Stiva

I'm hoping AEW continue their style as they move to TV but, on the whole, I'm not sure that's really a style that will grab young people's attention. I think it might grab older viewers who don't watch WWE week to week anymore and move them back to a weekly wrestling product but the overall problem of young people not watching wrestling is a question I certainly can't answer. How do you attract people to 6 hours of pro-wrestling a week in an age where young people's media seems to be more easily digestible and disposable than ever? Make Ninja a backstage announcer?

It's also very telling that the women are getting less focus now that Ronda isn't on the roster and following on from stories that WWE are internally unhappy with the ratings they were fetching so I guess it's also Becky Lynch's fault in their eyes?

I know that there’s been a year or so since it happened but imagine if Bryan didn’t get the all-clear and he wasn’t on TV as a heel. These shows would have almost nothing redeeming on them. With regards to the production, the buck should always stop with Vince but Kevin Dunn clearly needs taken out the back and put out of our misery sooner rather than later.

Vince repeatedly mentioning that a guy can't do a Southern accent whenever he's brought up is absolutely manic stuff. Harper is a super agile big guy with a great look who can not only work the style they want out of their major singles guys but do it better than a lot of them with the added bonus of it coming from a heavyweight. They obviously know that enough to recognise that he'd be a big get for AEW but not enough to utilise him because he can't do a certain accent? The leaps of logic baffle the mind.

If there's a tiered subscription, the more expensive options are probably going to be for more current content which is the absolute opposite of what I want. Sadly, I (and probably everyone on this board) am probably in the minority with that but you'd hope that a more expensive, tiered subscription saw more efforts made to archive, restore and present older footage in addition to their own terrible original content. Basically, if they're asking us to pay more, they need to deliver more.

Even the website has a ton of Vince-isms. I read the recap of Smackdown and we had "Kevin Owens SAVAGELY attacked The New Day", "Elias and Shane McMahon BRUTALLY ASSAULTED Roman Reigns" and "Lars Sullivan DEMOLISHED several superstars" Without going into why you're running 3 heel beatdowns on the same show, you can almost hear Michael Cole saying all of those sentences as you're reading them.

I've fallen off Impact in recent weeks but anything between The Lucha Bros and LAX is something I'm on board for.

I'm incredibly interested in where this new Wyatt gimmick is going but I have to wonder how it translates into an in-ring change. Though having him return through a series of vignettes makes a lot of sense considering they're what got him so hyped in the first place. Also, the constant name changes are starting to give me whiplash. So much of this seems like they're bouncing wildly from one train of thought to the next.

Yeah, that's some high-level business right there. If that's how they're going to present their product going forward, I'm all in (lol) for their TV show.

One of my favourite matches from Mania weekend in which Dominic Garrini worked as if he could feel no pain. A flat-out awesome, wild brawl around the arena where both guys took huge punishment that felt like a real out-of-control Southern fight. Garrini was an absolute bumping machine here though, channelling Foley in that he took crazy hit after crazy hit and just kept on moving forward. It went from the fairly mundane (though still wild) dive through Bishop and the front row before culminating in a big bump into thumbtacks by way of a unbelievably nasty, back-first crash through an entire section of seats. At one point, Bishop is just nailing skewers into Garrini's EAR before Dom responds by nailing them into Bishop's forehead. Finish comes when Bishop and his second handcuff Garrini to the turnbuckle before dousing him in lighter fluid and motioning to set him alight before Garrini surrenders. That finish seems hokey when written down but the match played out in a way where it felt like one guy getting set on fire seemed like a likely and realistic outcome. A crazy war and when you look at this and his Bloodsport match, Sunday morning must have absolutely sucked for Dominic Garrini

I’m only 2 matches into the AIW Slumber Party Show but man, Dominic Garrini takes one of the nuttiest bumps this side of the 90s ECW Arena in his match. Between that and Bloodsport, he had quite the Saturday.

Lacey should just be a general fly in Becky’s ointment as she’s busy with a top feud. If they can get Sasha back, it should probably be her. If not, Naomi maybe? Really, the women’s division is small enough that they should all be interacting with each other anyway with Becky being the bonafide top dog who they orbit around.

Yeah but they had nothing else on the card. It's like if WCW ran the Hall/Nash angle at The Bash without Benoit/Sullivan, Giant/Luger, Malenko/Rey or Horsemen vs Greene and McMichael on the card. Invader angles don't work when someone is invading a promotion full of talent that nobody cares about.

Cole gets dumped on by Vince, Cole dumps on the guy beneath him. That about checks out as typical, shitty corporate environment fare Also, this shit with changing finishes on the fly is absolutely the kind of thing that would have made the LOLTNA page. What the fuck are they doing half the time?!

Catching up on the main and Adam Cole strikes me as the new Edge. In the sense that I don’t enjoy watching him and think he’s corny as fuck but is going to be pretty much consistently over and a mainstay around the top of the card as long as he’s in the company.

