HumanChessgame

I didn't watch the post Rumble presser but I'm shocked that a place like WWE where everything has always been so scripted they didn't just only include journalists who would tow the company line and only ask pre-screened questions.

repost...disregard

I don't mind Graves when he isn't going over the top and trying to put over whatever is being piped in his earpiece, but McAfee was like an even louder and more annoying version of him.

Naomi's return was a surprise as the last time I watched a TNA show she was champ so I figured she was still under contract. She ended up going quite the distance. I was also surprised they acknowledged TNA and completely shocked when Jordyn Grace showed up. Tony Khan isn't the only one with access to a Forbidden Door! I don't know if Kairi's elimination was a botch, but it looked like both her feet hit when she initially went out. Jade debuting was expected and her dumping a dominant Nia was an impressive way to make her look strong. Dug the faceoff with Bianca. Tiffany Stratton got some nice shine in her debut as well. Going in it seemed like Becky was the obvious winner and when the last three were left I realized I'd completely missed her elimination. Bayley/Rhea is a decent enough Mania option and they've got the added Damage Control drama or potential fallout. This was one of my favorite women's rumbles on account of them not shoehorning a bunch of divas in. Half the stadium could have taken a dump during the entrances and intro of the 4 way. There was no way Roman wasn't winning so I didn't pay that much attention to the match but what I saw was fairly plodding. Owens/Paul was decent and the finish was a creative way for Owens to lose via shenanigans. No DQ match at Mania? The surprise returns/debuts continued with Andrade coming back in the men's rumble. My prediction about Bron debuting turned out being accurate. His faceoff with Gunther was boss even if he did wind up eliminated by Dom. I wondered if anyone from TNA was going to turn up in this match, but there were no other surprising entrants. The match itself was decent if unmemorable. Repeat winners of the Rumble is stupid, especially back to back, but I admit Punk not winning was a swerve. Cody/Roman with Rock as guest ref at WM?

Not a peep about the ongoing controversy on SD. The women's tag match was really good.

I think a lot of the Rumble outcome depends on if Rollins can make it to Mania or not. If it's a case of Rollins being medically cleared but definitely needing to go away for a while for surgery after a la Cody with a torn pec, then it makes it pretty obvious he'd lose unless they're going to vacate the title. In that situation I could see Punk winning the Rumble (which seems the pretty obvious conclusion) and wonder if they'd have Rollins, bad wheel and all, somehow beat Punk then decide to pull the trigger on Priest cashing in (or maybe the next night at Raw when Seth is seemingly going to forfeit the title). After Monday they really teased Punk and Cody which makes it look like that's on the table for Mania if they need some big match. That match would honestly have enough story to not need a belt involved but leaves the winner of the Rumble in the air. Gunther would be great, but I keep hearing he and Lesnar rumored as a Mania match, which is probably more fan speculation than anything, but I'd like to see it if Lesnar is willing to do business. They could have Lesnar be an unannounced entrant and be eliminated by Gunther, then maybe Lesnar distracts him or whales on him after the elimination causing him to get tossed. Then he defends the IC title against Lesnar at Mania but drops it to a debuting Ilya at the next show. Rock winning would be stupid and I can't imagine the crowd being happy about it. The EC is up next and maybe Orton wins that to give us Orton/Roman for those titles? I don't care about such a match, but it would make sense and be somewhat fresh. Maybe Roman wins then Rock comes out and gets in his face after, leading to Rock and an Uso vs Roman and the other Uso at Summerslam? Does anyone else debut in the Rumble? Jade seems like a no brainer. Bron maybe? I really don't want he and Corbin winning the Dusty Cup as I'm not a fan of two singles guys thrown together and beating the established teams.

Dustin getting more tv time lately then having this great match with Christian made me want to see him as Sting's last opponent. Granted Sting probably couldn't do ten minutes solo even with Dustin and Dustin is far from an upper card guy but I just think it would really be fitting. According to Cagematch they've been on the same team 58 times but have never wrestled eachother.

I'd actually reverse the opinion and say they've hurt the titles by leaning way too much into being a comedy act since winning them, along with rarely defending them.

