Reigns selling attack by Gallows/Anderson

[Hanley!]

This annoyed me.



This angle is actually one of the better ones WWE has done in a while, sadly. The Bullet Club guys attacked Reigns and Styles claims to have nothing to do with it. But Reigns doesn't know if he should believe Styles because he's tight with those guys and he has everything to gain from them taking out Reigns, while Anderson/Gallows have nothing to gain themselves.

It's a simple story. It provides a little intrigue. It's a good way to generate heat between two feuding babyfaces. This is actually a really good idea for a feud. Two thumbs up for the concept.

The execution was so bad though. I'm pretty sure that clip I posted above is literally the next segment after Reigns got attacked. He's perfectly fine. Even booking this segment here was a lousy idea, but Reigns makes things even worse by doing nothing to sell the beatdown that happened just five minutes ago.

Why the fuck do they do this stuff? In trying to make Reigns look strong, they've just made the Bullet Club look weak and they've hurt their story. It's so counter-productive. Why would Reigns now care that he got jumped? Why would that make him mad at Styles? It didn't have any effect on him. Styles might as well have recruited his two buddies to jump out at Roman and yell 'Boo'.

If they had destroyed Reigns and sent him to the hospital, and Styles cut a backstage interview afterwards saying he had nothing to do with the attack, and then they built to a confrontation between Styles and Reigns on Smackdown or next week's Raw, this could have been a great angle. And they haven't had a great angle in a while.

But no. Roman has to look strong at the expense of everything else. So fucking dumb.

[SlightlyJames]

Maybe they're no selling the beatdown because it was mostly for show and they're siding with Roman at Payback Maybe those "Bulletproof" t-shirts are both a play on Bullet Club and also Roman's chosen attire! It all adds up!

[Hanley!]

Maybe they're no selling the beatdown because it was mostly for show and they're siding with Roman at Payback Maybe those "Bulletproof" t-shirts are both a play on Bullet Club and also Roman's chosen attire! It all adds up!

This kinda makes sense actually.

Though even if it was just for show, Reigns should have been in on the act. He should have at least been feigning injury to throw Styles off the scent.

Besides, even if they came up with a way to have this make sense later, it doesn't stop the angle from being less effective right now. They should be trying to make people care about their pay per view before it happens, not after.

[Circled Square]

I like Roman because he makes smarks butthurt but man I can't defend his selling. It's a weakness he's had for awhile now. This no selling shit has been on the go for awhile. Remember when Bryan showed up on Raw after his intense WM match not selling it at all? It's a thing they must be told to do. It makes no sense if that's the case.

[Str8Shooter]

Didn't Gallows and Anderson just hit him with their finisher though? It's not like they beat the guy down repeatedly for minutes, or with chairs or something. Reigns selling isn't great by any means, but it stands to reason getting hit with one move out of nowhere could be shaken off in 6 or 7 minutes.

[Hanley!]

Didn't Gallows and Anderson just hit him with their finisher though? It's not like they beat the guy down repeatedly for minutes, or with chairs or something. Reigns selling isn't great by any means, but it stands to reason getting hit with one move out of nowhere could be shaken off in 6 or 7 minutes.

He should have at least looked pained, from taking a few moves and a finisher. He literally does nothing to sell the attack. As a performer, that was a horrible missed opportunity.

On a booking front, they should have booked more of a beatdown. Back when WWE were competent, if they were going to base a main event feud around one mystery attack, they would have made sure that the attack was devastating and memorable. Another missed opportunity.

[Circled Square]

Didn't Gallows and Anderson just hit him with their finisher though? It's not like they beat the guy down repeatedly for minutes, or with chairs or something. Reigns selling isn't great by any means, but it stands to reason getting hit with one move out of nowhere could be shaken off in 6 or 7 minutes.

Grab your wrist, limp a little, wince, look around sorta paranoid like, do something. Guy looked like he just got done donkeyfucking two super models..

[Str8Shooter]

On a booking front, they should have booked more of a beatdown. Back when WWE were competent, if they were going to base a main event feud around one mystery attack, they would have made sure that the attack was devastating and memorable. Another missed opportunity.

