Stiva

It's kind of making me want to get it and play it before they patch it, things look beyond fucked up.

This Aaron Stevens gimmick with the terrible B-roll footage is fantastic. It makes me wonder where Hollywood Bob Holly may have went in SMW with more money behind it.

Stray thoughts: Excalibur and Taz were shockingly good together. It’s strange to remember that Taz was actually pretty good at one point. Janella/Cutler was oil and water with a bizarre chop exchange thrown in the middle of it. Cutler is probably serviceable as a competitive jobber but he really had no chemistry with Janella. The Librarians are still terrible but as a cheap heat machine, Avalon is at least tolerable. Bates/Nyla was...not good. I dig Nyla’s power offense but Bates moves like she has a piano strapped to her back. I think Nyla Rose might actually move quicker. But props to Leva for taking a couple of nutty bumps to get her over. Peppering in some little promos to hype the TV is a good idea to keep Dark fresh with two good concise ones from Kazarian and PAC. The main was fun but felt like a real dark match with the comedy spots, MJF interference and Private Party working quasi-heel. Bucks/Private Party feels like the beginning of a long-term rivalry that they can always go back to. A show that was saved by its main but these have so many good workers to plug into these kind of multi-mans that they can run those matches forever.

Catching up on NXT and Oney Lorcan would get over if they let him work those awesome hot tags on either of the main two shows.

They stumbled on the formula in 2013 which is running tons of 6-man tags with a deep tag division which they completely abandoned in their post-Mania XXX creative collapse.

"Mauro. Don't be fooled by Priest's composure. His ruthless nature is focused on creating an incandescent presence" I swear to God, this commentary.

1.014 million for last night's Dynamite. Staying just about level while NXT continues to drop. They're taking an early lead.

That’s fantastic news! Plugging Kingston’s promos into their presentation would be so great.

Ken Anderson showing up is genuinely enough to stop me watching so there's at least one segment I'm skipping every two weeks. Sandow is a far more enjoyable television presence than that joker will ever be. Murdoch/Starks was a highlight, just to see that Trevor Murdoch has fully embraced his fat man status; I demand to see him deliver jiggly goodness every week. Starks was great on the mic and seemed fairly smooth in-ring too. The Tony Falks commercial was like a Tim and Eric sketch; they're by and away the funniest thing on any wrestling show. Laser focus and tremendous execution. Like said, I assume they're building toward a supershow so you'd hope there's some hot angles coming up once they've established everyone. Still, this is still a fun hour of wrestling, even if I'm not going to get my fix of good matches just yet. And, I know this is Eddie Kingston's retirement year but it's an outright crime that the closest he got to a national run with Homicide was Impact, years after anyone was watching. A late-day Homicide run in AEW with Kingston as his mouthpiece would be so great.

Yeah, he's a great high-concept thinker and creative dude but I really don't want to watch him wrestle. Having said that, the 8-man tag was a good TV match but the Aubrey Edwards interview was great. Another excellent piece of low-key, serious presentation that speaks to how they're adding genuine depth to their roster, right down to the refs.

Considering the cell match and the bumps therein were the thing that pushed Foley over the top and into the main event as an eternal, respected fans favourite, I’m not surprised Rollins doesn’t understand that.

The street fight allows for more crazy Allin bumping which is another thing that will get him over. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a missed Coffin Drop through a table or something to get over that Foley style of taking massive punishment and continuing to move forward. I really hope they have something lined up for him after this brief little exposure. Guevara seems an obvious choice but I’m not sure either should be losing much atm.

I thought that NXT was a good show, had some good to great matches but you can only compare it to AEW since this is the self-proclaimed war and Dynamite was so much more vital, energetic and exciting. NXT put out a good show, AEW hit it out of the park but there’s a worrying feeling that “good” is all NXT can muster up at this point.

Yeah, I know all of that, it's just the idea that WWE are explicitly stating that the respective TV networks are the ones picking people for their shows. There isn't even the pretence of GMs at all.

