I'd like for some midcard heel to come out at 10, and then Tye at 11 to eliminate that guy before getting dumped by Braun a minute later. If they want to kill the ten chants, they could turn Tye heel as the Perfect 11.

I guess I'm the only one who didn't enjoy the Dee/Mac plot due to my own claustrophobia. Getting stuck in a tube like that was too anxiety provoking for me to find the laughs, until they threw the passed-out kid down the slide.

Sami needs to be off TV a week to sell the brutality of the LMS match. It's fine.

AJ Styles is part A and part B if he's cast against Roman or HHH. He's a huge face in the right program.

BRING IT TO THE TABLE
—— (sidebar)
It was okay.

It was important when Cena had it too. It matters how it's booked and you've got a good face and heel example in recent memory.

I agree about Braun/Sami. Braun shouldn't eat a pin until at least WM, and Sami's ceiling is at best Dolph Ziggler's. He's just not that over with the casual fans.

Are you a heel AV Club commentator?

Yep. Miz and Ziggler would be a very tired feud without them putting over the IC title in a major way (with a big assist to D-Bry). Ziggler was putting his career on the line for it! And the result was a really compelling feud with good matches that were very over.

I shortchanged Saxton a bit. At times there's a really dry self-deprecating sense of humor, and he generally gets across the babyface talking points without getting in the way of the play-by-play with non-sequiturs. There's at least a dynamic with Graves. Otunga just exists in a bubble alongside the SDL team.

I can't understand why they even put the belt on him if he was just going to go right back to the main event periphery after a month or so. Raw is severely missing a midcard/undercard belt for everyone other than the main event to fight for. I don't even know who the midcard is other than Rusev and Sami. There would…

It really is a kayfabe destroying finish. You have to believe the ref wouldn't consult with the announce team, the timekeeper, the ring announcer, GM, etc. to clarify what actually happened. It feels like something that worked great on house shows several decades ago, but doesn't really pass the smell test nowadays.…

The brand split made it pretty logistically challenging. But if they really wanted to do it it could have easily been a network special kind of thing. I bet it just wasn't enough of a ratings draw to bother with and wouldn't have been as cheap to produce as the talk shows they make so many of.

David Otunga really makes you appreciate Byron Saxton.

Reigns v. Strowman is a good use of both, preferably as an 8-10 minute cooldown match before the main event. At least RR won't go over someone the audience cares that much about, and the last 20 years have shown that you can have guys like Big Show and Kane eat a million pins and then rebuild them to look strong when…

I'm only popping for this if he returns as the 1-2-3 Man.

Selling limbs and telling a story when time allows, fine. Selling until an 8 count on the outside of the ring as a rest spot, no.

Seth's tron has to do with his recovery from his knee surgery and quest to regain the title. It makes less sense the farther away we are from his return, but it was fine at the time, especially if used as a babyface gimmick.

That match was just rotten as well. I can appreciate that they are trying to transition into a new feud with some storytelling, but I'm not sure that a bad story is better than "Okay, Carmella lost the feud to Nikki, and now she's going to fight Nattie."

Luke Harper getting that heel spot in the match over Corbin feels like an angle for sure. No storyline defense for it at all.