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Died at Roman entering at 30 when everyone was expecting a debut or return. Otherwise the whole event seemed pretty dull. Hopefully WM is the end for Taker, because he looked like shit.

I'm so shocked that Grimmas would disagree with every word I wrote. EY/Tye fucking sucked. Eric Young fucking sucks. Came out to the worst music imaginable, to dead silence, with an overly choreographed and timed entrance, then was doing a Flair Flop on the SECOND PUNCH in the match. It was about 5 minutes too long, made Tye look like a geek for all the times he'd purposely put himself in a compromising position with the rest of the group, and the whole build seeming to be "I've let down the people who support me too many times, I can't do it again" only to do it again doesn't build up Bryan/Sami sympathy for him. It makes him look like a loser since he's lost basically every even kind of big match he's ever had in NXT. It's not like he comes close and victory is snatched away from him at the last second. He's just a loser who loses every match. Saying the crowd was into it is a stretch. They were into chanting for Tye. They chanted for Tye in Sombra/Strong as well, but I don't think you'd say that the crowd was into that match because of it.

EY vs Tye was outright bad. The best the show got was decent. AOP vs DIY was the match of the night and it was easily DIY's least impressive match they've had in NXT. Nak/Roode had zero chemistry, and not only that, but it seems like it was a test for him to work more traditional US TV style main events, and it didn't work well at all, imo.

What a not good show. NXT has been not interesting for quite a while, but this was for sure in the bottom 2-3 Takeovers. Nothing about it was good, and at absolute best it was "meh".

Says a lot about the state of NXT where a non-confrontation between Seth/HHH (a feud that has no heat or juice on Raw) is by far the hottest and most exciting thing on a Takeover event.

The lack of energy and excitement from anyone involved with this card is palpable. From the negative chemistry on the pre-show, to the crowd sounding like they regretting buying tickets so many months in advance, to not giving a shit about anything so far beyond chanting 10. Silence for Eric Young, polite scattered clapping for Strong, silence for Sombra, Percy Watson is TERRIBLE holy shit, Graves keeps getting lost on his lines. Shaping up to end up as the worst Takeover. At least on par with The End.

What's sad is that the roster is so devoid of top guys that Shane IS the biggest boy not tied up in something. The SD roster is so devoid of stars in particular that Shane really is the biggest name they can put AJ with even if they were to call up Joe or Nak. AJ vs Miz would be excellent. I'm sure it'd be a fine match, but I'm not talking about match quality. I'm talking about name quality, and Shane is literally the biggest name SD has after Cena. Sure, and Foley is the biggest name on Raw. SD has AJ, Cena, Randy Orton, Bray, Ambrose, Miz all of guys that are main eventers. Bardon Corbin is coming along as is Luke Harper. SD is not lacking on main eventers. Guys who aren't main events on that list: Orton, Bray, Ambrose, Miz. Corbin and Luke are barely upper mid carders at this point. SD is extremely lacking in main eventers, hence why AJ got stuck with a comedy jobber as his main feud for 3 months while Cena was out. At best, Orton/Bray/Ambrose are Jericho versions of a main eventer. They are certainly not "top 3 WM match" names at all/anymore. They're all decidedly out of the main event scene. Miz's great work for the past year doesn't make him a main eventer. On top of all that, Bray/Orton are obviously going to be involved with each other, Ambrose is going to very likely be in whatever multi man gimmick match they come up for for the IC and US titles this year. Same with Miz. They're literally not main eventers.

What's sad is that the roster is so devoid of top guys that Shane IS the biggest boy not tied up in something. The SD roster is so devoid of stars in particular that Shane really is the biggest name they can put AJ with even if they were to call up Joe or Nak. AJ vs Miz would be excellent. I'm sure it'd be a fine match, but I'm not talking about match quality. I'm talking about name quality, and Shane is literally the biggest name SD has after Cena.

What's sad is that the roster is so devoid of top guys that Shane IS the biggest boy not tied up in something. The SD roster is so devoid of stars in particular that Shane really is the biggest name they can put AJ with even if they were to call up Joe or Nak.

