I wasn't a fan of those. Wrestling is about a suspension of disbelief. I want to be able to forget for a moment that it's all fake. When one match features someone literally teleporting around after someone else buried him alive, it's hard to suspend disbelief for the next one. I appreciate that it was something new to try during the pandemic era to give fans something new while working around some of the restrictions, but I think they are best left in that era.

Swerve and Claudio are unbelievable.
OH MY FUCKING GOD.pic.twitter.com/lIETs5dvEr

— Drainmaker 🌧️ 💵 (@DrainBamager) April 28, 2024

That's pretty sick. 

An anecdote about how pro-wrestling is again picking up new fans for the first time in quite some time (reminds me of the Attitude era) - I say this, because I remember back in the Attitude era, a lot of young women becoming fans, the sort that you wouldn't normally expect to be wrestling fans. Also, the importance of booking a high calibre women's match like Becky Lynch and Rhea Ripley first on the card. Because, while the soap-opera storytelling of the era was enough to capture some women - many of them were there just because they found certain wrestlers attractive. Wrestlers, like Rhea Ripley, give them a favourite that they can live vicariously through - whereas before they had Trish, Lita, and sometimes Jacqueline and Tori (and later, Victoria), and those two were often involved in really out there stories. By the time Torrie Wilson and Stacy Keibler came along, it felt like wrestling had already lost most of its mainstream fanbase, including mostly every woman I knew except for the more tom-boyish ones (you know, the ones with no female friends).

Any way,
Looking forward to the Netflix era of wrestling to see how much it will grow. There is an energy about it right now that feels like 1997 in retrospect.

Don't mind WWE doing more international events... but it kind of seems like they tend to phone it in a lot for these, because they know they're going to sell out no matter what since they're in these places so rarely and haven't worn out the audience.

AJ Styles vs Cody Rhodes should obviously be great from an in ring perspective, but it's hard to get excited when you know there's no way Cody is losing the belt. It's hard to make a match engaging when there's no real stakes.

The Damien Priest Jey Uso match should be more interesting, because they could potentially take the belt off Priest. I'm not really sold on him or Uso as top guys, but maybe they could surprise me.

Bayley vs Tiffany vs Naomi is another one where it's predictable. Bayley wins by pinning Naomi, who is there to take the fall.

Jade and Bianca will beat the Kabuki Warriors for the title. Which makes all the sense in the world, but again, predictable.

And, the new Bloodline isn't losing so soon after forming, so they will beat KO and Randy Orton.

We'll see if this can somehow overdeliver, but a rather meh card. I'm guessing they add another match or so on Smackdown. This often happens after mania where you just had a lot of people have their big moment and you don't want to cheapen it, but I still feel like they could have made some more intriguing matches. For the life of me, I can't figure out why they didn't have a match for Rhea's title here. Seems like a triple threat between Becky, Liv, and Nia would have been a way better idea than just having Becky win it on Raw. But, again, it kind of feels like that's part of the deal with these international shows, where they're guaranteed a hot crowd so they don't want to like, waste good matches on them or whatever.

In the opening match, Solo sets up Randy Orton for a Samoan Spike on top of the announce people. To the shock of noone Randy Orton instead RKOs him into the table...

WHY WOULD YOU CLIMB A TABLE TO DO A SAMOAN SPIKE?! HOW DOES THAT MAKE IT HURT MORE! IT'S LIKE YOU WANTED TO GET RKOED ONTO THE TABLE IDIOT!

To be fair, I guess he could have been going to spike him then do like a Rock Bottom through the table, but it seems more like he was just setting up to take the RKO. That aside, pretty fun match. Crowd is crazy hot. Tanga didn't come out looking super strong. But we have more Samoans! I'm guessing the end game is Bloodline vs Bloodline feud. Roman, Jimmy, Jey, and Sami vs Solo, The two Tangas, and Jacob Fatu. And, that sounds pretty fun.

Tiffany, Naomi, and Bayley had a fun match. There were a few sloppyish spots, but also some really great ones. Bayley I think almost lost the title buy mistake, with Naomi missing a pin break up. Tiffany Stratton looked great. As expected, Naomi was there to take the pin, which is too bad for her.

Damien Priest and Jey Uso exceeded my expectations. Despite all common sense, they sold me on the idea that Jey Uso may actually win the match. Whoever the agent was for this match planned it out incredibly well, and good excecution too. I still am not sure I buy Damien Priest as a top guy, but there were some flashes here where I kind of got it.

Jade Cargil and Bianca vs the Kabuki Warriors was... ok. It started off well, with Bianca doing most of the work. When Jade finally came in, she finally got to do more than a few moves, and she looked downright decent. He movements and transitions are still a bit too tentative, which is soemthing that's hopefully just due to a lack of experience. But, what she does, she does pretty cleanly. The way she powered Kairi Sane into the Glam Slam/Jaded was amazing. Jade Cargill is never gonna be the next Shawn Michaels, but she's getting good enough for the Warrior/Goldberg kind of character she is.

Problem is that the match got kind of messy towards the end. Kairi Sane had Jade Cargill in a pin, and the referree, rightly or wrongly, said that Kairi wasn't legal. The problem was that because of the language barrier, it didn't seem like the referee was able to property explain that Kairi wasn't legal. So, she just kind of awkwardly went through some spots. And then, tagged Asuka which the ref reacted to as a tag even though he thought Asuka was legal? Dunno whose fault this was, but it kind of ruined the momentum of the match.

