MORELOCK

You mean how they gave him a push and the Cruiserweight title and he fucked it up by beating her?

What would a satisfying payoff to the search even look like? Is there anyone already in the company that they have in mind?

Yeah, nothing I've ever seen or found about Triple H addressing DDP in a negative way at all. I'm guessing it didn't happen and this is just more "We hate <insert pet target> and will assign him things he didn't do or say to reinforce our opinion."

Keith Mitchell in action.

Isn't this your take every week, though? It's not a matter of whether it's "for me" or not. When people drag out the entrances and the chanting, the television show drags. The atmosphere might be great in the arena, but the overwhelming majority of people watching aren't in the arena. Because they're a million times more enjoyable, and provide characters for people to invest in rather than having robots working same-y robot matches. Seven star classics are not going to increase the ratings one bit.

Dial it back. So intentionally not saving Mox and walking into a 2-on-1 assbeating is somehow in Darby's best interest? That doesn't make him look tough, it makes him look stupid. Having a tag team partner in a tag team match seems like a means to an end to me. It didn't make sense and that's why the announcers tried to cover for it.

What I liked: The PPV recap to open the show was shockingly abbreviated - I'm used to the padded sprawl of WWE recaps, which at least seem like they take 5+ minutes. If you MUST open the show with a recap - get that shit out of the way quickly and get to the exciting part of the program. AN ACTUAL SQUASH MATCH!!!! I can take or leave Big Swole herself, but *this* is how a squash match is structured. The jobber is waiting in the ring (not getting an entrance and certainly not getting mic time), the match lasts a couple of minutes. The 10 minute "squash" matches are essentially 50/50 booking - no one gets over the way they're supposed to because for some reason the jobber needs to be capable of getting their shit in and going the distance. This match is what the matches on Dark need to look like. Jake had a promo to cut, so what did he do? HE PUT HIS HAND UP TO MOTION FOR THE CROWD TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND THEY ACTUALLY DID IT. Still the master. If it were someone lesser, they would have (of course) paused for five fucking minutes so the mouthbreathers can get a few different "You've still got it/Welcome back/Holy shit" chants in. I don't have time or patience for that shit. Lots of outside of the ring talk and angles this week, which is the wrestling show I'm looking for. I don't need four 20 minute matches that are laid out exactly the same and get nobody over. TWO MINUTES for that MJF promo, and if it weren't for an all-time great promo showing up it would have been the best promo on the show. TWO MINUTES is all you need! The farther you go past that mark, the worse the promo is going to be. What I didn't like: Mox's entrance and milking of the stupid chants meant that he didn't even start talking until FIVE MINUTES into the show. That's not a hot opening! Pausing for bullshit chants might be fun for the live crowd, but it makes your TV show drag. And when he started talking, it was...telling the fans that they're the real star of the show? Talking about how happy you are to be RIGHT HERE in Broomfield? Boring, generic babyface promo that didn't seem to have a reason for being there at all. Isn't Mox supposed to be the rugged, crazy loner? Why does a character like that care about kissing the fans' asses? Whoever's idea it is to be panning around the crowd looking for reaction shots: This is one of the worst things about watching WWE programming right now. I don't WANT to see what some guy in a Bullet Club shirt thinks about a near fall. I don't WANT to see some fat neckbeard mouth the words to "Judas" incorrectly. THESE THINGS DON'T MATTER. STOP FOCUSING ON THEM. "Judas" itself. Jericho's a heel and his current heel character would absolutely change his theme music just to piss fans off - so do that. The Dark Order chyron reading "first time [names] have all teamed together." Isn't that true of most of the teams in eight-man tags in AEW? It's certainly also true of the opposing team. I think the chyron stuff works sometimes with their Hangman jokes and stuff, but other times I wonder why it's even there. Quoting dirtsheets saying things like "what a great story in that tag match" can fuck right off. The amount of Excalibur "OHHHHs" in that Cody-MJF video stood out so much that it kind of seemed like a rib. The Cody talk during commercial break - for someone who initially didn't want to use Dusty's death for an angle, he sure seems to refer to him during EVERY promo. We get it - you are the son of Dusty Rhodes. Let's get more chatter about how you are CODY instead of relying on the Dream crutch. I watched the FITE version with no commercial breaks - if they're going to offer that as an option, they need to figure out a better way to utilize that time. Too many wide crowd shots and pointless banter from the announcers. I didn't know who Shake Milton is until JR asked Excalibur to clarify. I know Excalibur is just a more-tolerable version of Mauro, but you shouldn't make references that you need to explain. Also - we're all going to jump down his throat for referring to basketball like we jump down JR's throat for football references, right? That main event sucked. Why exactly didn't Darby run to the back to help his tag team partner? He just shrugged and was like "welp, okay, guess it's a handicap!" And I'm all for keeping Darby strong, but going almost 15 minutes in a handicap match involving one of the most important guys in the company? Ridiculous. All this said - this episode was far more enjoyable than most have been, mostly because of the focus on angles instead of padded, boring matches. I'd like that to keep up.

