{Current Mood: Beat}
Hey there Pond People,
Last week was a very productive one that saw the Scummies push out five articles in four days. Quite possibly a PSS record.
It’s now time to continue another week of sports blogging, reality and fantasy, with some more fantasy wrestling content. Maybe I’ll even get a piece out this weekend sometime. o.0
Our friends over at realfantasywrestling.com have created something awesome with their salary-cap structured contests for Monday Night Raw as well as weekly contests for both Raw and Friday Night Smackdown. I’ve been working on creating a statistical database to help me push out fantasy wrestling content here at PSS as well as to help me set my own personal lineups.
Over the last week, I’ve been perusing the numbers and giving some thought to wrestlers to be featured in this, the first ever fantasy wrestling sleepers and busts article.
The purpose of this piece is to identify those value plays as well as wrestlers that may be overvalued, trying to use their potential to lure you into paying for them to get you three whole points. If you’re taking part in these games, you don’t need me to tell you to play the guys who have been big producers over the past few weeks. So don’t expect to hear anything about The Shield or the John Cenas and Daniel Bryans of the world.
These are people that I personally won’t be using, but only because I have my strategy somewhat set in stone for the time being. But if you’re looking for someone to plug into that final spot in your roster that has the boom or bust type potential to possibly lead you to a victory (one that I’m hopefully not on the losing end of), or looking to see whose trap you should avoid falling into, then keep on reading.
Note: These sleepers and busts can apply to both nightly and weekly games. Because even if you play them in a weekly game and they only wrestle on one of the shows, they can single-handedly either bring you to victory with a monstrous performance or sink your team right into the ground with a dud.
SLEEPERS
Damien Sandow – $10,150
I can’t tell if Sandow’s current rivalry with Sheamus is going to end up with them facing off at Payback or not. A lot of times, you’ll see these “TV rivalries” develop over the span of a few weeks and culminate with the wrestlers in question facing each other on Raw, lots of times on the Raw immediately preceding a PPV. It’s not confirmed that these guys are even facing each other tonight but, with Payback coming up in six days, tonight would be the ideal night to see them face each other in a match if there aren’t any plans for a PPV match to happen between them.
Sandow hasn’t been terribly consistent over the past few weeks but any time he faces Sheamus, it’s always a highly competitive match that always winds up being longer than you think it should be. And longer matches means more points for everyone involved.
And while Sheamus is the sixth most expensive RFW competitor at $12,825 (out of the 111 people you can currently choose from), Sandow, the 26th most expensive competitor, is $2,675 cheaper and should get you just as many points as Sheamus, even if he loses.
There’s always the potential for Sandow to either talk on the microphone, accompany Cody Rhodes to the ring for a match and/or do guest commentary, tag with Cody possibly against Orton and Sheamus (which I know just happened recently, but a return match isn’t out of the question), defeat Sheamus which would get him more points, or even all of the above.
I don’t necessarily like to spend money on guys who have tons of ‘potential’ but aren’t guaranteed to have a match because they’re not part of a major storyline. A feud with Sheamus, even if it’s short and doesn’t result in a PPV match, isn’t a major storyline but it’s one that has seen Sandow get some TV time and actually put up some points over the last few weeks.
Sandow is the least expensive of the sleeper options I’ll be mentioning here and, since this program hasn’t seen him and Sheamus face each other one-on-one yet, he’s a great, inexpensive-ish guy to take a flyer on tonight.
Big E Langston - $11,000
Large Edward has been putting up a good amount of double digit point performances lately and a lot of that has to do with the fact that he’s been facing Alberto Del Rio pretty consistently.
Usually I wouldn’t necessarily recommend using Large Edward because his matches with anyone not named Alberto Del Rio have been too short for him to record a decent amount of points. However, with the impending return of Dolph Ziggler, there’s potential for Large Edward to gain extra points tonight in a multitude of ways.
Potential extra points could come from accompanying Dolph to the ring if he winds up wrestling tonight, teaming with Dolph in a tag match, possibly hitting some extra people with a finisher because he’s Large Edward and he can do these sort of things, or all of the above.
Let’s just say they team together tonight. Theoretically, as Dolph’s bodyguard, you could see Large Edward get the majority of the ring time. This would be Dolph’s first match back from injury and you have to believe he’d looking to protect himself and his World Heavyweight Championship as much as possible, especially if there are plans for him to wrestle at Payback.
Plus, Large Edward's entrance is simple but awesome. Just thought I’d mention that.
Dolph Ziggler - $11,800
As the World Heavyweight Champion and the 18th most expensive RFW competitor, this will probably be the first and last time you see Ziggler’s name listed as a sleeper.
We all know how phenomenal of a wrestler and athlete he is. Hell, he’s single-handedly carried me to a number of top three finishes. Leaving him out of my lineups this week was not an easy thing to do because I know he could very likely turn in a 30-plus point performance tonight.
But just because he’s been medically cleared to compete doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to be competing before Payback. If there are plans to have him wrestle at the PPV, there’s a good chance that the higher-ups will want to protect the investment in their World Heavyweight Champion and keep him out of the ring until Sunday.
There’s still a 99% chance he appears on Raw tonight to speak his mind and a good chance he’ll wrestle and record yet another ho-hum 25-plus point night. This is the cheapest you’re probably going to get Ziggler at for a really long time and I urge you to take advantage of this. Just know that there’s also the possibility of the WWE being extra cautious with him, which could really kill your chances at victory this week.
BUSTS
Fandango - $11,125
Fandango used to be a guy I would always make sure to put in my lineups. When a guy comes in and gains as much momentum as Fandango has since debuting with a win over Chris Jericho at Wrestlemania, it would be stupid to not plug him into your plans.
