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For the first time in almost 10 years I have not watched Summerslam. I even watched all the news stuff, spoilering myself to death.

So! AJ Lee is finally back, and looks tremendous.

One thing confuses me. Becky Lynch beat Trish Stratus and then most recently Nikki Bella pretty handily. So even if we apply the "wrestlers get stronger after their retirement" bonus, I think Mrs.Lynch over-sold the excellent entrance of AJ Lee quite a bit.

Giving WWE Wrestlepalooza a whirl.

Once again, I’m reminded that, for reasons I can’t adequately explain? The WWE just doesn’t seem to know what to do with tag teams.

WWE Superstar Drew McIntyre Cast In Chad Stahelski’s ‘Highlander’ As Henry Cavill’s Brother - DEADLINE

At least he's actually Scottish and not a Frenchman like Christopher Lambert

AEW works really well for me right now. Dynamite was lovely; if it wasn't for that huge don callis family...

Heyhey. I've been to the wrestling again. James Storm is EWA International Champion now. xD He was the only international guest this time. The summer event is a bit bigger. Also: not a single women's match either. But it was good fun. The end.

I have been so out of touch. Work has been crazy and WWE isn't easily viewable with my TV choices.

Cena's last match... was a thing that happened. Not a fan of the finish.

Yeah, 'member when watching WWE wasn't hopping through 20 hoops?

I liked the end to the match, even with the dopey peace-face. When HHH got into the ring, people boo'd him, and I didn't make the connection to the finish of thematch, I thought they boo'd him because of Trump, Saudi Arabia and TKO. By now I'm a bit on the fence about the finish, because I heard people complain about it and make some good points.

The man who never gives up... gave up... smiling.

If he'd have tapped while looking extremely tired and haggard I'd feel better about it. The whole smiling thing takes away from it all.

It certainly was weird, but memorable.


I watched World's End! And it was lovely. AEW are so good at PPVs.

Okada vs. Takeshita was proper rasslin', New Japan style stuff, and all of that. Only criticism: Wear different coloured pants! Maybe it's to signify how both are just no fun and how both are in the same group, but one of the most basic things a match requires I think are for the contenders to wear different coloured gear. Yes, the guys looks very different from one another, still: same-coloured gear looks just silly in my opinion. Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine. Second match, Moxley vs. Fletcher a bit less so, bit more brawly, lovely stuff to build a Don Callis family CIVIL WAR on. Moxley is great, still can't get behind Fletcher. (Fletcher landing on his head was GNARLY. No idea how these guys don't just shatter.)

Tag Team Wrestling, but a Chicago street fight! FTR vs. the bang bang gang's Juice Robinson and wider gunn. And by golly, he is wide. Came out like a ninja turtle toy, but I like people wearing different stuff for street fights (NOT some cosplay thing though. Do not love wrestlers dressing up as videogame/comicbook/whatever characters. Defeats the whole point of wrestling. But I digress.). What great fun. Maybe I'll play special attention to Cash Wheeler in 2026. He was really sports entertaining already after the heel turn this year, but he's really good in general, isn't he, and deserves our attention. Also, it almost looked like he'd murdered himself, jumping straight out of the ring and into that table. Yikes. Speaking of which, Stokley being thrown out of the ring, sliding over the table and head first into the announcers table also looked uncomfortable, but fit the character well.

Womens Tag Team Title Match! Babes of Wrath vs. Moné and Athena! In general I prefer "nasty fighter badass" Athena, but even at being a bit more like Moné in character she does so extremely well. Big, big Athena fan. Cool match. I like Willow, from the first match on, I see the value of Harley Cameron, and it finally looks like Mercedes Moné's losing streak commences and she snaps, which I like. She's still holding that EWA women's title hostage too, so that one should be the next in line for her to lose! Anyway, good match (great "athena flies in from off-camera" moments), good character stuff, Babes of Wrath cemented as serious title holders.

Darby Allin vs. Gabe Kidd: I like the latter! And I'm sure that many people see a great appeal in Darby Allin.

Big tornado tag team match. I like the Conglomeration as a group a whole lot less than I do the single parts of it, but I was okay with that intro, and Strong actually is a very welcome addition to the group by being a straight man to all those wacky characters. Death Riders look goodas always, I don't know what it is about Danny Garcia that makes me not really want to see him. It's weird. Very interesting timid forays into intergender wrestling there. Totally forgot that Strong is Shafir's husband, which adds a layer. But mainly Marina Shafir looks great and menacing, which is very good.

Women's world championship. Perfectly OK. I have to admit that at that point I didn't watch the screen as much any more, which is to my own loss because especially Hayter has to be seen in-ring. Because she's really, really good at the heavy-hitting wrestling.

Okada vs. Moxley: Great. Both great. Okada can't have a bad match and can play serious almost better than silly (even though with him the silly works so well because he's such a straight-laced dude), Moxley is good at everything. That tooth thing was gnarly, and of course shouldn't happen, but it added so much to the end of the match and the great post-match promo.

