EVA

I’ve noticed it too. Initially thought it was just a knot from getting potatoed or something, but it’s bee around so long I’m starting to worry it’s an infection of some kind.

Life is too short to spend it watching Jimmy Uso vs Solo Sikoa anyway.

Basically the same spot he injured his knee on against Jinder in 2024. Might be time to retire that one, Seth.

i liked Kenny/Okada, but it did feel like a lesser version of Kenny/Takeshita from Revolution. I assumed Okada would win for a few reasons (among them: I think they want Okada to carry the Continental title through the next C2 and lose it in the finals; now that Ibushi is back, Kenny likely wants to focus more on doing Golden Lovers tag stuff), but man, nobody wants to see Kenny losing matches at this point.

Knowing what we know now, I think giving Dustin the TNT belt was 100% the right call. After breaking the crowd’s hearts with the Adam Cole news, you absolutely had to give them, not just a babyface win, but a genuinely heart-warming, uplifting win. Dustin fit the bill perfectly. Plus, rather than having Fletcher win the belt in a cold match, you now get to build to him taking the belt off Dustin down the line (sooner than later, I’d imagine), when he can break the crowd’s hearts in the preferable way. That match will be incredible, too.

Thinking more about Mox’s performance and what this might have meant to him… At the first Grand Slam, he worked a tag match with Eddie against Suzuki-gun. At the All In 2023, he was in a Stadium Stampede match with like 20 dudes. He wasn’t even on All In last year. Even his Wrestle Kingdom matches were midcard affairs for the US title. So this was really his first opportunity to prove that “Mox” is an equal to his Shield peers as a stadium-level main event act. Can’t help but feel like that was some extra motivation for him.

I feel like any discussion of the main event should really start with Jon Moxley giving a stadium-sized performance. From swaggering confidence, to drifting into madness as the blood started to pour, to his indignation at Hangman’s audacity to not stay down, and finally culminating in that moment of terror when he was caught in the chain and couldn’t escape, there’s a whole story in the range of emotions he goes through over the course of the match, and Mox played them all to the rafters. He gave his all to make this match work, to make it worth the wait, and I think he succeeded.

I’m kinda fascinated by Mercedes reinventing herself in the mold of Zack Sabre Jr over the past few months. She’s just grabbing holds, any hold, all the time now. It’s been very good. Gives her PPV matches a different feel from anything else on the show, male or female. It’s also helped her to dial herself back from trying to do more than she’s actually capable of, which has always been her Achilles heel, and to just focus on the stuff that’s gonna hit clean.

Loved the show. It was a long-ass show, but I never felt like it dragged. I honestly don’t know which matches you would even cut to shorten it. Even the tag title match, which seemed the most disposable match going into the show, had some momentous developments worthy of a stadium environment. Also worth noting that the crowd never burnt out after 7 HOURS OF WRESTLING. Further proof that long shows don’t burn out crowds, lousy booking does. “Death slots” are often just self-fulfilling prophecies. This card was really well put together, and everything built to a crescendo. A great, full day of wrestling, much to the dismay of my wife.

Kenny Omega is a prophet.

I would say the same thing about the Death Riders going into All In as I did about The Bloodline going into WM39—just because it got good at the end doesn’t absolve it of being so bad before*. September through January of the Death Riders was deeply unpleasant and counterproductive TV, and it did not need to be that bad to get us to this point. *Of course, as it turned out, WM39 was not the end for The Bloodline, and it would in fact get even worse again after that. All the more reason for AEW not to make a similar mistake here.

Ibushi looking this good is a minor miracle considering how absolutely DONE done he looked as recently as a year ago. Hope his body holds up.

Yeah, I mean, if you’re seriously shopping for an undercard comedy act, Mr. Iguana is right there. He’s a very competent luchadore, and it’s easy to see where he could slot in at that Lucha House Party level.

Yeah, I don’t get the Santino comp at all. It’s easy to forget, but Santino was actually a decent worker who gradually evolved into being an increasingly absurd comedy character over time, and he was able to sustain that character on TV for so long because he was a pretty decent in-ring guy. He knew how to work it. Conversely, Danhausen stinks. It’s an indie-riffic act that does not translate outside of indie meme wrestling. He’s never had what WWE would consider even a passable match. A closer approximation would be the Boogeyman, but even he had the advantage of being tall and muscular so they could just book him to scare heels and squash wimpies once they realized he sucked. You can’t book Danhausen like that. I just don’t see where he fits in WWE at all.

If I was Private Party, I would try to follow the Mike Santana model—sign with a 3rd-tier promotion that will actually use you and hit the Indies hard, rebuild yourself the old fashioned way. They will 100% get lost in the shuffle in WWE developmental. Just be there forever like Wes Lee. Which would be a shame, because Zay in particular has a lot of potential.

WWE’s YouTube “highlights” clip job of Cena/Punk has exactly 40 seconds of them actually wrestling before it just goes right into the run-ins. That really sums the whole thing up.

Classic Gedo, wanting the belt on a white guy for a major show in a white market. Probably the correct call this time, though.

Seeing Punk, Bron, and Reed blow everything they tried immediately brought to mind Punk and Ryback for some reason.

Yeah, whatever spark was there between Cena and Punk in the closing stretch of Elimination Chamber did not show up in Riyadh. Big time Age in the Cage vibes from this one. Two guys just running through their old spots at 1/4 speed. And all of it was meaningless because it’s a 2020’s WWE main event, so nothing means anything until the run-ins start. I could not be any more tired of the Punk/Rollins issue.

Yes, because he badly needed the money! The whole “time heals all wounds” thing is how normal people think, not someone with the pathology of CM Punk, who has never let go of a grudge in his life.

This probably has something to do with the mythology Punk built around himself, but I feel like there has never been enough consideration given to the likelihood that, coming off a years-long protracted legal battle with a major corporation and a failed MMA career, Punk was in financial peril and needed to come back to wrestling for the money, rather than the love of the game (as he portrayed it). It would certainly explain why he was so quick to go groveling back to the hated WWE once things started going bad with AEW, and why he continues to endure this current humiliation ritual. The man has bills.

And they just made him get up in front of a crowd and apologize for the Blood $ tweet! They are making this dude eat unheard of amounts of shit lol.

To be fair, if this match had happened at MSG in 2019 like it was supposed to, I think they would’ve gone in a similar direction. Upping the violence and hatred was always the logical next step for their rivalry. You can’t just keep having The Best Wrestling Match Ever over and over again. In fact, it’s probably even more important that there be some additional layers to it now, considering that both guys physically aren’t what they were 7 years ago.

And then the bell rings.

Yeah, that was the gnarliest blood capsule spot in my recent memory. The blood definitely appeared more, um, visceral than capsules typically look, and Kenny sold the hell out of it, just spewing it everywhere while every vein in his face looked like they were gonna explode.