For Great Justice

The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special was gratuitous fan service but also really cute. My four year old loved it and demanded an immediate replay. Solid use of 40 minutes.

How can WWE do so much, so wrong, yet absolutely crush it with Roman like they are. That was an incredible segment.

Right, totally. I mean Moxley cutting a promo basically saying “I don’t have a lot of friends, but Darby and Will Hobbs are my friends” is a MASSIVE way to put a dude over. Compare this with being the second big man in a three person stable where Starks is going to do all of the talking. Like, I love The Barbarian, but being John Moxley’s Tugboat is a way more upwardly mobile spot than being The Barbarian

For as much as I’m here for Team Taz, I gotta wonder if they left some money on the table with babyface Hobbs. He really seems to have that physical charisma and size to look good walking tall on heels, and what babyface big guys are left? Dustin, Luchasaurus vs Cage, Archer, Lee, Butcher, Wardlow, Hager now Hobbs I dunno. A Cage and Hobbs team potentially RULES, but there was some breakout good guy equity on the table I think

On Kenny, the customized-weekly, obnoxious "read em off, Justin!" intro bit is so good that I can't believe no one's ever done that before (that I can think of). He can't really back up the character on the stick, but then again a lot of legit elite-level athletes with similar presentations and cocky physical charisma aren't good talkers. Mayweather is an example.

Are Butcher/Blade/Bunny the least jobbery looking JTTS's in modern history? Their presentation and look screams top talent, yet they never win. Like I can't think of a Virgil/Sal Sincere/Jerry Flynn/Roadblock type that was actually packaged/presented to this degree of quality. Glacier was a way bigger threat. #FreeBBB

Elsewhere I am all in on Fire and Ice 2020 and the return of Death Triangle. Those were two well done progressions. Mox’s promo was great. Not sure how I feel about the backstage attack as I figured they were going Pure Sports Build here leading to an Omega win in his environment. So a diversion from the course I expected but I’m curious where it goes.

Cody doing a shoulder block stalemate spot with Brian fucking Cage might be a new Peak Cody

So, Dark. I know Hirsch to Team Taz is the most overly fantasy booked thing on the board at this point. But this needs to happen right now. Have him hype her, run some sit down vignettes where she’s like Bull Hurley calmly talking about breaking arms and shit, and then let her loose on Dynamite. I need Hirsch/Deeb in particular ASAP.

So I was catching up on Impact some and...is it crazy to say that for the first time in the what feels like 300 years of this company, in 2020 Impact knows exactly what it is (and, importantly, isn’t)? I feel like they’ve really excelled during the pandemic. They don’t pretend to be a workrate company, or a big epic presentation company, or whatever. They know exactly what they are, which is a fun, throwback-feeling, Lucha Underground-like take on wrestling that isn’t meant to be taken terribly seriously, but is meant to entertain. It’s really cool to see. I got nothing but love for Impact these days.

Maybe Sydal is being brought in as a player-coach kind of thing with some training duties? I see value in him helping teach how the PWG style translates to TV. If just as an in ring guy I kinda got nothing

Side note, not gonna lie during the Sheamus/Drew bit I was hoping Broken Dreams was gonna be in the treasure chest.

Based on the build I presume Sheamus is next for Drew (only because WWE can’t successfully book a Sting/Luger dynamic, which is exactly what those two should be)

Raw is atrocious as a general rule, but credit where it's due both the tag titles and main were really good. Nice result in the main, too.

It’s depressing to think that a 2020 Old School Raw including Evolution would be akin to a 2003 Old School Raw including Hogan and Bundy. The latter gap covering massive changes in the nature and presentation of the promotion, and the former gap covering....no material changes at all, really.

Smackdown is Great Value New Day

Wishful thinking because it’s only been 40 years, but maybe, just maybe, the winds of change can start to blow regarding the absolutely asinine independent contractor designation. This feels like the potential start of something.

I can see several others following her lead. Paige, Andrade are two that come to mind. How the fuck is Velveteen Dream still employed anyway. What’s Xavier Woods’s legal situation with all his stuff? Dude is more or less the face of “wrestlers who Twitch”. I suspect WWE already owns (?) the UUDD/related IP?

One thing about NBA players, we know they can sell.

Really short sample size but I dunno man, do they? I’d put what WWE is doing now with McAfee or the initial Rousey stuff above anything AEW has done, but honestly I can only think of Tyson.

Somewhere else in the multiverse McAfee doesn’t make it as an NFL punter, pivots to pro wrestling after WVU and becomes one of the biggest stars in the industry. I’m so impressed with this guy - he’s a natural.

As a side note, this was my first Dynamite to listen to via headphones and wow the themes and music came in so much better. So maybe it’s their sound mixing that makes the music so soft on TV. ...or maybe it’s just my TV.

I unabashedly love WM30. At the time I thought we might be *this close* to a mini-boom period afterward, and then within 3 months....man it all came crashing down. Bryan’s first feud being Kane was reasonable in theory given the background, but dude don’t feud your white hit top babyface against Kane.

Shaq is not just any retired player. He’s one of the faces of the league and a key part of its programming. He’s all over TV. That’d be like calling Michael Strahan a retired football player. It can be true that 1) Shaq is a big deal that can legitimately help them and 2) this was a very strange way to start building to that, and not in the top 1,000 ways I’d think of to start a Shaq / Cody feud. And it wasn’t executed well.