General

I think it'd be better to bet on how many years before they just unify this new one with the others to make the Undisputed Unified WWE World Heavyweight Championship that they'll then need to have exist alongside ANOTHER new world title for the folks they don't want to have beat the real world champion.

So glad they finally pulled the trigger on the Bron Breakker heel turn. The NXT crowd was clearly getting bored with him (one of the downsides of filming in front of the same crowd every week), so I'm glad they weren't afraid to turn him heel like they were for the longest time with Roman Reigns and John Cena when crowds were sick of them.

Bron does nothing for me tbh, heel or face. Hope they click something in place at some point to make me care.

He’s got time to win you over haha. He’s young and green. Something besides I’MA STEINER will come out eventually I hope. If he starts to cut math promos, I’m in immediately lol

He did make a reference to the Steiner math promo once.


Impact Wrestling is hyping up a surprise this Friday and it seems like it's going to be

That's gonna put butts in seats...

Nah I want like full on math promos. Maybe add in some Sid stuff too, and you’d have the best promos ever.

Spoiler person would do the same thing as John ace a going to Impact: nothing. No one going there will help TNA. They’re in the same spot they’ve been in for years and will always continue to be. It’s unfortunate because the quality of the shows and the roster is amazing, but it’s not going to become the alternative they threatened to be in the first 7 years or so.

Wow, they let Roderick Strong go, and somehow it was kept a secret. It's clear they had no plans for him and I saw something a few weeks ago saying that his run in NXT lasted longer than WCW Nitro was on the air.
Not sure what he brings to the table that AEW doesn't already have though. With all these hirings, maybe it is for the better to do a soft roster split when that new show starts.

He brings banger matches, that's what he brings. Fudgein Roddddyyyyy.

One of my favorite ROH matches is still Roderick Strong vs. Eddie Edwards, ROH title match from Manhattan Mayhem IV. Roddy's ROH title run is iconic imo.

Roddy will get lost in the shuffle. He will do the Adam Cole storyline and then go in the pack like everyone else in that crowd of thousands. I like Roddy a lot, but he won’t be occupying a ton of screen time after this story is done.

He’s also listed on wwe.com as still on the roster as of right now lol

AEW uses good wrestlers. He’ll do wonderfully there.

Tbh, I can’t name a top tier talent AEW has brought in who has actually been lost in the shuffle unless it was due to extraneous circumstances.

Miro - injured, then refuses the creative he’s offered. More power to him.

Andrade - injured, then doesn’t seem like he cares to be there and fist fights Guevara. Then injured again haha

Those are the two biggest flubs imo, and it’s not entirely AEW’s fault for either. I want more Andrade, he rules. I like Miro, but don’t FULLY grasp the obsession so many have with him.

All Roddy needs to do is have good wrestling matches to warrant his move to AEW and I betcha he does.

Man, I miss “Bad News” Barrett. “I’m afraid I’ve got some BAD NEWS” while on a raised platform was so gosh darn good.

Lol truth

Oh wait, I mean “where’s the lie!?”

Jeez
https://twitter.com/itsmekelsey_x/status/165168732...

Why i just goofily laugh when dorks on the internet pretend AEW needs a “performance center” lol

It took gosh darn forever (+ a Rhea Ripley title win) for it to happen, but I finally sorta dig the Judgment Day. That said, I cannot believe Finn Balor is the fourth wheel in a faction. Dude should legit be top of the card, I don’t understand how WWE can fumble somebody so hard, creatively.

I don’t get it either. He should be constantly at the top of the card and kicking all the ass, but he’s the least important member of a group that was dying before he got in there and they kicked Edge out. I have no idea what happened.

BucketofJustice wrote:

Not for nothing, even though I'm not a fan of his, Dom Mysterio got HUGE HEAT last night.. They were booing him so loudly you couldn't hear what he was saying AT ALL.. That's legit heat. When everyone else talked, the crowd was calm.. The SECOND he started to talk, it was BOO city.. insane..

shadyfozzie wrote:

Don't get me wrong, Dom has been doing great with his character since a month or so before Mania, and WWE is doing great presenting him as a pissant heel, but it's confirmed that WWE uses piped in crowd noise. I think the first time the heat was insane was legit, right before or after Mania, but I'm fairly certain they're leaning into that using specifically-produced audio. Which is smart to be fair, it's definitely helping him finally get over. You'll notice that in most Dom promos, especially last night, he eggs the reaction on by pausing as if he's being interrupted. That's to help the illusion of nuclear heat and it comes across great on TV.

It's wild that the ULTIMATE babyface's son is now WWE's ULTIMATE heel.

Either way, Dom getting over is sort of a non-factor in the conversation about Balor. Balor shouldn't even be in the Judgment Day, he should be a pillar of the singles main event scene along with guys like Reigns and Rollins. He's doing fine work in Judgement Day, but a dude of his in-ring caliber shouldn't be playing second, third, or fourth fiddle in a mid card faction.

lol pls just watch the cold open for this ep of Being the Elite. "It's okay, it's okay... Bloodline, much better." Takecrapa rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaAlRF162A

theJaw wrote:

Finn got derailed the day he got hurt after winning the 1st WWE championship a few years back. He was supposed to be big but the injury curtailed him and people forgot about him for a while.

