Seabs

It's a lot more WWE can't book a babyface to save their lives and miscast so many popular acts as heels. I think there's something to that with Roman at the minute but that's only because they've failed so bad trying to make him the universally liked babyface. Or what I think is happening and they're very cleverly setting up for him turn to heel. But even typing that feels like giving them too much credit on current form.

Lots of money, a good (not great) TV deal and a booker who can present acts as must see attractions before anything else. It's not impossible but it's whatever comes before it. Someone might come in with the money to make it work but then the chances of them getting good TV is slim and even if you get both of them there's barely any talent that would have great mainstream appeal and draw the audience numbers required to maintain a good TV deal which in other words means drawing outside of the audience pool who watch wrestling for good wrestling. The investor would likely also have to be somewhat of a recognisable name in order to attract interest of the right people.

Cass/Rusev was really weird. Cass has this perception of being great as a part of Enzo’s act but nobody really either wants to see him pushed as a singles guy or thinks he can work a singles match. So naturally in his first big singles match they book a DUD of a match that gets going in a literal sense but never actually has chance to actually get going. New Day tag was really good. Could have been great if they actually sold the stories they were telling though. They have Cesaro start off hot from the get go and New Day for once are really on the backfoot and Cole and co are just calling the moves and talking about how great Cesaro looks rather than selling that this is the most vulnerable New Day have looked this early into a match. They even could have brought up the fact that New Day got caught off guard and conceded a quick fall the previous month at Survivor Series. So they work Kofi over for an extended period and Big E’s on the floor unable to tag in for a couple of spots and then he finally does make the tag and he works the exact same hot tag that he would have done had he been waiting ready on the apron for the entire time. On the plus side he managed to do that spear to the outside without it looking like death for him. Match develops into a really fun sprint at the end. Not this match but Cesaro had an all time great hot tag in the 3 way on the Raw before this show. Cesaro’s pretty good at this wrestling lark. I still can’t believe that we haven’t had a year yet of Cesaro just being given opponent after opponent in the midcard to have truly great matches with. Every year has felt like him having a great in ring year despite only being given the freedom to have a good year. Everyone seems to think that New Day are suddenly working like heels again with the Woods spots but they never stopped the 3rd man heel shtick when they turned babyface. That’s who they are and I actually like that they never dropped it. Just because they’re faces now doesn’t mean that they’re different characters. The babyfaces that don’t completely play by the rules and use that to beat the heels at their own game because they’re better at said game than the heels are is a good babyface act but it’s backfiring atm because they’re doing it on very popular babyface Cesaro. The finish was excellent on paper but it only came across good on TV because once again they didn’t sell the story of it. They just did it and then both teams reacted to the finish and not the spot. The announcers too. Isn’t it common sense for Cesaro and Sheamus to point out their brilliance of outsmarting the team who always outsmart their opponents including Cesaro and Sheamus multiple teams to keep the belts from them. That spot is about that moment not Cesaro celebrating in the crowd and Sheamus celebrating on his own. Instead of it coming off as a moment of brilliance from a reluctant but now well functioning team, it came off more as Cesaro having a great idea and Sheamus following up on it. And then they carry on with the two guys who don’t like each other shtick after the match when this should be the turning point for them as a team and dropping that as the main focus of their act. They should have done this match on Monday and had New Day lose the belts a day short. Because New Day breaking the record has done nothing for anyone because it’s not a memorable reign that people will remember, just the same as Demolition’s reign. But then again they wouldn’t treat that as a big moment to follow up on either. Braun/Sami was awful. This