Go2Sleep

The "blading vs drawing blood" thing has to be one of the stranger production quirks/policies in WWE. If you're going to let guys bleed on rare occasion, why wouldn't you want them using a small blade to just break the skin as opposed to having guys bare-knuckle each other or ram their heads into solid metal?

I'm curious what Brock was doing then when he raked his head across the bottom of his glove exactly where the cut was.

Another pretty whatever show, but what else do we get from WWE these days? When Del Rio came back, it felt like he was never gone. It was supposed to be a special moment, but he just blended right back into the current uninspired landscape. At least the match wasn't pointless overkill like most of Cena's recent work. Roman/Bray was fine, but these guys needed the blood more than Taker and Lesnar. They were pretty creative within their limitations and both guys took some good bumps. Really glad New Day retained the tag belts. Hope that's the end of the Dudleys as contenders. That attempted double team is a legit Botch of the Year Candidate. The women's match was probably Nikki's best match ever. Thought they went to the finish too fast after that awesome Alabama Slam on the apron, but other than that, very solid. The WWE title match was better than I expected. Rollins getting the decisive clean win was impressive. Totally forgot about the IC match, and based on the way it was executed, I feel like WWE did too. Felt very last-minute and rushed. I honestly didn't care for the main at all. Between Lesnar blading on an obvious non-contact spot and the fucking cut doctor cleaning up his crimson mask, they actually managed to make me wish they had just stuck with the "no blood" protocol. The match should be minus five stars just for having a doctor inside the cell the whole match. The action was pretty dull for stretches, more like Mania 30 and less like Summer Slam. The camera angle for the tombstone was Linda-McMahon-bad and the most of their "exposed ring" spots missed the exposed ring. And if they wanted to put Lesnar over as the new phenom or whatever, why did he use the low blow? That was a seriously lazy attempt at storytelling, a callback like that only works if it makes sense for the characters. You can't just be like "Oh that's what Taker did at Summer Slam... That's DEEP man!" A better spot would be Taker using the low blow and Brock fighting through it to still get the win. Anyway, that match annoyed me more than it probably should have. The post-match would've been interesting had the WM angle not happened. Typical Bray job/randomly appear to feud with someone else booking, without the month layoff this time. There's potential for it to be interesting, but look inside yourselves and ask: Do you think it will be?

Jericho's turn on Michaels in 08. Shawn had to fake an injury to beat Batista, and then he kept up with charade for weeks. Jericho was telling the truth!

I thoroughly enjoyed Dolph getting his ass kicked the second he used "millennial" as a pejorative.

WWE has found a way to turn Cesaro (potentially a Cesaro/Neville team) into x4 material. Bravo.

I don't think Breeze/Ziggler is a bad idea. I mean the writers could easily screw it up and Breeze can't in good conscience call Dolph an uggo, but Dolph's a credible midcarder who can make Breeze look good to a new audience. Plus the name Summer Breeze writes itself and they should be a good comedy duo with Breeze still being a midcard threat in the ring.

Eh, I think this is true more often than not. I think you'd have to be really passionate about being a wrestler to make it to the level where people want to hear a shoot interview with you. I think the big difference is that unlike 99.9% of wrestlers, Brock didn't grow up as a fan. It's really impressive how quickly he picked it up and how good he is, but it makes for a dull interview about wrestling.

Brock's great in small bursts, but nothing feels like a bigger waste of time than a "shoot" where the interviewee doesn't remember or care about large chunks of their career (I remember a godawful one with Scott Steiner along these lines). Plus, ever since the HHH interview, it's obvious they're telling Austin to limit the shoot stuff and give it more of a talk-show feel. I'll be honest, I'll probably check this thread before I watch the next post-Raw Austin podcast to see if it's worth a damn. The last few have been weak, especially since I've been going back and listening to the older Austin/Jericho podcasts on itunes.

