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Becky's promos even get across Charlotte's motivations for being an asshole.

Heath Ledger and Bo Dallas have undeniable charisma.

I agree with those points about the battle royal. Bayley sort of foreshadowed the eventual winner in her own pre-match promo, but it was subtle enough to not give it away. Would it be fair to assume that they're probably going to have the Bayley vs. Carmella match at the Royal Rumble weekend tapings, and then build up a real feud with someone else for the Mania weekend show?

Apparently they taped some new matches for NXT Kids at the taping tonight. It lives?

In summer / early fall of 2014 when Ambrose was super over, he brought that feeling of "controlled chaos" to a lot of situations. They weakened his character after that. His best matches seem to be with Rollins; I liked the EC / MITB matches from 2015.

Court Bauer and Dave Meltzer reported today that the WWE signed AJ Styles, Nakamura, Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson. Nakamura will be staying longer than the rest to finish up his title run. http://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/njpw-stars-nakamura-aj-styles-luke-gallows-and-karl-anderson-headed-wwe-204971

It was unlikely he would ever get it even before his injuries (forgone conclusion it's ever happening now), but he's been pushing for that match since Brock came back. Wasn't Bryan supposed to be in the Summerslam match instead of Cena?

In terrible quality on YouTube: Edit: Actually, this is on the Network: http://network.wwe.com/video/v532453883. The high quality transfer is really great for seeing Caudle's reaction.

The Observer this week (copied by all of the newz sitez) mentions that there are people in the WWE worried about the prospects of Bálor and Bayley on the main roster. The worries about Bálor are that his past experiences and age combined with main event matches on the NXT touring schedule will break him down too much and limit his shelf-life. The prospects for Bayley are considered to be extremely bimodal; she will either flounder or become a huge star in the "female John Cena" role. She currently has a "big sister" appeal to young girls, and she may outgrow that unless they pull the trigger on bringing her up soon. Personally, I don't think either of them have any chance on the main roster at the moment. Bálor's been having good matches, but he's missing a certain something. Someone on the PWO reaction shows (I forget who) summed it up well: he's never really felt like the central focus of NXT. If they do the demon gimmick with the head dress on the main roster, then they're going to have to be more polished and they're going to need to use it more sparingly. Even putting WWE's booking woes in the women's division aside, bringing Bayley up is an interesting booking challenge. How do you repeat the underdog story when a substantial portion of the audience has already seen it in the same company?

The big "We Want Sasha" chant during another match was even at the last Raw in the same venue. Maybe that was due to her Takeover match that weekend, but it certainly wasn't due to her booking up to that point in the Diva's Revolution. The crowd also didn't seem to be particularly dead near the end of Monday's match.

Sasha and Becky looked like they were going through a choreographed match that they hadn't practiced enough. There were points where they were doing things that made no sense in the context of the match, seemingly just waiting for a cue or visibly discussing what to do next. I don't want to sound too negative or come across like those people who are like "see, I told you they couldn't really work". The NXT women's division was my favorite thing about WWE in 2015. I don't think inability thusfar to take what made the ****+ matches in NXT so great and translate it to the main roster takes away from those matches in NXT at all. I just want them to find whatever it is and duplicate their success in a new setting. If it means more practice on house shows before doing a long TV match, then just do that and don't put the match on TV until it's ready.

Is it worse that they are visibly aware of the problem but are seemingly unable to fix it than if they acted like they were unaware of the problem altogether?

This is a nice-looking bump: http://i.imgur.com/8KknpC4.gifv

I'm not sure I could think of a worse viable winner for the Royal Rumble than Taker. The whole booking cycle of Royal Rumble / Elimination Chamber / Wrestlemania / MITB is really stale at this point, especially with a single world title. At least they managed to get rid of Elimination Chamber this year. It's even worse when all of your top heels have be aligned with The Authority, so it's either going to be a babyface winning the Rumble despite The Authority's attempts to stop him, or the Authority succeeding in manipulating the outcome of the match to have their choice win. I guess Taker is big enough to defy this template, but he's a bad choice for every other reason.

Vince is going to be on Raw again and Cena's coming back. This will be interesting...

I'm usually not a fan of 4-way tag matches, but I really got into this. Jordan & Gable are so incredibly over. Most of the match was between Jordan & Gable and BAMF. I like how the announcers actually sold the ref distraction from Alexa Bliss. I feel like if that happened on the main roster they'd probably wouldn't even be talking about the match. Jordan & Gable have to get a big match on the next Takeover.

Enjoyed the show as always. When the gimmick was announced for the title lineage rebook, I immediately thought "ugh, why don't they just make a whole separate lineage?" Thankfully you guys realized the terrible path you were going down with the original. I didn't really expect things to get so heated over Ron Garvin / Macho Man and Bret Hart / Mr Perfect. I'm looking forward to hearing the 90s reboot. The Hart family in Home Alone was gold.

I don't really care to psychoanalyze Stephanie, but if she's going to always get one over on the wrestlers then eventually there should be a payoff. Since they're not going to do man-on-woman violence on TV any time soon (and I probably wouldn't be a fan of that anyways), they should either have a payoff with another woman or find a way for her to get her comeuppance that doesn't require physicality. The latter is difficult to do well on a wrestling show. Breaking Ground was awesome this week as always. Scott Hall giving random advice to people was cool, and so were Sami's poetic descriptions of wrestling. No Nhooph so I didn't need to feel any fremdschämen for her. The Dana / Asuka cliffhanger was a good way to end an episode.

The rumor was that they wanted to give Eva Marie a title shot, which they did technically do. If she had worked out better in the wrestling role then they might've waited until London for that match. Even though it was better than I expected going in, I'm disappointed in the Nia Jax match because they only get one chance to do that first match between the two and the first loss for Nia.

So what feuds are we going to have now? They teased Asuka and Nia Jax, but it's a bit of a strange pairing because Asuka is on her way up to a title shot and Nia Jax is on her way down. Who does Bayley feud with? I assume they're going to do a short TV program before building up something big for the Wrestlemania weekend show. On the men's side, it looks like Baron Corbin will be getting a title program soon. Do they move right to that and leave the Joe rematch for later? Sami Zayn is back and Hideo Itami is hopefully coming back soon. Do the tag champs move onto the potentially hot feud with Jordan and Gable? If so, what do Enzo and Cass do?

When's the next Main Event podcast?

It was great how they were able to suck you in for the second sequence at the end when Dana Brook got ejected from ringside. The face distraction leading to the heel approaching from behind with the foreign object, only to be defended by Asuka. The unused foreign object being right in front of the camera for the 3-count was especially poetic.

I've been putting off starting on this podcast due to an huge backlog, but a Cornette interview pushed things over the edge for me.

Why would she sign such a ridiculous contract that would uproot her from her home on the other side of the world, only to be stuck in a developmental fed forever? Unless it's a short term deal for more money than usual? Another question: Why is her name pronounced "Aska"? Where's the u? Why waste a perfectly good vowel? I am not an expert in Japanese phonology but I think the 'u' is devoiced, so it sounds closer to a pause but not like you would typically pronounce "aska".

This show was amazing. I can't believe I enjoyed a Baron Corbin match. I only have a few minor nitpicks. The ref bump in the first match was really weak. I sometimes take a rougher bump getting out of bed. Enzo and Cass losing the tag team title match seemed off, especially after the pre-match promo; maybe there needed to be more underhanded tactics leading to the finish? Nia Jax's leg drop sucks. She needs to get more air or switch to a different move. Is she worried about hurting people?