Matt D

Ok, Rusev continued to sell the ankle last night. Million billion stars.

I missed chunks of the show. Are Goldust and Stardust going to challenge the Usos now? Also, the head writer of Smackdown is obviously a huge Dolph fan (he's much more prominent on that show, including challenging batista right after his turn for a few weeks, etc), so I'm curious how he's going to use him as IC champion.

A couple weeks off at this point is just going to make the crowd hotter for Ambrose when he comes charging back.

If they didn't for Fuji Vice... Neither here nor there, but I have this feeling that if the Bobby Heenan show dropped today, on Adult Swim or IFC or something, it'd have a huge cult following. Way before its time.

Yes. I bet all of us would agree on that but Will, who would go with headbutts.

What's even the difference between No Holds Barred and No DQ?

He was pretty clear about only wanting to come back as a heel, but who knows.

Selling on offense is the greatest thing in the world. That said, It was so blatant that I figured someone had to take him aside and specifically tell him to do it. That doesn't make it less of a positive trait and hopefully it's something he keeps in mind in the future, now that he successfully done it once, but I still thought it was a point worth raising.

I wish i was that talented and dedicated.

It's a way to set the stage for the HOF next year.

The difference between that and let's say The Beautiful People is that people in and/or around the industry were talking up the Beautiful People relative to what WWE was offering in a comparable area.

It's weird to me that they're not using Cesaro (maybe with a secondary belt) as the Heyman guy stand in for Brock while he's off Raw. He could be the herald of galactus, basically.

I made it to the start of the Ambrose stuff and Dylan being wrong about the gimmick before I had to stop listening due to time constraints. BUT I want to call out Kris on something. Re: Rusev. It was a great performance. It was very good selling. It was especially good due to the fact he's got so little in the way of main roster experience. The problem I have with overhyping it is that i feel that a huge majority of the roster could probably have done a comparable job if they were put out there by the agents and told to do so. It was so one-dimensional a match in that regard that it was less challenging than managing that selling as part of a broader whole. It stood out because they don't do it much but I don't know how much that has to do with Rusev being somehow special or whether he was just lucky to be put in a situation where he got to show off something that most guys usually don't get to show. I loved it but I do think you have to keep that in mind.

If the match is Rene Goulet vs SD Jones, for 13 minutes, then it is his job. Less so for Santana vs Savage.

I had to hit refresh once during Swagger's entrance. That was about it.

The flip side is this: What the hell will they give us in Brock's absence in the meantime? Part of me thinks that hilariously Cena wins it back at NOC.

You weren't watching last year after Summerslam, Charles. Were you watching when the Nexus angle hit, or during the Pipe Bomb angle? The answer is that they'll fuck it up within a month and a half. I wish it wasn't, but yeah. The only saving grace is that maybe they don't have enough dates with Brock to fuck it up immediately.

I'm not sure I want to see Bryan in a match even half that brutal.

After this, they have to do Cena again, basically. If it had been more even then it would have been another story but they have to let Cena get revenge now

The animated gif back and forth between Lesnar's grinning ogre face and Cena's beat up face in the corner will be amazing.

So he actively defied a stip that he chose that lead to him losing . Kinda makes him a dumb babyface. He's freaking nuts! He's Dean Ambrose!

I still think there was a relatively big Total Divas following in the crowd. The cool part about that is that while we all saw the turn coming, none of them did and there was a sense of huge surprise in the reaction.

But this way they put Ambrose over for actively defying the stip. It wasn't just haphazardly that they broke it. It was with purpose.

She was really smart to stop doing the Yes motion after it was obvious they were chanting Steph.

Maybe they should have worked in a few more hope spots at least?