The first episode of Night Country didn't really grab me, but the overall concept was interesting enough to keep me interested. After season 3 being overall solid I've got hope they aren't going to have another stinker like the second season. Season 5 of Fargo is easily the best of the show's run and one of the better singular seasons of tv I can remember in a while. This was like a story Cormac McCarthy never wrote coupled with some of the irreverence you'd expect from the show.

The HOB/FTR+Garcia match pretty much was like this. About the only thing that took me out of the match was how selective the ref was being with the rules and in the whole last half tags and the legal person were just kind of a suggestion. If they were to do full trios rules then fine, but either commit to the bit one way or another.

Even though WWE's product in general is kind of bland, their booking is at least somewhat logical and everything is laid out very well as far as agenting, timing, etc goes. This Jinder/Rollins program is nothing but filler but the end of the match had it looking like Jinder might actually win. When Truth popped up I had no idea he was still working there. But then he almost got Priest to corpse in their first segment and I see why.

This made me curious to see of Hogan and Terry Funk ever wrestled. Looks like they had about a dozen WWF house show matches in 1985, plus Hogan and JYD had a couple tag matches against Terry and Dory. There was also some random match in South Africa that listed nothing else but two random women's matches.

I kept thinking Britt Baker was going to make an appearance at some point.

Isn't Vance still a heel and a member of LFI? Then again the heel/face and feud status didn't really matter in any of the 8 person matches. I get Sting might not be able to work a singles match but The Bucks are going to get shit on and not in a good heel way. Then again most people are going to watch for Flair to inevitably punch Sting in the balls anyways. Claudio/Page was great and an ideal way to kick off a show.

Is it just me or is this a lot more stuff announced than they normally do? Kofi Kingston vs. Ludwig Kaiser JD McDonagh vs. The Miz Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Cody Rhodes WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship: Katana Chance & Kayden Carter (c) vs. Piper Niven & Chelsea Green CM Punk returns to RAW Tommaso Ciampa vs. Finn Balor The frogurt is also cursed

Every IRL wrestler encounter not related to a show I've had has been pretty random. A few years ago I saw Sgt. Slaughter sitting on a bench at an airport. I don't think the WWE had a show in town but I was on my way to catch a flight and didn't have a reason to bug him. Shannon Moore dated and later married a girl I went to high school with (wikipedia says they divorced in 2005). They were at my senior prom together in spring of 1999 but he hasn't been signed by WCW yet so he was just some guy. I left for college later that year but whenever I would be at home working at my old grocery store job I'd see him in occasionally. I recall one time some little kid and his mother recognized him and he talked with them for a few minutes. Back in 2007 or so I was at a concert and the opening act were these two midgets who did some comedy bits then had a brawl with eachother. Nate Webb was the emcee for their segment and I went to talk to him in between sets. He was genuinely surprised someone recognized him and was a friendly guy who said working this gig payed more than Ian Rotten did and he didn't have to get dropped on his head.

I'm not a big fan of Cole but his promo was fine as far as heels justifying their actions goes. Like everyone else, I think his insistence Wardlow wins and hands over the belt is stupid unless they have Wardlow explain that he doesn't care about the belt, he just wants to hurt MJF and take everything from him. That's still pretty dumb, but it would make more sense than what was initially said. Swerve needs to keep his momentum going and Page losing makes him look like a chump, so I wonder if they do some sort of fuck finish where there's a bunch of interference to set up the next feud for either guy.

14 think it could have just been an email or discussed in the Teams chat while waiting for the one other who endlessly babbles about inane shit to shut his pie hole so they can get back to work.

