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I know shitting on WWE creative is pretty fun, and often the right attitude to take. But going back a month and a half ago, before Cody was fired, was anyone thinking "You know, this whole HHH/Bryan thing would be a great gateway to put a title back on Golddust." No? No. I wasn't thinking that. I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. Even when Cody Rhodes is all of a sudden thrown in a "you're fired" match with Orton, I'm not watching thinking "Ah...endgame for this is Rhodes brothers tag team title reign!" Nope. But clearly they were. This fantastic moment was planned out at least 6-8 weeks ago and unfolded perfectly without any swerves or giving up on the angle, or hotshotting it too quickly or putting it off too long. I got to give credit...probably two months ago, the WWE writers came up with an absurd and beautiful idea that no one could have predicted would go this well...and they executed it pretty well flawlessly.

Alberto Del Rio is Spanish for Jeff Jarrett.

Man, that main event ruled. That's now my MOTY. That match had so much awesome. It tied in together every storyline in one beautiful, amazing match. I loved the final sequence after the match ends. Cody and Dustin celebrate after their second epic, dramatic win over the young bucks who ran through everyone else. Big Show continues to regain his dignity. And he does it with Daniel Bryan's "YES!" chant as HHH freaks out in the ring. That's just so amazing. This whole thing started because HHH doesn't want Daniel Bryan as champion. He made The Shield his enforces and tried to make Show his indentured servant. He then tried to humiliate the Rhodes Family. All of that came back to bite in the ass in a major way as his hand-picked mercenaries get defeated. Bryan started all of this. But he's still the one who has to beat the final boss.Everyone always complains about a lack of long-term storytelling from the WWE. That is what they've just given us. It is awesome.And you don't get the reaction of a crowd without having an incredibly structured, brilliant match. So many amazing things. Dustin rules. Cody Rules. The Shield rules. I want to watch them ever week for the rest of my natural life.

WMXXX should just be a 5-hour nostalgia show. Keep all the Miz-level jobbers to a backstage segment with Maria Menounos's stained white pants. Then Hogan can have plenty of time to waddle out and bodyslam the Andre hologram HHH debuted the previous night at the HOF ceremony*. *Andre hologram will only get 5 minutes before the music plays him off the HOF stage** - half of that time will just be the crowd chanting "YOU STILL GOT IT" at the hologram, which will not be a pre-programmed exchange the A.I. can process, so the last 2.5 minutes of its stage time will just be this: **Mick Foley inducting Demolition will be bumped to the internet stream.

Only if the finish to the rumored Bryan-HHH match is Warrior then running down to the ring and squashing HHH for the save to relive another classic WM moment.

I only caught one moment of RAW while flipping around tonight, and it was HHH and Stephanie making out.

6'5 luchadores with legitimate Olympic-level amateur wrestling and MMA backgrounds are a dime a dozen now?

Del Rio going into Payback and kicking the living daylights out of the cocky twat who took the world title when ADR was at his weakest was the face move of the year in my eyes.

Deadspin, I love you. http://deadspin.com/why-dont-the-st-louis-cardinals-respect-the-game-1445679050

Your positive attitude has absolutely no place here ... fucking NONE.

That was odd, particularly since he had no problem swinging the larger Brodus on Main Event the other day. "Swinging the larger Brodus" sounds so very dirty.

GOLDUST MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

So this happened: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/anthony-hopkins-sent-brian-cranston-and-the-cast-of-breaking

Reigns is a part of the Anoa'i family and a former defensive linebacker, he's an hard cunt. Great main-event, chairs, spears through barricades, super-hot tags, perfect use of the enforcers, new champions, Brilliant. "A hard cunt" not "An hard cunt", we pronounce the H in hard, so you don't need the N. You facking wot?

What's funny is that my mother's side of the family? Their last name IS Dewar...so when I saw that you'd replied, I was like "hmmmm...this could be interesting."

You're the one that invited the WWE comparison.

Reigns: "You IDIOT! YOU NEVER PUT THE CHAIR DOWN!" was such a movie villain moment, just before he gets sucked out of the plane or whatever. Also, any wrestling match that ends with one of the announcers screaming "SOMEBODY ARREST THAT MAN!!!" ...is amazing

I'd want to see him come back and take a Cesaro Swing. But he'd probably fall apart But...I guess I wouldn't terribly mind seeing that too. So yes?

What's the cadence on that, exactly? Is it "where's-my-chinesefood-clap-clap-clapclapclap?" It might work better to the tune of "Joe is gonna kill you," but needs another syllable. Maybe "Where's my bourbon chiiiicken?"

I am actually laughing that people are taking personal offense to southern people being whatever to some wrestlers somewhere. Like they personally offended each and every person of color or something..

But it is great in three-ways and whatnot. I used to do that shit back in the day... The last thing I expected was to log onto the board today and see Nikita suplexing what appears to be Jay Donaldson and Lightning Tim Lutz. Of course maybe 1 or 2 other people besides Nikita will know who I'm talking about....... maybe......

6'5 luchadores with legitimate Olympic-level amateur wrestling and MMA backgrounds are a dime a dozen now? If they can't do anything to make more than like 5 people want to watch them, then yes. And those 5 people probably post here. ADR is terrible. Pfft...there's at least 6 people here that enjoy ADR matches. ADR rules.

I am actually laughing that people are taking personal offense to Low Ki being whatever to some promoters somewhere. Like he personally offended each and every indy fan or something.

