Iron Moose

Not that we have any sense of. It started during the earliest days of Graves on commentary, when his orientation was more counter-crowd. Becky's inauthentic, Sasha betrays. It just kept going and going. There were some stories to that match, but ... they really could have been told better. Zelina eliminating Sasha from the Rumble seemed like a natural starting point for it all, but they threw in a lot more.

If the question starts with "did they change" and pertains to contemporary WWE, the answer is, far more often than not, "yes, and for the worse" (aside: if they make GUNTHER develop a taste for stereotypical German meats, that would also be for the wurst. )

Even then - Ronda overshadowing Asuka was tagged as 'peak white feminism' and I didn't have much to dispute it.

a feud that has no end in sight, and no sensical beginning in hindisght

Liv in particular lost weeks (months?) of her career to errant Bella kicks. In a world with a better Rumble planner, Liv taking out the Bellas after they toss Sarah Logan would have been a thing. Maybe a tag down the line. Rhea's backstories with Shayna and Charlotte didn't really seem to come up, Bianca felt like an afterthought as the match went on (and it's jarring that the EST wouldn't take exception to the BaddEST Woman On The Planet) ... and last year we had Rhea and Bianca much later in the match eliminating Charlotte -- it's a strain to watch them try and fail to eliminate her as they did this time. Anyone - characterwise, it probably works best for Rhea or Bianca - spearing Rousey during her walk down the ramp would have had a star-making moment. Having already turfed Charlotte to win the Rumble, I'm not sure Ronda would have enough incentive to choose her over Becky -- but Ronda-Becky means Bianca gets hung out to on the story that's been building since Summerslam. They can certainly do Ronda-Charlotte / Becky-Bianca, but it feels like they'll be swimming uphill against the crown in both of those situations. And it brings up the spectre of another inane tag skirmish and leaves Sasha and Rhea with nothing to do.

Sasha's attire was one of her best and it truly seemed like she was living her best life for a few minutes there. This promptly flew out the window with Tamina not having any Team BAD callbacks and having a lot of time to kill, along with many, many occasions where people would be interrupting each others' elimination attempts.

Liv seemed genuinely surprised, and the crowd seemed into it. I was hoping for Liv's crossbody to actually eliminate herself along with the Bellas - closing off that narrative thread but making fewer people look like chumps.

OK. My guesses for the final five are

in before lashley gets curbstomped ?

I was shocked at how believably Rhea sold the sucker punch. The gif is here: https://twitter.com/WWE/status/1480731241557209098?s=20

as I posted in the Discord -- With that said, almost everything else delivered. Very odd booking to have Mandy do so little and KLR do so much with so little grounding with the domestic audience. Some awful camerawork in the first match. Dolin worked like someone trying to make a big splash -- some great headscissors and she really threw herself into her strikes. Whoever did it -- I think Jayne -- mocking Shirai's rope-running was also a nice touch.

I am stern, and Canadian.

This is not a good-looking War Games match, if the brawl following the main event was any indication. Commendations to Dakota for the main event, though, she had some really brilliant technique (in particular, her blocking of suplexes by fully getting her leg around Raquel's, and feeding into the stretch muffler). The physics of Raquel going into the bottom turnbuckle were perplexing, though.

this perfectly sums up the experience of watching wwe these days

Rey, Dominik and Seth on the same team -- something tells me they won't to see eye-to-eye. Aliyah ... I mean, good for her, but will the crowd have any idea who she is? It feels like she's being set up to falter. Also unfortunate that Naomi, Toni and Doudrop aren't around.

Maybe it's the pandemic and the relentless passage of time, but I was discouraged to have Owens basically do the same kind of Ziggler promo he eviscerated a few years ago and Becky rehash the Planet's Champion. It makes me feel like 'fickle' is a word of particular significance to the writing team, and that the interviewers aren't particularly clever given that they can't coherently reply to it. I feel bad for Bianca. I still don't have a sense of who Liv is.

She's not Cesaro, but it feels a bit Cesaro Section-ish. She manages to get across that she enjoys what she does, and she is a lot of fun to watch be ragdolled. With that said, I haven't really understood what her post-Riott Squad look is supposed to tell us about who she is.

I wasn't paying too much attention to the show, but I didn't care for E coming out and the focus being heavily on Rollins at the end of the show. Had E feeling like an afterthought, which feels unsound given the relative novelty of his positioning.

All Elite Wrestling: where the ring doesn't collapse from regular use.

This is a really good, insightful post.

Both of these things can be true at the same time. To extend on what @NoFistsJustFlipssaid, I'll add that a rhythm of seeing hometown favorites lose, extinguishing their crowds, probably has a downstream effect of muting the enthusiasm of future crowds. Besides, it's not like the story of Ali and Mansoor desperately needed *this* loss, or set this loss up to matter more than any other.

For a company that likes putting smiles on faces, it sure was dippy to job out Ali. In terms of smiles, there is also a case for bothering to hype Ripley/Jax before running it.

There's an interesting nuance to this, which is 'change in show presentation' versus 'lack of audience'. I'm not sure about the latter, but for the former - Drew and Shayna come to mind, as well as the Mandy / Otis angle's derailment. This is a good take. If anyone wants a grim data science side project, graph the outbreaks two weeks after a WWE show rolls through a town.

the phrasing here is unclear. Do you mean that "hopefully they aren't stupid and therefore have her pin RIpley" or "hopefully they aren't stupid and therefore don't have her pin Ripley"? TBF, wasn’t he was given promo time after that insult and got flustered after he said he was the best inside the three sides of the ring? Aaaaie, that was a painful slip to watch. Three ropes, four corners...