Unlucky 7: The Most Notable Times WWE Failed Bray Wyatt

August 4, 2021 by Joe

Bray Wyatt (real name Windham Rotunda) was recently released from his WWE contract. This sort of thing happens all the time in the pro wrestling business, but not typically to a performer who holds the spot on the roster that Rotunda holds. Whether cheering or booing, the fan at-large never stopped responding to Rotunda. And, by all accounts, he sells a lot of merchandise, and makes WWE a lot of money.

This would lead one to believe that his release was due to less typical circumstances. One such circumstance is that Rotunda has always brought creative ideas to the table that are both complex, yet still clearly-executed. Vince McMahon has never been one to push a complex idea, and the only clear ones he cares about are his own. For the time-being, I’m going to theorize that Rotunda and WWE parted due to the ever-popular reason of creative differences.

But, the bigger question, is how did we get here? Rotunda has been over with the fans since his main roster debut back in 2013. For the most part, the audiences engagement with him never really faltered. Along with his creative storytelling, he is a very good in-ring performer with a strong, signature move set, and even stronger in-ring psychology. With that package, Rotunda should have have a decades-long run at, or near, the top of the card. The problem is that, no matter how great a package you present, McMahon needs to push that package the right way.

Frankly, Rotunda’s success seemed to come more in-spite of Vince McMahon than anything else. If you take a look back at the points in Rotunda’s WWE career when he was on the cusp of becoming a true main event superstar, you can can see a very clear pattern of Vince McMahon’s booking undercutting Rotunda’s momentum. The list I’m presenting below will certainly not tell the whole story, but I believe that it offers the highlights (lowlights?) of the problem. The list has been sorted in chronological order.

Bray Wyatt vs John Cena – WrestleMania 30 – April 2014 – The Wyatt Family, a cult-ish, backwoods crew who gained notoriety in the burgeoning NXT made their main roster debut in 2013 after that year’s WrestleMania. The fans were immediately interested in the Wyatt Family, and that was almost entirely due to Wyatt’s ability to spin a great promo, and perform like a badass in the ring. This was Bray Wyatt’s WrestleMania debut match. And it was against the man who had been at the top of the company for nearly a decade, but had one foot out the door and pointed toward Hollywood. A win here would have given Wyatt a massive rub, and set a new star rocketing toward a main event spot. Instead, Cena was booked to overcome Wyatt, and his Wyatt Family, as Cena had been booked to do to virtually every other previous challenge. The result here presented Wyatt himself as just another one of those challenges, thus sullying his credibility right out of the gate.

Bray Wyatt vs The Undertaker – WrestleMania 31 – March 2015 – Prior to what is popularly referred to as “WrestleMania Season” Wyatt has started calling himself “The New Face Of Fear” as a direct shot at the old face of fear. It seemed like a good angle, since that face was only showing itself on WWE programming two or three times per year by this point. The Undertaker’s legendary streak ended the year before in a loss of Brock Lesnar, and he was several years into the phase of his career where he really only had matches at WrestleMania to defend said streak. With the streak over, WWE was presented with a great opportunity to pass the baton, and give Wyatt the sort of win that could define his young career. With the streak over, the only real thing Undertaker had left to offer was his own career. A match between Taker and Wyatt at WrestleMania, where Wyatt could both retire the legend, and officially claim his New Face Of Fear mantle would have set Wyatt off on the path to great things. Instead, Taker wins, even though he was an aging part-timer who was no longer even defending a historic win streak.

The Wyatt Family Getting Clowned By The Rock & John Cena – WrestleMania 32 – April 2016 – You may notice a pattern forming here, but I promise there will be a few non-WrestleMania examples coming up soon. Though, the fact that there are so many examples of his at Mania makes the problem very clear. This was not even a match, other than The Rock beating Erik Rowan in an impromptu match that lasted all of seven seconds. The Rock was retired and, frankly, could have laid the smackdown on any undercard talent here while getting the same pop fro the crowd. Instead, they brought out the semi-retired John Cena, and the pair bounced Bray Wyatt, and his cohorts, around the ring for a few minutes. Hardly the best use of Bray Wyatt, and certainly not helpful to his credibility after losing matches in the two previous Manias.