should have been so easy and instead they got it so wrong. First off this match only works if Sami takes a beating which didn’t even come close to happen. You just can’t work this as a regular match with Braun doing his regular squash match moves. Sami took less of a beating than he would do in a match with Owens. Braun should have been hitting his finish 5 minutes in and then just launching him all over the outside area, through a table, on the ramp, into the steps, the ring post, the whole 9 yards. Instead we ended up with Strowman taking the biggest bumps in the match. WTF? Then Foley comes out dressed in god knows what and puts into action his and Zayn’s dastardly plan to distract Braun for long enough to wind the clock down and recover for a good minute. 1/10th of the time limit! And then the match ends with Zayn about to beat Strowman and the time expires right as Sami’s about to hit the kick for the second time and Sami’s not pissed at the time expiring. He doesn’t carry on attacking Braun and hit the 2nd kick and have to be restrained by Foley. He just takes survival as a victory and then trots off to the back. This should have been so easy to do something for at least one of them and instead it managed to do absolutely nothing for either. Rollins/Jericho was awful too. Rollins has turned super robotic in the ring. He just does his moves and takes his bumps and that’s it. He’s turning into Finn Balor but without the look and the entrance so basically Finn Balor without any of the value. He actually wrestled as a better babyface when he was supposed to be working as a heel. This match made zero sense looking back on it after the finish of the main event. Cruiserweights was just nothing. Crowds just do not care and they give them no reason to either. I’m in favour of matches being able to end at any point, especially off a kick to the head but they need to establish that as play in the playbook and not just a sudden finish. Adding Neville to the mix is better late than never but they’ve done borderline irreversible damage to the division with this horrible introduction. Turning him heel was a good move as well because it gives him a nice kick start in the division and it needs a better top heel. Charlotte/Sasha was excellent. Best WWE match this year and would have been on par with the top few NXT matches this year had they done the finish properly. I know people are sick of them wrestling one another now but I don’t get that outside of fans thinking wrestling has a set of booking rules that are set in stone. The brand split has caused all these programs to be stretched out like this but it’s smart to do it like this because the alternative is they run through absolutely everything by Mania. They probably still will with barely anything left for the division outside of trades after Mania. The amount of title changes isn’t super but it also really doesn’t matter. They did another title change so we could have another great match and the best one yet between the pair of them. Woe me. Match was nothing more than ok for the first 10 with them doing their Guerrero/Malenko routine. Up to the first fall this was just good. Crowd was not into at all but what do you expect when you look at the 3 matches before it. What I like most about these Charlotte/Sasha matches is that everything they do feels impactful. It may not be as crisp or as robotic as a Rollins/Balor match would be but it has grit. Sasha gets flak for her bumping style but I’ll take that over bumping as safe as possible in a way that doesn’t look like it would ever hurt. Also they’ve never badly injured one another on a spot in their matches. Rollins/Balor are one for one. That bump on the stairs looked awesome. Ref kinda killed the impact of the spot a little by staying in the ring and not rushing out to check on Sasha. Charlotte was out of this world great in this match. May be a bit of hyperbole but I thought it was a masterclass in character work over the course of a match. It reminded me of Austin during his heel run in 2001 the way she seemed obsessed with winning and was muttering to herself after every spot and every now and again she’d lose it and let out an outcry of emotion against Sasha and the fans. And not once did she get cheered! The leg work was awesome. I loved how with 4 minutes left Charlotte didn’t go straight into panic mode and straight into the Figure Four. She made sure that Sasha was crippled before going in for the kill. Leg worked looked nasty too. They did the end of the fourth fall totally wrong though and this is the only thing stopping me from calling it MOTY. It was so easy too. Have Sasha fight