I'm happy with the winners. Otis winning is really unexpected to me. I would also have been OK with Dana Brooke winning. WWE have given loyalty reigns before & it would certainly be better than another Nia Jax push or randomly slapping Tamina on PPV shows but whatever. Asuka is great.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Otis lose the briefcase in a match to someone though. But since it's WWE, he'll probably cash it in for the tag titles & his teammate will turn on him. 

2 minutes ago, Al said:

The sound effect was way too quick for them to have fallen all the way off the roof.

Yeah they would have had to fall about 100 miles per hour to make a thud about 2 seconds after falling that far

 

1 minute ago, Coffey said:

I'm happy with the winners. Otis winning is really unexpected to me. I would also have been OK with Dana Brooke winning. WWE have given loyalty reigns before & it would certainly be better than another Nia Jax push or randomly slapping Tamina on PPV shows but whatever. Asuka is great.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Otis lose the briefcase in a match to someone though. But since it's WWE, he'll probably cash it in for the tag titles & his teammate will turn on him. 

 

LMAO, so true. They might wait for that cash in until they can do a show on his home town.

This Undertaker doc has been tremendous so far. The symbolism of a legendary character trying to wring out one more match from his battered body, and going to the gym wearing an Andre the Giant shirt was probably unintentional but it struck me. 

14 minutes ago, Al said:

The sound effect was way too quick for them to have fallen all the way off the roof.

So what am I supposed to believe they fell into? A cherry picker that Stone Cold Steve Austin had driven up to the side? A fire department trampoline that The Gobbledy Gooker was holding?  Surely there's some casual fans out there (not just nitpicking cranks like me) who know what Titan Towers looks like and that all the ways to fall off the roof look fatal. They could have at least had Michael Cole freak out, considering he screams his way through random matches every night anyway. In 1995 the announcers shit their pants when the Giant went off the building, even if he didn't miss a single night.

If you don't want the audience to think twice about a guy taking a fall off of a building, and you'd rather just say "good night folks thanks for joining us on this unique night" instead of "oh my God somebody fell off a building," you don't have to do the spot.

Conrad trying to poke the bear by quote tweeting Bryan Alvarez saying that he didn't like the Brother Love cameo in an effort to get the Prichard fanboys riled up was maybe the saddest thing I've seen tonight.

 

Well there was also Ryan Satin tweeting about how Tamina deserves a run with the belt. For existing I presume.

50 minutes ago, hammerva said:

Yeah they would have had to fall about 100 miles per hour to make a thud about 2 seconds after falling that far

 

I was genuinely curious so I looked up the math on this, and the calculator I found says that a 25-meter (85-foot) fall takes 2.26 seconds. They would reach 79 km/h (49 mph).

https://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed.html

The sound effects were more like 1.2 seconds. Maybe they were just the actual crashpad sound. Although wouldn't that be over 40 feet? Hmm.

Maybe this is the new form of meta-working the marks. Instead of the booking decisions, get us thinking about the editing decisions.

 

I just caught up but my great wisdom, that once they hit the roof I started fast forwarding like crazy, is obviously unnecessary here.

The highlights of that main event was Carmella hitting Dana with a poster of herself and Vince wearing Jeans. I bet he hasn't worn any since the Piledriver video. Glad Asuka and Otis won. I have a feeling Otis is going to give Mandy his briefcase.

Not even good camp, really. I liked the "movie" matches they did at Wrestlemania just fine, but this one was embarrassing and seemed filmed on the cheap by comparison, even though it was probably more expensive to produce.

I'm still wondering why Asuka went to the second floor with the elevator rather than the top.

1 hour ago, CarpetCrawler said:

I'm still wondering why Asuka went to the second floor with the elevator rather than the top.

Maybe she didn't know the winning briefcase was on the roof either, like Dana Brooke, despite them constantly telling us it ended on the roof.

Also, it's a sensitive subject & I understand that, but did Nia get bigger during her time away injured? If not, that body suit is not doing her any favors.

9 hours ago, Loss said:

Not even good camp, really. I liked the "movie" matches they did at Wrestlemania just fine, but this one was embarrassing and seemed filmed on the cheap by comparison, even though it was probably more expensive to produce.

