There's something that hit me this episode about how WWE probably views the WWE title scene. Generally, the three most important segments of SDL have been the starting segment, the segment starting the second hour and the last segment. I don't think any of them have focused on the WWE title scene for the past three…

Even aside from the fact that these reviews were reduced summaries recently, since AV Club has data we don't, I might hazard a guess that if it has Raw and SDL discussions posts instead of those other show posts, then it would most likely be because these get more clicks and views that those shows did.

I could not even imagine how great heel Sheasaro could be before witnessing their true glory at Payback. Now I'm all in on them and just want them to have all the titles, every single one of them. Since that is impractical, I'll settle on the tag team titles.

I felt that this Raw highlighted the eternal struggle with how to represent Dean Ambrose and his duality. Don't get me wrong, I thought Dean was really good here and those backstage segments were great, especially that tenseness with Rollins. However, the only reason they work for me so well is that there is that…

I guess that is true, but I'm struggling to see how this is caused by the Raw discussion thread? I mean, nobody seriously thinks that these prevent those real prestigious shows from being reviewed, right?

Sidenote on Charlotte's potential face turn. For me, the most intriguing aspect of the current story is that I can kind of see them keeping her heel or turning her face, but don't know for certain which path they are taking. I think that it adds a level of uncertainty to the story which makes it more interesting to…

The best part about that was that the performer himself was actually Italian-American instead of an Arab

While I was entertained by the first Naomi/Charlotte match, I was genuinely surprised how much of an improvement this second match was on all fronts, especially on pacing and timing. What makes it even crazier for me is that they only worked one multi-woman house show match together this past weekend and yet were able…

That last image of Jinder standing from the top window of a limo driving away while holding the stolen WWE title was the almost the most JBL moment possible. And as someone who enjoyed JBL's reign, that truly entertained me.

Exchanging Shane to JBL improved Talking Smac so much and actually managed to give us hilarious moments such as:
-Breezango's explanation on why they are good at Beat the Clock challenges as they just want to beat up time as a general concept
-JBL, as a respectable journalist, bringing up that maybe it's Becky's fault…

I don't know, for me that isn't the issue here. The thing is that Bayley was too big at NXT to be a brought up as an underdog as you can't have someone presented as important and at the same time be the underdog. Bayley always had to be a big thing from the start.

That women's promo segment was a bit of a roller coaster. It had some really great moments, such as Bliss first playing up the What chant before shutting it down, but then there was everything that followd that. It's not even Bayley being Bayley, but then there were the odd insults like 'Have you even kissed a boy…

I'm actually really digging what they are doing with Cesaro/Sheamus at the moment as there is this weirdness in their interactions with the Hardyz, but at the same time it does feel like it is going somewhere. I am genuinely intrigued by the tag team title match at Payback.

This was the episode where I really felt the reboot status of the Shakeup. The past couple of episodes had a surge of energy with the new talent coming over, but now it feels that Raw is waiting for Payback to be over so that they can really start building their new stories.

I feel obliged to commend the current SDL commentary team. Moving Otunga away just improved things dramatically and now that JBL isn't just burying Saxton, I feel there is a lot of good stuff coming from the commentary desk.

They really went out of their way to make Charlotte feel like a big thing in this episode and that opening segment was pretty pure fire with the Naomi/Charlotte confrontation. I suspected last week that they were going for the phased introduction and was glad to be right. It also seems pretty evident that the…

To be fair, when Ziggler won the number one contendership, there were similar reactions, but even if the match was underwhelming, they did manage to raise interest in it with really great promo interactions. So you never know.

Jinder is the challenger at Backlash, although it is quite telling that I don't think they've even attempted to explain what would happen if Bray Wyatt, who has been drafted to Raw, would win at Payback.

I'm still struggling with how I feel about Jinder winning the number one contendership and the bizarre promo confrontation that followed. I just- If Jinder remains the number one contender, there is no way in hell that the WWE title is the main event at Backlash, is there?

I think this was probably Shane's worst performance to date on Talking Smack. Not only did he just feel like he was sucking out the energy from the whole thing, he also had three heel guests, two of which just acted in blatantly underhanded manner in order to win, and he did not push them on those at all. In fact, he…