The John Report Wrestling Blog

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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140 Characters or Less
By Mike Aires

I was re-watching this week’s Raw a couple days ago (since I fell asleep Monday evening), enjoying Brodus Clay dance around and smash the stupid ginger Heath Slater.  It was also fun to see Kane have his first official match since putting on his new/old/new mask and beat the living hell out of someone.  An appearance by Mick Foley wearing familiar Cactus Jack attire always brings a smile.  Why do I bring up these very certain details?  Each of these gentlemen has made a career (so far, anyways) by becoming a completely different person.  Kane doesn’t go home and choke slam his dogs to hell.  I doubt Brodus Clay has to talk to archeologists about being the only living Funkasaurus.  I really hope Mick Foley doesn’t live in a boiler, and scream out for his mommy.

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Thursday Headlines: John Cena’s Angry Face

This week’s episode of Raw was a good one. We got some great CM Punk/John Laurinaitis interaction, another fantastic Chris Jericho segment in which he finally spoke, and an excellent video package promoting the Royal Rumble. All in all, it was a very good go-home show (a show that promotes an upcoming pay-per-view, for all you non-wrestling nerds). But there was one segment that stood out for all the wrong reasons, and ended up being a disappointment. Of course, I’m talking about John Cena’s “angry face” segment.

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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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Is the WWE Ruining Zack Ryder?

Being loyal WWE fans, it isn’t very often that we get exactly what we want.  The wrestling business is designed to withhold complete satisfaction.  We may want our favorites to win championships, and hold onto those titles for an indefinite amount of time, but that would be a foolish business practice.  No, the real money is in the chase.  We pay to see our favorite superstars fight for the opportunity to earn a title.  Why is Ric Flair one of the all time great draws?  Because people paid to see him to lose to their territorial favorites.  Fortunately the NWA had the foresight to (mostly) keep the title on him.

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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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The John Report: The WWE Raw Deal 01/09/12
By John Canton
Follow me on Twitter at @johnreport

Live from Corpus Christi, Texas this is the Raw Deal…

They started the show with a video package from last week with Kane trying to drag Zack Ryder “to hell” with John Cena saving him at the end. Kane started the show with a promo. They had the red lights on to make the situation more ominous I guess. Kane cut the same promo he did a few weeks ago where he tells us that we should embrace the hate. He says that when we chant “Cena sucks” we’re actually saying that we suck. No, I’m pretty sure it means that Cena sucks. It’s not hard to interpret. He continues his boring psychoanalysis by blaming the people for Zack Ryder being popular while I wait for somebody to come out. Kane’s fine with me, but he should talk less when he has the mask on. It’s not complicated.

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How Ridiculous Should a Gimmick Get?
By Laurence Salford

Last week on Raw saw the much critically divisive segment at the end of the programme, where Kane attempted to drag Zack Ryder through a hole in the ring, which I’m guessing was supposed to represent Hell. When Cena had pulled Ryder to safety, a great ball of flame erupted from within the hell-hole, with the camera showing the fear in both Ryder and Cena’s faces. I for one had no problem with this segment, as it represents a part of Kane’s character which has been around since its inception many years ago, but to other people, it seemed outdated and silly, a type of move that belonged during the 1990’s era of wrestling. It got me thinking – just how ridiculous can you push a gimmick, in this day and age of wrestling?

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NXT 5.44 Review
By Lonestar

Happy New Year Cantonites and welcome to the NXT Review. I’ve been out of town as of late and haven’t caught the past couple of Raws but I’ve heard a bit of the commotion over ratings and main event segments and hypocritical internet fanboys thanks to this wonderful website. Now, it’s hard to delve into this topic without getting one’s hands dirty and since I’ve got NXT to talk about I’ll avoid the conversation for the most part and just make one little point. If you don’t enjoy John Cena or his current feud in the main event spot please, by all means, change the channel. This isn’t a “like it or get out” argument, it’s a simple fact of life; changing the channel and lowering the rating is the only way the WWE will realize that maybe they should try to support someone other than Cena for the long haul.

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The John Report: The WWE Raw Deal 01/02/12
By John Canton
Follow me on Twitter at @johnreport

I wrote it live this week. Live from Memphis, Tennessee this is the Raw Deal…

The beginning of the show had Michael Cole narrate over a graphic that promoted CM Punk vs. Dolph Ziggler for the WWE Title later in the show. Then they had a video package for the Kane/Cena segment from last week. It was really well done as usual.

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