Yeah, was rather surprised when it ended at 10 to. And yeah, it was a boring episode with not a lot to show for it.
Although at one point I was in heaven because I had my TV on the left playing El Rey network “Secret Weapons of Kung Fu” (or something like that) with the final battle between the two main guys, and on the right I had NXT going. Then my cat on my lap and some consumables at hand. 
Yeah, this kind of felt like a filler episode, which seems odd because they only have two more episodes to build up Takeover 3: The Search For Sami, and they didn’t do much here to advance towards that besides announcing the Neville/Zayn rematch. I know from spoilers that we’ll also be seeing The Vaudevillians vs. the Lucha Dragons for the tag titles, Sasha vs. Charlotte for the women’s title, and Kenta/Devitt vs. the Ascension , and they’re going to have to establish that quickly in the next two episodes.
I did like that they’re hinting towards a Baron Corbin vs. Bull Dempsey match - they set up that segment knowing the audience would turn on Bull when he didn’t beat the clock.
If your spoilers are to be believed (and I have no reason to think they aren’t) then a certain SOMEONE didn’t take another certain someone’s advice, and therefore the second someone is going to need to show a third someone what’s up
I usually suck at predictions, but here’s my SS picks:
Team Authority vs. Team Cena: Team Cena wins. I was going to go with the Authority, but the latest spoiler announcement, which went viral the moment it was taped, says the Auths will announce on Smackdown that if Team Cena loses, they’ll be fired. No way that happens. Plus, with rumors of Mick Foley rejoining and Sting needing to make his presence known, that sets up putting them in position as RAW/Smackdown GMs after HHH & Steph “lose power.” They’ve been sowing seeds of discord within the Auths, and Big Show & Ziggie need to win back their heat after getting beaten like half-ethnic stepchildren.
Bray Wyatt vs Dean Ambrose: Wyatt wins. Ambrose has been taken out of the feud with Rollins. With Rollins primed to feud with Cena, Orton when he returns, and possibly Brrrrock, Ambrose has to step out of the picture for a few months. Wyatt is due to implement new family members, so I’m thinking they’ll jump Dean and cause the loss. I’m more inclined to think Ambrose will win by DQ, but that’s rarely done in PPVs. A Wyatt win will extend the feud to another match at the next PPV which is what, Royal Rumble?
Dust Bros vs. The Usos vs. Los Matadores vs. Miz/Mizdow: Miz/Mizdow win. Damian has been getting over, and this is the break he needs to elevate from being WWE’s resident bitch.
Team Natalya vs. Team Paige: (flips coin) Team Paige wins. This is going to be the bathroom/beer refill match that nobody cares about, and will probably last 2 minutes.
AJ Lee vs. Nikki Bella: AJ wins. Somehow Bree will cause Nikki to lose because her bitch requirement will expire during the match.
**“New & Improved” Fandango vs. ???: ** Fuck that, it’s a pre-show match, and I don’t want to watch him wiggle his Fandango during his 15-minute entrance.
Would be nice if Sandow got the pin, Miz came in and celebrated hard about how HE won and it was all MIZ MIZ MIZ who won the match, Sandow objects, Miz attacks him, Sandow lays him out. BUT, I don’t think they’d put the belts on them and then implode the team at the same time. So I’ll go with Usos winning or the Dust Bros retaining.
How many of the worthless Divas are in the Natty/Paige match? All of them? Yeah, then short stinker of a match.
Fandango will probably go over Axel, but I could be wrong. Lots of misused guys could fill that spot.
Was thinking The Authority would probably win to extend the program through Wrestlemania, but the second they announced the fired stip, that told me SuperCena would overcome the odds. I’m thinking someone will come out at the end and help clear out the Authority scrubs to even it up, so that’s the only real ‘surprise’ we can hope for. Unannounced early return of DBD, Reigns, a return and face turn for BNB, something.
Fandango vs. Rando Calrissian: No idea who’s gonna win this one, but I’m gonna go with Fandango because he’s the one being touted.
