Cena via AA. AJ via lighting it up. Sheamus via brogue kick. Rollins via Wyattference.

Oh and Rusev clean with that camel clutch.

Wyatt? Wtf. Enjoyed the zigs and tag match so gonna watch rest later. Anything worth skipping?

I'd say it was all at least watchable.

Awesome thanks

I concur, with the caveat that nothing was must-see either.

(Maybe the stuff prior to the bell ringing for Seth/Dean)

I was going to add this as well, but left it alone.

great PPV from start to finish
will re-watch

gg

now let me check how the Packers are doing...

Wyatt's deep thought out reasoning for Wyattference:

F#ck Man what a stupid ending.

Rollins Clean Sweeping Ambrose and now they are going to build back Wyatt by putting him over Ambrose. By the time Reigns comes back Ambrose will be a mid-card afterthought feuding with Miz and Stardust.

I like Rollins but WTF why can't he lose a match. Rollins, Lesnar, Cena, Reigns, Rusev. None of those guys get clean pinned until Wrestlemania.


Only way this story turns out good is if Wyatt turns Ambrose into a real lunatic tweener/heel who helps him try to take control of WWE. Wyatt Family vs Authority...like ministry vs corporation

Live Audio Wrestling (Toronto radio show, and podcast) is on now talking about the show, fyi.

http://www.tsn.ca/radio/toronto-1050

dont have to sell me on the greatness of LAW (and review a wai)

^^ Pretty Good Podcast


WWE Writers are the worst in Hollywood. Everyone has better ideas, in fact i don't know any WWE fan who can't come up with better cards.

My Survivor Series
Main Event - Lesnar vs Cena Three Stages of Hell
Stage 1 - First Blood
Stage 2 - Submission
Stage 3 - Falls Count Anywhere Except the Ring

Main Event II - Classic Survivor Series (No DQ)
The Wyatt Family (Bray/Ambrose/Rowan/Harper) vs The Authority (Orton/HHH/Rollins/Kane)

USA vs The World - Classic Survivor Series
Big Show (Captain), Jack Swagger, Mark Henry, The Miz/Mizdow vs Rusev (Captain), Adam Rose, Sheamus, Great Khali

IC title - Ziggler (c) vs Cesaro (30 minute Iron Man)

Tag Titles - DustBros (c) vs The Ascension (debut)

WWE vs NXT - Classic Survivor Series
R-Truth (Captain), Kofi Kingston, The Usos (Jimmy and Jey) vs Adrian Neville (Captain), Sami Zyan, Lucha Dragons (Kalisto and Sin Cara)


BOOM. Now That is how you book a PPV. These writers are clueless.

Man i really hope this doesn't turn into ambrose joining the wyatts. ugh

Title main events need to end in the ring. Booking any sort of street fight or boiler room brawl whatever is okay if it can serve any sort of logical purpose and feels genuine in the arc. Cena/Lesnar having a first blood match would be enough on its own. Ending a title match outside the ring as a stip is too messy. Live crowds need to be served even in today's market. And there's no better way to kill a live crowd than to have a match that isn't in the ring.

I like WWE/NXT classic match but think it could be improved. I also think that it should be the only classic match on the card. I'd put both Miz and Mizdow in the match and have them start their open feud a la old school breakups at SS. A nice tip of the hat to long time fans.

Tag Title match is also fine.

I don't think Dolph and Cesaro are moving any sort of needle so I wouldn't even need to see them. I think there's still more they could do with the Divas here as there is some decent momentum. Rusev needs a new foil and the obvious choice would be Sheamo after last night. I'd like to see Rusev be F2 at the Rumble and going over clean again would build to that well.

If the writers are wanting to bust the Wyatts back in I'd like to see some sort of scenario where they're just terrorizing both Ambrose and Rollins and there's some sort of 6man waiting somewhere with the Wyatts against a forced team of Ambros+Rollins+1 other. Not sure how I'd book it from that point.

Overall I like where you're going but I think you've got a hat on a hat as they say in too many scenarios. The writers need to continue momentum and play to the strengths of the company.

So are we going to see Ambrose get the DB treatment and get jobbed out/screwed over for months until the crowd starts crapping all over these endings?

Just finished the ppv. I skipped the two divas matches and Miz match. I don't think Cena/Orton is passable at all. If anything it points out why they absolutely suck and should work with others who can hide their gigantic flaws. Also, it went 25 ****ing minutes.

Ambrose vs Seth. Just lol. Bad bad bad bad. You couldn't pay me to watch it again. From beginning to end was bad. Cole is awesome though, "It's Bray Wyatt!!!". Pretty sure everybody knew that from the moment the lights went out.

