The John Report Wrestling Blog

WWE Royal Rumble
St. Louis, Missouri
January 29, 2012
By John Canton (Twitter @johnreport)

They aired a video package hyping that the winner of the Royal Rumble gets to go to WrestleMania. Lots of people do, but for now we should only believe the winner does.

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WWE Royal Rumble 2012 Preview
By John Canton, Andrew Johnson & Christian Michael

John Canton: I’ve always loved the Royal Rumble pay per view. I showed that love last year when I recapped every Royal Rumble match. The concept of the match is wonderful. Even if you think you know what might happen, there’s always a very good chance that something crazy will happen. I didn’t think Cena would win in 2008 or Edge in 2010 because they both made surprise returns. Could there be a surprise winner this year? You never know. The sad thing about the Rumble is that the winner doesn’t really get to “main event” WrestleMania anymore (especially this year), but it’s still one of my favorite matches and I know I’m going to enjoy it like I do every year. Right now there are only four announced matches. I’d expect some kind of midcard match to be added as a buffer to some of the big ones on the card, but I’m not going to guess what they will be.

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The Midweek Breakdown: 10 Things I Think I Thought This Week
by Cody Dodson

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another fine edition of the column that rises above hate almost 43% of the time. It’s the Midweek Breakdown with me, your ever-so-grateful host, Cody Dodson. It will be January 25th when this column comes out, which can only mean one thing. The Royal Rumble is upon us and thus, the Road to Wrestlemania is about to begin. Now, most people are busy speculating over the standard questions like who is going to win, who will be the surprise entrants, and whether or not the arena will fall dead silent when Heath Slater makes his entrance. I personally won’t try to guess any of these, although I think we all know the answer to one of them. What I will do is give some thoughts on the week’s happenings and the Royal Rumble in the form of the 10 random thoughts format I debuted last time. It got a good response the first time, so let’s do it again!

Quick note: I might make this format a bi-weekly thing if people continue to enjoy it. Be sure to let me know what you think. It’s still in the experimentation phase!

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Andrew had something come up, so I’m stepping in to do Headlines today. I don’t normally complain about wrestling, because it’s wrestling. It’s going to be silly, you’re going to scratch your head sometimes, and that’s fine. Again, it’s wrestling, and it’s always been that way. What bothers me, though, is that 30 years ago–before the internet ruined our lives–storyline injuries worked better because they were believable. Someone was piledriver’d on the cold, hard concrete and their neck was broken. Randy Savage smashed Ricky Steamboat with a ring bell and his trachea was permanently destroyed forever. Then these guys would come back from career-threatening injuries, because they’re superhuman, and they would seek revenge on their attackers. That was then. Now it’s usually ridiculous.

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The John Report: The WWE Raw Deal 01/23/12
By John Canton
Follow me on Twitter at @johnreport

Live from Phoenix, Arizona this is the Raw Deal…

We get the usual intro. Isn’t it time to get a new theme song? I’m so sick of Nickelback. I’m sure a lot of people are, but in Canada it’s even worse since they come from this country. I’ve had people write me about a lack of pyro at WWE shows. I’ve read that they made an internal decision to cut back on the amount of pyro they use. It’s a money thing.

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Monday Headlines: MVP Says John Cena is Ribbity-Rap-Rap-Raptastic by Jacob Lindsey

In a recent interview with The Miami Herald, former WWE Superstar MVP discussed the possibility of John Cena being involved in an EP he is working on, citing Cena’s impressive freestyle abilities.

From The Miami Herald:

The guy is exceptionally good. His freestyle abilities are better than most. For the people who say that he sucks, he could probably beat your favorite rapper in a freestyle competition. We sat in my studio in my house listening to a few beats and wrote a few things. They were really good. The one that I liked the most was something we worked on called ‘Urban Desperado.’

I thought that was pretty cool, because Urban Desperado is also the name of my friend’s Antonio Banderas tribute hip-hop/dance group. MVP talked about some other stuff, too…after the jump.

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Canton’s Corner: The Wrestling Week in Review – January 21
By John Canton
Follow me on Twitter at @johnreport

Welcome to Canton’s Corner. I have some news that will likely interest you, the reader. Starting February 1st, I will be posting recaps of all 27 WWE WrestleMania events. They will feature recaps of all the matches and segments, plus analysis as well as star ratings. I’ll also give the show a grade, list the stars of the show and add whatever other tidbits I can. I’m excited about writing it as it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve already written the first three. The last one will be posted one week before this year’s WrestleMania 28 event. They will be exclusive to thejohnreport.net, except for a select few that I will post at other sites as well. Basically what this means is in February & March you’ll get a lot of my writing. With that out of the way, let’s get rolling with this week’s column.

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Disasterpiece Theatre: The Reunion
By Jacob Lindsey

Last week, I promised a Steve Austin movie for this week’s review, but life happened, and it didn’t work out. In a panic, I found a Redbox kiosk that had something I could watch. I wish I hadn’t. this is the first movie I’ve watched while mildly intoxicated, and by the end of it, I was hoping I would pass out. While it wasn’t quite on the level of River of Darkness or Little Hercules in 3D, this was awful.

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The John Report: The WWE Raw Deal 01/16/12
By John Canton
Follow me on Twitter at @johnreport

Live from Anaheim, California this is the Raw Deal…

They started the show with a video tribute of Martin Luther King Jr. in honor of this day that we honor him. It’s a video they air every year. On a lesser note, the Nickelback Raw intro song started up from there. When are they going to change that song?

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Canton’s Corner: The Wrestling Week in Review – January 14
By John Canton
Follow me on Twitter at @johnreport

Welcome to Canton’s Corner. We’ve got the usual happening this week with some thoughts on Raw & Smackdown plus the poll, the random video and the twitter ten where I answer your wrestling related questions. I don’t have a section for TNA this week. I was one of the six people that watched their PPV, which was so poorly booked and did nothing good for anybody in the company. I realize the last 45 minutes of Impact were good with two rematches, but I couldn’t handle more TNA in a week. To the few that care about my TNA thoughts, they will return next week. Let’s get to it.

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Thursday Headlines: WWE Network to be Delayed
By Thomas & Aaron Briggs

The inevitable has happened: The WWE Network is likely to be delayed until fall.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been following along.  The Network is lacking in developed content, carrier support, and even staff.  Although the WWE was hoping to launch the ambitious channel by Wrestlemania, it seems impossible at this point.

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The Midweek Breakdown: 10 Random Thoughts
by Cody Dodson

Hello TJR faithful and welcome to another edition of the Midweek Breakdown. I am your eleventh favorite columnist and your host, Cody Dodson. Today I’m going to do something that I like to do every once in a while and just talk about some random thoughts I have regarding what’s going on in WWE. Most weeks I like to take one or two topics and take an in-depth look at them. This week, I’m going to share some quick thoughts on a lot of different topics. There’s been a lot going on, so let’s get started.

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