Steenalized

They've handled that in such a weird way. He's still the Bulgarian Brute from time to time. They say he's now living in/from Russia, but it's pretty much impossible to ignore that he's Bulgarian seeing as how he has a tattoo of the outline of Bulgaria on his arm filled in with the Bulgarian flag.

Good match, better angle. Rusev finally gets the US title which is the perfect prop for him. Sheamus and him busted their asses in that match.

Cannot recommend that match enough. It won't be at the very top of my Best of Japan 2000s list but it won't be far off either. I enjoyed it as much as any match that wasn't the Taue/Kobashi vs. Tenryu/Akiyama tag.

Like I mentioned on twitter, I actually started to care about Orton for once and now he'll be gone a while. Hopefully he can keep it going when he comes back. I'm with Will, that ending was well done. I thought Raw overall was pretty well done and nowhere near as bad as twitter makes it seem.

Luger gets it too. Taue and Luger had long torsos an short legs that make them look kinda unathletic, but they're very clearly excellent athletes. Taue has ungodly long arms too.

To that extent it's impossible to remove all semblances of "strategic voting." Ranking your top 100 is going to have hair splitting and personal biases coloring the list. Slipping a personal favorite who has a case into the list in the 90s is a world away from putting only joshi workers in your top 10.

Among consensus-type candidates, I'd imagine I'll be a or the low voter on Kobashi. He'll make my list, I think, but he really doesn't go a lot for me. His best qualities are his charisma, which doesn't hook me in for whatever reason, and his offense, which I think is very overrated. Not bad by any stretch but nowhere as great as a lot of people rate it.

As I make my way through '91 and now into '92 WCW I'm getting a lot of very green Johnny B. Badd. All told I don't think he's awful at this point, just raw and green and a weird gimmick. The one thing that stood out to me is his punches. They're simultaneously great and awful. At Clash 18 vs. Morton, he backs Morton up into the corner with jabs and hooks and from a technical standpoint, they're great. The guy is a Golden Glover afterall. But for pro wrestling, his punches are awful. He doesn't connect with the real boxing punches since potatoing the shit out of Morton isn't a good call. When he throws worked punches, they look terrible.

Sheamus has been the best worker in the WWE this year and I'd say he was pretty great and '13 and '12 too from what I recall. I get why people don't like him. His character ranges between grating and downright brutal as a face. WWE booking doesn't exactly give him a chance to shine in a meaningful way at this point. Yet Sheamus is putting on good to great matches every week.

I crapped on the PPV (mostly because the ending) but a huge thumbs up to Raw this week. Orton actually being remotely interesting. Henry turning. Ryback returning. Cena/Rollins throwing bombs and a locker room clearing brawl.

Heel Henry, Face Ryback with the crowd behind him, both are huge pluses to me after last night.

Wrestlemania 30. People were pretty damn pleased with Summerslam too.

I'll say that they put on easily the worst show I've ever been to live when they came to Chicago back in June. Zero good matches and the impromptu thumb wrestling tournament took up more time than the main event.

Then watch an actual Wrestling company. WWE has always leaned on kitsch and spectacle. I've made the same arguments for a trolling end many times but WWE IS Sports Entertainment it is a different genre, it isn't booking it IS Creative for them. They hire writers to come up with creative and goofy stuff not bookers to book towns. Hardly a newsflash but seem to eer back to them being a Wrestling company. Except they still put on wrestling matches in a wrestling ring and occasionally do things right. I don't hate watch Raw. I watch Raw almost every week because I do enjoy it. However, it's frustrating to know that they have all this great talent and to know that they can do great stuff, only for them to crap the bed.

Can I just say WingedEagle is talking complete and utter nonsense about Snowden's book. Overall I agree with Snowden at times people here can be too detached from enjoying and consuming the show as a fan. His approach in talking could be better obviously. I don't understand the anger or surprise over WWE being WWE. Have learnt to pretty much to embrace it. A Hologram? BUT OF COURSE. I don't want to enjoy wrestling ironically. I sincerely enjoy it and would rather not have to justify bad booking and kitsch.

Cages mean nothing to the WWE, someone is going to get in there and get involved somehow. Island death match is the only sacred gimmick. I could have lived with the Lawler/Rich and Idol finish. Mystery finishes I don't get. That would have been better, though I still think after the actual pinfall would be best since Bray isn't working with the Authority, or at least I presume not. I also found the smoke and hologram to be cringe-worthy.

I'm a big fan of most of this show. I liked the main event, contrived main event spots and all, until the very end. Third year in a row where someone gets inside the Cell, mystic wrestlers in 2014, and no actual blow off to Rollins-Ambrose. I'd give the show overall about a D given how terrible that ending was.

I can't be that guy, because honestly I'm probably going to watch tomorrow, but... damn it. Why? All they had to do was have Bray do that AFTER Ambrose gets his win.

One time, WWE, just one time give us a cage or HIAC match that doesn't have someone getting inside.

I love how the crowd popped for just the opening bell. This is great.

No, it's Vince that does.

Waiting for Triple H to come back sometime in the future to make him go 25+.

Rusev is so damn good at this.

That's how I took it. Use the cage a bit but focus more on having a no DQ type match. Yes, it probably would have been better to just have a no DQ match, but the WWE loves them a gimmick.

I've always thought DDP looked like he was really yanking the guy's head down while Orton tends to sorta fall with them. I'm enjoying this more than any Orton/Cena match I've ever seen.