{"id":40437,"date":"2017-03-26T23:56:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T04:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=40437"},"modified":"2017-03-26T23:56:25","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T04:56:25","slug":"rising-star-fading-star-xavier-woods-bayley-samoa-joe-american-alpha-stephanie-mcmahon-bray-wyatt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/03\/26\/rising-star-fading-star-xavier-woods-bayley-samoa-joe-american-alpha-stephanie-mcmahon-bray-wyatt\/","title":{"rendered":"RISING STAR &#038; FADING STAR: Xavier Woods, Bayley, Samoa Joe, American Alpha, Stephanie McMahon, Bray Wyatt"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-4276714970\" 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><h3>RISING STAR OF THE WEEK: Xavier Woods<\/h3>\n<p>By all accounts, Xavier Woods should have been flying high on the &#8220;Fading Star&#8221; ship for weeks to come, but with a couple of seconds worth of awkward stares by his New Day compatriots, he and creative managed to turn an extremely embarrassing (and damaging) situation into a funny acknowledgement and dismissal. Not sure how this whole ordeal will help his star power (at least on Raw), but as far as I&#8217;m concerned he cruises out unscathed, and for what it could&#8217;ve been, that definitely deserves a win.<\/p>\n<p><strong>HONORABLE MENTIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Samoa Joe:<\/strong> Joe is one of the distinguished few that has been booked nearly perfectly since his debut on Raw, and that&#8217;s something that is rare as WWE properly utilizing continuity. It truly sucks that Sami Zayn had to be apart of the process in a losing effort (in defense of a fired Foley nonetheless), but if someone comes out looking strong from it, I&#8217;d be happy if it was Joe.<\/p>\n<h3>FADING STAR OF THE WEEK:\u00a0Bayley<\/h3>\n<p>I know the titles really don&#8217;t matter anymore in WWE&#8217;s eyes, but nothing really hammers that point home more than having your champion lose clean two straight weeks in a row. The character of Bayley is such a simple one to get over, and it&#8217;s truly remarkable (even with WWE&#8217;s past track record of ruining a good thing) that McMahon and company managed to screw such a shoe-in of a money maker like her up, and &#8220;Fading Star&#8221; has been a pretty strong indicator of that. Bayley, without a doubt, has been on here the most, and I hate every bit of it. If booked properly, she could by all rights be main-eventing WrestleMania in a straight-up one-on-one match with Charlotte, but instead she&#8217;s mixed up within a muddied four-way that&#8217;ll be on the downturn of that six-hour Thrill Ride.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DISHONORABLE MENTIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>American Alpha:<\/strong> Chad Gable &amp; Jason Jordan are the Bayleys of\u00a0Tuesday\u00a0nights. Coming in, they were the tag team to save all tag teams in what was a depleted and disappointing tag team roster (on both sides) &#8211; something that could&#8217;ve really distinguished the Smackdown brand from the Raw mothership, but nothing was capitalized on and America Alpha was booked like American Omicron; somewhere in the middle, but near the bottom. We&#8217;ll see you on the pre-show.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stephanie McMahon:<\/strong> Now if we were going by &#8220;WWE Universe&#8221; rules, this column would be called &#8220;Stephanie McMahon &amp; Everyone Else&#8221;. That opening Raw segment vomited on everything that was good about the closing segment the week before with Foley. Steph gets the last laugh in (with that trying-too-hard-to sound-like dad &#8220;you&#8217;re fired&#8221;), the last win in (Joe beating Zayn) and the last word in (hubby Trips saying &#8220;have a nice day!&#8221;) She remains the biggest obstacle in my mainstream wrestling enjoyment, and she doesn&#8217;t even wrestle.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bray Wyatt:<\/strong> WWE Champion or over-the-top cult leader who&#8217;s really bad at pig latin? I&#8217;m leaning more towards the latter. His culminating feud with Randy Orton has been just awful &#8211; it reminds me of the poor build-up that they had between C.M. Punk and Taker for WrestleMania 29 (you know, where Punk had Paul Bearer&#8217;s ashes), only with less personality and more of me not caring. I will not follow any buzzards of any kind.<\/p><div id=\"pwtor-99334432\" 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>See you after the Thrill Ride for a &#8220;Rising Star Fading Star of WrestleMania&#8221; (remember to bring your dramamine).<\/p>\n<p><strong>NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK&#8217;S ARTICLE:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/03\/19\/rising-star-falling-star-mick-foley-seth-rollins-bray-wyatt-alexa-bliss-dana-brooke-american-alpha\/\">RISING STAR &amp; FALLING STAR: Mick Foley, Seth Rollins, Bray Wyatt, Alexa Bliss, Dana Brooke, American Alpha<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Follow Dominic Twitter @DominicDeAngelo where he says he tries to keep kayfabe.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-1521121257\"><div id=\"pwtor-1308214158\"><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: Xavier Woods By all accounts, Xavier Woods should have been flying high on the &#8220;Fading Star&#8221; ship for weeks to come, but with a couple of seconds worth of awkward <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/03\/26\/rising-star-fading-star-xavier-woods-bayley-samoa-joe-american-alpha-stephanie-mcmahon-bray-wyatt\/\" title=\"RISING STAR &#038; FADING STAR: Xavier Woods, Bayley, Samoa Joe, American Alpha, Stephanie McMahon, Bray Wyatt\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39134,"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":[52,4309,27],"tags":[1790,127,75,125,250,323],"class_list":["post-40437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opnionandanalysis","category-rising-star-fading-star","category-specialists","tag-american-alpha","tag-bayley","tag-bray-wyatt","tag-samoa-joe","tag-stephanie-mcmahon","tag-xavier-woods"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/post\/2017\/02\/WoodsXavierNewDay_WK3x2_600.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40437","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=40437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40438,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40437\/revisions\/40438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}