HHH vs Seth has never had any momentum, imo. It felt forced and not interesting when they first started planting the seeds, then having to put it on hold for a year pretty much killed it before it got started. HHH screwing Seth out of the title and taking the next 6 months off, leaving Seth to just kind of flounder around aimlessly certainly didn't help make the angle feel like anything important. And here's what's going to happen anyway: HHH is going to be the face in that match. Doesn't really matter if Seth wins or loses, he's going to look inferior to HHH, for various reasons that don't involve HHH is trying to berry my fav type of stuff. Fans have been pretty indifferent to Seth since his return outside of the first night, then to double down on the heel thing only to just kind of float to being a face for no story reason other than he was mad at HHH, never atoning for his actions against his Shield brothers yet still being bros with Roman all of the sudden, plus just flat out being a poor face. He wasn't good as the face of FCW/NXT, he's not a good face now. You could pretty easily argue that Seth deserved what he got and HHH was kind of in the right for doing what he did. HHH and Steph handed everything to Seth, then Seth was being a cocky shithead to them for no reason at all. Of course HHH would take it personally. So what you're left with is an overly long angle where the heel is in the right, the face is in the wrong and not being a good face anyway, and there is no reason to care about either guy getting their revenge.

Bryan definitely would have had the title at some point in 2014 even if it wasn't in the plans at WM 30 originally. I would say that the second Punk left, the decision was made for Bryan to get the belt, because that next week they shifted all focus to him and reignited the feud with HHH that had been phased out in November or so. It seems pretty clear that the specific plans became clear almost immediately after Punk walked out. A lot of happy accidents happened right at the same time: Punk's walk out WWE's pettiness to stick it to Punk and replace him with the other big indie guy and give him what they never gave Punk Batista's disastrous return Orton's DOA title reign That Michigan football game doing the Yes chants but that decision was clearly made right after the Rumble. People always talk about the terrible reaction to Batista's win, but people seem to forget that the Orton/Cena match that night was met with CRICKETS. Fans did not give a single fuck about Orton as champion and didn't even pop for all the finisher spam and kick outs. It was the same when Orton won the TLC match in the first place to win the belts.

The Network numbers will never be accurate, because they count all the people using free trials, which you can use unlimited amounts of with the same card as long as you use a different email each time. They do a big spike around the Rumble and WM of people not paying to get all the content, and they don't stay around to pay for it afterwards, yet they're still counted as subscribers. Blatantly obvious attempt to fool investors into having good looking stats. Even with inflated numbers, the world wide base for the Network is well under half of what the Raw viewing audience is in America alone. Considering how many markets they've pushed into in the past year, to have the numbers still hovering in the 900K-1.2M range is probably somewhat worrying.

DVD? I don't think they ever released a DVD with 24/7 watermarks did they?

It's fascinating to me that they ran this match when 2 weeks before WM, and basically gave away the whole match and even the finish. And what's worse is that this match was much better than the WM match. Outside of the stakes of the title, this match had better everything. Better action, better crowd, better selling, better drama. And yet both still end with Hogan hot dogging and saving the day.

I don't know how anyone who likes a dominant big man wasn't into Strowman from day one. Outside of Brock beating his ass, he's been booked perfectly from the start. I also don't understand any ironic enjoyment of him. Dude has been a great freakish, dominant big man since before they actually started pushing him as someone to take seriously. He's the best kind of heel big man in that there is clearly a big time face turn down the line for him.

Rusev is the biggest turn around I've had on a guy in years. Thought his NXT stuff outright sucked, saw absolutely nothing in him being an utterly generic foreign heel, and really figured he wouldn't even get built up enough to have the obvious feud with John Cena. It took until around the time he and Big E has those super short hoss battles that I realized I was wrong and that he was a pretty tremendous performer, and since then, he's only gotten better and better. He's really close to as good of a total package as WWE has. He's able to shine no matter how much dogshit he's covered in (and he's been booked in nothing but awful shit for two years now), genuinely hilarious on the mic, excellent in the ring with great attention to selling details. He has an amazing face turn in him, I have no doubts.

Lol imagine any one of those guys showing up in the rumble zero reaction and getting eliminated by like...Baron Corbin or something.

I could maybe count Sheamus as a hoss based on his bruising style, but Mojo could be 400lb and not come off as a hoss.

Sad how low the bar for a HOSS is now if guys like Cesaro/Sheamus/Crews/Rhyno/Mojo are included. Like how the "big guy" from the UK tournament wasn't even 6 feet tall.

