Happy Wednesday Everyone!
We’re continuing my current rebooking arc this week, as we go from Survivor Series 2015 all the way up to WrestleMania XXXII.
Last week; we crowned a new WWE Champion in the form of Roman Reigns, as he betrayed long-time friend and ally Dean Ambrose in order to join up with Triple H and The Authority, when Money in the Bank holder Sheamus handed him his trusty briefcase so that he could cash in.
I’ll post the full results for Survivor Series 2015 after the break line, and the full article is available in my archives.
Anyway, we need to continue the story here with the December pay per view. Normally WWE would hold the TLC pay per view in December, which often led to a bunch of hastily booked gimmick matches that didn’t really make sense and usually took away from existing feuds and storylines.
I’ve decided to retool the December pay per view and drop the TLC gimmick, with the replacement being the return of Starrcade. This is for a few reasons. The first is that it means we don’t have to clog the card up with dangerous gimmick matches that don’t really help with the booking. Secondly, calling the event Starrcade gives us some storytelling options we can go with which I’ll explain further down. And thirdly, I just like Starrcade as a name, and seeing as WWE bought WCW, we might as well re-use some of the better event names the, now departed, company had. I’m a sucker for all of that history and lineage stuff in wrestling too. I was considering bringing back SuperBrawl as well, but Starrcade 2015 ended up getting the nod
Results from Survivor Series 2015
Winners in BOLD
WWE Title Tournament Quarter Final
US Champ Alberto Del Rio Vs Adrian Neville – 8 Minutes. Clean
WWE Title Tournament Quarter Final
Alexander Rusev Vs Roman Reigns – 8 Minutes. Clean
WWE Title Tournament Quarter Final
IC Champ Kevin Owens Vs Dolph Ziggler – 8 Minutes. Distraction finish by The Miz
WWE Title Tournament Quarter Final
Wade Barrett Vs Dean Ambrose
8 Minutes. Clean
WWE Women’s Title
Champ: Charlotte Flair Vs Paige
12 Minutes. Clean
WWE Title Tournament Semi Final
Alberto Del Rio Vs Roman Reigns
10 Minutes. Clean
WWE Title Tournament Semi Final
Kevin Owens Vs Dean Ambrose
10 Minutes. Clean
The Wyatt Family (Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper and Erick Rowan) Vs The Brothers of Destruction (Undertaker and Kane) and NXT Champ The Demon Finn Balor
12 Minutes. Clean (Taker pins Rowan)
WWE Title Tournament Final
Roman Reigns Vs Dean Ambrose
12 Minutes. Clean via flash pin fall
Roman Reigns is handed the Money in the Bank Briefcase by Sheamus and cashes in on Dean Ambrose to become the new WWE Champion.
_______________________________________________________________
So with us all up to date on the results of the previous pay per view, let’s move on to Starrcade 2015 and see what we can come up with!
Opening Match
Tyler Breeze w/ Summer Rae Vs Goldust
10 Minutes
The story for this one is that Goldust’s father played a hand in the creation of Starrcade back in the 80’s, so he’s got an added incentive to pick up a win at the big event. We can have Summer-Breeze make snide comments in the build-up and Breeze can even lay out Goldust with a spinning wheel kick on the go-home show before putting some bad mouth on him. Goldust will be fired up to win for a few reasons here then, and he will do, pinning Breeze clean with his finish after a competitive opening match. Breeze isn’t going to be hurt in this situation and both wrestlers know how to put together a good match, so this should be an upbeat way to start the pay per view.
Match Two
The Wyatt Family (Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, Erick Rowan and Braun Strowman) Vs The Dudley Boyz (D-Von and Bubba Ray), Mark Henry and Jack Swagger
10 Minutes
Following their defeat at Survivor Series; we’ll give The Wyatt’s some wins to heat them up again, with them developing an issue with both of the tag teams on the babyface side. There are enough solid workers in here that this should be a watchable match, and we’ll eventually have Bray pounce with a Sister Abigail on D-Von to pick up the win when things break down in the closing stages. The babyface side won’t be booked to look weak, but the eventual pin fall will be clean so that The Wyatt’s hopefully look good for beating some strong opponents in a big match setting.
Match Three
WWE Intercontinental Title
Champ: Kevin Owens Vs Adrian Neville
13 Minutes
Neville had a decent run in the WWE Title tournament, winning some matches on TV in order to qualify for the tournament proper before going down to Alberto Del Rio at the pay per view following a competitive match. Starting an issue between Owens and Neville shouldn’t be too difficult, as they’re both former NXT Champions. The easy way to start things off is for them to have some verbal sparring leading into Neville mentioning the name of Owens’ former friend, turned rival, Sami Zayn. After a few verbal collisions, and maybe a tag match or two, Neville will get himself an IC Title match, leading to these two hopefully having a great contest here at Starrcade 2015. Owens will eventually pick up the clean win, but Neville will have him on the ropes on a few occasions so that he won’t be hurt too much by a defeat, whilst Owens will look like a deserving Champion, even though we all hate him for it.
