winning percentage on there.
A non WWE spoiler that made me excited was when Sting came back to TNA to beat Jeff Hardy for the title. It was on a taped Impact but they taped a few episodes overseas and that was one of them and the building and feel felt like a legitimate company. I mean Hogan was already 2 years into destroying the company (like Dixie needed help with that) but still the company wasn’t on a death march like it is now.
The biggest spoiler for me was an old work friend on Facebook posting about Brock beating Undertaker at Wrestlemania. I’m pretty much the only person among my group of friends that watches wrestling. There are a couple friends who will occasionally watch/read up on what’s happening, but that’s about it. I was recording the PPV because I couldn’t make home in time to watch it live. I decided to go on Facebook because I was bored, not worrying that someone would spoil the show because I was confident that none of my friends would be watching.
Well to my dismay one of my old work friends was watching it live, and posted on his feed, “Damn. I can’t believe Undertaker lost”. I was furious to say the least. I immediately closed the page and thought, “is he lying? Is this just some dumb trick?” Anyways, I finally got home and turned on the PPV. I actually forgot about the spoiler until the Brock/Taker match started. Of course Brock won and I was not shocked at all. His post ruined probably one of the biggest shocks in wrestling history for me. After the match ended I went back on Facebook and was about to tell him thanks for the spoilers in a sarcastic way, but someone else beat me to it. He basically told the guy to piss off because wrestling is fake and anyone who enjoys it is dumb (even though he was watching it). He’s always been kind of an asshole like that. On the bright side the main event of that Wrestlemania was awesome, and was not spoiled for me.
Because of that incident if I can’t watch the show live, I won’t go online just in case. Love the podcast (and all the other ones, too). I especially like the commentaries. Gives me another reason to rewatch some old matches. Keep it up!
QOTW It has to be the main event of wrestlemania 20 I grew up in a home that would never pay for an expensive PPV like wrestlemania and Benoit was one of the coolest most badass wrestlers in the world to me and there was no way he could beat triple H that was obviously Shawn Michaels match to win and I found out the next night on RAW and that was cool but I didn’t actually watch it until I got wrestlemania 20 on DVD months later and you see the confetti and Eddie comes to the ring with the WWE belt and then Benoits family comes to the ring and they’re hugging and crying and it was my favorite ending to a PPV ever and I remember thinking this is great but it would have been a million times better if I saw it live (and now I can’t bear to watch any of it at all cause you know….)