FMKK

She was fun doing the 'straight fire' bit but she's on a whole other level now

When did Becky Lynch become the best promo in the business? She's knocking it out of the park right now and there's really no good reason that she and Ronda shouldn't be promoted as the top two stars in the company. I'm not sure if they should do a face to face or anything this week though, because Becky is absolutely nuking Ronda (and everyone else) on Twitter and if that translates to the mic, it could mean trouble.

So Cormier did a promo on Lesnar at UFC last night. Another sign that their potentially collaborating or, at the very least, Vince want to have Lesnar to be carrying the WWE belt when he goes into the Octagon.

Glad to know that Ric Flair main eventing helped to bring change to North Korea

It's so global that it takes place wherever you want to imagine it

If he was never going to be there, why would they announce him in the first place?

Cena is officially off the show

It's amazing how they can do all these videos talking about women not getting chances in the past without ever addressing why, right?

I enjoyed the more low-fi aesthetic of this show than the super OTT overproduced WWE shows we're used to. Not too much going on with the ramp, normal ring posts instead of the LED pylons and old school barricades were a nice change of pace. I didn't mind the dimmed crowd lighting either. The whole thing just seemed more fresh, which is something they should learn. When all the other shows look homogenised af, little changes like that can make a big difference to the presentation.

That was a really good match, especially considering who was in there. Nikki was excellent on offence in the first half or so in particular. There were some sloppy moments but nothing that couldn't be kayfabed away as just being part of the struggle of the fight. As good as it could been and more. Ronda is star but also worth mentioning how over the Bellas were, especially with women.

I seriously thought her neck had gone for a few minutes after. Felt like the match teetering on the edge a bit.

I like Nikki and I'm glad she's getting a proper match here but I'm not sure why they don't have Ronda winning matches straight off the bat like in UFC

That was a really strong match, albeit with some moments of WWE Plunder Match cliches that took away from the overall performance. Glad Becky won but it seems like Charlotte really went out of her way to take rough bumps to endear herself to the crowd. Some great selling of the physicality and pain inflicted throughout too. People on twitter saying its by far the best WWE last man standing match ever are complete numbers-seeking hype merchants though. Cena vs Umaga is still the standout.

I saw something today suggesting that a final decision on the venue will be made on Wednesday. So expect lots more references to 'Crown Jewel' without any indication of where it's being held. They could be scrambling to find a location in the region as we speak.

Yeah, it seems really weird that they didn't put the turn off by a couple of weeks at least

Well Reigns is obviously off the card now.

Jesus, just seeing the Reigns stuff now. Awful news for the guy. We can only hope for the best.

Michaels will go insane? I thought Born Again Jesus would be against carving people up with saws but I'm not an expert.

I speculated that involvement with this would be damaging for Cena in particular given that he's transitioning to the wider media. Interesting that he and Bryan would apparently make power moves in this direction. Good.

I'm not so sure about that

This was great fun to read and I really wanna just bunk off from marking papers and watch all these matches. I grew up on early 2000s Smackdown as my Saturday morning wrestling so I have a lot of nostalgia for a load of guys on this list.

That was the Randy Orton narrative earlier in the show

He's the guy who was a big TV star back when wrestling was good and popular.

It worked to heat up the match and I guess it's fine to do as a plot point in a feud but it just seems out of place that every person Nikki feuds with basically calls her a whore when they're doing their phony corporate feminism thing. If they weren't so heavy handed with that stuff, it wouldn't be so grating.

It might get a bit more play because wrestling being involved makes for a nice absurdity in TV comedic punchlines but you're right. This'll all be swept under the carpet within a few weeks, like when the Saudi twitter implicitly threatened a 9/11 attack on Canada a few months back. Everything moves so quickly now that something that would have been a months long saga barely lasts for a weekly news cycle.