rolling Jericho calls The New Day trap queens 2016

i think the mcmahon kids are the "showrunners" but they pick their GMs tonight at the top of raw, i think

steph commish of RAW, shane smackdown. picking GMs tonight. there is a potential spoiler on who the smackdown GM could be (wwe.com published something and didn't change a name that they were supposed to, or something).

convert this binary to ascii to see what they accidentally left lying around in a story:
01111001 01100101 01110011 00100001

this is my cool new way to hide spoilers

that just says 'yes!' afaict?

oh oops now i get it SPOILERS FEEL FREE TO DELETE MODS

samoa joe i can only see going up if they take the nxt belt off of him, which i imagine they won't do tonight... he'd be great on the bigger stage though.

he's anchoring nxt right now but they really need to bring him up before he literally dies of old age

whoa it'd be interesting if they called him up to smackdown and he defended the nxt belt on that show for a little while... not a great idea nvm

raw's getting a cruiserweight belt

i'm actually watching raw :x

foley raw gm lol, talking about how this "feels like the monday night wars" and reminding everyone how much better this dumb split would be if they just BROUGHT BACK NITRO

Watching raw and yeaaaah this show has been well fun.

Bob backlund as a Donald trump pisstake training a clueless Darren young, 'make Darren young great again' is the best new gimmick.

if you missed the long ass draft, yikes, what is even happening, i'm mostly just mad at myself, see you sunday monday and then tuesday, etc

nothing ridiculously atrocious happened it was just depressing

smackdown's women's division is literally just becky lynch and they're probably not even gonna split the title to give her something to do

smackdown's tag division is literally american alpha??? and i guess the usos are gonna be relevant again? basically everything after their first six picks was vintage goofy crapcard smackdown from 2008 or whenever. good for alexa bliss but yikes. most of that roster is made up of everyone WWE was in the process of giving up on.

brock lesnar was eligible?

oh and

raw: cole/graves/byron
sd: mauro/jbl/otunga

i hope at least cole and mauro can remain neutral in the center; jbl heeling on mauro could ruin mauro and graves heeling on cole could ruin graves

cole/jbl was the devil we knew

god i hate brand splits

kinda gotta love how given any scenario to ever do anything fans will like, the wwe fuck it up to the point where they get actively worse.

also that they love breaking up couples (paige/adr, carmella/big cass).

so branding-wise it looks like main tag team + women's division will be on RAW and smackdown will be minor leagues / perfunctory for those divisions. at first i thought smackdown men's division would be smarky but RAW kept cesaro, zayn and KO, and cena/orton went to smackdown so that's not entirely true. it's hard to figure out how they're thematically separate - or maybe that's the point. if you were drafting legit (kayfabe) it wouldn't necessarily turn out thematically organized.

yeah but drafting legit is dumb as shit, that's the sort of stuff WCW used to pull back in old days, booking tag team tournaments with genuinely random pairings etc. stupid way to book a show.

it's such a confusing draft. what are they even trying for, with either show?!

it's like... they want Raw to still be the main commercial flagship show, so you've still got Lesnar, Reigns, Rollins, New Day, Sasha Banks, Jericho providing some star power, Cole announcing, Stephanie / Foley providing the obligatory authority figure feuding etc.

but apparently they also want Raw to be a cool and happening place for yr smarkier wrestling fans to relax and enjoy themselves with Corey Graves, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Cesaro, Finn Balor, almost all of the useful women and a cruiserweight division?! (a cruiserweight division that at the moment seems to consist of Sin Cara, assume they'll be bringing more ppl in after the CWC is over)

and then on Smackdown it's supposed to be the WRESTLING SHOW, with Mauro on commentary, Styles and Ambrose anchoring the brand as the top two babyfaces and Bryan as matchmaker. So they bring over.... Cena, Orton, Bray, Kane, ADR, Ziggler, The Miz. none of whom fit the image that they seemed to be going for at all. well ok maybe ADR and Dolph qualify but they're both totally mediocre so w.e. wtf are they thinking of?!

a bunch of good stuff spread around here that is gonna get neutralized by the shit. they really needed to double down on getting the workrate guys and Graves over onto Smackdown i think. a lotta potential here for this to be just two extra hours of tedium a week

hey, don't forget neville! he can also be in the cruiserweight division! and i guess finn balor is light enough too. so there you go. three cruiserweights to fight each other forever.

and smackdown's tag division... i mean my 3 fave tag teams are on SD (vaudevillains, aa, lol breezeango) so that's fun but yeah this whole there's-three-of-everything is not a good look. i guess maybe they can do something with hype bros... i'll be honest they've impressed me lately on nxt. partic mojo. he looks good. aside from new day i really DGAF about a single tag team on raw, i mean enzo and cass and fantastic but i don't see that program working. i guess the club can still prove they work in wwe. but dudleys, shining stars, social outcasts, golden truth... what is this the job division (lol new dn)?

anyway the most important thing is this:
https://twitter.com/MATTHARDYBRAND/status/755589702799986689

(i tried multiple ways to upload an image but my phone is stupid and my work pc is locked down so you have to click the link)

I went and while I had a great time at the show the more I think about the end result of the draft the more it seems sort of... off. Will there be trades, do you know?

