For everyone chanting "Fight Forever!", they have that event. It's called Wrestlemania and it's become a tiring experience. Don't chant it if you don't mean it.

He didn’t really land on his back, he landed on his butt, it was just slightly botched from an angle perspective. I’m fine with it.

That was an entertaining AF 2.5 hours. Imagine all WWE ppvs were that length?

Put this on with some friends whilst waiting for the boxing, did not go down well. End of the womans match which was unexciting and the main event which was building but needed more instant action.

Shame.

I look forward to watching it all tomorrow by myself.

Extremely disappointed that they managed to take someone as over as Johnny Gargano was against Chiampa and handle his reign so badly that in his second attempted defense the crowd went nuts for him losing to a heel


for anyone that still has the belief that HHH is the savior in waiting, take note that nxt still can't book a babyface champion

Reading around and it seems like Johnny has some sort of severe injury that's gonna keep him out for a while and the switch was done out of necessity.

hate to hear that

gargano is great and having him and TC out with injuries is a real downer to my favorite feud of the last few years

Yeah, NXT gets praised endlessly for its character work, but they basically botched Johnny's character with the Aleister Black angle/weird heel turn and I don't think he's ever recovered in terms being that hugely over fan favorite. Even if Ciampa had stayed healthy and they'd seen the story through, I think it would have been an issue. I also think Adam Cole kind of sucks at being a heel which complicates it further.

The last few minutes of Gargano/Cole were preposterous but I liked the rest of this show quite a bit. Breeze/Dream was really good. The booking of the women's match was weird with Shirai losing clean then being a sore loser as a babyface moment of some sort, but I guess Shayna is despicable enough that it worked. Shayna's run has me a bit riled up in a way that I think is effective heel work. I'm just sick of her finding a way to win at every Takeover but will mark out when she loses (hopefully to my girl Dakota Kai).

My least favorite NXT trope: when a guy takes a superkick or something else to the head, acts really dazed and stumbles into the ropes, then suddenly regains all of their strength/senses and hits their own superkick/clothesline/whatever.

I really was into the main event until Gargano kicked out 9f the Panama sunrise on the outside, then it got stupid

That was the exact turning point for me too. That looked like it should have killed him or had him get taken out on a stretcher.

I think I actually hate that MORE than the finisher spamming. Just infuriating.

Gargano/Cole 2 was better than the first one, but still had a bunch of stupid nonsense like that.

The ladder match was absolutely nuts and unnecessarily dangerous in a couple spots.

I think the most problematic long term issue with WWE is that they can't book a satisfying and interesting face champion. What was the last good reign for a face champion?

The WWE Championship:

Kofi is a couple of months into it so I don't want to judge it as a reign yet. Thus far it hasn't been anything special though.

Bryan was a heel.

AJ's reign before Bryan was over a year. He had a feud about being hit in the dick, a feud about joe stalking his family home, and one offs vs owens/zayn/ziggler/rusev.

Mahal was a heel.

Orton won it from Bray in that weird projection match and quickly lost it to Mahal.

Cena had it for two weeks.

AJ's run at the end of 2016 was the last one for the WWE title that I thought was good but he was a heel for most of it (and the best of it) with the Ellsworth/Ambrose stuff.

Ambrose had the shield triple threat and the match with Ziggler. The triple threat was viewed as a let down and was on a B ppv.




Universal Title:

Seth, Brock, Roman, Brock, Goldberg, Owens, Balor. Not a single reign by a face that was good. Seth has also been uneventful thus far as champ. Balor and Goldberg held it for no time. Brock was a heel. Roman was **** on constantly.


Before the title was split:

Rollins -> Heel
Reigns -> **** on
HHH -> Heel
Reigns -> **** on
Sheamus -> Heel
Reigns -> Less than a day
Rollins -> Heel
Lesnar -> Heel
Cena -> Won it and got decimated by Brock a month later
Bryan -> Lost it after a month due to injury
Orton -> Heel
Bryan -> Less than a day
Orton -> Heel
Bryan -> Less than a day
Cena -> Held it from mania to summerslam. Feuded with Ryback and Henry before losing to Bryan
Rock -> Held it for 3 months as a prop for his mania match


Punk.


You have to go back to CM Punk in 2013-2014 to find the last time that the WWE booked a babyface champion well.



