blitzkrieg Posted April 15 Posted April 15 I'm afraid of what will happen if we ever get a Dijack/McIntyre feud, I don't think the internet could handle it. 4
Cliff Hanger Posted April 15 Posted April 15 Announced for NXT tomorrow: Trick Williams v Carmelo Hayes, steel cage match Dijak v Noam Dar Thea Hail v Tatum Paxley Sol Ruca v Lola Vice Joaquin Wilde v Ridge Holland Malik Blade and Edris Enofe v Authors of Pain Also announced: Tony di Angelo returns from Boca after his loss to Ilja I have high hopes for those first 2 matches. 1
StuntmanCrowley Posted April 15 Posted April 15 12 hours ago, blitzkrieg said: I'm afraid of what will happen if we ever get a Dijack/McIntyre feud, I don't think the internet could handle it. Dijak deserves a real main roster run, him and McIntyre trading verbal jabs would be absolutely incredible. 3
hammerva Posted April 15 Posted April 15 So unfortunately that Rhea Ripley vs Liv Morgan match or "confrontation" tonight on RAW has extra meaning if the stories are true about her being injured 1
EVA Posted April 15 Posted April 15 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. 1
Greggulator Posted April 16 Posted April 16 The Sami entrance from him at the front of the building until the commercial break was one of the best 90 seconds in Raw history. Such a beautiful shot that really captured why we are wrestling fans — the utter joy that comes from watching someone like Sami. There’s at least one kid who saw that tonight and is now a lifelong rasslin’ fan. Hot damn that was just something else. 7
Cobra Commander Posted April 16 Posted April 16 Sami shakes hands with James Randi post match, goes to his wife, and there's the Chad Gable heel turn
DragonZombie Posted April 16 Posted April 16 The Raw tags were renamed, to the World Tag Team Championship. Black and gold belts. The Smackdown tags are the last of the colored straps belt for the men to be changed.
StuntmanCrowley Posted April 16 Posted April 16 Gable as a killer is going to be amazing and I can't wait. 2
Greggulator Posted April 16 Posted April 16 Everything from when Jey handed the baton off to the credits running with Chad wrecking Sami’s ankle in front of his wife was as perfect as professional wrestling gets. The aforementioned entrance to a banger of a match to Gable snapping. You really don’t get moments like that too often. 4
Dolfan in NYC Posted April 16 Author Posted April 16 17 minutes ago, Greggulator said: Everything from when Jey handed the baton off to the credits running with Chad wrecking Sami’s ankle in front of his wife was as perfect as professional wrestling gets. The aforementioned entrance to a banger of a match to Gable snapping. You really don’t get moments like that too often. While the trope of an outside attack will probably never die, I'd like to point out what an incredibly pleasant surprise it was for Jey to find Sami outside. I was 100% convinced he was going to walk out to a thumb to the throat and a Tama Tonga beatdown. And as Gregg put it, there's definitely a few boys and girls in the crowd that will love this thing forever. Hell, I fully expect 10-15 years from now hearing some new wrestler say how they were there when Sami came through the crowd. Triple H Forever! 7
Dolfan in NYC Posted April 16 Author Posted April 16 23 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said: Never again is what you swore... the time before... Also... this is going to be a thing. QR code during the tag match. Puzzles on the web. etc. The Twitterati think it's Alexa Bliss. But the symbol they showed was a indicating a duo as it was the symbol for noted binary planetoid Pluto & Charon. (Unless it's something like Alexa and Nikki Cross, but... eh.)
Greggulator Posted April 16 Posted April 16 1 minute ago, Dolfan in NYC said: While the trope of an outside attack will probably never die, I'd like to point out what an incredibly pleasant surprise it was for Jey to find Sami outside. I was 100% convinced he was going to walk out to a thumb to the throat and a Tama Tonga beatdown. And as Gregg put it, there's definitely a few boys and girls in the crowd that will love this thing forever. Hell, I fully expect 10-15 years from now hearing some new wrestler say how they were there when Sami came through the crowd. Triple H Forever! Yeah, I was bracing for Jey to get got, too! It was such an awesome touch for Jey to be the one to get us to Sami considering the importance they have both had to each others careers and to the Sami/Roman match in particular. It even had that little element of surprise that comes from these new staging techniques they are using and we don’t know how they’re going to be used yet. The last shot of the camera looking up at Chad Gable doing the ankle lock on the top rope was just some really good Film Making 101 and the usage of a subjective camera angle to make Gable look even stronger. 5
NikoBaltimore Posted April 16 Posted April 16 Preach! I unashamedly lost my mind when the song played. And I'll gladly echo all that Greggulator said because holy fuck all the Sami related stuff ruled so hard. 2
For Great Justice Posted April 16 Posted April 16 Yeah that Jey->Sami->Crowd tracking shot was unbelievable. The thing we’ll remember from this show for a long time. 3