it and fight it until it gets down to the final 10 seconds and she either passes out or her shoulders fall to the mat for 3 and she’s so out of it she doesn’t even realise. That way Charlotte wins, Sasha gains by losing in that way and you create the same drama but better going into overtime. Instead Sasha came off as a total moron for tapping with 2 seconds left. Mere mortals wouldn’t have held on for as long as she did but once you’re at that point I’m pretty sure most people would just tough it out for another 2 seconds. And when people will think that it makes your wrestler who should be a larger than life opposite of a mere mortal nothing like that. Overtime was great. I was listening to Meltzer’s review of the show and him and Bryan were both critical of Charlotte struggling to execute the Figure Four at the very end and it was maybe my favourite part of the match. 30+ minutes in I don’t want her working like she’s 5 minutes in to an easy match. I want it to look like a struggle to get every move executed. I mean I don’t know how intentional that was and how much of it was just genuine struggle but that’s what a 35 minute match between epic rivals should build up to. Did they even mention Charlotte’s PPV streak at the end of the match? It’s a nothing thing but once you brought it up at the last PPV surely you should be driving it home hard here. Charlotte’s had an amazing aura of a genuine star that carries herself as a champion from the moment she debuted in NXT but she keeps getting better and better and this was a good of an individual performance as there’s been in recent memory. One final note on this, those reaction shots are god awful but they actually caught a really great one at the end of this that was perfect. But then they also caught someone pulling a stupid face that totally killed the non existent heat in the match and made everyone laugh. Said it before but the wrestlers should be fuming with this because it diverts attention away from their work and in this case made the crowd giggle during their work. They continue to miss spots doing it and the wrestlers should just be fuming thinking why the fuck am I taking bumps on my body when these idiots in the truck are missing it because they’re cutting to the crowd hoping for someone to pull a goofy face that only takes away from me inflicting pain on my body even more when in one second you undo all the work that I’m trying to do by getting their attention and playing with their emotions by making them giggle by showing someone pulling a stupid face. Fans cottoning on to WWE’s desire for crowd reactions and working them into showing them on the big screen only to do something incredibly immature and vulgar can’t come soon enough. Main event sucked. Probably the worst main event in recent memory. I mean there’s been some terrible ones but at least you can always say well they tried. I thought the Cena/Owens matches sucked but you can’t say they didn’t work their butts off. They didn’t even try here. I know that the headlock spot is kinda Owens’ thing but god how stupid could everyone be to think that doing several extended resthold spots with Roman Reigns in front of a PPV crowd would be a good idea. Owens could at least back up to the ropes and work the ropes and the ref but I guess that’s against WWE policy to do that. Owens just hasn’t been very good in the ring in WWE. And Reigns is getting worse as an in ring worker and falling into all the critiques that everyone throws at him. Between this and the Rusev matches I’m getting sick of him just spamming the same few moves and not selling and shrugging off the heel’s offence. The Reigns experiment is doing so much harm that I have negative interest in seeing him wrestle now because it’s just going to be a disinterested crowd with a horrible atmosphere. Finish sucked. They started building up some goodwill for main event finishes with Brock/Goldberg and in 2 shows they’ve killed that back dead. Why do people care about these main event matches when the chances of an actual finish that puts one guy over another basically come once or twice a year. As far as doing that finish it was a nice variation of it. But it’s still a better way of doing a bad finish. Owens not being in on it made no sense. Surely the shtick should be they both worked Reigns rather than Jericho worked everyone including Owens which makes him out to be the biggest idiot of the lot. Also feels like they’ve turned Jericho and Owens on one another so many times already that when they do it’s not gonna mean much. New Day tag was really good. Charlotte/Sasha was brilliant. Everything else was garbage.

