NintendoLogic

As far as complacency among the talent goes, the example of Zack Ryder remains instructive. WWE went out of their way to kill him dead for the sin of getting over without permission. Dave has said that other wrestlers constantly point to him as a cautionary tale. As for Rusev, I can definitely see AEW as an option. It was Dusty who put Rusev and Lana together in the first place, so I figure he's tight with the Rhodes family.

I was thinking that initially, but the WWE.com preview says the match will have three teams from Raw and three from Smackdown, which would seem to rule out anyone from NXT.

I don't know about the long-term viability of the women's tag division, but they're getting off on the wrong foot because the Elimination Chamber match to determine the first champions looks absolutely dire. The four announced teams are Nia/Tamina, Morgan/Logan, Rose/Deville, and the IIconics. Sasha/Bayley will most likely be the third Raw team, but even if WWE builds a time machine and brings back the 1987 Jumping Bomb Angels to be the sixth team, this match looks to be doomed beyond any hope of redemption.

I found it interesting that Adam Cole, the heel, didn't throw a single punch against Tyler Bate while Bate was throwing them at will. I couldn't help but think of when JR was on Austin's podcast and said that if he were running a promotion, he'd fine any babyface that threw the first punch in a match. Also, Jordan Devlin needs better entrance music. His current theme is way too low energy (sad!).

Again, a hard chop to the chest isn't any worse than slicing your forehead with a razor, which Lawler and his opponents did countless times. And do you really think that Liger never worked stiff or dropped opponents on their heads? You're really reaching here. Just take the L and move on.

We don't have a problem with you talking about your connections when it's germane to the discussion. The issue is gratuitous namedropping that serves no purpose beyond putting yourself over. Like when you mentioned, apropos of absolutely nothing, that you shared mutual friends with Ronda.

New Japan elimination tags have always counted being tossed to the floor as an elimination. It actually enhances the drama because it gives a team's lower-ranked members an avenue for taking out the higher-ranked members on the other team when it wouldn't be credible for them to get a pin or submission. Maybe the most famous example is Umanosuke Ueda's kamizake elimination of Akira Maeda in the 1986 NJPW vs. UWF elimination tag.

Stop me if you've heard this one: Nia Jax has injured someone. She hurt R-Truth's ankle and face when she laid him out at the Rumble. This is seriously getting absurd. Mabel was fired for far less.

Something I've been thinking about recently is the lack of good guys in WWE. There are plenty of babyfaces, but that only means that they're in conflict with the heels. You hardly ever see them doing something heroic that doesn't align with their self-interest. When was the last time one of them objected to the actions of a heel they weren't already feuding with? The only recent example I can think of is Dakota Kai and Io Shirai during the 2/3 falls match between Kairi and Shayna.

Chops made more sense in an era when strikes weren't nearly as important. Punches are supposed to be illegal and elbows tend to look like shit unless you're really laying them in.

It's like blood. It can enhance the action and drama when used judiciously, but it becomes distasteful when taken to the point of overkill.

Yeah, I'm sure Sid worked light as a feather with all those jobbers he manhandled. Seriously, it's just a chop to the chest. There's nothing stupid or excessive about stiff shots to safe places. Also, they put Walter up against the skinniest pastiest jobber they could find so as to maximize the visual impact.

It told the right story. He turned the guy's chest to hamburger with one (1) chop. It got a simple chop over as a lethal weapon. There was nothing excessive or masturbatory about it.

The more I think about it, the more Lesnar destroying Balor after their match bothers me. The main issue for me isn't that it made Balor look like a geek who didn't belong in the ring with the real stars, although WWE doesn't exactly have a surfeit of genuine top guys. It's that it completely negated the story of the match. Lesnar not being able to hit the F5 due to the injury to his abdomen and having to win with the kimura was a fantastic story, and it went right down the drain when he started tossing Balor around with no ill effects.

Orton doesn't even recycle! Take that, hippies! Destroying the planet to own the libs.

I have a confession to make, and this is as good a place as any to put it. I don't really get Becky Lynch. I have nothing against her, but I don't understand how she's become the most popular wrestler in the company. And it's not like she just caught fire out of nowhere. Even when she was toiling in the midcard, she was always more over than her push. The question is why when she doesn't really excel at anything. She's decent in the ring, but she's not a best bout machine by any means. She's pretty good on the mic but nowhere near the best. She's attractive enough (and like it or not, appearance is a major part of the equation for WWE women), but she's hardly a stereotypical bombshell, nor does she have that AJ Lee hot-but-attainable vibe. Maybe being solid across the board is better in WWE than being outstanding in some areas and subpar in others since any weaknesses get put under a magnifying glass. But regardless of why she's so over, she unquestionably is. It doesn't matter much to me either way since I don't watch main roster WWE outside of the PPVs, so I have no emotional investment in anyone on the roster. But I can't think of any compelling reason not to go full steam ahead with her, so they might as well do it. And that means facing Ronda one-on-one at Mania. Adding Charlotte to the equation would only confuse the issue and dilute the heat. Even if you think that Charlotte would improve the quality of the match, there's no reason to think that Becky and Ronda would stink out the joint without her.

There's a difference between sloppiness that conveys a sense of struggle and sloppiness that exposes the business. Sasha's quarter-speed armdrags are an example of the latter. And while we're at it, let's admit that Ronda's punches are Shane McMahon tier.

I was only half paying attention to Sasha/Ronda when it happened, so I went back and watched it again. I too was impressed by Ronda's arm selling, but the match overall was nothing special until the last few minutes. With the women working high-profile matches on major shows, it's become impossible to ignore how markedly inferior even the best ones (or at least the US-trained ones) are to the top men from a technical standpoint. They're less explosive, their execution is sloppier, and they telegraph everything worse than a Punch-Out character. That doesn't mean they can't get over or draw money. It doesn't even mean they can't have great matches. But calling them the best wrestlers in the company, let alone the world, is laughable.

I thought that the wonkiness of Balor's offense actually enhanced the match. It came across like he wasn't planning on having Brock's stomach as a target and had to adjust his gameplan on the fly. And if Finn's strikes were giving Brock that much trouble, he must really be hurt, so he might actually lose.

It should be remembered that the Jericho/Brock confrontation was largely driven by Michael Hayes trying to work Jericho and pretending that the finish to the Orton match wasn't planned.

Made my first pick for 2019. I'm going to hold off on top 3 until after Wrestlemania unless some matches blow me away before then.

It was pretty apparent that I was an extreme outlier in how much I enjoyed Bryan/AJ, so I went back and rewatched it. I still thought it was fantastic, albeit perhaps not the MOTY I initially pegged it as. The dead crowd hurt it quite a bit, but it's the kind of match that played better on TV than in a stadium. When a match is built around targeting a body part, it's the subtle details that take it to the next level, and a sequence like Bryan blocking the Phenomenal Forearm by kicking AJ's injured arm followed by AJ having to go up the turnbuckle because he can't springboard is probably going to go over the head of someone in the nosebleeds.

If Becky is facing Ronda at Mania, she shouldn't have tapped clean to Asuka. Now it looks like she's ducking the real champion.

I'm actually pretty sanguine about this outcome. Brock delivered in a big way in his match with Balor, and there's no reason to think he can't do the same with Rollins.