Ziggler vs Cesaro was also disappointing. Had a great ****ing story but the execution (particularly by Cesaro, as much as i don't want to say that) was poor.

Ironically enough, earlier in the day I had watched Bryan vs Morishima from Final Battle 2008. Those two feuded for a year and a half with Bryan wanting to prove that he could slay the dragon. It had the only logical conclusion. This Seth/Ambrose match should have been the same. I doubt WWE will pick it up again at some point after the Wyatt feud and Rollins/Orton saying "they have unfinished business". They'll probably just put them on a RAW in a couple weeks ala Shield/Wyatts and blow it off that way.

Oh, Lana looked smoking hot and I'm not the biggest fan of her but she can rock pink.

PPV get a 2/10 from me and I'm officially done watching ppvs unless a match is pimped by many people or Brock is in a match. Company is ****.

Haha, now that you point this out I have to admit that I didn't really pay attention to this match at all until the final few minutes, which is probably why I was just kind of thinking back and going "yeah nothing was that bad."

It could sort of end up this way, but Bryan had more of a foundation of support in place (I think) that wasn't going away...it still doesn't seem to me like they planned on that long-term culmination at Mania until they were forced to bail on face Bootista.

In the long-term Ambrose will be fine I'm pretty sure, but in the short-term they've just relegated him into another Wyatt mess.

Ambrose needs a chant, obviously. Or a word that people can say that will start a "movement". Easy.

The PPV itself was... unobjectionable? Yeah, I'll go with unobjectionable. Except for the Bella stuff, but as has been noted elsewhere, that's not for us.

I am not at all interested in seeing where this Wyatt thing goes -- I stand by what I felt last night, that "hey, they'll never expect this and it will be shocking!" was the only reason for doing what they did, and it'll end up being a total cluster**** of stupidity and not very good wrestling. The only potentially "good" thing about it is that it could keep Ambrose away from Rollins, which lets Rollins cash in on... oh, wait, the champ is never around anyway, so lolol.

In other "great" booking news, with where things are at now they're just going to have to pretend that Sheamus has always been from Boston or something to have him take on Rusev. Or he can go after Ziggler and the US title, I guess, but let's see, you have a guy whose one great ability is that he sells dynamic moves like he was shot out of a cannon, and we're going to match him up against a monster heel with a static submission move. Sounds great!

Basically, to sum up: thank goodness for MNF for the next couple of months.

In Which My B0-LEAVE Shirt Just Got Relevant

Bo Dallas Washington is still really great. I don't know if he ever rises above his current spot on the card, but as a mid level comedy heel (and they may need a new one of those soon) he's damn solid. Mark Henry is slow.

Show. Stolen.

Cesaro/Ziggler was excellent. I think Cesaro losing in two straight really made sense. 1- After how often they wrestled eachother during the build, the best way to create a sense of closure here was a definitive victory. 2- Given the match they wrestled and the punishment Dolph is taking, him losing the 2nd fall and wining a 3rd might have strained credibility (I thought maybe he kicked out of too much anyway, but that's less this match and more just current WWE climate).

People have been suggesting that Cesaro might be catching heat for the interview he did where he pooped on Cena/Orton, but if you've been watching the JBL and Cole show, his character on that basically exists to poop on stuff, so that may have been totally in character and any notion that this is a punishment is silly.

I do wonder where a guy who just lost feuds for both mid tier belts goes next, and we may be in for another period where Cesaro mostly exists to make other people look good, but long term he's too amazing to not be a big part of the picture moving forward.

If only for a fleeting moment, I love you Dallas, Texas

Brie going for a local shout-out cheap pop and getting booed was great.

This was a pretty solid match, and it was nice that they basically just wrestled and there was no other nonsense. It wasn't so nice that Brie was one of the wrestlers, because she's not very interesting. Nikki's awesome, and I'm hoping she moves on to working with some of the better women in the company now.

Umm... Errr... Okay...

I'll obviously talk more about it latter, but the ending to the PPV left me so emotionally spent I really didn't want to watch the matches I cared about again so soon. I uhh... did not have that problem here.

It was a fine match, but we've seen these guys work with each other forever, (and from the Usos side, seen them in tag title matches for even more ever) and nothing felt different enough. The Dust Bros seemed like they had slightly less interesting offense than usual. They're still great, but they need to move on to something new, and a just slightly dusty finish makes me worry than this wasn't the ending of this that I'm hoping for.

Well Yeah, That Happened.

This may be the first time I've actually seen a Cena/Orton PPV match, and while it was good, very little about it felt novel. Orton was great, Cena was Cena (and that means that he was the guy with some of the most boring offense in WWE). My thought going in was that these guys were too good to put on a bad match, and I guess that was true, but boy they sure didn't do anything (beyond that one AA to RKO reversal) that felt new.