Also Cesaro OTM:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xFbiWvFYMo

The WWE really think Orton is a technical wrestler, a wrestlers wrestler, "if you built a wrestler from the ground up" etc.

Its beyond logic and fans fucking hate him but that's been his rep for a while, which is why he feuds with Rollins and Bryan, as if he's an equal part in a five star match, and why he's the brock pick etc.

Cena is thought of this way too because he actually does have those five star matches and cos he did the open challange thing.

And Kane... And the miz...

Ok its fucking ludicrous.

I think they were stuck very much inbetween a rock and a hard place promising one as the flagship entertainer and one as a wrestling haven. Personally I feel they should have properly ignored that and just gone "Kevin Owens doesn't need to be on the same show as zayn, neither cena and Orton, Rollins and Ambrose, etc. Etc. Etc.". Obviously you couldn't seperate them all but Orton v. Owens douche off on one show and cena the vet v. Zayn trying to gain his respek and beat him is way better than zayn/owens and cena/orton a million times more.

fuck it would've made more sense to just build one as the tags and women's show and just make it fucking incredible with the wealthe of talent they have in both divisions, and save the other for single mens shenanigans

in other news my gf genuinely asked why anyone likes wrestling last night and i explained the daniel bryan and sami zayn stories of the past couple years and didn't even spoil the four horsewomen bc i am just gonna try to show her that stuff at some point

annoyed enough about all this that I've spent the whole afternoon sitting here fantasy booking a superior draft instead of doing my work. I wanted AJ Styles as Smackdown world champ, carrying the show with monthly 4* minor classics against Sheamus / Orton / Owens whoever like some kind of latter day Shawn Michaels. lol I may actually have to fire up TEW tonight at this rate.

Aw man I showed my gf some wrestling when takeover Brooklyn and summerslam happened and after bayley/sasha I reply felt like I was getting somewhere and then that dumb brock taker match and loads of dumb b list American celebrities and more dumb finishes all happened and she went back to forgetting she ever enjoyed takeover and everything she's half seen since has been dumb like mania...

But wrestling isn't wrestling without dumb or inane shit to complain about so she'll never get it. She stops watching tv she doesn't like, what the hell?

will never make it on ilx imo.

feel most bad for kalisto, cruiserweights tearing it up on raw (boldly assuming that this will actually happen) while he's losing to erick rowan or whoever.

would bet my left nut right here rn that this "Cruiserweight division" is gonna be the same three guys fighting each other over and over, two in the ring while the third causes the distraction roll-up, week after week after week. something for Neville to do I spose.

They've already signed ibushi, metalik, gargano, ciampa, alexander and possibly a few other guys from the cwc right? Its crazy how bad the la sombra debut was, might as well riden on the back of sin cara's old gimmick bmx. Kalisto has to be given a push as a srs not even small guy guy or he's fucked fucked fucked. I bet they are thinking 'well rey was part of the original smackdown 6'

eh, they're mostly gonna be NXT-bound once the CWC though you'd think? i mean ok, Ibushi could do something given half a chance i guess, but the rest of them? they can't even one masked luchador over anymore, let alone two or three at once. i look forward to watching Gran Metallik feud with Kalisto and ADR for the rest of eternity.

does anyone seriously think that Vince is gonna know wtf to do with guys like Gargano and Ciampa? This isn't some Bryan Danielson-ish where they're so great and have such a strong hardcore following that they're gonna make it no matter what. those guys have got main-roster jobber written all over them.