Owens/Henry was great. Henry's been a jobber for years, but he built himself up to give Owens a decent rub in 2 minutes. The main event was fun too. Seth was hilarious and Dean reacted perfectly. I actually thought the chickenshit gimmick worked here, even if it's been done to death with Rollins. First it actually got the right heat since it was something people wanted to see, and second, there's no reason to do anything actually resembling a real Shield reunion right now. That's a money moment down the road, but it makes no sense for any of their characters right now. Also liked the absurdity of Dean Ambrose chatting with Finlay and Malenko on his way into the arena. It would really be nice to have some non-Bella women segments. Sasha needs to practice her hot tag, although Nikki botching the first hit didn't do her any favors. Also, it just feels so wrong to see Sasha doing her entrance routine to something other than Sky's The Limit. It was kind of weird to have a go-home show with so many people in ppv matches MIA (Kane, Harper, Orton).

Breeze is at the awkward point where he's peaked in NXT, and even though it looks bleak for him on the main roster, there's not much else to do with him. Basically the same thing that happened to the Ascension. Breeze is way more talented than those guys to be sure, but it's gonna be hard for him to get past that Adam Rose/Bo Dallas tier. I think the best play would be to bring Corbin up with him and do a Shawn/Diesel thing as tag champs.

That's because it doesn't make any sense for Cena and Nikki's characters to be connected on Raw. Just like it didn't make sense for Rusev and Lana to be connected on screen anymore, even though everyone knew they were a real-life couple.

I hope the upcoming match inspires everyone to watch this. Easily a top 10 WWE MOTD, probabaly my second favorite HIAC behind Taker/Foley. The most amazing part is that Brock was only in WWE for like 6 months at this point.

From the PWTorch Insider Terms Glossary

Kayfabe is the reason people snicker when you say you like wrestling. Maybe it made a little sense when there was a non-zero percentage of the population that believed it was real, but for at least the last 30 years, it's just fucking embarrassing for grown adults to pretend they're the same people they portray on an obviously fictional television show. Not that that's ever stopped me from enjoying wrestling, but I'm pretty glad kayfabe is dead and it makes way more sense for an "entertainment company" like WWE to get rid of it altogether. The next step is understanding that people will still enjoy old-school rasslin' storylines and characters without needing to believe they're real, and letting the wrestlers have normal lives (at least as normal as celebrity lives can be) off screen. The main shows are in an awkward place where they can't find the balance, but NXT has it down. They have lots of outlandish characters all played completely straight and the crowds eat it up. As far as I know, none of them live the gimmicks 24/7.

The Enzo/Cass comment is just ridiculous. How are they not babyfaces, number one? Number two, they already move lots of merch and their sustained heat doesn't indicate anyone is tired of them wouldn't accept them getting a push. Number three, the idea that a show as well put-together as NXT has people in charge who "don't know or care" about anyone on the roster, much less guys who get regular tv time is so beyond absurd, I'm not sure how you could even bring yourself to type it. But more importantly than all that, your idea that a babyface needs to be built from the ground up seems to go against the last 20 years of WWE history where the most successful faces were guys that got over with their heel acts and were turned out of necessity. Even in the context of modern NXT women's wrestling, Sasha is overshadowing Bayley with that exact same model.

I think you need to learn that a babyface isn't actually determined by how a crowd reacts. It's based off of how he or she is booked. And it's always been that way. Uh, if that's the case, then Cena is the #1 face in the company without question with Roman right behind him, but I think there's definitely a difference between being booked as a face and being over as a face in the sense that the crowd really likes you. I know Morelock can be abrasive at times, but he's pretty right on this one. With all the necessary caveats about how much I love Bayley as a worker, she's not even the most over face on NXT, let alone all of WWE. In NXT, Enzo and Cass are definitely the #1 face act as far as getting crowd heat goes. Sami Zayn is Bryan-status, meaning he would easily be the most over face if he wasn't hurt. Finn and Bayley are neck and neck after that. Shit, you could make a case that the most over pure babyface on the full-time roster right now is Randy Orton, and he hasn't done anything relevant in almost a year. He still gets some of the best pops every show, though. You could also throw New Day into the "faces that are supposed to be heels" category with Sasha. They're getting unsolicited "New Day Rocks" chants in almost every city.

I guess the other possibility is that they didn't want to wait for Lana to get healthy to finish this angle, and this was a convenient excuse to drop it. The way it was done didn't help anyone involved or make any sense if you think about it for more than 2 seconds, but it does free everyone up to go in different directions.