Match Four
B.A.D (Sasha Banks and Naomi) w/ Tamina Snuka Vs WWE Women’s Champ Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch
10 Minutes
2015 had seen a bit of a Faction War™ between three groups in the women’s division. We had Team Bella (The Bella Twins and Alicia Fox), B.A.D (Naomi, Sasha Banks and Tamina) and PCB (Paige, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch). PCB has since been broken up and I believe Nikki Bella was out with an injury at the time, so we’ll just bring this to a close here and break the groups up. Flair and Lynch will pick up the win here when Lynch makes Naomi tap out to the Dis-Arm-Her. This will cause divisions between B.A.D and lead to a split. Lynch will have done what she needed to do in order to win the match, but Flair will be conceited and think that Lynch was hogging the spotlight, leading to Flair leaving Lynch hanging on a handshake at the end before storming out on her in order to set up the next chapter of that storyline.
Match Five
The Miz Vs Dolph Ziggler
12 Minutes
The story we have for this one is that Ziggler eliminated The Miz from the WWE Title Tournament on one of the TV shows, leading to Miz costing Ziggler his Quarter Final bout with Kevin Owens at Survivor Series. This will cause Ziggler to want revenge for being cost his chance of becoming Champion, whilst Miz will want to defeat Ziggler in order to wipe away the previous match they had in the tournament. These two usually have good chemistry together, so hopefully this will be an entertaining match, with Ziggler picking up the clean win after a back and forth affair.
Semi-Main
Dean Ambrose’s team must win in order for him to qualify for the Royal Rumble match
New Day will be forced to vacate their WWE Tag Team Titles if they lose
The League of Nations (Sheamus, US Champ Alberto Del Rio, Rusev and Wade Barrett)
Vs
Dean Ambrose and WWE Tag Team Champs The New Day (Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston and Big E. Langston)
20 Minutes
What with Ambrose being screwed out of the WWE Title at Survivor Series, The Authority will stick the boot in further by stating that, because a cash in happened so soon after Ambrose won the belt, he is not entitled to a Title shot and won’t be getting one anytime soon, with The Authority also refusing Ambrose a place in the Royal Rumble unless he can defeat The League of Nations in an 8 man tag team match.
The Authority of course have made this stipulation on the assumption that no one would be dumb enough to volunteer and thus get on their bad side. However, Ambrose’s partners end up coming in the unexpected form of The New Day, a team who prior to this had been Heels and even noted as being in the good books of The Authority. The deciding factor in making New Day sign up as Ambrose’s partner is the feeling that their contributions haven’t been appreciated and The Authority are more interested in Sheamus’ group, a point punctuated when Stephanie McMahon bites their head off in her usual vile manner when some valid issues are raised.
Thus New Day goes Face as a retaliatory measure by backing Ambrose up for this match. As punishment, The Authority has added the stipulation that New Day will be forced to vacate their belts if they lose, thus meaning everyone on the babyface side has something on the line. In the end, the babyfaces will prevail following an intense match, with Kofi and Woods both spending time getting worked over in the Heel half of the ring until Big E gets the hot tag and all heck breaks loose. Eventually Ambrose gets tagged in and he puts Barrett away with the Dirty Deeds in order to put himself in the Rumble match and save New Day’s tag belts.
Main Event
WWE Title
Champ: Roman Reigns Vs Cody Rhodes
15-20 Minutes
I can’t remember if he remained as Stardust for as long as he did because he personally wanted to or if WWE made him do that, but if it’s the former then I’m going to ask Cody Rhodes very politely to go back to his previous name. The story here is pretty straightforward; it’s Starrcade and Cody wants to win the WWE Title at an event that was so synonymous with his father. Reigns will accept the challenge, wrongly thinking it will be easy to beat the guy who has been whacky in face paint and a jumpsuit for the majority of 2015, but he will soon realise that he has made a mistake when Cody takes the fight to him and almost wins the Title. Reigns will eventually retain clean with a Spear, but he will know that he has been in a fight and Cody will leave the event with his pride intact.
In Conclusion
Qualifying for the Royal Rumble doesn’t mean that Ambrose has the machinations of The Authority in his rear window, as they will now do whatever they can to ensure that Ambrose is not left standing at the end of the match. The obvious play is to book Ambrose in a number of punishing matches as part of the build-up, as well as forcing Ambrose to enter the match at #1, but Ambrose keeps fighting and will eventually make it to compete, even if he’s not at 100%
In the women’s division; B.A.D will continue to combust, with Naomi and Tamina siding together against Sasha, meaning that Sasha will suddenly be outnumbered and might need some backup. Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch will drift apart as friends, with an increasingly paranoid Flair just waiting for any excuse to attack Lynch, which will come following another tag match on television, leading to the two needing to settle their dispute.
The New Day may have survived Starrcade 2015 with their belts, but The Authority and The League of Nations aren’t going to let this one go, so The Champs are nowhere near out of hot water just yet, with their grip on their belts to be tested even further.
Kevin Owens may still be the Intercontinental Champion, but he will be looking over his shoulder somewhat now that is former NXT rival has been mentioned on WWE television yet again. Sami Zayn returning to NXT television isn’t going to help with that either and that story could continue to develop in 2016.
I hope you enjoyed reading this and found it interesting. What do you think about the return of Starrcade? Would you have kept TLC? Would you have changed anything? Please let me know in the comments as I’m always interested to read what others would do in these situations.
Hopefully I’ll see you all next week when it becomes time to Rumble!