Stray thoughts as I go. Trying to rehab Racist Hulk Hogan as a bumbling idiot who doesn't know the name of any arena in the country is a bold move. Lesnar/Rollins was a much better match when they did it with Balor and Bryan and I really don't buy three curb stomps as enough to put Brock down, even if he did sell them like death. Balor's stomps and Bryan's kicks looked like better killshots and they didn't put him down. Kind of felt like Brock jobbing out of the territory but I'm sure they'll throw more money at him for a rematch in Saudi Arabia. Orton stretching out a 7 hour show by taking twice as long to walk down a huge ramp is some of his finest heel work ever. But man, the match was a snorefest. We've seen everything Orton has to give at this point, especially as a quasi-top guy and Styles is in dire need of a shift to Raw to freshen up his work. The crowd clearly didn't have the attention span to stick with the slow pace, even if the work wasn't sub-par, they'd have been chanting and singing like assholes and quite why King gets trotted out when he clearly doesn't watch the TV is beyond me. I think a rematch with a gimmick could be a lot better but other than a few neat moments (Orton committing himself to the RKO fake-out was fun, the superplex was great), this seemed to drag on and on. Rusev and Lana remain the most underutilised double act they have, the whole look is complete money. It's halfway depressing that even the Mania crowd can't be bothered to sing along to Nakamura's music anymore. Black and Ricochet felt like big deals with their entrances and a long series with The Usos would be great considering I I find Ricochet's actual work far more digestible in tags. Cesaro is such an incredible base, holy shit. The spot with Sheamus smashing everyone on the ring apron while Cesaro swung Ricochet around about 75 times was a great use of limited time and felt like the first real memorable spot on the card. If they're actually serious about focusing on tag wrestling, any combo of these guys should get given plenty of time on TV. I actually dig heel Shane (as a character) whereas badass, walking tall babyface Miz is still as miscast as he was in The Marine. Shane's strikes look like the ones you'd throw when play-wrestling as a kid, Jesus, even if his general heel work is actually really solid. Papa Miz stepping in to throw down was great, I think he's my favourite pro-wrestling dad. The brawl into the crowd was kind of there but Shane's willingness to throw himself about onto concrete helps improve things and running down the foreign announce tables and hearing all the different languages shouting over each other led it an oddly convincing air of chaos. Shane could have an easy office job and spend time with his family, there's no need for him to go full-Foley but thank God he did because it actually made this really enjoyable, even if the actual execution of the brawling wasn't great. The pop when Papa Miz gets his shot in on Shane is going to be huge. The inflatable tube men refusing to work made me laugh more than it should have. Thought this whole thing was largely dull, Nia being out of it so long actually hurt it since her presence would have offered something halfway different. IIconics are strong personalities and will be fun heels for The Sky Pirates to squash for the belts. An all-timer of a video package for Kofi/Bryan and an awesome response for Kofi himself. Between Kofi and Becky, it's night and day how much more interesting and organic these matches are than the forced Rollins push. I dug the slow start with Bryan heeling it up with some nasty face scrubs and strikes with Kofi's spots getting peppered in here and there and man, what a bump to switch to Bryan in control, damn. Kofi just went full force into the table, that had to absolutely suck to take. Bryan getting to work as a heel wrestling machine in WWE is so great and the Boston Crab counter was an incredible spot. The whole heat segment feels like it could end at any point, simply because Bryan is being presented as a total world class pro wrestler. He's so good that he's counteracting for Kofi's general lack of credible singles offense by making all of it look fantastic and spacing it out perfectly. An absolutely incredible performance. Woods and Big E getting their big moment helping their boy was a great spot and the near fall on the kick was on-par with the one Bryan hit on Lesnar. It didn't feel like Bryan vs Kofi, it felt like Bryan vs an entire stadium. Like he was fighting against the tides of fate itself and he almost pulled it out. Great moment and the babyfaces cheering was an awesome touch. I hesitate to call it a carry job from Bryan but it really was a GOAT-level performance. Woods bawling like a baby watching his buddy win the big one is more evidence that The New Day can never ever break up. I need to take it in two parts since this show is so long and I'll be amazed if anything matches Kofi winning the belt for a sheer emotional response

As much as I would love to stay and watch this with you all, I have an early start. I'll meet you all in a world where Kofi Kingston is a world champion.

Hey man, I love reading your posts but it's apparent you're here for the same reason we all are. We're gluttons for punishment.

You went from watching the main event of a show to watching a curtain jerking battle royal? It'd be more bizarre if you expected similar results out of both of those

Has EC3 won a match since he signed? I include NXT in that. Dude is getting buried so deep that you can't even see him.

Sam Roberts' shitty heel-aping work is dying out for someone to storm the set, cut a promo on him and put him in his place.

Remember when Cesaro won this and it felt like a huge deal?