But the point of the attack was to "help" AJ, and have AJ look conflicted and unhappy about them helping him in any way. If they were beating Reigns down in the ring badly, AJ would have absolutely looked complicit in it if he was just standing on the ramp doing nothing to stop it.

[Hanley!]

If they were beating Reigns down in the ring badly, AJ would have absolutely looked complicit in it if he was just standing on the ramp doing nothing to stop it.

You're boxing yourself into corners that you don't need to be in. Styles didn't need to be on the ramp when they attacked. That would actually have played into the story much better.

You probably defend WWE by default sometimes to counteract the rest of us negative assholes, but I dunno, do you really think this was as strong as it could have been? Don't you think if this had been shot during the Attitude Era, a much bigger deal would have been made out of this? Or even just 10 years ago?

This is the main event for the next pay per view. It's an intriguing angle that could play into the next big heel stable, Finn Balor's debut and a heel turn by Reigns or Styles. If you ask me, this would have come across as a huge deal just a few years ago. On this show it was just there. It didn't generate nearly the amount of excitement it could have ... much like most other things they do these days.

[Str8Shooter]

If they were beating Reigns down in the ring badly, AJ would have absolutely looked complicit in it if he was just standing on the ramp doing nothing to stop it.

You're boxing yourself into corners that you don't need to be in. Styles didn't need to be on the ramp when they attacked. That would actually have played into the story much better.

You probably defend WWE by default sometimes to counteract the rest of us negative assholes, but I dunno, do you really think this was as strong as it could have been? Don't you think if this had been shot during the Attitude Era, a much bigger deal would have been made out of this? Or even just 10 years ago?

I don't think it was a terrible angle or anything, it was the opening salvo of the angle really. A simple little attack by the Bullet Club on behalf of their friend, trying to "help him out", even though he presumably didn't ask for it and doesn't want it. Could it have been treated as a bigger deal, yeah maybe, but I don't think this is the "big moment" of the angle, it's just a small taste. It's not like the Nexus debut where the shock and awe of it was the selling point in my opinion.

The big moment will be the reveal of who is behind the Bullet Club guys, whether it was AJ all along, Finn, or even Reigns behind it. That's the moment that will need to be treated as a huge deal going forward to me.

[KaiserGlider]

This is so overblown. Good time as any to use the new Reigns meme.



They hit Reigns with one move. Reigns, the guy who is almost as strong as Lesnar. And clearly in the backstage segment that happened a few minutes later you can see him moving his jaw and his neck and walking more gingerly than usual, like he's a bit sore. I can maybe agree that it's not a great or super obvious sell job, but it's not absolutely nothing.

I can also agree that the segment wasn't as big as it should have been, but it was a good segment that built intrigue for the PPV. I would have done it at the end of Raw as Gallows and Anderson's debut, instead of the attack on the Usos the week before.

[Hanley!]

I don't think it's overblown. I mean you could apply it to most angles nowadays, rather than just this one. There's nothing particularly egregious about this particular angle, it's just a demonstration of how mediocre wrestling in general has become these days. I think people are getting so used to it that they can't see it for what it is. This is their main event angle. I've been going back watching reviews of Hulkamania era pay per views and back then if they had booked something like this they would have made it a huge deal and got a lot out of it. Why don't they try to do that anymore?

Reigns is just cementing himself as a main eventer, and it's Styles first time in a WWE main event. They should be trying to heat this up as much as possible. This effort was just very half-hearted. And again, not in comparison to everything else they're doing at the moment, but compared to their main event stories in any other era.

As for Doc and Gallows debuting with the attack on Reigns, I actually think what they did was better in that respect. They let us know who the guys were first. People were speculating about the Usos attack as they're connected to Reigns, then they linked them with Styles on television before the attack. That was all good for building intrigue and establishing the characters and the angle. As for why they didn't do it at the end of Raw, that's just their strategy now: they don't put their biggest angles at the end of Raw anymore. Why? Because the third hour has been dying. In my mind the solution to that is to try and build some great stuff for the third hour so people will want to stick around, but their solution seems to be to move the most important stuff off of it and concede defeat.