Stiva

You know, I'd be intrigued to see them try and turn Rock heel and be Reigns mouthpiece against a face Lesnar...

OK, so looking at the post-show, Cena is getting Rusev. The most over guy potentially being lost in the shuffle heading into Mania is madness.

so, if they don't do a repeat with Bryan (which I can't see), what the hell does he do? Rusev?

Man, I can't wait until they start booing Rock's promo coming up next. Laughing out loud at such blatant stubbornness from WWE.

Yikes, eliminating crowd favourite Ziggler so KANE can break an elimination record. EDIT - Did Rusev roll under the bottom rope?

There's no chance that they're being that adventurous with their booking and they've already run an elimination steal spot with Rowen.

Well, they had the crowd back for a little while

Do they think people aren't going to see through Rock "endorsing" Reigns?

Well, there goes your crowd.

R-Truth has been rapping that theme for 7 years or so now, you'd think his flow would have improved by now.

I love how this feels like an insane bar fight where the police are just standing back and letting it sort itself out.

Yeah, a lot of them felt very stilted. Ryback's promo earlier was a lot more natural and relaxed.

Miz continues his sterling record of never catching anybody when they dive to the outside.

I would love to see them at #1 and #2 and then be the final two at the end. The crowd would be something else.

It's crazy they didn't even think about doing an eventual Harper face-turn by him breaking free of Wyatt. There's just no long-term planning any more and it shouldn't be a shock since it feels like it's been that way since around 2009 or so but it's so frustrating thinking of how many opportunities have been wasted, even minor ones like this.

I love Meltzer and all but he's so deeply into New Japan at this point that it's impossible to take his views on it seriously. It's great that he's digging on something so hard but his reviews of their shows could be ripped straight from a message board somewhere.

I watched Raw for the first time in a while last night and I will say this re: the quality of it. At least in 2003, at it's worst, it felt like they had some idea of who they were pushing and how they were doing it. Late 03, it was Kane as your monster heel, Goldberg was chasing HHH who had his cronies helping him keep the belt, Orton was being kept strong in the midcard with the IC title and Christian was being positioned with Jericho with the idea of eventually putting him over and elevating. You watch that show last night and there's absolutely nothing there to indicate anything even approaching that. It seems so off-the-rails and haphazard because it clearly is. In some ways, it has parallels to 03 because we've got HHH "gaining heat" on top, to absolute crickets, long past the point people have cared about seeing him get his comeuppance.

I really dislike this match for a multitude of reasons but something I'll mention, outside of the obvious, is that Angle is so quick to go from spot to spot. I know that's a common criticism of Angle's work but I feel like this is the first time that we really see it. There's a section early on where he's beating Shane down and his heel work is impacted by how quick he goes from suplexing him to dragging him up to suplexing him again. If he let it breathe and allowed Shane to sell each individual one, it would have worked a lot better. The spot where Angle goes down and goads Shane into a mat exchange and Shane just kicks him straight in the ribs is great though.

Just watch more wrestling, on a week to week basis, than I have done for a while. This recent year, I just completely burned out on a lot of stuff and I'm only now starting to stir back into life. Will pick up as many yearbooks as money allows and try to follow every company on a regular basis. I'm setting myself a challenge to catch up with Lucha Underground by the end of the week to set myself off on a good foot.

I guess Bryan is healthy for the Rumble and this is the angle to start it off.

I'm watching Vengeance 2001 and there's a Regal/Edge match that is a great showcase for Regal as a worker. He has a ton of subtle heel mannerisms that he uses as he cuts off Edge's comebacks and you can hear the crowd reacting more and more with each one. That's before you mention Regal's punches and knees looking great, as you'd expect. Edge wasn't really ready for the IC push (remember when that meant something??) that they were giving him but man, Regal was the perfect opponent to make him look good. Everything in Edge's comeback looked great and got him over while Regal still came out of it looking good. He tried to cheat but the babyface was too wily. Man, William Regal should be top 25 in the Greatest Wrestler Ever poll.

I think the problem with giving Neville any sort of cartoony gimmick is that a certain section of the crowd is going to chant for his NXT name. The guy could be out there in full Mighty Mouse regalia but you're going to hear "Adrian Neville" chants throughout his matches.

I thought they had a great thing going with three hours last summer because they had the best workers in position to have long matches that filled the time nicely. Now, those guys are either split up, away from each other or injured.

I honestly think the money in Cena/Taker is completely gone now that the streak has been broken.

I don't read through this kind of thing enough to know the dude in depth but these sorts of threads are often exactly what the banned parties want, i.e. attention.