Alucard

I hope so! But last week on Talking Smack, Renee kinda teased him about maybe entering the Rumble but he was all "no I'm good"

Agreed. I miss the early 2000s way of some guys having themes from somewhat mainstream bands. Had some killer PPV themes then too.

Love the venue, thought this had a very old school feel to it and I liked it more than the beginning of the CWC.

The latest Observers are saying Taker is not challenging for the title, so if it's Taker/Reigns I guess Reigns wouldn't be champion.

I thought Lemmy would go in last year. If they ever do induct deceased celebrities, I imagine HHH would push for that. Also could see Muhammad Ali being inducted to the celeb wing.

Agreed. Kills me every time the supposed monster Nia Jax constantly jobs to bayley.

I could've seen it being a much shorter version of Shane/Angle as far as him getting ragdolled and tossed around. With Shane/Lesnar off the table, does anyone think Shane still wrestles at Mania? Not sure of any other opponent for him really and maybe the mid-air spear at Survivor Series was the end of his in-ring career.

Honestly I would've rather had Lesnar/Shane since we just had Lesnar/Goldberg and it would've been a crazy spectacle kind of match I'm sure.

Great set of reviews as usual!

Bad times. Smackdown was pretty great in 2009 with Rey/Jericho and Punk/Hardy. Got pretty terrible when Taker came back though. Not to mention we got a bad Kane world title reign in this period as well. Summer 2009 for Smackdown is super fun, and then basically the moment 'Taker comes back everything gets flushed. They spent so much time building up Punk and Hardy, and then 'Taker comes back and its like, "Ha, sorry, these little men couldn't possibly beat the Dead Man, screw them." But from the moment they moved Jericho and Punk over until then, the wrestling is on par with the Smackdown 6 era. Agreed, SD had a big new stars feel at the time when they headlined one show with Punk & The Hart Dynasty vs Morrison & The Hardys. Punk/Morrison had an awesome series of TV matches while of course Punk/Hardy had the big feud, plus Rey had a handful of great matches with Morrison and Ziggler.

Agreed. The Alexa/Becky talking segments during this feud have been some of my favorite mic work this year. Loved their first match in Glasgow and tonight ruled too. Both women are excellent. Happy for Alexa to get a run

Agreed, they were really going overboard in hyping it up as the main event, and it really should've been.

Agreed, Lashley's become my favorite guy in wrestling. I wouldn't have taken the title off of him either but the matches have been good stuff and he continues to absolutely kill it on the mic. I loved the first two Lashley/Edwards matches and this would've felt more fitting if they kept that momentum building instead of Edwards winning the title coming off a losing streak. The title change match was short but this past week was good stuff.

Agreed, I think it's been on fire this year and the best it's been since 2012.

Having not read Foley's books, this thread has cracked me up good

Agreed, when she has something to do like the excellent feud with Dana Brooke & Emma, fans are very into it and behind her. Especially the Asuka/Emma match last year, one of my NXT favorites.

Saving that for Mania... Definitely my first thought when I saw Survivor Series for this.

Always liked Wendi Richter

Welcome back! Though I'm currently getting a "bandwidth exceeded" error when I click on it, I look forward to catching it eventually. Have missed the reviews!

Where he returns and wins it then the question is which title will he challenge for! ; ) Already seems crazy that just 2 months ago, Ziggler pinned Styles to become #1 contender for SummerSlam on the first SDL

I've been underwhelmed by it so far. TJ Perkins does nothing for me and I'm just not getting in to his matches at all. The matches so far on Raw feel like random TNA X Division matches from the weekly PPV days when they just throw random indy guys out there and the crowd's had no reason to care.

I don't hate Zayn the way I can't stand guys like Rollins and Ziggler I just don't "get" him. Nothing I've seen from him in WWE says he's anything more than "just another guy." There are plenty of guys who manage to stand out despite shitty booking either in a "this guy is a great character" way like Rusev or by always putting on a good match like Cesaro or Sheamus. Sami Zayn doesn't do either and I feel like if he was "the best babyface in wrestling" the way some people hype him up as then there would actually be some evidence of it in the past 6 months or so instead of having to point way back to his NXT run. Agreed 100% with this and the first post on the subject. Always found the overrated "best babyface" stuff to be a ridiculous exaggeration, never saw him as anything special.

Smackdown Live is the best. I think Raw has gotten worse lately while SDL, which has been good since the split, has been absolutely on fire since killing it at Backlash. Can't wait for that to hurry up and happen. Going from heated rivals to lovey best friends has been the worst. I can't stand this attempted babyface turn at the moment. Nothing's changed other than who he feuds with, everything about his character screams heel to me.

SDL has been a very solid show all around since the draft. I think it's been consistently better than Raw almost every week. Agreed. Like we're just supposed to forget he was bragging about taking out Balor, the actual likable face, a week ago. I much prefer Seth as a heel

Storm supposedly finished up with TNA again at the tapings last month and told the live crowd that we might be seeing him with an old friend again real soon, so there's at least a chance he might end up back in NXT. If nothing else, his final match with Lashley was pretty great.