Considering who is in the HITC matches, I think we're safe from any entertaining spots or title changes tonight

I'd be fine with an annual Shane getting thrown off the Cell spot tbh

In. But hoping people getting thrown off the top of cells is dead.

These pre-shows are so lame. I have always wondered who watching finds these round table kayfabe discussions interesting.

Yep. I don't think you could make them watchable no matter who you put in the seats.

Last preshow I remember enjoying was Adam Cole telling Pat MacAfee "nice jorts, dork"

Pretty meh so far. Although to be fair, I've mostly been playing on my phone.

Jerry Lawler does very little visible aging. But given his tastes, I imagine he's particularly inclined to invest his money in avoiding aging at all costs.

So, this Bliss-Shayna angle looks unpromising.

Yeah, Lawler appears to age at a much slower pace than all other humans.

This Alexa Bliss stuff is just the worst.

Credit to Sami: as a poker player, I can hardly imagine a better heat-drawing device than repeatedly screaming "JUSTICE!" after winning.

Kevin Owens / Sammi Zayne entertained me.

Thumbs up.

Pretty lame DQ

Granting that I haven't paid super close attention, this is definitely the one that drew me in the most.

Once upon a time, Drew McIntyre arrived in the WWE and was super boring. And got pushed until they finally gave up on ever getting a crowd reaction for him, at least until years later when we arrived at today's push.

Growing a beard was a good move, but I've still never fully separated him in my mind from the really boring dude who won the IC Title before he was ready.

Losing via distraction roll-up with tights inside HIAC, in the main event, for the WWE Title has to be in the conversation for worst HIAC endings, if not worst PPV endings of all-time. I'd take that Rollins/Fiend HIAC ending over this easily

Yeah, I thought the match was great up until that point.

Overall I enjoyed the show.

McIntyre to smack down to beef with reigns?

Fine with this as long as they acknowledge that whole feud where Drew told Roman's kids he was going to kill their father just after he came back from leukemia

I seriously don't understand this guy's appeal. Audience of one, IMO.

Much like Randy Orton, he looks like a superior athlete. He'll tall, he has minimal body fat. He is Vince McMahon's platonic ideal of a man. Therefore all the fans should love him, despite his complete lack of personality or being booked in any interesting angles at all.

Orton has definitely cranked out interesting stuff at times. That's as part of a long career where he's been boring more often than he's been interesting, but still. Orton's Legend-Killer run, and the Orton-Christian feud in 2011, are a couple of examples of output far more interesting than anything I've seen from McIntyre.

That's just Orton's longevity. If McIntyre had never left WWE and had been in lots of angles during that time, the law of averages says he probably would have lucked into one or two entertaining moments.

Meh. I think Orton is better in every way, but is just stale and doesn't have any particular range so he can't seem to manage to morph into another phase where he's interesting again, the way that the actually great all-time wrestlers do. I'm sure it's correct that on a long enough timeline, Drew will produce something compelling for the reasons that you said, but I guess I just fundamentally disagree with the implied premise that Orton is the same level of talent. Drew was pushed from day one without having actually become good yet. Orton merited his initial push. No doubt that being a son of a wrestler helped, but a lot of those (who came from higher-profile wrestlers than Bob Orton) failed where Orton succeeded.

To be very clear, I do not even like Orton.

Should we be grading someone like Drew on a curve since he's had maybe 5-6 live RAWs and this past WM with fans present? I think that can make a difference in the booking for sure - decent chance we don't get Drew/Orton for 4 months if there were live fans present, crapping all over the redundancy of running it back so often. I feel like the Thunderdome-era could be comparative to the deadball era of MLB