That's a problem. It's hard to get invested in faces because there's never any long term payoff for them. They get the title, it feels good, and then creative doesn't know what to do anymore to keep it interesting. So watching the same thing happen in NXT with Gargano comes off to me as a sign of problems even if haitches takes over. He hasn't seemed to be able to solve that problem either.

Even Punk would have to come with an asterisk since he usually didn't main-event PPVs as purportedly the top champion in the company.

I think that was part of what excited me about the "Becky Two Belts" thing -- the idea of a babyface champ being at the very top and having a ton of heels or even other faces trying to knock her down, which she finds a way to do for a sustained period of time. Not in like dominant fashion necessarily, but just scrapping her way through PPVs. That was a good babyface champ angle, but I'm guessing they didn't feel it could work practically or would lead to overexposure.

Come to think of it, Ronda Rousey's reign was pretty damn strong until she turned heel.

I think Ronda's reign was strong mostly due to her not having worked with the challengers prior to winning the belt. Once you start rehashing old stuff like Becky/Charlotte after Becky wins the belts, it's pretty ****ing dull.

I sorely miss Ronda At this point, I'd even take her with the **** makeup/hair jobs they did at ppvs with her.

Obviously not main roster, but Asuka had a reasonably successful reign on NXT as a face.

I realize you can argue she wasn't a pure face.

I mean, has there really been a successful, entertaining, well-booked 4+month main event face champion since Rock circa 2000?

Meltzer gives Strong/Riddle and the ladder match 4.5

Women's match gets 4

North American title match gets 3.75

Cole/Gargano gets 5.25

I'm guessing from that elite "-6 stars, Dave" tweet from Rollins that Dave must get hate for these stupid ratings of more than 5 stars. Has he ever offered a defense?

I do admit to some envy, because he must believe that wrestling is at an all-time peak. I would love to feel that way.

Cole/Gargano really was a fantastic match until the standard ridiculous "epic match" kickouts happened

His defense is that he thinks these matches are better than the matches he gave 5* in the past so to rate them the same wouldn't be fair

I agree with Dave tbh. It's why I've been advocating opening up the MLB Super Hall of Fame for the best players of todays era since they are obviously better than the people from the 50s.

Yeah, had to figure. Like I said, I envy anyone who feels like we’re getting the GOAT matches today.

Watching NXT for the Kushida match and that Matt Riddle "MMA style" match was the dumbest **** I've seen in a long time. Matt Riddle sucks.

edit: Killian Dain just beat him up. Killian Dain is awesome.

edit2: They signed Samuel Shaw and kept the rapey gimmick. WTF.

I actually liked that episode of NXT a lot.

The Matt Riddle vs whatever their calling Adrian Jaoude now was unique. Probably not for everyone, but I liked it. Post-match was great.

Kushida vs Apollo was outstanding, though I think Apollo actually should have won that.

I don't know anything about the previous work of Dexter Lumis, but the gimmick has potential. It was creepy. Not cool creepy. Creepy creepy. I'm in so far.

I'm not really excited about another Gargano/Cole kick-out fest, but the feud is at least good. Plus there aren't really any other faces with enough credibility to face Cole besides Velveteen Dream (who has his own title) and Pete Dunne (who will presumably be busy fighting Imperium in NXT UK).

Add some fun backstage stuff with Tyler Breeze and a possible future heel turn for Keith Lee. I was sports entertained.

This probably sounds stupid but I just think trying to make a wrestling match look like an MMA match makes it even harder for me to suspend belief than a guy doing an irish whip or a powerbomb etc. I watch a lot of MMA and most of what they were doing in that match came off as ridiculous, overly fake to me(still real to me dammit) and just watered down versions of the real thing. I can't watch a real competition where people are doing 450 splashes and DDTs.

WWE changed Samual Shaw's name to Dexter Lumas because his character in TNA was basically a complete rip off of Dexter from the TV show except his whole storyline revolved around him being obsessed and abducting Christy Hemme with TNA heavily implying that rape was involved. I know it's creative's fault and not his but it was beyond terrible and it's surprising to see WWE not only continue with a similar gimmick but also just blatantly name him Dexter. He is a decent wrestler and good on the mic so I'll stay optimistic though.