Consistent is a good word for Gedo's booking, because he's consistently predictable and complacent and only makes moves when he literally doesn't have the option to keep booking someone. Go look at how many Tanahashi/Nakamura, or Okada/Tanahashi, or Okada/Nakamura, or Ishii/Shibata, or Nakamura/Goto, etc etc etc matches there have been under his reign. Anytime there is something fresh or a big upset happens, it's undone by the next show or two unless someone gets hurt. Gedo is the least creative booker of any major company and has been super lucky that NJ has had 4-5 of the top 10 talents in the world that he could keep throwing together in great matches for the past 4-5 years. Gedo's booking on with a weaker roster would have no one interested. He books like he's playing EWR and found a few guys that have great chemistry and book them over and over and over.

Possibly the biggest rematch in history. Also one of the most watched matches in history. It's been a little under a year since Hogan and Andre had their encounter at Wrestlemania 3. Since then, Andre and Brain had claimed that Hogan was ducking Andre, refusing to give him a rematch after a match they believe to have fairly won in the early minutes anyway. Hogan would end 1987 losing to King Kong Bundy via count out at SNME, which saw Bobby Heenan hold Hogan's leg so he couldn't make the count. Hogan was incensed and attacked Brain, leaving him too injured to accompany Bundy for his rematch at January's SNME. In his place, Andre The Giant would be in the corner of Bundy. Hogan was victorious, but after the match, Andre would viciously choke him out for minutes. It took almost all of the significant faces in the company to get Andre off of Hogan, and he really only broke it because Jim Duggan's 2x4 annoyed him. Weeks later, at the inaugural Royal Rumble, Andre and Hogan would have a contract signing. Hogan was obviously nervous, and with good reason, as he was again left lying in the ring after the encounter. Shortly after, Bobby Heenan would sell the contract of Andre The Giant to Ted DiBiase. It all built up to the first ever The Main Event, a SNME spin off held on Friday. Now, the match itself was pretty bad. Andre was in pretty terrible shape at WM 3, and not even a year later, he'd declined quite a bit, as he was barely mobile and spent almost the entire match leaning on the ropes or Hogan. He took one bump, and at one point actually lost his balance and fell over while attempting a big boot. It was a bummer to watch. It's really the angle here that is so big. In one of the first overt screw job angles that I can recall in WWE, Dave Hebner's twin brother Earl would be paid off by Ted DiBiase to count Hogan's shoulders down when they were clearly up. Andre would end Hogan's nearly 1500 day reign, but then immediately sold his title off to Ted DiBiase. Hogan's reaction of thinking Ted must have paid someone off to get plastic surgery is the most hilariously coke fueled paranoia response possible. But the angle itself served so many purposes. It got the title off of Hogan while protecting him in a controversial loss, established Ted DiBiase as the top heel in the company, set up the tournament for WM 4, allowed Vince to get the title on Savage without having to turn him or Hogan, gave Hogan time off to start No Holds Barred, got Andre his gold watch, and set up the main event for WM 5. In a round about way, it also set up the main event for WM 6, since Randy's ascension to the main events allowed Warrior to rise up the cards and explode in popularity. I don't think it is a stretch to say that it is the single most important WWF angle since Hogan won the title 3 years prior. As a bonus, here is the weirdly ominous training montage set to Jake Roberts' future theme that aired at the start of the show: https://youtu.be/DUp-0dYZM4U

His push NOW has nothing to do with what got him over, which was my original point. Naito (and CMLL) got himself over. Gedo's booking actively harmed his popularity, and he had to leave the country and develop something of his own without Gedo's influence to get popular, to the point where they could no longer keep him out of the main events. And then they found a way to make sure everyone knew he wasn't better or higher on the totem than Okada by making him the B team main eventer. NJPW/Gedo were clearly content to book Naito into oblivion like they did with Goto.

Okay. If there is a poll to have Balor/Owens for the Universal Championship or Goldberg/Taker for the IC Championship headline WM, which do you think would win the vote? Do you think the vote would have anything to do with the IC title? Take the IC title out of the equation and Tanahashi/Nakamura with no title would have won the poll to headline that year.

It didn't headline WK because of the sanctity of the title, man. Come on.

Sometimes I don't know if you are trolling or not... Naito was pinned like 6 times in all of 2016. When they made the first big push for him (when he won the G1) back 4 years ago, it just didn't work out the way that Okada's push the year prior worked out. Naito has been the most over dude in the company for 2 years. All they've done with him was a token IWGP reign where he did nothing and lost his title right back to Okada, and then stuck him with the secondary title that will never, ever be as important. It's basically like taking Austin in 1998 and sticking him in the IC title feuds all year when he's clearly more popular than everyone on the roster and probably the best guy on the roster.