I generally try to stay positive about things (maybe that's the reason why my Pinside post count is so low?) but the WM show kinda fell flat. I watched the NXT Takeover from 11am-2pm on Sunday (had plans on Saturday and missed it live), and then flipped on the WM pre-show at 5pm and soldiered on until the matches ended at midnight. That's a whole damn lot of wrestling. And having the lumbering, akward main roster stuff juxtoposed against the free-wheeling NXT show I watched earlier in the day didn't help: it was one of the best Takeovers ever, IMHO. I thought the two prior Manias were far and away better programs than what we got this year.

I'm glad the Bludgons won, I really dig Harper, and he deserves all the success in the world even with the poorly executed gimmick of a Hillbilly Thor. Extremely disappointed in seeing Asuka's streak haulted (but she's my favorite wrestler, so I should be let down. Who better, though, to stop the streak than Charlotte, right?). Also extremely disappointed that Rusev didn't win the US Title...especially given the commentators went OUT OF THEIR WAY on the pre-show to incessently mention all of the "Rusev Day" chants inside and outside the building. I wasn't bothered by the Taker-Cena match, it served its purpose. Styles-Nak was good--not special, but good. The IC three-way was a really good match, and probably stole the show. I'm with everyone else on the main event...but I do think having Roman split open made for a great visual, and worked to erase the fact that he took thirty-seven F-5's before he went down for the count.

And then there's Braun with that kid. It REALLY irked me...especially after sitting through nearly eleven hours of wrestling at the time it happened. I don't want to sound like Jim Cornette, but it really burried the division, The Bar, and everyone who ever held a WWF/E tag title. Do you know how much of a rub an actual contracted performer could have gotten being put in that position? Curt Hawkins could have ended his streak. Jeff Hardy could have returned. Throw a suprise NXT call up into the role. Hell, grab a legend from the HOF lineup. Pick a female performer--lord knows creative has nothing else for Becky Lynch to do. F*ck it, bring back Ellsworth! Thinking it was "for the kids", I showed my son the match the next morning. He asked "Why did Braun pick that boy?". He couldn't compute it, and wasn't excited. He also noticed that Braun passed, within an arm's reach, No Way Jose on his little walkabout to find Nicholas and asked why he didn't pick him because he's "a good NXT wrestler". I didn't have an answer. I just patted him on the head and told him he was asking the right questions.

Tommy, you must be all wrestled out for the time being. It was an exhausting slog watching it at home. I can only imagine it made for a really long day live and in person.

I'm pretty stoked for the Greatest Royal Rumble. It's an absolute stacked card. And if you thought Rusev was being buried by the office before, he's literally going to be buried at this show--Rusev and Taker in a Casket Match was just annouced!

Takeover was incredible, and didnt mind WM. Most impressive match to me was the mixed tag. Show definitely dragged on, but a different match order could have helped. Lot of smart people at WWE, cant believe they thought Roman/Lesnar would get a different reaction...

Haha man, you have no idea. We literally drove through the night on Thursday, called when about an hour out from New Orleans to make sure we could check in early and they said yes. We got to the hotel around 9 AM and they said nope not ready haha, awesome. So we went to our other hotel (we had multiple groups with us), two of them went to sleep and me and my buddy headed to Bourbon Street for the day. Came back to the hotel around 5 PM to shower and head off to our first independent show of the weekend that started at 7PM and ran until about 10:30, that was going to be followed by an hour break and then Joey Janela's Spring Break 2 which started at 11:55PM, the main event of that show went on at about 3:30 AM, we got back into downtown around 4:30 AM and headed back to Bourbon Street for a few more hours before finally taking a nap and heading to Axxess at 8 AM. Then you are absolutely right, I don't think Wrestlemania stood a chance after that amazing Takeover. The greatest Royal Rumble thing just seems so odd, but like we have all stated I'm sure its a nice payday for the boys and girls and company overall. And yes please for the love of god give Becky Lynch something relevant to do, she is so talented and so beautiful, I just don't get how she isn't pushed more. I do think Charlotte and Asuka stole the show for me followed the by IC Triple Threat match.....not getting a Balor Demon entrance was my biggest let down of the weekend and also gave away the finish of the match for me because then he could take the loss knowing Miz would want some time off to be with his newborn, and if he came out as Demon he was going to win, if not it would be all Rollins. I think between Thursday night when we left and Monday morning when we started the drive back I only got about 7-8 hours of sleep, my buddy I was staying with got even less as after NXT although we went out for several more hours I at least took a nap before Axxess that morning, he just stayed out all night at bars and came back at 8 AM when we had to head over to that again. I haven't gone back and watched Mania on the next work yet but I will get to it eventually as I do miss the commentary aspect when I am at a live event.

