Iron Moose

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.

I am once again a low voter on an NXT that seems to be well-received. Gargano's return fizzles thanks to the new mix of Rebel Heart. Dolin doesn't meaningfully get an entrance, and starts a match that we're primed to view as emotionally significant for her with a collar-and-elbow. She wins - and I think the story was more pointing towards either a cheap Jacy win with a post-match beatdown by Dolin or something inconclusive. Bron and Melo set up what should be a grand collision between two high-level stars with a bland mutual-appreciation chat. Roxanne's collapse after the main was in poor taste, and I find that she still struggles on executing some of her signature moves. As an artistic choice it's not for me and if it isn't, it's something she should really be working to improve. In particular - she seemed to go for her floatover russian leg sweep two or three times before hitting it, but the move doesn't seem worth the trouble; the Pop Rox on the floor looked messily half-countered, and the kick preceding it seemed to be significantly slower than most of her other strikes... I dig the ongoing Bate / Chase U stuff; I like Axiom's preoccupation with his eyes, I thought Dijak and D'Angelo both came off quite well. I'm not sold yet on Lyra, but I think they're setting up for her to lose by Stevie interference against Stratton before she gets into the title picture, and we'll get Meiko-Stratton (interim title? number one contender?). Unfortunate how Ivy seems to have been increasingly backgrounded these past months - Meiko pulled her to a really good match on one of the UK shows.

Wasn't this Azeez turning on Apollo?

Page's entrance looks so, so much better IRL: versus https://twitter.com/AEW/status/1632569791914336256 (The link could not be embedded because twitter.com does not allow embedding of that tweet.) I did some theatre a while ago, so I'll offer these critiques, with more to follow -- instead of COW BOY SHT, it should say HANG MAN PAGE, and it might look better with one horse moving across screens, rather than three in their own loops. But those are tiny nits to pick. This was great - I buy a guy with THIS entrance coming down to challenge the Bloodline. Not so much the previous ecstasy of gold ripoff.

There's a good and important insight here into a challenge that the NXT model imposes on the main roster -- when you run a good story for someone that the crowd buys into (Bayley's chase for the title, Jason Jordan's search for a tag team partner culminating in the super-wrestling weirdo that was Ready, Willing and Gable, or in this case, very face Dakota's shocking betrayal of Rhea and Tegan and descent into twitchiness), you're giving them a very uphill intro to the main roster by calling them up fully formed, where the majority of the crowd won't have seen the journey, only the destination. (IMO this is also hurting Gargano)

It's probably Omos as bait for a Hurt Business reunion?

accidental double post, plz ignore

Respectfully, the bolded part doesn't feel true for me. Bryan's arc involved a shockingly quick loss at Mania, a MITB cash-in after a grueling match, and a whole lot of verbal abuse, and way better in-ring performances than his position on the card warranted. Cody already enters the game on second or third, gamely does some family-based stories, seems to enjoy Stardust at the time, and hits a lower, but still respectable, ceiling. The properties of the respective ebbs to their arcs are very different, to the point where "I'm gonna take the gold and prove them wrong" on the part of Cody feels transparently like his function is to roll out a red carpet for more compelling AEW hires. It also doesn't help Cody that he comes off as Homelander. Sami can be a lot, but IMO he communicates a lot more fundamental human decency and authenticity than Cody.

More Ziggler! Followed by Miz! and an interminable series of victories over Gable!

it also just doesn't make sense, Dusty died long before Roman was a thing

Missed the beginning of the show, went back to watch this. You're right to say it's weird, I'd go farther and say it's a match layout that was uphill in terms of getting the crowd into it. We start out wondering about Kiana and Fallon working together, we get incredulity when Carter slaps Brooks' ass, we get a disconnect when Fallon doesn't work with Kiana in double-teams - the Fallon segments are worked face v face, the Kiana segments are more traditionally heel-face - so we get this weird zone of feeling iffy about KC2 double-teams on a team that we're maybe supposed to be rooting for the unification of? We also have the not-great dynamic of Brooks and Jensen being there, so the tiny good-guy champs are outnumbered, even if B&J didn't do much. And then we kind of feel bad about the actual team losing to the face-heel team when the heel heels and the face doesn't notice. Really mixed-up messaging, would have benefitted from another week of build or a promo segment so we'd know more clearly how Fallon would feel about Kiana cheating to win.

I don't see how the story beats justify an IC EC rather than a US EC. Theory has been annoying lots of people for months and getting questionable wins by interference; GUNTHER has - with the possible exception of Sheamus - cleanly and fairly beaten a long line of challengers. EC makes perfect sense for the former as a multi-man cage match with a built-in way to stack the deck in Theory's favor. (Also, didn't you say you were going to stop watching because of how it's more explicitly supporting Vince again?)

12 Raw, not counting Bliss, Belair, Carmella 17 Smackdown, not counting Naomi or Maxxine Dupri 30 NXT, not running down the list, and not counting Yulisa, Lyons or Ariana Grace My guesses for NXT appearances -- Fyre, Indi, Roxy, Sol, Stratton, Stark.

Thought the KC2 / Alba match was really well laid out. Alba was not happy and taking it out on KC2 with lots of strikes, throwing them into the steps - character notes that make sense given her recent frustrations. Ruca - who beat Alba last week but might not feel great about it - is in the unenviable position of being a surprise unwanted partner AND having to beat on two much smaller competitors. So what does she do? Counters, flips, the occasional shoulderblock, a press, and a gorgeous big splash. Nothing that has her moves expressing anything beyond friendly competition. It's not 'personal' for her, per se, and so she seems OK with the loss and worried about what's up with Alba. Solidly done.

Unsure if it goes here or the general thread one forum up, but the NXT Instagram has posted entrance clips from a recent house show with Bron / Lyra / Roxy v Waller / Toxic Attraction (The Toxic Attraction Effect) and the heel entrance has Waller gyrating to the point where I almost cracked up. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cns4eixhSRY/ (Previous NXT House Show shenanigans have included Bayley and Balor swapping entrances, doing the lift from Dirty Dancing, an entire team doing Nakamura's sprawl, and a Sami / Bayley v Breeze / Banks tag that I'd absolutely love to see. ) We also have Trick Williams pinning a referee. https://www.instagram.com/p/CnsyG6KBQox/