Seabs

Taking Mania off PPV was definitely a mistake. I guess they brought into the notion that PPV was dead and last year proved that wrong. As did the pre network buyrates for Mania. Even if you didn't offer Mania on the network I doubt people would unsubscribe for that month. You still get a TakeOver, Hall of Fame and all the archive and they could add some extra original content that month. If people are just letting their sub run month to month they won't cancel for that one month. The only people who would are the ones only subscribing for Mania who would pay the PPV price as they were beforehand. Or they watch it through other means and WWE get no revenue which they don't anyway because if you only want to subscribe fot Mania month you'd have to be pretty useless with technology to not get the free month, even without having to make a new account. Mania's huge and imo it'd still be doing around a million buys every year on PPV. If people want to see something then they'll still pay for it and for as much as WWE's popularity is dwindling, Mania is still watched by everyone. Plus the Mania cards they've done since have been strong from a star power perspective. I mean if they have Brock/Roman, Cena/Taker and Rousey's debut this year there's no way you're not talking 1m+ and I bet the Network number would remain at least above 1m too. That's a lot of extra revenue that they're giving up. Don't think you could put Rumble or Summerslam on PPV without defining down the network and then really risking losing month to month subscriptions but for just one month that would be loaded up with plenty of other network content I can't buy WWE not making a lot lot more money that way. But I don't think they were confident enough in the network taking off without making it such terrific value and launching it with Mania for $9.99.

Gargano's a lot lot better in NXT than he was before NXT and it's all character work. He isn't really doing much different ring work wise but the difference is that he got himself over as a personality and not just dude having good to great matches. The DIY team were never supposed to be pushed hard but they got over above their push and unlike on the main roster they ran with it and it just turned into a steamroller of momentum. A lot of the credit really should go to The Revival because that was what took them from a team of Indy guys that everyone liked because they were good wrestlers to white hot babyfaces.

Like 2/3 weeks since Enzo got fired and they switched back to a format more like the CWC and away from all the bad soap opera arcs. The platform isn't going to make any of them stars, especially when they're isolated on their own island away from all the actual stars so they may as well just let them go out and have great matches with a little promo time here and there. There's definitely been a switch to a more wrestling focused product post Enzo.

It'll never happen but I don't think Ronda should ever speak. Or at least very rarely and not for a long time. Her glare does more than words ever can for her. I don't think I'd even give her a mouthpiece but if I had to Heyman would be the only guy. Sure his material with Brock can be repetitive but when it's not he still knocks it out the park like nobody else in that role can. The thing with Ronda is you want her away from any pro wrestling traits and any other manager is a pro wrestling manager. But they ruined all that on Day 1 with the pointing to the Mania sign so whatever. They'll obviously book her strong but like with Brock they won't capture that true outsider force everyone bar the real heroes want to avoid. And she sure as shit shouldn't be working traditional style matches but aside from some early squashes I bet she does that too.

Charlotte's not half as good as a babyface but in her defence she's been given nothing booking wise and barely any half decent opponents let alone singles matches. She had the best match with Naomi she's ever had when she first moved over though. But after that she's been just another woman in multi person matches and had a couple of matches with Natalya ruined by trash booking. Even now she's an afterthought on the show. I know she doesn't have a match to promote but at least Alexa is doing something on Raw and building to the Asuka match.

Rather than the obvious route of Ciampa costing Gargano it'd be so much better and refreshing if Ciampa costs Almas to get the belt on Gargano to fuck with his head and worm his way into a title shot. Also means you could do a 3 way Mania weekend before Almas moves up and you haven't used up a Gargano/Ciampa match going into the next post call ups slump.

The women are nowhere ready to be main eventing a Summerslam let alone a Mania. I'm all for the women being treated with more respect and being given more opportunities but the reality is no women's match is strong enough to main event. A match like Sasha/Charlotte is fine for a regular PPV without a hot world title match but that's not going to happen on a big show. Ronda is a big enough star but she's never wrestler a match in her life and having the women main event Mania in a ** match does way more bad than good for them. I'm all for it if they earn but they're not even close to earning it. None of them are over enough to warrant top billing over guys like Roman and Brock or even AJ. If something gets as hot as Sasha/Bayley in NXT then fine but none of the women are anywhere close to that level of overness. Everything the women earned in NXT was organic and is why it got over so well. Everything on the main roster has been fake and forced pat ourselves on the back and give Steph all the credit shit. I think the women's rumble is going to badly expose just how far the division as a whole has to come, especially in terms of in ring ability. Charlotte, Asuka and Sasha are great and Bayley and Becky are good but everyone else just aren't lose to the level they're being pushed at. Nia's better than she gets credit for but her and Alexa generally can't match the standards of men's midcard matches. Natalya's ratio of bad matches is pretty shocking given her technical ability. And then the Carmella's, Naomi's, Mandy's and Liv's of the roster just aren't very good. Add in all the cameo's and you're going to end up with a good 60-80% of the match being below average workers that aren't even all that over. So I expect Sasha and/or Becky to be in for a long night. I'm not expecting it to be goos but hopefully with all the vacant entry spots it's going to be fun and might end up beating the men's match just for pure drama and unpredictability, especially if Ronda shows up. The men's match I can't believe how little excitement I have for it. Don't see any random cameos after the last few years and how many the other match will have, most of the guys in it are blah and there's no potentially exciting winners. It seems a 3 horse race between Nakamura, Reigns and Cena and none of them and what they'll setup are exciting.

