EVA

Yeah, um, you hate to give Vince credit for anything these days, but you gotta hand it to him: this Cena heel run has completely vindicated his decision to never pull the trigger on it.

I guess one new wrinkle to Rollins winning is that this is the first time we’ve seen a heel backed by a stable of killer heavies with MITB. Rollins was aligned with the Authority his first go-round, but Jamie Noble and Joey Matthews vs. Bron and Bronson is very coughing baby vs. nuclear bomb. Ostensibly, that should make this a rather short MITB run, as he should be able to press that button and easily win whenever he wants.

I tuned into this right when the Dangerous Alliance guys were doing their run, err, saunter-in. That closing stretch felt more like a series of segments stapled together that happened to end with a bell ringing than an actual wrestling match. No one projected any sense of urgency about getting the belt and winning the match. Can’t judge the whole match, but that ending was super anti-climactic. But not nearly as anti-climactic as the main event, which was one of the worst headlining tag matches that I can recall from recent history. The LONG heat on Jey was a total snooze, and it “built” (using that term loosely) to one of the worst hot tags I’ve ever seen. Like someone slowly letting all the air out of a balloon. If Truth hadn’t returned, I think more of the conversation would be centered on yet another absolute stinker main event from this Cena heel run.

Absolutely zero surprise to me that Mr. Iguana was the biggest AAA star coming out of this show. His act is exactly the sort of lowest common denominator silliness that WWE fans eat up with a spoon. Mark it down—he’ll wrestle on one of the main roster shows this week.

The fact that Cole spun a completely different narrative on commentary than what Truth tweeted should make it quite clear that this was not a work. I guess we’ll see if they actually re-upped him or if they’re just going to give him a more fitting send-off with whatever time is left on his contract. I kinda hope it’s the latter. Otherwise it’s a good news/bad news type of deal for whichever poor soul gets made redundant in his place. Main event was, unsurprisingly, pretty bad. Paul turning into CM Punk doing the Buckshot all the sudden really makes you appreciate how Hangman nails it flawlessly every time. Never a doubt.

I timed it perfectly and dropped in right at the start of Gable/Vikingo. I was pleased to see that WWE let them go for it, and they really delivered. Vikingo is clearly still struggling with his knee (and maybe hurt it again late in the match?) but did enough to impress the unfamiliar, I imagine. But GABLE, man. Not sure how anyone could watch this performance and think he should still be getting booked as just a good hand in the midcard. It’s insane behavior. He should be doing this shit in PLE main events.

Remember when Tay first jumped over from NXT and revealed herself to be a very raw but interesting worker? Doing a lot of Suzuki-influenced graps and striking? Really good babyface fire, too. All that kinda took a backseat when she got sucked into the Jericho Vortex, and of course she’s been away for a long time, so her early AEW run kinda feels like ancient history now. It would be cool if she could find that version of herself again.

Also, how did this 4+ hour show with TV commercial breaks feel like less of a slog to get through than a 3-hour WWE PLE lol

I really like a lot of what AEW is doing right now from a booking perspective. I’m really enjoying Ospreay as the pure, whitemeat Guy Who Cares SOOOO Much and how that’s putting him in natural conflict with, like, everybody else who are fixated on their own stuff. That’s a tough role to pull off without becoming cloying, but he’s nailing it. Probably helps that they’re booking him to be the aggressor with Swerve instead of a pacifist. Wrestling fans do ultimately pay to see people fight, not get along.

Sociopaths have a funny way of showing how much they care!

Normally, I’m 100% with you on that. But Miz is beyond wealthy between his 20-year WWE run and all his outside work. His family will not lack for food on the table. The college fund is secure. I feel comfortable joking about this!

Let’s all contribute to manifesting that, right now.

Carlito getting paid for 2 years off a hometown pop in Puerto Rico is just an incredible piece of business.

“Little Jimmy” is a real sliding doors moment for Truth’s career. I’d be really intrigued to see where his career might have gone if he’d been able to remain a somewhat serious wrestler for the past decade, because he clearly had some juice as a heel in early TNA, and even some good heel stuff early in that 2010’s Cena program. But once Vince & Co. decided “Ron is mentally handicapped” was the angle, that sealed his fate for the next decade-plus of embarrassing, often borderline racist, lowest common denominator humor. A fate which included staying employed as Vince’s court jester longer than most and making quite a bit of money in the process, granted. But what might have been.

Of course, he also publicly supported Vince post-Janel Grant, so kinda fuck him, too.

Based on longevity and the fact that he was a Vince favorite, I bet he’s on a way bigger deal than you’d expect someone in his spot to have.

TKO spreadsheets don’t get sentimental. I think this is going to be the norm going forward—long-term talent on hefty contracts getting cycled out more frequently in favor of cheaper NXT call-ups. We’ll see how that works out for them over time. Truth will make a killing on the indies and convention circuit, if he so chooses.

I noticed Gates of Agony are “in action” on Collision this week (i.e., squashing some dudes), so I assume they’re being built up to be Ricochet’s guys.

Yeah, she absolutely has to avoid going to Smackdown right now. Sending her to NXT would be about as silly as sending Starks there, but I’m sure they’ll do it.

I’ll just reiterate a version of what I said when those rumors first came up: Both sides extracted maximum value from this deal. Mariah took herself from a nobody in the US to a major TV star, and AEW got a an incredible, unique storyline that drove a lot of business for them and made Toni Storm an even bigger star than she already was. This ain’t a Ricky Starks situation where you’re left wondering what if. All the meat was off the bone. So much so, I’m not even sure what an Act 2 for Mariah in AEW would even look like. Even if she could still be useful in some other kind of role, I think it’s probably best for both sides to George Costanza this and move on.

Just when you thought the New Jack gimmick for AITA was played out, the arena started levitating when “Bodies” hit.

That’s what makes the bankrupt creative so frustrating. The people want to be into this! They’re not getting as much as they’re giving.

Cena taking every bump on his hip like late era Flair.

The Andor version of Rogue one would have had a 3-episode arc about Galen’s time on Eadu, actually seeing how he meticulously sneaks in the Death Star vulnerability, how he converts Bodhi, and his engineers would’ve become your favorite people on the show and break your heart when they get executed.

I just don’t think the first two-thirds of RO are good at all. You can tell it’s crudely stitched together from two different ideas of what the story is about. I’d just be delighted to see Gilroy and his team get a crack at treating the whole movie with the same precision that they handled ANDOR with. I am going to invest in an army of obnoxious GilroyVerse bots to astroturf this into reality.