strobogo

I don't know how anyone could like that stuff. It's TL Hopper tier or the worst Russo stuff you could imagine someone walking in on you watching. It also simply can not be done in front of a live crowd so they're going to have to have an actual match unless they do another pre-taped cinematic match. I have watched and enjoyed a lot of completely dogshit horror movies in my life (also a lot of completely dogshit pro wrestling tbh), and nothing has been as bad and embarrassing as even the recaps of the Fiend/Orton/Bliss stuff.

I think the real issue with Brock isn't his skill or talent, which are of course very high, but the corner WWE has booked themselves into with him since 2014 where he's a special attraction with classic special attraction booking, but it also makes no sense for his character to be involved in anything except the title scene, and also he's nigh unbeatable. It'd be like booking Andre to be the champion for most of the 80s so not only is your champion rarely around so the title scene is held hostage, but also anyone who gets over enough to face him is going to get smashed and still have to be on TV every week while Andre doesn't come back for 3 months. Because of this, everything he's involved with is the same and his feuds have benefitted no one, not even Seth/Roman actually beating him (twice in the same year in Seth's case). In fact in almost all cases it has derailed his opponent's momentum (Reigns, Rollins, Strowman, Joe, Ambrose, Balor, Orton, Kofi, Rey, Ricochet (lol how did that even happen)) to the point it took them years to recover or not at all. It doesn't even seem like he's done anything for ratings or ticket sales, either.

I think the most interesting things to come out of this weekend is to see if the live crowd reacts to how the TV booking as been. Are they going to cheer Roman because he's a good heel now? Are they going to rage at Edge like Batista? Will Lashley get cheered over Drew because THB was cool and Drew is giving some serious 1996 corny HBK vibes anytime I've seen him in the past 6 months? I'm just imagining how live audiences would have reacted to the atrocious, unbelievably embarrassing Fiend/Orton/Bliss segments and I'm hoping they feel like they can do it with a live crowd and they completely shit on it. Should be a lot of energy from the crowd and talent, at least, which is a lot more exciting that what I've seen of read about the lead up to...well, everything. Real quick Takeover thoughts: Ciampa/Walter was great, for sure going to be the match of the week for WWE. Night 2 in general was real bleh, Karrion Kross needs to tighten up his game if they're going to play up his MMA and heavy strikes because they have no impact at all, Cole/KOR was not at all what it needed to be and was a huge disappointment. Somehow KOR vs Balor seemed like a more violent and hateful match than what is supposed to be this super intense bloodfeud match that featured just a ton of overwrought and overthought "epic" spots. If any match needed some blood.

Seriously like 70% of the roster is exclusive to the Youtube shows. And both versions of Dark get so few viewers, it seems like such wasted money and effort. It's good that a lot of these young talents are getting a place to work and get paid during all this, but also....why are you signing Big Show to do commentary for a show that gets maybe 30,000 viewers on Youtube? This is definitely a WCW style lol what did they spend money on type of decision. Big Show is probably getting paid more than the entire roster on the show any given week. Show's signing in general is weird to me. It's always helpful to have a vet and all, but I'm not sure what he has to offer to a roster where the biggest monster is about the size of Jake Roberts and they all do moonsaults and dives every week. Even among the people that are on TV regularly, most are either doing the same angle for 10 weeks or floundering around in mini angles that go no where and are dropped with no explanation or blow offs. AEW's booking is as dull, repetitive, and dumb as WWE's they just have talent that are happy to be there and haven't had the passion pounded out of them so it has an energy that still makes it mostly enjoyable if you just tune in every 3-4 weeks.