Anyone claiming they don't have a monopoly on the wrestling industry doesn't fully understand what a monopoly of an industry is. goc's definition is the first thing that comes up if you google define: monopoly and while it is A definition of a monopoly it's not the only one and it's the most suitable one for this context. What you're referring to is an exclusive monopoly which is known what a monopoly is referred to as in a economics context. So that by that definition technically they're not. The more suitable use of the term here is a business/law monopoly whereby the market leader has raised the barriers to entry so high for anyone else to compete them. Nobody has the capital and/or the infrastructure to compete with WWE in the wrestling industry, hence monopoly. Typically monopolies are recognised when they start charging overly high prices to customers that drive away competition but that's kinda murky with wrestling and the core product being free to watch on TV. But you can point to WWE spiking ticket prices for Wrestlemania for instance and customers still paying whatever they set the prices out. But that's also a lot of supply and demand and like I said a kinda murky way of looking at the question. The better angle to look at that from is probably the standard of production values and wrestler's contracts they've established. And that if anyone tries to compete with them for a wrestler's services WWE can quite easily just overpay and drive competition away. The fact that they've upped the talent acquisitions (or raids as some call them) from competitors in recent years in monopolistic behaviour as well. Monopolistic behaviour tends to have a bad stigma attached to it which is sometimes true but often misinformed. WWE are a monopoly and it's not good for the industry and obviously less consumer choice is always bad for the consumer but at the same time WWE are also part of the entertainment industry and trying to grow to be a bigger player in that industry. So in trying to be competitive in one industry they're also displaying monopolistic behaviour in another. TL:DR 100% yes assuming you don't use a very literal economics definition.

That doesn't account for all the other metrics that are also going down. Although it is a good point to make regarding the ratings.

Brock vs Goldberg Hunter vs Rollins They both seem like obvious locks. Cena vs Taker. Taker beats AJ for the belt at Rumble and Cena beats Taker at WM to tie the record. I think making it for the Title weakens the suspense of the outcome but it's the biggest match other than Brock/Goldberg they can do and they can go back to Cena/AJ after Mania when Taker goes again. Reigns vs Balor. Balor's due back for the start of Mania season and it'd be impossible to not put him back into the title picture. Plus putting Reigns against a fresh babyface act with a big entrance at Mania would be so WWE. Reigns wins the Title at Rumble in a 4 way when Jericho goes for the win and costs Owens. Owens vs Jericho. It's happening and it doesn't need the Title. Owens losing the Title is the obvious catalyst for the turn/split too. Charlotte vs Sasha vs Bayley. I don't see anyway they leave one of them out of the big Mania match or doing more than 2 Women's matches on the main card. Becky vs Nikki. Same as above. Only 2 stars in the SD division that would be missed on the card. They'll find some match to get all the other Women on the card even if it ends up getting into double digit hours. Orton/Wyatt vs Alpha. It's very obvious that they've held off on AA so they can have the big moment at Mania. I spose they carry on with the Wyatt team up to Mania do they have a credible team to beat. It's them or The Usos and there's too many diversions between now and then for that to work. Obvious neglections are AJ/Ambrose/Strowman. Braun winning the Battle Royal is probably the better move than fast tracking him into the Reigns match. Hopefully they get Joe and or Nakamura up by then and that solves the issue with AJ and/or Ambrose. Watch them end up doing AJ vs Shane.

Womens Survivor Series match wasn’t up to much. It got plenty of time but also never actually enough time to do anything with any of the pairings. They basically just rushed through to the final fall and even then that was short on time. Everything was basically just there. They’ve really cooled Sasha right off. These matches need clean falls against the bigger names but Sasha’s fall should have been protected a lot more than just getting rolled up by Natalya of all people. Give Alexa the minor rub there. Nia continuing the story that I’m the only the one reading off her dominating but continuing to fall into traps which quickly lead to going down (which is usually getting caught in a submission and tapping) made me smile. I’m assuming she works Sasha for a while now which lends itself perfectly to continuation of that (not-a-)story. Becky/Bayley