For sure. Then he came back and remained a better wrestler than most on their roster. WWE did absolutely nothing with him for years except book his Demon gimmick to lose constantly until Judgement Day… and then booked his Demon gimmick to lose DURING Judgment Day. Now he’s the least over member of a mid-card faction. Just so goofy. He’s one of the best wrestlers on the planet.

I'm still not quite convinced that was piped-in. If it is, they're doing a better job of disguising it than compared to Trish's lame ass promo a couple weeks ago where it seemed pretty obvious because with all the Boos you were hearing, the crowd looked pretty dead and not interested in what she was saying. Becky is the far better heel, but in this particular storyline it made more sense for Trish to be the heel, so this is what we're stuck with.

theJaw wrote:

There are rumors that he will split from Judgement Day and join with AJ Styles.. Don't know how true that is but that would be cool to see them recreate the Bullet Club.

@PizzaTheHutt ehhh I dunno, looking at the crowd last night (and previous Dom outings), I’d probably bet a couple hundred on it being piped in. Which, again, I don’t feel is a negative. Makes for a better TV show.

@shadyfozzie being the dorky fan of the actual wrestling side of things that I am, I’d geek out for that tbh.

Hot crowd tonight, love to see it.
Use this example to get Iyo away from Damage CTRL, she's too good for them

We need more of these events overseas. These crowds are always so lively.

Agreed. Iyo got to do Iyo things and she doesn’t need a group to flounder in. This crowd is great too.

I don't give a crap that he beat Okada once, I simply do not care about Bronson Reed and don't know why Triple H rehired him.

That’s how you make blood matter. Not all the time, and it added to the match. I don’t think we need blood much at all anymore, but if it’s going to happen that’s how it’s done. Someone explain this to Mox.

Or to Flair, Bruiser Brody, Foley, Gage, Funk, Abdullah, etc etc. List goes on. That’s how blood is done in 2023 WWE: for shock factor, and that totally works for WWE given their style of wrestling… but that’s not inherently how blood needs to be done. Considering Rhodes/Lesnar was still a bit of a popcorn fart even with blood, I’ll take Mox bleeding every match as long as he continues having great matches. Like I’ve said before, it’s a non-factor to the quality of a match to me and plenty of other folks, it doesn’t necessarily need to “matter” any more than just “a guy started bleeding during a fight”. I just want the match to be good at the end of the day.

All in all Backlash was a fine show. Bunny/Priest was awesome and should’ve been the main event. Loved seeing Carlito and Savio show up. The trios tag match took a while to get going but got there in the end with some more good storytelling woven in. The Bloodline is finally getting interesting again with the teased dissension, but I still don’t care about Riddle being involved. Loved seeing Zelina Vega get that reception, she’s a far better wrestler than she’s allowed to show on a weekly basis. The rest of the card was standard imo.

Rhodes/Lesnar was just okay… I hated that Rhodes could attack Lesnar pre-bell, bust him open, hit him with two straight Crossrhodes, but still had to just barely eek out a win… then run away. For as well as WWE built him up pre-Mania, they’re flopping him post-Mania despite the crowd being behind him 100%. That won’t last if they don’t even make him look strong in victory.

Brock went hardway, so I'm not sure blood was even planned for the match. He probably knows he's in a spot much like Bret and Piper at WM8 were, where even though he knows Vince doesn't like it, he likely will only get a slap on the wrist for doing it (if they can prove it even was intentional).

I read a report recently that said WWE were looking to move back to a slightly more “edgy” product so who knows if they’re just letting this slide for PLEs or something of that sort. Either way, it was a masterful hard way if it was intentional.

It added to the match, which was going meh. It was better than Mox stabbing someone with a fork or something every week on Dynamite.

I don’t feel the need to compare the two, personally. I like it both ways as long as I enjoy the match. Brock’s blood did add to the match to an extent, just wish the match was better with a better finish.

That said, fork spots absolutely don’t happen every week lol, Mox just gets busted open a lot. In my opinion, it adds to those matches too, despite it happening often. My opinion on a wrestling match isn’t dictated by blood or who decides to bleed, but to each their own obv.

So I thought the new World Heavyweight Championship was being introduced because Roman doesn’t show up consistently, but then it was announced that it was going to be Raw exclusive, which still keeps the Roman problem on Smackdown. But now they’re apparently having Raw and Smackdown talent in the tournament for the belt… weeks after the Draft. What the heck is going on here? Why not just have Raw talent in the tournament, or just hold off on the Draft until after a champion is crowned?

theJaw wrote:


I don't know if it was ever debunked or not, but right around the time Vince was outed last year, word got out that they were in talks with USA about going back to a TV-14 format. They ultimately ended up not doing it, but words like "ass" and "dog" started getting used in promos a lot more than they had in the previous decade since going PG.

@PizzaTheHutt Ah I gotcha, maybe that’s what I read but I feel like it was more recent and had to do with Nick Khan. Something about him wanting an edgier third hour of Raw. Like you said, it does seem like they’re getting a bit more lenient on certain things, so maybe it’s just as simple as that.

Little more regarding the blood situation specifically, in spoilers since I got a bit long winded as usual:

Oh they actually just announced the competitors for the WHC tournament. Still don’t fully understand the point of the belt given everything WWE has announced about it, but this should at least be an entertaining tournament:

Raw:
Seth Rollins
Finn Balor
Damian Priest
The Miz
Cody Rhodes
Shinsuke Nakamura

Smackdown:
Edge
AJ Styles
Bobby Lashley
Austin Theory
Rey Mysterio
Sheamus