Go2Sleep

The biggest problem is "cloud nine head over heels in love" Dolph is vomit-inducingly bad. I do admire Rusev's work, though. He's the name-actor who realizes he's in a shitty production and commits to hamming it up the entire way.

Worth it for the "Gay Community??!!" line. I wonder when they changed their philosophy on "performer" and "performing," since that seems to be one of their big things the last couple of years.

I was thinking about this after Titus dropped the "2 degrees" line on him. People confuse bad public speaking skills with being stupid, and this has led to the downfall of many an announcer trying to bully guest commentator Titus O'Neill. He might stumble over his words, but his content will leave you unable to even make fun of that. New Day/Lucha Dragons was an underrated match overshadowed by the aforementioned commentary. New Day has consistently been a bright spot on WWE TV since Mania. I loved the Brock segment if for no other reason than I always wondered why wrestlers would bring axe handles out as weapons with out the axe blade attached. Poor Jamie's gonna be in a full-body cast by Battleground. The Cena/Cesaro match was another great one in a vacuum. I preferred it to last week's match, but I don't know how much more epic-y Owens/Cena 3 can get to put Owens over. Ultimately, I guess it's silly to worry about that, since in 3 years, we're just gonna look back on this as an awesome match with no regard for how it fit in the context of another angle. That bump Cena took into the barricade was nasty.

Admittedly, my only two memories of JBL's original run without re-watching anything are him harping on Lashley's "elevated enzymes" and relentlessly shitting on MVP's debut, but maybe those are outliers of his overall performance? There were definitely times when it seemed like he was more interested in getting himself over than the people in the ring, or at least he was unaware of how he was slipping into "promo" mode a bit too much in the booth.

I remember him always being pretty antagonistic and putting a lot of attention on himself in the booth. But even if he dials it down, what does he add to what Cole and Saxton did? 3-man booths tend to be pretty bad in general, but there was absolutely nothing that made me think "You know what would make this better? JBL." His only appeal the last few years has been occasionally making some obscure historical references, and Cole and Saxton did just fine in that department without him. Even if he restrained himself from trying to one-up those two (which might be a Vince thing), he's just cluttering the booth at best, splitting material that 2 guys can handle 3 ways.

I think Corbin or a re-packaged Solomon Crowe are the best bets to move up.

Even if you want to put all of JBL's negatives on Vince, there's still nothing of value he could've added from the booth here. Cole and Saxton put over both the faces and heels and covered all the history. He's completely unnecessary.

I have to agree this was a fun show. Looked like HHH had his hands all over it since it resembled NXT a lot more than Raw. The minimalist aesthetics really let the wrestlers stand out, and the commentary proved how much of a hack JBL really is (although I've been saying he's as bad as Lawler for a couple years now). Just a nice, simple show that didn't try to do too much. I was impressed with Jericho, easily the best he's looked in about 3 years. This match might have been the best on the show. I loved Cole name-dropping FMW, Dragon Gate, and differentiating the Walls of Jericho and the Lion Tamer. Divas match was just a divas match. Was hoping someone taught Nikki how to do a Tiger Driver to complement her running elbow. That would've probably gotten a good pop. Brock/Kofi was exactly what it needed to be. Loved all the no-selling by Brock and Kofi can sure take a bump. Balor/Owens was fun, but I think their NXT TV match was a little better. That Green Bay Plunge that Owens did caught me off guard. They did a nice job mixing up their usual spots. The tag was a terrible choice for the main event and went on way too long, but whatever.

I think "anyone active" is the number one answer, but for people that have been retired for a while I'd say Kobashi, Booker T, Mick Foley, and Daniel Bryan (if he's actually done) should they go in the next few years. I've pretty much seen Booker's whole career, and his rise in status coincided pretty nicely with my rise in fandom. I feel like I've seen Kobashi's whole career too, even though it was in post-2005 downloaded form. Plus he got me into puro. Similar deal with Bryan and indies, plus my biggest in-person markout moment at WM 30. Kobashi, Bryan, and Foley also have the whole "they died for my entertainment" guilt thing going on that hit me pretty hard with Misawa. Of course if they make it to old age (60+), that softens the blow. Also the Undertaker actually dying will be fairly surreal, I think.

The opening and closing segments were ridiculous. I was trying to x4 them and stop at what looked to be a logical point of interruption, but then nothing would happen and I'd have to start over. I couldn't imagine sitting through that live. That 8-man was pretty underrated. Titus had a nice hot tag sequence and Kofi was selling it like death. Cena/Cesaro was really good in a vacuum, but I think the non-stop attempted epics with midcarders is devaluing Owens. You can only get so epic-y, and it doesn't make Owens look as special when he's having similarly competitive matches with Cena as guys like Stardust and Cesaro are. The key to the "movesy ace" being successful is establishing rank. You don't need to bring the big guns out in every match. Lower ranked guys should succumb to simple strikes and first-line finishers and shouldn't be landing a ton of offense. A strong sense of status and knowing how to give guys a rub while still protecting yourself so that you can give a rub is the difference between being Misawa and being Kurt Angle.

A "spooky Bray Wyatt appearance" finish is always worth -2* though.

I actually like the Hype Bros (having a real team name helps). It's way better than Mojo as a singles guy, and gives him a decent shot of rehabbing his image by pairing him with an established fan-favorite who can carry a lot of the ring-work. He definitely needs to ditch that hammer time thing until he goes heel, though. That shit's gonna make the crowd turn on him in a hurry.

Lost in Owens' tremendous commentary experience, I think his best asshole moment was in his promo with Itami. Itami said something really lost-in-translation like "Kevin Owen... I mean ke-VIN Owen" and Owens just did the douchiest "white guy mocking someone speaking english as a second language" smirk/head-shake combo ever (which is ironic given his language status). I felt so bad fo Hideo right there.