at the end didn’t get the time to be what they clearly wanted it to be. The right women survived. Miz/Zayn was very good. Miz delivered again. This was a decent match considerably bumped up by the leg work. Take note Shinsuke. I’d be totally fine with Zayn just selling a lingering leg injury for the next year he’s so great at it. Kinda like how Cesaro was selling the arm every match earlier in the year after coming back from surgery. They worked the Figure Four spot really well between them. That finish isn’t great but if you’re doing it then it was done well. Works with the Miz/Maryse dynamic, Zayn didn’t look completely stupid by thinking Miz had tapped out of his sight in that position and it gives the Miz/Bryan feud easy material to work off with Bryan and SD benefiting from Miz’s cheating. I enjoyed this infinitely more than I would have if this was Ziggler/Zayn. Tag Teams Survivor Series match was good. It was frankly terrible until Hype Bros went out. Not sure what FaBreeze have turned into but it’s terrible and not in a heel stooge terrible way. I’ve done a good job avoiding Mojo all together but his minute spell on offence was as bad as whatever Fandango was doing at the start of the match. New Day going so early was good. They don’t need to survive here and you may as well eliminate them in a way that gets a nice pop. Primo and Epico getting an extended shine period in this of all matches was really weird. Cesaro/Sheamus and The Usos had a really great mini match for the final fall that was everything you want from a short tag sprint. Usos got put over really strong here which is nice but they’ve spent the last few months being jobbed out on PPVs to comedy teams in Fandango/Breeze and Slater/Rhyno. SD’s direction with the Tag division is pretty clear. Give Slater/Rhyno the short babyface reign to kill time before you run Usos/Alpha into Mania because that’s literally your only pairing of any value. Usos looking strong here I assume means they get the belts a couple of months later than they should have done and you then restart pushing Alpha to the top again and have their big Title win at Mania. Which on paper is actually really good but the execution hasn’t been. They’ve pissed all over what momentum Alpha had coming out of NXT and done nothing to get them over to the new audience. Waiting is good but you need to be pushing them while you wait and keeping them strong in preparation for that Mania moment. Instead they’ve just done nothing at all. This was the perfect opportunity to put a ton of shine on them without winning the belts too soon. Everything that The Usos did here should have been what Alpha got to do. And they should have gone over too. That was where the biggest rub was. Instead they got some very minor shine and went out early leaving The Usos to play the babyfaces fighting against the odds. Which brand reigns supreme means fuck all to anyone outside WWE’s bubble but you’d think they’d at least have it 1-1 going into the rubber right? Instead I spose we got classic 50-50 booking yet again even in an odd numbered series where Raw wins the series but SD wins the big one. In other words, nobody won besides the individual acts who survived. I really hope the 10 shtick over count outs doesn’t catch on elsewhere. Kendrick/Kallisto was decent but jesus the crowds are just all time levels of silent for these Kendrick matches. Everything he does on paper is really good but it doesn’t work at getting a dead crowd up and it isn’t anywhere near as effective as a heel on top compared to busting out all these spots as the scrappy desperate underdog. Because all these wiley veteran spots are perfect scrappy hope spots. At the risk of sounding like a broken record I’m just dumbfounded that they took Kendrick from the CWC who was the best babyface act in forever and made him a heel that can’t get any sort of reaction at all. In an era of nonstop highspots running rampant through nearly every match, the Cruiserweights being the ones to work the most dumbed down safest style is quite incredible. The only time the crowd came alive was for the Spanish Fly spot which is what a division like this should be. You have a bunch of new athletic guys that you need to get over all at once, well the easiest way is to send them out there and do a bunch of nutty spots. Bully Choke spot was worked really well. Finish is what it is. Shoutout to Corbin working through an injury that took him off the show to appear on the show. I spose you get more coming out of this match with that finish (Kallisto/Corbin has an edge to it now and you have easy material between Bryan and Corbin) than you do Kendrick just beating Kallisto. The Cruiserweights are still yet to have a match that universally breaks the *** barrier. The final 5-on-5 was a weird case of a WWE match being extremely well booked but actually let down by the action. Everything in between the falls