The Brass Ring

WWE has released a video about who to watch in 2018 and who will grab the brass the ring.

Their 8 are

Paige

Samoa Joe

Pete Dunne

Kairi Sane

The Street Prophets

Carmella

Sami Zayn

Drew Gulak


Anyone have any thoughts on this. Who would you expect to break out, or really push on. Obviously WWE's list is based on either their plans or the momentum established in 2017.

And what about in wrestling as a whole?

It's not a bad list from WWE. Including my clear favourites from both the CWC and UK Championship. What little I've seen of the street prophets I could see them being managed or teamed up with MVP when he returns to WWE. No idea what he's doing right now, but it looks like what they set that team up for, really.

Paige - blatantly getting pushed to the moon, with the film coming out, and WWE wanting to show their friendly, supportive side after all her private life stuff. I think she's a decent bet to win the women's rumble.

I'm hoping Cedric Alexander gets pushed, I really rate him and he could be a break-out star, and even outside of the CW division. Joe and Strowman should win world championships (I'd like Joe moved over to SD though),

Wrestling as a whole - Matt Riddle will end up in WWE and pushed, and I reckon Ricochet will spearhead 205 Live.

Joe has to win a big event and a big title.

Strowman lost some momentum so needs that back before people get bored and the bubble bursts.

Miz re grabbed it last year, so has to be rewarded. Maybe beating Roman on the anniversary Raw to kick it off.

Cedric does some great stuff, but I just can't see him connecting in WWE. I've not seen one match where I've thought, okay this is the guy that got that reaction in the CWC. Same as Ali, he can do some phenomenal stuff, although his transition and believability is worse than Alexander. I guess you could draw comparisons between Alexander and AJ in the way they move, but I'm still not convinced, yet. *bloodying Enzo's face is a good way to start getting over ha*

Considering I legit hated him on that wrestling talk show, Marty Skurll has grown on me a lot. He can have all kinds of matches, including using comedy really well in ring. Even though he lost his title in NJPW In can see him having a massive year. ROH world champ? NJPW intercontinental? Something like that. All in all 2018 will be the UK's biggest year globally in wrestling, I suspect. Hopefully Neville gets a big push in WWE. Pete Dunne is undeniably great and has that x factor and the way he lives the character when the cameras are on means he's way ahead of anyone in 205. If they stuck him against a Rollins or an AJ that aren't ridiculously huge in comparison they'd steal any show.

Paige obviously. I thought they'd be getting the title on Asuka so at WM you can have Asuka vs Paige and Rousey vs Charlotte. Rousey wouldn't even need to win the rumble because she's a special attraction. So Paige is probably my pick. She'll be front and centre of Raw. There's a lot more British talent too.


Internationally In NJPW the Kiwi Switchblade looks like he's kicking off a feud with Bullet Club and Omega, and he's probably an obvious replacement if any big names leave BC too. He could be 2018's breakout like Omega was a few years ago.

There is also the tension between Cody and Omega. And at some point I imagine the New Japan money match is Omega vs Okada title vs title in north America. No idea on touring plans, but they want that market bad.

You're assuming WWE doesn't rebrand ricochet as "Splashback" then

WWE have confirmed that Ricochet has signed with them. He's another who could be set for a huge year - if he goes to NXT or even 205 Live, he'll make both brands much better.

And War Machine signed as a tag team too.

Is Braun Strowman getting the Stone Cold push? He's got all the focus now. Safe to say he's got his momentum back with 2 weeks of monster mayhem.

They can keep doing crazy shit with him and get a real mainstream following. He's the water cooler moment guy, and he really needs to be on a super bowl advert for WWE. It would be worth the investment to have Braun destroying stuff for 30 seconds on super bowl Sunday. Wouldn't it? And if they don't use this chance then no one in WWE has a marketing brain anymore.

Braun is awesome, he really is. Him and Rusev are the two guys I like watching the most at the moment.

They really trust Braun as the guy that can bring the mainstream back, I reckon.
I'm not sure if Hulk is returning to cheers or boos, but I know I'd like to see him get Strowmanised.

They should give Matt Hardy a similar freedom and budget with some off site shoots and WWE will be even more appealing. He should be as good to watch, but something isn't clicking. And it's not his performance.

I don't think Matt would work to a mainstream audience. There's an element of OTT stupidity to what he does, and if someone who doesn;t like watching wrestling sees it, they just won't get that it's meant to be OTT. My wife watched about 30 seconds of Final Deletion and just said 'Well, that's utterly stupid. What the hell is he doing?'. I can't imagine seeing something like that would help get WWE get more mainstream, other than in a 'Look how dumb this is!' kind of way.

They already have guys who are mainstream - Cena, Jericho, the Total Divas / Bella thing, Lesnar, supposedly Ronda Rousey. The problem is that wrestling is still seen as the campy cousin of UFC - why watch pretend fighting when you can watch 2 guys do it for real?

The Hardy bit was a biy of a separate point. Giving him more control and budget will be more appealing to me haha.

Strowman, although a bit of a weird one, has that attitude era feel about him. They aren't quite doing it reality style like the attitude era, but people like seeing that tank of a man do anything from the impressive to the weird and insane. The tease of needing to call the S.W.A.T team is something they can still explore too lol. These days water cooler moments are gifs and YouTube clips and Strowman is the absolute leader on that front. I suppose you could say there is two mainstreams. Sport and entertainment. The sport mainstream will only ever latch on to the Lesnar's , Mcgregor's and Rousey's and anyone who seems to hang with them in ring without seeming too fake.

I think WWE has just about found the perfect group to lead the company forward and it's about to all click into place though.

The women are seriously over too.

All that really matters is people outside the bubble talking about wrestling. And it doesn't necessarily have to just be the espn sports news kind of thing they target. Go all in on sports and entertainment if you're calling it sports entertainment.

Back to Brass rings, they seem to be letting The Revival say they are wrestlers, not entertainers. So when they shatter machine Road Dogg (or whoever) next week that might be them re-establishing themselves and that division as a hotly contested wrestling division. Uso's vs Revival seems the best option that can be done for WM now.