...TG

I think the"Hugger Section" cards they handed out spoiled the surprise a bit.

So strange that they're calling this tournament "a series of matches". I guess it gets them out of having to come up with a bracket, but it's weird anyway.

Dave's been covering MMA for 23 years. We're surprised that he's going to watch the biggest fight of the year live, and the NXT show on delay?

That's a lot of blood.

I would have liked to have seen (another) match, but that spear was pretty awesome. Don't know how Roman is the face here, but whatever.

So in other words, a political hit?

I liked the finishing sequence, but I kinda checked out when the crowd kept shitting on the belt instead of watching the match.

The Eva Marie bit continues to be funny..."exhaustion"! And great to see Nikki back, Misawa's true heir.

It's hard to hate Jon Stewart when he's so obviously having the time of his life out there. Big E drinking the piss was really quite something.

Who cares about the finisher spam when it's that well done? That was fun as hell. If there's a more giving major star in terms of putting anyone over than Cena, I can't name him. If anything, he probably should have been more careful about protecting him self over the years. LOL, come on man. Let's tone down the hyperbole in this thread just a tad.

Apollo just isn't clicking with the crowd with this bland face gimmick. Maybe better as one-half of a tag team?

Agreed. They looked, acted, and sounded like a tired nostalgia act. If you didn't see their work outside the WWE, you'd think they had not evolved one iota in their ten years away. I can understand starting out with the familiar, the tried and true, but they should have quickly moved beyond that. They didn't, and still haven't. They're in their mid-40s, and even when they were good they weren't particularly good. Their ceiling at this point in their career is JTTS nostalgia act, and that's fine. If they were on top of the tag division we'd be complaining about WWE not pushing the young teams. Or I would, at least. And as I say that, Jericho & Owens go over the insanely over young team.

Given how much "the demon king" sounds like "the demon Kane", you'd think they wouldn't push it quite so hard. But you'd be wrong.

What a match, they had the crowd in the palm of their hands the whole way. That's darn near the WWE MOTY, I think. Never thought the guy who took a piss next to me at Eddie Deen's Ranch in Dallas a few months ago would have 12000 people chanting "Johnny Wrestling" at him. So happy to see great, old school work like this on a big stage.

Evolve 66 tonight has a strong opener with TJP v Cedric Alexander. Good work by TJP on Cedric's knee, and it paid off in the end! Selling could have been better but I liked that the legwork wasn't just time-killing.

Strong match from Brian Kendrick and Tony Nese. Told a nice story, the wily veteran versus the hungry young guy in Nese. Kendrick looks so seedy now, with his dark hair and goatee, like older pot dealer friend hanging around a bunch of young dudes. Bryan openly rooting for him on commentary is a hoot.

The Noam Dar-HoHo Lun match was just kinda there. As good as Tozawa's leg selling was in the previous match, Lun's was that bad in this one. Dar looked much better than his first round match but I'm not particularly impressed. But the only two matches I've seen haven't exactly been against 1991 Jushin Liger or anything so maybe it's just the opponents?

The Jack Gallagher v Akira Tozawa match was a lot of fun. Jack was just insanely over, tons of chants. I loved how his early escapes and holds were goofy and fun but got progressively nastier after the strike exchange. He really worked on Tozawa's leg and the selling was great. Would love to see more of Gallagher, and Tozawa really improved on his disappointing first round match.

It was the go-home show for Takeover this weekend, so it was a pretty nondescript episode. But Byron jumping up and literally running away when Joe got pissed at Nakamura was probably the funniest thing I've seen on WWE TV this year.

Oh dear - now Paige herself is suspended for a wellness violation.

IIRC, they dealt with AJ Lee fairly well after Punk quit, but she was more or less on top of what was a pretty thin women's division at the time. Paige has been hurt or otherwise buried for most of the year so I don't know how much more they can hurt her.

Adding insult to injury is that this was announced on ADR's girlfriend Paige's birthday. WWE is such a weird, petty company sometimes...

If Bix doesn't pull Kris' "made in Georgia, bitch" for drops I don't know if I can believe in anything anymore.

Can't wait to see what Elliot has planned for UWFi. That's quite the interesting roster.

I'm having a hard time getting all the outrage over this result, both here and on Twitter. Let's say a lot of the speculation is true, and Vader refused to do "business" and put over Ospreay when he got to the show. It's Vader, and if that's his rep, what did they expect? Why put him on the show? And how does this hurt Ospreay in the long run? When you bring in a big-time heel, you put him over and there's more anticipation for a rematch. Seems like booking 101. Note that I have zero investment in the promotion, Ospreay, Vader, or this current "feud", so it's possible I'm missing something.