Nia Jax
Christ. All the actual talent they've got and they bring Jax back.
If you specific want a big woman you've got a Piper Niven right there (once she's back from injury?)
If you just want a challenger for Ripley use literally any of your other women.
I don't get it at all.
We will be shocked to hear that Vince is back from medical leave and made several changes to Raw last night.
On that similar topic, say what you want about CM Punk, but the booking of Collision suspiciously went to shit last week in his absence.
WWE officially no longer his after last night? Hopefully a last hoorah. Get him gone.
The Endeavour guy who's now in charge of everything insisted that Vince was part of it, so unless he gets done for something more serious than whatever caused his two week retirement that's him set there for life now
Trips has been ousted though. He has his position in creative but he's not COO or whatever he was before, now.
One title defence in 6 months for Reigns. The biggest joker on the roster. Properly lazy bastard.
They had to give him the part time role otherwise he would have jacked completely but there can still be a lot of second guessing the record title reign. I think Reigns equals Sammartino’s second reign (in terms of days) by the end of the year, yet only has 30 defences versus 203.
I get it’s a different era and all and a month or so after WrestleMania it felt like they’d possibly made the right decision to carry on with the reign even though we all wanted Cody, but now five months on the Bloodline storyline is spinning its wheels after fumbling the Summerslam match and it seems like Cody will never get close to where he was. So maybe it was worth the chance of doing the title change after all.
Triple H has this thing where he likes the hero of the story to fail first time and then battle back up.
Everything just felt right to make the change to Rhodes. Sami and Drew before him would have worked, but not to the same degree. Problem now is Cody has lost his perfect storm running up to it and WWE seem to think losing the belt can only happen at Mania now.
So we're in this weird situation where the Bloodline story is ready to wrap up now as it has worn out its welcome somewhat, yet we're nowhere near Mania season, so we can't. Instead we must split off and do other things for a while. I wouldn't put it past them to have Cody win the rumble a second time and do pretty much the exact same build up.
But then, Hogans record wont be far off...
Remember pre-Tribal Chief when he would talk about how shit Brock was for being a part-timer?
He's so much worse than Brock ever was.
Is he?
They're even on the "having the exact same match whenever they do bother to wrestle" thing (aside from the occasional 3 or 4 man match, but given Brock would spend most of those lying down during his worst part-timing run I'm not sure they're much of a boon).
The Bloodline stuff is actually very good (or has been, with some spots of wheel spinning) where Brock would turn up, Heyman would do his one Brock promo because there was usually no story (or it was just more fucking Reigns matches).
Reigns has helped get some people more over even if he/WWE haven't put them over. No bugger got over out of Brock no-selling their character/story and then beating them in 10. Exception being Rollins I guess but then he also actually lost to Rollins and had matches outwith his usual smaller dude template.
In Brock's favour is that when he was about he was at least defending his title whereas while some of the Reigns non-title matches have been great it sucked having no world title matches on so many PPVs.
Also in Brock's favour is that other than that one year where WWE was having him bury all their guys with potential to be contenders so that they could pretend it was exciting when Roman kicked out of 371 F5s he never had the belt for this mad a stretch of time.
Depending how highly you value the Bloodline stuff and his part in that I think they're at worst about the same, and even then it's WWE who're the actual problem. They can't control how often these guys work if they have the sway to get big money AND a part-time thing but WWE can not keep the belts on them.
Although to that last point: Cena and the like have got flack before for not putting over people he could have and it looks worse because with e.g. the Nexus he's actively "That doesn't work for me, brother"-ed it but that doesn't stop either Bork or Reigns going "Erm actually is this a bit much now?"
I think Reigns is great, it's just a shame their top title is stuck on him. I think the later Bloodline stuff would have succeeded without a belt, and really we're only here now moaning about it because the storyline has gone sideways in recent months and Cody hasn't come out of the Brock stuff with any more momentum.
Clearly the Bloodline end game was planned well in advance and Cody tearing his pec presented them with an unknown. Sometimes you've got to forgo your stubbornness and roll with it. There seemed to be so many possibilities for the Bloodline had Reigns lost the title, and ultimately we wouldn't be bemoaning Reigns' part time status were he not holding the top title to ransom.
Part time Brock was the best thing ever. People were seething all over the place and it was more entertaining than the product’s been in decades.
If you think the IWC being cross is entertaining you're gonna shit your pants when you try TV or a video game.
Yeah, I hear that new Starfield game is a load of shit.
