Black History Month DAY 20

Derrick King v. Tatt2 (10/14/06)




This would be your all black match. Black heel vs. black face with black promoter announcing in front of mostly black studio audience on a TV program that airs in a majority black town.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen Tatt2. I don’t get much of a sense of him outside of him having pretty huge ups on all of his highflying offense. He gets a ton of elevation on his leapfrogs, drop kicks, and on the jump into broncobuster.

Derrick King is a Don Bass trained worker who has been around for about 15 years. For good portion of that time he’s worked in WWE developmental territories. He worked both under Randy Hales and Jim Cornette in role of local guy who lays out the match and eats stuff from WWE developmental trainees. And here he’s working a pretty old school TV studio formula: arrogant heel champ complains about lack of challengers, confronted with young challenger—arrogant heel champ claims challenger is below him and can be beaten in five minutes—is challenged to follow through on claim and fails. The match is pretty much made by King’s mastery of the TV formula as he does a great job at facially selling the whole angle in ring. His facial selling of the arrogant attempt to win by countout, his goofy sell of the 619, facial sell of fear of fighting out of the sunset flip, facial sell of relief at being able to hit the desperation super kick etc; just makes the whole thing work. He throws some questionable missed clotheslines, but facially he is so committed to this story that you buy everything he does and the crowd eats the formula up.

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Black History Month DAY 19

Floyd Mayweather wrestling angle night 2

Big Show & Floyd Mayweather Face Off - 2/18/08
Uploaded by JabroniHotel99

This was a basically unsatisfying follow up to Sunday's great angle. The WWE is so over produced, that they can rarely keep anything looking out of control and spontaneous very long. Floyd coming down to ringside to "Get Money" with the $500 hoodie and large entourage was really great. Then when he opens his mouth, it is clear that he is reciting some promo scripted by what ever ex-According to Jim hack they have writing RAW promos now. This ended up coming off exactly like ever mike segment they ever use to set up any match.

There is a reason that Floyd drew two such huge PPV numbers this year, and they have to let Floyd be Floyd. Brag about the diamonds in your watch, pull 75 grand from you pocket, don't talk about what a fan you are of the WWE, he didn't talk about what a fan he was of Oscar DeLa Hoya, he called him overrated and washed up.

Also while Floyd may get over as a face in a Las Vegas arena probably full of waiters and busboys he has given extravagant tips to. He doesn't work as a face anywhere else, listen to the boos. This interview was pretty ambiguous, but they need to go whole hog with heel Floyd. Dump the Rey aspect of it, and just have it be cocky ass Floyd talking shit. One hit and one strike so far, we will see how it plays out.

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