Stiva

There's so many individual matches to look forward to, so many instances of promoters plucking dream matches out of the air but nothing that compares to the first night insanity of Dan Maff vs Hornswoggle in a Street Fight.

You have to assume HHH is putting himself bang in the middle of the card, right before the crowd tire out to ensure the biggest crowd response. There's no way the main event gets a ton of heat since these shows are so long. And with 16 matches, marching the HOFers out and all the miscellaneous nonsense around the sides, this one is going to be the supershow to end all supershows.

The main of the Anniversary show was some wild business. The Briscoes were king-sized, bumping huge, bleeding big and driving the edges of the snapped canes into PCOs throat was ridiculously nasty looking. The botched piledriver bump was oddly aided by being fucked up because it looked like King slipped on Jay's blood, leading to the spill. PCO is certifiable; he keeps bumping like that on the ring apron then this run isn't going to last much longer. The Briscoes remain one of my favourite teams ever and, while I know they're loyal to ROH, I'd love one big run on a stage like WWE/AEW.

There's definitely an argument to be made that this is the greatest promo of all time. As said, it should have been the springboard to the Horsemen vs nWo but the next 18 months is pretty great in it's own right.

With hindsight, he was done when Brock didn't put him over in late 2017. That was the time.

Yeah, time has been really kind to this feud and these matches. Simple, well-thought out, well-executed matches that played to both guys strengths and made great use of Diamond Doll. The overarching story was classic undercard fare that got the crowd into it and also helped build into DDPs rise later on. It’s an underrated aspect of WCWs rise in 95/96 but it was another example of something that WWF weren’t doing well.

Yeah, even with skipping through the tags and the undercard, these shows are still a good chunk of time. I can’t imagine trying to watch all the NJPW possible, it seems like a hell of a commitment.

Orton and Punk had a really good match at Mania too, in what will probably amount to the same place on the card. It'll be a good, tight, 10 minute match that will be far from the worst offender on the night.

If they're going to go this route, I wish they'd utilise the Ronda/Mortal Kombat connection and make Scorpion and Sub-Zero tag team champions.

Though, I would love the ending to their arc taking place on a spaceship that is hurtling into the sun

Dana Warrior is in there to "provide a female perspective" apparently. Think of all the talented women in the wrestling business who you'd assume are brimming with ideas and they turn to her.

They're really in danger of over-stirring the pot. This is already the match people want to see, let the excitement and tension build on TV.

Awesome, thanks. New Japan and ROH have a strange ability to make me look at a card and, despite seeing match ups that look intriguing, not have a single clue if they'll actually be good or not.

Anything worth watching from the Honor Rising shows? Or is ROHs complete and utter blandness impossible to overcome?

I hope Santino inducts him, in character, as the Honky Donky Man.

I actually think I’d rather have Reigns in Seth’s corner at Mania instead of having him wrestle one of Raws boring as fuck heel guys.

He had fucking awesome entrance music and that will be missed.

FWIW, the four guys that a recent ex of mine loved were Finn and The Shield. Though, she also had a thing for Baron Corbin but I think that was an outlier. EDIT: I think it was Finn's ridiculous abs that she liked rather than his whopper but I'm sure her eyes were going there.

TJP has felt less and less useful as more and more guys on 205 Live came to the fore.

Yikes, Seth doesn’t seem like he’s going to fare any better as a top draw this time around. Looks like Becky will be Raw-bound after Mania.

I’m glad that the years of pushing part time talent as the only thing that matters is coming back to bite them. They need a Mania like this to shake them into life and change the focus a bit. As for Raw sucking, who would have guessed that putting all the good workers and tag teams who are capable of filling time with long matches on Smackdown would also come back and hurt them eventually?

I hope that the person playing Vince adopts his sleep cycle and rampant steroid abuse as a form of method acting.

Edge was always going to get pushed, regardless since they had him groomed for the top spot from 98 onwards. Whether that's because they considered him good-looking or not, I don't know but later, Rated R Edge was the very archetype of what WWE think cool people look like. Long hair, sunglasses indoors, suit jacket with t-shirt underneath and awful jeans.

It's awesome to see PAC back on the scene and clearly motivated to have good matches. The first few minutes of this is fairly pedestrian stuff until Kzy hits a dive that sends he and PAC backwards about 5 feet into the crowd and then follows it with a flipping neckbreaker from the apron. From there, we get PAC hitting an obscenely high superplex where it, honest to god, looks like KZYs feet touch the ceiling and he transitions into heel control. PAC bulking up and adding some whip and drive into his stuff during the WWE heel run really was a welcome addition, especially with KZY throwing himself and bumping huge and hard on everything. Say what you will about NXT, PAC is really a much more expressive wrestler having gone through the ringer. As said, when this goes, it stays gone; huge bombs thrown, the dives are hit with such smoothness and heft, all the big moves are hit such snap and torque that KZY really does look like he could have snapped his back at about 3 points and even the strike exchanges are done right. The shooting star to a standing KZY was one of the craziest killshots I can ever remember seeing. It looked like the kind of thing that would completely break both of your shoulders. Wild match with a lethal heel performance from PAC and a fantastic performance from underneath by KZY. 2019 PAC owns.