I thought HHH running down there immediately and just completely losing it added to the importance and chaos of the entire thing. HHH losing his cool and forgetting for a sec that he isn't a rassler anymore was absolutely perfect. It's really such an amazing character. He wants you to think he is this purely corporate entity, telling The Shield about "best practices" and "opportunities not failures" but in the back of his mind all he is thinking is "I'm still the best. I could pedigree all three of these morons right now and pose down while listening to Motorhead and no one would say a goddamn word. I'm still the Game, baby".

$19.99 would have been the magic number.

DC should just start a series to keep up with the copyright renewal characters they keep shoving into series that are obviously not going to last long. Copyright Comics Cavalcade

If it was a character I loved, I would rather keep them in limbo than being used by this DC.

Isn't this what the Chargers always do (barring last year when Rivers couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat)? They pull off just enough wins to make you wonder what the hell is going on. Then, you know, they die horribly in some sort of 35-18 game with 7 total turnovers and a special teams touchdown.

Let's be honest; the only reason Heath Ledger even got a nod for Best Supporting Actor, much less the win, is because he died. That's not an indictment of his acting skill, but an indictment of how out of touch/pretentious the Academy is with their decisions. I used to have "watch a movie before it gets picked for Best Picture" on my bucket list, but scratched that off once I saw how stuck up its own ass the Academy was for picking stuff like Hurt Locker and fuckin' The Artist and decided it didn't matter.The Hurt Locker was a fucking great movie...

I'm really impressed with how things stand right now. You've got the Punk/Heyman Family feud, keeping one of the top faces believably preoccupied enough to not get involved in the main storyline. Then you've got the multilayered "best for business" story: Orton and Bryan feuding over the WWE title, the Rhodes brothers feuding with the Shield over the tag titles thanks to HHH and Stephanie's power trip, and Big Show working out his frustration on the entire HHH/Stephanie power structure. I saw some people saying that Bryan should've been in Show's position at the end of this Raw, but I disagree: Bryan's focused on the the title, his fiancee, and Orton, not HHH or the Shield; Show's issue is more directly with Hunter, and by extension his cronies. They're doing an excellent job of building the face roster up as a whole to carry the weight while Cena's gone, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket. And a lot of the matches are damn good, too.

I'm still giddy and I didn't watch any of the rest of what seems like a pretty eh (at best) Raw. But thinking about it -- that's on the short list of greatest matches of all time. That's not a lie. The only other match I can think of that was able to tie in so many stories like that in one match was Raven/Richards vs. The Pitbulls in ECW and that was the best match in ECW history and one of the best of the 90s. This was an updated version of that match but with more talented people putting on an absolute clinic of a match that had not one wasted punch or move or anything. Everything built to have that climax. And it was also done with so many cliffhangers -- The Shield are more than deserving of a rematch, The Big Show's regaining his dignity, and as pissed as HHH is, Daniel still doesn't have the belt.This is some amazing, amazing work. Wrestling rules. I didn't know if anything could top Cena/Bryan for me since that was an insanely great match that led to the best few months the WWE has had in probably a decade. But this was the fruit of that labor. We're far from done, yet. The hero's journey isn't completed. But this was absolutely amazing and why I watch grown men pretend to fight each other in tiny pants.

I was at the show. Apart from the in-ring festivities, my favorite part was the kids in the row behind me:They had absolutely no idea what "WWE" stands for; they weren't sure whether Tamina Snuka is The Rock's sister or his cousin; but they were 100% certain that Curtis Axel is the son of former wrestler "Mr. Handsome." Sadly for them, their Moms decided they had to leave right after the Bryan-Del Rio match because it's a school night. The time was only 9:30. That's just poor parenting.

I only saw the main event, so I'll make sure to just post negative thoughts about the rest of the show instead of talking about how unreal awesome the last five minutes were. The Shield gets a rematch. We get at least one more of these guys. Wrestling is so awesome sometimes.

Glad the Dodgers decided to bring the bats for this game. Hope they bring them tomorrow, too.

The main event... man. Fuck anyone that bitches about whatever rating that segment gets.

HOLY SHIT FUCKING GOLDUST!! Match was insane. I liked how they worked Show into the end too. The Shield is so great also... no wasted motions from those guys.. I liked how Ambrose and Rollins didn't just stand around like idiots they went right at Show instead. Match of the year? I don't know... who cares anymore... the same group of 8-10 guys on the roster are putting on crazy matches every week. Who doesn't love this?

All I can say is . . I CAN'T WAIT until the Shield comp.

Ha, same here.

My wife informed me that we're spawning again.

No it hasn't.

Low-Ki entertained me. The fact that he made it to WWE(however briefly) was pretty miraculous even with the recent trend toward using smaller guys. Unique style. Regarding Davey, I annoyed my wrestling fan friends for a while with: "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "RESPECT!"

Given recent history, it could change to Zack Ryder between now and tonight.

I like this episode because there was no Dana or any of Brody's family. This show needs to revolve around Saul plotting to take over the world. Really that is it.

2 small things I noticed last night. So I see the little Mexican flags in a corner during Del Rio vs Bryan and think that's an odd touch. Then I see they are in all 4 corners. What's with the new up and down arm taunt thing Punk was doing? They cut to the crowd and people are doing the Yes! thing. That's kinda leaching on Bryan's heat...

Yeah, fuck an Emmy. That's the next best thing to a Knighthood.

At least they killed dude-bro and super nerd quick.

Jesus, didn't we literally have this exact conversation about Punk last year, at this time. RATINGS ARE DOWN, PUNK ISN'T A DRAW. Merch sale arguments. um, guys, the ratings fall at this time of the year every fucking year because of MNF and MLB playoffs, and always bounce back up just in time for the road to wrestlemania/end of the football season....