Kadaveri

Remember Bryan vs. Kofi was originally going to happen at Fastlane, but got pulled the week before for Bryan vs. Owens. My guess is Bryan vs. Ali was only meant to be a Fastlane match anyway, Kofi took Ali's spot, then he got really hot so that match was moved to Mania.

He wasn't making a joke about the tubemen. His comment was that Kylie was "a ball of emotion and passionate... she's not wacky inflatable tubemen pretending to be nice she's actually..." [he then doesn't finish the sentence as he notices the audience reacting badly]. The reference to the tubemen was just identifying who he was negatively comparing Kylie's character to, it wasn't the subject of the remark. Also see on the Observer Board Bryan Alvarez is doubling down claiming he's heard stories of Bayley not being a nice person.

I thought AJ vs. Seth was really good. Pulled off some really cool spots and Seth didn't do the injuring his knee then ignoring it thing.

BEST PPV EVER. Bayley's Champion.

When's the last time Daniel Bryan was on the pre-show? That's a weird call. Pulling for Bayley to win MITB. She's been looking really good this year.

It may not have much of a Western fanbase but Dragon Gate has been the 2nd or 3rd biggest promotion in Japan for the last decade, it's not some little indie company. PAC has been their undefeated champion for the last six months. it is not sensible to expect him to take a loss to Adam Page of all people on this show. Forget about him personally, why would Dragon Gate agree to have their champ lose? If you book another promotion's champion you really should know what the politics of that are.

The Saudi leadership works with Israeli intelligence regularly and doesn't even hide it nowadays... trying not to go on a political tangent, just this idea they might not let Goldberg into the country out of hatred of Jewish people isn't based on reality. It's all geopolitical games, they couldn't care less about the religious background of some wrestler. But to the topic, thing is I think the cause of WWE's decline is so structural the only way I see it reversing is if AEW is really successful and suddenly Vince (assuming he's just gonna run the company forever) feels he needs to loosen the grip for WWE to stay profitable. The product is dire because they have no stars. They stopped trying to create them post-Cena when they realised they can now make money with WWE The Brand as the draw (or at least that was the idea) and not have to deal with wrestlers getting leverage over the company, which means pulling the rug under the feet of anyone who evers gets any serious momentum lest they get too big. There's no incentive to change that system so long as it still makes money, it's a safer bet than empowering their workers.

John Cena had more matches on it than Manami Toyota. Don't think many people would have predicted that.

Thanks OJ. I've actually found a friend-of-a-friend who said he'd have a go, although he knows nothing about wrestling. I'll make a subtitle video if that goes anywhere.

Anyone who's seen Stardom's streaming service knows they have English subtitles for the talking segments, which really helps following the stories for those of us who don't speak Japanese. I've had this idea of asking someone to translate promos from famous matches and saving them somewhere, like I've always wondered what Misawa is saying in the post-RWTL interview that gets such a big response from the crowd, or what exactly is being said in the Queendom tag post-match. 1. Has this already been done, does anyone know? 2. Does anyone know an English/Japanese speaker who might do it? What fees they'd want? 3. If anyone else is interested I was thinking people could contribute to a paypal account or something, and then could vote on what they'd like to see a translation of. Thoughts?

This is a really good stiff battle. There's a funny moment on commentary where they're extolling Dolph's technical skill in contrast to Sheamus' brute brawling style, meanwhile Dolph is unloading a flurry of punches at Sheamus. I really liked how they did the transitions, Sheamus lariating Dolph while he's sitting on the top turnbuckle looked cool and the finish got a cheer out of me. ***3/4

Best Chyna match ever? This is surprisingly quite good. I find Lita really hard to judge as a wrestler as she seems to be objectively bad at everything except being very over with every crowd her entire WWF run so... she must be doing something right that I can't quite put my finger on. The execution is often sloppy, but still in the macro Lita works pretty well here sympathetically working from underneath trying to find an opening to beat Chyna, who is overpowering her at just about every turn. The crowd gets really into it. You see Chyna putting up this friendly facade whilst sneaking in the odd underhanded tactic to beat Lita, like she isn't really as full of confidence as she presents herself to be. This might have been a good storyline had this feud went anywhere, but alas events. **3/4

The way he described getting the story sounded very amateurish. He just says "so five days after an event, four different people all separately contacted me on the same day to tell the same wild story presenting one person in a terrible light" and he doesn't even note how suspect that sounds. It's like he doesn't realise that 'sources' can have ulterior motives and don't necessarily tell the truth.

I am enjoying that in this whole fiasco the only thing Sasha has publicly done is post a few innocent holiday snaps on Instagram. Hope she's having a great time.

But that was reported mere hours after the event, which shows you how quickly such a story would have come out if true.

He also said that these four different sources all contacted him today to tell him. Bit of a coincidence. No way am I believing that two grown women laid on the floor screaming about losing wrestling belts with dozens of people around and cameras everywhere, and nobody said anything about it until 5 days later.

This is all untrue. Sasha has wrestled more matches and has missed less time due to injury than any woman on the roster the whole time she's been there. People seem to mistake her being taken off TV for ages as her being injured not realising she's wrestling on house shows the whole time.

