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I think Meltz said that the plans for Brock would have been changed if they went with the Omos match, but not from the Gunther match as that was never really considered. That lead to me trying to figure out who the heck Brock was actually booked to face and the funniest option to me was Vince having to put his foot down and tell HHH that he can't put Kross against Lesnar at Mania, you have the book but there are limits.

Seems to be pretty close to his legit voice.

The actual interesting bit is that, given that this wasn't a line-up that seemed destined to pop much of a rating, do you think this was due to the hype of the "important announcement" or because there was no NBA game running against the show for the first time in a while? If it is the latter that is a very good thing that hints at better ratings for the half year without a NBA season, if the former then we may get an important announcement every time Tony finds a new restaurant he likes >_>

Omos/Brock both feels like a waste of a Mania match for Brock yet also a match I kinda want to see just to watch what Brock does with the big lug. Absolute worst case he just suplexes a legit giant a few times which is still something I'd watch a 4 minute match to witness.

This, basically. Thought it was a good match (although TBH probably about 95% of what Kairi/Sasha would have been on a WWE ppv if it was ever booked to happen) but going from cheapshotting Kairi at the Dome show to cheating and heeling all match to hugging and crying afterwards felt kinda half-assed if I'm being honest. Look at what was written about Jay White in the post above this, I appreciate it when the performer fully buys in and that was the one thing that was lacking in this specific case. Hopefully now that she's past the big "first match" deal it won't be a thing moving forward as it's not like this is a problem she's had before.

As someone who watches Raw weekly it desperately need the world title split again as the show just doesn't functional nearly as well as it should without a top title. Perhaps if instead of Roman the belt was held by someone who competes more regularly it would be less of an issue but without a top belt Raw feels like a show full of midcarders with the exception of Cody, and only Cody is spared due to being so fresh. One can argue that the US title should function as that but as someone who watches the show it just ain't working, it's stronger than it has been in years but it still seen as a secondary title.

Ariel is a dork but publicly telling Schiavone that he's great no matter what his cokehead boss says is probably the best thing he's ever done. Tony Khan needs to stay of twitter if he's can't win twitter arguments with this level of guy, hire people to do that for you if you must.

It was a ticky tack call that happened to have a visually huge impact due to the receiver ending up so far away from where the ball ended up landing. I'm actually not sure that the ball just wasn't plain overthrown but when you see the guy hold and the result is that... I see why they decided that they couldn't let it slide.

It might not matter much for the game itself, but AEW makes deals with other advertisers so managing their overall image so that they aren't seen as too "mature" for some of these companies to work with is something they do have to worry about.

I think Bron is simply someone who can't be the more experienced wrestler in a match and have it be really good, which if we are honest isn't that unusual for a wrestler only in their second year active. This is where the lack of a bunch of veterans on current NXT is an issue as I think he's pretty much learned about what he is going to from wrestling other young wrestlers, you can put him on the main roster and protect him while giving him reps with several experienced hands which will give everyone a better chance to evaluate exactly how he is progressing and what his potential truly is.

I think it is less that and more that the smarter fans have generally been around a bit longer or at least are more familiar with the company's history, and this sort of situation has popped up a few times in the past and it generally has gone a certain way. Bryan/Batista is one but they also ended up switching around Kofi and Owens during Bryan's last WWE title run because Kofi unexpectedly got very hot. Add in that we've seen a different crowd turn on Cody not that long ago and heading into this it was reasonable to wonder if history was gonna repeat once more. Not for nothing, but Batista was a much bigger star than Cody and probably as well liked and he got chewed up by circumstance. As of now I'd say things are looking pretty well for Cody, he's still new enough thanks to the injury that he's still a breath of fresh air but I'd also consider the Roman/Sami match as the last bump in the road Cody has to be worried about. If they randomly fumble the ball there I could see a split in the crowd forming, but they've handled this whole Bloodline/Sami deal so well that I am not hugely worried about that. The interesting thing is to consider what would have happened if Cody never got injured and had several more months of being around and talking before we got to this point. It might not be insane to say that that injury may have ended up being a legit blessing in disguise.

Someone pointed this out to me but with Elimination Chamber being in Canada... can either Uso even work the show? I recall their prior DUIs keeping them out of the country as recently as last year so unless something has changed that seems like it'd limit some of the options for Sami/Roman.