Two big things are keeping me from putting Fandango in my lineups: 1) His price tag has jumped quite a lot since Wrestlemania. 2) I wouldn’t care as much about #1 if he hadn’t been spending the last few weeks getting himself counted out, ballroom dancing at ringside during his tag team matches, and basically just playing up his flamboyant persona in any way possible that keeps him from being in the ring too long to take too much punishment.
Even if he wins the Intercontinental Championship at Payback this Sunday, what’s to say we won’t see more of the same? ESPECIALLY if he’s holding a championship.
I’ll think about using him for my PPV lineup on Sunday because I, like the rest of the world, thinks he could very well wind up taking the I.C. strap but, unless he starts wrestling long enough matches to get me more than a single digit number of points at a clip, I’m staying away because his peripheral stats won’t be enough to make up for the potential lack of scoring you’ll get from him.
Wade Barrett - $12,000
Wade being listed as a bust for this week does not, in any way, mean that I think he’s the shits. I’m actually a huge fan of Wade, his wrestling ability, his style, and think he has what it takes to carry the company as a WWE Champion and main event player for a long time to come.
Unfortunately, the numbers he’s been putting up recently don’t really make me want to plug him into my lineup over anyone else I have in there at the moment. Especially since I’ve been burned quite a few times by him either not wrestling or putting up a single digit number of points.
He’s been very hit or miss over the last few weeks and it’s all, in my opinion, a matter of circumstance. When you know he’s going to have a match, he’s a great guy to plug in for at least a 20-spot. The problem is he hasn’t been wrestling consistently enough for me to recommend plugging him into your lineup, even in the midst of these rivalries he has going with The Miz and Fandango.
If he loses the I.C. strap on Sunday, I can see his price tag dropping quite a bit. If this happens, I feel he’s too good to not use as a value play if you can fit him into your roster. But again, if you don’t know that he’s going to have a match, this probably wouldn’t be the best course of action to take unless his price tag drops below $10,000. He’s too good for that to happen though. So wait it out when it comes to Wade.
Jack Swagger - $10,250
The fact that he just wrestled Alberto Del Rio at Extreme Rules in a match to determine the #1 contender for the World Heavyweight Championship and then wasn’t featured on TV at all last week when Payback is only six days away and there are currently only three matches signed makes me very, very hesitant to use Swags this week.
Even when I used him the last time he had a match of decent length, I only got 14.6 points out of him. His opponent, Randy Orton, had 39.2 points.
He’s definitely capable of putting up decent performances and point totals but I’m personally waiting for Swags to get his momentum back before I think about using him again.
LOOKING AHEAD
Zack Ryder - $6,400
There have been rumors of a repackaging of Zack Ryder’s character taking place in the near future. If/when this happens, I’m going to want to see what he does before I start ryding (see what I did there?) the potential hot hand.
Even if he goes on a Curtis Axel-like tear, are there any guarantees that he’ll put up the kind of point totals that Axel has been putting up? Are there any guarantees that he’d be getting to wrestle longer matches that could see him put up more than just a handful of points even in victory?
Nothing in wrestling is ever guaranteed, but I’ll be watching to see how this whole thing unfolds and waiting to pounce on Ryder if the situation calls for it (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING NOT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
A quick update on my status as the #1 ranked fantasy wrestling player.
Oh, I forgot, IN THE WORLD!!!
My head to head battle with The Joan for Weekly supremacy and bragging rights came down to who was going to score more points between JBL and Paul Heyman on Smackdown. Joan got a 9-spot out of JBL between TV time and talking points. Meanwhile, Paul Heyman got points for TV time, talking, accompanying Curtis Axel to the ring, and talking as a guest commentator, netting my Goatface Killa squad 13 points and a victory over Weed the People by the final score of 389.6 to 385.6.
A valiant effort from The Joan, but she’s going to get another chance this week when we go at it again. Only this time, we’re going to do it a little differently.
We are going to hold a draft.
That’s right. This will be the unofficial first ever fantasy wrestling draft. This will definitely ensure that we don’t have nine of the same 10 people on our rosters again this week. We’ll figure out all of the logistics later and keep everyone posted as to how we fare when we likely can’t lean on the guys we usually lean on when setting our rosters.
In other weekly RFW match-up news, my first place finish out of 20 people in a random weekly free-roll I entered brought my overall record on the week to 6-0. Six first place finishes in six games. My 381.3 was the winning score by a 23-point margin.
Finally, I finished second in The Ken Reedy Show's weekly free-roll behind my Wrestling on Fire broadcast partner, THE Kenjamin Reedy, and his 396.85 points. Only 7.25 points separated me from a seventh first place finish out of seven games I participated in last week (Thanks a lot for ruining my chance at a clean sweep Ken, you jerk). The Joan finished in third with 388.2 points.
Coming into tonight’s festivities, The Joan and I are still ranked #1 and #2 IN THE WORLD respectively. I improved my overall score to 2,335 and The Joan moved up to 1,436 points. I’m also up $19.46 thanks to my run of good fortune while The Joan finds herself up $1.07.
There are definitely some people, The Joan included, that I know I’m going to have to watch out for that could be gunning for my status as #1 ranked RFW player IN THE WORLD. Can the Goatface Killa prove that his run of success last week wasn’t a mirage? Or will a team like Weed the People, The CEO, TheGame316, or even a dark horse contender shoot their way up the rankings, like I did this past week, with a big performance?
Only time will tell, but if any of these people use my own sleepers to overtake me, I may have to quickly make this feature a thing of the past.
#KThanksBye
-Ray Ray Marz-
PS - No, I couldn't let The Joan have the title screen blog post for more than two hours :P
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