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What's the issue with the Brock matches? Have they just regressed into the suplex city thing and purposely turned him into a gimmick worker or is there some sort of physical issue that's inhibiting him from doing more? Perhaps it's just him trying to get by with the least possible effort, which is a shame because he's a really top level worker when he's engaged. In fairness, I would argue that the Wrestlemania match with Goldberg is a legit great match.

New Japan isn't shelling out $5 million plus travel expenses for five Brock Lesnar matches a year.

Another thing I saw on Twitter (obviously a pinch of salt comes with all of this) is that, although there may have been some incident on the tour, Enzo being thrown off the bus by Roman was seen as a joke rather than something serious so it could have just been a rib

I think I basically agree with all of this tbh. I will say that Benoit, Guerrero, Jericho and Rey are head and shoulders above this generation of smark fan favourites except for I guess AJ, who is an all-timer imo.

So the poor handling of Daniel Bryan has basically killed off two potential top babyface runs (Sheamus and Reigns) I'm not sure the genie can ever be put back into the bottle with the divided crowds with the Hijak Raw stuff from a few years ago, the CM Punk debacle and WWE flat out playing up to post-Mania crowds. As much as I would love the crowds to react as appropriate to the booking, I just don't think it'll happen now. There are now multiple audiences rather than a single, united audience. EDIT: And I'll add that with the top level push of AJ Styles as well as good pushes for Owens, Rollins etc and the massive investment in NXT, WWE has gone pretty damn far to placate the smark section of that audience.

I'm increasingly of the view that good creative may not have made much of a difference to Reigns' reactions. Some of the booking he's had has been flat out bad but I feel like a certain section of the audience will always reject him for what he represents in their mind (Vince's choice, Cena 2.0, Not Daniel Bryan) rather than for any on-screen booking. He's jobbed to Strowman in the last two PPVs and has put on consistently good matches for two years now and yet there's a narrative of Roman Always Wins and Roman Can't Work, in spite of reality.

If Roman Reigns sells more merchandise than any other full timer and gets the most consistently strong reactions on TV every week, how can it be determined that pushing him isn't giving the fans what they want? Outside of that, how do you determine it? I certainly don't think they should be booking for smarks 100% but really WWE have already made loads of compromise in that direction. Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, AJ Styles, Finn Balor, Sami Zayn, Shinsuke Nakamura etc are all pushed as stars (to one degree or another) and they're allowed to wrestle in a very similar style to their independent careers. They're created NXT as a workrate promotion that also has goofy gimmicks that get over with that segment of the audience. What more should WWE really do other than junking half of their audience and turning into a mid-2000s ROH revival promotion? That's not a show that I would have any interest in whatsoever considering I find Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman, John Cena and The Miz to be consistently more entertaining than all of those I listed earlier with the exception of Styles.

He retired the Undertaker a couple of months ago

Joe/Lesnar sounds like a great match both Stiff workers should be interesting. Hope Joe destroys Lesnar and takes the title. Sure theres talk about Lesnar/Strowman headlining Summerslam but it doesnt sound as great as tonights match. Tbh, as good as this build has been Strowman vs Lesnar is possibly the combo I'm most excited about on the whole WWE roster so I really hope it happens.

If this show lives up to the build, at least for the top matches, then it could be WWE show of the year. The only match I don't expect anything at least decent from is Rollins vs Wyatt but that's a filler match and a filler feud so it's not a big deal. I hope Joe and Lesnar can deliver on the hype. It went from being a semi-interesting routine title match to a must see main event over the last month or so.

Really enjoyed that article. Cultural and even sporting homogenisation is something I've thought about quite a bit and that's one of the best articulations of the idea that I've seen. Do I dislike Kenny Omega for the same reason I dislike the endless Marvel superhero movies?

It makes perfect sense that a guy as small as Aries would be in the cruiserweight division. I know this might be outdated thinking but I can't really imagine him as a threat to Lesnar, Reigns, Strowman etc with his stature.

I've only really been dipping in and out of WWE TV recently for the top angles so I've missed this Kirt Angle/Corey Graves angle. What's that all about?

Another awesome pair of segments for the Joe vs Lesnar and Reigns vs Strowman matches. They've knocked the build for those feuds out of the park imo.

All the big segments on Raw last night were pretty damn good. Roman took a great bump onto the side of that ambulance. Him vs Braun is then eud of the year by a mile and I'm so excited to see them go at it again. GBOF could be an incredible show,

He manages to take himself pretty seriously. Imagine writing wrestling reviews for decades and becoming a trusted opinion leader on the topic then pissing it away for Twitter reactions and fanboying movez though. He may as well just join Reddit.

Raw is a black hole on top without Strowman feuding with Reigns tbh. I like Miz and to a degree Ambrose but they just scream midcard to me at this point, while Joe, Rollins, Balor and Wyatt most here aren't particularly high on. Maybe they should pull the trigger on the Hardys going broken and making tabthe main focus for a bit.

It's strange that he had what seemed like a long main event run but when you think back on it, it was only really about 5 years between his first world title and his retirement. It's hard to think of anything from that run that's of any consequence except for maybe the Cena feud.

So do a lot of the people who vote in Observer polls. There were people who had those two matches pegged as the best of the night long before the matches actually happened and would have still voted that way if the two matches were god awful and Roman vs Braun (who finished 1 & 2 for most overrated in the year end awards) had been a 5* classic. Roman I get as his case has been talked about countless times. But I'm shocked about Braun. I know he didn't really reach full awesomeness till this year but even by November he was clearly getting better and showing signs he was very good and worth a push. He wasn't in Japan or the indies though. Therefore overrated and should never be pushed in the mind of a lot of WON fans.

The hair obsession is definitely a thing and it's really weird, but Sasha for example has had some really dreadful dye jobs.

I thought this was the blowoff. It was quite awhile ago though so I probably forgot a lot of it. Did this happen before the Rumble? I do remember Bryan losing that match. This was about two or three weeks before to set up the match

The Rock says: IT DOESN'T MATTER how biology works!!! I dunno, it seems kind of a cop-out to be mad at the fans instead of the company that has been ramming the guy down their throats as the New Cena for years. Fair or not people don't want to see him in the position the company does, yet it's somehow the fans' fault when they push back since this company has a near sociopathic obsession with deliberately not following the lead their audience creates for them. So instead of pushing the guy who sells merch, has a good look, is over with the demographic they target and wrestles better than everyone else in the style they like they should listen the the internet guys in the crowd who chant stupid shit to get themselves over and will be hardcores no matter what? Seems counterproductive to me.

What would turn the smarks around on him outside of releasing him to compete in the G1? And even then I feel like a large proportion of those fans don't actually watch much New Japan etc.

The initials ROH or NJPW on his Wikipedia page.

Amazing performance from Reigns last night and I was going to bump this thread to discuss it. Nice to see it already getting recognition. Not only was he excellent at selling the pain he was in when Strowman was in offence, but the subtleties of lessening the impact of his own moves and, as has been pointed out, kicking out of the powerslam so weakly were incredible. I'm not sure if there's anyone else on the WWE roster who could pull off a performance from underneath as good as that, let alone even being interested in doing so ahead of just going move for move. AJ Styles for sure but that's probably it. I loved the desperation and hatred that shone through when he was thumping Strowman with the ambulance door at the end too. It's hard to conclude that the guy is anything other than one of the top workers in the world right now and I really hate that he still gets no respect from a large portion of the audience - the demographic that purports to care about people being good workers as well. Surely these people are just deluding themselves at this point. Performative smarkdom is the worst.