Bray Wyatt vs Randy Orton – WWE Championship Match – WrestleMania 33 – April 2017 – The match itself ended up being overbooked, and undercooked at the same time with silly moments provided by the WWE AV Club. Wyatt lost the match, and the title, after a single RKO in an era where no one stays down after one finishing move in big title matches. The bigger travesty in this case, was that they were so close to finally doing right by Wyatt.
Just two months prior, Wyatt outlasted John Cena, AJ Styles, Dean Ambrose, The Miz, and Baron Corbin in an Elimination Chamber match that concluded with Wyatt, himself, pinning both Styles and Cena. Wyatt was still nominally a heel, but the crowd showered him with a “You Deserve It!” chant that clearly had its origins in the many previous mishandlings of Wyatt’s booking.
On top of this, Wyatt had been involved in a months-long program where Randy Orton joined the Wyatt Family, despite Luke Harper’s (portrayed by the late Jon Huber) suspicions about Orton’s true motives. Wyatt sided with Harper over Orton, only to be betrayed by Orton just as Harper had expected. The stage was set for an epic Triple Threat Match between Wyatt, Orton, and Harper for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania.
Instead, McMahon had Harper booked out of the angle a few weeks before Mania, and then booked a terrible gimmick match that was won by Orton, who was already a multi-time world champion, and did not need this win nearly as much as Wyatt did. A few months later, Orton dropped the title to Jinder Mahal, who went on to have an extremely forgettable title reign himself, and Wyatt had to get back to the drawing board to build himself up again.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Seth Rollins – WWE Universal Title Match – Hell In The Cell – October 2019 – See? I told you we’d have some non-Mania examples coming up. Wyatt floated around the mid-card, and tag team division for a little while, before re-inventing himself with one of the most staggered character transformations in the history of pro wrestling. Leaving the cult leader persona behind, Wyatt became a creepy children’s show host who sometimes transformed into a horror movie-style monster called The Fiend. Again, he was working heel, but the fan were super into this new presentation. Only a few months after The Fiend’s in-ring debut at SummerSlam, he was given a Universal Title shot at the Hell In The Cell event.
One couldn’t imagine a more perfect scenario for the monstrous Fiend to claim his spot at the top. October. Halloween season. Hell In The Cell match. The Fiend took all of Rollins’ best shots, and kept coming after him. Until the end, when Rolling piled a bunch of steel chairs atop The Fiend, and then beat those chairs with a sledgehammer. No pinfall, no submission, a HitC match has no rules. But the referee stopped the match. Rollins retained, The Fiend attacked him after the match, and the crowd hated it all. This ending hurt Rollins as much as it did Wyatt to the extent that Rollins – who was running at an all-time high popularity – had to turn heel shortly afterward.
A few weeks later, at one of WWE’s ill-advised cash grab Crown Jewel Saudi Arabia shows, The Fiend did take the title off Rollins. But having the title change happen at such a controversial show, rather than in the perfectly-themed Hell In The Cell was another in the long line of booking mistakes for Wyatt.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Goldberg – WWE Universal Title Match – Crown Jewel – February 2020 – Speaking of the morally-problematic Saudi Arabia shows, The Fiend dropped the Universal Title at the very next one to 50-something year-old Goldberg, who happened to show up a few weeks earlier and demand a title match.
If there’s one thing Vince McMahon loves doing, it’s feeding his current stars to relics of past eras (see the first three entries on this list). Goldberg speared and jackhammered The Fiend a few times, and then pinned him to take the title in less than five minutes. The Fiend stood up afterward, and dusted himself off like it was no big thing. But he’d already lost the match, and the title, so the damage was done.
Goldberg dropped the belt to former Wyatt Family heavy Braun Strowman two months later at WrestleMania 36, while Wyatt actually had his WrestleMania highlight in a Firefly Fun House match against John Cena. This Wyatt-Cena match was a lot more fun than their previous Mania encounters as both Wyatt and Cena were committed to making something really self-referential and interesting.
Wyatt himself won his second Universal Title from Strowman at that year’s SummerSlam, but then lost it in a Triple Threat Match to Roman Reigns only one week later at the Payback event. Honestly, that could warrant its own entry on this list, but I’m trying to keep it to seven.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Randy Orton – WrestleMania 37 – April 2021 – And, just like that, we’re back at WrestleMania, and we’re back with Randy Orton. It makes sense that this would be the final nail in the coffin of Wyatt’s WWE career, as McMahon had used Orton and Mania to kill Wyatt’s credibility at his previous career peak four-years prior. This time around, Wyatt and Orton had a much less interesting story. Orton set The Fiend on fire in the ring some months earlier, so Wyatt’s new acolyte Alexa Bliss became a thorn in Orton’s side, until The Fiend returned to lay out Orton, and make their WrestleMania match official.
With fans in the arena for the first time in over year, due to the Covid pandemic, and chanting for The Fiend, McMahon again books Wyatt to be pinned by Orton after a single RKO. Sure, The Fiend was confused by Alexa Bliss’ make-up or some such thing, but this was still terrible booking, and the crowd let them know it.
Wyatt would make one more brief appearance on the following night’s episode of RAW, before disappearing for several months until his release was announced.

So, what’s next? No on can tell for sure, but Rotunda is a highly imaginative person, and I would certainly be willing to check out whatever he does next – be it wrestling, writing, or filmmaking. My personal preference, though, would be to see him show up in AEW. The rival promotion has been putting on a better wrestling product than WWE in every way pretty much since its premiere, and it certainly seems to be a place where where more creative minds can thrive as well.

AEW has a growing list of performers that Vince McMahon couldn’t (or wouldn’t) figure out how to use properly, that they have presented like the superstars they always seemed like they could be. Cody Rhodes, Jon Moxley, Miro The Redeemer, Andrade, and Malakai Black, just to name a few. With word that former WWE super-duper-main-even-stars CM Punk and Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) are set to debut in AEW over the next few weeks, acquiring Rotunda on top of that would elevate AEW to a whole other level of relevancy amongst even the most jaded pro wrestling fans.

It’s exciting to look forward to whatever Windham Rotunda does next. But, looking back, it’s also pretty easy to see where things went wrong with WWE. Vince McMahon likely won’t learn any lessons from this, and one of the lessons Rotunda probably learned was that Vince never learns his lessons. Hopefully, whatever else Rotunda learned, will serve him well in what he decided to do next.

Showdown In Screamtown Round Two: The Evil Eight

October 22, 2017 by Joe

It’s time for our mighty monsters to get back in the ring and square off once again to decide who is the baddest of them all!

This group of eight have survived and advanced through one brutal round, now let’s see if they have enough left to move onto the Frightful Four semi-final round.

MATCH ONE: DRACULA (1) vs THE THING (12)

Top-seeded Dracula hasn’t had easy matchups in this tournament, first having to deal with the interdimensional horror of Pennywise, and now facing off with the cosmic terror of The Thing.

Thingie goes right to trick that helped him upset Jason V in Round One, this time taking on the shape of Drac’s long-dead love Elisabeta (for those who forget, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula the titular bloodsucker is super into Mina Harker because she is the reincarnation of he aforementioned Elisabeta). It’s all for nought, though, as Drac immediately sees through the charade, and he’s pretty pissed at his opponent for taking such a low blow.

The grandaddy of all vampires goes all-out, and starts tearing pieces off The Thing. This, of course, only creates more problems for Drac, as every piece he tears off now attacks him. He ends up reaching deep into his bag of tricks and calls upon the creature of the night in the neighborhood. After all the rats and wolves and owls tote every piece of Thingie out of the arena, Dracula is the one left standing in the ring.

WINNER: DRACULA (1)

MATCH TWO: THE WOLFMAN (2) vs PINHEAD (9)

Our resident Cenobite is feeling irrationally confident, considering he defeated a little girl in Round One, but Wolfie doesn’t care about that. Pinhead tried to S&M his opponent to death, but every inflicted wound heals almost instantly.

The Wolfman start pulling every nail out of Pinny’s head with his claws and, suddenly, the match changes from a fight to something far sexier (at least as far as Pinhead is concerned). After turning Pinhead into Plain Old Head, Wolfie starts tearing chunks out of the senior hellraiser’s pale body.