Whelp, 24 hours later, after some online comments from Rusev ("Bury me softly, brother"), he's been removed from the casket match altogether. He's been replaced by Jericho. Maybe a casket match is more believable when BOTH of the guy's careers have one foot in the grave already? I hope Jericho can work a bit of comedy into the match...thus making it more entertaining than what we saw from Taker-Cena at Mania.

You did not want to mess with Lawler back in the day.

Going to hang out with him in a couple weeks!!!

Legend! Get a pic!

You know it! Got one with him and my son from this summer (I look like a total dork). My kid is holding the King's crown with the biggest smile on his face

Finally tracked myself down on the Network! Raw 339 - November 22, 1999 - Buffalo, NY. I've been rocking the Spiro Agnew moniker for years!

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So did anyone else get to go to ALL IN? I couldn’t believe how much fun I had at that show.

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Didn't go, but did watch it. It was a good show. I usually recognize the old school wrasslers even if it's been several years since they were on TV, but the Genius has no resemblance to his younger self. The Cody Rhodes match was a bit overbooked with extra NWA fan service for the ending, but it was his show, so I can appreciate the reasoning for it.

I heard Lanny made an appearance - what does he look like these days?

I want to watch it on one of the streaming services just to see if I missed much. I missed the entire battle royal in the merch line. Only show I've ever been to where it was easier to get beer than merchandise. We waited about an hour and the line was way longer when we left so I can't imagine how long some people waited.

My current fave is Kyle O’Reilly

It’s inexplicable but ROH has -always- had this issue. Their merch is kind of the Wild West. Some of it is the venue - the venues are permanently set up to sell beer and food, and merch is the big long table and bigger longer lines where everything is kinda slow. Even the last WWE house show we went to in Baltimore was like that a bit (although significantly better run.) ROH would be smart to step their game up in the merch department now that they’ve got everyone’s attention.

The stream I watched kept hawking their ProWrestlingTees.com site. Every commercial break featured that site, so maybe that's where those in the know shop? The Battle Royal was cool and worth watching. If I had to choose a match to miss, it would've been the awkward hardcore match, but even that wasn't terrible. The announce team also had that Emma character and some other girl as a guest during the women's match, so if you're into that you can hear them. The announcer named Don? sounded a bit like Gorilla Monsoon at times. Maybe it was his accent, but it made the event seem more nostalgic.

This guy in the freeze frame talking about Bam Bam Bigelow apparently. It's what I found on a Google search.

I've been to a handful of indie shows and I enjoyed them, but after watching All In, it made this weeks RAW almost unwatchable. Its been a cell phone checking snore-fest for years, but that juxtaposition drove it home. I think I am going to stop watching the weekly shows and stick to the PPVs. They play 10,000 recaps during RAW (Here's what happened 2 minutes ago!!) and those are all replayed on the PPV to get you back up to speed.

That was the general consensus from the group I went with too. We are thinking about a 12 hour trip to the NWA 70th anniversary show next month.

It’s sad to say but WWE will have a better product when HHH is running it.

Don Callis! He used to be called “The Jackal” in WWE. And Cyrus the Virus in (I think?) ECW. Booked for TNA for a hot minute, good friend of Jericho too from back in the day. He has a great podcast with Lance Storm where they relentlessly rib each other, it’s called “killing the town”

That’s a good thing. Monday night wars.

Interesting...live streaming the Hell in a Cell being constructed for Sunday's event.

Smackdown is the superior product to RAW right now, and has been since Wrestlemania.

The so to be in ring return of HBK should be interesting. Eight years is a long time.

