w. josh

In World Class he was the Dingo Warrior, which makes it...a bit more explicit, I guess, if you squint.

Yeah, the "Stop the damn match!" guy was a douchenozzle.

Dain's certainly a better wrestler, but his gimmick - pseudo-anarchist but also pseudo-Viking but also bagpipes - mutes the hossitude a little. Lars is just a weird ugly guy in plain tights tossing people around and grimacing. Perfect.

Ohno moves as well as he ever has, and I buy into his strikes a lot more now, but I could really do without the multiple closeups of his bathing suit area every match.

I think AoP are probably fine without Ellering. He's still a good promo, but they're big scary guys in combat gear who yell a lot, so his pseudo-literary promos weren't really doing much to bring the package together. That said, like a lot of others have suggested, they'd probably work great as muscle for someone (Miz would be great).

So the Takeover title change seems obvious now...

By "both of the Ultimate Warriors," you of course mean the original and Kerry Von Erich.

Strowman can probably get an entertaining match out of himself.

Since they've expanded Forgotten Sons from a tag team to a stable on the house shows and tweaked the gimmick, I assume they want to just introduce the whole group at once.

I'd settle for taping at Full Sail every 3-4 weeks, crossing over with the NXT roster whenever it's convenient, and never booking a romantic plotline again.

"Shakespeare was the original rapper!" *does a 630 off a desk onto a stack of textbooks*

Nice sweater, Trevor.

I know the height, pockmarks, and pot belly are going to complicate things a bit, but Pete Dunne deserves to be a megastar already.

*insert Gorilla Monsoon GIF here*

The nWo was a group of middle aged jocks acting the way they thought cool young people act. The BC are a group of young nerds half-ironically acting like middle aged jocks acting like young cool guys. It's, like, eight layers of obnoxious.

The commentary is maybe the worst it's ever been at this point (yes, even worse than Heel Cole). Graves is great and Cole is Cole, but Booker screws up EVERYTHING. On one hand, everything he says contradicts whatever story they're trying to tell, and it's impossible to figure out what his point is most of the time. On the other, Graves and Cole are so openly incredulous and hostile to everything that he says that it ruins the flow of commentary and makes Booker (almost) sympathetic. Also, Cole busted out a "just loves to have fun in the ring and entertain the Universe" on ASUKA. Jesus.

Fans, too.

Hopefully Lio Rush gets a match - of all the dudes on the roster who'd do some ridiculous spot with two rings, his would probably be the ridiculous-est.

Anyone surprised that Sami makes a great heel has clearly never met a Nice Guy.

It's not that they can only get over in front of a smarky Full Sail crowd, it's that they can only get over in a different format. Running them out in front of tired crowds in half-empty arenas and doing a bunch of cringe-y backstage skits isn't working. Neither is going back to Divas booking, where the champion and immediate challenger are always the focus of the division and everyone else gets love triangle or comedy storylines if they're doing anything at all. Moving to something closer to the tournament presentations with a smaller, energetic crowd would allow them to show that some of these guys ARE over, which could transfer over to the main roster. Or scrap the whole thing, throw a few of the guys on the NXT roster, and have Gallagher beat Roman for the Universal title.

Solie and JR had/have prolonged periods of flat, disinterested (and, let's be honest, alcohol-impaired) commentary at the end of their careers, and Heenan was a color guy, not a lead. Even when Lance was being used as a third-tier guy in WCW, he always came across as engaged and excited by pretty much everything. He made you feel like the bad guys were the worst human beings to walk the face of the earth and the good guys were world-conquering underdog heroes to their core. When the bad guy is Barry Darsaw dressed as a golfer and the good guy is named Z-Man, that's an impressive feat.

Absolutely. "Lose constantly for months on end, cash in, flop as champion because all credibility got jobbed out, get blamed for 'not being ready'" has been the pattern for years now.

Brandi is Cody's Anger Translator.

Trying to watch Evolve 91. I decided to play a drinking game and take a shot every time someone did a double stomp, but now I'm dead.

Montez Ford might already be the most charismatic guy on the roster. I would say it will be hard to screw him up, but they will almost certainly find a way.