Iron Moose

Y'all are right, I was out of line there. Sorry, @The Natural. It might be a general sense of joylessness at things outside the scope of the board, but I thought Gunther and Kaiser were both a bit off in the main last night. (Chelsea-Zoey too, but they're going for different things) I post-hoc rationalize this as them not having tagged with each other without Vinci in a long while, but it was a bit jarring when Graves, for example, told us to watch for a double-team and it just turned out to be Kaiser kicking someone in his corner while Gunther ... stood a few inches away, in the same corner. I guess the hallmark of the plausibly-post-Vince era is more benefit of the doubt to the talent.

It would be preferable for your contributions to include context or insight, rather than merely an image or a transcription. In this case, the humor of the exchange relies on knowing that mere seconds before it, Zayn and Owens were berating Imperium and wondering where Giovanni Vinci was. (Vinci was attacked backstage last week by Riddle, and his absense meant a less frequently-teaming combination of Imperium against Zayn and KO. )

worried that the sixth spot in the Women's MITB might end up going to whichever of Charlotte/Bianca loses on Smackdown.

I've been thinking about this on and off for a bit, and Rollins accepting would seem to undermine the actual, current NXT champ.

I too watched the Statlander episode of Hey EW.

So even at the time, I thought this match was something special and weird. It's worked almost entirely on strikes, Sasha barely flies and they both do a good job of controlling the pace. It had me worried someone was injured to the point of having to bypass a lot of their standard moveset.

... as opposed to their promo segment from two weeks ago, which was just porn...

It was alright. Lash has improved a great deal, Jackson didn't have too much to do but did it all well - she was good at making Feroz and Leon look good. I was more watching for Feroz and Leon, so... I don't think they're fully formed as characters yet, and a bit handicapped by robotically (or exaggeratedly carnival-y) dancing to the ring, as well as after the match. Nice finisher, though, with shades of KC2 (one does a basic grapple and the other flies into them), and their double-team and Leon's missile dropkick were both good. I think the high-water mark for Level Up has probably been Palmer/Ruca v Lash/Jackson.

I have a bad feeling about Hayter retaining.

I feel like there might be a framistan here... but yeah. There does seem to be a sense of escalation for the sake of escalation. (... is it me or would escalation make a decent name for an AEW youtube show?)

They definitely clashed in NXT

I went on to watch the Ruby and Willow episodes. I'm not sure I agree... I thought Ruby's was a lot more awkward and Willow came off as bewildered, but likable.

I didn't think she came off particularly light-hearted, but she did seem quick to anger. Maybe some of RJ's stuff was too weird?

They ran GUNTHER v for the first time at a house show this weekend. I think they've also been running Rhea v but I think it would be really surprising if she was the NOC match. With the renewed focus on the Prism Lock, my guess would be Nattie.

They're in their own little bubble. It would be really easy for Trish to interact with Rollins or comment on Nattie's return or something. Her character should have more to say than jibes at Roux.

Bracket for the NXT Women's Title is out: Very clever booking, I think -- the less-favored halves of the quaterfinals are feuding with each other (Fallon/Kiana, Gigi/Jacy), so we can get interference in either direction. In terms of scheduling, I'm guessing one from each side of the bracket today, the remaining quarterfinals on the 16th, semifinals on the 23rd. My thinking is that they'll want to avoid doing the Roxy and Tiffany matches on the same broadcast...

I started at... RSPW, I think, and then went to CRZ, and DEAN's posts on the-w were vivid and passionate and alive and so, so saturated with identity and joie de vivre. And then I was drawn here. It's basically been 22 years adjacent to DEAN's energy and I will miss him and can't and won't forget him.

So if anyone is interested in the order that people are in this, it goes (blank) (blank) cody (blank) rhea cody seth rhea cody seth rhea bianca seth owens bianca becky owens bianca becky theory bianca becky theory asuka zayn theory asuka THE FUTURE (text) (blank) bayley (blank) gunther bayley rey miz bayley rey miz sheamus mia miz lashley mia balor lashley mia uso lashley uso HAPPENS LIVE (text) and then there's a bunch of rapid flashes, in this order: Priest, Omos, Natalya, Dawkins, Riddle, Ford, Nakamura, Baszler, Zelina, Woods, Corbin, Lesnar, Reigns

... was that the best match yet for both Roxy and Zoey? I guess that's what happens when you put two people who are each carrying a lot of the division against each other. Some of Roxy's reversals looked better than I recall from other matches, she really threw herself into some of those corner uppercuts (even the one that missed, which a great skill to have). Zoey does this thing in her match structures where she sets up a climactic reversal through a few successful hits- I first noticed it in a Ruca match a few weeks ago where she threw Sol into the corner a few times in the same way that a late-match throw would eventually be countered into a Sol Snatcher, she did similar things here with Pop Roks and a headscissors.

Fun tag with Sol Ruca and Dani Palmer on this week's NXT Level Up -- Palmer has very strong fundamentals and the Snatcher looked great.

@DEAN, your recap posts make literally every show better. Thank you for being you.

this strikes me as a weak defense of a poorly-received episode. Why would it be true that WM the past weekend would justify "not having a lot of time to put a show together tonight"? Is there any indication of anything happening on or around WM that would cause a last-minute rewrite beyond capriciousness? The WWE does not lack the capacity to plan in advance. Your defense seems to simultaneously be that they are planning and executing a timeless storyline and too inept to make it good. This is silly revisionist history. It paid out with Bryan winning the big one, then languishing for months with Kane while the focus shifted to Shield/Evolution (good, but not for Bryan) and incoherent McMahon/Bella/Bella dramatics.

YES

it kind of looks like it has a hotdog in it? Disappointing.

Yeah. It feels like it's a ladder match to have a ladder match, which is ... capricious, at best. We've had Lyra and Tiff both gathering momentum and both were absent yesterday, and Kiana having a qualifier and possibly wrestling twice also feels slipshod. Maybe there's another covid outbreak? Possibilities: a. she's back ahead of the match, it's a title match b. she's back right before the match and in it c. she's back late in the match and wins, but slimy d. she's back immediately after the match and we get a two-belts unification thing e. she's back on a show after the match and we get a unification f. she's back on a show after the match and we get a match g. she's gone to the main roster a makes Michaels et al out to be heartless, vicious goons of match-makers. b is kind of the middle of the road. c is the first step to a heel turn, which could be interesting but makes the dynamics in the division really weird. d makes sense if she's speedrunning HBK-Razor 1993-1994. e and f are kind of flat; g strikes me as a really bad idea at this point.