forameus

I'm surprised they're having anything at all, although I guess ticketing it with a (probably) strict limit in an outdoor venue is probably the most sensible thing to do.

How far is too far to look back to talk about nations and previous achievements? It's burying the lead a bit to talk about the Netherlands as "the 2010 finalists" when they're only just recovering from having an absolute nightmare.

I'd imagine it'd be midnight as usual, no? Fastlane was 11pm given the clock change, so expect it'll be a 10/11pm start for the preshow (depending on whether they do one or two hours, surely just one) then midnight for the main card. EDIT: Actually, you're correct. Going by the poster, it's 8 Eastern, so we are looking at a 1am start. Must really be looking at a shorter than usual show, so DomDom's probably right on these being 3 hour sprints.

I was being a bit flippant, the tag match always seemed like the most sensible option, but hadn't realised that one party was injured. And probably similarly flippant on the tag match. It's just nothing to get really excited about. It's like a lot of the matches on the card. They'll be good, maybe even great, but not really spectacular.

Final RAW before WM down, and...sigh. They've added a Tag Team Turmoil match to night 1, with the winner getting a shot at the Women's Tag Team Titles. Hype. They've also decided that Bad Bunny's too shite to doa 1-on-1 match, so it's now a tag match with Priest and Morrison added in. Sizzle.

I'm quite relieved to be honest. I thought the show was looking really devoid of any kind of imagination, really lacklustre. But then they booked a tag team turmoil match, followed by a title match for the winner, and now I couldn't be happier. Who needs star power?

Oh I don't doubt that. NXT is going to be electric whatever happens, it's just a big shame that such quality (assumedly) is going to be in front of a tiny crowd, and WM will likely be fairly pish but be in front of the first crowd in a year. And yeah, there's still a lot of questions on how that crowd is going to come across. It's going to be great to see atmosphere again, but in an open-air stadium, how much are you really going to get? Particularly when WWE have a really bad habit of having their show completely fall off a cliff late on in the show when the crowd gets tired.

It's probably empty hope, but I just keep thinking like they've got something planned, either tonight for RAW or at the actual show itself to make it feel bigger. It just doesn't seem very WWE to have an underwhelming WM, particularly in current circumstances. I expect a lot of the matches are going to be good-to-great, but just...meh. Like Rollins vs Cesaro. That'll likely be a great match, but there's no stakes, and I'm not sure just having a solidly worked match between two guys is going to elevate the show to where it should be. I'm really excited for the title triple threat, but we've got to sit through a lot of show before we get to that. No huge stars on the card, no real interesting stipulations to change things up (I don't think Shane vs Braun in a cage is going to really move the needle). On a different note, is NXT getting a crowd in or are they just going to do what they've been doing and have a few fans surrounding the ring in a smaller venue? Looks like it, and it's a crying shame that the matches taking place there don't have a crowd, and WM's do.

And his elbow at that, wasn't it? All the stuff around the ball moving kind of frames it as being a bit of a botched penalty, but although it wasn't brilliant, I don't remember it as being that bad. It was a really good reaction save from Porno Dave.

I think I've only had 2 of my entries so far. I think this must make me a basic bitch.

I was never a Nintendo guy (I was cool as shit with my Game Gear thankyouverymuch) but now I've got a Switch, Mario Odyssey is just unadulterated joy from start to finish. Best platformer I've played by a distance.

One thing's for sure, if they do a WWE24 on this (and I expect they will) it'll be really interesting to see the thought process behind it. The lack of real star power is startling compared to most years. DId Brock not fancy it? Didn't want to pay him? HHH too busy to go through the schedule? Did Covid stop them going after more special attractions? It really does seem like they see this as the end of the year they'd rather forget, but that's not really understandable given they've gought to get fans in (whether it's a good idea or not). Do they really think they can just put out an average show because people will be desperate to see anything? I'm looking forward to a number of the matches, but it's not a great start to know that the one match I expect everyone will look at is going to be at the tail end of around 8 hours of show across two nights, and by that time - going by previous years - it could be underwhelming.

So another show out of the way, and just two left before Wrestlemania, or one if you count Smackdown as Night 0. So what did we learn? What massive matches did we book? f**k all. Well, not exactly. We now know the lineup of the tag team titles match next Friday. Roode and Ziggler will defend against Alpha Academy (Gable and Otis), the Mysterios and the Street Profits. Probably all fuelled by the absolute rage of knowing they're off the biggest card in their industry. We also have a stipulation for the Intercontinental Title Match. Ladder? Street Fight? Hell in a Cell? Nope, Nigerian Drum match. Aye. Oh aye, and they've added Logan Paul as a corner man for Owens vs Zayn. Like making a Michelin Starred Meal, bringing it to the table, then having the waiter slam his face into it. Updated the initial post, but with just a week to go, this card is desperately short of where a Wrestlemania should be.