Aj Styles vs Cody Rhodes was about as good as they could have done. Obviously, both guys are great, the crowd was super excited, and they worked a good old school pace to milk the crowd reaction. Both guys dug a little deeper into their repertoires, pulling out some stuff they don't usually do. The only real issue is that I did not for even a millisecond believe that Cody was going to lose. Of course, there's nothing that could have been done to avoid that, since Cody had to have a first major title defense, and he had to win it. But, it was what it was.

This was a pretty unambitious show, but each of the matches accomplished what they set out to do. The crowd helped make it seem more exciting than it probably was. There was nothing all that remarkable, or anything really worth going out of your way to see if you didn't watch it, but it was a perfectly fine way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon.

IT's so funny seeing your takes because they're always so cynical and negative...but everywhere else I've looked people were LOVING the crowd, the atmosphere, the experience. The outcomes being predictable didn't detract from the fun and that's honestly how it should be. 

Some times I swear you're just a hipster. 

Bloodline civil war tease ;p

Uhhhh... I'm sorry, are you criticizing me for not loving the crowd and atmosphere in a post that was made before the event happened? I can't like, see into the future dude. XD A lot of your posts trying to criticize me have been reaches, but you're reaching Dhalsim levels of reach with this reachy reachingess Christina Ricci. 

Don't think I'm always negative and cynical. And, as always, I have some evidence to back up my position. Lets see what I thought before the last ple...

I actually did projected star ratings for that one... And of the 12 matches on the card, I predicted half of them would be 4 stars or more. That really doesn't seem cynical and negative. One might even say that I was pretty optimistic, which is exactly the opposite of cynical. 

I would ask you to to show some time where I said an upcoming show was going to suck or something like that, but at this point I'm pretty sure you're not going to actually back up anything you say. 

Just so happens that before your post, I had already given my thoughts on the show. Cynical guy that I am, I must have hated it and bashed it relentlessly. Let's see my venomous review. For convenience, I bolded the parts that are positive, and italicized the parts that are negative. With neutral stuff being neutral text.

Perfectly fine way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon. Oh man, such cynicism. Such negativity. Clearly the words of a man who hates the world and everything in it. Might as well be writing poetry in a graveyard, amirite? 

*Ahem* Actually, I think it's a fair balance of good and bad. I think the criticisms I did have were pretty reasonable. And of course, I mentioned several times how great the crowd was. I think a rational person who is not looking to start arguments on a message board for unfathomable reasons would have to agree that my post/review indicates that I overall enjoyed the event. Apparently I'm a cynical hipster for not liking something that I liked @_@...

But, for me, predictability does kind of make it less enjoyable. Wrestling is about storytelling. Sometimes a story has to end in a way that makes sense, but it's always more fun when you don't quite know what will happen. I mean, would you try to avoid spoilers for matches you're excited for? If so, you're doing so, because not knowing what will happen makes it more fun. So, I stand by my comment that they could have easily added a couple of matches where the the winner was in doubt, and the event would have been better for it. Don't think that's cynical. By the way, here is Simon Miller, a well known positive Pete, reviewing Backlash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF7YDSmLLeM He mentions several times that the matches suffered a little due to predictability. He also mentions that the card on paper did not look all that impressive. I guess he's a cynical person too. 

So, I think your opinion is hilariously off base, and as usual, I have provided evidence to show that. But, that's the last time I'm going to have a discussion with you over whether I'm cynical, angry, was a bad mod, am biased, am a hipster, wear sandals with socks, put the toilet paper roll the wrong way, sing off key, put pineapple on pizza, own too many mugs, or whatever other flaws you may think I have. 

The point of this topic, which is already dead enough, is to discuss wrestling, and I'm happy to do that, even with people I disagree with. Would be boring to only talk with people who share the same opinion. But, I'm not here to discuss my personality, because I genuinely could not care less about your opnion on that. And if I had to guess, I'd say nobody else is particularly interested in that either. 

So feel free to disagree with anything I say about wrestling. But, if you want to discuss my personality, nope, not interested. Next time you do so, I'll simply request that you stop responding to me, quoting me, etc. Really would rather not do that, because this topic is dead enough and we could potentially have productive conversations if you weren't always trying to make it about me personally, but if you're not mature enough to do that, then there's no point in any discussion. *shrug*

Assuming they do this at war games (which obviously they should), it's usually five on five for the men.

So... bloodline 2.0 is Solo, Tanga Bros, and likely Jacob Fatu.

Then the other side would be... I guess Roman, Jey Uso, Jimmy, and... maybe Sami? 

If that's the case, we would need one more person for each side. The Rock could potentially go either way if he were involved. But I honestly have no idea who the last person would be or the last two people if the Rock isn't going to get involved.

Or it could just be four on four. But it's way more fun to speculate a on a mysterious fifth man.

[WWE does events in Saudi Arabia]
Me: “this is kind of outrageous when you consider they execute women for doing certain things legal for men, along with murdering western journalists.
[WWE reports they make 50 million USD, up front, by the Saudis, every time they do an event]
Me: Well, yeah, you’d be stupid not to take it…