Bierschwale

Yeah, I feel like Vince had no compunction about letting her go because of Dunn giving her the very inorganic introduction that she received, plus it's an excuse to cut payroll. A shitty, shitty excuse to cut payroll, but it's still there.

The Bryan turn, and most obviously the segment from the last RAW of 2013 where he "joined" them, felt like absolute foreshadowing for a face turn and a Corporation-Ministry redux feud. It was all about how Bryan had no recourse but to give in to Bray because of "the machine" that had kept him down.

I'm just muttering in the dark "only one more RAW before Zayn debuts, only one more RAW before Zayn debuts", even though there's nothing that has said that he'll debut in Montreal. It just SEEMS obvious to me-- hometown show of course, he's done the dark matches, has been a fixture on the international tours, just doesn't have much more to do in NXT because he won't be the one to take the title off of Neville, and he'd be the first catalyst to the Cesaro face turn, plus if he was directly introduced with Cesaro, as a prospective "Paul Heyman Guy", it would add some of the desperately needed ambiguity to Heyman before Brock's return when he'll go back into ultra-heel mode.

I'm going to be weird and call Naomi-Paige my match of the night in terms of what I got out of it. That wasn't really longer than the normal Divas title match, but it felt longer, and I mean that as a good thing-- they worked hard, showed their skills, and got in a bunch of memorable moments. It was just fun without any bullshit. As for the two ladder matches, the first probably was too much of a pure spotfest, but it was the right guys doing the spots so the energy was there the whole time (and I'm a kind of an "over is over" thinker. I somehow would have tried to defend Sid during his career because of his absurd ability to always get heat.), and every Ambrose-Rollins moment was just great. The nuclear Ambrose pop/Kane run-in was as big of a heat implosion as you can get. The main just... it just didn't do it for me. It's not about the result, I'm not Uproxxing out, Cena was the only guy who could win the title and then face Lesnar. But the spots with Cesaro and Sheamus on the hook didn't really work the way that they should have, Reigns was fun but his performance still found a way to bug me; was the floor to apron dropkick needed in a match with about 25 ladders sitting around? Stuff like that just has me concerned about where he's going as a worker. The "everyone jockeying on the ladder" spot was Benny Hill shit. It never had the right momentum for me. I HATE saying that a match like that needs at least one guy willing to make himself a quadriplegic for that ONE great bump, but there was just a pervasive awkwardness in it to me without anyone there who you know will eat huge offense in that kind of match.

They've had Rybaxel as Orton's partners in six-mans on house show and they were his goons throughout the Europe tour. But, nah. Kane. Correction: THE DEMON KANE.

X-Pac didn't have X-Pac Heat. But Kane most definitely does.

I think that it went tag- first splash-second splash and the cover. Again, it's really, really meaningless, but it just looked off to me. Regardless, it was indeed a really strong opener.

For what it's worth, and that is absolutely nothing, the legal Uso wasn't the one who made the pin.

Barrett is officially out of the briefcase match. I like how on the preshow Alex Riley completely forgot that Ambrose was in that match.

I think that the biggest problem would be that you have to force some eliminations just because of time constraints, especially when the shows were almost entirely the tag matches. It's not that exciting when you lose guys from the match because of countouts/DQs.

You can still do Cena/Lesnar as it doesn't need the belt. It would, but it just seems weird for Brock to go eight months (and since he's working NoC, nine) without a title match after having said that his absolute mission was to win it. As for Orton, I feel like THAT is where they'll finally get to do Batista-Orton straight up. Just without the belts, and not at WM.

You know what? I'm going to throw in a wild card and completely disregard the wording of the thread title. Aja Kong has a top five, at worst, case at playing the role of "best big man in history".

Monday was 1100.

If they're forced to pull Barrett from the ladder match, I have this really weird feeling that they'll bump down Cesaro into it, with him winning, so they can do the cash-in angle with Lesnar that we seemed to hear a lot about, even though that match became "Ambrose, Rollins, and five guys to eat bumps" around fifteen minutes after it was booked on-screen. Again, I absolutely admit that it's one from left field.

Wouldn't the RoH title count? It was recognized by NJ (JUUUUST now, of course), Held by McGuinness, Morishima, and Steen. Defended in a ton of countries at this point. Active for 12+ years.

I considered mentioning Baba, but I think that he's more about significance than work which has become the thread split, and he can't compete with Andre there.

I don't think that Kane's going to make it to the main event. Chekhov's Vanilla Midget and all. We never got our Buried Alive match!

Between the IC title match, the... unpleasantness (in which Stephanie really was fantastic), and the Rhodes Brothers interview with Dustin saying that he's finally the normal one, that was a hell of a segment sequence, wasn't it?

Jesus Fucking Christ, Vince.

And then he did things in the match that were cool and well-executed! This is deeply confusing.

Yeah, my lord. Did they lose the rights to "Live in Fear"?

Kudo might be the greatest deathmatch worker ever just because of her ability to keep things IN the ring. So, yeah, there's stuff to see there, but what made most of the best ones great was that the participants relied on "pure" wrestling to make the big spots dramatic and meaningful.

Yeah, that genuinely could just be a pure syntax screw-up. I doubt that it is, but it wouldn't be a big surprise, You don't go to Dave for the prose.

Sorry, I'm a bit slow this morning, but what's the implied joke? The beer coming out of the hose from the beer truck.

NEW JACK. Just... New Jack.