artDDP

Me, too. My local channels dropped all WWF programming in 1993 so I could only follow Raw and the weekend recap shows. At the time Raw was where most stuff happened but they still shot a few angles and had some interesting match-ups on Superstars.

So on TV Ronda is all "Let's make history Becky!" "Think about your daughters, Steph!" On Twitter she's "Fuck you, Rebecca, I'm going to punch you for real because I hate your face so much!" There's quite a disconnect here. Are they trying to shoot the angle they wanted because they realize WWE is trying to keep Ronda a babyface in this feud?

This reminds me of my dad, after years of watching WWF squashes, seeing the more competitive WCW matches and remarking, "Wow, that guy actually put up a fight." A big part of the fun of watching the Superstars uploads is seeing who you recognize as the jobbers. So far I've seen Big Vito, Scott Taylor, Duane Gill, Glen Ruth, and freakin' Jim Brunzell.

On the Nigel doc they show the footage of Bryan Danielson yanking him head-first into the post and drawing hardway blood. A few weeks later, during the Phoenix Takeover, Shayna Baszler pulls Bianca Belair by the hair into the post and Nigel makes a comment about knowing how dangerous that can be. I thought it was a nice callback.

Late to the party on this but Bugenhagen has been something of a YouTube character for a few years and seems to have enough charisma that he could do something else if the air guitar gimmick dies quickly. You may not be into heavy metal and screaming but he has a few videos of himself being an over-the-top powerlifter and a few where he's a bit more calm giving solid training advice. And, as a bonus, he prefers reading off notes in his monologue videos so he'll do well in WWE's scripted system.

Ronda should have hooked up with The Rock's publicity team way back when they did the angle at WrestleMania XXXI. When she's unfiltered she's a complete train wreck.

Initially, I thought the "Big Dave" mentioned here was Dave M. I was thinking "But he already works for AEW" before it hit me who you meant.

It looks like Wade scooped Dave on the Dean Ambrose story.

I found Impact on my cable provider. It's only available on a Spanish station. Time to learn, I guess.

I binged on this week's Raw and Smackdown last night and survived. I loved the hell out of these shows. It's great that they're trying to rehab Sasha. As long as fans forget how much she lost and how many times she's feuded with Bayley they can accept "The Boss" as a contender to Ronda. And anytime you have more than two or three competitive acts in a division is a bonus. That three-way was awesome. Seth didn't annoy me and Bobby looked like a killer. When they replayed the clothesline to Dean and the freeze frame was on Bobby's menacing face, muscles tensed, about to come barreling at Dean at 100 mph I thought THAT is the Lashley they should be pushing. Lio being an annoying twerp who can flip and roll away from the faces is a cool part of the whole act. And Dean sold that spear huge. The main event was cool and did what it needed to do without going on too long. Drew is a monster, Cena is still somewhat "Super Cena" and Finn is a small guy who can hang with the heavies. I saw the Rey and Adrade match after hearing everyone hype it for a few days and it was all kinds of awesome. It's great when they let guys have a good, long, competitive match and the crowd is into it. They made the big spots matter and didn't just lucha for lucha's sake. The main event was inoffensive to me. It was quick and I kinda look forward to seeing what Sheamus and Cesaro do with or to The Miz and Shane at the Rumble. As far as I can tell they're letting Becky be Becky and Asuka be Asuka and that's OK with me. I'm sure most of Becky's stuff is scripted but she actually comes across like a star instead of most everyone else seemingly at the mercy of the McMahons. I'll gladly take more of this.

While I loved the match, it was here where I finally got really angry with the overdone "1-2-kick out--exasperated face" sequence everyone must do after every single near fall now. It's as overdone as every NXT wrestler having to position themselves directly in front of the hard camera before hitting their finisher and getting the win. If you don't know what I mean, it's the "I can't believe s/he kicked out!" face everyone makes while the camera zooms in tight after every "dramatic" moment in a big match.

Nodding my head at everything SomethingSavage said about Seth. As for the comment about the talk show segments: Are we still paying the price for the "This is Your Life, Rock" segment getting a big number in 1999? After all these years does WWE think their fans will stay tuned in on the edge of their seats for these never-ending promo segments?

Salina does nothing for me right now. Maybe I haven't seen enough of her yet to get a better impression of the character. Glad I'm not the only one who couldn't take their eyes off of Gotch's pecs during this match. Totally agreed on the Xavier vs. Andrews match. All throughout this I kept thinking of those guys you see periodically in Botchamania videos who clearly did the bare minimum at wrestling school and jumped straight into doing highspots. Not that these two were anywhere near that bad; just felt they were trying to look cool instead of working a match.

That was cool. Also cool was how wildly different Google Chrome's translation of that tweet to English was compared to the Twitter site's own.

Maybe they'll have no choice but to keep them current once they move to Pursuit.