Iron Moose

I've been thinking about this on and off for a bit, and Rollins accepting would seem to undermine the actual, current NXT champ.

I too watched the Statlander episode of Hey EW.

So even at the time, I thought this match was something special and weird. It's worked almost entirely on strikes, Sasha barely flies and they both do a good job of controlling the pace. It had me worried someone was injured to the point of having to bypass a lot of their standard moveset.

... as opposed to their promo segment from two weeks ago, which was just porn...

It was alright. Lash has improved a great deal, Jackson didn't have too much to do but did it all well - she was good at making Feroz and Leon look good. I was more watching for Feroz and Leon, so... I don't think they're fully formed as characters yet, and a bit handicapped by robotically (or exaggeratedly carnival-y) dancing to the ring, as well as after the match. Nice finisher, though, with shades of KC2 (one does a basic grapple and the other flies into them), and their double-team and Leon's missile dropkick were both good. I think the high-water mark for Level Up has probably been Palmer/Ruca v Lash/Jackson.

I have a bad feeling about Hayter retaining.

I feel like there might be a framistan here... but yeah. There does seem to be a sense of escalation for the sake of escalation. (... is it me or would escalation make a decent name for an AEW youtube show?)

They definitely clashed in NXT

I went on to watch the Ruby and Willow episodes. I'm not sure I agree... I thought Ruby's was a lot more awkward and Willow came off as bewildered, but likable.

I didn't think she came off particularly light-hearted, but she did seem quick to anger. Maybe some of RJ's stuff was too weird?

They ran GUNTHER v for the first time at a house show this weekend. I think they've also been running Rhea v but I think it would be really surprising if she was the NOC match. With the renewed focus on the Prism Lock, my guess would be Nattie.

They're in their own little bubble. It would be really easy for Trish to interact with Rollins or comment on Nattie's return or something. Her character should have more to say than jibes at Roux.

Bracket for the NXT Women's Title is out: Very clever booking, I think -- the less-favored halves of the quaterfinals are feuding with each other (Fallon/Kiana, Gigi/Jacy), so we can get interference in either direction. In terms of scheduling, I'm guessing one from each side of the bracket today, the remaining quarterfinals on the 16th, semifinals on the 23rd. My thinking is that they'll want to avoid doing the Roxy and Tiffany matches on the same broadcast...

I started at... RSPW, I think, and then went to CRZ, and DEAN's posts on the-w were vivid and passionate and alive and so, so saturated with identity and joie de vivre. And then I was drawn here. It's basically been 22 years adjacent to DEAN's energy and I will miss him and can't and won't forget him.

So if anyone is interested in the order that people are in this, it goes (blank) (blank) cody (blank) rhea cody seth rhea cody seth rhea bianca seth owens bianca becky owens bianca becky theory bianca becky theory asuka zayn theory asuka THE FUTURE (text) (blank) bayley (blank) gunther bayley rey miz bayley rey miz sheamus mia miz lashley mia balor lashley mia uso lashley uso HAPPENS LIVE (text) and then there's a bunch of rapid flashes, in this order: Priest, Omos, Natalya, Dawkins, Riddle, Ford, Nakamura, Baszler, Zelina, Woods, Corbin, Lesnar, Reigns

... was that the best match yet for both Roxy and Zoey? I guess that's what happens when you put two people who are each carrying a lot of the division against each other. Some of Roxy's reversals looked better than I recall from other matches, she really threw herself into some of those corner uppercuts (even the one that missed, which a great skill to have). Zoey does this thing in her match structures where she sets up a climactic reversal through a few successful hits- I first noticed it in a Ruca match a few weeks ago where she threw Sol into the corner a few times in the same way that a late-match throw would eventually be countered into a Sol Snatcher, she did similar things here with Pop Roks and a headscissors.

Fun tag with Sol Ruca and Dani Palmer on this week's NXT Level Up -- Palmer has very strong fundamentals and the Snatcher looked great.

@DEAN, your recap posts make literally every show better. Thank you for being you.

this strikes me as a weak defense of a poorly-received episode. Why would it be true that WM the past weekend would justify "not having a lot of time to put a show together tonight"? Is there any indication of anything happening on or around WM that would cause a last-minute rewrite beyond capriciousness? The WWE does not lack the capacity to plan in advance. Your defense seems to simultaneously be that they are planning and executing a timeless storyline and too inept to make it good. This is silly revisionist history. It paid out with Bryan winning the big one, then languishing for months with Kane while the focus shifted to Shield/Evolution (good, but not for Bryan) and incoherent McMahon/Bella/Bella dramatics.

YES

it kind of looks like it has a hotdog in it? Disappointing.

Yeah. It feels like it's a ladder match to have a ladder match, which is ... capricious, at best. We've had Lyra and Tiff both gathering momentum and both were absent yesterday, and Kiana having a qualifier and possibly wrestling twice also feels slipshod. Maybe there's another covid outbreak? Possibilities: a. she's back ahead of the match, it's a title match b. she's back right before the match and in it c. she's back late in the match and wins, but slimy d. she's back immediately after the match and we get a two-belts unification thing e. she's back on a show after the match and we get a unification f. she's back on a show after the match and we get a match g. she's gone to the main roster a makes Michaels et al out to be heartless, vicious goons of match-makers. b is kind of the middle of the road. c is the first step to a heel turn, which could be interesting but makes the dynamics in the division really weird. d makes sense if she's speedrunning HBK-Razor 1993-1994. e and f are kind of flat; g strikes me as a really bad idea at this point.

I am once again a low voter on an NXT that seems to be well-received. Gargano's return fizzles thanks to the new mix of Rebel Heart. Dolin doesn't meaningfully get an entrance, and starts a match that we're primed to view as emotionally significant for her with a collar-and-elbow. She wins - and I think the story was more pointing towards either a cheap Jacy win with a post-match beatdown by Dolin or something inconclusive. Bron and Melo set up what should be a grand collision between two high-level stars with a bland mutual-appreciation chat. Roxanne's collapse after the main was in poor taste, and I find that she still struggles on executing some of her signature moves. As an artistic choice it's not for me and if it isn't, it's something she should really be working to improve. In particular - she seemed to go for her floatover russian leg sweep two or three times before hitting it, but the move doesn't seem worth the trouble; the Pop Rox on the floor looked messily half-countered, and the kick preceding it seemed to be significantly slower than most of her other strikes... I dig the ongoing Bate / Chase U stuff; I like Axiom's preoccupation with his eyes, I thought Dijak and D'Angelo both came off quite well. I'm not sold yet on Lyra, but I think they're setting up for her to lose by Stevie interference against Stratton before she gets into the title picture, and we'll get Meiko-Stratton (interim title? number one contender?). Unfortunate how Ivy seems to have been increasingly backgrounded these past months - Meiko pulled her to a really good match on one of the UK shows.

Wasn't this Azeez turning on Apollo?

Page's entrance looks so, so much better IRL: versus https://twitter.com/AEW/status/1632569791914336256 (The link could not be embedded because twitter.com does not allow embedding of that tweet.) I did some theatre a while ago, so I'll offer these critiques, with more to follow -- instead of COW BOY SHT, it should say HANG MAN PAGE, and it might look better with one horse moving across screens, rather than three in their own loops. But those are tiny nits to pick. This was great - I buy a guy with THIS entrance coming down to challenge the Bloodline. Not so much the previous ecstasy of gold ripoff.