Will be good if Stone Cold starts out with a long and rambling question about his career that ends with "so why have you turned into this massive fucking c**t, Chris?" Is a surprising one, although maybe it goes to show that most of the animosity either company feels is completely made up by the sorts of people that are desperate to have a war to pick a side on. They're obviously competitors for talent, but with WWE's TV deals, does Vince really see them as the sort of threat that WCW were?

Or they still have it, but are hoping that the prospect means more people will tune in to Fox to see.

I think I read about that. Unless I was mistaken, sounded like one of their writers went a bit rogue? If so, must be gutting that you pour your love and time into a project, and then one wee incel manages to ruin it for you.

And your 22 jobbers for the evening will be... Looks like the journey back to their home planet has been slightly delayed for Slapjack, T-Bar and Mace.

Can only assume Fox want a ratings bump, but if that's the case, having a Battle Royal no-one cares about and a tag team match (presumably Street Profits vs Roode/Ziggler vs Gable/Otis vs......who fucking knows?). Bet that was a fun conversation with the roster. "you know how you usually get that WM payday? And how this one's really special because it's the first in front of a crowd in a year? Ha! f**k you guys! You're on Smackdown. Now f**k off."

So Wrestlemania is going to have three nights essentially? Seems an odd decision, are they really trying to cut down the length of the card? I wondered if the Battle Royal would be canned because it isn't the most safe relating to Covid, but clearly not. At the moment, if you put both nights together you'd still have a lower number of matches than most of the previous ones in the modern era (obviously there's more to come, but still)

Just watching Wrestlemania 34, and expected it to be basically shit from the start, but it's had a pretty solid opening couple of hours. Great triple threat opener with Miz/Rollins/Balor, Charlotte/Asuka, solid 4-way for the US Title, then Rousey's debut. Remember it being pretty poor overall, so wonder where it fell apart....let's scan through the card, and...oh, Styles vs Nakamura. Oops. Hopefully with this being two nights, they can avoid the whole "falling off a cliff" part that they've suffered from the past few years. EDIT: Although it was mostly good, it also had one of the worst parts of WM with the whole Cena in the audience stuff. Just had a classic between Charlotte and Asuka? Get Cena running up the ramp past them and have the girls look like they're actually cool with it. Top stuff. EDIT2: Actually, I've changed my mind about the Rousey match. She's brilliant, but given it's a HHH match, it's far too long, and it's just sad watching Kurt Angle walk like he's made of drainpipes struggling to put on the ankle lock.

I wouldn't call it a bad game at all. I just think it was a missed opportunity, like they polished every element to solid and then stopped, rather than making sure it was as good as it could be. I never quite got into mods, so my opinion is uncoloured by that. I expect they cover up a lot of the problems it had and made things better. Although given the high-profile cases of games not being quite what they should have been, somehow having a game being criticised for being "just solid" seems quite quaint.

I'm going to say that I think, 76 aside, Fallout 4 was the weakest of the modern Fallout games. It definitely had good elements, and it's not like it was anywhere close to bad, but several aspects of it could have been so much better. Although come to think of it, Fallout 4 for me came right around the time Witcher 3 did. I know they're not exactly the same, but I think a lot of the things Fallout didn't do very well, Witcher did far, far better. And conversely, I'm not sure there was much that Fallout did that you could say "that's really brilliant". It did everything to a solid level, when I'd have expected much better. Witcher had its own issues (some of which were better in FO4) but the strengths it had pushed it ahead in my mind.

Couple of additions to the NXT show. Pete Dunne looks like he'll be kicking off night 1 against Kushida, and The Way (Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell) will face Ember Moon and Shotzi Blackheart for the Women's Tag Titles. Also the Guantlet match competitors have been decided - Leon Ruff, Isaiah "Swerve" Scott, Bronson Reed, Cameron Grimes ,Dexter Lumis, LA Knight, with the latter entering last. Night 1 looks like it'll be really good, but add Night 2 to it, and once again there doesn't look like there's any chance of WM coming close to what NXT can offer.

To be fair though, Wales were an artificial bottom seed, and much harder than what we could have got. Albeit we should have beat them both times.

Oh don't get me wrong, I don't think we will, but although it's only 10 games, the way the games are spread out it's a long campaign, even in this shortened state. Over five months until we next play (in Denmark unfortunately) before Moldova at home, then off to Vienna. Anything could happen by then. Tierney could maim himself, McBurnie could have some kind of epiphany. Next window will tell us. If we end up with three points from Denmark, Moldova and Austria, it's over, albeit not mathematically. We could end up with nine. We won't, but we could.