Cena winning is basically the most that match result that match could have had. Gone is any notion that he's anything other than the golden boy, and while I guess that serves a purpose for the WWE, it's sure not something I care about.

It's Fun To Stay at Hell In A Cell

It's so surreal seeing a match become all about the guy not in it pretending to be in it. It also makes me really ****ing happy. Sandow got all the dumb crap in the world thrown at him, invested 110%, and it's paying off and making him super over.

Sheamus's annoying alpha aggro face bit works a lot better when it's framed in a comedy context. If I don't have to think of him as a real person, I can ignore the fact that if he was real, he'd be horrible.

I also enjoy that Mizz stayed mostly respectful of Sandow, and that hopefully they're going to have a bit of nuance for Damien's eventual turn.

OH DID THE BIG BABY GO TO SLEEP?

Rusev/Show was pretty perfect. Show got just enough offense in to seem slightly more credible than Rusev's previous challengers, and Rusev got a pretty definitive win to continue his elevation.

Rusev's matches always feel super smart. He does exactly enough to get the win, adapts to match his opponent and nothing feels forced or rushed. I'm really interested to see what he does once he's facing somebody like Cena. Could be a really fantastic match.

This Match Again

Every match on the PPV was good to great, but a few really suffered simply because what they did last night was not noticeably different from what they did during the build. Both in terms of outcome and the moves in the ring, this was just another RAW match. a good RAW match, but a RAW match.

Yet another ending with a bit of interference and then some "omg girls are crazy" nonsense. If Paige had the title and lost because Alicia rolled her back into the ring and thus wasn't DQ-ed, this would work. Did they just forget who had the belt?

Hopefully this is the end, and we move to Paige/Alicia and AJ/Nikki or something. Paige is so great (she killed it on the mic earlier), I really hope she gets to do something that's actually interesting.

You're Getting Worked Bro

OK, so I was mad at first. Ever since Seth hit Roman in the back I've been wanting to see him get what's coming to him. Being denied that felt SUPER FRUSTRATING.

Then you realize why I was mad. I was mad because I cared. I cared because when they choose to be, the WWE is pretty good at this storytelling thing.

This wasn't the end to Dean and Seth, if anything it's an indication that they'll get to have their end on the biggest stage possible. If this is act 2, and the way we get to act 3 involved a Dean Ambrose/Bray Wyatt feud, I'm all for it.

The match was spectacular. I got slightly worked by the injury spots (I was so worried that they'd try and do something crazy and get hurt, and this played directly into that). It's somewhat crazy how good it was when you had two guys who can wrestle not actually do a whole ton of actual wrestling. (this is how you find variety when people keep going up against eachother, take note UsoDusts and AJPaiges).

I'd somewhat prefer Bray just do a more normal run-in than all this lights going off and chanting stuff- but I can't say it's bad (I just think it's odd when the production team becomes complicit in a surprise, but maybe Luke Harper took over the control room and made 'em do it). I also didn't love Dean pulling out the screwdriver, if for no other reason than that we know he can't actually do anything with it.

LET ME SUM UP

Top to bottom this was a really solid PPV. No match I'd come close to calling bad, 2 matches that were balls out amazing, and a bunch of really solid work.

I think we know the post PPV RAW will be solid, but the week after that will be interesting. We're at a spot where either we're in danger of getting a whole lot more of the same, or things might get super interesting. Will Bray/Dean be as awesome as it should? Do we get Seth/Randy? Do they screw that up by turning Randy full face? Who does Rusev eat next? Do loveable babyface Harper and Rowan return to challenge the Dust Bros? Does Jamie Noble get a singles push?

If you're not excited for Dean Ambrose vs Bray Wyatt you really need to turn your cynicism the **** on down.

Do people really think the WWE is so obtuse that they don't realize what they've got with Ambrose/Rollins? Did people learning nothing from getting so worked by Daniel Bryan's story? Yeah- they don't do everything perfect, but in no way, shape or form is this the end. Remember, Bray and Dean have history, this isn't some random thing. This is good, long form storytelling.

by all accounts WWE had no plans to push brian at WM until their grand master plan to strap Batista completely blew up in their faces. let's not pretend that bryan wasn't pinned in the middle of the ring by Wyatt in the undercard of Royal Rumble. and wyatt didn't even get pushed after that win, so that's how little they thought of bryan.

and lol if you think there's any element of "good, long form storytelling" going on here. the shield vs. wyatts history will not be mentioned once.

my guess is that they were in desperate need of a way for rollins to shake this feud with ambrose without losing and this is what they came up with. i'm not saying it's the worst angle of all time or anything but it feels like they are (clicking buttons and that would be consistent with how things have been done in the past)