It'll be interesting to see how Dave reports the Enzo rape allegations in wake of the Elgin news. He's probably best not sharing much of an opinion on it knowing that it will probably be well girls can be crazy and it's only her word for it which is weak evidence. Which is a fair argument but Dave isn't nuanced enough with his choice of words to be the one making it unfortunately. That said, Twitter just isn't the channel to put forward such serious accusations regardless. It's also a concerning culture that anyone can go on Twitter, acuse a celebrity of rape without fair evidence and in an instant that guy is branded a rapist worldwide with his reputation in taters. Obviously if true then fuck him but it seems like everyone has already decided he's guilty which at this stage based purely off her tweet is indicative of a potentially very worrying culture. Thinking about it now I think Dave's business may funnily enough be like WWE's in the sense that it will be what it is no matter how much he trolls and annoys his audience base barring doing something catastrophic.

If you try the impossible task of thinking how Vince would think then I could see him thinking well if Bryan wants to wrestle somewhere else next year then let's try to kill as much of his star power as we can while he's still under contract to us and that would in his mind theoretically be done by turning him heel and trying to turn fans against him. Of course that won't happen in any scenario at this stage let alone leading a Steenerico charge against any McMahon, even Shane.

Man even with a great limb work segment it's just so hard for me to get invested in anything that Malenko does. The leg work is good though and Scotty does a good job selling during the workover, it just needs Malenko to bring something more to the table in the personality/charisma department. Was a shame that they really blew the leg work off after spending so much time on it. I'm fine shrugging it off to do The Worm because it's The Worm and anyone who says it's a stupid spot is wrong because just listen to the reaction for it but they did too much stuff after where the leg work was totally neglected. Great finish though. At the time you probably see this and expect nothing and when you get this it's considered really great because it surpasses expectations by so much but since then it's kind of taken a life of it's own and that surpassing expectations thing is no longer there so when you go into it expecting something ranging from really good to great it's almost somewhat underwhelming.

Cool novelty match but not actually all that good. Given the circumstances I thought Shawn looked good. Shawn working most of the match on top made sense as this is essentially come and see Shawn work a match in his own promotion that you never thought you'd see. I agree it had a nice mid 80s Bill Watts feel to it. Venom didn't look good. The big table bump off the stage should have been the finish. The spot itself almost looked scary when it looked like Venom wasn't going to rotate in time. Both of them wandering back to the ring and completely brushing the spot off was frustrating. Shooter Schulz with an all time great run in. I could see before he even went for the first t-bone that he'd struggle to break the table. Laws of gravity exist in Texas too. Just nowhere near enough drop time. So of course he goes for it again. Totally agree that this should have ended on the stage with Shawn delivering Sweet Chin Music to kick Venom off the stage through the table.

Unless you're a big fan of Santo or just really want to see the novelty of Santo working a small Indy show I can't see much that you'd enjoy about this. Santo looked good but Quack didn't. Obligatory fuck Quack. The pre match stuff was really cringey. The authority guy coming out to No Chance In Hell was one of the cringiest low rent things I've ever seen on an Indy show and the bar is set really low for that. That botched dive by Quack looked brutal. Time limit finish was awful. Not so much in practice but definitely in that it came before the match even got going. After 30 or even 20 minutes of a match that was reaching its crescendo it'd make sense but this came after the opening stanza was done and just as the middle section was getting under way. Made me wonder if it was an audible because Quack was really hurt off that dive. That was my first instinct anyway because he really did nothing after hey got back in the ring. If I went to the show to see a Santo match then I'd be really let down if I only got the first 15 minutes of a 20-30 minute Santo match.

This felt a lot more grounded than the usual Toryumon tags. Not better so much but different and different is good. The more methodical pace allowed for Crazy Max to put in stronger heel performances than usual. I wouldn't say that anyone individually stood out in this with a great performance but everyone was good. They can't go all out all the time but this served well as a between big shows match to keep the rivalry going while delivering another good match.

