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Davis seems to be really committed to signing with the Lakers, but if other teams can push that off until summer of 2020 it brings up the one possibility that no one really wants to consider: Lebron has a metric ton of mileage on his body and there is no guarantee he can go another 100+ games without a legitimate scary injury as while he appears to be an alien, if he is in fact human then something like that happening becomes more and more likely as time goes on. If he were to say suffer the same achilles tear that Kobe did and the Lakers haven't yet manage to acquire a second superstar before then it suddenly becomes a much less attractive destination. The NBA in particular moves fast, it looked very different 18 months back and will almost certainly look very different 18 months from now. Another team investing in Davis for that period is a risk, but I don't buy anything that far off being inevitable.

Ambrose on Raw was either being left high and dry by Seth or put basically zero effort into hiding getting into position for stuff and just waiting there, so either that was some next level work or he was very checked out.

As someone who doesn't watch NXT... Breeze did not make a really good impression on the main roster at all. He had a bit of an initial push with Dolph but he really didn't seem to be either particularly strong in the ring despite being given showcase matches, and his character bits and talking weren't really there beyond the entrance. Vince probably pulled the plug on his push too quickly, but he hadn't really been showing himself to be much more than a mid to low carder at that point. He's much better as a comedy guy and should probably stay there. Revival had some dreadful injury timing, but aside from a few highlights haven't shown themselves to be more than some solid hands. I would shift them over towards the SD side to give fresh match-ups to the teams over there, and perhaps with that focus can show themselves to be legit attractions, but they aren't really built to be the focus of a division and that is what Raw would require of them. Their ceiling seems to be the opponents to a top face team the crowd loves... so yeah let them work with New Day. The whole Raw tag division has been a disaster for the better part of a year now, but it's not like the Revival has been putting out great work during this time.

I know it is early, but that apron... whatever between Sasha and Nia will be a solid contender for worst apron spot of the year.

Hilariously I thought to myself that IDLES was solid enough to avoid the bottom of the list but had enough things you'd be relatively cool on to keep it from the top (plus the Daughters album is legit better), so I was going "I think it could maybe slide in around the 5 spot". I perhaps know your musical tendencies too well now. (Aside: In a bit of game theory thinking I almost just left Uniform in as it probably had a higher list ceiling, but could also have easily ended up in the bottom 3. Also I legit liked it less.) Thanks for doing this again, it's a fun little project to follow at the end of the year.

I know a few people who were impressed with >observer_, so I'd say that one is worth at least giving a try.

Assuming you haven't listened to it in the past two days, I'll take you up on this and switch to Idles: Joy as an Act of Resistance.

I feel rather comfortable at this point saying that Tamina simply doesn't have it. She's shown little if any progress over the years in any area, even in terms of things like speaking or presence. Over the past couple months she has ended up being out there while Nia has to talk for a bit and not only do they not have enough confidence in her to give her even a couple lines, she basically never reacts to anything that anyone says or does during these stretches. She just has no instincts for it. I'd say she's comfortably the worst person on the roster male or female, and I don't even know if there is a close second.

Fun fact: I stumbled upon my probable actual album of the year on December 30th. Next year I'm waiting until the actual cutoff before nominating something.

I mean... I would think that redemption would involve an actual admission of fault and taking steps to make amends and such. If I recall she did the standard "I hate steroids, but they happened to be in this dietary supplement I took" which... god I don't think any MMA fighter has ever intentionally taken PEDs as according to the people who failed the tests they were all accidental ingestions. Now I don't think this means to adopt a transphobic hate boner for her, personally I'm pretty neutral towards Cyborg, but simply being good at sports doesn't absolve someone for previous bad behavior.

So just to see if I am following this correctly, a very very tiny trace amount of the steroid he originally failed for 15 or so months back showed up in this December 9th test result. Also none of this substance popped up in any of his other recent tests, and I believe only popped up in one of his samples from last time (as opposed to all of them)? I can follow a long half-life drug still showing tiny trace amounts well over a year after the fact. It skipping several of the other tests he took both back then and more recently is... harder to digest.

Lashley does not use the slingblade, so I'll at least listen to arguments in favor of him over Balor. I'm mean... I'd give Vince a pass on that one as I'm not really convinced Balor gets it beyond having to crawl a bit more during his entrance.