Loved Usos vs. The Hardyz. They might be the top 2 WWE tag teams ever. I think The Iconics are the worst act to win a championship in WWE since Maryse was the Divas Champion, but at least the women from that era were barely trained and got no match time so it's not necessarily their fault. I don't get how you can spend years at the Performance Centre and NXT and still be so awful.

I think the interruption went down badly because of who did it rather than people 'not getting the promoted match'. If it was Daniel Bryan & Rowan or Brock Lesnar avenging their Wrestlemania losses, Drew Galloway continuing his vendetta against The Shield or an NXT debut then at least it would constitute an angle. The Bar doing a run-in was just totally random and so replaced a title unification match with a tag match with no storyline/stakes at all.

It looked like an angle to me. Surely Cass wouldn't be throwing punches at Bully Ray like that if it was just them gatecrashing.

Of all the terrible people in wrestling why would you attack Bret Hart. What did he do.

Goldberg squashing Brock.

I thought it was an excellent match. I'm really glad Walter's wrestling his style in NXT and doesn't seem to have been molded into the WWE formula too much. The match felt really rough and violent. It did drag a bit at the end when they went into the obligatory big move trading which didn't really fit the match. Wasn't a fan of Pete Dune attempting a triangle choke on the top rope to someone who has a powerbomb finisher. Reminded me of all those times someone would pound Undertaker's head in the corner then be SHOCKED when they get grabbed for a Last Ride.

I cannot think of a single WWE women's match where this happened except for the NXT Brooklyn 1 match. The closest thing was maybe Alexa's promo after the first Elimination Chamber, but that was just fake-out so not really. Weird talking point.

As well as the blowoff to the rivalry with Styles, this match is like the culmination of John Cena's career. Ever since he became The Guy in WWE he's been criticised for his bad offense, his "unconventional" style as JR would put it. Triple H slammed him as 'uncoordinated' in the build to their title match 10 years previously, and it all has some basis in reality. He's sloppy and a clunky wrestler. But it's never really mattered. Cena's big calling card is his "Never Give Up" attitude and his lack of technical precision is just an obstacle for him to overcome. Through sheer heart and willpower he always seems to find a way to win. Dylan Hales sums this up very well in this clip here. Everything was going pretty wonderfully for Cena as the Ace of WWE, until AJ Styles arrives. Before their Money In The Bank 2016 match AJ does a promo on Cena saying if WWE had signed him 15 years ago there would never have been a John Cena, but "the powers that be" have protected Cena and kept him away. He's effectively saying the last decade of WWE has been a sham and Cena's a paper Ace. They have their 1st match, and it was AJ dominating Cena through technical skill. The whole match Cena could barely string 3 moves together before AJ cut him off. It took him absolutely ages to get a comeback together and even then it was on one leg as it'd been worked over so badly. The best bit is when Cena pulls off a five-knuckle shuffle on the one leg and it looks pitiful, he even has this dejected look on his face afterwards like he knows that was useless. He loses. The 2nd match at Summerslam isn't as good as a stand-alone, but what it is in the full story was Cena deploying his tried and tested "Never Give Up" strategy of just powering through every big move he gets hit with until he survives the war of attrition and hits the last big move to win That always won him the second match of a feud after losing the first. But this time it didn't work either, AJ was on another level to all his previous opponents. He's proven Cena was a false Ace all along. Or has he? On Talking Smack a few days before the Royal Rumble AJ assures viewers that Cena doesn't stand a chance against him because all Cena has is "John Cena, he's strong he's going that going for him, but there's a lot more to it than that" and says he can wrestle any style but Cena cannot. Then we get this match in front of 52,000 for the WWE Championship, and it's all an answer to that first encounter. Cena learns throughout the match that if he's going to beat AJ, strength and willpower isn't going to cut the mustard anymore (failed him twice already), he's going to have to finally outdo someone on technical execution, his historic weakness. His initial attempts at countering AJ's offence by just hammering with lariats doesn't get him very far as AJ still dominates the opening. In fact, every time Cena goes for one of his power routines it fails as AJ has a brilliant counter-offence up his sleeve. Cena's backbody drop into an AA attempt but AJ flying kicks him in the head. Later Cena goes for a protoslam only for AJ to turn it into a hurricanrana and takes back control. This isn't going well again, you see the cogs going in Cena's brain as he gives us these Hamlet facial expressions. But then right from when Cena ducks a headkick from AJ and hoists him up into an electric chair slam, this is now ON. Cena is now going to put on the most clinical performance he's ever delivered, it's the only way to win. AJ has pushed and challenged him into becoming the best version of Cena ever. And he totally does it. Later in the match where he hits a Code Red totally perfectly is the moment that best sells this, didn't look like anything like the sloppy John Cena of old. And then Cena and AJ are both on the mat towards the end of the match exhausted, AJ goes for calf-killer but Cena has outwrestles him on the match, this happens multiple times, every trick AJ tries Cena manages to reverse it into something else we don't usually see from him, including Cena managing to slip on a figure four leg lock at one point! (If Cena wins he ties Ric Flair's record for 16 World Title wins). Still think all Cena's got is strength AJ? Cena finally dodges AJ's attempt at a flying forearm (how he lost last time) and beats AJ with a cool-looking rolling double AA he innovated for that match. And in winning he vindicates himself and his legacy, showing that he still would have been the Top Guy of WWE had AJ been there the whole time, it just would have been an even bigger challenge for him. ***** and one of my top matches of the decade.