To be fair a Bethesda game might be worse than the IWC moaning.
Becky Lynch defo heard about Nia Jax coming back and fucked off to NXT.
Surprised she won the title so at least it will be an extended run for her in NXT. Is it worth watching again? AEW has been pants since All In and I've been busy since anyway so I might willingly extend my forced hiatus, WWE's good bits (LA Knight) can just be caught on YouTube and I've completely lost interest in New Japan.
I haven't bothered with it week-to-week since Joe had the title I don't think, but the internet geeks are all over it again recently.
I've recently gotten back into it (after the last PPV) and it's good but not a patch on the black and gold era.
Miles better than early 2.0 though.
They've got some great talent and they're utilizing them well.
Booker T on commentary is a real shitter though.
As expected, there wasn’t 82k at the Wembley show. Around 10k less than that who went through the turnstiles
Can't wait to see how Meltzer explains this one away for his friends, considering he breaks his back to use turnstile counts to correct WWE's bullshitting.
Think of Will Ospreay who got a tattoo of the attendance.
Looks like Jade Cargill is going to WWE. Pretty useless in the ring but my God she looks amazing, she could get over big if they hide her limitations well.
I'm a twit
Let's see how long it takes for Nia Jax to break her.
At this point Nia Jax has to either be cosied up to someone in the right place or she's some 55th cousin of the Rock or Roman Reigns.
She offers nothing. She's too big to work a match with where she isn't(literally) squashing. She's a shit promo as well if memory serves.
It's annoying as Rhea deserves better, but I expect the crowd will turn nasty over this one.
She's actually the second cousin of The Rock.
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/wwe/...x12baluq56ueei
"Being part of the legendary Anoa’i wrestling family, whose tree includes her cousins Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and the late "High Chief" Peter Maivia, to name a few,"
Is Tamina still getting a paycheck?
PWInsider and Sean Ross Sapp. Apparently her contract is up at the end of the month and she has no intention of re-signing.
The return could just be to do a clean job on the way out.
Yeah, me either. Honestly thought she was a random fatty from Australia.
Yeah she's in for family reasons. Tamina, she's the one who knows where the bodies are buried. Possibly literally.
Roman not wrestling until November in Saudi apparently...
Didn’t expect to see The Rock randomly appear on Smackdown whilst scrolling through Twitter
I have no idea if he just showed up for tonight since him and Pat MacAfee were in the same area or if he’s really going to be fighting Reigns.
Poor Cody if so.
I just clocked we have Balor/Styles and Knight/Miz tonight as well as Asuka/Bayley. Add John Cena being on the card as well as The Rock appearing, the new folk in charge obviously want to start with a bang
Bless you putting Knight / Miz in there.
Also.i.wonder if since his last attempt the Rock has come up.with a good promo. Given his more recent films suggest he's lost any sense of humour about himself I'm gonna say no.
Still, the pop will be great. Not as good as I'd they hadn't FUCKING ANNOUNCED IT but what do I know.
Tbf I don’t think they did announce it. Just that SRS bloke put out a tweet but WWE didn’t put anything out as far as I can see.
Miz/Knight was decent but I think all the matches are being rushed due to the opening segment going on forever. Honestly thought Smackdown was 3 hours long. Teasing Knight/Solo is interesting
Ah, fair enough.
Well as expected the Rock offered nothing beyond the initial pop and a few cheap ones after. And as you say that opening thing took so fucking long and frankly it's just bizarre to have the Rock around and not even a proper tease of some Bloodline crossover.
I hope that's Knight done with the Miz but I've no idea what I'd do with him next. I'm not sure the match he'd have with Solo would be much cop and also don't really want either of them losing that. I guess it'd give him something fairly meaty to get his teeth into though.
Still not really feeling the Jimmy stuff.
Yeah, Jimmy is a weirdo and a bit shit. Jey is fine on his own but Jimmy is utterly dreadful. I really hope they don’t have a match as it’ll be dreadful. They both have the same moveset which consists of super kicks, horrible punches, Samoan drop and a splash.
Yeah and especially given they'd probably try and give it the HHH EPIC treatment and twice the time it needs. I mean if they really want to give Jey a shot at a solo run a match with Jimmy would be the time for him to actually expand his moveset because we really don't need Taker vs Taker but for little Polynesians.
Outstanding.
He’s fat as fuck.
He had the ace debut when he threw the guy half a mile in the air, that seems to be where he peaked and it's all gone straight off a cliff since.