Pinhead is loving every second of it. He’s long ago ceased fighting back and, by the time he’s lying on the ground moaning loudly, covered in blood and….other fluids…the ref stops the match. The ring crew are used to mopping up gore, but they didn’t really sign up for this. So Pinhead is politely, but firmly, asked to leave the arena immediately.

WINNER: THE WOLFMAN (2)

MATCH THREE: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (3) vs PREDATOR (7)

This match is a completely different affair for both these guys. Predator faces off against the exact opposite of an inquiring scientific mind in The Creature, while Frank himself stands across from an enemy who – being unsure whether The Creature is a worthwhile hunt – doesn’t make the first move.

Eventually, Frankenstein’s Monster snarls and moves in for the attack, leading to Predator going invisible and stabbing away from all angles with his wrist-blades. Frank takes a lot of damage, but he’s able to take it in-stride until he gets his hands on P-Diddy. His tech takes the brunt of the attack, so the invisibility strategy doesn’t last much longer.

Frankie comes at the Big Game Space Hunter like a freight train, making the latter starts wishing that the nuke on his forearm wasn’t banned from the tournament (along with all firearms). Instead, he relies on his superior speed and agility to cut Frank down piece-by-piece. The Creature wants to continue but, seeing that his limbs are no longer functioning, the match is stopped.

WINNER: PREDATOR (7)

MATCH FOUR: LEATHERFACE (4) vs THE TERMINATOR (6)

This would have been a quick win for the literal Killing Machine in round one, since a chainsaw isn’t much use against a cyborg. But the acid bath and claw massage that the Alien Queen gave him in Round One has left the T-800 in really rough shape.

Leatherface goes to work on the parts that are already damaged, and saws through the exposed gears and wires on every body part he can get at. With the Terminator on the ground, Leatherface really leans his chainsaw into the slot that hold’s his opponent’s brain chip. This ends up being a mistake for the Texas BBQ Master.

The inexplicably Austrian-accented robot manages to grab Leatherface by the throat with his lone functional hand, and snaps his neck with one good twist. He struggles to his feet, dragging one useless leg behind him, and gets that one remaining hand raised in victory.

WINNER: THE TERMINATOR (6)

That leaves our Frightful Four semi-finals bouts looking like this:

Dracula (1) vs Predator (7)

The Wolfman (2) vs The Terminator (6)

Since there’s only a grand total of three matches left, we’ll also cover our Chilling Championship match in the next post.

So tune in then to see who is left standing when the dust settles on the Showdown In Screamtown!

Showdown In Screamtown Round One: The Satanic Sixteen

October 11, 2017 by Joe

The competitors are in the arena.

The matches have been booked.

The introductions have been made.

The crowd is amped up and ramped up.

So, without further delay, let’s get ready to rumble!

MATCH ONE: DRACULA (1) vs PENNYWISE (16)

A classic match-up of Old School Ghoul versus New School Ghoul. They would appear to be pretty evenly paired as far as physical strength goes, but it doesn’t take long for an old veteran to spot the upstart’s weakness.

The fact is that Pennywise’s power is predicated on fear, which is why he primarily hunts children. So, unless Pennywise can transform into a crucifix or a sunrise, Drac isn’t going to fear him very much.

Without being able to charge up on fear juice, the killer clown is just as doomed against one nosferatu as he was against seven preteens.

WINNER: DRACULA (1)

MATCH TWO: THE WOLFMAN (2) vs FRED KRUEGER (15)

If this fight takes place purely in the real world, the Wolfman tears through Kruger as quickly as if the latter were nothing more than the slice of pizza that he resembles. But Fred is canny enough to find a way to take their battle into dreamland, where he’ll have home field advantage.

At this point, though, Fred runs into a similar problem as Pennywise did. He killed children in life and teens in post-life, and he was damn good at it. But Wolfie is a grown-ass man and his subconscious, where Krueger has found much success against insecure pubescents, has a grown-ass monster wolf prowling about in it. Old Freddy Knife-Fingers looses in both realms.

WINNER: THE WOLFMAN (2)

MATCH THREE: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (3) vs MICHAEL MYERS (14)

Michael is far more aggressive, and has racked up a far greater body count that the Creature over the years. I mean, Frank would rather babysit a little girl than stalk and kill her babysitter and said-babysitter’s school chums.

So the murderous Shatner fanboy would come out swinging…or stabbing, I suppose. He’ll put a bunch of holes in the Creature, but Dr. Frankenstein knows how to construct a damn durable dude. It took a flaming collapsing windmill to put the Creature down once, and they had to explode a whole castle laboratory around him to stop him the second time.

Eventually, Capt. Boltneck will get fed up and toss Michael into the river like he was a little girl picking flowers.

WINNER: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (3)

MATCH FOUR: LEATHERFACE (4) vs ZOMBIE (13)

In our shortest, and most lopsided, match of the night the zombie hungrily inquires “Brains?” to which Leatherface – thinking the undead a snob for only wanting to eat the caviar of the human body – fires up his chainsaw and promptly turns his opponent into rotten cold cuts.

WINNER: LEATHERFACE (4)

MATCH FIVE: JASON VOORHEES (5) vs THE THING (12)

Neigh-invulnerable and strong as hell, Jason would jump out on The Thing fast early on. He’ll be hacking and slashing his way to an early victory before Thingie figure our how to use his greatest strength to his advantage. In a stunning twist, it’s revealed that The Thing located Pamela Voorhees and absorbed her corpse prior to the match!

Since Jason is not one to chop up mama, he stops his attack. This allows all the pieces that JayJay already hacked off to attack him from all sides, leaving the primary mass of alien ass-kickery to finish the job. And, just like that, we have our first upset of the night!

WINNER: THE THING (12)

MATCH SIX: THE TERMINATOR (6) vs ALIEN QUEEN (11)

With guns, the Terminator makes short work of our royal xenomorph. But, as laid out in our previous entry, no guns are allowed here, so the Austrian Android has to get down and dirty in this fight.