I worry that Rhea challenging Charlotte for the SD women's belt means that Judgement Day is about to meet the same fate The Hurt Business did, you get the main belt but the group that helped elevate you is left in the past. She might be switching brands, could take Dom with her to set up the Rey/Dom match and Edge has talked about having to kill his creation...

I mean I can see one having different feelings as to how well HHH is doing in charge but Judgement Day went from months of struggling to finding a groove and flourishing within about 6 weeks of the change in leadership. Even if you hate the guy ignoring that is just silly, more than just 3 to 5 people are much better off.

Haha, I just bought OlliOlli World a couple weeks back, oops.

I think the bigger issues in the theoretical Sami/KO vs Usos feud is that Owens has really been awful to Sami this whole time and if we are honest Jey has had his back more this past couple months than Owens has in their entire relationship. Kevin is always about him first, he without hesitation was willing to wreck all of Sami's relationships just to have a better shot at the title (which is pretty much what he did in NXT when he first showed up). Kevin was proven wrong, Jey actually was his friend and that still got ruined as Sami just couldn't bear to see Kevin basically crippled. Neither man is a saint or evil but it feels hard to ignore just how toxic Kevin has been for Sami's well being. ...So I say fuck it, run Sami/Jey vs Jimmy/KO.

I believe Gargano has a hurt shoulder as well.

Bronson Reed just straight up attempted to kill Tozawa with that tossing powerbomb into the barricade.

A quick googling suggests doing the above but with the power charger cable plugged in and charging might help? If not it would appear the next step would be attempting a factory reset which would get rid of everything you have saved on it which would appear to be an issue. I would suggest if the above doesn't work to go to amazon help and asking them directly for assistance, I assume they would know any other potential solutions.

I could talk positively about all that lovely blood and violence but I gotta get something off my chest: this whole Kingston/HOB deal is the most Vince-era WWE angle AEW has run in ages. The defining trait of such an angle is at least one participant having to act like an utter moron for the narrative to not instantly collapse, and unfortunately Eddie has drawn the short straw here. Ortiz is someone Eddie has had a relationship going back what, a decade or so with, who he has gone to war(games) with in this company within just the past year. He's got an anger management problem, not a delusionally paranoid problem (I believe that was Punk >_>). The event that started this all off wasn't even a good fake out as no one else in HOB acted like they were thinking Ortiz was with them, just that Black called them off for some reason. Black then dropped a confusing to follow (even for him) promo a couple weeks later that was supposed to plant the seed for this dissension but left most people going "wait, what?" and then in this match... if you think you can't trust your partner why are you even asking for this match but much more importantly... if you are worried Ortiz might stab you in the back leaving him on the apron leaves you vulnerable and with your back to him all match, you let him wrestle and spend all match hesitating if you trust him on the apron (he did that briefly early on, which was fine). Refusing to tag out to Ortiz because he can't trust him doesn't make a lick of sense given the situation they set up, and the whole end run was overly complicated but at least not as bad as everything else. HOB are cool, I love eddie, ortiz is fine but this angle has been a dumpster fire.

It feels wrong to lean towards the Usos/Banger Bros match solely due to the expertly played cutaway gag... but that was a great gag.

Yeah I was gonna say, one of the things I vaguely recall is that due to the way things went with Vince leaving him coming back would bring in all sorts of potential SEC problems into play. Given that the investigation into him by WWE wrapped up in November and he apparently started this push in December... I mean, if I were the SEC I'd raise an eyebrow over that.

I'm pretty sure I saw Dom had a teardrop drawn under his eye which would be the absolute perfect little touch.

Hey, I was gifted the same book for Christmas. Haven't started it yet but I hope it is as good as the first book.

So the last two years I put a decent bit of work into figuring out what my album of the year was (naturally I still stumbled upon my favorite '21 release in about February of this year) (I like how I make that sound like work, all I did was listen to a bunch of music) and I got it down to a final four earlier this week. Figuring out which of those four I liked best though... man I went back and forth so many times. Shoutouts to BackxWash's His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering (felt it was probably more guilty pleasure good than legit good) and Honningbarna's Animorphs (don't speak a lick of Norwegian but great high energy punk album) as I liked them both a bunch but my final two was Ashenspire's Hostile Architecture and Soul Glo's Diaspora problems and... while it is somewhat different from Black Midi I could see one who disliked them also not caring for Ashenspire for my official pick is: Soul Glo: Diaspora Problems