#PushAlexRiley

[ForzaItalia]

Remember this guy?

Yes, I do too. The last time we saw Riley was on Raw a couple of weeks getting squashed by Lord Tensai. Now before I get into Alex Riley, please take the time to watch this video from OffTheRopesShow, who started this movement. Please guys, no immature comments, just listen to what they have to say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcWq5-Q-e4Y&feature=g-user-u&context=G24dfa7bUCGXQYbcTJ33ZjLuxWnqlLmnNRdYnbhofpg6mBoZsyTMA

Now that you have watched that video you would know why this exact title needs to trend during Raw. Let's face it here, there are many new guys coming up from FCW and as we all know it's Spring Cleaning Time, where most of the lower-card guys are future endeavored. Sadly, Alex Riley could be at risk here and if he does get released, it would be a huge waste of potential talent. Alex Riley is a guy that was very over in the Summer from feuding with Miz and still to this day he gets a decent pop every time he comes out of the curtain even from not being on TV in such a long time. This guy had everything going for him, his music, his look, and his ability to even outshine The Miz sometimes.

Now, I understand why he was taken off TV. He was a little too green in the ring and seemed to have sandbagged Swagger's Gutwrench Powerbomb, which is the rumored reason why he was taken off TV and put in the doghouse. However, since then I can honestly say that Riley has gotten a lot better in the ring and seems to have learned to slow down a bit and is a lot less sloppy than he was in the Summer. He looked great in the match against Tensai and he has put on good matches on Superstars with guys like Drew McIntyre and Michael McGillicutty.

Alex Riley is a guy that could have been a huge babyface and he can still be huge. WWE needs baby faces that can get over and Alex Riley was getting over. He is exactly what WWE's mid-card desperately needs, solid babyface mid-carders. He got a huge ovation at the Royal Rumble when he entered second and for a second there I thought they were actually serious about pushing him again, until he was eliminated. All he needs is to be featured on Smackdown and re-enter a feud with Miz, which could benefit both guys at this point to be honest. OTRS has done this before with #SaveYoshiTatsu, which was somewhat of a success because Tatsu did get on TV and was trending worldwide over Lord Tensai.

So, before it is too late, I agree with OTRS and think we should show WWE that we do care about these guys not getting a shot like Hawkins, Reks, and McIntyre and give them that chance by making this trend. All you need to do is use #PushAlexRiley during your tweets on Raw tomorrow and that's it. If we can actually get this trending, we can save a career that is full of potential and one that hasn't been given the chance to show its true value to the company. Sorry if this is in the wrong section, feel free to move it. Thanks for listening.

 

[Fugazi]

I like Alex Riley. I think he has a bright future even. But I think he's a bit far off. If the WWE is censoring the YES chants from fans I really wonder if they would even note that #PushAlexRiley was trending. Riley will get there but theres not much of a place for him when you've got Santino as US champ and Show as IC champ. The only way I can see Riley getting a shot is if Rhodes gets back the IC belt and that means Riley gets thrown to smackdown, which wouldn't be bad. He's got a better chance there anyway.

 

[Steamboat Ricky]

Hey. Thanks for posting the weekly thread about this topic.

Alex Riley does NOT deserve a push. He was given one after Wrestlemania last year and it was a pretty big snooze fest. Let him establish himself on Superstars, then we can talk.

 

[Nate DaMac]

He's not talentless. That's about the long and short of it. There's no way I would consider putting forth the effort to make his name trend on Twitter during Raw. I don't think that he necessarily deserves that. What has he done to earn a push?

Besides, that's one of the lamest things I've ever heard.

 

[Parkur]

Riley did get a push, and while the crowd was kind of into him, it was only because he was feuding with miz, once he got away from miz, despite the fact that we went over in that feud, people pretty much stopped caring, maybe if he went back to his Varsity Villain gimmick he might have a shot, but Riley as he is now is barely lower mid card material

 

[ForzaItalia]

Hey. Thanks for posting the weekly thread about this topic.

Alex Riley does NOT deserve a push. He was given one after Wrestlemania last year and it was a pretty big snooze fest. Let him establish himself on Superstars, then we can talk.

I did not think his push was boring at all. He was going somewhere and seemed to be on the verge of capturing the United States Championship, but as I said when he sandbagged Swagger's finisher, that seemed to be the nail in the coffin that took him off TV. Since then he has improved a lot on Superstars and deserves to be given a shot to show his worth. You have your opinion, but Alex Riley getting released would be a huge waste of talent imo. He is exactly what the mid-card is lacking right now, babyfaces that are over. He is still over, Royal Rumble proved that and he needs to be put back on TV.