I watched the show, genuinely enjoyed it and the look and feel didn't bother me in the slightest. It hit all the cliches but there was some good promo work, some neat video packages and Cornette's best commentary in about 25 years. I do hope that, as the show rolls on, it feels slightly less over-produced though and dishes out the chaos and fireball angles. What it needs is the 2019 version of Tracy Smothers coming in and causing havoc. Hell, maybe that's just Tracy Smothers.

The draft being framed as two TV companies picking wrestlers is weird as hell. Or is that some form of regular occurrence in other sports that is being lost on me in the UK?

Everyone interacting with everybody else is filling my heart with glee. For far too long, TV wrestling feuds have been self-contained to the wrestlers in that feud but that show closing angle with everything spilling over was amazing. Props to The Bucks for putting in an unbelievable performance; they actually came across as the best team in the company who got caught by the young prodigies and, in the process, have blown what looked like a predictable tournament wide open. Everything on this show worked, it was a real killer night.

Hosted by Tony Schiavone in front of some truly terrible green screen but, nevertheless, a really fun B show outing. Commentary from JR and Excalibur for the most part. Darby Allin/CIMA was a good little TV sprint with CIMA meshing pretty fantastically to Allin and his ludicrous body control. The 8 man was a mess of spots, some fluid, most kind of awkward and the crowd was fairly dead throughout it. And to make matters worse, the cameras didn't catch Orange Cassidy interacting with the kid dressed as him in the front row. It really feels like The Lucha Bros have to win the tournament and then they need ROH to finally fold so we can get The Briscoes in the division. The women's tag had some decent moments but Ford seems really green and there was some bad miscommunication and timing with some of the spots. Though Allie feels like she should be someone that they can focus more going forward; she was a good FIP and hot tag. The 6 man was probably my favourite of the night; it was a condensed, TV match version of the PPV one and probably better for it with all the guys getting a shine, some fun comedy spots and more build for the tag tourney. Even though I'm not high on all the teams they have, they've done a good job of casting enough doubt over each match in the tag tournament so far. Either way, this is a show that's certain to have some awesome little gems on it going forward.

Eddie Kingston in a studio wrestling setting sounds pretty great to me.

The dark show idea is great and seems absolutely aimed at the likes of this forum who rue the fact so many cool match-ups were never filmed.

Why buy the PPV when you got Jeff Cobb for free? I’d have tuned out after that too.

I didn’t see Raw but did they even give Rey a promo where he talked about the attack on his son and what he was going to do about it? That would have been a decent bridge other than him just wandering out with the guy.

Popped huge for Tyson Fury, he's been one of the best stories in heavyweight boxing for years and years and has charisma and the gab to spare. He'd be genuinely fantastic in a celebrity Mania build. Kofi getting squashed was pretty ridiculous, he should have probably got SOME offense in and if like me, you don't watch UFC, the ending was Brock Lesnar getting run off by a dud with a dad bod and a leg brace. We talk about Raw dragging but this thing moved almost too quickly at times; I think it worked as a hype job for the PPV (what few matches are announced anyway) but a lot of guys were barely featured at all. Like, Orton and Styles hit one move in their time on screen and then they were gone. Still, the commentary was 100x better, I liked that we were spared bad backstage vignettes and I'm pretty confident that Rollins isn't coming out of the cell as the champion so, we can be positive.

I really hope those arches open and close like the old Saturday Night set

I thought they pretty much knocked it out of the park, even if the Pac/Page match was a bit of a lull. Could have probably used another tag match in that spot to break things up a little bit. But, I thought they looked like a pretty big deal; great hot crowd, serious presentation, great, relaxed but informed commentary and a hot angle at the end of the show. I'm fine with Swagger coming in as part of Jericho's group, especially since I think the company needs a couple more hosses to break things up a bit. Luchasaurus/Swagger could be genuinely fun. Though, I do like how the PPV is probably going to have Swagger/Goldust which I'm pretty sure was a running feud on WWECW in 2008.