Yano.

This is a tricky one for me as most of the albums I listened to this year were either older acts releasing rather middling albums, or guilty pleasure bands that I would not put up for any kind of even marginally critical analysis. That leaves one album that... well it is niche, but sure why not. Uniform - The Long Walk

Joe Doering/Zeus.

The ratings always turn around in January, as there is no more Monday Night Football. Of course those in WWE are aware of this.

Debuting him on the same show that Rachael Ostovich will next be fighting on is probably the most counterproductive one to do so on, so yes?

Looking forward to Iconoclasts, kinda bummed that there isn't a PS4 version of Papers, Please to be crossbuyable. Played through Soma a month or so back for Halloween, it was not my cup of tea but I could see others digging it. Steins:Gate is the kind of disaster I might not be able to resist experiencing.

NXT also benefits from rarely having to deal with the "...and then what?" stage of a talent's career. For their most successful wrestlers it generally goes build them up through a title reign, and then when the reign is over they basically wrap things up and move on to the main roster. They generally don't have to deal with moving someone back down the card and finding something else for them to do. This also frees up a good amount of space and time for the new people coming and and being built up. As backwards as this seems, if you go back a few years and leave like Balor, Owens and Joe in NXT it probably makes the show worse as you can't have those guys around and not feature them. They'll likely put in good work but now fewer good new people get a shot, or one of those three ends up missing more shows than one would think is wise and NXT gets sucked into the whole "they don't know how to use their roster" talk many other places have to deal with.

...the Becky Lynch turn was a reboot of the D Bry "yes" movement deal. D Bry now for likely several reasons has cooled off tremendously, it is likely that a majority of the crowd will go along with it. Now... the possibility of Daniel Bryan being refreshed and performing well as a heel may over time win the crowd over and get him cheered by most again is very real and I would not be surprised in the least if that happens at some point down the road.

My gut reaction is that they assume Dillishaw is gonna win and hence they want to take this chance to be able to push him as a two division champion.

I feel like the people who talk up Bayley having her own Nick show and such have like... not watched her cut a promo at any point over the past couple of years? She's been at best passable on the mic, maybe she was better in NXT but on the main roster this is one of her main weaknesses, not strengths. Cena she is not.

I feel like Joe's issue is the fact that he's gotten injured twice at iffy times. They weren't bad injuries, but I think WWE looks at them and his age and feel more comfortable with him in the gatekeeper role. They aren't even necessarily wrong for thinking this, I just think it is kinda unfortunate that he couldn't have made it to the main roster a few years earlier with a bit more tread left on his tires.

I think the worst thing that can happen in NXT for your main roster career aspirations is to get over via some long form storytelling or angle as opposed to some instantly identifiable character or gimmick. You looks at Bayley and American Alpha and too much of the audience had no idea who they were or what their deal was, but too much also knew about it for WWE to just restart from scratch or do the whole thing over again. It isn't a case of WWE being bad at writing, it is a legit tricky transition with no real obvious great options. If you want to look ahead, Gargano and Ciampa are facing a nightmare-level transition if/when they are called up. You compare this with Enzo & Cass or Elias where within a segment the crowd can easily grasp who they are and what they are about even if they have no idea what they've been doing the previous year, and it is just the better situation. There is also the deal that, regardless if the developmental fed is more... let's be polite and say critically acclaimed, the main roster shouldn't feel boxed in by what they did with a talent and yet because it is such a per project of one of the top people in WWE they aren't comfortable just ignoring what happens down there. No doubt some acts should be brought up as is, but I look back at OVW and think a lot of people who ended up being huge stars were very fortunate to get fresh starts once called up, and those fresh starts just don't seem to exist any more. If you look at the past several years and those people who were called up with either new gimmicks or no real NXT past, you get Roman, Braun, Rollins and Ambrose, maybe even Drew. Starting your story on the main roster as opposed to having it pick up midway just seems like it works better, so they should probably do that more and let NXT be its own separate universe.

Gamestop had a midnight release at 9PM for some reason, and that was right around when I got off work, so... FWIW it took me a legit 90ish minutes to install the game from the discs.