 

[SPFlickLS]

I like riley... at first, i liked his song, but then i figured it goes well with the guy. the feud he had with miz got him over with the fans. he was getting cheered so much everytime he came on that stage. I SAY THE WHOLE WWE UNIVERSE COOPERATE AND START "WE WANT RILEY" CHANTS. lets send the message to wwe! until they listen. the dude has potential and i once told a certain friend that riley could be the next cena lol... even though theyre around the same age.. i have hope for the guy. thumbs up and chant WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WANT RILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! come on vince!

 

[matty2thumbs]

ARy is without a doubt my LEAST fave superstar. I can't believe i just called him that. C'mon. He is terrible. There is not one thing good about him. Soooo uninteresting and not the least bit entertaining. I would rather watch paint dry. He shouldn't be on television, even as a jobber. His spot in the WWE should be carrying Heath Slater's gym bag.

 

[TempestH]

Alex Riley does deserve a push.

Lesnar's back and he can't feud with Cena forever. A-Train's back and he can't squash jobbers forever. Cesaro has debuted and Ambrose isn't far behind. But here's the thing, All these debuting guys are heels. The roster is so heel heavy with minimal faces to go against them. Alex Riley needs to be put back on TV and used for more than just squash matches. Guys like R-Truth and Kofi need to be used more. They need to stop burying Zack Ryder, so that these new heels can have people to feud with. Hell, Miz can't even get on TV anymore because he doesn't have a credible face to work against. Start building these guys back up.

I like Alex Riley. I think he has a bright future even. But I think he's a bit far off. If the WWE is censoring the YES chants from fans I really wonder if they would even note that #PushAlexRiley was trending. Riley will get there but theres not much of a place for him when you've got Santino as US champ and Show as IC champ. The only way I can see Riley getting a shot is if Rhodes gets back the IC belt and that means Riley gets thrown to smackdown, which wouldn't be bad. He's got a better chance there anyway.

Riley's been working house shows against Otunga, and I've heard that Otunga may take the title off of Santino soon. So I'm crossing my fingers that this may be Riley's shot.

 

[iwinulose]

Alex had so much potential and it will be a shame to see him future endeavored. Yes Alex was receiving pops during his feud with miz, but after the feud he lost all his steam. the crowds stopped caring. he doesn't get good pops, he isn't over. Plus as great an idea #PushAlexRiley is in theory, the wwe won't listen. they don't give a damn about the people, vince only cares about the green ($$$$ aka: money).

Telling people to not chant yes, taking signs from Ryder fans (before he got his push). They don't care. Ryder wasn't over with the crowd after he won the title due to lack of character development. He is getting buried. Daniel Bryan actually became incredibly over after he lost the whc (i just don't get wtf happened there, i swear i must have missed something somewhere), but he is still getting buried (unsuccessfully i might add).

I mean all we seem to have left is heels, no one is a face, the ratio is like 75/25 heels having 75. Now is the time to push new guys, 2012 is the year of new talent, yet all we seem to get is old talent. they won't build anyone (and yeah, alex has potential, wait here, POTENTIAL he could be a main eventer if everything went perfectly, but the wwe won't take a chance on him, they won't try, they won't have anything to do with it).

 

[Reflection]

Alex does not deserve to get future endeavored, but he doesn't exactly deserve an immediate push either. i feel he should be booked in some exhibition matches and see how he fares. he needs to show what he is capable of, before he is book ed in some major angle. p.s. everyday the internet fans comes up with one name or the other who they want to be pushed. riley, ryder, tatsu, kidd, hawkins, this guy, that guy.. if the wwe starts listening to the internet fans on whom to push, they are gonna have to do a royal rumble every month.

 

[silverbullet]

Alex riley was always annoying to me, they tried to give him more mic time, and his promos just came off awkward, maybe its just me, they where making everything riley said seem to hit home in his feud with the miz, when the miz killed him everytime he got a chance to talk over him, riley needs work before he is pushed any farther, although his entrance music is awesome.

 

[LeviCook]

Alex Riley is decent. He definitely deserves a better spot then where he's at. I think he would make a good mid carder. We saw him get that push when feuding with The Miz and looked like his career was gonna take off. Something about the guy makes him a good character. I really enjoyed him as a heel but i don't think there is anything wrong with him being face. To be completely honest he kind of reminds me of John Cena when he was younger. Hopefully during the draft we will see some changes.

 

[yoda's nose]

To put it simply, i do not buy Alex Riley.
Anything he has been involved in has led to me changing channels.
I do not believe he has "the look", he is just another orange, too into his looks, sappy looking so called superstar.
Alex riley would be the wrong way to go. In my opinion.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I haven't really seen Alex Riley do much of anything that warrants getting a push. He was given a slight push last year during his feud with The Miz and I think it was pretty evident that Riley is someone that just wasn't ready and didn't have the ability overall.

