El-P

Garbage. It's ridiculous these kind of stuntfest with no purpose whatsoever and awkward set-ups and overscripted internal sequence still pass for good work in 2018. I enjoy a good garbage clusterfuck if there's a sense of chaos. This had a sense of carefully planned super dangerous spots to pop a crowd of wankers who were chanting "this is awesome" even before the match started. This is an awful way to display Ricochet in his very first match because he's now the guy who gets tossed around on ladders. This was also overlong, overthought, overproduced. One of the worst, most boring, uselessly dangerous match of the entire week-end.

As a fan of both these guys, I'm glad I didn't watch that...

Derailing stuff : I don't dislike you. I don't know you. I dislike the way you interact with us on the board. That's different.

Nak is a banged up guy whose prime is behind him, who seized the opportunity to work a lighter style and get big time money by going to WWE. Good for him. But yeah, his match against Zayn two years ago was awesome. That's the last time we saw that Nakamura. That being said, those more familiar with the guy in NJ will say he was always more or less coasting and showing up only for super big matches. I thought the match against AJ was very good, maybe even excellent, and the idea of him working heel is rather promising. But AJ had a better match in WWE against Seth Rollins. That's the reality of it. Right now, I'm more interested in watching Bryan vs Sami than I am watching another AJ vs Nak.

I said celebrity.

I know you're a Reigns fan, but come on. He's been pushed as the number one guy in the entire business for four years, probably makes an insane amount of money in the process. This is ridiculous.

To be clear : if I were a mod, you'd be gone already. So there. Back to Mania discussion, please. Did I miss anything or there were no celebrity stuff this year ?

The anoa'i family needs to quit bitching. Roman Reigns has main evented four Manias in a row. Not a whole lot of guys can say the same thing. What is it ? The Samoan Mafia ?

Newsflash : no one gives a fuck. This thread is not about you. Get a grip already.

Derailment reply : I don't think I've seen ten matches in my life I would give the infamous 5* ratings. Yeah, what a joke. Just a troll. Don't feed him.

Gawwd, don't tease me with some dream matches that won't happen. Nikki elbowing the shit out of Rousey until she gets her arm broken in half would be such a fun match. Was I in your dream? Ah ah ah. I don't remember the posters involved, but I do remember browsing the thread. Me too. Really, this week-end made me happy to be an old pro-wrestling fan (and I'm watching Takeover tonight…). Pro-wrestling wasn't more fun before. It's great and fun now.

This is actually a pretty great and accurate description of the match and how these two guys worked. I think it speaks volume on how patterned it has become. They can't act & react organically as pro-wrestlers depending on the story they are supposed to tell, they just do token spots over and over again. Picture Rey Mysterio doing the 619 twenty times during a match...

All joking aside, Braun can be special and unique. Not the new Andre. Not the new Taker. Hopefully not the next Big Show. Just the first Braun.

Completely agree.

Yeah, it was a complete mess. I'll say this though, there's something somewhat compelling about blown-up Lesnar sweating like a pig throwing people around and elbowing them in the head to make them bleed. I mean, Lesnar has a presence still that no one really has. Sure, the match was garbage, Roman throwing a hundred superman punches was a compelling as it sounds, as where the dozen finisher kick-outs, but I dunno, I'd rather watch a Lesnar complete car-crash than your run-of-the-mill decent Roman match. Of course I'd rather have anything other than these two propositions, really. But yeah, that match was pretty damn awful and a complete failure in the end, like most Lesnar have ended up being since he got into Suplex City mode as opposed to kick-ass MMA beast.

That gets overlooked here. Cena is a fucking trooper. And as far as presence, aura and star power, he's still above everyone else, as demonstrated by the whole "sit in the crowd/reaction shots/Elias angle" combo and the way he reacted to Taker's entrance. The guy is still at that level.

It's odd because for all the talk of Vince not wanting anyone being bigger than the company anymore, he sure still insists on creating the next Hogan/Austin/Rock/Cena. Since the WWE brand is bigger than anything and that the McMahons are the stars of the show (and really, after yesterday, Stephy really was), why not just run with a bunch of people on top without having to try and create and Ace ? Then if someone gets over to that degree, ride him as long as you can. It's not like a Steve Austin is gonna exist for every generation. You can't create a megastar, especially going against your own audience.

I'm not pretending. He's fully capable of following a good lead and has gotten pretty great at selling/bumping, but his offense is garbage finisher spam, at least for the big matches I've seen over the last 4 years. Agreed. The superman punch spamming is just dreadful to me, not to mention the spot itself is pretty goofy anyway as a one shot. I'm not making any narrative nor do I search excuses when I say I don't see shit in Roman Reigns as a top level guy. He's overrated as all hell now because of the pendulum effect, he gets way too much credit when he has a really good match considering who he's been working with. He's not bad, he's not great either. He's an ok guy put into position to work WWEtm epics.

You're just trying to get attention on yourself, as showed by the way you like to point at your "odd views" all the times. You're not exchanging, you're just trying to get yourself over and you are derailing threads with stupid shit about "white power prevailing" and comapring the Usos to the Crush Gals or ROH with LLPW and other nonsensical stuff. This is what a troll does, derailing threads to get attention on himself.

Come on, her brother used to go toe to toe on the mat with Olympic Gold medal Kurt Angle. This is a family of fighter. But yeah, that was the only moment where I though "Oh, shit, seriously ?". The whole match was still glorious though, the finish being an all-time classic with Stephy actually showing how good she can be when she wants to (too bad it's 5% of the time).

Back on track. Am I the only why waiting for Stacy's insane report ? She must have lost her shit with the Rousey match.

And another thread got derailed by stupid shit about "just my odd views" and "real sports logic". Did you watch Mania ? Anthing relevant to say about it ? Can you use capitalization and punctuation as a sign of respect toward the other users ? For fuck's sake.

How over was he last night ? A mix of boos and apathy. After 4 years of straight push to the moon, that's pretty poor honestly. Blaming the "annoying smart fans" is a cop out at this point. This simply doesn't work. It weighs in on the whole product because no one gets nearly the same opportunity and it leaves a sour taste every year at Mania (and during the entire build). Last night was almost Vince losing his shit and tell the people "Ok, you don't like Roman ? I'll fuck him up myself then !". Of course he'll wake up today thinking about new ways of getting him over as the babyface Ace...

Agreed. You can't just go on forever, especially when the streak wasn't really that over anyway. Both girls come off the match bigger than they came in, they tore the place down, they arguably had the second best match of the show. And it's obvious Charlotte vs Rousey is the direction to go. It doesn't hurt Asuka in the least, she's more than just a streak gimmick. Still can get over how great Rousey looked.

This card was fucking crazy. I actually dreamed about this thread.