Queenie would scrape off much of Schwarzenator’s synthetic flesh with her claws but, as designed, the murder machine will keep coming after her. This one gets nasty, as Queen Xeno gets torn apart limb-from-limb. But she does nearly as much damage to the Terminator as her acid blood burns through flesh and metal alike.

In the end, the Bionic Bludgeoner finishes the job, but he’ll be in really rough shape for Round Two.

WINNER: THE TERMINATOR (6)

MATCH SEVEN: PREDATOR (7) vs BRUNDLEFLY (10)

We’re rolling with the half-transformed Brundlefly here, so he’s still got much of his genius intellect intact. While one might think that’s an advantage here, it’s actually quite the opposite. Brundlefly has a very inquisitive mind, hence his ill-fated teleportation experiment, so he wouldn’t be able to resist asking Predator a million questions about his physiology, his homeworld, his likes and hobbies, and so forth.

The only reason Big P waits so long to tear out his opponent’s spine is because he’s not sure whether to actually consider him a threat. Ultimately, he decided that he may die of boredom if this continues, and so he adds a human/fly hybrid to his trophy collection.

WINNER: PREDATOR

MATCH EIGHT: REAGAN MACNEIL (8) vs PINHEAD (9)

This is a tricky one because it’s entirely possible that Pazuzu – the demon possessing Reagan – is actually Pinhead’s boss. That aside, both take a keen interest in torturing poor Reagan and, as a result, Pinhead ends up victorious.

WINNER: PINHEAD (9)

And with that, our Round Two match-ups look like this:

Dracula (1) vs The Thing (12)

The Wolfman (2) vs Pinhead (9)

Frankenstein’s Monster (3) vs Predator (7)

Leatherface (4) vs The Terminator (6)

Tune in next time to see the results of Round Two: The Evil Eight!

Showdown In Screamtown: The Challengers

October 7, 2017 by Joe

With Halloween just around the corner, I’ve decided to dedicate a couple of blog posts to two of my favorite things: Horror Movies and Single Elimination Tournaments.

So, I’ve rounded up 16 of the greatest movie monsters of all-time, and decided to stick them in a series of one-on-one matches to determine who is the baddest of them all!

I’m calling this pay per view spectacular The Showdown In Screamtown.

In the instance of challengers with numerous incarnations throughout film history (Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster, Zombie) I chose the versions who would be the most proficient in a straight-up fight.

I’m not that big of rules and regulations, so I’ll be playing pretty fast and loose with the matches themselves.

There were, however, some qualifying rules for entering the tournament. The most useful of these rules was placing and weight limit on the combatants. Basically, if you can’t fit into a WWE-style wrestling ring, then you can’t compete. This rules out monsters like Cloverfield, Godzilla, King Kong, the Kraken, and any other kaiju. Sorry, big guys.

One other rule is that, since I want this to primarily be a hand-to-hand combat tourney, signature weapons are allowed except for firearms. In other words, Leatherface gets his chainsaw and Jason get a machete, but Terminator’s guns and Predator’s shoulder-mounted laser blaster are outlawed

The seeding was based on the first fights I’d be interested in seeing. I haven’t planned beyond Round One yet, so things will get pretty interesting pretty quickly.

From Round Two onward, the tournament will run according to Round Robin rules, with the highest remaining seeds taking on the lowest remaining seeds (1st seed vs 16th seed, 2nd seed vs 15th seed, etc).

With that in-mind, let’s meet our tremendously terrifying tournament titans:

1: Dracula (Bram Stoker’s Dracula – 1992)

Dracula is a no-brainer for the #1 seed here, as he’s been the inspiration for so many other monsters. I went with this version of Dracula because he showed a full arsenal of creeptastic powers, including control over night beasts like wolves and rats, mind control over people, de-aging himself, and the ability to transform himself into a big wolf-like thing and a big bat-like thing. Bonus points for the fact that he was still able to seduce Lucy while in wolf-like thing form, which takes mad skills.

2: The Wolfman (The Wolfman – 2010)

There are so many werewolves to choose from, but this one might be my favorite. He looks like a big bad wold ought to look, while still serving homage to the classic Lon Chaney Jr. wolfman. He can run on two legs or all fours, is strong as hell, fast as hell, and nasty as hell. You also have to give props for them getting Sir Anthony Hopkins and Benecio Del Toro to star in this film.

3: Frankenstein’s Monster (Classic Universal Film Series)

There were shockingly few semi-decent film incarnations of Frankenstein’s Monster (not to be confused the Frankenstein, the mad scientist who created him). But since this character probably inspired even more monsters than Dracula (a few even show up in this very tournament) he needed to be represented here. Several of the classic Universal monster films feature the Creature are great, though, so we’re rolling with old flat top here.

4: Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Film Series)

The only fully human competitor who made the cut (so to speak) Leatherface deserves a lot of credit as he’ll be repping the whole human race essentially (I’d still take him over Trump). He’s a whirling dervish of a killing machine who can chop you to bits, then slow cook those bits into some mean BBQ.

5: Jason Voorhees (Friday The 13th Film Series)

To paraphrase DJ Khaled “All he does is kill kill kill no matter what!” JayJay here is an early favorite for this type of challenge as he puts his SuperZombie skills on display in hopes of winning that championship belt! (Did I not mention there’s a championship belt? Cuz there is. There always is. And it’ll be pretty damn sweet).

6: The T-800 Model Terminator (The Terminator – 1984)

As mentioned earlier, the T-800 won’t have access to the plethora of guns he’s used through the course of five films (of varying quality), but don’t feel too sorry for him – he sure as shit won’t feel sorry for you when he tears your limbs off one at a time. He’s built from a highly durable steel alloy and was built exclusively to do what he’ll be doing here.

7: Predator (Predator Film Series)

The Big P was built for killing like the T-800, but he’s spent his entire life mastering the art of it. This guy might be looking forward to these fights more than any other combatant, as he loves nothing more than to test his skills against the most formidable of opponents. His shoulder-mounted laser blaster may be off-limits, but he’ll still be able to use his retractable wrist-blades and extendable spear.

