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The ratings pattern for the show was simply awful this week FWIW. Stolen from somewhere, NXT included as some might be curious: P2+ / P18-49 AEW Q1: 1.010 / 512k (Hangman/Dark Order vs Hardy Party) Q2: 826k / 410k (IC interview, Cody/Brandi announcement, very start of Cody/Angelico) Q3: 843k / 405k (Cody/Angelico, post match w/Sting, Eddie/PAC/Archer brawl) Q4: 835k / 413k (Dustin promo and 6 v 6) Q5: 726k / 400k (back end of 6 v 6 and Rosa/Britt segment) Q6: 746k / 399k (SCU vs Acclaimed and Top Flight interview) Q7: 741k / 406k (Ivelisse/Diamante vs Swole/Deeb) Q8: 718k / 419k (Omega vs Janela) NXT Q1: 743k / 230k (The Way vs KUSHIDA/Ruff) Q2: 734k / 247k (Legado promo, Shotzi promo, start of Rust/Ciampa) Q3: 695k / 223k (rest of Rust/Ciampa and GYV promo piece) Q4: 742k / 246k (start of Dunne/O'Reilly) Q5: 843k / 293k (second half of Dunne/O'Reilly) Q6: 801k / 271k (Rhea interview, Xia Li vid, Shotzi/Hartwell) Q7: 764k / 251k (Kross vs Troy, Isaiah Scott interview, Ever Rise interview) Q8: 772k / 241k (Ripley vs Storm) That's approaching a 30% audience drop from start to finish with your champ who is theoretically in the hottest angle in the company in the main. That's also the same main doing the worst quarter for the entire show. I think the solution is quite obvious: fire Joey Janela into the sun.

I agree it is shocking to watch a wrestling show where the women actually get something meaty to do after catching Dynamite >_>

Drew not coming out to stop AJ from trying to cripple his best friend of over a decade, then not mentioning it or even being mad at AJ when they met in the main event face-off shows that he is an awful friends and deserves it when Sheamus turns on him. Also I laughed when Lashley accidentally ruined his own suit.

So I watched that Keith Lee/Angel Garza Main Event match that was being discussed (and put it in the 2020 matches thread so others can as well) and the guy who tweeted that it was wrestled like neither man had any idea how to work a big man/little man match... I have no idea what he was talking about as that didn't appear to be the case at all. The match is just sorta there and if one wanted to go "the WWE match formula has issues and I'll use this match to show why" that'd be fair but they generally worked the big/little formula well enough and the layout doesn't show any sign of the agents letting them down. Angel does have an awful chinlock but using it once you finally knock a big man down to keep him from getting back up is actually the right time to go to it, Lee perhaps registered Angel's strikes a tad bit much, but those aren't massive "these guys have no clue how to work this kind of match" issues. Lee didn't do any big athletic moves which is a larger main roster issue for him but I don't know that I'd want him to bust that out for Main Event. Watching it with a critical eye what really sticks out is that on this stage Lee just lacks presence due to not really emoting much or being all that expressive either facially or with his body language. He does the big guy powering out of stuff WWE likes and at the right times but he doesn't really sell it all that well, perhaps if he was in front of a live audience that is marking out for it it'd work better but in this environment it looks... well it basically looks like a guy who needs a bit more training in that area. It is generally the one area WWE generally focuses on, often to excess (cries hysterically after someone kicks out of a move that has never won a match), so I am pretty sure it isn't something they'd ask him to do and something that would bother them in particular.

Since people were talking about that Keith Lee/Angel Garza match:

I mean, I both appreciate this sentiment but think it is probably the wrong game to make that argument about given the very buggy state it is in on the base models. That's a case where it is actually much better to listen to the reviews than spend $80 to find out for yourself that it seems to just run awful for many people.

I watch Raw pretty much every week and I've said since his first match on the show that Lee seems uncomfortable. I don't know if it is his confidence getting shot or just something with how they run a main roster show but if I hadn't seen his prior work I'd have been confused as to the hype around him. His booking hasn't done him favors but I see a lot of that on Raw and this is something more than just that (Ricochet is booked awful and I'd never say this about him in ring). Oddly I thought the triple threat match with Riddle and AJ was the best he's looked since being called to the main roster and that may have been his last match before this came up but I'd say something has definitely not been clicking beyond "the show is poorly written and people suffer due to it".

Worth remembering is that Punk is a bit of a raconteur and while he doesn't generally lie outright he seems comfortable fudging with the details of a story a bit to make it funnier/more memorable/etc. I think most wrestlers are. Anyways, while I'm sure there is a specific true story about someone in WWE having a role of some sort that the company deep-sixed them on I would not necessarily expect all of the given details to be 100% accurate. Workers gonna work after all.

My favorite wrestling show I attended was the Ring of Homicide show for ROH with the Homicide vs Necro Butcher main event as I got to toss a chair into the ring.

