Iron Moose

I am really not a fan of Reigns/Uso. I don't feel that they've done enough to establish the 'tribal chief' thing, and it comes off kind-of racially charged. It was way too repetitive for my taste and I was glad it was over, as opposed to relieved.

This overdelivered. I say this as someone who thinks that Ember-Asuka was a really great match - I really hope Ember's taken time to work on her character.

Man, the Vengeance 2003 tag with Kidman and Rey against Haas and Benjamin was so good.

I would characterize the issue more as "even with backstage permission, the performance of the act itself (lacking permission in the world of the show) is problematic. " We also don't know (and realistically, don't have reason to believe) that permission has been freely given.

This is precisely a reason to dread the coming days.

I'm of two minds on Sasha these days - I truly respect her dedication to the craft, but it felt like, in terms of being able to execute the spots in her match, she more-than-once wasn't quite where she needed to be. (In this case, the series of flips and rollups towards the end of the match - far too often it was just looking like she and Asuka were tumbling for the fun of it. )

moreso than usual, they can literally do anything (given the pandemic/performance center era) ... and they did that.

At risk of fantasy booking, I could see Io turning to Rhea as a counter to Gonzales (following the line of Charlotte helping Sasha against Dana and Emma in exchange for a title shot. )

At risk of sounding conspiratorial, I’m thinking it’s intentional that the first three folks to come forward are backstage women and a non-wrestling guy (who I first saw on the Jeff Hardy DUI Smackdown, speaking loudly in the center of a cluster of talent, a shot that will surely age poorly if it reflects a regular backstage occurrence. )

Tuned in about halfway through - Sasha really was working for four, eh?

I have plenty of faith in the editing crew. I don't have it in the final cut.

A secondary frustration with Charlotte is that based on her MMC and non-title picture CharLynch periods, she's capable of being charismatic and fun, and these extended periods of wooden dominance and offhand dismissal of competitors don't help anyone, including herself.

This is really interesting. I'm not sure if it's better for Rhea than it is ominous for Shayna, but I'm leaning to the former - having Shayna stay NXT Women's champion only to lose to Charlotte (on the spiritual heels of Asuka's streak) would probably have done the totality of the NXT Women's division fewer favors than where we're at now. In terms of match quality, how do we think Shayna/Charlotte would have compared to Rhea/Charlotte?

the Billie-Peyton bit was upsetting, and while I commend them both as performers for it, I really hope we don't go there again any time soon.

my no-prize is "practice"

Cathy left; Charly is also on ESPN.

That poor horse...

To the best of my knowledge, there's no clear statement about Almas being released? He has an ambiguous "pray" emoji on his twitter and Charlotte posted a broken heart emoji followed by a photo of her and Finlay. Is there a statement somewhere?

At risk of being told to settle down, I don't think Rhea or Shayna were done favours by their new attire. Rhea's was fine, but didn't connect to her televised persona or have a clear thematic counterpoint to Charlotte - it only makes sense because we know from social media that she's into DBZ. (I contrast this to the New Day's DBZ stuff, which was more in line with their canonical WWE positioning as nerds. ) Shayna's red just overpowered the cameras and washed her out -- I'd have gone with something more evocative of either Ronda's from last year (adding white or jagged orange to her usual palette), or something with callbacks to her previous victims.

This is something we gave her praise for in the second MYC - a seemingly-intuitive sense of how to scale her selling (off balance from some spinny Catanzaro stuff rather than completely loopy) and keep herself busy.

that main event was just ... astonishingly creatively bankrupt? also, shayna needs to not do the clutch standing. Makes everyone look bad.

That IS neat. It still sucks as a name.

I feel like, at this point, the writing is pointing at simultaneous mid-match submissions in the Chamber (one from the Asuka Lock and one from the Kirifuda Clutch) Becky interfering on Shayna’s behalf, and shenanigans leading to some combination of Nattie and Asuka at ‘mania.

I hope we get Sonya as the straight man (I know) to Mandy's increasingly histrionic and unkind antics.

I thought so too. Maybe they’ll do a pre-tape and replace him with Mansoor.