forameus

So so far, we've watched the hosts almost die of embarrassment doing a Saturday Morning Kids TV style pirates impression, the continued attempted murder of the Fiend gimmick, and now this. Good going.

It's really quite a testament to him as a performer that they continually try their best to destroy him, and he keeps coming back.

Can only assume they didn't go with a Firefly Funhouse match because fans were in, but it's still a stupid decision.

Just got done with night 1, and it was...pretty good I suppose. Obviously not watching live, so switching the video on to Cole telling me there's a rain delay was utterly surreal. Was tempted to come on here and ask just how long it ended up being, but I think they actually made quite a good fist of filling the time. Usual shite chat from the commentators, but the promos they let everyone cut felt like they were being let off the leash a little bit. Drew sold his frustration well, although to be honest I imagine he was just speaking as himself. Then once the show actually started, I don't think there were any bad matches. Tag Team Turmoil match was what it was, but at least they put it on early rather than their usual tactic of having it sit second-to-last and get completely lost. It might be a weak match in context, but compared to where women's matches were not that long ago, it's great to see ten of them get some decent time and not be a joke. Bit of a pisser with Drew, I'd have liked to see him win it to make up for last year, even if Lashley took it back next month, or on RAW or whatever. But he got to be first out in front of the crowd, and I'd imagine that's a decent reward after carrying RAW through this year. I'd say Strowman/Shane was average, but significantly better as a spectacle and match than that sad, plodding HIAC match he had with Undertaker. Not too long, Strowman got his shit in, Shane got to try suicide again presumably in front of his family, everyone wins. Main event was what it should have been too. I've never really seen what everyone sees in Belair. She's very impressive obviously, but never quite seen the rave reviews. I think the strength spots were a little overdone in the match (bit of a stretching of belief that Banks would just sit on her shoulders for about an hour while she paraded her about the ring area (although fair fucking play to Banks for staying deathly still and not throwing her off balance)). But when the little parts of the real person shine through, I like her much more. You could see how much it meant to her at the bell before she regained her composure. Her Da almost tossing himself over the barrier in glee. the sheer delight. All lovely to see, and a great way to cap off a show that has so often finished poorly in recent years. Roll on night 2.

I'm still utterly baffled by that union. Fair play to big Windham though, even if he did pretty much leave his family for it

On that 1am stuff, you think this is Peacock requesting it or just a one-off thing? I'd started watching a few of the PPVs live as they were going midnight to around 3, but f**k doing that if it's going to be 1am from now on. I'm going to skip tonight, then try and avoid spoilers and watch the whole thing in one lump tomorrow. Get the full "holy f**k, why is this still on" Wrestlemania experience.

I wonder what Jim Johnston thinks whenever he hears the absolute pish that WWE are happy to use nowadays. Both Cole and O'Reilly's "music" is utter pish.

They're in an awkward position with stuff like that. You got the feeling early on in the Covid times that they were holding back, scared to do things in case they got crowds back, but I'm not sure they can keep waiting that long. Do they try and make the wider product as good as possible by doing all these surprises, or do they stick to a holding pattern in the hope that we're reaching the end? In this case, not sure they really need something like that at this stage.

Podcast I listened to rationalised it well. There's far more benefits to letting the women main event, and Lashley and McIntyre open. First women's singles match to main event, first with two women of colour, and probably the one with the person that most seem to want to ascend. McIntyre was robbed of his moment last year, and you could tell it really meant a lot to him. Closing night 1 doesn't really do much, but opening in the first match to take place in front of a proper crowd (and potentially winning), as well as being the first entrance, would be the least he deserves after carrying a frankly awful RAW through the year. Best for everyone.

Didn't think UEFA would give a shit, but fair enough. Although that statement does seem to contradict a bit. They'll see how many tickets they've sold, and if it's over the amount they're allowed in, they'll ballot. Fair enough. But are the association tickets ring-fenced from that so that more lose out on the ballot? Good news for those that have the points, good on them. Deserve it after the pish you've watched to build up those points.

