The Chief

Kind of disappointed they didn't go all out with the name and gimmick. I thought we were gonna have guys coming out of a 50's diner for their entrances.

Didn't realize how late it was. Hope this isn't a one minute special.

Haha, Curt Hawkins vs Heath Slater impromptu match. The 2017 version of The Giant vs Greg Valentine.

Roman and Braun have such good chemistry. I could watch these two kill each other forever.

Phil Hickerson

There was A late 60s TV taping from DC that went up on eBay a few years back, Graham had somebody do a write-up on his site

When near-40 year old recent signee Austin Aries got himself a commentary gig, and did awesome at it, I thought he at least got a nice ten year Tazz gig out of it. Oh well, guess not. FWIW, him and Neville had the best match at Mania.

Most of their recent releases have been DVD only. Blu-ray must have not caught on as much as they hoped because I don't think I've ever seen a WWE Blu-ray in a physical store. I had to get mine through Amazon back when I was buying these things.

Wasn't Rusev supposed to come back tonight? Or is he going to be out longer than they thought?

That theme song is next level stuff.

The tryouts sound very interesting. I've been our of the loop with their home video for a few years now. Do they still do Blu-ray releases?

I'm not a fan of Dolph, but I can sort of see the logic for giving guys in the MITB match TV time before the PPV. After that is where it really drops off. I don't understand why they can't rotate some of these guys in and out on a weekly basis. Those at the Breezango level don't need to be on every week. Every other week switch them out for Harper or Dillinger or whoever. It would go a long way in making these shows not feel like the same thing every week.

This was mentioned by Kris and Devon on one of the reaction shows, but they really need to do a better job of getting guys TV time on the Smackdown side. Luke Harper has been off TV since Backlash and he was barely on TV leading up to that. Not a good way to gain momentum off of a babyface turn. Same with Erick Rowan and he's just coming off a long injury layoff. American Alpha has disappeared off the face of the Earth again. They did this before when they won the tag titles and they took the entire tag team division off TV with them. Mojo Rawley won the Andre Battle Royal then disappeared for weeks. To be fair, it looks like they're finally getting him back in the mix after last night. What happened to Tye Dillinger? Not to mention the numerous lower-level guys. And as far as I know, Smackdown has zero C-Show presence so if you're not on the main show, you're out of sight, out of mind.

If we're allowed to count pre-Hogan era, I got your back. I love that Eddie Gilbert angle so much!

Getting a weird message about a blackout restriction due to content not being available in my area. Directs me towards wwe.com/blackout. Never had this happen before, anyone else?

I can't believe AOP are as green as they are. Or I guess I should say, as young as they are. They're so fucking good I can't believe they have no experience outside of NXT. What an awesome team.

If Shawn is around the 1997-1998 WCW locker room, there's a good chance he's not alive anymore. Not to be morbid but I don't see that ending well. On the brighter side, do we get head coach of the performance center Leo Burke?

Bray Wyatt has officially been eclipsed by every other member of his group. Luke Harper is a better worker, Braun Strowman constantly has the best segments on TV, and Rowan just played a better Bray Wyatt character than Bray himself. In a 5 minute Talking Smack segment, Rowan came off as much more unsettling than all the years of goofy Bray nonsense promos and SFX combined. Genuine too. Is there anything Bray is better at than these guys?

Yep. He had one match on TV under the gimmick and it wasn't a good showing for that gimmick. We know who Patrick Clark is from Tough Enough and a lot of us liked him as himself. Why they felt the need to change who Patrick Clark is, I'm not sure. Who's "they?" How do we know he didn't come up with the gimmick himself?

Yeah this was good stuff and I love the enthusiasm. The way they debuted Sivi Afi was similar to how they put Dan Spivey in the US Express earlier. It was never outright said that he was Barry Windham but they brought him out with Rotunda with no mention of replacement. You were led to believe it was like that all along. I took it as a subtle way of keeping the boys in their place and reminding them they're replaceable. I'm sure there's other instances.

That felt like a real coming of age moment for Strowman. Like "we realize what we have with this guy" kind of stuff. Match was great too. I wanna see Strowman vs Lesnar so bad now.

Somebody please tell me that Russo never repeated Viagra on a pole in TNA or something...

I am very interested in the life story of "Mr. McMahon." Can't we just have both?

Starting off with the Doom music was a great way to get my attention. If this is the spiritual successor to Letters From Kayfabe then I already have a million questions I want to mail in. Awesome!

Here's a thought, what does Randy Orton look like right now anywhere outside WWE? What does he do outside of WWE agents and structure? He's spent his entire career in their system. Can anyone point to examples of Randy ad-libbing something?