{"id":38721,"date":"2017-02-12T16:33:47","date_gmt":"2017-02-12T22:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=38721"},"modified":"2017-02-12T16:33:47","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T22:33:47","slug":"rising-star-fading-star-week-bryan-jericho-alexa-bliss-mauro-ziggler-crews-ascension-kalisto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/02\/12\/rising-star-fading-star-week-bryan-jericho-alexa-bliss-mauro-ziggler-crews-ascension-kalisto\/","title":{"rendered":"RISING STAR &#038; FADING STAR OF THE WEEK: Bryan, Jericho, Alexa Bliss, Mauro, Ziggler, Crews, Ascension, Kalisto"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-3289847582\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><div><\/div>\n<h3>RISING STAR OF THE WEEK: Chris Jericho<\/h3>\n<p>Do you know what happens when you make an actual relevant pop culture reference on Raw that doesn&#8217;t seem forced? Hmm? Do you know what happens? I won&#8217;t scoop Y2J&#8217;s heat any further, but him adding Tom Brady to &#8220;The List&#8221; has been one of the first times in awhile Raw un-ironically made me laugh out loud. This, and the apparent start of his WrestleMania 33 &#8220;Best Friend&#8221; feud with Kevin Owens, shoots him right to the top today. No one on Raw has been as solid as a star week in and out as Jericho and, although I personally don&#8217;t feel that splitting these BFFs up is the grandest route to take (how about they be bus buddies in a dual face-turn), it sure should be a fun dynamic.<\/p>\n<h3>HONORABLE MENTIONS<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Alexa Bliss:<\/strong> Consider Alexa&#8217;s honorable mention this week an honorable mention for every women involved in that double contract signing on Tuesday. Wow, what a segment. All of it, from the body language, to the dialogue, to the &#8220;forgetting that a certain someone&#8221; was in the ring hit its mark just as flush as Naomi&#8217;s kick to Bliss&#8217;s temple. Smackdown was an extremely good &#8220;go home&#8221; show this week. A huge part of it was in thanks to the ladies being on their game.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Daniel Bryan:<\/strong> Granted, our boy &#8220;DB&#8221; got the generous benefit of a hometown crowd pop, but it was a great refresher to how hot of an act he is, was, and still can be. The Smackdown opening segment was good despite the obligatory set-up of every competitor conveniently interrupting the previous, but Bryan started this Elimination Chamber build-up with the sizzle it needed. It a bitter-sweet shame that WWE won&#8217;t be able to settle Bryan&#8217;s score with Miz in the ring (bitter because of Bryan&#8217;s itch and talent to wrestle again, but sweet because we can avoid further potential head injury).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Ascension:<\/strong> I&#8217;m surprised my Chromebook&#8217;s keys aren&#8217;t melting away as I type this, but everything seems to be order: Did The Ascension really win this week? Can I actually see an angle with American Alpha actually working for albeit, only a short period of time? It&#8217;s really bizarre to type &#8220;yes&#8221; and &#8220;The Ascension&#8221; in the same sentence. (Quick! It&#8217;s time for the inaugural edition of &#8220;The Pop Quiz of Wrestling Relevancy&#8221;: It&#8217;s probably been since their WWE debut since we&#8217;ve last seen their finisher, but The Ascension&#8217;s tenure on the main roster isn&#8217;t the only part of their gimmick that we would call &#8220;apocalyptic.&#8221; Cue The Jeopardy! music &#8211; answer is at the end of the column and must be answered in the form of a question.)<\/p>\n<h3>FADING STAR OF THE WEEK:\u00a0Kalisto<\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to fathom someone falling deeper down the WWE doldrums than one Dolph Ziggler, but when you&#8217;ve been on the losing end of a feud with him (even if he&#8217;s at the start of a new heel turn) and you need someone&#8217;s help to get the job done (see below), then you&#8217;re pretty darn close to being a bottom feeder. As talented as Kalisto is, he&#8217;s a man without a country &#8211; no one considers him a credible Smackdown member and putting him in the cruiserweight division would only furthers this Lucha Dragon from going the way of the Funkasaurus.<\/p>\n<h3>DISHONORABLE MENTIONS<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Apollo Crews:<\/strong> Why didn&#8217;t Crews join Kalisto in the unwanted win this week? Because he may be the only one who\u00a0gets an actual direction out of this low-card cluster-mess. If he beats Dolph, maybe he&#8217;ll be able to grab a grain of notoriety when it comes to seeing some babyface build, but having him with the Kalisto handicap doesn&#8217;t really paint an exquisite portrait of &#8220;handling things on your own,&#8221; does it? Even if it&#8217;s by the booking of the Smackdown GM.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mauro Ranallo:<\/strong> Why in the blue hell did Tom Phillips starts Smackdown off? Vince McMahon apparently is not only getting in the WrestleMania mood, but he&#8217;s letting his inner bully flourish. Not cool when it involves the best non-color commentator on the WWE brand. Thank goodness we have four people huddled around the table to pick up the slack.<\/p>\n<p>Jeopardy! answer to &#8220;The Pop Quiz Of Wrestling Relevancy&#8221;: What is &#8220;It&#8217;s not relevant.&#8221;<\/p><div id=\"pwtor-984151033\" class=\"pwtor-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280 __336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>Okay, for you nitpickers, it&#8217;s really &#8220;Fall Of Man,&#8221; but do you really care? See you next week.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b><\/b><strong>NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK&#8217;S ARTICLE:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/02\/02\/rising-star-fading-star-week-samoa-joe-naomi-enzo-baron-corbin-bayley-neville\/\">RISING STAR &amp; FADING STAR OF THE WEEK: Samoa Joe, Naomi, Enzo, Baron Corbin, Bayley, Neville<\/a><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-4263394313\"><div id=\"pwtor-3088817868\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>RISING STAR OF THE WEEK: Chris Jericho Do you know what happens when you make an actual relevant pop culture reference on Raw that doesn&#8217;t seem forced? Hmm? Do you know what happens? I won&#8217;t <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/02\/12\/rising-star-fading-star-week-bryan-jericho-alexa-bliss-mauro-ziggler-crews-ascension-kalisto\/\" title=\"RISING STAR &#038; FADING STAR OF THE WEEK: Bryan, Jericho, Alexa Bliss, Mauro, Ziggler, Crews, Ascension, Kalisto\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,52,4309,27],"tags":[372,131,224,835,1327,886],"class_list":["post-38721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlightarticles","category-opnionandanalysis","category-rising-star-fading-star","category-specialists","tag-apollo-crews","tag-chris-jericho","tag-daniel-bryan","tag-kalisto","tag-mauro-ranallo","tag-the-ascension"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Jericho_3x2.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38722,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38721\/revisions\/38722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}