It was a setup for Halftime Heat.

I think that's just step 1 of the process. They are going to be running head to head against the ROH/NJPW supershow at MSG for that Takeover so they need something big. Elimination chamber works perfect for that and they have 6 guys that all make perfect sense.

Eh. They're probably not TOO worried about that. Both shows will sell out. I'd like to see that match but they'd probably just run it at the Elimination Chamber PPV if it's on the table.

Yeah that weekend it's easy to sell out everywhere. I was thinking more about streaming demand but with the on demand nature it's not a huge deal. I still think Vince will want to have the best show regardless. I read stories about AEW shirts being forbidden at the Rumble (at least on camera), not sure if true or not.

It's true. Video evidence out there of a producer making a guy take the shirt off.

The women's singles matches were botchfests.

Paled in comparison to the womens Rumble match. Whoever put the order of entrants together needs a boot up the ass.

That Mickie/Mandy sequence with Mickie completely whiffing on a spin kick...woof lol.

Also I wonder who's bright idea it was to have Lacey Evans go in at 1? Holy shit....

Lacey Evans should still be in NXT. I imagine the conversation with Vince going like this. "Kairi Sane? We've already got Asuka, pally. Shayna Baszler?!? She's just like Rousey!!! Get me a hot tall blonde with big boobs, DAMMIT!!!!!!"

Also, holy ****ing shit was Graves creepy last night. Pretty damn funny but after that comment about the napkin it was time to shut it down.

I was ok with the order in a way. It got a lot of the garbage out of the way early so that the womens one could finish stronger.

The exec's, writers and agents all need to watch the mens rumble if they want an understanding on why the current product is stale as piss.

They will NEVER understand. Ratings fall to an all time low? McMahons come back as authority figures. They NEED to make a new superstar but they keep trying to use the same tactics from 20 years ago that only worked because The Rock is ****ing awesome, and the McMahon-Austin feud can't be recaptured a 2nd time, no matter how many times they try.

The McMahon's are minimal at best. I'd be more concerned with the fact that Seth Rollins is using a Roman Reigns script from early 2018, with his name written over Roman's.

They waited a year too long and capitalized at the worst moment considering he's coming off a drizzling dogshit program with Dean Ambrose, who is the most blah performer.

LMAO Goes from turning heel on the night Roman Reigns announces his Leukemia to being inoculated with a giant ****ing needle in the span of a couple of weeks. What were they thinking.

First, Jericho is 48 (he's almost 2 months younger than me) LOL :D

Second (and most important), AEW can spend all the money they want, but it has to be booked well for them to beat WWE. AEW needs to learn from WCW's mistakes.

Well they've always booked him like a joke.

"Hurr he's so wacky....forgot his title in the uber! WHAT A FRINGE CRAZY GUY"

What's sad about the WWE today, is nobody 20yrs from now is going to talk about today's current roster. No one's gonna be like "Hey remember what Seth Rollins or Stroman etc etc did on Raw, or PPV etc".

I still watch old Attitude Era clips on Youtube. Still entertaining as hell.

What's equally sad is that if creative would give the members of the roster room to shine, they could be talking about them in 20 years.

More currently, they need to learn from TNA's mistakes and I think they have. I know All In was a one-off show but it was booked extremely well and pretty much built up with the Being the Elite youtube show. They aren't going to hire a fleet of writers and several of the talents (like Joey Janella) already have experience booking their own shows. They will let the wrestlers have a lot of input into their characters and historically, that's how big stars are made, Austin and Rock being the biggest examples.

Who else is ready for The Nation Of Vegetation on Tuesday?

If you actually go back and watch the wrestling in the Attitude Era it doesn't hold up very well--too reliant on swerves and foreign objects with a lot of bloated stiffs. Wrestlemania XIV-XVI were really shitty cards. There were a lot of awful, awful storylines, too. However, when they did hit, they often hit it out of the park. The best period for the in-ring aspect was the post-Attitude, pre-Cena era; it was probably the most balanced the wrestling product ever was.

Today's matches are just spot-to-spot with very little selling or psychology, which makes it more like a crossfit workout than a wrestling match.

That would have been the period of the Smackdown 6 when Heyman was booking Smackdown. He was always a master of hiding weaknesses and showcasing strengths so when he had a group of high workrate guys on Smackdown he went nuts with it. It was a bit similar to the real early period in ECW when they had Malenko, Guerrero and Jericho. That iteration of ECW was more like ROH.

How about The Straight Veg Society?

Also, Attitude Era is hilariously overrated. Go back and try to watch a full episide. Horrendous.

ReVegetation X?

Bullet Shrub?

The Smackdown 6 period is a bit cringeworthy now, considering the bumps Benoit took and the endgame from it.

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There were definitely times when the gore went too far (JBL vs. Guerrero, 2005) and the spots were too dangerous (all those early Elimination Chamber matches).