8: Reagan Macneil (The Exorcist – 1973)

The little demon girl (literally, not figuratively) is less of a physical threat than most of the other challengers, but she’s spooky and running on devil diesel fuel. Her best gameplan might be to talk crazy smack until she gets into her opponent’s head and psyches then out into a making a mistake.

9: Pinhead (Hellraiser Film Series)

He’s iconic, so he had to make the list, but he’s really more into pleasure than pain – even if the specific pleasure is meant to be elicited from extreme, agonizing pain. But he’s all black leather and nails-in-the-face, so I expect he can hold his own in the ring.

10: Brundlefly (The Fly – 1986)

Mad scientist and monster all-in-one, so he’s got brains and brawn, Seth Brundle’s may have transformed himself into a horrifying and nauseating human-fly hybrid, but can he transform himself into a champion?

11: Alien Queen (Aliens – 1986)

Queenie just barely made our weight/size cut off, but she trimmed a few pounds and here she is! She royalty and the mother of horde of neigh-unstoppable apex predators, so she’s going to be a tough out for anyone,

12: The Thing (John Carpenter’s The Thing – 1982)

Thingie pushed right up against our size limit, as his final form is pretty massive, but we let him in. A master of deception who, when found out, can also bite your arms right off. This thing from another world has a chance to go deep in our tourney, but it all depends on what sort of shape he shows up in (cardio and otherwise).

13: Zombie (Return Of The Living Dead – 1985)

So many zombies to choose from, but we’re going with the ROTLD variety as they are the hardest to kill. Brain shots won’t stop them from munching on your brains. Hell, they had to nuke a whole town to stop them at the end of the movie. So he can take a beating for sure, the only question is whether he can deliver one.

14: Michael Myers (Halloween Film Series)

Michael could be interpreted as every bit as human as Leatherface, but he’s really running on some dark and unknowable evil drive. Six shots and a two-story fall didn’t finish him, so he’s a player. John Carpenter’s Halloween kicked off an entire sub-genre of slasher films – not unlike Romero’s zombies – but will that be enough to get his arm raised in victory?

15: Fred Krueger (Nightmare On Elm Street Film Series)

I’m going with “Fred” instead of “Freddy” because the character was a child murderer in life, and that disqualifies you from being on more familiar terms with me (JayJay only every killed teens, so I’m a little cooler with him). But Fred McMeltyFace has been haunting nightmares both on-screen and off for more than 30 years, so he’s primed and ready to get down and dirty.

16: Pennywise The Dancing Clown (IT – 2017)

A very recent addition to the pantheon of famous filmland monster, but a worthy one nonetheless. He does eat children, so he occupies the same pure heel position as Krueger, but the crowd always needs someone to boo! Still, he made one hell of an impression in one hell of a short period of time, so he’s coming in to Round One hot.

Round One Matches:

Dracula (1) vs Pennywise (16)

The Wolfman (2) vs Fred Krueger (15)

Frankenstein’s Monster (3) vs Michael Myers (14)

Leatherface (4) vs Zombie (13)

Jason Voorhees (5) vs The Thing (12)

The Terminator (6) vs Alien Queen (11)

Predator (7) vs Brundlefly (10)

Reagan MacNeil (8) vs Pinhead (9)

Check back next time to see the who managed to survive and advance the Round Two!

Roman Reigns vs Dean Ambrose A.K.A. Vince vs The WWE Universe

March 4, 2016 by Joe

If you’ve clicked to read this blog then you already have some sort of interest in the current WWE product, and so you don’t really need an elaborate introduction into their current quagmire.

So, the short version, Vince McMahon is thrusting his choice for top guy Roman Reigns at the WWE Universe despite how hard the universe resists. Meanwhile, Dean Ambrose has gotten himself way over in a very organic fashion and is clearly the WWE Universe’s choice for the next top guy.

Here are the most pertinent factoids about Dean Ambrose: he lacks the in-ring skills of a CM Punk, a Daniel Bryan or a Seth Rollins, but he can hold his own with his take-a-beating-but-keep-on-fighting ring psychology. What he does have is Punk’s anti-authoritarian charisma and Daniel Bryan’s “never give up even when his opponent is clearly physically superior to him” attitude. He also clearly has the WWE fans’ support in a way that Roman Reigns probably never will.

Roman Reigns is fine in the ring, he sells well, and his offense looks like it it might actually do some damage to his opponent. But his mic skills are underdeveloped and he lacks any genuine natural charisma to lure in fans with his presence alone.

Another major knock on Reigns is the way he’s been booked, which is not his fault in any way. Popular opinion is that they tried to get the WWE Championship on him too soon. He has never worked the mid-card, or won a mid-card title, and his lack of true rivalries has cut off his chance to develop as a character. While some of this is true, the truth is that they’ve waited too long to make him WWE Champ.

Money In The Bank 2014 was when he should have become WWE Champion. He was coming off a fantastic Royal Rumble match, and the Shield has just wrapped a great program against Evolution. The fans were completely in Reigns’ corner and he was white hot at the time. The crowd was also ready for something new – as illustrated by Daniel Bryan’s rise to the top – and so they would have been fully behind Reigns winning that ladder match and becoming champion.

Instead, WWE decided to go back to John Cena for the umpteenth time. Sure Cena served as little more than a transitional champion to Brock Lesnar, but Lesnar never needed to be champion to have heat with the crowd. He could have run through Cena, and some other top guys en route to a collision with Reigns for the title at last year’s WrestleMania. Sure, Lesnar may have had the fans cheering him over Reigns by that point, but it was a risk worth taking.

Instead all these stops and starts with the title have only hurt Reigns’ credibility with the fans. Couple that with the fact that he keeps being given opportunity after opportunity on top of already being shoved down the WWE Universe’s throat by Vince McMahon, and now you’ve got a big problem: The WWE Universe is already ready to move on from Roman Reigns.

Ambrose faces a similar, if not worse, credibility issue at this juncture. He has been in several high profile feuds against the likes of Seth Rollins and Bray Wyatt, and has lost all of them. An Intercontinental championship feud with Kevin Owens was fun, but did not elevate him like winning out in either of those other programs would have.

