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Starting off with a bang as usual with Claudio time.

Also saw it noted that she's the first 4th generation wrestler in WWE, which is kind of wild when you think of all the famous families that have passed through.

I'm sure Hunter is way more aware of New Japan than Vince was, but I don't see him going out of his way to try to screw with them by intentionally double booking.

I know there's 0% chance it was done intentionally, but WWE double booking Karl Anderson after NJPW already announced the match where he was going to drop the Never title pretty much eliminates any WWE/NJPW partnership idea for a long time. Japanese companies don't forget shit like that. The fact that they felt the need to put out a statement making it clear that they did in fact clear his booking beforehand and that the title will be vacated if they don't show up says it all. That's pretty much the clearest way they can say "fuck you".

Well bringing in the Rock's daughter as part of the Schism was a surprise.

As someone who enjoys watching all four people involved (I even bought a CM Punk shirt when AEW released it), it'd rather have one of the four missing from the company as opposed to three. Just looking it from a math perspective. Ironic in retrospect that the thing that turned him into a hero to the masses (WWE's medical treatment of him) might have been the only time where he wasn't in a situation he caused himself. Also, if nothing else Punk deserves to be rocketed into the Sun just for his comments at the press conference alone. I know Tony sat there like a lump when it happened and that's on him, but there's absolutely no way you can keep someone who just took a giant shit on your company publicly like that.

I wonder if the Saudis dictate when these shows take place, since it's odd to have one (that by their nature they have to treat like a Big Deal) right before one of their traditional big PPVs.

Or......and hear me out here, he's still the same grumbling irritant he's always been and what flew in the past doesn't really fly today. No matter how much you might side with team Punk, choosing one guy who despite being your top draw is rapidly falling apart physically on top of everything else, would be the worst business move. As was stated before, if nothing happened after the show he still would have been gone for over half a year. Who's to say Tony just saw Punk as a sunk cost and decided to cut bait instead of running the risk of perhaps multiple people getting fed up and leaving. What's was the best possible outcome for this Punk run realistically? Maybe another year of him being the top guy before he either is forced to retire due to injury or at best a John Cena occasional appearance role? If he was causing discord in the locker room I'd take the short term hit over alienating guys that could be your foundation for the next 10+ years.

Interesting choice to have the return of Crazy Nikki Cross as your show ending angle.

I think there's real possibilities in using JBL as a mouthpiece to get someone over, but wasting it on Bum Ass Corbin ain't it.

I really want WWE Network to do some kind of MTV Cribs style show just so we can see their closet situation.

Does Becky know Seth raided her closet?

Bayley knocking over the camera before (presumably) the beatdown was a nice touch.

Miz's shoulder is being held together with duct tape and hope, so I assume this was just something easy for him to do.

There's something comforting in all the uncertainty in the world that R-Truth will still be appearing on Raw for the next 20 years (and still not age a day).

Yep, they play in the USL Championship which is one level below MLS. Funny thing, even though US sports don't do promotion/regulation, there's been more than a few teams that moved up to MLS so in a way it does kind of exist. I know the Riverhounds stadium that currently seats 5,000 is built to be able to upgrade to like 18,000 with the eye of moving up to MLS at some point in the future.

Yeah I'm not saying he doesn't have charisma, but I just think what he does have isn't a fit in WWE.

For the first time ever in Pittsburgh the local (world) football team is better than the (American) football team. The Riverhounds won a playoff game and the Steelers are trying to let their offensive coordinator murder the career of a young QB in the crib.

I pretty much agree with brother @C.S. on all but a few (minor) points: While it does certainly appear that the next time someone asks Cody to reveal the reason he left he can just sorta just gesticulate wildly in the direction of that whole mess, I don't really think that his departure was as bad of a blow as a lot of us feared it could be. Obviously is not great to hand your competition one of your top guys on a platter and let them do a victory lap on you, but Cody's situation was just as untenable on screen as it apparently was backstage. He very clearly had a path he wanted his character to go and he didn't give a shit if the fans wanted to go that way or not. Neither side being willing to give in led to all his segments living in their own reality, so it can be argued that it actually helped the show in the sense of they no longer had to deal with having to fit weird Codyverse segments into the show every week. Hell I'd even argue he probably wasn't the backstage spy WWE might have thought he could be either. By the time he left, Cody was so removed from what everyone else's ideas were the only thing WWE could have learned from him is what bank AEW uses for their payroll. I do, because it's 100% how Danielson wants it. He did the same thing in WWE too, he's made it abundantly clear that he feels at this point his best use is to get as many people over as he can. I seem to recall their being stores of when Bryan was wanting to put over guys like Gulak, even Vince at one point was like "Really?"

Ilja is great in ring but that won't cut it in big boy WWE if he doesn't find something to click personality-wise/

Man they REALLY need to not have Booker commentating on Quincy Elliott

Man they got a money feud whenever they want waiting for them, just have Miz point out to Cody he's made a career out of making his sidekicks look like stars.

It's probably fun to have a match like this with Roxanne, she's small and tossable enough for all kinds of cool ideas.

It was pretty damn good.

This DOES actually make sense because WWE has long established you need to put them in a coffin *and* close the lid in Coffin Matches, but the announcers aren't saying that and it's making everyone look dumb.