I doubt Taker is even able to post properly at this point. Bray probably never learned. Do they still teach a vertical suplex at the Canadian Destroyer Flip School that every wrestler trains at now?

That run actually took place before his TNA run.

People like to pretend I'm a contrarian too. It's easier than listening to and addressing an opposing point of view, I guess. DZ's general creepiness in the photo and gif threads is way more bothersome.

Man, everyone talks about Montez Ford's charisma making him a can't-miss star, but basically everything the Streets Profits have said or done since being called up has been really, really obnoxious. And it isn't supposed to be. Someone compared them to the New Day - I can't put my finger on the difference between the two groups, but it is vast. If what we've seen is the best Ford can do, I do not see it.

Kayfabe-wise it isn't really relevant to a referee whether someone kicks out at 1.9 or 2. The match ends on 3, so that's where the second fractions count and the referee needs to worry about precision.

Wasn't Matt "Woken" because they couldn't legally use "Broken?"

Because three isn't enough?

I'm sure he'll get right on that. The title needed to be taken off of Riho ASAP, but Nyla is in no way ready for this role. That match was scary. Why isn't someone telling her to just not do top rope moves? If this is the best the division has to offer right now, it's time to hire some new female talent and pivot. Who is it in the business that thinks "force kiss on unwilling person" has any place anywhere on a wrestling show, let alone being done by a babyface? Why does it keep coming up? I would have figured AEW would know better.

Board's been nuked at least once since then. RIPPA hinted after the last time that he may be able to extract the archives, but I assume since I haven't heard anything about it since, there is no archive. Which is great - I make an ass of myself often enough in the here and now that I don't need to go and relive how much worse it surely was 10 years ago.

Forgotten Sons just had the random lazy "GYV doesn't like Americans? WE'RE American!" promo last week. Not sure if it was even supposed to be a turn.

Pretty sure the spot I'm referring to happened during their SmackDown match.

Upper back/shoulders. That's pretty close to the neck. Germans aren't a flat-back bump. And Benoit had the annoying habit of doing three in a row, extending it to like 10 in one of the Austin matches IIRC. I guess it didn't hurt him enough to break a simple waistlock after 9.

If Goldberg wrestling means Edge will have to keep his spears to a minimum, then please sign me up for the neverending Goldberg championship reign. Goldberg at any age is a million times more credible than Edge ever has been. You've been shown the proof and then moved the goalposts. We get it. Goldberg isn't for you. Doesn't make it a bad short-term business decision.

Didn't Austin take a million German suplexes during the Benoit program? I don't remember seeing any bumps after 98 that could have messed him up worse than that.

Caught up. It stood out to me during Logan Creed's entrance just how little they were doing to make him look like a giant. They shot him from straight ahead, from the shoulders up, then abruptly switched to his promo where they correctly shot him from below. It was jarring. Debuting Erick Stevens to go 10 minutes with an Indy CAW is not a good way to make him look strong. If he was just going to show up in the main event, why not just debut him that way? This show always has good, natural ways to get a bunch of people face time within the hour and push storylines forward. It's something that a show like NXT could learn a lot from.

He also based that on the territory days, so I'm not sure if it still applies. I know there are a lot of spots that I wish would stay gone for far longer than seven years (the superheavyweight superplex making the ring collapse, for example).

Knoxville Girl is part of a larger subgenre of songs rooted in European folk tradition that depict gruesome killings, called "murder ballads."

It didn't. I asked what he said, not what he didn't say. If our conversation is frustrating you, you don't have to answer my question. I'm pretty sure I already know what the answer is, just wanted to give you an opportunity to correct me if I'm wrong.