Is Kofi Kingston turning into Chris Rock? Just listen to him when he's doing a promo.
Will Ospreay v Kushida for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship.
https://youtu.be/VPYt6YyIJjA
Shield reunion agenda
1. print t-shirts
2. hooooragh
That sounds like a fucking bizarre episode of RAW. Basically an extended 205 live.
Adding Boatman to the Shield match means somebody has to look like an arsehole in defeat. Either the really strong team of Miz, Sheamus, Cesaro and Strowman lose with a colossal advantage or the Shield lose and you wonder why they bothered.
Fucking knows what they're up to with Wyatt now either.
Apparently they're putting all the Cruiser stuff on last because a) it pushes it but also b) because people are turning off for Monday Night Football anyway. I dunno if that actually works with the timings but if it does then it wouldn't surprise me. WWE has form for that sort of thing.
Wasn't Boatman a Wyatt member before they realised he was better off tearing the roster up?
I don't find Finn Balor convincing on the mic, but it's to his credit that at no point he started laughing at Bray Wyatt pretending to be a girl with a sheet on his head.
You'd have thought a company whose female gimmicks are all shit like "I'm Ric Flair's daughter!", "I'm a boss... but in no way am I actually a boss" and "I wear goggles" would have used the character to actually give a Diva a personality but.... nope, let's just make it a bloke in drag. That always goes down well.
Luke Harper and Erick Rowan popped back up on Smackdown last night, rebranded as The Bludgeon Brothers, with MASSIVE club things in their hands.
Rumour has it that Neville has quit, but that’s not been confirmed by anyone yet.
Be a real shame if Neville has gone, it felt like he was really building up momentum. The timing seems odd for him to throw his toys out of the pram - presumably they had no plans for him to move to the main roster.
Future GFW Champion forever.
Is there some kind of springboard beside the ring during Kalisto’s entrance, or does he legitimately jump from outside the ring, do a flip over the ropes and land in the ring?
I'm a twit
There's a springboard.
The Neville thing is disappointing. As SvN said, presumably he was told they weren't actually going to be treating him like a proper wrestler again, despite him deserving it.
It can't inspire much confidence when you look up the card and see how they're treating people who are much bigger names than you. Add that to what is happening with wrestlers coming though NXT (some in a second stint with the company) with no small amount of momentum and a few years in the indies selling merch and looking like a superstar must look pretty tempting.
Even if you ultimately still want to do the business in WWE then yeah, when you've got the talent just piss off for a few years and smash it elsewhere and you'll almost certainly have the option of coming back in a better position than when you left.
Yup, Rey used to get catapulted out of a hole in the ground for his entrance too, I think that was a little springboard of some kind.
Meanwhile Ahmed Johnson (hi, @Cord !) used to do all his own stunt work while taking suicide dives to their logical conclusion.
WWE's saturation of the market might just crash the whole thing, to be honest. I was reminded Austin Aries flounced off earlier in the year over similar reasons to Neville. "Man, it would be great if X was in the fed." And then they turn up on 205 live or some offshoot before pissing off.
Too much talent, not enough slots and then they do things like the UK Championship of the Mae Young Classic which just exacerbates it. Hell, the CWC begat the 205 Live debacle.
Me and Cord were talking about this on Steam the other day and he said it'd be amazing if WWE became a stepping stone to the indies until they sorted they shit out. And he's right. Guys turn up, make a buck and improve their reputation for a few years (a guy being underused is always better than the guy who's doing it in the mind of your common fan) and then goes on to do it with the little guys as a big name. Or NJPW if he's lucky. And then as I said above, if he's actually good and wants to go back to WWE the option will basically be his, even if he has to do a year in NXT.
But if he's ex-WWE and already knows "the style" then there's less need for that and they'd be loving the chance to exploit the return of a guy who's a bigger name.
But yeah, for all the bemoaning of the current product a lot of people seem to overlook that even their own personal biases aside there just isn't enough room for the amount of talent they currently have to be booked in the way everybody wants. That doesn't account for FUCKING JINDER, of course, but in terms of in-ring ability the standard is generally better than the most popular eras. And you'd think the mic-work would be less interminable, if less "polished", if they were given the freedom of previous eras too.
A month or 2 back I started watching Smackdown and 205 live (RAW was still too long for me to even attempt) but it only lasted a few weeks. I just realised that, despite paying for the network, I haven't even glanced at the last 2 PPVs, so I've cancelled it. What a load of shit it is these days. Hopefully the rebranded WCPW will stay good to give me something to watch.
He’s back:
The Shield vs The Miz, Sheamus, Cesaro, Strowman and Kane is now the main event for TLC.
It’ll be fun to see the Shield run through the majority of the top heels in one match.
I did mark out for Kane.
I have a deep and abiding love for Kane but even I reacted with a "Kane? Why?" before I remembered to be pleased to hear his music.
When you think about big pops, he's fourth behind glass shattering, the rock smelling and the Taker chimes.
Imagine the pop CM Punk would get if they somehow kept it under wraps.
I'm a twit
To avenge his brother who he spent 20 years trying to murder, obviously.
The what culture lot are back as Cultaholic.
I didn't realise Blampied was one of the ones who'd gone. I hope he gets back to doing How WWE Should (Have) Book(ed) under another name. Loved me some of them.
Everybody left aside from Simon and his big arms. He also moonlights for a gaming site so he probably didn't bat an eye when it all went tits up.
The guy who did the leg work behind their magazine seems to working for someone else now too.
Brock V Jinder at Survivor Series has dusty finish written all over it.
Shame it's not in an open air arena, Brock could launch the Singh brothers into space.
Do WWE think the key difference between men and women is women have hairier faces?
Holy fucking shit. Angle is back and Balor is now facing Styles.
SHIIIELD
Get the milk out.
Apparently this illness thing had started with viral meningitis and now quite a lot of the roster are being checked with mumps.
Bo Dallas and Bray Wyatt have been ill, apparently JoJo the ring announcer is ill too. You’ve got to presume Roman Reigns is next.
Now is ‘Mumps’ going to be a baby face or a heel?
He's the fourth face of Foley.
I hope JoJo is okay.
I'm a twit
This is the most use they've ever got out of that 'card subject to change' disclaimer.
So they bumped the Balor-Styles match to the main event then?
Is Styles going to be Sister Abigail?
Neville should've waited a week and nabbed a title shot / reign. Plus he's MMR vaccinated, like all good British children.
Browning has asked the key question.
"The bad news, AJ, is we're committed now so you're definitely going to have to wrestle in drag."
Which will go down well with the bible belt gay basher.
Well that was a bit of a state. The main event started well and was a good "Shield-style" high-tempo start, but the whole thing sagged way too much in the middle, relied too much on people having a five-minute kip after relatively little punishment and the bit where it was 5-on-2 was ridiculously tame just so they could make it more believable when Ambrose and Rollins fought back. I mean, you're talking about what's meant to be a bunch of brutal heels and they're holding their outnumbered opponents up so Sheamus can jump off the top for an axe-handle smash? C'mon.
And is Kane really back to give Strowman something to do?
At least Styles / Balor was good. Probably Balor's best WWE main roster match so far.