I imagine the conversation went like this...
Saudis: We want to see Shawn Michaels
WWE: There’s no amount of Oil money you could offer to bring him out of retirement.
Saudis: Ok...what about this much?
WWE: That’s the amount.

Ha! That’s almost exactly how my wife and I thought it went down. Eventually we will know how much HBK was paid since WWE is public and discloses compensation. I’m super curious.

My guess is HBK is being paid $1.5 mill for all appearances/matches this year and about the same next year (with a singles match next year). $3 mill for basically one year of part time work is my guess.

I bet it’s even higher than that - that’s a good payday for a great year, but HBK is a major real estate investor now - 1.5M May not Be enough to get him off the ranch. Hope he doesn’t get hurt against Undertaker and Kane. Lord, hopefully none of them get hurt! lol

I am taking my son to Smackdown 1000 in DC, which should be unforgettable

Yeah I’m betting he is 3-5 million for this event.

I was subscribed to Network since day 1, cancelled for first time last week. Taking a break, wwe is so stale and I was getting frustrated. MAY check back around royal rumble but for now I am stepping away. I made sure to mention in my last wwe survey

I like seeing people's reaction to my wwf royal rumble at keg n coin. Whats more epic then oh yeah?
Favorite 90s wrestlers?

I just did the same thing. Trying out Ring of Honor Club instead.

Anyone else going to the NWA 70th Anniversary show in Nashville on the 21st?

Do to some miscommunication between me and my wrestling buddies we ended up with 8 General Admission tickets instead of just 4, so if anyone is interested in the extra 4 tickets just let get ahold of me.

Come on, guys, you’re gonna lower my stock value! Haha

same here kinda, they just seem directionless and there’s this bizarre whiplash effect from certain feuds changing on a dime, and then we have the OMG IS IT GOING TO BE ROMAN AGAIN?!? Which never seems to end.

Don’t get me wrong, I think roman is awesome -when he is with the shield -
But by himself and the Brock feud.. give me a break. Those guys are being hurt a little bit by the PPVs being so long but man it’s just boring as hell. Even Braun is starting to get a little of that stink on him. It’s time to change it up. IMO Braun was killing when he was allowed to be funny. Now he’s just another huge angry guy with absolutely no story. They can do better than this

Then you have the whole drew/ziggler vs Ambrose / Rollins, which is a GREAT feud. Thats giving it a little juice putting Braun in there, but I’m sure they’ll mess it up as usual

That said, I like the network because of all the old stuff on there, and the occasional new program they do every 6 months.. I love the Legends table episodes where they sit around and discuss stuff, that is my favorite show of all. I wish they’d do more of that

Man, the length of pay per views needs to be cut down. They could just shorten the matches. Summers Kam had the right match length and it was paced well but every other PPV just seems to drag because they have 20 min duration matches.

Also, the fueds need to resolve faster and change up. They need to expand the women’s roster some.

Plus you have a 20 minute video package replaying everything we just saw on raw or smackdown a few nights beforehand between every match.

Totally agree. They have the PPVs every month now, and they are basically cramming in 2 PPVs of story. WM was like 7 hours this year! Maybe a bit much. I shut it off before the Main Event, and gee it had the exact outcome I expected.

I will say that Brock coming out at the end of HIAC was TOTALLY not on my radar - that was good. The match wasn't really, but those guys aren't wrestling, that's just a power punch show

Wrestling always gets stale when football season starts then the Royal Rumble sneaks up and it gets me into it again.

Anybody ever watch Story Time on the Network? Jake Roberts is the best!

Angle, Big Show, HHH, Taker, HBK, Kane, Cena. Saudi money is strong!

When is the crown royal
Thing? Saudi royal family basically looking like organized crime right now.

Cody va Willie Mac on ROH for the NWA Title was a good match posted to YouTube yesterday. If you haven’t subscribed to the NWA YouTube channel I suggest you give it a shot. Free for starters and it is updated regularly and they are really putting out some good stuff.

Got a link?

Damn. Roman is out to fight leukemia.

Wow, I had to go look that up. That Suuuuuucks. I didn’t love the character nor the push, but there’s no denying he’s a bad ass performer.

Just got a text about it. Crazy

Best raw ending in a long while.