*once the CWC finishes

oh i am a 10000 times with you. the draft was butters. i'm just trying to make sense of wtf just happened.

i just watch *the* cesaro interview. he's pissed man, to the point where you kinda wonder whether he was offered something more. i wonder how many more are pissed, especially considering cody & wade etc. just quit.

i just wrote a big rant of every shitty mistake theyve made in the past year but its essentially been a decade of faeces rubbed on the tv, masked by nxt and yes! yes! yes! and who cares? its not like i even fucking subscribe i should just stfu.*

*starting to think the day vince dies i might subscribe.

i can't even get the wwe network w/o having a cable package in canada lol. but if i could i would subscribe the second i could bc frankly the price is worth it for nxt. just forget you're paying for all the other shit :/

if you have the time i recommend flipping through the entire (3 hr) draft central special to the interviews, it was kind of great. sort of like three hours of all the good unscripted stuff that always gets shunted to youtube. you end up with total disasters like kalisto and honestly charlotte but also great stuff like cesaro and big e/kofi being more hilarious than they have been in like a year (in a very heelish way too) and honestly BIG CASS, who was awesome and totally took the wheel. everyone should seek that out. cass is seriously great on the mic, everyone just thinks "not as good or fast as enzo" automatically means "bad". they're best when they're going back and forth. every time someone mentions splitting them up my heart breaks. keep them together forever and actually give a shit about your tag team division long term. they complement each other perfectly.

also lol meltzer says cesaro's interview was literally a shoot

Rey v Puma really lived up to the hype. I need to rewatch the whole show but it was pretty fun.

Watching the second ep of the cwc and I've gotta say I don't like how a guy who introduces himself as from Chicago has to represent Pakistan and that instantly makes him a heel.

holy fuck that Ali v. Dorado match is essential viewing.

that was so good but so was the whole episode. tjp!

Sami Zayn is the greatest wrestler of all time, better than Flair or Michaels or Austin etc.

You can say blah blah blah all Japan in the 90s but I'm never gonna watch it all.

Sami Zayn is the best ever.

lol i wouldn't go that far but it was a hell of a match. not sure the last time i saw a spontaneous standing ovation in the middle of a WWE match.

was great hearing the pop for Bayley, there's so much promise in the women's division now.

interesting that they're no longer pretending not to hear the Reigns boos as well. that might be the best thing that could happen for him right now.

I just cant think of a wrestler* who has had everyday matches better than zayn and can beat a list like the cesaro 2/3, the Neville match, the Owens ones, the Samoa Joe 2/3, the Nakamura, this new Owens match... All while this being his second gimmick, after having been the best ever jokey character in history who also had serious 4 star matches. And this is only the beginning. I guess Bret had the matches but he didn't have the babyface fire and charisma. I just think he's so good. I would love for them to have Zayn v. Cesaro at WM for the us title.

*I don't follow Japanese wrestling, my bad

i get ya. "best" in wrestling is such a thorny issue though. i'm not sure that the number of great matches someone has is a criteria that i would use to judge. what makes someone good at this or otherwise is pretty intangible i think.

sure Zayn has had loads of awesome matches, but is he really "better" than, say, Ric Flair? Terry Funk? Randy Savage?! idk about that man, you can have all the matches in the world but the Macho Man was like something from outer space and that's worth more imo

i would say that Zayn is indisputably getting up there with Danielson and Styles now ito best of the last generation or two from North America, but i'm not sure i'd put him on a level those guys just yet.

in other (SPOILERISH) news.....

*********SPOILERS FOR MONDAY NIGHT RAW*************

i am pretty stunned at how hard they've pushed Balor out of the gate. I expected him to come in as a big-ish deal but I didn't expect him to get such a huge chance at Summerslam.

also the de-push of Roman Reigns is a wonder and a joy to behold. of course it's totally possible that they get properly behind him again once he's paid off his debt to society, but i dream of a future where "What if Roman had never been busted for a wellness violation?" joins "What if Magnum TA hadn't crashed his bike?" and "What if the first Mania had flopped?" on the list of legendary "what ifs...." that would've changed the course of the business

Watching Raw now. I'll have to leave for work in a bit so I'm only seeing up to the end of the second fatal 4way but I love that wwe has learnt how to do multiman matches now. These are awesome and in the ast year we've had zayn-joe-Corbin, the four horsewomen, brock-dean-reigns and the extreme rules one. Oh and rusev-cesaro-ko. I've not seen the end of bttleground yet but I presume that was fun too. 20 years too late but now they understand the formula I love it.

lol Ziggler jfc you have gotta be fuckin kidding me

Raw was so good, and Smackdown was so.... not

Is that gonna be on the ss pre show or

Baron Corbin gotta be pissed after destroying ziggles for 2 months

true, but corbs at a clear disadvantage in a 'six pack challenge'...

Note to self: Must poll terrible sports illustrated 101 greatest wrestlers ever list when I get home

Orton at 17 is some great trolling but the thing is full of it. Davey Boy Smith as the technical master of the 80s and 90s also a+

lol yeah there are some treats in there for sure. no idea who the writer is but he certainly hasn't watched very much wrestling