FMKK

The powerbomb into the barricade. Awaiting Bret's next shoot with baited breath.

Balor confirmed injured and stripped of the title. They finally start to push a guy and he ends up hurt after one PPV. Insane bad luck. Anyhow, they need to do something big tonight.

Bound to be an angle. I hope they don't have a long feud.

Ambrose and Ziggler I think did very well on promos in the lead up to this. Both men seem weak due to their lack of sustained push coming into this position though. Ambrose was squashed by Brock a few months ago and Dolph had been jobbing to Baron Corbyn FFS.

That was rubbish. They threw story out the window about five minutes in for your turn-my turn. And then Cena basically no sold the Styles Clash to be up for the forearm.

Cena burying his finisher for all time now.

This is just more of the spammy movez stuff Cena did against Owens and Rollins. And apparently Sasha has been pulled from all events until 23rd September. Wellness?

Taking the precedent of Wrestlemania, I'm trying to work out the worst case scenario booking decisions for the rest of the night.

Wtf was that finish? It feels like both were meant to have their shoulders down and they fucked it up. Good match but Sasha has got to cut out the reckless spots.

Of the people who would have benefited from getting the pin here in 2016, Jericho was not one of them.

I feel like they were only really properly over for the return pop in front of the smark crowd. They've been living on fumes ever since.

I think the storytelling and the promos have been quite good for this one. It makes sense to acknowledge that Ziggler has never gone all the way but like you say, they need to play a careful game. I wouldn't give him the title but with the rosters so stretched they can't afford to devalue anyone who is half-way over.

Kick-off show is underway. Lot's of big matches on this show although only four of them really interest me; Lesnar vs Orton, Cena vs Styles, Reigns vs Rusev and Charlotte vs Sasha. However, at least some of the results seem unpredictable. Hoping that the 6 hours doesn't drive anyone to insanity....

I really hope they do trolly Eva vignettes on TV while she's away taking about how she can't wait to return to the ring etc.

What was he doing, sniffing cocaine off of them?

Lots of talk on Twitter that Eva Marie has been popped too and an official WWE announcement is on it's way. I really hope it's an angle!

Raw booking made no sense whatsoever as a go-home show. You can't put heat on a feud by having the heel lose clean 6 days before the PPV. And the demon thing was wasted too, though I'm surely not the only one to find that whole get up incredibly lame.

Other than the fact that beating Ziggler has no credibility. He's the stalest guy on the roster and needs to go away for 6 months and come back with a new gimmick, new look etc. I think he needs to go heel on Ambrose in the build-up to this show at least. But having him as the no.1 contender really exposes the dearth of talent on the Smackdown roster. The whole draft was completely baffling when you look at the story they're trying to tell with the GMs. Shane and Bryan are talking about offering new people opportunities and their big stars are Cena and Orton with Ziggler getting a title shot while the evil Stephanie's show pushes an NXT call-up to the moon on his first night. If they wanted to go down that route with Shane and Bryan, the least they could have done was put Zayn and Cesaro on Smackdown.

I'm enjoying the cosmetic changes. Not sure how they should go about this main event though. They should definitely end with a cliffhanger or a hot angle though rather than just a straight winner. Also, Universal title is pretty bad.

Just catching up on this show but am I the only one that finds Balor totally overrated? I just feel that everything about his act is superficial; the entrance, the face paint and the work all seems to be ok for show but not really connected to any wider sense of him having a character. He's just a guy who sometimes wears paint. His matches seem to hit a glass ceiling for me in terms of quality too. He does some cool moves I suppose but there's just something missing, maybe in terms of story or psychology, that stops them from ever crossing over into really great territory. Kinda like Seth Rollins. I feel like the bloom may be off the rose with him quite quickly when he is eventually called up to the main roster and doesn't have the aura of being the top NXT guy to keep all the smarks loving him.

I thought the point of the camera tricks during The Shield attacks were to get over the wild, unexpected quality of the beatdowns. They were particularly annoying in those segments but at least it was unique and played into their act. Now The Shield is no more and it's kind of infected everything.

I assume they'll give him someone he's definitely going to beat. The novelty/name value should be enough to pop a buyrate for UFC as a one-off but if he loses then that's a credibility hit to his WWE gimmick.

Amazing. That really is the perfect comparison.

The acting is sub-pornography bad. Wtf does Matt have a dead badger on his head? Abysmal.

I will admit to not yet having seen the match and to not having seen much of Ospreay but when I saw the GIF on Twitter my instinctive reaction was to cringe pretty hard. I find myself doing that a lot when I see overly choreographed, flippy, self-aware stuff that the likes of the Young Bucks specialise in. I really think it's horrible to watch. But I guess they've achieved their ultimate goal now because a lot of people are going to seek out this match to see what the fuss is about and I think I probably should too.