As someone who would likely always sit in the JHS, it would be a fucking stupid idea to shut the JLS for the many fans like you. Doubt you'd be alone in chucking it if you felt like you were being pushed away from an important part of the club. Although where else are they going to put that huge Jacqui TIFO?

Nobody told me they'd not only changed the title match, but changed the actual Champion too. Who the f**k is that guy?!

Well at least they celebrated fans coming back by killing Adam Cole. 4 more brilliant matches, and then that main event...jesus. I think that's easily the best match of that type that NXT have ever done. So many before it, but they still managed to pick out some new spots, and managed to genuinely make you believe like they both hated each other. Hats off to them. And that final spot...f**k. On a general good news/bad news basis, I noticed last night how good the camera work was. There were a few absolutely wonderful shots they managed to get, particularly the ones with Balor on the turnbuckle facing down a fucking massive looking Karrion Kross (I'm not sure why, but I fucking love him), and then O'Reilly's wrecked back as he stares down the ramp to the broken Cole. Wonderful stuff. But on the bad news, you saw the worst parts of having a crowd back, with the chants trying to get themselves as part of the show. It's minor though, as having people in there naturally reacting to situations is always going to be significantly better than the Centre Court of Wimbledon canned noise they have been using.

It's not necessarily just not set up for it. I'm a developer, and although there were a few teething issues, by the end of that first week we were pretty much set up to do everything we could do before. But then it's down to the individual person. You get all these glowing stories of people who are desperate to stay working from home because they find they're more productive, then you get those that are the complete opposite. Communication is also utter baws. Zoom calls where everyone is on a different length delay is no match for just walking around to someone's desk and asking them something. You could have absolutely perfect setups, but if some in your team can't quite take to it, it can have an effect. I can't fucking wait to get back into the office, and that's from someone who regularly did a day a week at home before all of this

Yeah, that's fair enough. It definitely was just a big, ugly brawl, I just thought it would be even better than it was. I put his match with Dragunov significantly higher, which is a shame given that basically happened in an empty Tesco stock room.

Did they though? I'm sure when that report came out, he spent a good few more weeks on the main show, before admittedly disappearing for a bit. Maybe they just delayed it, but always seemed like a bit of a baffling story. Luckily, the VLs over on reddit have you covered. It's a few years old, but covers a fair bit of ground, and I've added a few from other articles. 69 of the fuckers, and you know what? They have a pretty good record when it comes to calling the women up. Paige, Sasha, Charlotte, Becky, Carmella, Alexa Bliss, Bayley, Nia Jax, they all got pushed to varying degrees. Then there was ones like Ember Moon, Kairi Sane, Nikki Cross, Iiconics, Dana Brooke, Lana, Eva Marie, Zelina Vega who they didn't quite have as much hope in, but still gave it a good shot. I'm not sure you could call any of those failures exactly, even Eva Marie who was fucking hopeless. They were desperate for her to work. Summer Rae and Emma are probably the closest to it. The rest...jeezo. They've got success stories - all three of the Shield, Owens, Zayn, Balor, McIntyre, Nakamura (mibbee). They've got ones that ended up being successful, but perhaps not because of WWE - Fandango (for 5 minutes), Big E and Woods, Wyatt. But there's a long list that have either fizzled out completely, or have been outright ruined. And 30 of the 69 names I found are no longer with the company.

It's nice to actually hear them in a setting where you can believe the audience is actually doing them, rather than WWE piping them in. The latter always seemed like a bit of a riddy to me

Was going to ask if I was the only one, and looks like I will be. I thought the WALTER/Ciampa match was the weakest of the night. By no means bad, but I think I'd overhyped it, and the rest of the matches really had a step up. That one felt like it was paced like it'd be the first in a series, but with WALTER hating the US, not sure we're getting that. Also felt like the ending was a little rushed, but that was a theme through the whole night. The way they usually structure Takeovers is perfect. Put 5 matches on, give roughly three hours, then let each match really breathe and have its time. They could have really done with that extra time on a few of the matches to really push them up to great. But enough of the negatives, because that was another wonderful show they put on, and Night 2 looks like it'll be even better. 1am start though? f**k sake Trips.

