GDT: WWE Backlash (21st May 2017) - Nakamura’s in-ring debut!

[Virtanen18]

Kimi has already pointed out how ticket sales stalled when Jinder was announced.

Which means a lot of people wait for the main event to be announced before they consider going. Who else could have been put in that spot and sold tickets? This is a Smackdown problem, not a Randy/Jinder problem. That's only part of it.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Which means a lot of people wait for the main event to be announced before they consider going. Who else could have been put in that spot and sold tickets? This is a Smackdown problem, not a Randy/Jinder problem. That's only part of it.

AJ for starters, but you could of done better feuds with the likes of Corbin and Sami that at least would of been platable to fans.

 

[The Gongshow]

Welp....at least TakeOver was good..

Should have just given the belt to Rusev. Much better choice

 

[Natey]

I'm sorry but I will never get IWC love for Christian. Yeah he's alright IC-tier but for re-zel?



I think I'm enjoying this so much because it's early in the day and I'm fast forwarding through the crap.

Uh he can wrestle and was great on the mic? His in ring psychology was incredible.

The only thing Jinder had as a performer over Christian is steroids.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Welp....at least TakeOver was good..

Should have just given the belt to Rusev. Much better choice

Wasn't possible due to Rusev's health.

 

[The Lunatic Fridge]

They're just going to have rusev interfere in orton's rematch and become jinder's lacky on samckdown, aren't they?

 

[Emperoreddy]

I'm torn on what was the most disappointing thing about this show. Either Nakamura getting a poor rollout, or the women putting on a bad match.

What an absolute nothing burger that featured Becky doing the job yet again.

 

[Virtanen18]

AJ for starters, but you could of done better feuds with the likes of Corbin and Sami that at least would of been platable to fans.

Ideally, AJ has the title and Orton isn't even near the main event, but that's just doing fantasy booking pretty much. I don't think people are flocking to their televisions or to arenas to see Orton/Corbin or Orton/Zayn.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Ideally, AJ has the title and Orton isn't even near the main event, but that's just doing fantasy booking pretty much. I don't think people are flocking to their televisions or to arenas to see Orton/Corbin or Orton/Zayn.

They are less likely to turn it off for those programs vs giving them a Jinder program.

Especially in the case of Sami as fans will get on board with the push for an underused favorite. Just look at how hyped people got for a Bray push when it finally happened despite years of misuse.

As for AJ. The logical program coming out of Mania was to do Orton vs heel AJ. It wasn't any kind of crazy fantasy booking to put that together. AJ felt shafted out of the title, so it made sense for him to go back after it once he was done with Shane.

My guess is they mistakenly thought they could draw that out until Summerslam, but that assumed people could stomach Orton as champ for that long.

They then turned AJ face and put him into a weak mid card feud with KO, and now I really have no idea what they actually want to do on this show.

 

[Blitzkrug]

I feel like if you wanted to hotshot someone into the main event like that, Corbin would have been the guy.

He's probably a more reasonable fit given they put a fair amount of resources into him, and you could easily turn him into a bad ass type face character somewhere down the line

So yeah, the people are like "we want new faces" and are whining about this title flip are still kinda justified since there are other "new faces" to put in the main event scene.

 

[Kimi]

I feel like if you wanted to hotshot someone into the main event like that, Corbin would have been the guy.

He's probably a more reasonable fit given they put a fair amount of resources into him, and you could easily turn him into a bad ass type face character somewhere down the line

So yeah, the people are like "we want new faces" and are whining about this title flip are still kinda justified since there are other "new faces" to put in the main event scene.

In the initial plans this was going to be Corbin's title match. Orton would retain, but it would be the first steps of Corbin into that main event spot.


I think it's very reasonable to want new guys in the main event, but it's even more reasonable to want actual good guys there. No one wants trash like Jinder.

Corbin isn't really acceptable, but at least with him they've built him correctly and hidden him in matches with good wrestlers so people have forgotten that it's actually still bad.

 

[Emperoreddy]

There is a bunch of really talented guys in the company that have not gotten any kind of push, but are deserving of it.

 

[M.C.G. 31]

House show business is going to bomb if Jinder is champ for any significant length of time.

 

[SeidoN]

House show business is going to bomb if Jinder is champ for any significant length of time.

Indeed. Meltzer said Backlash sales stalled after main event announced.

 

[GKJ]

It already sucks without Cena

 

[Pinkfloyd]

If it was Styles-Orton, ticket sales would've been fine. The Nakamura/Ziggler match was underwhelming. It didn't seem like Ziggler was all that into the match himself and he got way too much offense in for what this should've been designed to do. A heel should be dominated but not entirely squashed in that situation. If it was face versus face then you can have them go toe-to-toe like they did. So they base a lot of this show around Nakamura and his debut and it's fine that they opened the show but they did nothing for his entrance and it looked completely off from what I'm used to seeing from his entrance at NXT but maybe that's me.

 

[Natey]

Not sure why everyone disliked Ziggler vs. Nakamura. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It didn't make sense from a company standpoint why Ziggler got so much offense but the match was very good.

 

[Reality Check]

WWE can only blame themselves for Mahal being viewed as a jobber. I don't blame him in general and frankly think he hasn't been that bad.

Smackdown did this to a degree with Bradshaw. Too much, too soon. Mahal should be in the position of Owens and vice versa.

 

[M.C.G. 31]

It already sucks without Cena

It'll suck even more now that people know Jinder is headlining as champ.

 

[Acallabeth]

Nakamura-Ziggler match was mediocre as hell. What a trash way to debut the wrestler you've put over like some in ring god.

KO is unbelievably boring for his movez arsenal and his heeling doesn't really work.

Be grateful Jinder pinned Randy for the championship. It could be Ellsworth submitting Bray or Styles.

 

[M.C.G. 31]

shhh, you can't call KO boring here, apparently, even though he has been since his summer feud with Zayn.

 

[Sheppy]

KO needs to be a tweener ass kicker. He was absolute money on the main roster, he was cutting edgy promos to Cena and the crowd absolutely loved it.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Not sure why everyone disliked Ziggler vs. Nakamura. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It didn't make sense from a company standpoint why Ziggler got so much offense but the match was very good.

Because both have shown much better in the past and it should've been treated as a big deal because it was Nakamura's debut. They did some hyping to that end but the match didn't deliver and certainly the entrance for a debut match didn't deliver. This was the time to go overboard on theatrics introducing Nakamura and they flopped. And that led into a fairly ordinary match with no real big spots and nothing that would make anyone think that Nakamura is the standout that he ought to be portrayed as.

As for KO, I can admit that there's been a drop-off since he won the Universal Title but he's still entertaining to me. It's just not to the same height it was before he won that awful title.

 

[Emperoreddy]

The Drifter had a better debut match than Nakamura.

 

[GKJ]

Nakamura and Ziggler had a Smackdown main event match. Probably wasn't all that different from the dark and house show matches they had. I thought they'd work a little harder to make Nakamura look great, but I also think Nakamura is just going to save his best stuff for huge matches, and in the meantime do the bare minimum to keep himself over enough. It wasn't so much disappointing as it was underwhelming when you consider the match he had with Sami Zayn, and the fact that it was Nakamura's best match despite it being his first match.