Four-way heavyweight title match: Strickland, MJF, Page, ...er... Joe. Again, great, swift, funny match. MJF's advancing hairline is something to behold. Amazing long-time storytelling from back when he was trying to get hold of Moxley's heavyweight championship and they had a sit-down debate in which MJF made fun of Moxley's lossof hair and the latter said that MJF would get there too. Amazing treading of that MJF character line where he's very cocky and a bully, but also extremely vulnerable on so many levels. Just kidding. Either way, Joe is always great, Page is the hero of our story once and forever, MJF is a dick, and Strickland is a tweener. And in that regard, I don't even mind the new entrance theme that much. He's a tough ass-kicker, with little nonsense here and there, but mostly he's just a dangerous contender for titles, and that is such an important character to have.

So yeah, World's End was super cool. Great mix of srs wresrtling and a holidays-appropriate portion of sillybollocks. Great stuff.


I also signed up for AEW plus, for that one week test thing. So I got World's End for cheaper and am watching old Dynamites now. Fun. And it reminds me of so many people we haven't seen for such a long time. I'd actually forgotten about Cima! And that Dax Harwood didn't always use to have a mustache! Just watched the Bucks lose to Private Party in the tournament for the very first tag titles. I also realized again that I really don't miss Marco Stunt. Nothing against the guy, but putting him with Jurassic Express was such a weird idea. Also: Luchasaurus talking is good. No need for him to talk as Killswitch, but as Luchasaurus he should talk. I miss the butcherand the blade too of course. The butcher looked amzing.

Rewatching early Dynamite episodes makes me sad about not seeing so many people any more (really liked Shanna), but it also makes me very happy we don't have to see Brandon Cutler on screen any more. Especially as a wrestler. "I like to play [popular pen&paper role-playing game] and look like it" must be the worst non-comedy wrestling gimmick of all time. It insults me as a wrestling fan AND as a pen&paper role-player. Not seeing Sammy Guevara as much any more isn't bad either. Also, how good was Jericho. Apparently many people soured on his presence on AEW tv now and he's WWE-bound, but I never really minded him. Probably a bit too present a lot of times, but never bad.


Small things like personal grudges aside -those were some really good shows.

Had intended to catch Royal Rumble. Found out it was recording in Saudi.

Fat old “NOPE” from me.

Yeah, it's annoying, isn't it. I did watch the Royal Rumble. WWE's PPV format with "as few matches as possible" is still odd. Since Rumble matches are pretty long though, the ads in between didn't feel too overwhelmingly long. However, they're doing a different thing now: We watched on the Network bescause that's still around here (thank glob!). However, each time there's ads on Netflix they just do nothing now, just a slideshow of pictures of wrestlers with a little "We'll be right back!" message along with a big Netflix logo underneath and elevator music.

Matches themselves were OK. Women's Rumble made me realize how horribly bad WWE entrance music is these days. Saw several NXT people of whom I only heard before for the first time. I was a bit down on Alexa Bliss (during her time out, Liv Morgan overtook her in every regard), but when she came out and did the character stuff with Charlotte.... what worked for me. Lash Legend is as fun asthe past time(s?), still like Nia Jax a lot. How the heck does American Made or what tthe stable is called still exist? I had to look the name up, but

Gunther/Styles was really good and kinda moving, even though the gloves thing in the end was unnecessarily unclear.

McIntyre vs. Zayn was there, I don't like Zayn in Saudi Arabia that much. And usually I love the guy; always have.

Men's Rumble was OK. First time I saw Mr.Iguana, don't like him. I liked LeParka a bit better.
They actually got me with the Powerhouse Hobbs entrance, because I'm a big stupid MARK.
Man, Rusev... that was disheartening.
Oba Femi is great, Brock Lesnar unnecessary, Cody's entrance was too long (not to mention Jey Uso's), Grande Americano's return was funny and good

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Had intended to catch Royal Rumble. Found out it was recording in Saudi.

Fat old “NOPE” from me.

Same, looked up the rosters after the fact and I'm glad I didn't bother. Last year was way better.

Yeah, it wasn't too great. What I disliked the most though is the music. The state of WWE's (who pay sooooooo much attention to the entrances. Which of course is good; wrestling entrances are so important.) entrance themes is dire. Royal Rumble is always very indicative of that, when you hear loads of them within a short timespan.

Either way. Dynamite. I mean AEW is always rather good, but right now the main title scene is really, really interesting. Andrade-Omega was a joy to behold. In general, the current Andrade run looks excellently good. I always liked him, but this run looks like what every Andrade run should have looked like. The guy seems to actually give a hoot, he's got a fun gimmick... best tv wrestling.

Paige is back! Yaaaaaayy!!!

NGL, having gone from watching almost every event show last year to watching none this year, I'm pretty disappointed with how "meh" everything has been so far.

MacAfee and Jelly Roll shouldn't have been getting Mania spots, and Speed shouldn't have either.

But hey, sack a bunch of your talent just so you can book some random people who are famous adjacent, and this is what you get. Should've learned from Travis Scott last year.