It's an interesting point. Given how gaming is now basically a competition to see how much of a c**t you can be online, the decision in MGS2 would have been crazy to see the reaction to. Not sure they'd be dead, Kojima seems like he'd genuinely not care about that kind of stuff and just soldier on. But who knows - having a female character in a game now is enough to get the VL hordes amassing. I liked 2 at the time, but I really didn't like the massive left turn the story took. Might be because I was 14 or 15 at the time, but having a fairly normal game for 75% of its runtime and then going off the fucking wall was a bit jarring. Come to realise now that it's just Hideo being Hideo of course. Sorry, I meant Mario Odyssey, not AC Odyssey. Bought them both at the same time when I got the Switch, and didn't get round to Zelda for ages. On DS, no I didn't. It was one I'd followed as the hype built, with everyone not quite having a clue what it was going to be. Then it kind of fell off the radar for me for a while. Saw it on sale for PlayStation maybe 6 months or so after release, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Right, I've been waiting for it to come up, and now it has. Death Stranding. I voted it at the top, and it's my comments on the post. NotThePars covers a few of the aspects quite well. I think it's spectacular, but in a weird way, I wouldn't recommend it without significant caveats. It's not going to be for everyone with the relatively slow pace, and Kojima being very much Kojima, but it's easily my favourite game ever at the moment. Horizon Zero Dawn was a good choice too. Didn't have it on my list, but I really enjoyed it. It was very much the story though, as once I'd finished it, I couldn't really get back into it for any kind of replay or the DLC. Still, the mechanics of the game were sound (think the bow work was the best example of it in any game at the time) and the setting was wonderful. I'm probably going to get people flipping tables for this one, but I never saw the hype around Breath of the Wild. I've got a copy for the Switch, and I've put maybe...20 hours into it? Off and on. But I just don't see why it's so raved about. Being Nintendo, it's incredibly polished, and it isn't like it's a bad game by any means, but to me it just seems like another open world game like so many before it. A lot of the mechanics it brought in could be considered realistic, but didn't really translate to it being fun necessarily (I think Jim Sterling said similar and got a lot of hate). Maybe at some point I'll go back to it and it'll all click, but...nah, not for me. I bought Odyssey at the same time, and much preferred that. On MGS3...I think I actually preferred 5 oddly. 3 was brilliant, and the strongest story by some considerable distance. Kojima levels of polish and lovely little touches. But I think 5's open world element and gameplay actually pushed it over the edge, even though the battles with Konami really fucked the story.

But why do they, that's the bit I'm getting at. I don't see anything they "have" to do outside of satisfying their own interests. Giving tickets to the SFA doesn't satisfy their own interests. Under normal circumstances, there would be rules in place, but pretty much every rule has been punted out a window long ago.

2014 by the looks of it. If you're going by the "dots" on the network, Lita's was 37 minutes. Mr T - at the same show - was only 30, and that's the one I remember as being particularly rambling.

I think it's a decent couple of games. Luxembourg should be the sort of game to give us a decent runout without (hopefully) testing us too much. And the Netherlands are the sort of side we want to give a good account against if we have any dreams of beating the likes of England and Croatia in the groups.

I understand the frustration, it's utterly shit for those that would have had tickets in a normal situation and now don't. But UEFA aren't going to rip up the entire ticketing process they've got now just to portion off tickets that are now more valuable than ever to home associations.

Assumed they'd have run way long like usual, but both classes cut down to a manageable 90 minutes. Must've been really strict on the time for speeches after previous years let them go on for what seemed like forever. Just checked, and the longest was 2018 at a whopping 4 and a half hours, but interestingly (or not, I'm a massive geek) they've never held a show shorter than those two in the history of the Hall of Fame. Did Khali just get one sentence out? EDIT: His recap video lasted longer than the speech, the latter of which was a weird mish-mash of languages. On yersel Khals.