Swift

Riyadh is about 1800 kms from Tehran, so roughly the same distance as Kyiv to Frankfurt. So in other words, not remotely close.

And yes, how does Punk respond to this? The only thing that could kinda make sense is if he just refuses to go to SA and declines the title match completely out of principle (with that being the shoot plan all along)

I guess I'm out of the loop on backstage shenanigans over the years. What is the relevance of those 3 guys related to Punk?

She was maybe out of position for the Starks one but last night was just a completely innocuous landing that unfortunately ended in an injury.

I'd seen a rumour before the show that they were gonna switch the title back to Gunther to build for his program with Goldberg. Apparently one of the SNME shows is in Atlanta. Not sure you need the title for that, unless they're actually thinking of putting the title on Goldberg for a final run.

Of course it's not a work. What if there had been no fan backlash at all to his release and then he randomly shows up in the main event to confused crickets? It was a fun show with a surprisingly very hot crowd. Thought the women's MITB was a bit dull tbh but the men's (while insanely overbooked) was a ton of fun.

I had recently watched his match with Janela, there were a couple of very scary bumps in there. One where he cracked his head open on the bare concrete outside the ring. Any word on if that match contributed to his death?

Just catching up on this thread... how the frick have there been 3 different "Duke"s mentioned on the last couple pages, all separate of each other?

Very good show up until the shitty main event. Travis Scott out there walking slowly to the ring and awkwardly doing his stuff killed any momentum the match had built up. And then Cody looks like a friggin idiot falling for Cena's goofy begging off face. Just really poorly thought out. Women's three way easily the match of both nights.

Enjoyed the main event, that was a lot of fun, but sadly the rest of it was just decent enough. Didn't feel like a WrestleMania tbh.

Petey Williams ate dirt on one of the run ins too.

I normally dislike the whole wrestler who's only got a good entrance thing (I don't get LA Knight's appeal, Ken Kennedy sucked) but Jey Uso feels like he's got a huge connection with the fan base beyond just that. I think they'd be crazy not to put the title on him at Mania. Would be one of the loudest pops in years. Someone said earlier that it doesn't make sense from a business perspective but how does it not? I assume he's one of the highest merch sellers in the company.

You beat me to it. I was 100% getting late 90s Michael Hayes vibes last night. Glad someone else picked up on it.

Enjoyable show overall, with only the forgettable Sami/Miz stuff bringing things down a bit. I knew Lyra Valkyria was from Dublin, but a bit of googling during her match led to the pleasantly surprising news that she's from five minutes down the road from where I grew up in Dublin. Happy for her success!

Your parents? Whatever they're into I guess.

Same. I got spectacle and a big show feel, and outside of The Rock's nothing appearance, I enjoyed what they served up. Not sure how much I'll be enjoying it when it's just the regular weekly show but we'll see, I'll give it a chance. I actually thought the 3 hours flew by here.

Hadn't thought of that. Will there be ad breaks built into it? Or just lots of recap videos?

I'm pretty much a very casual wrestling viewer these days. I've only been watching the WWE PPVs this year and some Raw highlights on Youtube. The move to Netflix has excited me (I no longer have to pay for Sportsnet) and I'm hesitantly telling myself I'll tune in each week but at the same time, the shows are 3 hours long so maybe not? However, I was very excited to see a lot of the back catalogue on there yesterday. I've gone back to the beginning and started watching the Wrestling Classic. I haven't watched older stuff in years, so this won't be news to any of you, but it's immediately noticeable how unpolished the whole thing is. Half the wrestlers are doughy fat guys (I miss that look in my wrestling; yeah there are guys like Bronson Reed and Otis, but they still look athletic in a way that Adrian Adonis just doesn't), McMahon talks over Alfred Hayes, Jack Tunney stumbles through his bit to the point where Okerlund just cuts him off, promo bits take place while the ring announcer is yammering on in the background, the camera misses a finish where Tito Santana has his foot on the rope during a pin, etc. I think I prefer the rough and tumble, unslick nature of it all.

I've been generally ok, at least compared to other accounts I'm seeing online. It was a shitty feed for the first two fights, then crashed but was perfect for the Taylor/Serrano fight but then crashed out again for the decision. So far perfect again (famous last words)

I'm surprised people think it's anything but a work. Fatu is screaming his head off and the ref doesn't even go to check on him.

Priest seemed off to me all night. There were a handful of little botches in their match tonight I noticed.

See this story makes sense, it's just a pity that we the fans are filling in the blanks for them. Still though, even with shoddy storytelling I'm actually very excited in something in WWE for the first time in many years. Did feel sorry for Rollins though. At the end, he was going off on Rock. It was probably more just to keep himself relevant in that moment, but is there any chance those two face off at WM?

Speaking of injuries, it looked like the ref got injured when Solo pulled him out of the ring. He was limping and wincing for the rest of the match.

I watched Bullet to the Head earlier this year and the most memorable thing about it was when I went to log it on Letterboxd, it turned out I had already watched it a few years earlier. Literally didn't remember a thing about it, and barely remember a thing about it now. Some stuff I've watched this week - Escape to Victory - Loved this as a kid. Nazi Max Von Sydow challenges well fed and paunchy POW Michael Caine to assemble a football team for a Nazis vs. POWs game. Pele, Ossie Ardiles, Bobby Moore and a bunch of others show up. It was and still is weird seeing actual footballers in a movie, particularly John Wark who has a remarkably ripped body in a shower scene. Stallone feels very miscast and seems to have been shoehorned in to have an American star. It's all very silly but holds up as a perfect weekend afternoon movie. Pele's slow motion overhead kick and Ardiles' flick are things of beauty. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - The original trilogy is my favourite film trilogy by far. I hate the 2008 one and was wishing they hadn't made this one, but I think I actually really like it? This was a second viewing. It doesn't have the inventiveness of Spielberg and looks too computer generated for my tastes but still kinda feels like it belongs in the same world as the earlier films. The ending is a major misstep for me. Without going into spoilers, it had a perfect ending set up that I would have adored, but they chicken out into an abrupt send them home happy kind of ending. Or probably leaving the door open for yet another movie. Napoleon - Looks gorgeous and there's a lot of effort put into the production design. That's kind of all I want sometime in my period films. The rest of the film just plays a bit like a greatest hits album. Phoenix irritated the hell out of me at first, just moping around like a stroppy teenager as he seems to play a lot recently, but his performance grew on me as I realised that Scott was kinda taking the piss out of the Corsican. Elisa, vida mia - Geraldine Chaplin plays a woman going back to visit her ill estranged father (Fernando Rey) after a decade while dealing with the breakdown of her relationship. Very elliptically told - some scenes are in the present, some appear to be from the book her novelist father is writing, some are flashbacks to her childhood where Chaplin also plays her mother and some are episodes in her recent life which appear fantastical. At one point, there's an out of context love scene between Chaplin and Rey and you're left wondering if that was a flashback, a fantasy, incest? So a messy film, and one that worked best for me when it was just straight scenes of father and daughter chatting and reconnecting.

The last movie I saw pre-Covid was the Jumanji film on New Years Eve with a bunch of us. And then the next was Tenet. The next after that was Shang Chi a year later but since then I think I've been to the cinema every month since, sometimes twice a month. I signed up for Cineplex's club membership last year so get a ticket every month. I love the theatre experience, though mostly I tend to go on weekday matinees when I have a day off work. The local second run theatre has started playing popular classics so that's fun. Watched Mary Poppins there last month.