Phantom Lord Posted April 16 Posted April 16 This was a good episode of RAW. Sad to see Rhea have to vacate the title. Hopefully it's nothing too serious and she's out for an extended time from it. The bit with Truth and Triple H was funny. I don't think Triple H expected to start cracking up which made it funnier when Truth called him Ciampa. The ensuing tag match was really good. The Creed Brother's are monsters. I'm bored of all things New Day so I'm glad they didn't win. DIY vs. Awesome Truth should be a fun match. I'm not sold on the new tag title belts, but they are an improvement over the old ones. At least they didn't bring back the copper ones that looked like giant penny's. Dominik vs. Andrade was all right. Saw the post match beat down coming a mile away. Ricochet with the save so that gives him something to do. Jey vs. Finn was a good match as well. I liked the post match beat down of Jey only for it to look like Damien didn't want them to do it. The shot of Jey going through the crowd in the mezzanine was fantastic. It's really amazing how experimental the WWE is getting with camera tracking shots. I loved how it led right to Sami and his epic walk through the crowd. Just fantastic. Speaking of fantastic, we got a hell of a match with Sami and Gable. Sami is just so good and so is Chad. I loved the ending and I suspected a heel turn from Chad was coming and the way they did it with Chad literally ripping Sami from his wife's arm's at ringside was amazing. Earlier in the night they had Chad training with The Creed Brothers. Could that be a stable in the future? I hope he doesn't ditch Otis. Otis dropping the comedy and going serious would be some fun stuff if he was the killer of that group. Overall a good episode. 2
Eivion Posted April 16 Posted April 16 Rhea having to vacate the belt sucked, but I did enjoy them tying it into Liv's attack from last week along with Liv's later backstage interview. Not sure they really go with a Liv heel turn, but I'm definitely curious to see how things shake out. I assume Rhea comes back no sooner than Summerslam since they had her vacate. Sheamus/Ivar was pretty solid as expected. Nice return for Sheamus. Dug the post match celebration with Pat and Cole. The presentation of the new tag titles to Awesome Truth was fun. You could tell having an idea of what was to come HHH still wasn't sure what words would eventually come out of Truth's mouth. He clearly had to hide his chuckling a couple of times. Was nice to see this lead into the DIY vs. New Day vs. Creeds. The match was good, and I'm pleased DIY came out on top. Ivy/Maxxine vs. Indi/Candace was surprisingly decent. Maxxine is slowly improving. Was nice to see Indi finally make her choice in wanting to be a horrible winner or kind hearted loser. Andrade/Dom was solid though it felt like it could have been stronger. Post match attack was expected, but it was nice to see Ricochet make the save. Was also nice to see him do it without his music. KC Squared vs. Chelsea/Piper was alright. Nia Jax's promo as solid and felt like a hint of Jade or someone new potentially being moved over to Raw. Cody's promo was alright. Dug that it led into Jey/Finn which was a pretty solid match. The post match beating leading to Jey's escape and catching up with Sami was neat. Loved Sami's entrance through building and hyping up the crowd the whole time. Sami/Gable was a damn good match. Gable's heel turn post match was unsurprising, but I loved how they did it as gave a false sense that it maybe wasn't going down. that final shot with Gable having Sami in the ankle lock was perfect. The matches were generally solid, but it was the triple threat tag and Sami/Gable that really stood out as something worthwhile here. Rhea dropping the belt sucks on many levels, but this also feels like a good chance for them to reset the division a bit. Rhea was almost too strong as champ, and they really never figured out how to raise many of the other women's profile due to Rhea's heel-face status messing things up. I think only Nia really got much out of it. Feels like now they have a shot to realign things. Still not sure if anyone else can really build themselves up to the next level without some sort of character change. Will be interesting to see. The entire sequence from Cody's promo to the end of the show was kind of amazing with the matches and segments bleeding into each other perfectly from story connectivity point. HHH has been doing a nice job of this, but the production changes in particular add so much more and make it all feel more alive. The episode was solid even before all of that, but that final hour carried it to something good. 3
HumanChessgame Posted April 16 Posted April 16 Have they specified what Rhea's injury is? If she worked hurt with Becky then that's even more impressive. As much as I like her and it sucks she has to drop it and miss a chunk of time, there really didn't have any new credible challengers set up. Everything going into the Sami/Gable match was fantastic, though when it ended I just thought the two of them had a better match in them. With more of an angle and an actual heel/face dynamic put into it I think they've got a really hot program on their hands.
caley Posted April 16 Posted April 16 53 minutes ago, HumanChessgame said: Have they specified what Rhea's injury is? If she worked hurt with Becky then that's even more impressive. As much as I like her and it sucks she has to drop it and miss a chunk of time, there really didn't have any new credible challengers set up. A quick Google (Was curious myself) says it's believe she injured her shoulder when Liv threw her into the wall last week...but with the state of wrestling nooz this could just be a guess, bizarre attempt at kayfabe or AI-generated so who even knows?! 3
Iron Moose Posted April 16 Posted April 16 4 hours ago, caley said: A quick Google (Was curious myself) says it's believe she injured her shoulder when Liv threw her into the wall last week...but with the state of wrestling nooz this could just be a guess, bizarre attempt at kayfabe or AI-generated so who even knows?! Last time she was concussed she was out of action for quite a while, and shortly after she won the Rumble she had an interview where she spoke about her knees being in really bad shape. Last week, during the Liv backstage attack, she had her other forearm in a brace of some sort. It could be a lot of things, I guess. Anyway, they also announced that next week there's a battle royale to name the next women's champion. Not sure who they go with, but given the impending draft I'm hoping NXT gets a few people in the mix.
EVA Posted April 16 Posted April 16 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… 1
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