Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Cornette’s Childish Behaviour, Enzo Amore’s Demise, Rape Culture Within the Wrestling Business, More!
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Taz opens today’s show speaking briefly about last night’s episode of NXT. He says that Velveteen is a very captivating character with a terrific look, great size and a ripped body. He thinks Velveteen Dream has a plethora of potential moving forward, and if he had to pick two NXT Superstars who he believes will become legitimate stars he’d choose Dream and Aleister Black.
Speaking about the NXT commentary team, one line in particular really bothered Taz during last night’s episode. After Velveteen Dream dropped his elbow finisher from the top rope, Mauro Ranallo said, “The elbow was Macho like Randy!”. Taz cringed at that line, and he really wishes Ranallo wouldn’t have compared Veleveteen Dream to ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage.
Taz understands that Ranallo is not making this comparison maliciously and he’s doing his best to get Velveteen Dream over, but Taz doubts Vince McMahon is aware that this type of comparison is happening on a weekly basis on NXT. He doubts McMahon would approve of these young talents being compared to some of the business’ all time greats, and Taz believes Ranallo is simply trying too hard to get these guys over.
Taz opens today’s show by saying RAW was really good last night on the whole. He says the Paul Heyman and Samoa Joe segment was fantastic and he loved a lot of the subtleties from Heyman and Joe in that promo.
When Heyman makes his way to the ring he does it nice and slowly, and he always asks the performer in the ring if he can step through the ropes before doing so because he respects the ring and the performers who stand in it. Heyman’s promos are always tremendous, but an underrated part of Heyman’s delivery is his facial expressions.
Taz says that he didn’t anticipate Joe attacking Heyman but once Heyman turned his back to Joe, Taz could see the writing on the wall. He actually anticipated Joe choking Heyman from behind because that would have been a real heel, scumbag thing to do. However, he liked what WWE chose to do by having Joe corner Heyman and threaten him while the handheld mics picked it up.
Taz thought this was very well done, and he has been asking WWE to do this type of thing for a while now. The focus should never be on the live audience, because the millions of viewers at home are the priority. For this reason, it was very cool to see Joe cut this promo right to Heyman’s face which made it more realistic, and only the fans at home knew what he was saying.
Bischoff opens today’s show speaking about RAW’s steadily declining ratings. He says that he’s still not worried about the ratings, because RAW is live 52 weeks a year and its ratings are impacted by seasonal occurrences. With the weather improving, there are less people watching television overall. In addition to that, they’re up against NBA Playoffs.
He says that although the rating is low, they still drew 2.4 Million people over a three hour span. He adds that there are producers of huge shows that have $5-$7 Million dollar budgets that would cut their left leg off to have 2.4 Million people watch their show.
Bischoff says that the recently announced Women’s Tournament that will air on the WWE Network is a very good idea. He thinks that the timing in perfect for this type of tournament, and he predicts that it will be very successful.