C.S.

It looks fantastic!

I'm with Eagle - I found the match to be overlong, masturbatory, and disappointing compared to expectations, but still decent. With that said, the rest of the card has been fun. The tag match was a fun high-flying brawl. Riddle and Dream are hopefully two future stars, but that all depends on how Vince sees them - and as we all know, that could go either way, especially with those two. The women were MOTY so far (I joined late, so I'm still watching the main event as we speak). I'm glad Belair's hair was used as a weapon against her, even if it did backfire. I was hoping for Io Shirai to win, but I certainly can't complain about Shayna retaining. I got spoiled on the Gargano-Cole result, unfortunately. Pedestrian first two falls, but the third has been good so far. And it just ended. I got distracted from writing my post to, ya know, actually watch the match. I'm still going with the women as the MOTY, but that third fall was NUTS! Not a blowaway TakeOver IMO, at least compared to past TakeOvers, but still good and fun. WrestleMania will have a hard act to follow, just because it's so fucking bloated and messy now. Edit: Is that Gargano's wife? Is it just me or does she look completely different now? Edit 2: THAT ENDING! It's hitting me right in the feels.

The writers did nothing with the hacker gimmick, but I think it could have potentially been cool. Hacking the TitanTron, the match schedule, parts of the show, WWE.com, etc. A lot could have been done with it. Sami Callahan totally shit the bed though. He was atrocious in NXT, a geek and a goof with awful mugging facial expressions that made early-WWE Jericho seem subtle. His valet (Seth's Nazi GF) getting canned right after they were put together - giving his act a much-needed infusion of...something - was probably one of the final straws. Was Sami miscast? Maybe. But it's not like he was forced to come across as such a dweeb and never have any good matches in NXT.

Who and what are you referring to?

That seems to be a thing now. There's a Trinidad flag on at least one PPV a year.

Let's face it: J.R. probably doesn't care about NJPW. I could wildly speculate a million reasons why, but that's pointless. He'll likely be much more comfortable on his "home turf," so to speak. I wish AEW had managed to get Mauro Ranallo. I know he has his detractors here, but I'm not one of them, and he'd kill in a sports presentation.

J.R. isn't the guy to get the goofy stuff over. (Maybe that's Excalibur? I dunno...) But what J.R. absolutely excels in is a sports-like presentation, which I have to imagine kinda matters to the owners of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

They're two legends. Who the fuck is Excalibur? This isn't Rey Mysterio we're talking about here! (Pretending for a second that Rey would be an awesome commentator, which maybe he would be, but I doubt it.) But yes, the masked commentator won't make or break the show for anyone, as @SomethingSavage pointed out, unless they're looking for something to make or break the show for them. However, J.R. as a familiar and comforting face and voice should not be discounted. His credibility is second-to-none. The J.R. of 1997 wasn't the J.R. of 1992, and that didn't matter either.

The whole masked Excalibur thing still sounds cheesy as hell to me for a commentator, but the star power and sterling reputation of J.R. should hopefully counteract any bad impressions Arthur's lost Knight of the Roundtable will bring to new fans. I am rooting for Alex Marvez, simply because he was my Meltzer years before I knew about the dirt sheets. He wrote an awesome "insider" column in the paper. Maybe all of the scoops originated with Big Dave - who knows? - but it was still mind-blowing for little 13-year-old me.

They didn't believe in him before. Why would they now?

I hope you mean that Miz is 1000x better than Sanity. Wow, the trophies for the Andre and Moolah are eyesores.

Like EC3 last night, Sanity has been reduced to a trio of useless geeks. Poor Eric Young...

Underwhelmed by the SDL Tag Title announcement. No idea why it wasn't just Usos vs. New Day.

I really hope Revival vs. Ryder/Hawkins is the actual match. Aleister Black and Ricochet have done nothing for me as a team, and I'm counting the days until Gable turns on Roode (but it will be the other way around, because WWE probably doesn't recognize that Gable is the true star there). Usos vs. New Day should be the SDL match. Has no current story going into it, and wouldn't make much sense since they're allies, but fuck it - you know they'll delver a great match. I cannot believe we are five days away from Mania and two major title matches aren't even set in stone yet.

Yeah, that looked NASTY.

WWE is probably smart enough to gimmick things like that, unlike Dubya C Dubya.

Corbin with the big win over Reaymus

Is Rey's mask supposed to be Sheamus's hair?

The Demon is lame. Yeah, I said it... And it feels good to say. Damn good!

Not sure why this insane brawl didn't close the show.

EC3 is already a neutered geek, and Breeze has been one for years.

Baron is such a dick.

I'll quote myself.

Man, you guys are L7 weenies! Prediction: After losing to Roman, Drew becomes the #1 contender to the Universal Title anyway and feuds with Seth Rollins over the next few PPVs. Maybe he wins at the end, maybe he doesn't. Probably doesn't, because Rollins is a supposedly a pretty sharp politician behind-the-scenes.

Easy solution: Have the NXT Tag Team Champions cost them the WWE Tag Team Title match on Monday, or the Revival cost them the NXT Tag Title match at TakeOver