Good lord

The DIY storyline in NXT right now so goddamn good....Gargano and Ciampa both rule. It was awesome Saturday, Gargano had Dark Phoenix themed gear and Ciampa went with the old school Wolverine gear.

It may not mean much but if you've been following it since the start it totally does and hit the nerd nerve with me lol...it's the little touches that matter.

The suicide dive to thrown chairshot is the worst Benoit bump, IMO.

The Ciampa match had some good limb work with Black's knee and it played into the end where he couldn't hit Black Mass. NXT has a great group of guys vying for the belt right now.

Yes it is! I could hardly stand to watch RAW back then (of course, during some of that time WCW was hitting on all cylinders and was the better show (and I did watch that until it, too, went off the rails).

The Vince Russo stuff got REALLY silly towards the end.

But it's still 100x better than anything they write today. I remember when Smackdown was just as good as Raw, and better than any PPV WWE puts on today. I remember going to the very first Smackdown ever, taped in KC at Kemper, it was on my 16th bday. Rock was sweet chin music'd by HBK during a People's Elbow, who was special guest ref during title match vs HHH. Also was at the Owen Hart show Over the Edge PPV, and I'll never forget that. I had floor seats and he fell not too far away from where I was sitting.

And the guys are smaller and more athletic now...but they all look like a bunch of metro-sexuals who are getting ready for a night out on the town. Characters aren't believable anymore. The mystique factor is gone, too many cameras behind the curtain, reality shows etc etc.

With exception to Stroman and a couple others, gone are the days of the big powerful wrestler that wow'd everyone. And that's partly due to WWE wellness policy and their overall direction they chose to go in.

Not to change the topic too much, but as one who grew up watching the NWA on Channel 41 on Sunday Mornings, I've got to share this:

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There are plenty of things that are wrong with thr WWE today. Wrestlers no longer doing steroids and ****ing up their bodies for the rest of their lives isn't one of them. The 3 guys you mentioned above were all smaller and more athletic anyway. Hell, Rock didn't swell up until after he had left WWE. Good god, the characters? Seriously, go back and watch a full episode of either RAW or Nitro, and come back and say the characters are less believable today. They're scripted horrendously in modern day WWE, but the shit back then was just ****ing stupid.

I enjoyed ECW back in the day, but good riddance it's now a dead company.

No way. This isn't even the worst period for WWE, and the worst period for them (diva search) was still better than Russo and his viagra on a pole match.

We view a lot of things through the lens of nostalgia because it was our youth. We remember things like Jericho's "Man of 1004 Holds" and Ralphus, but we also forget them running out actual ****ing ripoffs from Mortal Kombat at the same time. We reminisce about skits like Austin hitting McMahon with the bedpan, but forget about Mae Young giving birth to a hand or "We choppy choppy your peepee." And the sexualization of worn out women with fried hair, no athleticism, and bad saline implants at that time is just pathetic now.

Katie Vick

One day HHH's daughters are gonna stumble upon the video of him pretend ****ing a dead body.

Mike Vick

Who was murdered by President Jacobs.

Man that whole era was Monday Night Raw starting off with 30 minute long HHH promos. I don't miss those.

Big Boss Man feeding Al Snow his own dog and the subsequent Kennel from Hell match.

I will forever defend the Bossman and Big Show program.

Bossman's poem about the Big Show's dad's death and him crashing the funeral was so awful that it was hilarious.

The Big Show riding the coffin tied to boss man's cruiser is still legit hilarious to this day

so was Val Venus looking down at Big Show in the urinal and being all, "heh and they call you the BIG SHOW"

The worst thing I can think of that actually went according to plan was WWE forcing Hawk to pretend he was a drunk and high addict with suicidal tendencies.... when he was actually struggling with those issues in real life. IIRC, some dude named Puke ended up "killing" him by pushing him off the titantron or something ****ing dumb like that.

That shit is just cruel. Katie Vick was just Triple H humping a doll at the end of the day.

Brian's got a gun was pretty messed up too

The most uncomfortable thing WWE does nowadays is allow Shane McMahon to wrestle. He always stiffs guys and ends up taking receipts, does some of the dumbest bumps you'll see at a modern day show, turns a varying shade of dark pink all the way to purple in every match, and routinely forgets what he's supposed to say when he's playing the authority figure. The dude is 49 years old. Get him out of there.

Jeff Jarrett signed to WWE as a producer and on camera talent. Please don't ever come out with that outfit on again.

Still a better worker than Nia Jax

If it makes you feel any better, "Puke" was Darren Drozdov, a former scrub for the Broncos who was later paralyzed when D. Lo Brown botched a running powerbomb and dumped him on his head.

Sonjay Dutt and Shane Helms start producing today. Pretty sure Abyss from TNA is going to be a producer soon too.

