Cena's "passion" promo made zero sense, especially considering who he was talking to.

Yeah, I dig this too. Power finishers tend to work better for heels than flippy acrobatic finishers do. I think they should add some kind of flair to it though to make it unique to him.

Yeah this was a great heel turn. After the year he had, it's a natural character progression for him to get fed up with his hard work getting him nowhere and finally snapping and going crazy on everyone. I'm looking forward to this.

It finally hit me why Miz made such a great IC champion. In kayfabe, he treats this mid-card belt as if it was the most important title in the company (more important even than the WWE title), which fits his "C-lister who thinks he's an A-lister" gimmick perfectly.

Aside from the surprisingly-good Zayn/Strowman match, this show was pretty awful. Stray observations:

Go back to Breitbart.

This episode of Smackdown was more entertaining and eventful than any of Raw's post-split Pay Per Views, despite being only 90 minutes long and containing only 3 matches. And it wasn't even a go-home show. Smackdown is literally better during a random throwaway Christmas week episode than Raw is, well, pretty much…

The term "sellout" tends to disappear from your vocabulary the minute someone hands you a gigantic briefcase full of money.

I find that very hard to believe.

I do like the fact that AJ annihilated Ellsworth in ten seconds and immediately moved on to his next feud. To me that was the SDL writers acknowledging to the audience "Yeah, that angle dragged on a bit too long. Just so there's no confusion, AJ is going to bury him now to signify that it's done."

There is absolutely no story logic to this story. It's literally just Vince telling the writers to find a way to craft a feud around Total Divas.

Yeah, I don't want them to waste Renee as just some prop used to get a Dean/Miz feud over. It was fun as a one-time kayfabe breach, but it shouldn't go any further than that. Renee is too legit at her job to be reduced to a damsel in some 80s/90s style "I must defend my woman's honor against this heel" angle.

Nikki is a lot better in the ring than most people give her credit for, but Jesus Tapdancing Christ she is AWFUL on the mic.

"the heels get over on television, the faces get over at the house shows".

You got worked, mark.

#WeShallOvercome #RockLivesMatter
#StopDadBodShaming
#PastyIsBeautiful

This is what now passes for "oppression" in Trump's America.

Also a Sublime fan here.

Is it that time of the decade again? I thought the Sublime hate bandwagon wasn't due back in town for another year or two.

Yep. And "the Payback" was actually about Roadblock's quest for revenge against Megatron for killing Optimus Prime.