Riley is someone that got kind of a late start in wrestling. He's been in the business in total for less than 5 years and turns 31 years old in less than a week. There are guys on the WWE roster in the same age range like Dolph Ziggler, Sheamus, Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Randy Orton, John Cena, The Miz, etc. that have been in wrestling for at least a decade or longer. They have far more experience, they've demonstrated much more in the ways of overall ability and fans have gotten behind them. Even someone that's been in wrestling roughly the same length of time, like Kofi Kingston for instance, have just simply gotten over with the fans more than Riley had.

Plus, there's also the thing about Riley getting arrested for drunk driving last year, so that's also something that's put some doubt into the WWE brass' mind about Riley.

 

[BreezyDaProtege]

I have no idea where this love for Alex Riley has come from. He is bland and 10years ago he would of been a jobber...which it looks like he is on his way to becoming. A glorified jobber. Now maybe like someone said if they gave him his old varsity character he will go somewhere but as far as demanding Riley. NO!

 

[jrichardson25]

The guy has a great build but if he can't string moves together and give a half decent match he doesn't deserve a spot nor a push. If he stepped up his game and was packaged right he would be a decent US/IC Champion. He needs a gimmick he can feel comfortable in. He wasn't convincing against The Miz. He did quite well as a heel and should use that varsity villain/jock thing... That's what got him over before... just a thought.

 

[Mustang Sally]

So, before it is too late, I agree with OTRS and think we should show WWE that we do care about these guys not getting a shot like Hawkins, Reks, and McIntyre and give them that chance by making this trend.

You've made a good post that illustrates how it would be nice to be a fly on the wall at Creative meetings. Who knows why some guys have program after program written for them (like Cody Rhodes, Jack Swagger, Dolph Ziggler) while others look as if they're about to be launched, only to have the idea suddenly pulled or never started (like the guys you mentioned: Hawkins, Reks & McIntyre).

So, we occasionally see topics like this in which forum members question why the guy they like isn't getting any attention from Creative. We figure management must have something in mind, but their reasons for starting something and suddenly stopping are not only unknown to us, but you have to sometimes wonder if they know what they're doing. Do they measure the results of a push over a long period of time, or does someone get all bent out of shape in a couple of weeks and hit the abort button? How are these things determined?

Take the divas (please!) In the case of Kelly Kelly, she had a massive push which resulted in a championship reign that lasted months, which is really significant for the gals. Now, she's an also-ran. On the other side, you have Alicia Fox, who looked as if she was about to be pushed to the moon, winning a series of matches and being featured in the "bullying" ads and appearing in the opening montage of images on Smackdown. Then, suddenly, it's over. What happened? Did the whole Creative committee decide it wasn't working after 3 weeks? What gives?

Okay, now there's Alex Riley. Admittedly, I don't understand this one, because it looked as if they were making an instant star. One minute he's acting as a second for The Miz, who was in the midst of a monster push himself.....the next, Riley is openly opposing Miz and even winning a couple of matches from him. WWE management even arranged to ignore a DUI charge Riley was facing in the midst of all this, apparently willing to sacrifice their usual no-tolerance policy to continue Alex's push.

So, what happened? The OP suggests that management found Riley's ring repertoire to be too green for featured status. What, didn't they know that already? If someone in Creative decided Alex was ready for main event status and let him cut his teeth at the top of the card, did Creative heads roll when he turned out to be exactly what he is.....a rookie?

Obviously, WWE management isn't going to tell us what occurs at their top-level meetings; they just continue to give to some performers and take away from others. As for us, we'll continue to look at a favorite new performer and wonder why he's sitting in limbo while others are fixtures on TV. In Alex Riley's case, some will lament his stutter-start toward stardom.....while others wonder why he was given such favored treatment in the first place.

And so it goes.

 

[ultramattman]

I thought Riley did a really good job as Miz's sidekick during his championship run. For a minute there, it looked like his face turn was working like gangbusters, but it ran out of steam. Not sure why WWE abandoned Alex - I can't remember him doing ANYTHING after the Miz feud was over.

They should have turned him back heel once his face run petered out. He was effective as a cocky shit-talker. I can't really speak to his in-ring talents because I haven't seen him wrestle much in the last year.

 

[AwesomeRko]

I think Riley deserves better and should be at least for the moment a signifiant mid-card player. People have pointed out that the roster is extremely heel-heavy and nowhere more so than the upper mid-card, you have off the top of my head Christian, Miz, Kane, Rhodes, Ziggler, Swagger, Del-Rio, Otunga and Henry. By contrast there is Kingston, R-Truth, Santino, Clay, Ryder, Big Show and Khali to represnt the faces, a huge divergence in talent and fan-interest.