 Gert wrote:
NGL, having gone from watching almost every event show last year to watching none this year, I'm pretty disappointed with how "meh" everything has been so far.

MacAfee and Jelly Roll shouldn't have been getting Mania spots, and Speed shouldn't have either.

But hey, sack a bunch of your talent just so you can book some random people who are famous adjacent, and this is what you get. Should've learned from Travis Scott last year.

Yeah, watching WWE programming for me is just for the social occasion for watching with some friends who are unwilling to watch AEW.

Never liked PatMcAfee, his involvement here is annoying. Jellyroll apparently being the WWE's conscience and a sort of sad-faced, ineffectual guadian angel is funny to an extent, but again: unnecessary as heck. I show Speed: Unnecessary to the max. The way they were presented in the match was cleverly done by WWE and shows how they know that us wrestling peeps do not want to see these clowns. Just like the fans of the streamers, rappers and influencer idiots don't want to see the wrestling clowns.

How about getting rid of the rappers and the influencers and use wrestlers in the wrestling program? Everything I show speed did in that match could have been done by some slightly geeky wrestler. Heck, even Austin Theory could have done that. Then he wouldn't have had to just vanish entirely once the match was over.


Btw, this was the first PPV I watched on Netflix, because we got that on netflix now 'round here. First time ever I had ad breaks on netflix, and it's horrid. Between every single match (of which there aren't that many anyway) I had 4 minutes of ads for the Hulk Hogan documentary! Unskippable too. At least in the browser. In the app on mah telephone i did not have these really long ads, just the usual annoying ads. Either way, this is beyond bogus.


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Watching wrestlemania night #2 right now. Man, I'm not sure I wanna put up with WWE's format stuff. This is exhausting. 5 minutes of ads, 10 minutes of entrances, 11 minute match, etc.

There's a new NXT wrestler with some interesting background. Her ring name is Lizzy Rain, the Maiden of Metal. She is the real-life niece of late Iron Maiden drummer Clive Burr

WWE post-TKO isn't great but it really has hit a low now.

AEW is not perfect by any means, but overall it is a much more enjoyable experience.

It sucks because there are still great matches going on, and night 2 of Mania was better.

But then, having only about 35% of the show time being matches each day is dog buns.

Agreed!

And is Roman going to be a "full time" Champion or back to part-time status again?

Depends on how Street Fighter does I'd say. Probably the same with Cody.

Sounds like the post-WrestleMania WWE releases have begun, including the entire Wyatt Sicks stable.

I know releases happen every year but I can't be the only one to remember the reaction the Wyatt's got at Clash in Paris, right?

I guess it just sucks knowing that people with actual talent and dedication to the craft are getting dumped because WWE couldn't be bothered to get spots for them cos of all the marketing they want to do with internet "celebs".

Did the Wyatts ever have a strong identity or motivation besides Bray tribute/creepy people? Everyone there is a great talent, but I never really felt like the identity completely worked for the group.

Big news out of WWE today as the New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods) have been released...

Yeah, the Wyatts were a weird stop-and-go thing. They did that huge thing for their debut where they murdered Chad Gable ("I got better!") and everybody else, and before that these rather strong promo video packages, but beyond that... nothing.

The New Day thing is interesting. Earlier today I heard something reported on the aspect which had thrown up the most question marks for me - what's happening to UUDD? Apparently they offered CONSEQUENCES CREED a 'tyler breeze contract', so he could do WWE's bidding on the youtube channel, but wouldn't be allowed to wrestle anywhere. Weird.

I don't particularly care for Kofi Kingston (he's a good guy, a good wrestler, but I never really cared that much), but I wouldn't mind seeing a New Day run in various Indies, Japan, and then a lovely story in AEW vs. FTR and CONSEQUENCES CREED vs. Omega in several grudge matches in which they do NOT dress up as video game characters or reference video games. Then round it off with a New Day - Young Bucks match and then New Day may retire.

Anyway, it's weird. I could have sworn that New Day would stick with WWE forever. Shows the sorry state of WWE.Still annoyed with Wrestlemania. MyAEW actually torpedo'd my "nobody really NEEDS a credit card actually, right?" experiment by no accepting my debit card or my paypal. Haven't watched AEW in ages! And I really enjoy it. Crazy.

The Wyatts suffer from the same problem that Bray's characters did.

"Why is the story being told going to culminate in a wrestling match?"

Not exactly unique to them, when you look back the Undertaker and Kane stuff had the same flaw, but the late 90s were close enough to the 80s and early 90s nonsense to get a pass.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
The Wyatts suffer from the same problem that Bray's characters did.

"Why is the story being told going to culminate in a wrestling match?"

Not exactly unique to them, when you look back the Undertaker and Kane stuff had the same flaw, but the late 90s were close enough to the 80s and early 90s nonsense to get a pass.

Yeah, that was my main problem with the otherwise MINT Fiend (and Timeless Toni Storm for instance). Sometimes (and by that I mean 89% of the time) it's okay for a wrestler to be a wrestler first, other things (dentist, monk, the devil, etc) second.