Too much of the humour, as with a lot of WWE skits, was *person turns up and says catchphrase* repeated three or four times.

I am genuinely screaming with laughter at the fact that the 85-feet bumps which they built up on TV for WEEKS ended up meaning absolutely nothing. It would be even more hilarious if they just never mention those bumps again.

11 hours ago, CarpetCrawler said:

Conrad trying to poke the bear by quote tweeting Bryan Alvarez saying that he didn't like the Brother Love cameo in an effort to get the Prichard fanboys riled up was maybe the saddest thing I've seen tonight.

 

One of the reasons I’ve fallen behind on Arn is that, especially on the “Ask Arn Anything” episodes, Conrad always seems to be more interested in getting new shirt ideas, or a quip he can tweet out for “internet buzz” more so than interesting podcast discussions.  Often leaving low hanging fruit dangling to get on to something else*.  Good to see that’s still his operating procedure when it comes to creating buzz for his programing.

*i.e. I’d like to hear more about why, besides getting paid by AEW, that Marty Lunde has no desire to be a talking head on a WWE documentary or be on any like retrospective programing beyond the simple “no, thank you.” I know the answer but still, be a good 2-3 minute conversation about holding grudges, and if there was something that anything connected to the company could do to mend the fence, and if the answer could change years down the road.

I really have had my fill of this production style now. The women having to do their entrance poses while standing in the lobby was preposterous; are we even supposed to pretend these are real people now?

Bryan rounding the corner shouting "Is everybody ready for a fight?!" was funny though; that dude knows he's bulletproof.

No Fucks Given Bryan is one of the best things in WWE right now. 

I think it speaks volumes about his mentality that Brie isn't crazy about him traveling right now since he's theoretically at higher risk, but they ultimately made the call that anything that knocks time off of his contract is worthwhile.

So I watched the thing. It was terrible. Even in this setting, the camera work and editing makes it super annoying and hard to watch. The "ideas" mostly sucked and it was pretty boring for such a concept match. The attempt at humour is pathetic and embarrassing (Brother Love in the bathroom, food fight with Heyman, pie in the face of Johnny Ace, the worst fall on wet floor ever). The less said about Corbin "throwing people off the tower", the better. I mean, it's stupid enough but the execution with that piss-poor splash sound was so amateur hour. And hey, what a WWE show be without Stephy talking down to talent and making them look like idiots and geeks ? Just stupid on many respect, poorly executed and produced, not very interesting nor fun to watch really (yeah Asuka, Bryan, Otis, Lacy and Carmella had their moments). 

16 hours ago, CarpetCrawler said:

I'm still wondering why Asuka went to the second floor with the elevator rather than the top.

Plus Titan Towers seems to have to slowest elevators in the world.

Also were the "thrown off the building" spots even supposed to be that? The helicopter shots they showed, for example immediately after the spots, clearly showed the ring 20 m or whatever away from the edge on each side.

And what the fuck was with the hand puppets appearing around the ring in the Bray Wyatt match? This was "Warrior appearing in the mirror in Hogan's mind" levels of stupid.

When the Fiend character started, there would be times on Smackdown where the puppets would show up in the background in segments. I suppose that having them show up during matches was the next logical step (I know they did it for the Funhouse match but that was just one big acid trip). 

They should have the Funhouse puppets appear on screen after a huge slam or move like the Toasty dude from Mortal Kombat.

They should have the entire gimmick vanish forever because it makes every opponent he feuds with look like a complete dork unless they are bulletproof like Cena and Bryan. 

21 hours ago, Coffey said:

I wouldn't be surprised to see Otis lose the briefcase in a match to someone though. But since it's WWE, he'll probably cash it in for the tag titles & his teammate will turn on him. 

"During an interview with Digital Spy earlier this week, Otis said that he would be cashing in on the Smackdown Tag Team Champions.

"If I get the briefcase, we're challenging for the Tag Team titles," Otis said.

He added, "I don't think there's a rule of what titles to challenge for, so we're going to challenge for the Tag Team titles, cash it in, and that's what's going to happen... if I can get up that ladder."