Still, the fans pop for him louder than for any other full-time act. But, if WWE is not careful, they might end up with Dolph Ziggler 2.0: a guy who is super over for a while until the fans realize that he’s never going to be allowed to really win the BIG one and so they lose interest in him.

People in the business like to say that wins and loses don’t matter in professional wrestling, but that’s simply not true. Wins are the currency for the fans that help them decide who to invest their energy into supporting.

Heels who get big wins are proven to be true threats to any who cross their path. On the flip side of that token, the babyfaces who then beat those dangerous heels feed into their fans’ belief that their guy really can make it all the way to the top.

When the right guy wins the right match, it’s an exuberantly cathartic experience for thousands or even millions of viewers (see: CM Punk at MITB 2012 or Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania XXX).

At WrestleMania this year Roman Reigns will beat Triple H for the WWE Championship. That’s a close to a certainty as you’ll get in professional wrestling. The problem here is that, because his Vince-mandated crowning was so long delayed, he’s already beaten every heel on the roster and even some of the top babyfaces.

Sure, there’s a Brock Lesnar match in there, but that’s about it as far as intriguing match-ups go. The best bet here, and honestly for Reigns’ future in general, is to turn him heel. It’s a more natural fit for him, it will offer fresh matches, and it might finally give him a chance to have some fun and develop more of a character.

Speaking of Brock Lesnar, the people really want to see Dean Ambrose beat Lesnar in a no holds barred street fight at WrestleMania, but don’t really think he’ll be able to. In pro wrestling, that is the exact set up you want in this situation. If Ambrose does somehow beat Lesnar, then it will be the biggest win of his career, and he will become a bona fide main event draw by becoming the first man in more than three years to pin Lesnar in the middle of the ring.

Allow me to fantasy book for a moment here. If I were running the WWE I’d have Ambrose pull the shocker of the century and beat Triple H for the WWE Championship at Roadblock on March 12th. The main event of WrestleMania on April 3rd then combines the two big matches currently booked into a no disqualification, no count out Fatal 4Way match of the Champion Ambrose vs Lesnar vs Reigns vs Triple H. Yes, you’d have one less big ticket match on the show, but this match would drive the 90,000 people in the audience into an absolute frenzy.

The result here is Ambrose pinning Lesnar, followed by Reigns making an entrance during an Ambrose celebratory promo the next night on Raw, and nailing him with a spear to ferocious jeers from the crowd. Then we’ve got the most popular babyface as champ, Reigns in the monster heel position he belongs in, and a nice championship feud to kick off Ambrose’s title reign.

What is far more likely to happen is Ambrose loses to Triple H due due a distraction by Brock Lesnar at Roadblock. This would be followed by Reigns beating Triple H at Mania and Ambrose putting up a helluva fight against Lesnar but ultimately losing. Raw kicks off the expected Reigns-Lesnar feud, and hopefully they find something worthwhile for Ambrose to do.

The great thing about professional wrestling is that storylines and plans can change direction at a moment’s notice. Of course, that’s also the frustrating thing when the powers-that-be refuse to change things that are clearly not working.

I’ll keep watching, regardless, as I always have appreciated the art of the performance. And, as deluded as it may be, I will always keep hoping that WWE actually listens to its fans and gives them what the really want.

Fantasy Booking Game Of Throne Season 6

February 5, 2016 by Joe

Fantasy booking is a term you read a lot from pro wrestling reporters. It’s essentially when they book the storylines and matches that they would like to see, not necessarily what they expect to see. So this is my fantasy booking for season six of Game Of Thrones.

Keep in mind, this is for the TV show, not the novels. Therefore stories such as the Greyjoy family drama that no one really cares about are not taken into consideration.

Right off the bat we have Jon Snow resurrected by Melisandre. We all know this is what’s going to happen so let’s just bang it out right at the start of the season. Two minutes into the season premiere, here’s some king’s blood (likely Jon’s own blood) magic gets us off and running.

For his first act, the happy-to-no-longer-be-dead Jon says “fuck ya’ll” to his backstabby Night’s Watch brethren and decides to settle all the Stark family’s debts. His next step is to recruit any of the Free Folk settled south of the Wall, wherein has gathers a nice little army en route to reclaiming Winterfell.

The first stop, geographically-speaking, would be to find Bran. But Bran can keep doing his vision quest/learning magic thing, because he’ll be needed in season seven. You’ll understand why by the end of this post. Meanwhile Rickon & Co can keep laying low wherever they are.

Jon hooks up with Brienne, Pod, Sansa & Theon before they get to Winterfell. There can be a happy reunion between Jon and Sansa, who talks him out of running Theon through since he helped her escape from Ramsey. And then we’re back to business.

We get our first reckoning, as Jon’s army takes out the Bolton Crew. Jon kills Roose Bolton himself, perhaps by stabbing him repeatedly in the belly and slitting his throat in a combo platter of what Robb, Talisa, their unborn baby, and Catelyn got at the Red Wedding. Sansa and Theon can get their own justice by killing Ramsey in an adequately gruesome fashion.

Then they venture to the Twins, where they give old Walder Frey a bunch of arrows through his chest and other sensitive parts. At this point, they’ve progressed to the Vale, where Littlefinger managed to sweet talk them out of killing him. Perhaps they bring him along, but Sansa knows to keep a watchful eye on him by now.

That brings them to King’s Landing. While the Stark Family Revenge Tour has been going on, Cersei and her FrankenMountain have been trying to deal with the Sparrow infestation. Let’s say they accomplish mixed result with it, and are still in the middle of the process when they have some uninvited guests knocking at their northern gates.

Where’s Jaime during all this? Probably grieving over his daughter and looking to get some payback of his own on the Dornish. This would involve him turning the boat around and heading back to Dorne where they can milk a substantial season-long subplot.

Meanwhile, down south, Daenerys consolidates some power by hooking up with a new Dothraki horde. She brings them to Mereen, where she apologizes for abandoning Tyrion, Daario, Varys and Jorah to go joyriding on Drogon. She then apologizes even more profusely to Rhaegal and Viserion, finally unleashing their reign of fire on the unworthy citizens of Mereen.

She takes her buddies, her Dothraki, her Unsullied and her dragon kids as she finally moves towards Westeros. Along the way, they pick up Arya who, throughout the season has pretty much finished her assassin training, and pay an unwelcome visit to the south gate of King’s Landing.

