tbarrie

The problem I see with elimination-style three-way matches is that it makes it so obvious that the best strategy is to make peace with one of your opponents, beat the crap out of the third person two-on-one, and eliminate them first. Making a similar deal in a WWE-style triple threat isn't a terrible idea either of course, but the deal has to end sometime, and when it does the third person is still in the match and can make a comeback. I suppose the counter argument would be that three-way matches should only happen when all three competitors hate each other enough that they wouldn't make such a deal. If Ronda/Becky/Charlotte winds up happening elimination-style would probably work fine for that match.

I watched that match but have no recollection of this. What submission did Ambrose use?

Universe Mode is all I use it for, but it's not without frustrations.

They seem to expect you to tough it out. It's a bit clunky, but you could switch whom you're controlling, make the save yourself, then switch back. Not unbearably so IMO.

Because the colours are supposed to be good at different things, and white is better than black when it comes to low-cost creatures.

As of today, I am old enough to be the subject of a recurring Kids in the Hall sketch.

Definitely there are more women who deserve good spots on the show. Spitballing ideas, while reverting Nia Jax to her role as Alexa's muscle would be narratively unsatisfying, it could get us Alexa and Nia vs Saha and Bayley for the tag titles. Naomi has been underserved by the writing for some time, but at least she has a storyline now, even if it's not great. So maybe they could spare a few minutes to blow off Naomi vs Mandy? Carmella can appear in a between-match segment of some sort; it's not like in-ring work is her forte.

Do we know for sure that Trish is available for and interested in a match at Wrestlemania? Because if they insist on adding Charlotte to the Becky-Ronda match, Trish putting over Asuka isn't the worst plan they could make.

That sounds cool, but Truth should have cited the Maven Precedent and demanded a shot at Bryan, not Nakamura.

Yeah, I don't know that I'd go with "best ever", but I don't get the negativity either. Maybe it was due to fatigue? The show, like all WWE PPVs these days, was way too long. Throwing out some more specific thoughts: Becky-Asuka was great. I'm not sure having Becky tap clean was the right call, but I've already discussed that elsewhere. The women's rumble dragged in the opening/middle. In theory, completely avoiding the "Memory Lane" schtick they used last year was the right way to go, but it meant using a lot of NXT women I didn't know at all, and from the crowd reactions it didn't seem many of the people in the audience had strong thoughts on them either. The finish was superb, though. I was too emotionally tired after Becky's win to give Bryan/Styles the attention it deserved. I'll probably try to watch it again later. There's no reason a match between those two shouldn't be great. Brock/Finn was great, and in one match switched me from thinking Finn was generally useless to actively wanting to see Demon King Balor show up and win the men's rumble. Not sure yet whether I was wrong about Finn or if Brock is just still really good when he tries. The men's rumble was fine. Having nobody in the final four I particularly wanted to see win was a bummer (Andrade is great, but with both men's world titles held by heels him winning would make no sense), but on some days I'm able to separate my personal tastes from objective analyses of quality. This is one of those days. The match was mostly well-booked for what they wanted to accomplish. No idea what they were thinking putting Nia in there, though. My view on intergender wrestling is that in a perfect world, having men and women compete on an equal footing in the ring would be great, a no-brainer. In the world we actually live in, the WWE's long-standing policy of avoiding any hint of male-on-female violence is the right way to go. Which is why I'm baffled that they'd jettison it here for no clear reason.

Can I be Ricochet?

Kacy and Ricochet are dating?

Hmm. Could be. I generally only watch the PPVs and TakeOvers, not the weekly shows, so I could easily be missing out on nuances of character, but I had her pegged as the sort to let an ass-kicking speak for itself. She can certainly be dickish in the ring, but does she have a history of verbally berating her victims after a win?

See, this is exactly why I'm not sure having Asuka go over clean when the plan was clearly Becky vs Ronda was a good idea. I think it hurts Becky more than it helped Asuka. And I don't agree that having Asuka verbally tear into Becky is a great plan right now - it would just draw attention to the weakness in the writing. And if they're not planning to do another Becky-Asuka match soon, where's the payoff? Save that for the buildup to Survivor Series.

Has it? I know Roddy Piper said that one year when he was on commentary, but I think he was just making shit up. Pretty sure that rule hasn't been mentioned or adhered to since.

No idea what "CS:GO" is, but I'm sorry to hear that the Alberta scene is unpleasant. I've had almost unilaterally positive experiences with the Toronto tournament scene. Magic Online has guilds and friends lists. And I take it you only play constructed? There are certainly cards that aren't even playable in limited, but it's nowhere near 85%.

Speaking of that... what was the in-story reason for him being pulled from the match?

Yeah, I like it when you can make some sort of kayfabe sense of who gets in. The women's rumble did it right last year, with the NXT inclusions being the reigning champion and the winner of the major tournament they ran the previous summer. That's easy to justify. As opposed to the men's rumble, where they included the NXT champion and... some random schmuck who lost at the Takeover the night before.

But your scenario included a Brock/Braun match at 'Mania, so you weren't actually sparing yourself that. And you're subjecting the rest of us to Rollins/Balor! Those are two wildly disparate ability levels... ...and Balor is well below either. Did the crowd ever latch onto Bundy or Gang the way they did Braun, though?

I find your nightmarish vision of the future all too plausible.

That would require 24 women. I counted the women listed on WWE.com when trying to figure out how close they were to being able to do a Rumble this year without doing the memory lane schtick, and I think I came up with a number in the high twenties. So they could do it, but it would mean using pretty much the entire roster.

Did Cocaine actually have a co-director on that one?

Since we're sharing, I was raised Catholic myself, but became an atheist in my early teens when I realized how shaky the tangible evidence for this whole "God" thing is. As I age, though, I've come to have more appreciation for the core values of Christianity (as opposed to the repressive nonsense that's become attached to it in so many people's minds). I can't really call myself a Christian, though, because that word means you believe this one dude who lived a couple of thousand years ago was LITERALLY GOD, and I suspect that would sound crazy to me even if I weren't an atheist. Maybe I'm a Jesusist? At any rate, giving the Bible a good read-through is on my to-do list, though I expect I'll skip the "begats" section. The Quran and other major religions' holy texts too.

No worries. My follow-up post was just a semi-apology that I don't know the Bible well enough to keep the joke going.

Fair enough. I'll confess I was talking out of my ass for the sake of a joke - I haven't read much of the Bible beyond the Four Gospels. Heck, I can't remember for certain whether I've seen Ten Commandments either.