WingedEagle

Glad to hear there are steps to be taken and hopefully everything goes exactly as hoped for. Kick some ass and don't let the heat here get you down. You should be in great hands at MSK.

Ha that's pretty funny. Always appreciate him having a good time.

One thing that really stood out was how awful and cringeworthy the forced nicknames came off when announcing picks. Unclear if the goal they're tone deaf to it or not, but they don't evoke any kind of babyface or heel reaction in that context. Its just embarrassing. Probably a lot more optimistic about Gable & Jordan on the main roster than I should be based on precedent, but they look to only have one team (Usos) to even work with on Smackdown. That can always change and some new pairings may develop, but initially it looks like a large handicap.

Haven't had time to digest the rosters, but I was always content with the proposed Rolins/Reigns and AJ/Cena headline acts. Some really interesting potential with women on the Raw side as I've become a big Nia Jax fan. Biggest takeaway thus far is the huge improvement in announcing. Graves for JBL and JBL for Lawler should make both shows much better as long as Vince stays away from Graves's earpiece.

It'd be a phenomenal Network special, but seeing as how the entire driving force behind the draft / brand split and Smackdown Live is to build television ratings it just wasn't in the cards.

The first half of this was perfectly competent and solid, but really didn't rise above that at all and you very much had the sense that they were going through the motions to fill in the allotted time. Then comes the back half with a finishing stretch where before you blink the big moves and near falls enter the picture, but more importantly, the pacing and selling accompany them so that almost everything has time to register and matter. I don't know that I've watched more than a handful of joshi from this decade, but if there's more out there along these lines I'll need to catch up. Shirai brought the flash but Satomura held it together and lived up to some of the praise I've seen thrown her way. They really worked one hell of a finishing stretch. ****1/4

If Reigns turned heel tomorrow would he immediately get the babyface pop they're seeking?

Final Deletion also wasn't presented to be good. Fun, yes, but not a sophisticated wrestling angle or production. Clearly designed to be fun with a whole lot of over the top tongue in cheek humor. For those purposes it seemed fine. The Wyatt/New Day bit seemed to take itself a whole lot more seriously.

I love when people bring this up for New Japan yet ignore that's pretty much how Inoki managed to become a bigger star than Baba and New Japan bigger than All Japan in the first place Sometimes it works too. Takayama became a far bigger star due to his PRIDE fights despite not winning a single one. Not exactly comparable to WWE for many reasons -- the culture of the countries, the respective performances of the wrestlers in shoots, nevermind that Inoki's weren't really shoots. Were any other than the Ali fight?

Well, I mean they could bring up Samoa Joe as a worldbeater with an undefeated streak and pay known tough guys to do jobs for him all the way to Mania, but no way do they do it. Exactly. It'd arguably stand as good a chance as any of working, but they should really decide in the next month or 2 who that guy is and run with it. Whether its Reigns, Ambrose, AJ, Cass, Balor, Joe or whomever. The key is to commit to that individual scoring a decisive win on the biggest possible stage and building to it as an historical event.

He really should go into Mania as champ with a goal of making someone in dropping the belt that night. Not even sure at this point who the options are that haven't been tainted and are young enough that WWE would consider them, but it almost doesn't matter. They just need to try with someone and build that person from now until then with that goal in mind.

Dunno, based on the post-fight press conference keeping him out of the title scene seems like a good idea for now given that there looks like to be a good chance of him wanting to fight again and trying to restart his MMA career. He can want whatever he wants, but he's not fighting in UFC without Vince's approval for a couple more years.

Still don't get the upside to announcing an Orton match prior to this fight. Depending on the outcome, perhaps its a matchup with booking possibilities that make sense thic oming Monday or Thursday. But prior to tonight? I'm an unabashed Brock mark and still looking forward to the match because its Brock and his matches are always fun. But this one feels ridiculously cold from the jump and I'm not sure how you heat it up as a program, even if they bring in Brock as an even bigger attraction following tonight.

Aldo is a one ridiculous fighter. But that fight very quickly became a bathroom break / go say hi to the wife opportunity.

Very much watching. Always have a couple friends over big shows and this lineup is stacked. Everything on the main show is arguably a semi-main on most shows. Totally stoked for this show.

This. I'm all about basically every single Brock match. Whether its the Houston house show against Sheamus or MSG against Big Show, two members of the roster I'd rather see disappear. Why not create an issue with him and Orton, or somehow try and build up Orton before throwing this together out of nowhere? Turns out I'm going to be away on vacation during Summerslam (and unfortunately for Takeover and Connor/Diaz 2), but I'm still a Brock mark so its interesting. But every single outing of his should be a marquee, WWE-ized Mayweather event and instead its just not. It'll likely be a very good, and potentially great, match. But why not maximize the box office and intrigue?

Of course, you didn't even get to the daughters. Or sons. Or surgeries. The free agent sprees. The stadium. Amazing. I love it.

Wow. Amazing. Can't believe I haven't seen that before.

The Cruiserweight Classic bracketology show is outstanding. I have no reason to care about most of these names, and while many aren't even focused on for more than 60 seconds, I'm more invested in this than almost anything on Raw. Between this and the 24/7 specials you wonder what options they have for Raw/Smackdown. You can't just abandon the live event format and give up on those weekly gates, but devoting an hour, for the sake of discussion, each week to this kind of format would go do wonders for for ingraining personalities and characters on the audience, and consequently the matches that follow as well. I don't think you even necessarily need monumental creative for this. Just put together a WWE version of your NFL/NBA studio show + Hard Knocks. You could mix in house show footage, catch wrestlers coming to/from the arenas, basically copy much of what you see from sports. Then again, perhaps that's the problem.

Finished it this morning and it was an incredible. Harrowing and fascinating. For those that think they don't want to ever see or hear anything Benoit-related, that's me. No interest in looking back on the Observers or anything else written about the tragedy. Zero need to watch any matches or think about this story at all. That being said, this offers a unique perspective that is worth hearing.

How was the close of King of Gate? Anything I need to check out from the end of the series?

Definitely interesting how they weaved the suspension into the storyline. It makes sense given he's still pushed as part of the PPV main event, but I wouldn't have necessarily expected it. It remains to be seen how this impacts the type of crowd response he sees going foward and whether they tweak his role because of it. Am I the only one who found Cena/Rollins and AJ/Ambrose underwhelming? When those matches were announced I was pretty hyped for them but thought the former was by far the worst of their pairings to date without much flow before the predictable finish, while Ambrose seemed to gel less with AJ than even Jericho did. Not sure what was in the water in Tampa last night.

Has anyone actually said that? No.