was just there but they booked the falls really well. Strowman looked really good in this. Well aside from the AJ spot which gave the Cesaro botched dive a good run for scariest spot of the year. Which in this type of match is very achievable but it’s also kinda like where is the end game with him? You build him up to feed to one of your top babyfaces but the top babyface overcoming the monster heel in a subpar match isn’t really a successful formula anymore. And after that WWE have barely ever given any of them monster heels much of anything after their initial run. His best hope is that he can do comedy and that gives him longevity in between the periods where Vince decides to do the monster push again. His elimination was pretty much perfect. You get in your Shane highspot (which is always a good spot) and the extra touch of having get up and about to make it back in before for 10 was great. The Ellsworth addition was great too. Short of being the sole survivor and beating the entire team himself they couldn’t have put Strowman over any better than this. Ellsworth feels like an in joke that I’m not a part of but this was a good minimalistic use of him. Owens and Jericho eliminations worked for adding towards their teased breakup. Sure Owens should be put over better but they’re not booking him as that type of Champion so why start here. What I liked about a lot of the booking on this show is that every finish advanced something. Sure in isolation Owens’ elimination could be seen as daft if you have this false image of Owens being Brock-lite but they’re building towards a program that’s comedy first, heat second so that finish worked. The AJ/Ambrose stuff worked to get them both out while being protected and also sets both of them up for something with Taker. Ambrose was set up for that harder than AJ was but I’m not sure where they fit that in for Taker. Cena’s almost 100% challenging for the Title at Mania, it’s just a question of if the champ is AJ or Taker. I’m leaning Taker given that he’s back early. They can do Cena/AJ on any show and have already gone to it, Cena/Taker is more of a Mania spectacle. Putting the Title on it kills some of the suspense of who wins but if it was Cena/AJ I don’t think that wouldn’t be an issue there either. So my guess is Taker/AJ at Rumble and Cena earns a Title shot at the Feb PPV with Balor getting the Rumble win and essentially getting every rub he can be given by time Mania is over by which point he’ll likely still be in single figures for matches on the main roster. But he won’t be overpushed…. Shane/Reigns spot was great. I get why people hate the concept of Shane in these matches but tbh he’s got a bunch of in ring experience at this point now and doesn’t really get much offence in besides his big daredevil spots. Those punches looked awful but if you have Shane in there isn’t it better for him to be throwing these awful punches that look like a non-wrestler trying to play wrestler? And also at people arguing against Shane’s involvement, he was the most over babyface in that match. Actually, he was basically the only actual star in that match. Sure you have guys like AJ, Ambrose and Owens who are popular but they’re not OVER. Jericho more so but it’s more his comedy shtick than Jericho the wrestler. People enjoy them and find them entertaining but none of them are needle movers that have fans wanting to see them win or lose. So there’s a real argument to be made for Shane being the most over guy in the match and the biggest actual star in the match. Which considering that they pretty much put all of their top full time guys in this match is worrying. Not at all striking or revealing though. Shield reunion spot I popped for which I don’t do very often. Teasing it with just Reigns and Rollins and then getting Ambrose in the mix was neat and they let it breathe long enough for you to anticipate it and then when Reigns and Rollins freed Ambrose it came off really well. I was worried when it came down to Rollins/Reigns that they’d put them 2 over strong and the crowd would just totally reject it. Wyatt’s going over was a surprise. It’s good that they put a different act over strong for a change but Bray’s been so damaged by year after year of the reverse that it’s a case of too little too late. JBL completely blowing the call at the end followed a super awkward 5 seconds of silence ruled. You had one job John. To his credit though I did enjoy his call when Ambrose was screwing AJ out of the match. But he’s doing the big sell to put over Smackdown vs Raw rather than AJ vs Ambrose so you know. They did this terrible Smackdown vs Raw thing that nobody cared about in order to get literally nobody over. Not even Stephanie or Shane because neither of them were presented as winners. Goldberg/Brock was a spectacle. I don’t watch live and my file had about 10 minutes left to run as Brock came out so I knew this was