This event was a testament to NXT's past and its future. As much as Bayley vs. Sasha II felt like the end of an era, this was also a night that saw a lot of developmental talent come into their own. Dana Brooke and Baron Corbin have been quietly getting a lot better for a while now, and even in defeat the Mechanics…

Wrestling always exists in the space between the consequence free version of our fantasy booking and the messy reality of what we are given. When that distance is small (eg. finally paying of YEARS of wishing Bayley would get the NXT women's title with her actually winning it) wrestling is transcendent, and when that…

FFVIII is indeed criminally under-rated, and thematically way ahead of its time as well. Though the Persona games are now more or less the standard-bearer of JRPG critical darlings, their unique mix of relationship drama, stat management, and, um, school… was prefigured by the S.E.E.D. students at Balamb Garden a…

I share your disappointment about Rusev. Rusev, the performer, is among my favorite people in the company right now. Though often described as a "throwback" to the anti-American foreigner gimmicks of yore, Rusev's in-ring style is one of the freshest things on the show, and he does an amazing job of injecting…

As always, the existence of this article (and the promise of more weekly Raw reviews from LaToya) has improved the quality of my life considerably. Regarding Mania:
-I really appreciate the effort to view Wrestlemania 31 in the context of the broader creative landscape of WWE, and indeed, the lack of effort directed…

The real tragedy of this year's Wrestlemania is that the current RAW roster is full of matches I want to see—match-ups that have been building for the better part of a year and which deserve to have their stories concluded on the grandest stage of them all.

WWE fans often complain about the lack of continuity in story lines via-a-vis character motivations and past relationships (most recently, why does anyone in the Authority trust Orton, but also, why is Ryback putting his job on the line for Cena at Survivor Series, or why was the Daniel Bryan / Kane feud based around…

I am overjoyed that my existence now includes weekly discussion of Raw by LaToya Ferguson and the fine folks in the comment section at the AV Club. In a lot of ways, the increasingly dialogical relationship between creators and audiences that characterizes so much of modern TV watching culture (of which the AV Club is…