Pretty nothing match which didn't have the time to develop into something as good as the cage match. The ending was really weird. First of I have no idea what Spanky aas supposed to be doing but it surely couldn't have been dancing in front of the ref like the announcer was claiming. Or maybe it was because I can't come up with a better explanation. Initially I thought this was Spanky turning heel, especially when he started taking Dragon's mask off for him was douche mode turned up to the highest degree. And then Danielson attacked Spanky but it was called as him turning heel when really it was hard to blame him because Spanky was being a total knobhead and frankly deserved it. But it was certainly a heelish attack. Nothing match and a bad ending.

Super fun 5 minute sprint here really put over to a higher level by a super hot crowd. In front of a dead crowd something like this would be totally forgettable but an invested crowd is really essential for a match like this and it's not always a given. Marvin is always tons and tons of fun even this early on. Maybe more so this early on actually.

2000 AJ continues to unimpress me. That smoothness and crispness isn't there yet and there's consistently spots that look rough. By the time he gets to his WCW cameo he looks a lot smoother and by 2002 he's great so he clearly improves quickly. I really disliked how they made bumping off the ladder feel like absolutely nothing here. AJ especially would bump off the ladder to the mat and sell it like he was selling a regular back drop. Overbooking at the end didn't help anything but I had lost most of my interest in the match by then anyway.

About as good as this could possibly be for a five minute match in this setting. Regal's character work is great in giving the match more substance than just spots. He helps keep Reckless more grounded and Youth working more on the mat than in the air benefited him too. Of course with Regal compared to everyone else he was working with in Memphis during this run obviously makes a big difference. Regal's dismissal of the post match was an awesome heel spot.

It's been reported as viral meningitis and Bray and JoJo are being kept at home as a precaution in case they've contacted it too. Take it with a pinch of salt because who knows but it's better than the fears where my mind was running to when there was nothing at all being reported.

This was far from flawless but none of the TWA stuff so far has been. What it is however is always very easy to watch. What I really liked about this was how it came off as two teams that really disliked each other rather than two teams working a match thanks to the manic pace and the wild spots. Spanky continues to take nutty bumps on his head that make you wonder how his neck didn't break. BOE are goofy and some of their bumping against the cage is weird but I thought they were good flils here flr the two guys you're watching this for. Dragon takes a big bump with a cross body off the cage to the floor which very strangely turns into Dragon selling on the outside while Spanky gets worked over 2 on 1. I even had to rewind it after the match to check I didn't miss anything. Maybe Dragon was supposed to crash and burn but it didn't look that way. When he got back in though he looked great again. His elbow off the top looked awesome. Dragon gets his mask completely ripped in the middle and the resemblence to Bryan Danielson is uncanny.

The Murakami/Ishikawa exchanges in this were on fire. Murakami is such an awesome shitbag. He's the kind of fuy who'll go out on the town with and will start a fight with someone for no reason other than that's what he does at 1am and he fucking enjoys doing it. He just has such an awesome aura of danger anytime he's in the action coming across like he could easily just decide he's had enough and obliterate someone. To the point that you're actually expecting it in fact. Not that Otsuka and Sano were bad but there was a definite comedown whenever they were working rather than Ishikawa/Murakami. I was lowkey dreading this going 30 minutes but it was a breaze to watch and never dragged.

I skimmed through the thread before watching this so I was prepared for something great quality wise but I wasn't prepared for this type of match. Starts off slow but it's never dull. It's always building and you can feel it building. Murahama throwing in the pro wrestling shtick really helped put this over the top. I agree that the timing of the rounds hurt the flow of the match a little but not to the point that I'd call it a fault. The final 2 rounds though were awesome. They did an awesome job of creating the magic of an epic stand and bang slugfest in MMA. I just wish that they'd gone a little longer with the stand and bang at the end because it was that type of magic that is so hard to create. Great match.

Match of highs and lows. Bit dull in the begining but after Ki's brutally botched handspring kick it picked right up. The Asai Moonsault and the Table spot were really good. Mack selling his hand after each chop was a really sweet touch. Then they started losing me again by just kicking out of a daft amount of stuff. Once Ki kicked out of the top rope powerbomb I stopped caring. Then the powerbomb combo and the Greetings from Brooklyn were just the icing on the cake, not to mention after all that Ki getting Mack up for the Ki Crusher for the finish. Dull begining, really strong middle and then an overdone finish.

This was good but brought down so many tropes of a shoddy small Indy. The commentary was super amateurish, the crowd and the venue put a damper on the good ring work and did the opposite of putting the match over. The ring work itself was real good though. RNR were great in their heel roles and Rick Michaels did a really good sell job, it was just somewhat undermined at so many turns. Bad Attitude coming out to the MX music was really cringey too.