going to be really short but based on that I figured Brock was just squashing Goldberg, definitely not vice-versa. Putting my logic hat on with my business pants this didn’t make much sense. Building Brock up like they did for this would be awesome if Goldberg was someone who they could build off of week after week for years to come but he’s not. That said though, there’s not an obvious alternative to put in Goldberg’s position instead of him. Definitely nobody on the current roster because we saw in the previous match that none of them are stars. Maybe Joe but eh I don’t think so. And they don’t see him as being a top guy because he’s clearly been brought in to booster the vanity project before anything else. Shinsuke is the only semi realistic alternative and I suppose is a better alternative than Goldberg but he can still beat Brock later down the line in a longer match where he gets a different type of rub from beating Brock. I mean sure, that’s what they SHOULD have done but what we did get was great and I’m not turning my nose up at WWE delivering a great moment and building a big marquee match up to have a definitive winner. The good guy even won! It’s easy to look at the value they flushed with beating Brock here but they should also gain some much needed value for the brand. It’s created buzz, Goldberg’s a bigger asset going into Mania season than anyone’s been since probably Brock returned for all of a month before the Hunter feud killed that off, and they also gained some much needed faith with viewers that if they hype up a massive main event match they’re gonna deliver something big and buzz worthy on the execution of it. And that’s not something that they usually do. How often do they have a match like this and has some daft overbooked finish where there’s no decisive winner and nobody really gets over. If Goldberg is working up to Mania now as it seems then that should make the decision sting less and make more sense. Ignore the part about it should have been someone else for a second. It seems inevitable that Lesnar attacks Goldberg at the Rumble and they rematch at Mania. The rematch is bigger than the Survivor Series match now because of this. Theoretically they now have a major marquee match for Mania that will have a great build going into the event. If Brock wins then you can’t rematch or if you do it doesn’t mean more than the original did. I think everyone really overstates the value in Brock too. He’s not a massive needle mover. He shows up on Raw and ratings don’t change. Using him for a single show doesn’t have a big revenue boost with the Network model now taking over and as far as I’m aware they’re not selling out bigger venues with him on shows than they would be otherwise. He definitely WAS a major star when he first returned but frankly that died in less than a year and any drawing ability he had to an audience that weren’t watching WWE anyway was killed with the Hunter feud where he went back to playing pro wrestler again and trading loses. Everyone always plays up the rub of beating Brock and yes beating Brock means more than beating anyone else but without that crossover audience tuning in you’re not really elevating anyone to new heights if you’re not growing your audience. And granted that’s just a fraction of a much bigger problem but I just want to put it out there that beating Brock will make someone an instant megastar is becoming more and more myth than reality the further we go on. And once the decision is made to put Goldberg over this was exactly the right way to do it. Winning in a back and forth traditionally structured match doesn’t create half the buzz that this did. Fact, this got people talking and you can be outside the WWE bubble and know exactly what went down. Also this was being sold on the spectacle a lot more so than delivering on match quality. Ok you might have some fans who feel robbed that they didn’t get more of a match but they’ll be far outnumbered by the fans who came out of this show buzzing and the people who didn’t watch the show but are now intrigued into tuning into to see what’s next for Goldberg. And you’ll get the back and forth “epic” at Mania! Moments are more important than match quality. Rousey ending fights in seconds rather than having “a proper match” boosted business much more than her going the distance would have and assuming you save this for once in a blue moon it’s no different. I can get why people would shit on the show. Whatever closes a show often decides overall perceptions of a show and I can totally get why people would be pissed at how Lesnar/Goldberg ended. Personally I thought it was a great spectacle and the buzz I felt coming out of it far outweighed the undeniable booking issues. While nothing on the show was great, all the matches were at least decent and this was a very well booked show that nicely advanced pretty much everything that it needed to.

