Russellmania

Fastlane 2015 is a thing that existed. Given how Reigns developed, him losing to Bryan now seems the more likely result. that match was awesome. They have great chemistry. I would have no problem with either guy putting the other over right now.

this blows and the crowd mostly doesn't care

lol owned

I saw someone say in comments on wreddit that he had stem cell therapy done on his knees & that they are much better now. can anyone here confirm that? i'm not doubting that he's taking supplements, but surely being able to do cardio again has helped him shed the extra weight.

the hype convinced me to watch for the first time in months. Is RAW always this bad? what a shitshow

honestly in today's WWE climate some guys would really benefit from faking a minor injury every few months because often it keeps you better positioned than being on TV every week.

that doesn't exactly cover it though. Vince and HHH have final say on things, but don't come up with all the creative. it often starts with the writing staff, and Ryan Ward heads that up for Smackdown last I heard. So yes, Vince might call the shots on both shows, but he may be working with better ideas on one show than on the other.

if anything, given Vince's track record, Seth will probably become less sympathetic as he goes deeper into his face run.

uh didn't Fit Finlay leave the company years ago?

genuinely surprised WWE kept the section at the end where he's looking at the camera. That's one of the dumbest internal rules WWE has. I think it's just b/c Vince & Dunn love to separate themselves from old school pro wrestling tropes, but man when guys can look in the camera and give an impassioned speech it just really works and I wish they weren't so obsessed with forcing guys to look away.

It's funny how Smackdown was always the better weekly TV show during much of the first brand split era too. Maybe this is naive, but I've always figured it was because Vince is less involved in the details of booking Smackdown than with RAW. Or maybe it's that Stephanie is less involved. Either way it's amazing what coherent booking can do for a wrestling show.

the CWC was my first exposure to either guy and if I had to base my opinion of both guys off of just these two matches then I am in total agreement that Gallagher seems like a much better pro wrestler than ZSJ. Gallagher did a similar schtick but with a lot more personality and connected with the crowd much better, not to mention just having a flat-out much better match than ZSJ. Now with that said, I'm not so ignorant as to think you can draw a conclusion about either guy based off seeing one match so I'm not going to be so dense as to claim that one guy is a hundred times better than the other. I haven't seen much of ZSJ, but based on how beloved he is and how many MOTYCs he's been in over the last couple years then I don't think it would be going out on a limb to assume that he's much better than his CWC match would have me think. In my only exposure to him, though, he didn't really do anything for me while Gallagher blew me away.

man the Smackdown roster kinda sucks, but if they were to add Joe, Nakamura, Itami, Aires & Roode to it in the next year it would look so much better. Joe and Shinsuke in particular are really intriguing matchups for Cena, Bray, Ambrose, and Styles.

this has been my biggest problem with him in NXT from day one. Especially since the announcers constantly put over how dark and violent he becomes as The Demon. But he never does *anything* different. It's like as a full-up production team they all get the concept but nobody has figured out that he actually needs to behave differently for it to work.

with Rusev as US champ a great way to bait the fans would be to have Cena return to challenge Rusev for the title. All the "you can't wrestle" types will eat it up thinking Super Cena is here to ruin another Rusev push. Then swerve everyone by having AJ and The Club cost Cena the match to start a Cena/AJ feud. You could easily have AJ win the first match or two without taking much shine of Cena.

Would love to see them bring Rollins back and slowly start sowing seeds of dissent with HHH. Eventually have it lead to HHH bringing up Balor as his new protege paving the way for a Rollins face run. Hell the end game could even be a Bullet Club vs. Shield feud.

back before they took the title off Brock I thought a 4-way elimination match with the Shield + Brock really would have been money.

RAW actually fucking owned tonight. Top to bottom it was a really good show. It wasn't like some crazy earth-shattering stuff, but was just solid and cohesive all night. Very little time wasted, no segments that dragged and several really terrific matches, especially Zayn/AJ.

Shock because it didn't feel like the finish, rather than at the result. No, that was at the result I feel. That crowd LOVES Bayley. Her losing the title was a pretty big deal. Exactly. It was because they cared should have read the rest of the thread and replied later, but I'll reiterate. If they cared so much then why were they all sitting when the finish came? I totally agree with the guy who said that the shock was at least in part b/c that didn't feel like the finish. And IMO it's not because the work didn't make it feel like a finish but because the crowd was inexplicably not treating it like a finishing stretch.

I think there was some shock but the crowd was actually not fully engaged in the match in any meaningful way. They were at peak smarkiness during that match trying to get themselves over and I think the shock at the finish was 50% that Bayley lost and 50% that the match ended while they weren't paying attention. It was a bit like the Lesnar/Taker WM30 finish in that respect.

on paper I feel like it's totally possible that the show itself is pretty good as i think the big 3 matches have the potential to be really good and the undercard has enough talent to make something out of nothing. But in terms of build, hype and any sort of cohesive booking this is one of the worst Wrestlemanias ever. Anything good that happens on this show will be in spite of the shitty booking not because of it.

makes me think Undertaker

Wait... what? What has Hunter done for business that is so smart for the good of business? Putting over Daniel Bryan and Batista. uhhhh NXT and the performance center?

so is this a direct to DVD thing or a full on theatrical release? My wife really likes the first one and I thought it was fun. It was a full-fledged theatrical animated movie so it's kind of surreal seeing the sequel tied to WWE which is kind of slumming it in a way.

I'm legit shocked that anything came of it as horsing around with the boys has always been one of Vince's favorite things. In fact I'm surprised to see so many people say it was a dumb move by Titus because of the context. When i was watching it actually struck me as a kind of natural thing in that the whole scene with the whole locker room made them seem like such a big happy family and it didn't seem inappropriate at all in that moment for someone to engage in a "family tradition" like ribbing Vince.