Stat/Willow was a nice showcase for both. I was expecting some sort of post-match angle given Stokley's involvement. Yay for Serena Deeb coming back! When Danhausen made it to the final four I actually hoped they might have him win. Luchasaurus winning made me think they might have yet again some other turn between he and Christian but...then the rest of the show happened. The FTW title is dumb and pointless. Deciding to not selectively differentiate AEW and ROH and having this be for the Pure Title would have lead to a much better match. What we got wasn't bad but the Sports Entertainment garbage spots didn't do it any favors. I have always been a big fan of the 8 man Survivor Series elimination matches from the late 80s/early 90s and that's what the opening match reminded me of - just semi-random teams of dudes thrown together and hopefully everyone gets to shine with the team members quasi-cooperating. There were a lot of fun interactions and when Mark went for the J Driller I was hoping he'd get a time to shine on a ppv. Garcia getting the pin was surprising but good for him. Whatever the fuck the angle it is that set up Andrade/Miro was asinine but the match was great. I just hope they let Miro kick peoples' asses and put the kibosh on any more cringe promos. I'm not a big fan of Riho but this match was fine and did what it needed to do in making Toni look good. Poor Keith Lee. Dude is massively talented but every time he gets some momemtum going it ends due to no fault of his own. There are few better hands than Dustin, but I thought the opening cinder block attack kind of took away from the match. They either should have had Swerve just take him out and have no match or just wrestle a clean match. Swerve's heel mannerisms were really next level throughout the whole thing. Had little interest in the second four way. Nothing was actively bad but it was just a "get more guys a spot on the card" match. Julia/Abadon was a case of in-ring work can taking a backseat to the character work and both wrestlers did equally well in that respect. The actual wrestling was pretty good too, save for a few rough patches (the flubbed moonsault finisher). For someone who is a character first and foremost Abadon has come a long way in the past year or two and I hope they go into a feud with Skye Blue to keep some momentum going. I didn't have much interest in Edge/Christian and what I did pay attention to was your average AEW brawl. The end with Luchasaurus once again showing deference to Christian and signing over the title show was pretty dumb. This just means the Edge/Christian program is going to keep on going somehow... Eddie and Moxley didn't pull any punches out there and I like how the end came from a sudden backfist during the strike exchange. They did the right thing here and let the most deserving guy win. In a business filled with characters and gimmicks, few people come across as legit as Eddie does nowadays. Confirmed the CC is happening again next year. Awesome. Joe/MJF was good but I feel like the main draw of the match was to pay off the Devil angle rather than the match itself. Cole coming down to ringside felt like it was foreshadowing his eventual reveal as the big bad. Roddy, The Kingdom, and Wardlow being his minions is the best outcome there could have been, even if it was the most widely speculated result. The best part about this is that it hopefully spells the end of Roddy's awful segments. Nothing stood out as a classic but nothing was actively bad either. This felt like one of WWE's B-list ppvs where most of the matches were better suited to a weekly show than a PPV. FTR/HOB really belonged on here and something tells me will be a lot better than much of what we saw tonight.

So the Devil takes off his mask only to reveal a fully masked Evil Uno?

Tony Khan coming out at the end of the PPV and announcing a tournament for the Being The Devil title would be the most AEW thing ever. I'm still of the opinion it's Cole and the other guys are Roddy, Kyle, and The Kingdom as that would make the most sense. When MJF initially turned face everyone was expecting he'd just end up turning on Cole with lots of us opining it would actually be Cole who turned as a swerve. MJF spending all this time realizing it's ok to be vulnerable and have friends while making all this effort to work on himself and be a better person only to be stabbed in the back by the person he thought was his one true friend and he's better off being an asshole is a fitting arc for him. Or maybe because I think most of his face run has been filled with mediocre booking and cringe segments.

I really hope they don't re-do the Full Gear main event of a hobbled MJF still being able to hold his own for a competitive match with a fresh opponent. Not wanting him to lose in his hometown is one thing, but they've kind of booked themselves into a corner with this one. He should lose via shenanigans then return with no advance notice for an amazing pop. With how bad most of the booking has been lately I'm not holding out a large amount of hope for something logical.

Something tells me this may not have been something that would have ever been in the cards anyways. I'd never heard of this guy outside of the lawsuit and decided to look him up and he's not even on cagematch. There are a few of his matches up on youtube and he's a pretty generic indy guy. Getting a go away lump sum payout from WWE is probably the biggest paycheck this guy is ever going to get, unless someone convinces TK to hire him out of pure spite.

I didn't know what you were talking about and decided to look it up - https://www.cagesideseats.com/aew/2023/12/25/24014544/chris-jericho-claims-witnessed-brawl-out-twitter-feud-stephen-p-new-cm-punk-attorney-christmas Jericho has been one of my favorite guys ever since seeing him in ECW forever ago, but man has he ever crawled up his own ass in the past several years. Every time he does one halfway decent thing, is involved in a quality match, or provides some other type of veteran leadership he takes two steps back with an inversely awful storyline or some carny bullshit like this.

Mustafa Ali making his indy return.