Roode/Dillinger I didn't think was that good tbh. Decent match but there were more moments when I thought this isn't that good than this is pretty good. Well tbh there were zero moments when I was thinking the later but it wasn't overall not good. It was just there. Didn't think Tye looked half as good here as he has in the debut "squashes". Squashes in inverts because the guy going over spends 80% of the match selling. Roode's good in the ring but he feels below the standard that's been set atm. They should have just hotshotted him onto the main roster when the entrance took off because that won't be white hot forever. Assuming the entrance gets over on the main roster he's a hot babyface turn just waiting to happen. AoP/TM61 wasn't that good either. For those who haven't seen it watch AoP/DIY from the TV a couple of weeks ago because that match ruled and make Authors my new favourite act. Between that match and the Jose/Swann match they've looked like a really serviceable monster team with great offence. TM61 suck. Senton spot was cool and the setup was so preposterous that I dug it. Not sure why they blew their load on the Ellering Cage gimmick this soon. Chain spot was either terrible or went wrong. I HATED TM61 tossing Authors around like they're Cruiserweight guys. Like caps lock worthy HATED it. Them 2 should barely be bumping at all let alone taking suplexes and slams off 2 guys who look like TM61 do. AoP/DIY is the future I spose which based off their TV match I'm excited for. They're in a tough spot though because The Revival have set a standard for NXT tags now and nobody will be able to live up to them. Thought this was their best match yet against anyone. They've knocked it out of the park everytime against these and Alpha. The Enzo/Cass matches were really good too and by far the best matches that team has ever had but ever since then they've kicked into a godly tier. When you watch 80s tags one of the constant takeaways from them for me is god imagine if you transition the first 2/3rds of these matches with the final third of these modern matches and The Revival are exactly that. Incredible finishing stretches but with all the ground work to make them work. Plus having 4 guys to transition in and out helps with the finishing stretch not going into overkill every single time. 1st fall was decent but it really kicked up a gear in the 2nd when The Revival started working their match. Finish to the 1st ruled btw. Also they did an excellent job at structuring a 2/3 match which is so often an issue but for once there were no issues with the 2/3 format being hoaky. I could type for the next hour about the 3rd fall but basically everything they did was amazing. There was a sequence just before the very end that halted their momentum a bit and the ref stopping counting because I assumed Dawson wasn't the legal man didn't come off very well. But aside from that everything ruled. MOTY for me. Also have to give credit to Gargano and Ciampa who have done a great job getting themselves over as a team to someone who had no interest at all in them. I still don't want to see them in singles but they've created added value together as a team and Gargano's become a very sympathetic babyface. The Revival though. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeez. Asuka/Mickie was good. Not crazy about how much they gave Mickie given her status, especially in comparison to how much they ever gave Nia and Bayley against Asuka. They should have saved the someone pushing Asuka further than she's ever been pushed before for someone who can benefit from it while still saving the Asuka loss. Joe/Nakamura was good and better than Brooklyn but still felt like a disappointment relative to who's in the ring. I'm not sure if it's a case of them not clicking or what. This is their second match now where the crowd are hot at the start and are just kinda sitting there taking it in during the bulk of the match before they get back up to pop for the highspots. Nakamura not selling leg work is far from a new issue with him but it's becoming an all too regular one in NXT and hurt this match for sure. He either needs to start putting forth an effort to sell the leg work or the guys putting these matches together need to be smarter to recognise the issue and not have his opponents work over his legs. I'm starting to wonder if our perception of what Jose is/should be/could be is starting to cloud over vision of what the reality is. I mean his performance in Dallas was great but that's now the anomaly. That said Balor and Nakamura haven't super brought it as opponents against him. Nakamura dropping the belt back to Joe was surprising. You'd think it's because Nakamura is going up but then it leaves the vanity project really lacking drawing power with nobody major incoming and they've been struggling selling these larger venues recently. I'd go more towards they're just prolonging running Nakamura/Joe like they did Balor/Joe because there's really nobody else for either. I'm assuming that Itami getting injured again maybe caused this. The Revival have been the difference between the last 3 Takeover's being great shows rather than good shows.