blitzkrieg

The great thing about establishing things that they do every week on the show is that it allows them to subvert things. "Oh hey it's the beginning of the show where we show everyone arriving, let's have Bronson and Braun crash it." I thought they might go with Rhea vs. Dom/Liv for the title but hanging Dom from the ceiling allows Rhea and Liv to have a regular match with all the (Latino) heat that Dom brings anyway. Corey is also going have a field day bringing back all his jail references. Sami and Ludwig had a really good match that did a lot to establish Ludwig while showing the heat of Sami. Ludwig shoving Sami into Samantha's chair when he went for the barricade moonsault was a great spot to go into the break and Tessitore sold it well on commentary. Troll Gunther is the best Gunther. Dragon Lee is going make so much money off action figure sales when they release one with his new gear. Liked the extra fire from Dragon Lee and think Carlito has kinda found his groove in matches now. Rey popping up was a nice surprise and Dragon Lee picking up the win keeps the LWO/JD business open. Kross in the digital exclusive interviews tried to do the Devil's Advocate stuff on Smackdown but it was pretty much ignored on the actual shows, so at least they're leaning into it on Raw. Will it ever actually succeed or go anywhere? Who knows but it gives him something to do. The crowd never really organically picked up on chanting "Butch" at Dunne, so it's smart of them to have Sheamus setup the crowd to chant it. Reed/Miz disintegrating into a crazy Reed/Strowman brawl was great. Loved the security guards getting heat by preventing the superplex spot and then Reed getting cowardly heel heat by running off when Strowman looked like he wanted to dive to the floor. Poor Miz. Drew's rebuttal promo was good but was hurt by the crowd doing the "What" chants during it. Did like that Drew delivered it very much like it was a direct message to Punk instead of a promo for the crowd. Like the slow build of Damage CTRL vs. Bianca and Jade. Iyo and Kairi do such a good job of getting the crowd into their matches which paired well with Unholy Union being such a great old-school heel tag team. Look forward to Alba and Isla eventually getting an angle they can really sink their teeth into. New Day and the Creeds tag match felt like a really good showcase for both teams. The Creeds seem to be still work shopping some stuff but with their athletic gifts I think they'll be great once they get the character stuff down path. Crowd was super into this and loved Tessitore losing his mind at both the ref being distracted last week and the ref missing Wood's hot tag this week. Woods wanting the tag but then losing focus and costing them the match was a great little seed for Woods. The power bomb setup for the Brutus Ball is interesting though I still find myself always having to look to see how Brutus lands. Thought the backstage promo with Priest was great. Losing the title really might be the best thing to happen to Priest. Liked the continuity of Rey coming to apologize to the New Day for last week, only for Xavier's insecurity about never holding a singles title to spring up again. Also the small details part of Rey saying that he had a match scheduled with Finn for next week but him scrapping it to face Xavier instead. To echo everyone else, the main event was really good. Bron is getting so good at working his spots into his character work and that shined with a dance partner that is so over with the crowd like Jey. Jey hitting the spear and the Uso Splash for a two count was so cruel to the crowd. I thought that there was no way that Jey walked out with the IC Title, so it was such a pleasant surprise when he picked up the win. Assuming that Jey drops the title back to Bron before Survivor Series but least Jey finally gets his single title reign. Minor note: Really great night of vignettes. Had no clue what the flaming logo vignette was about but Twitter seems to suggest that it's a return of The Viking Raiders. No clue what the Wyatt Sicks promo is leading to but I love how much work they put into them. The PFC one wasn't anything amazing but it helps to get over their vibe and keeps them in people's minds despite them not wrestling on the show. Lastly loved the Godzilla/King Kong promo for the "Last Monster Standing" match next week, I hope we get more like that in the future.

Andrade and LA Knight started out of the show well. Unsurprisingly the crowd started decidedly in favor of LA Knight and Andrade seemed to adjust to it well when he realized that he wasn't going get the normal reaction with the corner knees attempt. Andrade doing the moonsault to the floor from the turnbuckle over the post looked really amazing with how the WWE posts are elevated. Started to feel like Andrade was winning the crowd over Knight, even getting a "ref you suck" chant after his elbow and the ref possibly not having the most consistent count. LA might need to just drop the leap up superplex with it being kinda hit or miss for him but Andrade did a good job of thinking on the fly to lead into the finisher. Liked the Carmelo/Andrade brawl in the back and felt appropriately heated. Assume that Melo ties things up next week to set up a seventh match. The Cody/Roman segment was perfect. Roman and Cody are both money and love the new dynamic between the two. "You're in my way." *Cody moves out of his way* "You're in my way in life." I got chills. I imagine not everyone is feeling it but I'm interested where they're going with Vinci. At the very least I think that the crowd cared a whole lot more about Vinci's post-match attack on Crews than they would have cared about him picking up a win. Nice to see Tama get to talk but think he might need to workshop things a little bit more. Corey dropping the "Reseda Dream Team" when it was announced that DIY would team with Owens was cute. The women's tag match definitely felt like Tiffy and Nia were working on some tandem spots for down the line. Thought the overall match was good with some nice spots, believable tension between Naomi and Bayley, and a creative but not cleanest double pin at the end. Appreciate using the finish to set up a match people want to see instead of just going straight to a triple threat. Chelsea Green remains a national treasure with her 80's/90's dumpster match training segment. Tonight seemed to be heavily dedicated to re-establishing the Tongans and Fatu after last week. I assume that we're eventually going get a DIY/Street Profits/Togans triple threat match for the tag titles. I thought the six man tag never really hit that next gear but was enjoyable before the kinda weak no contest. Cody waiting so long to make the save seemed a little weird but closing the show as everyone went "Don't do it Kevin" was a great way to keep sowing the seeds from the Bash in Berlin program. After how loaded last week's episode was, it was nice to see them put together a really good show with a lot of the other talent on the brand. The Cody and Roman segment:

Also one of the arguments for Raw going three hours initially was that the audience from Raw didn't stick around for whatever got programmed afterwards.

Announced for Raw: CM Punk in attendance. Judgment Day vs. The New Day for the tag titles Dominik vs. Priest Natalya vs. Zoey Stark Bronson Reed vs. Braun Strowman Sheamus vs Pete Dunne Gotta get all the matches in that they can before the move to two hours.

We honestly don't even know what the WWE viewership really is because all we really have is Nielsen ratings which is far from an exact picture of things. That said "they're going lose audience by going to streaming" would be the same criticism when they they launched the WWE Network and when they did their deal with Peacock. It's been 10 years since they launched the WWE Network and three years since the move to Peacock in the US, I think they probably have a pretty good grasp on what amount of their audience is going be affected on a "couldn't access it if I wanted to" level.

According to Hulu Customer Service on Twitter, they're losing all WWE content on the 25th. If this is the case they might finally be able to get rid of the Level Up and Main Event delays on Peacock.

The return of unadvertised overrun to Smackdown! I appreciated that Cody and Solo essentially got to work a normal (cage) match without any additional hijinks going on, they have good chemistry together. That bump on Solo superplexing Cody back into the cage looked nasty. Cody just barely surviving Solo was a nice balance to him cleanly getting the pin off of him. Jacob being on the top of the cage when Roman came out was a creative way to keep them from interacting with Jacob (for some reason) climbing down outside of the cage. Michin and Piper was super quick but impactful in the time they had. Hopefully the three can get a bit more time on a less crowded episode. Randy being Kevin's partner seemed pretty obvious but I thought they did a good job with the swerve attempt. The actual tag match was good but I really hope that they can finally untangle Aussie Down Under from the RKO orbit. I assume that we at least have a couple upcoming weeks of Randy and Kevin not being happy with Cody. The Bayley/Naomi/Tiffany/Nia segment felt a bit flat. Hopefully the tag team match next week can add a bit of heat to things. Andrade and Hayes have another great match and I love how each match has built on the previous ones. The landing on the barricade Spanish Fly was rough but it worked into the match as Andrade injuring himself on a high risk maneuver allowed Carmelo to go on the offense. Fully expect Carmelo to cost Andrade his US Title match leading to one last match between the two but this series has done a lot to really give Carmelo and Andrade some actual momentum. The main event interview segment did a good job of establishing Roman's current mindset, how Cody and Roman feel about each other, and setting up the tag match for Bad Blood. I did like Solo's jawing from outside of the ring, "Oh you guys are friends now?" Random Notes: Did not expect the new Smackdown theme to be a Megan Thee Stallion song, definitely a different direction music wise. Laughed at Graves trying to get the name of the song out. Thought they did a really good job of shooting the cage match from outside of the cage. It took me most of the show to realize that the lower part of the S in the Smackdown logo is a D but oh well. And I will admit I had to do some Googling to figure out Cole's Steely Dan reference. Hopefully the tag division gets some shine next week but I suppose the Tongans were too busy getting killed this week.

I can't really see any reason that people that have Netflix and watch Raw currently live on a weekly basis are going stop doing that just because it's on Netflix instead of USA.

I don't think it's about making Netflix viewers into live wrestling viewers, it's making sure that live wrestling viewers are subscribed to Netflix. You have 52 weeks of content which combats churn and then you have 3 hours of live programming that they can sell ads during. (In addition to getting PLEs and the other shows in other markets than the US.)

What I find works is using Firefox and making sure to go to the website with the address as "http" instead of "https." Chrome will automatically change the url to https which then leads to problems with the Invision setup having http references.

Closest I believe is Trips being asked about it at the Summer Slam post-show:

https://www.twitter.com/avawwe_/status/1833281888129044522 Rascalz out for the NXT Tag Title match, Street Profits stepping in. Assume more details will end up coming out but looking forward to what Fraxiom and the Street Profits can do together.

It probably would be the time to do it, if they are going do it, but with how much Trips has said he isn't interested in big sets I don't know how much they would do.

