Matt D

It's too bad we don't have more NXT house show fancams.

With both Striker and Mauro the issue is their smarkiness. They're basically the worst stereotype of a 1999 online wrestling fan given the power to spout off about it in a legitimized, national setting. I see absolutely no difference between their excesses.

Stakes are everything in wrestling.

It takes a long time for people to learn how to work their size effectively, apparently.

I don't know. For one thing, it means they trust Rusev to take Taker's stuff and MAYBE get some in on himself. They also trust him to work a convoluted match like a Casket Match. They see him as big enough, relative to their other options, to stand with Taker in a featured spot to a degree. I imagine if he has to travel all the way there, he'd much rather be in this match than just be in the Royal Rumble, payday aside. Plus, you know he and English are going to have a lot of fun with promos and things to build it up.

Remember when Paige was brought up and immediately went from a punk destroyer to a vulnerable wilting flower. No one survives the call up.

I feel like you hit on some of the things I tried to get ahead of in my post (that it's a result of the heel turn, that there are exceptions, that they need different opponents), which is all fair and I raised those counterpoints for a reason. I don't think they necessarily affect my general thesis when it comes to the 2017-2018 Usos though. I'm less compelled by the TV time argument. I think we've seen our share of 10-15 minute TV tag matches that aren't 10 minutes of stretch run. I suppose it'd be interesting to compare/contrast to what the Bar's doing over on Raw, but I don't have as as strong a sense of that (they also have different opponents). That you don't mind is actually the bigger issue. A lot of people don't mind. I think it's more of the comparative element that gets me than anything else. It's a GWE sort of argument about teams that are elite.

Building off of comments on Smackdown last night: I'm increasingly anti- 2018 Usos (and some of this response to the increasing talk of how they're not just great but the absolute best). Maybe it's just a matter of them needing new opponents, though. I would be very happy never seeing New Day vs Usos again. You know you're going to get a lot of excitement but 4 times out of 5 it's going to be narratively empty. I do think part of the problem is the heel role. It's great for their characters and great for their personality but they just don't base or sufficiently bully for the babyfaces they're facing. Instead they're throwing superkicks and flying around and you get these matches that are action-packed, incredibly strong workrate fests, but basically 70% finishing stretch without and real build or payoff. This is actually going to hurt my case with a lot of you, but what I'd compare it to would be the big mid-90s AJPW tag matches, just with less huge bombs, less developed singles stars, and less narrative callbacks/payoffs (which are all the things that made those matches effective, more than just the hard work). A majority of the match becomes an endless stream of pin break-ups and momentum shifts without actual transitions and guys moving in and out of the ring without necessarily tagging. Hollow excitement, which in and of itself isn't an issue, but when you get it week after week after week, it becomes desensitizing and all starts to blur (I understand that people can raise exceptions, and that's great, but they're just that: exceptions). They're making use of certain elements of tag team matches (the sheer number of people in the ring, the ability to utilize pin breakups to create excitement, the visual of blind tags, the ability to go faster more often by utilizing periods of rest on the floor) but so often are outright ignoring others (the build/payoff of the hot tag, the shine/heat/comeback structure, the heat of cutting off Face-in-peril hope spots, using their own visual similarity to gain heat, etc). Their matches end up feeling more like fatal four ways than tag team matches. I don't know. I definitely don't watch every week, so I may miss things, but I do watch enough that I'm not in any rush to watch more. I don't see how a team that leaves so much of what makes tag wrestling vibrant and effective can be in the argument for being the best ever just because they have a huge litany of matches that are worked extremely hard. Maybe if we lived in a world without a bunch of super high end NXT tag championship matches that take that frenetic pace and marry it with the other side of the coin to create a sort of hybrid traditional/workrate style, there wouldn't be room to criticize, but those matches exist and you can compare them to what the Usos do instead, week in and week out.

I liked Renee a lot as Lance Russell/Kermit the Frog backstage during the early NXT run where she was the only sane person surrounded by Adam Rose and whatever else. Also on the JBL/Cole show, which is one of the best things WWE's produced in the last ten years. I'm Renee neutral now.

Great way to protect both guys too. You didn't want Bryan going over the champ but you didn't want him losing so early out either.

That arm manipulation was a lot of fun.

Is that a bad thing given the time most of their matches get? This isn't 2005. They get decent enough time, especially considering how many PPV matches they get. I'm not saying every tag has to be southern tag style, but I do think matches where guys are actually on the apron for the majority of the match should be the rule, not the exception. This sort of 80% tornado tag style would mean a lot more if it only happened rarely.

I like the Usos as much as the next guy but it still feels like 2/3rds of their matches are finishing stretches.

I'd also take Bryan/AJ vs KO/SZ.

Am I the only one who thinks we're on borrowed time with Bryan and that every match is a gift? I mean I may look back three years from now and think how silly I was but... this is definitely a gift I'm glad we're getting sooner than later.

Counterpoint: Welcome to the age of long awkward Paige promos.

Ember fights the evil forces of the Negaverse?

I know C.S. for his avatar and recent insistence that Asuka isnt over.

I'm pretty sure we'll get a few more. I feel like Almas/Vega still need to let Gargano get his win back, and probably put over Black again, but they may still come up. Sanity's another possibility, and maybe the Iconic Duo. That's just idle speculation though.

If it helps, I thought the idea of a non-traditional, foreign crowd being more into Roman than the Mania crowd would be and them chasing that pop for his eventual win, was a pretty good theory I hadn't seen elsewhere.

I'm down to the bottom twenty in Dylan and Devon's GWWE podcast. I did want to mention now that while the podcast is very much the Dylan show (through no fault of Devon's as Dylan just has a more complete list), the most must-listen thing on there is Devon's awesome defense of the Miz. Excellent stuff and well worth seeking out. Someone should isolate that two minutes and toss it on youtube or something.

Booking matters. How he carries himself matters. I swear there was a moment last night where they quickly switched camera shots because it looked like the guy was pouting in the ring. That sort of thing has an effect on casuals (so much as they exist). If he went out last night and cut a promo saying that one F5 had taken out Braun, that one had taken out AJ, that he had survived 24 or whatever, that when Randy Orton was busted open, they stopped the match, but he kept going, etc,then they could have still built to the Saudi Arabia show. Instead, he cut a match puzzled about the booking and saying that he guesses if they keep giving him title matches, he'd eventually probably be bound to win? Whatever you want to say about it and why they're doing it, it's definitely weird.

That promo made it seem like the company was just exploiting him as a talent, to put him in a cage like some sort of animal against Brock, even after Brock almost killed him, so as to generate revenue in Saudi Arabia. His shrugging feeling about that was that he didn't know what was going on but if he was up against Brock eventually, he'd eventually win. Which was all pretty lame.

Giving everyone another day due to Mania weekend. AstroBoy's back on. Any other movement? In the meantime, here's my match from the week: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/41577-rick-rude-terry-gordy-and-steve-williams-vs-mitsuharu-misawa-toshiki-kawada-and-tsuyoshi-kikuchi-all-japan-71491/ A little more of a traditional tag structure (with a finishing stretch that felt like something out of captain-driven lucha trios), with Rude being a very effective fish out of water adding a fun element to the proceedings.