Firebreaker Chip

There was a really noticeable lack of dramatic tension after H turned on Angle, because nobody at all looked at that scene and thought that Shane wasn't getting pedigreed anyway Just bemused silence as everyone in the crowd tried to figure out if anything interesting at all could happen as a result of it

The five man booth was predictably shambolic, with Byron mandated to be all pissily partisan for Smackdown but just getting relentlessly clowned by everyone else for it and YBT barely present. I thought within the constraints of that Graves was exceptional, especially during the Lesnar-Styles match. Just consistently punchy, relevant, never bogged-down in too much WWE Automaton speak. "The house that AJ Styles built is merely a zoning infraction in Suplex City" felt like it might have been a Heyman donation. It's nice to get an overdue long Lesnar match where he actually shows how good he is at selling. Always been a big fan of his gutting-it-out one-legged hopping F5. Bar-Usos was rock solid, obviously wasn't intended to steal the show or even be the best regular tag on the card but both teams can do this stuff in their sleep. I popped for the Uso tope-tag. The main did a great job of exploiting the sheer amount of main event star-power and fresh matchups in the ring in the first ten minutes, but the most interesting Smackdown guys were eliminated first, and the story they were ultimately working to was pretty flat. The Zayn/Owens run-in felt irrelevant. His absurdly easy running off of them aside, it felt like Shane was actually more appropriately booked to be a non-wrestler with more guts than brains in this one, but it doesn't mean I particularly want to see a finish with him as the only one left while the other team squabble over pinning his corpse. There will no doubt be many ongoing overwrought storyline repercussions for Smackdown losing 4-3 in a series of matches that have no actual material impact on anything whatsoever at this, The One Time Of The Year When Raw and Smackdown Co-

God, imagine the pop if Jericho had actually been there and that fucking jacket had lit up when the lights were down

I thought the crowd was pretty great. Laughed my ass off at them chanting "you suck" at Kurt's entrance even with the Shield theme playing

The first match I had in universe was as Neville vs Joe, had Joe kicking out of the Red Arrow and the superplex, escaping the rings of Saturn, nearly tapping neville with the powerbomb Boston crab and a crossface, getting several 2.9s and then getting pinned off a sunset flip midway through attempting a second powerbomb on a 0 health near-comatose Neville , Neville all rolling out of the ring laughing at him as he shouts at the ref ****1/2, absolutely banging, a joy to play, made me wish I hadn't switched to PC so I could've ps4 shared it Extremely surprised to report that I've had very few problems on PC, a couple of interface/sound issues and some very short frame rate judders during an 8 man tag aside Happy with the first episode of raw universe gave me; I think I might just not even attempt career mode as it seems to be designed to make players as unhappy as possible

Sucks that the carry system seems impossibly punishing at the moment, was v impressed to see how they'd linked it with diving reversals so you can eg catch someone doing a diving hurracanrana and use the powerbomb carry position to lower them into the styles clash. Hopefully they can tweak it so you can still get reversed early on but be able to ragdoll a worn down opponent later on

I basically quit career mode last year because when I got to the main roster they put me in a tag team with him. Hopefully he doesn't hold a grudge.

Like the man said: Vader Helmet

The official 2k forum now has a thread where they want people to provide detailed descriptions of the bugs they've seen in early access videos from youtube cretins This... doesn't bode well for this game being in a state that warrants commercial release this year imo Prevalent bugs include dudes running into the ropes/corner infinitely, refs refusing to count at all after a certain amount of time has elapsed in a tag match, and the fact that on close inspection Jojo's lips don't move when she speaks, as if she were not a professional ring announcer but the most attractive Dark Souls npc ever Probably going to preorder this

Do people kick out of Juice's Unprettier much? He's obviously still climbing the ladder but it seems he'll be able to get a lot of mileage out of having a deadly but hard-to-hit finisher with lots of dramatic late-match struggles over the underhook etc Also, is Juice the most sympathetic white man with dreads ever at this point?

It was a good listen but Jericho is a bit tone deaf on the issue. It's understandable that he has complex emotions about it but it's not weird that most other people don't really want to talk about Benoit or his wrestling career very much He seems inappropriately fixated on the damage this does to his own legacy in a way that seems revealing, a bit like how he appears to be distastefully incapable of talking about when he accidentally potatoed Shaun's wife without also mentioning how beneficial it turned out to be for his career

Thanks. Time to future endeavour Okada Who Only Does STOs and Permanently Tired Chris Jericho

How do you actually delete edits? I've unsubscribed from a bunch of in-retrospect-terrible buyer's remorse ones from the first few days of sale but they're all still there The lack of any real-world edits has created a bit of a weird economy where none of the new edit makers have any benchmark of what the logic should be like or how many edit points inadvertently turns your Taguchi into Brock Lesnar

You're really doing the Lord's work here

On a related note to Jericho/Piper, I like to occasionally ponder that John Cena is older than Arn Arnderson was when he wrestled his last match, by nearly two years at this point Syncing up the Austin commentaries with the actual match videos is definitely doing the Lord's work, thumbs up

Not sure what was going on during the Roode promo, but definitely coming round to the idea that the Full Sail crowd needs to be cavalry charged at this point Also is it me or has the audio mix on the commentary been fucked for like months to the point where you frequently can't hear them properly at all

As much as that was the single most brutal one he ever hit, it had an an interesting dynamic because he'd never used it before so a lot of the crowd didn't immediately react to it as the scary deathblow it was Vividly remember watching it at the time and as the ref's hand hit 2 being like "oh holy shit that's the finish isn't it" I liked how over the preceding couple of weeks, Bryan sneaking out the win with a small package had almost booked itself as the 100% obvious finish, and that they then did a false finish off that and put him over 100% more decisively watching the Orton MITB cash-in still kind of bums me out restrospectively! Death to Money in the Bank imo

Smh at the Hardys having pyro for a no-touch run-in Also doing the run-in after the beatdown was over Liked Cesaro getting in a sneaky last stomp on the outside while the Hardys were looking away then doing a little excited happy saunter

A couple of Jinder's elbows and knees against Sami looked really reckless, is he just there to squish the brains of all the troublesome indie guys for Vince

Kevin Dunn's misogyny is becoming a real liability at this point

Ngl ever since the Takeover original I was hoping they'd do the Herald of Nakamura thing for his main roster debut A Miz feud does provide a lot of scope for arrogant Miz tirades getting deflated by an inscrutable one liner from Nak

That match was a time limit draw, Omega could still hold his head high

Did the crowd pop for Goldberg winning? I feel like even if I was favourably disposed to him I'd smell a bit of a rat at another ~1 minute main event that people paid money for

what the

The Cena/Nikki promo seemed designed to appeal to people's deranged relatives who post Facebook image memes about how terrible haters are I liked the "if I had stroke you think I'd be wrestling you at mania" zinger but the fact that he said he'd rather be wrestling Undertaker instead of the guy who's world champion right now was maddening