tbarrie

Not enough people are mentioning that "War Raiders" was already a pretty stupid name. I mean, yeah, "The Viking Experience" is worse, but they've overcome bad names before. I almost think "The Viking Experience" is the main roster showing they can compete with NXT when it comes to terrible team names. (But "The Undisputed Era" is still worse.)

Jason Jordan moved from NXT to Smackdown as part of American Alpha, then went to Raw when the "Kurt Angle's son" angle started.

No, because The Last Jedi went with the least stupid option.

Is that still a thing? I thought I heard they had moved past that.

Maybe I missed something, but... seven pages and nobody wondering WTF was up with Cena showing up as the Doctor of Thuganomics? Did I imagine that? Because that would only raise further questions.

Does anybody else think they've written themselves into a corner with Black & O'Shea challenging for all three tag titles in the space of a week? If they lose tonight, they're three-time losers. If they win, the Smackdown tag titles look like a consolation prize for a team that couldn't get it done on the other brands.

I'm not surprised. Miz has grown as a performer since the last time they tried it.

If they go with the main event stipulation Rippa quoted from WON - the champ who loses the fall loses their title - isn't that kind of stacking the deck FOR Becky? If Charlotte or Ronda pin or tap each other, they're a double champion. If they pin or tap Becky, they get nothing. Gives them very little reason to focus on Becky during the match. Odd way to book your top face.

AJ Styles doesn't have "way more personality" than a wet dishrag. You're right about Bryan and Joe, though.

I have no paranoia regarding WWE's motives, nor do I think for one second they're trying to cut Becky's legs out. (For the record, I've commented before that I think the idea that they were deliberately trying to sabotage Daniel Bryan's popularity a few years ago is ridiculous too.) My lack of certainty regarding the outcome of this year's main event is simply that from what I see, they're clearly stupid enough that they could blow this, no matter what their intentions are. In an ass-backwards way, putting Lesnar over Reigns last year was almost brilliant booking. I no longer have confidence in any argument that starts with "WWE wouldn't be stupid enough to..." because, yeah, they might be stupid enough. That in turns creates suspense even in the case of what should by all logic be an obvious result. If I thought they did that deliberately, I'd be impressed.

"Bodes ill for" is not the same as "totally precludes the possibility of". Certainly they could do a rematch even if this year's match has a conclusive finish. But the fact that they're planning a (partial) rematch increases the probability that they'll book a finish this year that leaves doubt. It's simple Bayesian reasoning. Though I probably should have quoted Meltzer's part rather than Rippa's, as the troubling part was: "The plan is also to come out of this match with a clear direction for next year’s WrestleMania...". Maybe I'm misreading that, but I don't see how Becky clearly besting both Ronda and Charlotte constitutes "coming out of the match with a clear direction for next year". Doing something allegedly clever to protect one of the losers does. And I have to ask: you've maintained for some time that it's obvious Becky's winning. Do you regard that as more obvious than Roman winning last year? If so, why?

That bodes ill for us getting the decisive finish we want this year.

Sort of.

Yeah, I kind of figured. The way it played out made too much sense for it to have been the WWE's plan.

Everybody turned on Dusty. Sting got turned on pretty often too. So them turning on each other would kind of make sense, ergo Russo would never do it.