EVA

I realize they’ll have to swallow some pride after dubbing him a pillar, but it is beyond past time to cut bait on Sammy. It would be in everybody’s best interests for him to go somewhere else.

The most only about ball man who was ever only about ball.

Loving the implication that Arch is such a hardcore gamer that, if he can play as himself in the college football video game, he will care less about playing actual football. Hilarious that someone in the Manning camp thought this would be a good thing to leak to the press. Just say you wanted more money!

Much to speak of tonight, but first we must acknowledge that a not-insignificant number of people in the audience in Greensboro apparently thought Will Ospreay is Australian and/or Ospreay and Kyle Fletcher are the same person (hopefully the post-match clarified the latter).

MEAT MADNESS

The 4 highest ranked champs get the top 4 seeds, regardless of where they’re ranked. (So, if the Big 12 champ is ranked 7th but they’re the third highest champs, they’re seeded at 3 regardless of who’s in front of them.) The fifth highest champ is guaranteed a spot in the field but not a seed, so they could be slotted anywhere from 5-12.

Nic Pizzolatto sulking about season 4 on Instagram is giving me life. Just constant passive-aggressive likes and shares, like a wrestler who’s unhappy with their push.

They didn’t tie *everything* up…

If there’s anything to be learned from Kelly leaving UCLA and Elliott leaving Georgia State, it’s that you should definitely FIRE your fucking coach when you have the chance. Guys are not going to coach out obvious lame duck years anymore. Elliott will now get paid comparable money to be an SEC position coach and not have the stink of “fired G5 coach” next time he wants to go out for a HC job. Hafley leaving BC was the same deal, too, really.

To me, one of the great disappointments of the WWE Network is that they never even really tried with scripted programming, beyond a couple of lame cartoons and the short-lived E&C show (which people loved). Just larded it up with cheap reality slop.

The arc of Rock’s Hollywood career is so interesting. You can see that initial rush to make him the next big action star, which mostly flops because the low-to-mid-budget action movie was already kinda dead by the early 2000’s. But then he has a surprise hit with THE GAME PLAN, and he immediately pivots to mostly making family films, with just a couple of not-exactly-straight-to-video action movies sprinkled in to keep his tough guy credentials active. Then FAST FIVE hits, and within a couple years, he’s parlayed it into starring in every other effects-heavy tent pole in theaters, amassing astronomical wealth while simultaneously losing everything that made him interesting as an actor.

The secret to Rock’s Hollywood success over the past decade was using his pro wrestling powers of self-promotion to somehow convince people that the only good Fast & Furious movie was good because of him. The “franchise viagra” gimmick was cringe but absolutely worked. Convinced a lot of studios to throw money behind him, to varying degrees of success.

I don’t know that there’s ever been any evidence that HHH is that clever. His two most successful political gambits were “drive for the big stars” and “fuck the boss’s daughter.” Neither are terribly cerebral moves, despite the nickname. He was never playing chess.

Show ruled, of course.

Surely a Jimmy Jacobs creative contribution.

Yeah, as the weekend has progressed, it definitely seems like they’re astroturfing a Yes Movement gimmick for the Code Man.

This BCC vs. CMLL angle is the epitome of “ give them what they didn’t know they wanted.”

Hold up. Granted, I wasn’t paying SUPER close attention that Miro/CJ angle, but I’m pretty sure the point wasn’t that she was fucking all those guys.

Flashback?

Never seen a promotion work as diligently to cool off their product as WWE has over the past year. I mean, plenty of other promotions have done it quicker and more spectacularly, but no one has matched WWE’s steadfast commitment to not giving their red-hot fans what they want circa Elimination Chamber 2023 to Now. They haven’t actually achieved it yet, but I have full faith in their ability to keep their nose to the grindstone and get the job done, eventually.

This does beg us to ask the question, exactly what were they supposed to get excited about? I didn’t make it home for the women’s match, but the men’s rumble was a brutal slog. The flow of the Rumble has always been built on entrance pops, new guys getting their shine, elimination teases, rare/odd face-offs, and, yes finally, dudes getting yeeted* over the top. Probably some other things I’m forgetting, but generally that’s what the crowd responds to. Well, most modern WWE theme music sucks and you can barely tell one from the next, so nobody pops for entrances. The intervals between entrances are so short, especially when they speed it up in the middle, so guys get very little time to shine. (Punk was in the ring for what felt like 30 seconds before he was on his ass, getting worked over, in his big return to a WWE ring. The crowd could barely get a decent CM Punk chant going.) And most of the time, if guys aren’t involved in a scripted shine/elimination moment, nobody is really doing anything of dramatic interest. Which really becomes a problem when the match goes long stretches without any eliminations, as last night’s match did. *Like Jey Uso was in the match for almost an hour, and I couldn’t tell you a single thing he did between the opening face-off with Jimmy and his elimination sequence. The guy’s whole thing is yeeting people AND YOU DIDN’T BOOK HIM TO YEET A BUNCH OF PEOPLE? The crowd was clearly ready to chant YEET all night, and instead you had him take a long nap in a corner most of the match. What are we even doing here? So I was not the least bit surprised that the crowd was dead.

Somebody could write a book about how Vince’s own body dysmorphia has influenced generations of young men.

Bron getting Brock’s run is interesting to think about. Would suggest a Brock/Judgment Day program heading into Mania season. Delusional Dom crowing about eliminating Lesnar would’ve been amusing. Speaking of JD—obviously fuck Vince forever, but part of my brain can’t help but wonder how he would’ve responded to Priest’s complete lack of star response last night. Crowd was giving big Just A Guy energy.

Big mad that TK outbid them for Okada and Ospreay.

They had 48 hours to either cancel this press conference or prep HHH on how to handle these inevitable questions. The fact that they evidently did neither might suggest to me that key players at TKO expected and wanted HHH to embarrass himself up there.