fram

Mauro is so damn good. Ambrose/Owens was great and his commentary elevated it. He called the Fastlane pre-show match too and it made me super bummed out when Cole took over for the main show.

NXT was great this week. Pretty cool that they used the Aries intro segment to give Corbin some love. Speaking of Corbin, he is basically the only guy on the roster that generates heel hatred from the fans. Joe still plays to the crowd and has people cheering for him.

Given the whole driving metaphor thing WWE has going with Fastlane and Road to Wrestlemania and whatnot, Roadblock is kind of a pretty great name for this event - especially given what it represents for the world title picture.

That said, I'd have been equally amused by WWE Speed Trap or WWE Detour or WWE Rest Stop.

I'm pretty selective with my wrestling twitter follows. I think Rusev might be my next one.

Aside from the finish being real sudden (I was hoping they put Brock through the third announce table) that was a fantastic match. Dean going nuts with chair shots was the highlight for me.

I hope Harper is okay after that finish. Goddammit Ryback.

Unless the WWE are playing at some sort of longer-term heel turn for him, I doubt that Reigns pins Lesnar after a Wyatt interference. It would only further the "WWE is forcing him down our throats" narrative that a section of fans have built. It would make his title win feel especially cheap in contrast to the relatively successful "overcoming adversity" win over Sheamus and the Authority. That said it's hard to blame the fans when he's booked to be so unlikable - receiving title shot after title shot, sitting out of most of the rumble only to face a returning Triple H, etc. Meanwhile Ambrose is off to the side earning all the goodwill and becoming the scrappy badass babyface by proxy. The closest they got to getting Reigns over as a killer face was the end of TLC. That whole bit was fantastic, as was him capturing the championship on Raw. But as usual with WWE there was no real follow-up, and a few short weeks later Triple H is eliminating Roman from the rumble to a standing ovation. I'm kind of curious to check out Fastlane just to see how much more of a clusterfuck the world title picture becomes.

Finally the door is open for Jeff Gerstmann's ascendancy. #murderslingshot

Holy crap, Smackdown was great! Sasha and Naomi put on a fantastic match, AJ and Jericho was INSANE, the commentary elevated everything. I could get used to this.

The Division 2: Paradise City