EVA

Too busy having sex. Women love sex with Great O’Khan.

It’s even funnier when you find out it’s a cut-and-paste reuse of a short-lived Brian Meyers gimmick from Impact.

I mean, I’ve seen actual professional fighters get KO’d off body blows. I totally buy TK getting leveled by a sucker punch like that.

We know that Wrestlemania in London is something WWE has wanted for a little while now but couldn’t get it over the line because London wouldn’t pay for it. I wonder how money they’re kicking Khan’s way to make this a campaign talking point all the sudden.

I also thought it was wise to go with punch to the gut instead of punch in the face and TK Driver instead of EVP Trigger, which minimized how much selling he had to do besides playing dead.

I thought it was a good angle. The fact that it got an unexpectedly large amount of positive mainstream press suggests it was a good idea to run with it. I don’t think there’s much you can read into the future based on it, though. Some of these angles have been harbingers of doom for certain companies, but others have kickstarted a period of big business. It’s all about the follow-up. To that end, if Kayfabe TK really is a benevolent and beloved owner, then I better see EVERY babyface in the company standing up for him and trying to get a piece of the Elite next week in Winnipeg. In fact, I better even see a few heels coming out against the Elite. It can’t just be business as usual for most of the roster.

Jack punching Kenny in the gut to nuclear heat in Winnipeg, please.

I’ll say that I’m a lot more intrigued by Kenny’s appearance next week now.

Yeah, clearly blew his knee out when he went for the missed corner splash. Looked like it took all he had in him to get back in the ring so they could get to a finish.

I thought the gauntlet match was really fun once it got going (aka when Ospreay entered). Him vs. pretty much anybody seems compelling right now, and you can tell everybody was excited to have their moment against him.

Hobbs blowing out his knee was pretty depressing.

Rosa finding her way out of 1st gear again was definitely a pleasant surprise.

I mean, Jericho has always had a history of trying to do more than he’s physically capable of to get the match over. That’s what this felt like to me, rather than sandbagging. I’m talking at least 25 years of that. My opinion on any suplex is that if it looked like it hurt, it was good. Jericho going face first through the table was a GREAT suplex.

Blame Cody for teaching him how fun it is to lie.

Man, I loved the suplexes. Far from the most graceful, but he fearlessly ate shit on all of them. Honestly, I think the match falling a little flat actually says more about Hook’s lack of development than Jericho. Jericho took a bunch of gnarly bumps for him, let him kick out of literally all of his shit, and Hook still couldn’t really get the crowd behind him. Hook really hasn’t figured out how to progress beyond squash/meme wrestler yet. I don’t think that’s talked about enough in regards to how lame this story with Jericho had come across.

C’mon now, guys. I expect this place to be a lot more knowledgeable than to go down the social media hyperbole vortex regarding Jericho/Hook. It wasn’t even bad, let alone nearly as bad as the Jericho/Cole PPV match last year, and certainly nowhere close to the company’s worst match ever. Billy Gunn vs. Jay White wasn’t even a month ago, and that was way worse and more counterproductive than this match.

I felt like Swerve showed a champion’s poise at the end, when they whiffed the top rope Swerve Stomp, and he just played it off and went right to something else, rather than try to redo it.

It feels like it happened a week ago, but OC/Shibata vs. STP was also like a Top 3 all-time Zero Hour match.

Incredible show. So good that nobody is even gonna talk about Roddy/Kyle, which would’ve been easy MOTN on just about any other night of the year, but was like a distant third tonight. Even the Jericho match everyone is hating on was, against all odds, completely fine.

Agreed, baby faces should *only* ever make challenges for RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, LET’S DO THIS.

One key thing that’s probably getting overlooked with the way the weekly TV is being shot is that it’s a lot easier to do interesting and/or complex shot setups when the showrunner isn’t constantly rewriting the show up until showtime (and sometimes while the show is in progress). Past a certain threshold, all you can do is static setups and use a lot of editing (and other tricks) to cover up for the lack of dynamic shots because you just don’t have time. Knowing what you’re shooting with ample production time helps talented people use their talents!

I still think Gable over Gunther was the way to go at Mania, because Gable is an incredible underdog face, but I will accept Sami transitioning the belt to him as a heel as a substitute. BUT if Sami beats him and Gable ends up reset back to exactly where he was before Alpha Academy caught on…

Obviously that’s bad for Rhea, but it would be terrible for Raw moving forward. I don’t think Judgment Day works as a group without her as the dominant personality, and they’ve been the centerpiece of the program for a while now. She’s the fulcrum around which all those personalities spin in an interesting way.

I bet Jey is NOT looking forward to giving up or splitting the YEET merch royalties.

The “pretend Tama Tonga is good” era is gonna be a rough one. Imagine being so bad that you’re part of one of the hottest acts IN THE WORLD for *10 years*, and even after all of the actually good members of the group are gone, you still can’t get pushed higher than the 4th tier singles title. And bear in mind that this is happening in a promotion where seniority and hierarchy matter more than any other promotion in the world, where even the most nothing-happening guys will eventually get a big push just because it’s “their turn.” For 10 years, Gedo took a look at Tama and was like, “um, not yet, brother.”