Kadaveri

It was an angle that led to a Ronda vs. Alicia match on Raw. Wears random extravagant outfits seems to be Alicia's gimmick now.

The funny thing about that Punk interview is he wasn't actually saying what 90% of fans think he was. His point was how ludicrous it was that he was being told to make Roman Reigns look strong when Punk was being booked to beat Roman in a 1 vs. 3 handicap match. He even says he said if you want Roman looking strong why not just have him win, but still was told you need to beat 3 guys at once but make Roman look strong. Actually summed up Roman's booking a lot better than the more popular narrative. Roman's the guy who loses constantly, but gets booked to lose "in a strong way" so WWE acts like it won't hurt him, even though it clearly does.

Meltzer says in the Observer that Shawn Michaels is gonna wrestle, probably the Saudi show in November but "not in a singles match."

Daniel Bryan just screwed up a suicide dive on Smackdown. Men should be banned from doing that.

What most bothers me is that's they're again just randomly announcing matches rather than building them as if WWE doesn't have 5 hours of TV a week. If you want to do Lita vs. Mickie, how about this. Do a promo battle segment between Alexa and Trish on Raw that leads to Alexa and her buddy Mickie James beating down Trish, only for Lita to run in for the save! I just thought of that right now. Why would you not have matches come out of a storyline that makes people want to see it?

I don't think Cena's shirts are bad, they're just aimed at kids. They love all that colourful stuff.

I still enjoyed this a lot but I don't see it as the classic it's being hailed as elsewhere. I honestly think the Naito/ZSJ was slightly better with the narrative it told for Naito whereas I didn't get anything like that from this one. Two wrestlers with a lot of cool moves hitting them on each other but at times I think they were putting shocking the crowd with the brutality over anything else. And I don't really get why this match had to be so brutal from a storyline perspective anyway, these guys are supposed to like each other. Compare this with the Kenny vs. Cody match which was supposed to be a bloodfeud but was totally tame. All that being said though, this was a lot of fun. Moonsault into the double moves is a sick move and I liked that Kenny blocked a lot of Kota's strikes rather than the usual NJPW of just exchanging them. ***1/2

which really is a form of grading on a curve as Sasha is one of the most injury-free members of the roster, hasn't missed a month since June 2013. The abuse Roman took in his matches with Brock or that Sheamus TLC match are way worse than anything any woman in WWE has done.

Really enjoyed this, told a solid story throughout and one thing that really stood out to me was their facial expressions. Toni has that mixture of suffering and grit as she fights through the damage Shayna's inflicting on her, but she doesn't have enough. Popped for the finish too, good to teach crowds that they don't always make it just before the 10. ***1/2

Becky has only lost one singles match clean since the brand split, and she's only been pinned on PPV in the Survivor Series elimination tags. I think they've always kept her up their sleeve in case they want her in the title picture again.

The Florida loop is NXT's real developmental system so not a valid comparison. The NXT Live tours usually have an attendance in the 1,000 - 2,000 range nowadays, which is very good for a 'promotion' that doesn't have TV. They were doing even better than that in 2015-16 actually, they peaked just before Bayley left and took her demographic with her. They've been hit and miss but the previous three Iron Man matches in WWE (Hardyz vs. The Bar, Charlotte Flair vs. Sasha Banks, Bayley vs. Sasha Banks) all had engaged crowds throughout. Can't blame this on the stipulation.

The issue with Alexa is she's pushed relentlessly yet is one of the worst wrestlers in the division who kills every babyface she feuds with by not taking any of their offense. She won't even take a big boot without there being a foot of space between her and her opponent, it looks awful. She wrestles like Bruiser Brody yet is 5ft 0. I don't know what match people were watching if you thought she was any good last night. She didn't take a single bump, even Lana did more in that match. Her one job was to be on cue for a very simple and spot for the finish yet she still inexplicably screwed that up and made Becky look terrible standing with the briefcase in her hand for several seconds waiting for Alexa to stop her.

I think Bryan's better than AJ right now. I don't remember a particularly good performance from Styles since the Brock match, meanwhile Bryan's already had the best matches Jeff Hardy, Shelton Benjamin and Big Cass have had in years (for Cass best singles match ever, he's terrible), and he's done all that wrestling a new style that WWE fans aren't used to yet it's got really over.

It was working out for him financially, so there was no reason for him to quit but personal pride. Apparently he got paid half a million dollars for doing this fight. I'd do it.

Rollins is reining himself in nowadays though, at least compared to 2015-16 where his main goal in matches seemed to be to hit every wrestling move invented within 45 seconds.

Last Friday MasterChef did an average of 3.32 million viewers 8-10pm. Week before that a show on Meghan Markle at 8pm did 3.68m.

What is that exactly?

*aired 02/27/09 Boy is this a hidden gem of a match. My first thought is why the hell was The Big Show not booked like this his entire WWE career? This match was laid out to make him look like an unstoppable monster with Cena bumping all over the place and having his trademark offense practically no-sold (in a good way). If this was the first Big Show match you saw you'd think he was a guy who won 95% of his matches in dominant fashion. Cena's selling is fantastic. I love how he works so hard for each comeback attempt only to be cruelly cut off at some point. He does get slightly cocky with that grin once he gets Big Show down for the 5 knuckle shuffle, but that's ok coz Show pretty soon after teaches him a lesson and squashes him. Great visual where Cena attempts a bulldog only for Show to no-sell it instead swatting Cena in mid-air like an annoying mosquito sending him flying out the ring. Didn't see that coming. ****

Rey Mysterio gives one of his greatest individual performances here. In the match from start to beginning and never goes more than a few minutes without pulling off some cool high spot or crazy bump. Right at the start he charges at Jericho and goes head first into the pod with a loud crack (or at least that's what it looked like). ****1/2 on the match.

No way. A big selling point of WWE programming nowadays is that it's live TV so people won't watch it on demand and skip the ads.

I most like their two PPV matches with Rollins and Ambrose. Iron Man match against the Hardyz was also very good, as was the match they won the titles from New Day with that unique finish. I'm not sure how highly to rate The Bar though. They seem to be a team which consistently has good - very good matches but I don't think they've had a single one that crossed the 'great' threshold. Compared to The Usos or The Revival their top tier matches are a bit weak.

Really great match. For some reason when I watched this show I thought the Edge vs. Taker match was the classic but this was a lot better. It feels so intense almost throughout the whole thing. I wish the more recent WWE main event style would dial back to this kind of thing rather than all the big move-2.9 kickout fests we get now that don't really make me feel anything half the time. Even the big false finish in this match is still sold as a near death-blow. Cena may kick out at the last split second out of the counter-to-a-powerbomb, but he is not inexplicably back up a minute later launching a big comeback. He's already a beaten man once he was hit with that, Batista just needs to do it again to finish him off. ****1/4

I think the backlash is amplified because Roman Reigns main-evented the show above the WWE title match. I don't know why so many internet fans think this is so important, but they do. Was that really the story of the match? Looked to me like Charlotte wasn't taking it very seriously for real. There was this awkward segment where Carmella had her in a submission and Charlotte was just laying there totally still not even struggling or anything.

I have no idea what this 1955 match is?

Does Goldberg have the record for longest gap with no great matches in between? vs. Scott Steiner 2000 - vs. Brock Lesnar 2017.