While everyone is converging on King’s Landing, the snowfall hits and winter finally comes. With it, the Night’s King and his undead army of ass-kickery knocks down the Wall via some sort of dark magic, and that’s where the season ends. This, of course, leaves season seven to deal with the real main event of every living person vs every dead person.

Unfortunately, I don’t actually expect this to be how the season plays out. But, if it were, I suspect it would be the most awesome single season of a TV show in history.

They could absolutely accomplish everything above in 10 hours of television. If you don’t believe so, then you’re most likely an HBO executive looking to milk a great show until it’s running on fumes. Personally, I’d rather to see things go down my way.

The Risky Risk Aversion Of Vince McMahon

July 23, 2015 by Joe

There was a WWE special event this past Sunday – they still refer to them as Pay Per Views even though people who have the WWE Network are not actually paying per viewing any longer – called Battleground. It was fine for a non-major event, with some good matches.

The big twist that WWE would like people to be talking about is the return of The Undertaker seeking revenge on Brock Lesnar for ending his WrestleMania win streak. But what the “smarks” and the Internet Wrestling Community (IWC) are really talking about is John Cena winning yet another match that does nothing for him and hurts his opponent.

The opponent in this case was Kevin Owen, who earned a reputation as a big time performer in the indies. He burst onto the NXT scene earlier this year, and possibly made an even bigger debut in a WWE ring a few months ago. Cena won the United States Championship at WrestleMania, presumably with the intention of restoring the credibility of that title by putting it on Vince McMahon’s hand-picked face of the company. The end game was seemingly to bring up a new star who would take the title off Cena and instantly become a main event level player. Owens had, in a very short amount of time, proven that he was the perfect guy to step into that spot.

Naturally, he lost clean to Cena by tapping out in the middle of the ring. This was just the latest in a long line of instances where Vince McMahon – at least over the past few years – shucked away from creating a new main event star in order to retreat to the comfort of a guy who was made ten years ago. It doesn’t always go the same way, sometimes Vince just kills a guy’s push with no real Plan B. I’m sure it’s not all Vince’s doing (you can get a better idea of the sort of “yes men” he surrounds himself with by googling the name Kevin Dunn). The bottom line is that Vince McMahon is, for some mysterious reason, terrified of taking chances on creating new main event stars.

I’m not going to go into how creating new stars back in the Attitude Era led to the most successful period in WWE history – that’s a whole other article. The fact was that Vince was forced to make new main eventers because WCW had signed away all of his current main eventers. The sad truth is that there’s no outside parties pushing Vince any longer, and so he doesn’t feel he needs to create new superstars. Even though, by that same token, there’s no real risk in pushing new guys to the top because WWE is really the only show in town. Thriving profressional wrestling organizations in Japan and Mexico are fine, but they’re not really competition. The same could be said for TNA and ROH who, even after recently pairing up, are still not a genuine threat.

Even with some bright spots popping up here and there, WWE has a very stale product. A big part of the problem is Vince McMahon & Co keeping fresh faces away from the top of their cards, and regularly digging up stars from past eras to take those spots. In this blog, I’m going to explain several instances where they could have gone in exciting new directions before copping out and returning things to the status quo.

I’m only going to go back to 2011, since four years really is a large enough sample size to make my case. Throughout the summer, CM Punk was cutting blistering promos and having exceptional matches. He impressed so much that Vince decided to put the WWE Championship on him at the Money on the Bank PPV that July. After getting one of the loudest pops in recent history for beating John Cena, Punk was written off TV to build up anticipation for the rematch at SummerSlam.

The crowd is hot for Punk all the way up to SummerSlam, and he won that match as well. Of course the end of the match was a bit overbooked, which took some of the wind from it. Not nearly as much, though, as having a has-been who played a very large part in the death of WCW – Kevin Nash – come to the ring, drop Punk and allow lukewarm heel Alberto Del Rio to cash in a Money in the Bank contract to take the title off Punk. Punk then proceeded to have a pointless, several month long feud with Triple H before the powers that be finally realized that Del Rio wasn’t doing anything for the fans and put the title back on Punk at Survivor Series in November 2011.

CM Punk went on to have the longest WWE reign as WWE champion in 25 years and had a series of great matches. He may not have main evented as much as he should have during that reign, but things worked out at least. Dolph Ziggler was not as lucky.

Ziggler is a great worked who, at the time, was a heel who got more cheers than most of the babyfaces that WWE wanted the people to actually cheer for. He won the Money in the Bank contract in 2012, but still was booked to lose a lot more matches than he won – which is really how his career has gone for the most part. On the night after WrestleMania in 2013, Ziggler finally cashed in his contract and won the World Heavyweight Championship from Alberto Del Rio. Del Rio was a lukewarm babyface at the time, and the pop Ziggler got when he won rivaled the massive one that Punk got the year before.

Unfortunately, Ziggler got a concussion off a blown spot and ended up having to sit out for a few weeks. This did nothing to dim his popularity and, when he came back to finally defend his title, WWE decided to make him a full-on babyface. He then proceeded to lose the title back to Del Rio, much to the dismay of everyone other than Vince McMahon. Championships are won and lost all the time, and so the fan naturally figured they would put the title back on Ziggler in short time. But it was not to be. Del Rio held onto the title until October 2013, where he dropped it at Hell In The Cell to Vince’s safety blanket John Cena.

Ziggler continues to be a great worker, in fact he had an awesome moment at Survivor Series 2014 where he was the sole survivor in a match that ousted mega heel group The Authority from power. In an act of atrocious and lazy booking, The Authority was back in power less than a month later. Ziggler, meanwhile, was finally booked so badly for so long that the fans seems to have finally accepted that he’ll never be the main eventer that he should have been.

The arc of Daniel Bryan’s odyssey started in summer of 2013, when he split from a wildly popular tag team with Kane to become the single most over performer in WWE. His unmatched work rate, easy charisma and everyman sensibilities made him the most universally cheered WWE superstar since Stone Cold Steve Austin’s heyday. Bryan was essentially the only guy who every demographic in the crowd were rooting for. Vince and his henchmen are known for going all starry-eyed a very specific type of musclebound human action figure, and so he was not apt to move the undersized Bryan to the top of the card.