AJ Lee Vs. Bella: Hmmmm. I’m Torn. AJ is gone here soon, but I don’t know when. I think they want to stretch this out 'til Mania, but I don’t know if they are doing it. I’m gonna go with AJ because Brie will do something.
Team Natty vs Team Paige: One of many I-don’t-care matches happening. Going with team Paige because she’s the only one our of the Total Divas squad they pay attention to, so that’s happening
Cosmic Weirdos vs El Torito all-stars vs Usos vs The Mizzuz: The Mizzuz wins because this will begin their eventual feud
Ambrose vs Wyatt: Wyatt can’t win the big one (copyright: Sami Zayn), and Ambrose is still the hot prospect, so he wins. Although I would love to be wrong and have an actual feud with Ambrose losing but…nope…won’t happen. Also this match could be won simply by who can ramble on about nothing the longest…
Team Cena vs. Team Authority I’m with everyone else, it was 50/50 until the “everyone will be fired” thing happened. If I had to guess how, it’ll be Cena over Rollins (or maybe even trips himself) The Authority is “broken up” but someone will be put in their place who is the same as them (literally, that’ll be the story…they’re not actually gone cuz of this person). I can’t see them separating the brands again and having Sting and Foley(??) be GMs. It’s unfortunate because other than boring-ass Kane, and how they are kinda ruining Rollins, the Authority is the best thing they have going right now.
So, is that the Survivor Series card? Sounds like we’re either going to get some nice long matches, or we’re going to get a lot of backstage filler. Were I a betting man…
Meanwhile, I have to say… wow, am I not particularly interested in much of that card. Sunday evening may well be spent catching up on the Premier League fixtures rather than watching the PPV. I’d say the only one I am, without reservations, interested in, is the tag TEAM match. I suspect Stardust and his brother, Gold, will retain, but it’s about even money that Miz/dow take it in a way that starts the friction between them for the eventual breakup. Either way, Damien Mizdow is great; I predict he will steal the show.
Ambrose/Wyatt… I’m interested in, but also worried about. The booking has not, IMO, been terrifically kind to either man–in Wyatt’s case, for basically the entire damn year; for Ambrose, since he became a prop comic. (I’ve heard that this has been dialed back a bit in recent shows.) I’m just afraid of some weird campy supernatural schmoz or other dusty finish here. I kinda wish we could have a time limit match; a 30 minute broadway could do wonders for the both of them, I think. Still, it’s two guys I love. I’ll be looking this one up to watch it unless I hear it’s an absolute pile.
NXT was also not exactly a shining gem this week. Things’ve mostly been said that need saying, but I’m going to be watching to see if Enzo and Big Cass just completely forget about the fact that the Ascension ganked them for no particular reason other than to make a point to Hideo Itami. Logically, Enzo and Big Cass should at the very least have a separate feud with the Ascension now, or better still, they should have Hideo’s back sometime down the road.
Similarly, way to babyface, Lucha Dragons, whom I pictured backstage in the Big E position, watching the #1 contenders beat up on a couple of helpless little people as proxies for them. If those two little people come back and somehow cost Lucha Dragons the titles, I will be the happiest smark ever. 
Ah well. Word on the street is that Brock is scheduled back in town soon (and seriously guys, what the hell is up with having Paul Heyman putting him over all year until he wins the title, and then when he wins it, he AND Paul disappear and we pretend the title doesn’t exist?), so things should start hotting up.
I think the Survivor Series match has potential just because there are some decent talents that’ll be in there. If they keep it in the ring primarily and work a real match, it could be pretty good. I’ll like seeing Rowan/Harper square off, Ziggler should be good, Cena can typically work a match, as can Rollins.
I’m not acquainted with Ryback much (he was part of Rybaxel and then not seen for awhile when I came back to wrestling), so I’m not sure if he’s one of those typical over-muscled guys who gets gassed early and then can’t do anything (he looked mighty worn out in his match with Cesaro, but I thought performance wise he was good.) Show and Mark Henry won’t bring much to the SS Match, Kane can actually wrestle but I suspect he’ll mostly just be the guy who constantly interferes when he’s not tagged in.
