sek69

Having the point of Hunter's promo be that Seth needed the cheers of the crowd because he's insecure was so meta it made my head spin. Plus nothing makes folks want to sit through a three hour show like starting off with another long Steph browbeating segment.

I think in current WWE canon anything pre Full Sail was a different show than today's NXT.

It was, but I thought it was pretty good. Everyone's caught up in Hero's fatness and all but I thought it was one of the better NXT TV matches of late (which I know is kind of damning it with faint praise).

I don't know if it's too late to salvage him, but I'm enjoying Almas' heel character just being an asshole to random geeks backstage.

That's the funny part, WWE seems to live in constant fear that sponsors will find out about something non PG happening, yet that never actually seems to happen.

I would think WWE's big concern would be if the sponsors find out there's a leaked sex tape with 3 of their performers. Especially since Xavier is starting to get a lot of crossover appeal due to his gaming side hustle.

By the way, the latest Observer mentions that Bully is in fact helping out backstage/in the office and is expected to be more of a part time guy.

Even though the encounter was years before they met, I hope neither Brad or Xavier cross paths with Alberto any time soon. Dude beat the shit out of someone at a Mexican indy show just for bumping into Paige in a hallway, he's probably livid about this.

Dave seems confident thar Nakamura is coming up after Mania.

Garrett Kidney made a great point in the podcast/rant he did reviewing the Impact reboot mess. Heel Cody doesn't just play to the people in the back row, he's playing to the people 150 feet away from the entire arena. He's so over the top and cartoonish and without being surrounded by the other wacky parts of the WWE Cinematic Universe it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Kind of surprised it took this long for something like this, seems like a show parodying Southern rasslin' would be right up Vince's alley.

Cena-Taker was the original plan, hence the winky reference by Cena last week.

I'm probably getting my hopes up for nothing, but the "anyone can enter" SD women's match seems like a good way to debut Asuka on the main roster.

That's another issue, I could never buy Orton as subservient to Bray since he's been portrayed as a top level guy almost since day one and Wyatt's been beaten by everyone and lucked into the title thanks to a gimmick match. The other builds have been so much better it just makes the ridiculousness stand out even more. As much as I have zero need to see another Shane WM spotfest, the build up for it has been fantastic. Miz and Maryse dropping truth bombs while Cena/Nikki can only respond with variations of "NO, U" has been fantastic, Bryan's promo on how he wants to punch Miz in the face for constantly trolling him by shittily copying his moveset was fantastic, and then you have Randy out there saying he's taken Bray's magic powers away by burning the remains of his long dead sister. Every time he does a promo all I hear is "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other".

I am actually watching the shows, and them going from "I will never face you for the title" to "sike, it was just part of my evil plan" in like a week came off (to me) as them realizing they had less time to get to the end than they realized. I mean for those of us who knew that was the scheduled WM match it was fine, but I'd imagine it was a hard out of nowhere turn for those who don't follow the insider news.

There was also that weird time where Warrior abducted him and it was implied that.....things....were happening to him.

I'm hoping that something changed at the last minute, since it's really depressing to consider the long term payoff to the months long Orton-as-a-Wyatt angle was always meant to be "it was just my master plan all along to pretend to be subservient and give up my title shot for no reason then burn your house down". Because that was like some shit you see when the writer of a comic book gets fired/quits mid story arc.

Not hard to argue that even being in the role of solid worker herding the noobs in NXT would have been a step up over whatever the fuck the DCC gimmick was supposed to be.

ROH is also one of the shows on the Fight Network so Anthem basically fucked themselves by fucking with their PPV which completes the circle of dumbshittery.

Yeah, his reaction was more "I ain't got no fight with you" than fear, plus kayfabe wise he figured Taker was there to fuck up Roman which would be what Braun wants.

Also Dave has been really into watching the Friday night CMLL shows ever since someone made him aware of the stream.

"Fuck that owl" is a pretty good mic drop tho, have to give her that.

So there is a show on the Observer site that reviews 98 Raws, but nothing that reviews lucha or EVOLVE or other indies? On Tuesdays they review retro Raw and Nitro. They did review Lucha Underground when it was airing, and Dr. Lucha has a semi-regular slot on the Friday WOL shows. Dave does tend to go over the big indy shows when they happen.

I was actually starting to get into the storylines the last couple of weeks, but I have zero interest in watching this reboot.

Alvarez of all people made an excellent point on the last Bryan and Vinny show reviewing 98 Raw that one of the biggest reasons Austin vs McMahon was so huge is because he was doing to his boss what people watching wish they could do to theirs. Fans could live vicariously through Stone Cold giving his boss the finger, and Vince was great at being the perfect foil always willing to show ass for him. Now we have three hours of Steph browbeating the talent and constantly reminding them they can be fired at a moment's notice which will leave them homeless and destitute. Everyone cowers in fear of the boss, and no one in the audience that they are trying to cater to wants to see 3+ hours of bosses browbeating the talent. There's nothing for the fans to get behind, who wants to cheer for these milquetoast-ass mofos who get their balls handed to them on a regular basis?