If there's one thing Owens has learned from HHH, it's how to absolutely kill it as a guest announcer. Finn and Rhyno actually had a nice little match there too, but I was cracking up the whole time thanks to Owens. I'm not sure who's been abused worse by Owens now, Rich Brennan or Sami Zayn. Also the Finn Balor video package was legitimately heart-warming. The pics with Albert were goofy and adorable, especially that clip with them on their bikes. And I've never felt a bigger personal connection to any wrestler than I did when Finn was talking about having wrestling tapes going in the VCR while building lego sets. If Finn and I were the same age and met each other when we were 9, we would've been BFFs for sure.

Instead of bitching about Kane still being a featured guy even though the "plan B" pep talk was the perfect setup for Rollins to change his goon-squad, I will just point out how much I liked HHH/Steph actually watching the show and talking about an un-related angle (Cena/Owens I think) backstage during one of their segments. I always wondered why authority figures aren't watching their product at all times since they seem to need to make on-the-fly changes a lot, so good to see a touch of realism here.

I've enjoyed Joe in NXT, but I didn't set my expectations real high. It's not 2005 and you can see the miles on his body are catching up to him, but he's been solid on the mic and showing a lot of effort in the ring even if the cardio isn't there anymore. The first few minutes of the Owens match was really good, but it looked like he was totally blown up by the time the show-ending brawl came around. If he can get some conditioning back, I think he could be a really good as a featured guy.

I just don't think they should do non-title matches with the champion at all. If it's a singles match, title's on the line. If you want to showcase the champ or (ugh) have him drop a fall, do it in a tag match. The main reason the IC title has been such a joke for years is that the champ is rarely above the challengers. It's just a pool of 6 or so guys where they all trade wins at an equal rate, but one of them has the title because someone has to. The art of establishing contenders through non-title feuds has been completely lost.

Oh I can't believe I forgot this one, it's gotta be number two behind the heel authority figure... Fucking non-title matches. Especially since the champ loses 90% of the time. Could you imagine how ridiculous that would look in UFC? Imagine Anderson Silva losing a non-title match Chael Sonnen. It's like the laziest way to build a contender ever.

The heel authority figure has been tired for over a decade, yet it still persists. I feel like no one in wrestling paid attention to the original two heel authority figure angles (Bischoff in WCW, Vince in WWF). Vince was getting shown up by Austin (or Rocky/Taker/DX in his absence) about 75% of the time. Vince had to scheme like crazy to get one over on Austin and it was always a big deal when he did, but usually Austin would get back to beating his ass the next week. Any physical confrontation never ended well for Vince, or whoever Vince's chosen one was at the time. This angle worked largely because of the charisma of the two main characters, but also in some part due to the strong face-oriented booking that's more conducive to satisfying fictional storytelling. Meanwhile, Bischoff and his cronies were the ones doing the beatdowns every week while the faces looked like dopes and had go through hoops to get any sort of payback. Bischoff himself never got shown up in any significant fashion in WCW. I'll let you guess which one of those angles led to the company making millions with record ratings and ppv buys going into the new century, and and which started sending the company into millions of dollars of debt before fading out of business with a whimper. Anyway, while we're at it, throw out heel announcers too. There hasn't been a decent one since Ventura, and they always drag commentary down. Finisher kickouts jumped the shark when Shawn kicked out of the tombstone at WM 25 (although it's been a thing since the tail end of the attitude era). Whatever happened to the art of finding creative ways to AVOID your opponents finisher? Every Raw match needing a commercial break so we can have multiple uninterrupted 15-minute promos, resulting in the "[wrestler] is rolling" spot that's become pretty trite.

I don't doubt that, but they're like 1998-NWO stale right now.

This is cool except it involves the Authority being around for another year.

I think this is the "Authority effect." Rollins has had lots of good singles matches over the past year and the way he plays his character is spot-on, but the way he's been booked post-Mania has been pretty uninspiring. The Authority has been around for 2 years straight, though, and have been boring since after Mania 30. Rollins leading his own group with J/J booked a little stronger and neutral authority figure would have been way better for the "cowardly heel" angle. Standing in the background of segments designed to put HHH and Steph over and the awkward "feud" with Kane that seemingly has no payoff have made him pretty dull. Also surprised that there isn't more talk about the bizarre choice of Sheamus winning MITB. That could very well be more shocking than Swagger. I have absolutely no idea what they do with Sheamus in or around the main event scene.

Yeah, Blue Pants is a perfect jobber. She's like a female Scotty 2 Hotty, except her disproportionate pop for her card position is for her entrance instead of the worm.

Even though it was a throwaway show without too much significant development, I thought there was a lot of enjoyable content. Owens/Neville was a solid match, not as good as their NXT match, but still a good showcase for both guys. Cena giving all his "media savvy" generic answers and keeping his composure in the face of annoying repeated questions was a good touch for his character. R-Truth interrupting the MITB dueling promos made the entire segment worthwhile. The New Day continues to be great. Everything with J/J and Rollins was great (save for Rollins taking the pin). Noble had a great fired up promo that was like a poor man's version of the time Ric Flair stood up to HHH. Rollins was a perfect douche that really made you feel sorry for J/J without making himself look funny or cool. The match was worked very smartly with J/J building sympathy and hope spots with simple moves while Rollins mostly dominated with his superior athleticism alone. Rollins actually losing is a pretty bad call that helps no one because it's not like Mercury is gonna go on to anything else. All 3 guys did great with what was written for them, though. I'm also pleasantly surprised Ambrose hasn't looked like a total chump for two straight weeks.

"Our Independence Day" In fact, if Kofi doesn't do a parody of the President Whitmore speech in preparation for his match with Brock, I'll be somewhat disappointed now.