All this talk has me wanting to go back and read the Marvel Transformers comics. By the time I discovered the Hama G.I. Joe comic the Transformers comic had ended and the short-lived G2 series didn't inspire me to head to the back issue bins. Also reminded me of the dangers of Humble Bundle bundles, I was bumming out that I didn't buy the last IDW Transformers bundle only to find out that I actually did buy it.

Pretty logical match to be set up after last week and Chelsea is probably the best first match opponent they could come up with for Giulia.

This is Ackerman's first solo written book, he co-wrote Waller vs. Wildstorm, but he's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. I did randomly throw it on my order list just because the write up of it sounded interesting to me. Acerkman is also giving out free stickers if you pre-order it/add it to your store's pull list.

They did not say his name, so he did not appear, but I still believe in Joe Hendry. Didn't expect Sami to be back so quickly which probably speaks to how little I know how stem cell therapy treatment works.

Bummer about Bronson, hoping that he gets well quickly. Just going throw it out there that I fully expect Joe Hendry to be his replacement.

Say her name and she appears, I believe in Giulia *clap clap* Honestly, if tonight is any indication, pairing the NXT PLE's with the city that is going host the Raw after them looks like it's a great idea. Way bigger crowd than the recent ones they didn't pair with a WWE PLE and also I felt the crowd was hotter than those crowds were. Found myself hoping that Fraxiom stay together long enough to make it to the main roster because they're just so good and smooth together. The main roster didn't get Wolf Dogs, at least let the main roster get Fraxiom. That all said I was surprised that Fraxiom won back the titles as I thought Ridge would eventually cheat to win. Speaking of hot crowds, I really didn't expect Chase U to get such a negative reaction. Great match and thought the turn by Ridge was well executed. No clue where it goes since it kinda came out of no where. Wes and Zach's match felt like a good platform for them to show off as single wrestlers but I feel like there's a better match in the future for them. The "Blockbuster DDT", as Vic called it, that Zach gave Wes was nasty. So was the decision to recover from the announce table breaking with a Meteora to the floor. With Zach having the X-Division title, I assume that we'll eventually get Zach/Wes for the X-Division title. Vic also was on fire all night but I loved him going "He got hit so hard he might think his name is Carter when he wakes up" during this match. The Women's North American title was probably the weakest match on the show but it wasn't bad. I think Wendy's current gimmick's mannerisms are great and the crowd reacted to them but I think she might have went to them a little bit too much. Also it seemed that the match was built around Wendy overpowering Kelani which I think didn't really work with the size difference. That said there's plenty of future contenders for Kelani and I think gimmick wise Tatum and Wendy getting to work against each other will be good for both of them to flesh out their characters. Oba Femi is such a star. I don't know how much Tony's ankle might have affected the match but they still put on a banger. I certainly wouldn't object to them running this back again. Roxanne does kinda keep going around and giving people their best match of their admittedly short careers but her and Jaida had a good match that also showed that Jaida is over with people outside of the CWC. Building the match around the ribs from the gauntlet match was a smart move and allowed Roxy to heel it up and cut off Jaida frequently. I'm not crazy about the Hipnotic as a finisher but her missing it on the outside got a huge reaction from the crowd and the Pop Rox on the barricade ended up being (unintentionally) nasty looking. Say her name and she appears! *clap clap* I believe in Giulia! Suppose the two questions are, "How long before Giulia wrestles her first match?" and "How long till Giulia and Roxanne wrestle?" I figure if she doesn't wrestle next week, since it sounds like they're going make the first Smackdown on USA week a thing, then she probably doesn't wrestle till the first episode on the CW. I do think we got Roxy/Giulia at Halloween Havoc since there probably won't be another PLE till at least December(Deadline.) The arena waving their hands side to side was such a great moment. Page serves as such a great foil to both Trick and Joe who were both incredibly over with the crowd. Thought the overall match was well executed and Trick never really was a distraction as the guest ref. When the ref shenanigans did kick in, Trick pleasing the crowd by stopping the Page 3 for a legit-ish reason, only to then to displease the crowd by having to count Page's victory was a nice touch. The post-match attack by Dunne came off a little flat but did at least build to their match on NXT on Tuesday. It's great to see NXT putting on shows of their level with just NXT talent, as this time last year they were heavily relying on main roster talent to pad things out.

On the post-show they did show Cathy Kelly interviewing Punk with him saying that he was going after whomever won the main event.

This isn't quite waking up to watch Pro and Mania but with my current sleep patterns it's pretty close.

Yes but they're getting quality programming now by poaching shows from modern-day CW.

Jonathan Greshman vs. Charlie Dempsey - Impact 8/22/24

Happy that the post-match of Dempsey/Gresham looks like they'll be running it back. Whether it's in TNA or NXT, I wouldn't mind the two wrestling under Heritage Cup rules. The main event was a bit trippy to watch with the feed constantly glitching.

"It took me two months but I finally got dinner reservations at Pure Fusion Collective."