I'm gonna be so sad when Braun jobs to "The Guy"

I think Kevin Owens was an interior decorator in a past life. Have never seen a wrestler who savors arranging furniture more than he.

 

Someone must have given Owens a best of Trent Acid DVD because that chair set up was almost every CZW match in 2001 and 2002

Reigns-Owens: I liked the early shenanigans with the cage, and the brawl tribute to Austin-Bret was felt. The chairs were ridiculous, but give these guys credit: they set out to steal the show. Plunder brawling with Sabu-era plunder feels like cheating, but the crowd at this bar cheered loudly for the table splash and hard chair shots. And to give the devil who's sucked in-ring all year his due: Jericho was awesome in that cage. So campy, and thus so what the moment called for. People went crazy for Owens mocking the Superman punch, and later Owens flagrantly turning himself babyface with the Stunner and mudhole stomps. Hugo and Graves standing together waiting for a powerbomb popped me. Need to see where they're going with the finish, but yeah, that was something. I hope it's not the build for Reigns' match at Mania, but I don't know, maybe it'll work.

Braun v. Roman could be really good. As we saw against Lesnar, Reigns is actually quite good at working from underneath.

I think I'm going to restrict in my praise/criticisms as we go to simply whether or not what I see helps the company: I see literally no virtue in setting up Stroman and Reigns with neither leaving tonight with the belt. I also see no virtue in making Jericho's role in the match unrelated to the finish (thus not advancing that storyline either). Finally, I think we can all get together on there being no virtue on not turning Reigns heel. Except maybe I guess it's possible he won't be in the main event? And I don't think Vince and company would see that as a virtue.

I'm excited for Braun vs Roman.

 

This has been a fun PPV so far.

 

What the hell was Sami doing? Haven't checked RAW in while, was that part of a gimmick or something?

Nice. An overlong, worked-at-a-snail-pace Attitude Era like garbage brawl, with the whole Jericho spot rendered absolutely useless thanks to the no-DQ stip, which overstayed its welcome about half-way through ending on a shit finish with a Kane/911 run-in. Gawwwwd. The self-conscious epic aspect of these overlong matches with carefully planned "epic" spot I really have zero patience for at this point. If you do a brawl, make it dirty and dramatic, not deliberate like this. It felt like 1999 again.

 

Reigns vs Braun ? Cool, One match I can FF at Mania.

 

This PPV is FUCKING SLOW.

So Owens vs Jericho is also a definite for Wrestlemania. I assume Jericho is the babyface in this but man he is such an easy hateable face

I am pleased these cruiserweight dudes aren't speaking with the generic WWE promo intonation.

I hope the crowd doesn't take a total shit on the cruisers. It's actually a solid setup for the match.

Great Vid to set up the Cruiserweight match. Hope crowd gets behind it.

Nope

I have been pretty underwhelmed thus far. I just so tired of That style of plunder brawling. I expected and wanted to see Reigns/Braun for the title. Well at least we are getting the match could be the show stealer at Mania!

Crowd has been checking their phones but this is a very solid match thus far.

Really nice to see the Cruisers put forth a really good performance, even if the crowd is silent.

No one slaps his thigh quite as well as Swann.

I know a couple of PWOers are in the building - is the crowd anywhere near 52k?

 

Bummer to see the cruisers put on a solid match to silence, even in front of hardcore fans at a PPV. May be time for yet another re-think on this experiment.

Really enjoyed the cruisers. Neville has found his calling in the bully heel role and Swann brought the requisite fire.

Swann-Neville: To the credit of everyone on this show, everyone in the ring seems to be treating this like the second biggest show of the year. On the other hand, there was a fight in the bar I'm in that early on had more heat than this match. Crowd did pick up during Swann's big rana and 450, and this felt bigger than anything the division's done to date. The home stretch was very good: I've seen both guys live and never liked either of them this much, and people seem to buy Neville as a seething heel Tyrion Lannister.

AJ Styles save me!

Great idea for a cruiserweight match to do stomps and chinlock spots. Because this show has been so breathtaking thus far.

 

Well, it was *solid*. No idea why this is on PPV though. Apparently neither does this audience. At least they can watch the match without the awful camera tricks which ruin every cool spot too.

 

Boring, snail pace show thus far, with Charlotte vs Bayley being the best match thus far at *very good*.

I absolutely loathed the Styles/Cena Summerslam match, as it went 10 minutes past overkill for me. I hope I like this one as well as most people liked the last one.

I absolutely loathed the Styles/Cena Summerslam match, as it went 10 minutes past overkill for me.

 

Ditto. It went 20 minutes overkill to me. So. The same. Hopefully they don't work like WWE epic-programmed-robots this time

Wonder if this match would have gotten better reaction if they switched Bayley vs Charlotte in this position. I thought it was a very good match but yeah crowd didn't care one bit

 

cena vs Styles in the "can we have a better Omega vs Okada match" match. This is probably going to be a long one

Over/Under for falses finishes in this match? I wonder how much PWGing will Cena do.

 

AJ gonna make it work regardless though