But every crowd in every city WWE went to had a different idea, and so Bryan finally got a main event WWE Championship match against (you guessed it ) John Cena. Bryan won the match, and the title, clean in the middle of the ring. This is all the more astounding since Cena only does one or two clean jobs every calendar year. After a few minutes of celebration, Triple H, the special guest referee in the match, dropped Bryan and allowed Randy Orton to cash in a contract to take the title off Bryan.

The next few months went much the same as they had for Ziggler earlier in the year. Bryan never won the title back, and was phased out of the title scene by the end of the year. Randy Orton squared off with John Cena to unify the titles- which was another terrible idea that I’ll have to address in another blog – and the world yawned. The fans, however, would not let Bryan suffer the same fate as Ziggler, and they simply cheered louder and louder for him no matter who he was in the ring with or if he was even in the ring at all.

It took all of Vince’s WrestleMania plans to fall apart – formerly popular superstar Batista came back and got booed out of the building, followed by CM Punk getting sick of the sort of things listed above and simply quitting the company – in order for Vince’s hand to be forced and allow Daniel Bryan to be the star of 2014’s WrestleMania. Bryan became the undisputed champion after a pair of great matches on the same night, and everything seemed right in the world of wrestling.

Sadly, a serious neck injury forced Bryan to vacate the championship, and the fans never truly got to see him have the title reign they were dying for. Of course, had they put the title back on Bryan back in September or October of 2013 like they should have, then we would have had a very satisfactory seven month title reign filled with a number of guaranteed great matches.

After Bryan vacated, Vince could have put the title on another up and coming superstar in an eight man ladder match held in June 2014, but boringly and lazily plopped it back on Cena. It’s worth noting that two guys who I’ll get to in a moment – Bray Wyatt and Cesaro – were also in this ladder match. Cena was then used to put the WWE Championship on part-time bad ass Brock Lesnar.

It may sound like I’m piling on John Cena here, but I’m really not. He’s a fine worker and, after all, he’s not the one booking his programs. That being said, he’s been used over the past year to bury a trio of heels who could have been used to freshen up the man event picture – Bray Wyatt, Rusev and Kevin Owens.

To summarize, a win for Wyatt over Cena at WrestleMania 2014 would have established him as a made man. Naturally he lost in the center of the ring. Wyatt hasn’t even sniffed the main event scene since then. At WrestleMania 2015, Rusev was the undefeated United States Champion who would have gotten a similarly massive boost by beating Cena. So, he also lost in the middle of the ring, and has become a bit of a comedic act since then.

Cena has since brought a lot of credibility and excitement to the US Title picture with his weekly US Title Open Challenges on Raw. But the truth was that he should have just been holding the title until the right time and right guy came along to take it from him. Kevin Owens was that right guy, and this past Sunday at the Battleground PPV was the right time. So, of course, John Cena was booked to beat him in the middle of the ring. Now, this just happened, so it’s not too late for things to work out. But it seems pretty unlikely, and the optimal moment for Owens to win the title has passed.

As I type this, Cesaro is on a run of fantastic matches that rivals Daniel Bryan’s leading up to SummerSlam. His popularity is blowing up, and the fans are ready to see him take the leap into the main event scene. Years of sour experiences have given me very little faith in ever seeing him reach the top of the card, though I’d love to be proven wrong. That being said, there’s no legitimate reason for him not to. Then again, Vince McMahon & Co have never seemed to need legitimate reasons to do any of the stupid things they do.

CM Punk, Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan, Bray Wyatt, Kevin Owens and Cesaro are all guy who could have – or still can – make the WWE main event scene a lot more entertaining. Yet Vince McMahon prefers to dwell in his John Cena-shaped cave. When he does venture out, he brings along part timers like The Undertaker, Brock Lesnar or The Rock, and sticks them at the top of the card until they go away again a month later.

It’s a bummer, but it’s not too late. Punk is gone, Bryan may be finished and Ziggler’s cred may be damaged to the point where he’ll never get his WWE Championship reign. But Wyatt, Owens and Cesaro are still in spots where they can succeed if they’re given the opportunities that Vince gave to John Cena a decade ago.

But Vince is scared of the future, and he’s scared of taking risks even though there’s no genuine risk involved. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no real competition for WWE’s market share. The best hope we, as fans, have is for Vince to finally step down and let Triple H and Stephanie McMahon take over, as they have shown a very promising vision of the future with NXT. Barring that, maybe John Cena will decide that making his living in Hollywood is a better deal than getting bounced off a ring apron every night. I’ve heard only good things about his roles in Trainwreck and Sisters.

Anyway, that’s my diatribe. I’ve been a fan of WWF/WWE for way too long to pull myself away – even though I do fast forward through about 65% of Monday Night Raw on a given week. Still, I’d like to see new stars being made, and new match-ups at the top of the PPV cards.

The most exciting part of pro wrestling, after all, is the fact that it’s a “sport” where the fans actually have an influence on how things play out. Or at least they should. We can’t hit three pointers for our favorite NBA teams, and we won’t catch touchdown passes from the QB of our favorite NFL teams. No matter how loudly you cheer for your team, it’s not really going to affect the outcome of the game. But with pro wrestling, you buy a ticket and you cheer as loud as you can for your favorite performers. The powers that be hear those cheers and sometimes, though less soften than they should, they will give those stars a well-deserved push.

TV shows have production schedules that stop them from changing course on a dime if something is not working. On the other hand, if something is not working on WWE TV, they can flip that story around the very next night. But too frequently they do not. I’ll keep watching, regardless, and I’m sure I’ll keep complaining. Hopefully, though, there are enough of those CM Punk/Dolph Ziggler/Daniel Bryan pops to keep me from becoming disenchanted enough to finally cancel that WWE Network subscription.

Ah, who am I kidding. There’s always that back catalog to keep me on-board. Ironically enough, that might be the exact same stance that Vince McMahon has been taking.

Joe Mikolay

Author Of The Venator Series

Category Archives: Wrestling