AJ Lee's "Light It Up" theme was terrible.

She should have forced TPTB to give her Eve's theme.

I liked Light It Up.

Not completely convinced Eve's theme would have worked for her.

wtf was that Cody/Miz match

Omos/Lashley feud is boring af

Asuka is the best

Oh yeah, and why does the commentary ALWAYS SUCK???

These jokers were yelling over the Becky/Asuka match the entire time.

“Gotta get their **** in” is a toxic concept that seems to extend to WWE announcers too. It’s obvious they’re up against some kind of formal or informal quota to jam a bullion buzzwords into every segment.

Yeah, definitely. Also feels like Cole is always trying so hard to get the “epic” line that will be played back during the subsequent promo package.

The announcing is a big part of what drove me away. Even watching bits and pieces of Mania this year I couldn't stand the amount of times they said "Seth Freaking Rollins". I get that his name changed but it's dumb af and I don't want to hear it every 5 seconds.

NXT UK and NXT 2.0 are my fave WWE shows by a long shot rn, both have way better commentary then SD/Raw and that’s a big part of the appeal imo.

I think it’s likely a VKM issue tainting the quality of the SD/RAW commentary rather than an issue with the commentary teams themselves.

As an aside, NXT 2.0 is absolutely killing it with their womens division the last month or so.

NXT UK is a really solid hour, seems to maintain the same 3 match structure week to week, feels a little less chaotic than a standard Rampage. Loving Dragunov and Satomura (less so) as champs.

I don't get the appeal of Toxic Attraction at all. They make faces that look like something just bit them in the ass, but I think they believe it's supposed to be sexy? I just can't get into any of these new gimmicks. Steiner's kid is going to be a star, but will get old pretty quickly and they're going to give him the Roman treatment. I don't know if he's doing this anymore, but they had one guy who's gimmick was that he played poker almost naked? All the new gimmicks are just awful.

If this recovery period is accurate, I guess the Rumble is out for Cody. To be fair, him returning just in time to win the Rumble is pretty uninspiring at this point in time anyway; that arc has been done before and doesn't need yet another rendition. Hopefully they can just come up with a different good way to build him up for WrestleMania.

100% WWE is overshooting the recovery time to make his Rumble return a "moment" on the level of Cena's surprise return. Just business as usual running the same shtick back

This was my initial thought as well.

I suppose that's probably right.

I hope it isn't.

The big rumor for a while now has been Reigns vs Rock at Wrestlemania. I guess there are ways around it if Cody comes back and wins the Rumble. I doubt Reigns will drop 1 of the belts to make 2 title matches at Mania. Maybe Rock costs Reigns the titles vs someone (Orton, Rollins, Balor, Edge?) and Reigns/Rock becomes a non-title match which frees up Cody for his big championship win. I just don't see Rock showing up enough to make that story work.

Or maybe they just decide to move away from bringing the Attitude era guys back every year and just let the basic booking work out and Cody/Reigns is a banger. Then again we probably will get another Goldberg match before this year is over.

Probably Rock/Reigns at WM. Rock has no movie schedules for next year as of now. Goldberg's contract is up and hasn't been re-signed.

They've pretty quickly gone from making me excited to see Edge's comeback to wanting him off my screen by turning him too often. The Rhea Ripley stuff is ridiculous too. She's heel, but then teams with Nicki. She doesn't want to be part of a tag team anymore, so Nikki turns on her. So then she forms another team with Liv and then turns on her. TV scripted content has evolved so much over the last decade or two, but this **** has gone so far backwards that I can't even watch full shows anymore.

Watching NXT 2.0 for the heck of it - it pales in comparison to OG NXT but is still far more watchable than RAW.

- Seems like their plan is to have cheaper, younger wrestlers take over gimmicks of vets they've released over the past few years (Pretty Deadly = Breezango, Joe Gacy = Bray Wyatt, etc.)
- Bron Breakker just needs to go full Big Poppa Pump, bleach his hair blonde, and quit trying to make any sense whatsoever.
- Nobody misses Beth Phoenix on commentary. Nobody.

I did not realize that Baron Corbin was in the NFL, let alone apparently a roommate with Pat McAfee while both were with the Colts.

Yep, that's on Corbin's Wikipedia page.

Rare footage of OG NXT:

WWE released a statement today that notes in part that HHH is going to be running creative.

Seems like potentially great news. My first reaction was, "Maybe I'll even watch Raw tonight." My second reaction was, "...but Raw is still three hours. Perhaps I'll wait to hear if others start singing praises about the product improving." But really, I'm hoping this means good things.

Raw is 3 hours, but Hulu has an hour and a half version available on Tuesdays.

I might give that a shot. Of course, even if HHH informally took over a few days ago before the official announcement, I have to be realistic about the timeline for positive impact. Even if he is indeed going to put the company in a much better place creatively, that can't be expected to happen instantly. Like hiring a good coach, the dividends are generally not immediate. And obviously my hope for a longer-term vision to be put into place requires...a long term to occur.

Perhaps the best hope at immediate improvement is that the announcers will not have Vince in their ears ghost-announcing the whole damn show, and can hopefully get away from continuing to blurt out an endless stream of corporate buzzwords during every match. If the announcing is actually going to get better then that should really show up within a few weeks and not the longer timeline that I expect other things to take. Though some of that does hinge on just how much the Vince method is baked into Michael Cole's psyche at this point.