An experienced reviewer at a site that gets pre-release games frequently should have a feel for which type of bugs and glitches are likely to see a day one fix and which kind are likely the kind that'll be around for months. The fact that the reviews for this game from said reviewers/sites seem to harp on the bugs makes me fear that it is likely they are of the latter variety.

Yeah the site has been almost unusably slow for the past few days.

Ishii has some swell matches but I don't think there is any argument for him being a hall of famer barring some surprising late career twists and turns. Unless the argument is that "this era of NJPW is so tremendous we are gonna just put everyone in" his accomplishments don't really exist and I don't know that there is any evidence of him being a draw in the least. Like... Samoa Joe isn't in and has little support. Taue isn't either and was a higher ranked member of a different golden age and was in quite possibly the match of the decade in the 90s. Those two are widely considered to be below the hall of fame cut-off (Taue gets a bum rap IMO) and both have much stronger arguments in their favor than Ishii. I still think all three of them own, but I don't think that's really enough to be a hall of famer.

Lashley nearly killed himself right before the commercial break where he lost his balance fireman carrying keith towards the post outside the ring and banged his head off said post with all of Lee's weight on his shoulders. He was lucky it was a glancing blow but it looked like it scraped and bloodied him up a bit.

Worth noting when I checked a week or two back Zelina's twitch channel was at about 15k subs, which on the lowest tier are $5 per month (non-renewing). Now that doesn't mean she takes home $75k/month as Twitch takes a cut and she has deals where for example if you buy 5 gift subs you can like get a signed poster, but I would be shocked if she wasn't making significantly more via this than her actual WWE job. I found this out because I was curious what Miro's twitch numbers are like given his whole AEW deal; they are kinda bad even by wrestler standards.

The booking of Andrade in the past 6 months screams out "he's in the doghouse" so much that I am stunned nothing has come out regarding that. If you look back to right before it all fell apart for him his US title run was a mini-disaster even with mostly okay matches due to a pair of injuries on top of a wellness suspension during it and I would not be surprised in the least to find out that it soured some higher-ups on him

What's amazing to me is that Lana somehow despite all logic has ended up with a more interesting character/program than Miro...

The avalanche backstabber Ali and Ricochet did is one of the dumber looking spots I've seen in a while and I totally do not believe it wouldn't hurt the person landing on the bottom more.

I think it is fair to say that there may be nothing worse in wrestling than a comedy wrestler you don't personally find funny. That's why my pick is Yano.

I am going the other direction and am slightly pleasantly surprised that WWE realized Retribution was a dud now as opposed to several weeks from now which is about when I would have expected it to dawn on them. I'd rather this than them trying and failing to convince me to take them seriously for much longer.

Going back to Ben Carter for a second, regardless of one's feelings about WWE or AEW if one offers to pay you and the other offers to let you work for free... that's a pretty easy choice to make if one isn't independently wealthy. I can see a larger point about where one should want to work but in this particular case I don't see an argument for him making the wrong choice.

I always felt like a lot of the current issues NXT has can be half-sarcastically chalked up to the then NXT fan's monkey paw wish that Gargano and Ciampa never get called up to the main roster. The simple fact is that as a developmental fed where you just cycle through building someone up, get the belt on them, let them have their run, put someone over and have them called up is kinda the easy mode of booking. You don't have to deal with the whole "well what do we do with them now?' that follows, you don't have them holding spots near the top that means there are less of them available, etc. I don't think the problem is the lack of taping a bunch of shows at once, going to two hours and stuff like that, the problem is that it's run like an actual regular fed now and it exposed that creatively they might not be as strong in that area. I will say that there was some growing pains when it shifted to two hours, but I also feel comfortable pointing out that Keith Lee was constantly lost in the shuffle before that shift and suddenly when they had more time to fill and he got regular appearances he suddenly got hot and thrived.

...This is the moment I realize that I haven't actually listened to a new album all year. Huh, that's not particularly helpful.

Mickey seemed all over the place in the match tonight, they also botched that hip toss knee spot before the commercial break and had to redo it, whiffed on that second mick kick, seemed a step and a half slower than Asuka on most exchanges and seemed to lose her spot on that back roll pin spot at the end leaving the ref to just call for a tap rather than hope for them to sort it out on their own. That was likely a mistake, but given how off Mickey was all match I can sort of understand.

Is anyone else finding the site to be a bit slower since the upgrade? It's not like awful but it feels like it takes an extra second or so for every page to load.

It's cool that Rusev/Miro is here now but saddling him with one of the worst guy's in the company talking about their twitch channels is about as lame a way to debut him as possible. He's seemingly bulletproof so I assume he'll be fine, but it is the rare situation where doing literally anything different would have probably been better. But hey, he's back so yay!