NintendoLogic

The cage has a fire extinguisher attached to it? Are you fucking kidding me?

The referee looks like he could take both of these guys in a fight.

He grabbed his knee for a couple of seconds in between spots, so it's cool.

That was the second apron spot and we're still in the first fall.

It's nowhere near as bad as the Panama Sunrise.

Cosplaying as Wolverine. Truly the geek of all geeks.

Christ, this nightmare just won't end. I was a Shayna fan, but this interminable title reign has exposed how limited she is.

The crowd is dead for this match. I think Shayna's eternal title reign has killed the heat for her matches.

After Dream went crotch-first into the post, he said "In the home of the Raptors, nothing but nuts!"

Why does Dain have his fists taped if he didn't have a match scheduled?

Io is so much better as a heel, it's not even funny. Candice kicking out of the moonsault annoyed me, but they redeemed themselves with that submission finisher.

That's exactly why they should have Shayna drop the title and move her to the main roster. If need be, they can do it 70/80s WWF style and have her put over everyone she had beaten previously on the way out.

I'd mark out pretty hard if the first fall ended in like five minutes with a small package or something like that. Yim/Baszler is my sleeper pick for MOTN. They had a really good match on NXT earlier this year, and they should be able to build and expand upon it. More than anything, I hope the match marks the end of Shayna's strangehold on the belt. Moving her to the main roster makes sense because there's no one left on NXT for her to run through and Becky and Bayley both desperately need fresh challengers. Yim/Shirai would be a dope title feud even if Mia is just a transitional champion to move the belt to Io.

Shanya Baszler has some pretty cool ones as well. She wore a Bolt Thrower shirt earlier this year. And she was wearing a Bad Religion shirt when she knocked over Kairi's treasure chest last year. Anyway, the latest Observer contains the following tidbit: “Hobbs and Shaw” with Johnson and Jason Statham as stars was, by far, the top box office movie both U.S. and international this past weekend for its open. The movie did $60,038,950 in the U.S. and $119 million outside the U.S. It was No. 1 in 52 out of 63 countries that it was in. The movie did well, with it rated A- on average, with 90 percent positive reviews and drew a 58/42 male skew. The audience makeup across the board was right on target with The Fast & Furious movies. Six of the eight Fast & Furious movies had a better opening weekend. I saw the movie. It was a lot of fun because you know what to expect and that’s what it is. Reigns had a small role as one of Johnson’s brothers. He didn’t have any lines. He was listed as Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoai in the credits. One thing I saw, and everyone I spoke with who saw it mentioned the same thing was that when he was on the screen and delivered his Samoan drop and had a close-up, or even was shown, there was no reaction. Here’s the most pushed guy and considered top guy in the company. I’ve seen wrestlers with name recognition who have small parts in movies and there’s always a buzz when they are on the screen, even in a cameo. It really shows how far off the mainstream radar wrestling is to the non-wrestling audience WWE has moved heaven and earth to try to make Reigns a star and he's not even a blip on the pop culture radar screen. Meanwhile, when something they can't take complete credit for like the Yes chants breaks into the mainstream, they go out of their way to avoid acknowledging it. Their star-making process is fundamentally broken. But I'm not telling any of you anything you don't already know.

@Matt D This was a fun Young Lion scrap. For the most part, they kept things basic and chippy with a liberal dose of trash talk and cheap shots. Wrestlers working like they genuinely dislike each other goes a long way in enhancing my enjoyment of a match. Takaiwa yanking Nagata down by his hair and then stepping on his head was Finlay-esque, and I will never not enjoy the illegal man getting knocked off the apron. The main issue for me was the lack of a strong storyline hook. In a lot of junior and joshi tag matches, someone will get worked over, they'll make the hot tag, their partner will clean house, and then the match will essentially reset. The work in this match wasn't quite that egregious, but there was never a sense that a team was placed at a sustained disadvantage by a member getting beaten down, which is an essential element to generating drama in a tag match. Ohtani and Nagata did what they could by focusing on Takaiwa's leg, but he never showed the slightest inclination in selling any accumulated damage. In particular, Nagata kicking Takaiwa's leg out of his leg during a bridging pin attempt seemed to be an attempt to get him to start selling, but he never took the bait. In fact, the finish was almost lucha-esque with Takaiwa submitting immediately to a hold (Boston crab) that had no real connection to anything that had preceded it. But I can't be too hard on them since they weren't setting out to have a classic tag match. It was all about showing fighting spirit and demonstrating mastery of the basics (other than leg selling, I guess). At that, they succeeded.

Gotch's only contribution of note to the business was that "Simon Gotch buries Enzo Amore" clip that ended up in the recommended videos feed of seemingly everyone who ever watched anything wrestling-related on Youtube.

It looks like Chael Sonnen wasn't a fan of the show. He held up Hulk Hogan as an exemplar of realistic wrestling, so he has to be working us. I mean, he can't possibly be that stupid, right?

It's not like the date for Summerslam snuck up on them. There's no excuse for not having something planned out for them well in advance.

Roman/Bryan has been dropped from Summerslam according to PWInsider. So neither guy currently has a match scheduled for the second-biggest show of the year.

The Ki/Danielson series was the wellspring that pretty much every 2000s indy wrestler drew from to a degree. Trying to argue otherwise is pedantic hair-splitting. I wouldn't use that as the sole or even primary reason to favor Jumbo, but it's something I can't help but hold against Bryan in the back of my mind. Then again, I don't think Bryan's direct output holds a candle to Jumbo's. I mean, come on. People in this thread are trying to argue for the Miz feud, which was actively awful by any measure, as a point in Bryan's favor.

Consider this: the style Jumbo helped develop begat Misawa, Kawada, and Kobashi. The style Bryan helped develop begat Davey Richards and Seth Rollins.

Cena hand-picking Bryan was also lame, and I think it played a role in Bryan's drawing power not matching the reactions he received from live audiences. Granted, WWE did so many things booking-wise with Bryan in mid-to-late 2013 that would have sunk just about any other wrestler that it's hard to pick out any one for emphasis, but it seemed to be intended to establish him as a cut below the real stars.

Since when is it the champion's job to track down challengers for his belt? You come to the champ, the champ doesn't come to you.

I still don't understand what makes Seth so uniquely terrible as to warrant a thread specifically dedicated to dunking on him. Is it because his matches are built around action and movez at the expense of drama and storytelling? The same could be said of 95% of the roster. Is it because he's a company shill? Roman Reigns just gave an interview to ESPN throwing Moxley under the bus and defending the creative process that tried to turn his cancer into an angle. Is it because he's pushed beyond his capabilities? Trust me, you'd all be hating anyone else WWE put in his position just as much. Nobody gets ahead in the company without proving their absolute loyalty by debasing themselves the way Rollins has. WWE is the matador, Rollins is just the cape.

It wouldn't be pure lucha libre if it were loaded with AEW talent, which speaks to how poorly thought out AAA's promoting of the show has been. They scheduled it for Mexican Independence Day weekend with the idea of promoting authentic Mexican entertainment to Mexican tourists. But I figure most people who travel abroad aren't going to be particularly interested in checking out something they can see back home.