MoS

All right, my takeaways from that footage were - "There was far more talking during that confrontation than we had heard" and "Really, that was the 'fight'?" I am not even kidding, I have seen bigger fights at the law firm I work in. I understand the Punk-TK footage confrontation that was not shown here was the reason for Punk getting fired, and I would really hope so, because I cannot imagine someone getting fired in professional wrestling over that weaksauce "fight". Also, Punk's guillotine grip is really bad. How he has been doing BJJ for so many years and still doesn't know these fundamentals is beyond me

Even with the bolded part though, yes, in a lot of territories, the NWA heel champ coming in once or twice a year and the territory ace perpetually challenging him for the title would draw big. But for week-to-week booking, where the focus was on local wrestlers, weren't the territory aces carrying the promotion usually faces? I agree with your last couple of lines, I just think we have had enough of dominant heel reigns for now - MJF for at least half of his reign was a heel too.

Personally, enough of dominant heel title reigns. Time for some long babyface title reigns. That is the shit that ultimately creates generations of long-term fans. As an aside, I have always believed that the adage "money is in the chase" is at best very myopic and at worst outright incorrect, and I have always remembered reading a really good discussion about this on this forum. Since I am on leave right now, I decided to finally actually search the board for these posts, and have found the discussion. The entire discussion is excellent and should be read, but I will also quote a couple of SLL's posts about this. I will also quote @Loss discussing from the other perspective. Loss: SLL again: tl;dr - long heel runs can of course draw money, but a lot of people seem to think it's the only, or at least the most prominent way to present wrestling, and that is completely untrue, and arguably, long face reigns have historically drawn more money than long heel reigns

Rock had fun this weekend

LMAO

Same

lol why is Nick Khan looking so grave and sad

Amazing ending, having to see Bruce Pritchard's mug aside. So happy for Cody, he earned this. Cody v. Gunther is going to be sick

X - Bret Hart XX - Eddy Guerrero and *redacted* XXX - Daniel Bryan XL - Cody Rhodes

Punk watching yet another person surpass him and main event WM

YES. Now hopefully we can have actual main event matches going forward and not bad middle school theatre

They couldn't get Austin so got Taker. WOuld have preferred Austin-Rock faceoff but Taker-Rock was very good too

LMAO Roman punked Rollins

CENA!!!!!! ROCK!!!!

Iyo-Bayley is clearly the match of Wrestlemania so far imo

It was definitely way too long, filled with the worst tropes of modern main event WWE style like unbearable monologues/dialogues, contrived face-offs, unnatural breaks in action, etc. I still ended up enjoying it, and thought it was fun and particularly enjoyed Rock and also Cody. The double pedigree nearfall and The Rock hitting Rollins in the balls were my favourite bits of the match

Move on, guys. This is nothing but an own goal

Don't know how much of a hot take this is, but Austin-Owens from last year was a better match ("match"?) than this one

Fun match. Thought Rock was the clear star of the match, closely followed by Cody. Rollins was a complete non-factor. This was all a preview for tomorrow anyway, job was to increase hype for tomorrow's main event, and it certainly achieved that

lol someone please gif the shot of Rock crying in pain after getting hit with Roman's spear, that was great. So was the double pedigree nearfall

Is Cody getting booed against The Rock? I guess that was inevitable

Roman has also become slower, his offence is noticeably less crisp and snug than it used to be, but he is still great at a lot of things that enhance a match, like the way he sells dizziness or accumulated damage, the way he conveys frustration, annoyance, anger, etc. Things Rollins never learned

lol Rock is such a dick, love him

I actually thought he woke up the crowd, although some of the Cody-Reigns exchanges were quite sloppy, and they are clearly (justifiably) holding back for tomorrow