"We'll see what happens when Austin 3:16 meets Pillman 9mm Glock!!"

Pillman was God. He swerved three promotions into paying him all at the same time, got a guaranteed contract from Vince, was so good on the mic that he got ECW guys to boo the shit out of him after he began a promo tearing apart Bischoff, and was one of the best American cruiserweights of the early-mid 90s. Unfortunately, that car wreck destroyed his ankle and he came back too soon, which exacerbated a painkiller addiction that helped stop his heart.

He was every bit the total package as almost anyone that ever worked for that company.

So am I and the entirety of my wrestling experience is working as a run-in referee and Mean Gene-esque backstage interviewer for a backyard wrestling program.

Bill Watts did his best to **** Pillmans career up well before that crash. ****ing dumbass.

That is such a hilariously low bar to set.

Still lol'n over her being the big surprise that was being teased

Jax has the charisma of Eric Watts, the workrate of Khali, and the mic skills of Shelton Benjamin.

There is no way Ambrose and HHH aren't related.

Are they trying to turn Nia into Chyna by having her fight the men?

Goddamn they're doing Kurt dirty.

I didn't like that finish much myself.

The WWE is boring, there is no way around that. But they've cultivate to 95% of fans that they are the only wrestling game in town.

Competing with them is near impossible.

That promo was ****ing legendary...the way he turned on the ECW asshole fans and started calling them marks still makes me LOL.

Top 5 promo for sure for me.

Is it me or do the women have better matches and more fully developed characters than the men on WWE these days?

Not just you.

I didn't think so. The segment with Roussy and Lynch was the highlight of the show so far (and RAW hasn't been all that bad tonight).

Ambrose gone after Wrestlemania.

AEW just signed an indie wrestler named Jungle Boy, who made his name in some small indies as well as one of Joey Janela's show. What is interesting is that he is the son of Luke Perry.

On the latest BTE Omega's phone was counting down to the Double or Nothing rally so if there was any doubt left (there shouldn't have been) you can forget it.

And sadly I doubt they care...They have done some things that are mind numbly frustrating yet it's their goal.

For anyone who is a long time fan who remembers the 80s and 90s and early 00's, what they do now is a exercise in frustration but basically here's what happened.

They through all of those era's always had one if not a couple of guys who had a rocket ship attached to them as the guy of the company. They decided they were not promoting that way anymore, now the star is the WWE brand. They have spent basically 20 years cultivating no other wrestling game matters but them, they make more money today than they did during the attitude era..even with less fans they figured out how to play that game.

But here is why it changed, #1 they were not happy when the Rock decided he didn't wanna wrestle anymore. That was irritating but nothing that really changed the directive of how they do things....then after him you have the last 2 guys they really did the mega push for...

Cena, who basically assured them by sucking their dicks every 5 minutes he would never leave, which to his credit he didn't. Cena is basically their wet dream, a popular dude that carries the company and never takes off.

But the one that really soured them on mega pushes and why you don't see them anymore was Lesnar. When they pushed him to the moon as the next big star of the company and he just basically took his ball and went home, that killed it for everyone else.

After Lesnar no one ever got a monster push again, even Reigns for all the bitching takes way more losses and competitive matches than any of their other big pushed guys in the past ever did.

They decided after that they would never be held hostage to a talent ****ing them over when they have no one else to compete with so the brand is the star.

All of their major problems lie in the fact that the man the show is booked for is 72 years old and completely out of touch.

Well, bye.

Never cared much for him anyway.

A lot of that is on creative, he'd have been a big star had he come along in 1999.

It really is a catch 22, you go to WWE and get frustrated but you make a ton of money, AJ Styles really cemented himself by proving he could go there and do it...

Wrestling fans in that circle love Kenny Omega but most people have no ****ing clue who he is.

Back to his Jon Moxley persona and to AEW then. I wouldn't complain.

If you buy into Meltzer he says they aren't interested in bringing in a ton of WWE guys..maybe 5.

I read the Ambrose stuff just sounds like he need a wrestling break in general.

Never was a fan.

He was alright until he got the WWE title on Smackdown. Just ****ing lazy after that.

That's smart and learning from the failings of TNA with all the retreads. I think if he went back into his Moxley persona from Dragon Gate USA, he could be really valuable.

I am praying they get The Revival, but WWE is probably going to do the smart thing and push them to keep them happy and signing a new contract.

AEW is also going after Pentagon Jr and Rey Fenix (the Lucha Bros). Basically they will need to get them away from TNA but that seems fairly doable and would be huge for them. Both guys are great in both tag teams and singles.

LMAO The new belt. Made from hemp and a naturally fallen oak tree.

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Samoa Joe with the sick AA burn ROFL

BAH GAWD WHAT'S NEAL EMBROIDERY DOING IN THE IMPACT ZONE