Stiva

Broken Matt cracks me up, man. I love how he always changes up his early spot where he stops and shouts something. Him telling Viktor that his cartwheel was "TREMENDOUS!" was fantastic on Raw

Really dug the Cruiser match. 205 Live is shockingly consistent these days.

Hunter must have botched his spray tan

"No matter what is happening in my universe" is absolutely how regular people talk about their problems

The spot-calling is ridiculous and the whole thing is kinda bland and formulaic but it's exactly the match they should be working for this crowd.

And there's the first ham-fisted reference to Bruno

Ha, I love how the crowd is popping for WWE tropes like HHH spitting water and Cena running down the aisle. This is like a crowd that Vince has created in a lab.

Seeing a lot of people say that they should give Kofi the Rumble win. Yeah, hold a marquee show in a new, rich market and end it with Kofi Kingston winning

I wonder how hot the crowd will be? I mean, its sweltering heat so I know theyll be warm but in terms of reacting to the show

Simple studio wrestling but I came out of it really digging Eddie Golden. He wasn't reinventing the southern heel wheel but he was playing one really well as well as knitting the whole match together, feeding Styles at the right time and he even looked good in the post-match beatdown. Does Jeff G Bailey punch a fan that tries to grab him? That guy was/is something else, man.

Fun match that manages to be refreshing in the context of recent brawls than anything else. With regards to Ki, he whiffs a couple of strikes and still looks green but he's just so naturally smooth at times; the moonsault to the outside is beautiful and the height and impact he gets on the big spots makes them look great. Cool to see that the crowd could still pop for a match like this without 100 table spots and they deserve credit for that. Monsta Mack was perfectly fine in this, finding some interesting ways to splat Ki all over the ring, put it all together and the match works. Indy refs are still counting way too fast for my liking though.

On the subject of merch sales, I remember Bryans merch being uniformly terrible at the time with fake beards and bad shirt designs based around him having a beard. Compare that to 08-09 Hardy when it seemed like every kid in the arena had those day-glo arm bands on

Coach's call during the Braun/Nicholas shit at Mania is up there with the worst of all time. Graves was talking about how ridiculous it all was and Coach replies with "Look, he's out there, making a dream come true for this young kid!" Not only did it sound inauthentic, it was maybe the most tone deaf take on pro wrestling you could pull off. Graves rebutted by completely ripping it to shreds, talking about how it was a Tag Team Title match at Wrestlemania, not a Make-a-Wish request and he sounded genuinely angry instead of putting it on as he does when he's busting Booker's or Byron's balls. So yeah, he'll be no great loss to the booth and Booker will inject a bit of life into the commentary at the very least.

Holy shit at Smackdown. Their PPVs should have some fantastic matches without even trying. EDIT: Oh shit, they scrapped them! One more cosmic joke: finally give Smackdown a roster that could sustain their own PPVs and then stop them

I also thought Pearce was great in the ROH vs CZW feud. He cut some good promos when the feud needed a mouth piece and he knitted the arena brawls and Cage of Death together really well without distracting from the guys that needed the spotlight in those matches.

I think a ***** rating represents objective perfection which can never be achieved in a creative craft that is at the mercy of subjective analysis. But if I had to answer on Meltzer's ratings, that Dragon Gate tag from ROH. And I love CIMA.

Don't worry, it will all go toward the 2020 Presidential campaign. I know Kid Rock wants to run for Senate but if we're putting money behind a WWE HOF'er, then let's get Mark Henry in the White House.

More great stuff from Evil Liger which sees the tanks actually get some good shots in on Godzilla. It isn't enough in the end but man, what a great sprint. The ending brainbuster looks suitably devastating after two excellent, explosive performances. I'm not sure what I've enjoyed the most so far this year: Evil Liger or El Satanico being a complete bastard. Viva heels.

I saw that Matt Striker shoot interview preview and he just came across as Michael Scott.

I enjoyed this, not as much as Loss but I really think this was an excellent opening tag match (if it was, I have no idea). As alluded to, the pace they cut was impressive but it breathed when it had to and I actually enjoyed the finish in a vacuum. The heels have had one avenue closed so they exploit another one. It's not something that you can do all the time because it brings up the logical fallacy of "Why doesn't the heel just always get intentionally DQ'd?" but I do think it works from time to time as a way to get heat. The ref even took a nice bump on the finish too! I have a standing belief that Joey Matthews is one of the lost or underrated workers of the 2000s so I hope PWO2K sees that be true.

I can't remember what order everything went in so I'm just bouncing around but I can co-sign Evolve 102 as having a really great main event but it also has Keith Lee throwing Darby Allin around in pretty special ways. A fantastic mix of great power offense and nutty bumping which I love. The Impact/Lucha Underground show had the feel of a televised house show but I actually enjoyed it well enough since there are definitely guys on both sides of that divide that are personal favourites (Jack Evans, Sydal, Aries, Drago, Trevor Lee). Everyone except Teddy Hart worked really hard to try and put on a good show amidst all the other hyped gigs. They had Teddy teaming with Steiner and I genuinely think Steiner put in more effort on his hot tag than Hart did at any point. It was kinda funny to see but the FIP sequence mostly involved him sitting in the corner as moves were heaped upon him and then nonchalantly making the hot tag after a quick high spot.

Taker/Rusev ends with Taker sending the casket off to the morgue. We follow the hearse and the "morgue" is just an outhouse with "TNA" spray-painted on the side.

Theyve been Impact Wrestling for however long now and even the talent is still calling it TNA. Thats some rebrand.

Really strong Mania on the whole that was REALLY fucking long. My viewing was definitely helped by consuming it in 2 chunks, rather than live but even then, I was ready for it to wrap up after Nak/Styles. Mixed tag was probably MOTN with Ronda looking like an absolute natural and Steph giving off the greatest performance of her career. She should seriously just pack it in now, she's never going to top that. HHH/Angle were there and I thought HHH bumped and worked hard to cover Angle's deficiencies. Nak/Styles was a really well worked match in front of a crowd that was totally burnt out. The heel turn was a hot angle and I'm glad they're trying to inject some life into the feud since you can't sell a "Dream Match" twice. Even then, the Dream Match was cold as hell. Main event was a total clusterfuck and I can't believe that they're still throwing money at Brock, The dude is worthless; we're going to get a rematch with Reigns in a cage and then what? Another 5 minute main event opposite Lashley? The act could justify itself when they were thin on top but look at the workers they have in top positions now. Without Brock, your Raw main event scene could be Reigns, Joe, Braun, Lashley, Miz, Rollins and Balor. That's a group of guys that the crowd is into and pop for. Anyway, everything else was great. I'd have liked to see Asuka and Rusev go over but Charlotte is their golden girl and she's great in her own right so whatever. The Rusev result though. It's pretty ridiculous that the dude put together a great act with English, came up with a catchphrase that everyone loves, has a top selling merch item and is a bonafide mega worker and they won't do anything with him. Yet they're content to rake in the money from his shirts. I hope he does get his release and can work in places that will give him the chance to shine. I think I've focused on the negatives too much but the opener exceeded all expectations, the Cena/Taker angle/squash was pretty much worked perfectly, the Braun/Nicholas stuff felt like a bit of a let down but I'm not sure that they could have delivered anybody that would have satisfied, especially with the match they worked. The two women's matches were strong and I liked the three pre-show matches all in all. They need to shorten these shows right down but this was probably my favourite Mania since 30. Also, the show is long but Rusev losing pretty much killed the crowd. And then once Rousey was done, they just tapped out. That should have went last.