Matt D

Looks like they're dealing with Star vs Gold in the ladder match and Miz vs Mizdow in the battle royal. So it goes. Part of me thinks they're going to have Cena help Axel beat Rusev so that Rusev gives him a match and Cena can beat him without having to take the US title.

Giving Divas a chance will be a Kevin Dunn produced Madusa and Nikki Bella monster truck battle.

They just put up all the HoF shows from 2004 to 2013. Full? With the Sherri speech?

I totally buy into the conventional wisdom that Brock Lesnar is a hermit who just wants to stay in his home in the woods, with Sable and a bunch of bales of hay he moves for fun, and he only leaves the house because he wants to compete and hurt people.

Someone has to win the beat the champ belt.

Can I start a shady betting ring on this.

There's an asterix due to the mic thing. Starrcade 97 all over again.

Since it won't hit the Network for a few weeks: I loved how the Lucha Dragons really had to earn the shine. There was a feeling that Tyson/Cesaro were just so good that they could be back on top at any moment, but also that the Dragons were good enough to prevent that. The transition was great. So much character and punctuated with a German. I thought they started to layer in the hope spots a little bit early, which on the one hand is fine since they wer transitioning out of the shine and that makes logical sense, but it doesn't "feel" right when it comes to a southern tag. I'm sure it was tied to match length because this really need two or three minutes more of heat before the hot tag. The catch outside into an armdrag was a little weird but I liked the idea of it. On the other hand, the DDT spot towards the end was a great nearfall. Very well executed and theu went back to it with Cesaro's huge spinebuster. Maybe the coolest thing about Cesaro/Kidd is their use of blind tags/shots from the outside in at key moments and it was great to see Kidd being the one to do it here to set up the finish. Enjoyable TV tag match but needed about 2-3 more minutes of heat. It makes me think they have a really good PPV match in them though. Probably a great house show pairing too.

That is far less awesome.

I say we send everyone on the board under 25 out into the wilderness to go tell people about El Dandy

So did Torrie and Al Wilson and Dawn Marie

There were little moments I liked a lot, like when Eddy made Rey team with him vs MNM for the tag titles and then turned on him, just to mess with his head. I'm not saying it was brilliant storytelling or anything but Eddy's delivery was just so good. I mean look at this:

i don't disagree but I think it shows a level of tactical thinking that he wasn't bringing to the table before. It also, frankly, plays into what you say he has to do. It's been obvious that for the last year or two that Smackdown is less micromanaged. Last year around this time, they were running a mini Dolph Ziggler vs Batista program, for instance, that would have never flied on Raw. That hasn't changed much. If he needs to be rebuilt, then Smackdown is a place to do that. More important to me, it may play into Vince's narrative, but it also shows him aware of what the company needs and looking for holes and heading towards them. That's a really good way to find success in the corporate world. Maybe it won't make him into Hulk Hogan but I still think it's both smart and different than what he was doing in 2013.

I do think that in interviews, Bryan has come off as more confident and more with it this year than he has in years past. There are things like wanting to make Smackdown his show and give it identity which I don't think he'd have said as late as last year.

Bryan would have petered out last year due to the booking. I 100% believe that, with all the "running away afraid from Kane" stuff. He was already starting to get mixed reactions someplaces. He would have transitioned from Kane to a 4 way or something and then they would have had him mostly cooled off by summer and Brock would have won at Summerslam and he wouldn't have been nearly so hot after that.

I don't blame him too much. If something feels like a work and smells like a work, it's usually a work. That's just wrestling logic. It's just that we're in a different age, where there are things that trump wrestling logic, and generally, Stephanie having the public perception of being a strong working mother businesswoman who plays a bad guy on TV is more important to the WWE brass than any angle possibly could be. I do blame him for being a jerk about it though.

I'm not sold on it. This is different than 2004. I'm curious to see what the next really smarky crowd does.

The brand is god

NPR turned heel on you.

Also, so long as the Sting match is smart enough to hide his weaknesses, they should use him again vs Cena at Summerslam, then maybe one or two more times buried in a tag and put him in the HOF. That's getting about as much value as they can out of him.

I'm not saying it's not an angle. It's just weirdly against Steph's whole social media "brand" thing where they do things like push HHH being nice to a kid (or Sami rescuing a lady from an overturned car or heels doing make-a-wishes) and what not. Even during the midst of the Bryan "B+" stuff, was Steph using twitter for any of that build?

Steph has spent years building up her social media image as some sort of compassionate female voice (at least in her own head) and hasn't used it as a gimmick before. That seems way more important to her as a business brand than something she'd use in an angle. Her job is the brand thing and they put it as a higher priority than all active stories. Add in the lawsuit which they can't gimmick and it's a bit of a stretch, even for wrestling. Not impossible, but still a bit of a stretch. It just feels like a reverse course if a work.

My biggest problem with the Cena match was how he was anticipating bumps more than usual. I don't know if he's just not used to working with Rusev or what. I didn't notice that in the tag team fancam.

I kind of foresee this weird scenario where Reigns is the champion but Cena is US champ and Bryan is IC champ.

Some silly part of me kind of wonder if Putin knows about the gimmick and is amused by it.