Iron Moose

as I posted in the Discord -- With that said, almost everything else delivered. Very odd booking to have Mandy do so little and KLR do so much with so little grounding with the domestic audience. Some awful camerawork in the first match. Dolin worked like someone trying to make a big splash -- some great headscissors and she really threw herself into her strikes. Whoever did it -- I think Jayne -- mocking Shirai's rope-running was also a nice touch.

I am stern, and Canadian.

This is not a good-looking War Games match, if the brawl following the main event was any indication. Commendations to Dakota for the main event, though, she had some really brilliant technique (in particular, her blocking of suplexes by fully getting her leg around Raquel's, and feeding into the stretch muffler). The physics of Raquel going into the bottom turnbuckle were perplexing, though.

this perfectly sums up the experience of watching wwe these days

Rey, Dominik and Seth on the same team -- something tells me they won't to see eye-to-eye. Aliyah ... I mean, good for her, but will the crowd have any idea who she is? It feels like she's being set up to falter. Also unfortunate that Naomi, Toni and Doudrop aren't around.

Maybe it's the pandemic and the relentless passage of time, but I was discouraged to have Owens basically do the same kind of Ziggler promo he eviscerated a few years ago and Becky rehash the Planet's Champion. It makes me feel like 'fickle' is a word of particular significance to the writing team, and that the interviewers aren't particularly clever given that they can't coherently reply to it. I feel bad for Bianca. I still don't have a sense of who Liv is.

She's not Cesaro, but it feels a bit Cesaro Section-ish. She manages to get across that she enjoys what she does, and she is a lot of fun to watch be ragdolled. With that said, I haven't really understood what her post-Riott Squad look is supposed to tell us about who she is.

I wasn't paying too much attention to the show, but I didn't care for E coming out and the focus being heavily on Rollins at the end of the show. Had E feeling like an afterthought, which feels unsound given the relative novelty of his positioning.

All Elite Wrestling: where the ring doesn't collapse from regular use.

This is a really good, insightful post.

Both of these things can be true at the same time. To extend on what @NoFistsJustFlipssaid, I'll add that a rhythm of seeing hometown favorites lose, extinguishing their crowds, probably has a downstream effect of muting the enthusiasm of future crowds. Besides, it's not like the story of Ali and Mansoor desperately needed *this* loss, or set this loss up to matter more than any other.

For a company that likes putting smiles on faces, it sure was dippy to job out Ali. In terms of smiles, there is also a case for bothering to hype Ripley/Jax before running it.

There's an interesting nuance to this, which is 'change in show presentation' versus 'lack of audience'. I'm not sure about the latter, but for the former - Drew and Shayna come to mind, as well as the Mandy / Otis angle's derailment. This is a good take. If anyone wants a grim data science side project, graph the outbreaks two weeks after a WWE show rolls through a town.

the phrasing here is unclear. Do you mean that "hopefully they aren't stupid and therefore have her pin RIpley" or "hopefully they aren't stupid and therefore don't have her pin Ripley"? TBF, wasn’t he was given promo time after that insult and got flustered after he said he was the best inside the three sides of the ring? Aaaaie, that was a painful slip to watch. Three ropes, four corners...

1. The little Madonna reference in the New Day's finisher is brilliant. (Midnight Hour - > Feel the power!) 2. Head of the Table Roman Reigns is a character that actively repels me from his parts of shows. Samoan supremacist - sure. All-smothering godfather figure, also good. Doing both at once connects them in a way that I think unintentionally positions the latter as a consequence of ethnicity, or as an authentic extension of the ethnicity, and that makes me really uneasy. Also the matches are plodding and the nutshot-kickout spot should be scouted by any subsequent challengers.

The first episode of Off Her Chops, a podcast from Cassie Lee (FKA Peyton Royce) and Jessie McKay (FKA Billie Kay) will be available on Friday May 21

Apropos of nothing - I'm guessing you're Canadian?

Going by UUDD and her out-of-character bits on Youtube, she's old-school geeky enough to be a bridge to the G4/Syfy-type networks. Really hoping she stays visible somehow.

For these three in particular: if they wanted this, I'm glad its happened and I wish them the best. If they didn't, DEATH TO WWE.

As a big fan of Rhea and Asuka, that was a really off night for both of them. I'm guessing it's at least partly because it's Rhea's first night in Thunderdome (her finger-wagging at Asuka's back was ... not something that really made sense in this context, but it would have worked if there was more of an audience to play to, and it looked like she was not positioned correctly on the electric chair that worked - that was a bit more back-to-the-hard-cam than usual) ...but that doesn't explain Asuka's dropkick botch or the electric chair slip or the sliding knee going over Rhea's head or whatever happened with that Samoan Drop-Crucifix... thing.... ... the faceplant after the cloverleaf rope break was cool, at least? On a character level, it might have been tough for Rhea to grasp her motivation in the match?

Ricochet, Mustafa and Cedric/Shelton could all be doing something.

Asuka, the Horsewomen, Shayna... Nattie, Mickie? Possibly Rhea, Nikki and Mia?

It's not a bad list but I'd add the Worlds Collide 8-man and Ripley/Gonzalez from Halloween Havoc.

At risk of retroactive fantasy booking, the Sting / HHH match had what seemed to be a perfect setup just before Survivor Series. Sting's appearance set the Authority out the door for a few blessed weeks - why? The motivation I read into it was "the Authority is calling themselves a New World Order, and Sting cannot abide New World Orders. " And then the Mania match happens. ?