The reason the Rusev/Summer segment was so awkward is that kayfabe has been dead for so long it was surprising to see someone actually get punished for breaking it. Like everyone knew Rusev and Lana were a real life couple even though they were feuding on screen, so I'm not sure how acknowledging their engagement off screen changes anything.

A full-on double turn would actually be pretty good with these two. Joe can kill Breeze, move on to the NXT title, and dominate while Breeze begins his redemption face run. Nia Jax was underwhelming after the months of video packages. Like anything NXT, I'll give it some time, though. Blake and Murphy sounds fine when introducing them as a team, but they really need their first names back when the spotlight is on one of them individually. It's hard to think of a way to make someone look less important than wrestling as "Blake." I hope the title angles they started tonight get blown off before the next Takeover. Asuka/Bayley and Joe/Balor are the money matches in NXT right now. I like Alexa and Crews, but they both have "filler program" written all over them. This also means Joe/Breeze would need to wrap up soon, but that's the one angle of those three I think has some longevity potential and would actually be "special-event" worthy.

I think it'll be Charlotte/Sasha.

The Rusev/Summer "blowoff" was very fitting for that angle. For a couple weeks there, it looked like they were about to stumble ass-backwards into revitalizing Dolph and Rusev's careers with a double turn, but this ending keeps the feud as pure wrestlecrap through and through. Is there anything on Raw these days worth watching besides Owens, New Day, and the rare women's match not built around the Bellas?

I could listen Dean Ambrose talk about wrestling all day. Did he ever do a podcast with Jericho or Austin?

Cena/Lesnar (Extreme Rules 2012) and the first Shield/Wyatts match are still the clear 1 and 2 for MOTD, but it warms my heart to know that a WWE women's match can be in that discussion. In fact, at the rate things are going, there will probably be several by 2019.

Still no R-Evolution, but this was an excellent show. The first two tag tournament matches were really good. I loved the Finn/Joe vs. Mechanics match a lot. That was how you do two singles superstars vs. a lower ranked full-time team. Dash and Dawson's swarming offense was on point (they didn't look out of place at all here despite hardly ever being on tv), Joe was a perfect foil, and Finn was doing some smart stuff (like dodging the second attempt at knocking him off the apron before his nice hot tag sequence) and some good selling. I liked the reluctant use of the double finisher at the end. I'm disappointed Jordan and Gable didn't win, but that was a sleek End of Days. I did love Asuka's debut, though I'd hesitate to say "best NXT debut." Kevin Owens still has that distinction as far as I'm concerned, but this was very enjoyable. They really made Asuka look like a world-beater, and Dana held up her end very well. As great as Asuka looks in the ring, this was no carry job. The way Asuka completely punked Emma after the match was beautiful as well. If they keep booking her like that much of a badass, people aren't gonna miss the 4 horsewomen for long. Breeze/Crews was nice little match that allowed Crews to do more than just run through his spots. I loved that moonsault sequence that forced him to debut a new finisher. Hopefully Crews can find a character trait or catchphrase that connects with the crowd, because he looks effortlessly good in the ring. The tag final was the only blah part of the show. It was just a worse version of the first Finn/Joe match. I will say that I applaud them for playing it completely straight, though. They teased the finish not working, but it did, and they resisted the temptation to do any kind of post-match swerve in lieu of a tasteful tribute. You have to have these kind of things go off without a hitch enough times to make the swerves mean something. The main was another strong outing from Bayley and Sasha. I think the time factor hampered it relative to the Brooklyn match, but only in the sense that you knew exactly when it would end. There were lots of great sequences here and it flowed nicely. I wasn't all in on Bayley up until the Brooklyn match, but her performance there and here has sold me on her 100%. There were a lot of nice counter spots and stuff that played off the last match. The finishing run was elite stuff with the modified bank statement due to the hand work, and that nasty reversal/new sub finisher that drew the verbal "I Quit" to end it and make Bayley look like the absolute best. I know it'll never happen, but I wanna see heel Bayley at some point after seeing how brutal her offense was down the stretch. Again, I applaud the restraint of not doing any post-match swerves and letting these two enjoy their much-deserved moment.