WingedEagle

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.

Pretty sure pot is only a fine now and not an actual Wellness violation. Only the "fake pot" that idiots like Evan Bourne used is part of the Wellness Policy. Meltzer tweeted that synthetic pot is apparently a violation. True greens remain a fine.

Ambrose seemed slightly toned down on the mic this week. Slightly. Not quite the full on tweak parody he'd become, but further along that spectrum than I'd want from someone with the big belt. Overall thought he carried himself well and was presented in a much more legitimate fashion than I thought possible after the direction of his singles run going back for quite some time. Seems like the pops for Shane O Mac have fallen by the wayside. Very expected once the nostalgia wore off, but we're clearly in for a full serving going forward. I was really excited at the teased face turn for the Wyatts before they disappeared due to injury. Looked to be a fresh and necessary reboot of the act with a lot of potential. Unfortunately they seem to have returned in the exact same role, soon to be followed by the never-ending True Blood promos. And in a program with New Day. These TV segments will give me a lot of time to check in on other things or make phone calls. Matches have some potential if New Day doesn't play it for comedy, but not sure what the ceiling is if Strowman is heavily involved. Really dug AJ's mic work and the presentation of the Club this week. Hopefully they find a natural, compelling way to shift this to the top on Smackdown if that is indeed the plan. Loved Roman/Rollins once again. Not at the level of the PPV, but a really good match and interesting that they worked it with Roman as the babyface selling and getting cut off, which lo and behold even seemed to produce genuine babyface pops for his comebacks. Can't quite put my finger on it, but the way they teased and eventually arrived at the double countout just didn't feel right. Perhaps because they both looked to make it back right as the ref reached 10? May have worked better had they both been laid out on top of an imploded table for the entire count. Either way, really solid TV main event.

I assume this was known before MITB & Raw and that plans for Battleground were made with this in mind. But we shall see in the days and weeks ahead.

Watched the show last night. Cena/Styles was good but far from the MOTYC I wanted and talked myself into in advance. Cena looked a bit off in his return and the finish did them no favors, even if designed to extend the feud. They just didn't have a good rhythm most of the way and it felt like they were jumping from spot to spot without of a plan for tying them together. The stretch run was pretty hot and exciting and I even dug the near falls until the Club showed up. The ladder match was about as good as it could be at this stage in its lifeline. We've seen most of what can be done in this setting, but they found creative ways to let almost everyone shine, and between the Cesaro springboard and Owens suicide bump there were more than enough cool and fun moments to make this enjoyable. Just not sure there's any juice left for the match to steal the show as it might in earlier iterations. I loved almost everything about the main event. From a strong lockup to Reigns acting as a smug heel early on and Rollins delivering hot babyface comebacks to Reigns's power offense and ability to sell as a big without playing dead, this was fantastic most of the way. Then he takes out the barricade in a spot we've seen on multiple occasions, but with the added wrinkle of doctors coming out to sell some sort of injury. Which at no point looked like death. Then 2 delayed Pedigrees to finish him? Really don't understand that as it didn't seem to put him over as resilient before going down, nor Rollins as a killer. Why not have Ambrose cash in on Reigns and not paint the title with quite so stark a shade of hot potato? These 5 minute title reigns don't benefit anyone as far as I can tell, so very curious what the long-term plans may be for everyone involved coming out of this. Hoping they have something very big planned for Summerslam. They've put together some great three-ways over the last 2 years (Rumble '15 and Fastlane this year), so while I'm not exactly hot for this one, the potential is there and with the backstory you'd think it would headline a "big" show rather than build towards such a big show. On to Raw tonight and Dominion tomorrow!

So incredibly disappointed this is going up against game 7. Slight chance I decide to be dead tired tomorrow and watch this after the game, but odds are it gets pushed to tomorrow night and Raw to Tuesday.

This is definitely my biggest GWE takeaway. I've still got a ridiculously long playlist compiled during the process that I've barely scratched the surface on. Which is great.

Hopefully it is the end of his run in WWE. Been long overdue. Not a big believer that someone his age can change, but if he does have more time on his hands maybe he'll put it to good use. Or a least listen to Chris Rock when it comes to domestic matters.

This was very intense and pretty heated for the duration, however, it was under 5 minutes. Would love to see what they can put together over a 15+ minute match. Okabayashi looks fantastic every time I see him. Really need to dig deeper there as I've only seen a few touted matches but he seems right up my alley, moreso than Sekimoto. Could probably go about ***1/4 - ***1/2 given how long they went here.

Thanks, will check it out tonight or tomorrow.

Is this available online?

Thanks for the update. Will at least try to catch Eita/Susumu this weekend as time may make it difficult to check out the full show.