It's pretty much a necessity for WWE in my view to push more fresh young talent up the ranks who are capable of holding their own with guys like Miz and Ziggler. This would in my view make the mid-card a lot more interesting and prevent great talent like the Miz and Dolph Ziggler from stagnating between storylines as they are doing at the moment.

I think Alex Riley along with Johnny Curtis would fit the bill. Riley did very well in his fued with Miz in my book, as Miz's lackey he was everything he was supposed to be and really helped to further Miz's comedic presence. The promo he cut upon breaking away for Miz was in my book very, very good and demonstrated huge potential, it was charismtaic, well articulated and funny all at once. He was very over throughout the Miz fued and prior to it he was fairly regularly involved in almost constant tag-team type high card matches, continuing to garner a strong crowd response.

In my view he proved that he has the tools with that run and would certainly provide a more interesting opponent for a guy like Christian than the same old stuff Big Show or Kingston would bring to the table.

 

[TempestH]

I haven't really seen Alex Riley do much of anything that warrants getting a push. He was given a slight push last year during his feud with The Miz and I think it was pretty evident that Riley is someone that just wasn't ready and didn't have the ability overall.

Riley is someone that got kind of a late start in wrestling. He's been in the business in total for less than 5 years and turns 31 years old in less than a week. There are guys on the WWE roster in the same age range like Dolph Ziggler, Sheamus, Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Randy Orton, John Cena, The Miz, etc. that have been in wrestling for at least a decade or longer. They have far more experience, they've demonstrated much more in the ways of overall ability and fans have gotten behind them. Even someone that's been in wrestling roughly the same length of time, like Kofi Kingston for instance, have just simply gotten over with the fans more than Riley had.

Plus, there's also the thing about Riley getting arrested for drunk driving last year, so that's also something that's put some doubt into the WWE brass' mind about Riley.

Riley got the DUI long before his push, back when he was still with the Miz. And back then he was a practical non-entity who barely wrestled other than squash matches. He was just as much of a jobber when he was with the Miz as he is now.

Fans got behind Riley as well once he turned face. He just has this amazing charisma and he's more over than his current position in the WWE would have you believe. He might not be ready to be a world title contender, but his current talents do warrant more than what he's currently being given. He should at the very least be used the same way that guys like Zack Ryder (until the burial kicked in) and Kofi Kingston are, as a consistently appearing midcard face who jobs to main event heels in competitive efforts

Sure he got a late start, but others have started at much later ages with much success. Guys like Rico, MVP, and most notably DDP have entered the business at an advanced age with varying degrees of success.

 

[xavyer]

The WWE already drop the ball with a great talent like Sean o' Haire, now history is about to repeat it self in some way, Riley is good in the ring, ok, he may need more experience, but he's a guy that can only get better,and he's got the talent to make it if the WWE gives him a decent shot at it, he was geting a good push last year, but to be honest, i don't know what happened, maybe he rub Vince McMahon the wrong way or something because he went from maineventing a few RAW shows to the dog house, but if they would have continued with his push, he would probably be a big star by now, who knows, but i guess we will have to wait and see what hapens with Riley, i sure hope the guy gets an oportunity, or a good fued to start......

 

[It's...Baylariat!]

The Alex Riley thing looks to be heat generated if you ask me. Riley's reasonably over with the fans, his gimmick's not horrible, and he could have been a good contender to be United States champion.

What it also looks like is that whatever Miz touches turns to crap. Not saying Miz actually has anything to do with this de-push from Riley, but it's just a weird coincidence.

Riley could be pushed as a face once more I suppose, but it may be possible that a repackage would have to take place. Once you're buried under a certain character, it's tough to get that character back up and running like it used to be. See Zack Ryder for example.

I think it would be fine to push Riley, but I can also see why he's not being pushed. Creative has nothing for you... what are you going to do?!

 

[#heel420]

I've never invested in Riley he doesn't interest me. His feud with The Miz last year after Mania was mediocre at best, and he really hasn't done anything since than besides get squashed by Tensai.

 

[TempestH]

Speaking of Riley, with what he did on RAW tonight, would that be taken as a heel move, ratting out another face or should it just be assumed he was in on it from the beginning?

I assume that he was in on it from the beginning. If they really want to push Riley, they'll have Punk retain the title and then Jericho can go "I would be WWE Champion right now if it wasn't for Alex Riley" and start a feud from there.

I really hope they push Riley as a face. Doing it as a heel would be a waste considering how over the guy is with the live crowds.