cpst

Bull Nakano tho...

That sharpshooter tapout was really weird.

The gear in this 6-woman match is on point.

Nothing to give the show that "episode of TV" feel like opening with an authority figure promo.

It's comforting to know that during the tumultuous times in which we live we can still expect the main event to focus on the McMahons.

Owens has an "I'm a hiding a double chin" beard rather than a hipster beard. A hipster beard would be way less sloppy.

There is no example of a male domineering figure who acts the same as Stephanie. Even though the entire concept of the heel authority figure is played out at this point, both HHH and Vince have consistently been willing to create tension that is resolved by violence. Geriatric Vince was even willing to take bumps to put Reigns over a year ago. Stephanie creates conflict and introduces unilateral violence (slapping wrestlers around, slapping interviewers around, etc.) with no feasible path towards reciprocation. In the (politically incorrect) world of wrestling where one's manhood is determined by the ability to use violence to gain an upper hand in conflicts, this is emasculating. Stephanie may not have real control over whether she appears on TV (the sheets have always talked about how USA wants more McMahons), but she has control over her character in a way that very few other people on the roster do, so it's more difficult to separate her skills as a performer from the tortured wrestling logic of her storylines. In the one case (the Brie Bella match) where there could have been a traditional wrestling resolution, she didn't actually go through with it. They could even combine their love of heel authority figures with the Diva's Revolution™ and create a main-event female storyline by having Stephanie antagonize Sasha Banks. I have no desire to see intergender violence, especially on WWE TV, so I'd rather they just change her character or have her character create conflicts with other women. One isolated example where I remember people making similar comments about emasculation etc. was when The Rock came and embarrassed Rusev, for no real storyline purpose. In that situation it was theoretically possible that they would have a match in the future, but I don't think anyone legitimately believed that they would waste one of his matches on Rusev.

I really liked the Asuka / Bayley match. It seems like the crowd had trouble getting into it at times. Strange that they used such a similar finish to the Nia Jax match.

Having the owners / GMs at ringside telegraphs the finish even moreso than the proximity of this PPV to the draft already does.

He got a month off to work out and eat well.

We have now crossed the line of too many kickouts.

Unless there's something from TV I missed, that was the best women's match since Mania.

Sasha's bump on that headscissors from the top rope looked pretty disgusting.

Debuting Bayley on a PPV makes more sense, because the crowd has more people who follow NXT.

You could argue that all of the cost-cutting done in 2014 in the wake of the failure of the WWE Network to meet expectations was "answering to shareholders".

What's the source for that? The supposed original source I found is a Sherdog post by an unknown user that has been discredited: http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/brock-popped-positive-for-rad-med-mod-edit-this-guy-is-trolling.3293585/

Meltzer said in June that NXT is still not profitable. For a while they were paying Nakamura a lot of money to work The Drifter on Florida house shows, and they have the cost of trainers and the Performance Center.

At face value, the split women's / tag team divisions are absurd. Does this mean that they'll try to sign a bunch of indie women's talent to fill the roster?

ESPN is reporting that the substance Brock tested positive for was clomiphene, the same estrogen blocker in Jon Jones' failure. I'm nowhere close to an export, but a cursory search online indicates that one of the metabolites has a variable half-life of 5-7 days or longer. I'm curious what plan they had to evade detection (they must've had one, given the money on the line) and why it failed.

Does one passed test affect the failure of another test? Pretty much everyone ever caught doping passed a test at some point.

I love how Michael Cole explicitly acknowledges Cena's formula on commentary.

I'd be okay with this, even if it's just to hear the Johnny Sorrow justification.

That belly-to-belly over the ropes and the following moonsault were pretty cool, but this match is completely heatless.

That beatdown also looked better than anything in the match.

We just need to wait until Summerslam where Sasha Banks will be in a good match and disappear into the ether until WM season.