My suspicion is this match turns into a 20 minute, unorganized, outside the ring brawl, and all the eliminations happen in the last 2 minutes. If that’s the case it’ll suck.
Bray/Ambrose I just fear too much for both of these guys. WWE seems hell bent on squashing any momentum either wrestler has so I’m assuming they will find a way for neither guy to go over and both to look weaker than they do now.
Rybak was just another in the endless string of monsters who come in, beat their way to the top, get fed to John Cena, then find themselves at the bottom. Rusev is next, then probably Corbin or someone like that.
Starting to wonder. Didn’t they already do the “power mad GM fires everyone left and right (and maybe injures people) to keep power until Mr. McMahon is forced to step in” angle? John Laurenitis ring any bells? I wonder if that isn’t their plan. The Authority wins the match, fires everyone, “injures” people, throws fines and suspensions around until Vince is forced to step in as the good guy and fire them (and hire everyone back).
The rumor circulating in the dirtsheets tonight is that Sting is going to make his WWE TV debut at Survivor Series.
This has of course not been corroborated by WWE itself, and these reports are wrong as often as they’re right (I remember Dave Meltzer himself swearing on his life that CM Punk would DEFINITELY be returning to the ring back in March), but if true, it lends credence to some of the speculation above about Team Cena winning the match and the Authority breaking down.
I will amend my prediction a bit, in light of this past Smackdown: Instead of somebody like Ascension becoming Wyatt’s new family, I foresee Bray will somehow have liberated Ambrose’s father from the pen and will have him appear at ringside during their match. It’ll be some old indy from the area who vaguely resembles Dean, or maybe one of the truck drivers. Bray needs to pull off another spectacular mindfuck like he used when he had all those evil singing children line up around Cena. I remember a similar angle in ECW years ago when Raven brainwashed Sandman’s little boy to tell his daddy “I love Raven!” I want this to get all white trash mystical with appearances by Elvis and Bigfoot and rattlesnake handlers. I just don’t want this to be another Wyatt-Jericho letdown.
Well…
That was awesome.
Wow
The last 45 min of that PPV were on another level.
I was on the edge of my seat literally the entire time.
THAT STANDOFF! THAT MUSIC! THAT DROP!
ETA: Sooo given what happened…do we wanna give everyone til after RAW to discuss it? To prevent spoilers from non-network users?
I haven’t marked out like that in years. Not even during the Summer of Punk.
Dolph Ziggler was the sole survivor. It’s about time he gets his due.
And the Sting thing was cool. He’s better in small doses, unfortunately I think we’ll see Triple HHH vs Sting at Wrestlemania.
Well that was good. I like that Cena wasn’t standing tall, it was Ziggler, even if it was somewhat bigfooted by Triple H/Sting. Could see that Cena was complimenting him there at the end.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Triple H told Sting that if he wanted to wrestle, he’d give him a big match against himself just to see if Sting could still go.
Ambrose disqualifies himself to continue the feud.
“Belladrama”. Yup.
No idea where you go with Mark Henry after that but to release him. He’s been so damaged that he can’t carry his side of a feud anymore.
FFS, it was free this month and the rumors have been floating around for at least the last week. Honestly, professional wrestling is, IMO, a pretty spoiler-friendly zone–many of the major weekly shows are pre-taped and the spoilers are out there the same day. If (like me) you generally prefer to avoid spoilers, you know to stay away from the IWC until you’ve watched the show; if not, well, it’s all there waiting for you. All applies to pretty much everything I watch other than NXT, which is a bit more complicated because it’s taped a month in advance, more or less. YMMV.
Anyway, overall for the PPV was somewhere in the C+/B- range for me. It was a little bit too much Sunday Night Raw overall, but there were some great matches, and there’s no doubt that that staredown at the end made it all worthwhile. Ambrose-Wyatt was the highlight, and Damien Mizdow stole the show before that. If it weren’t for the special guest tomorrow, I might consider watching Raw. As it stands, well, y’all can gt--d*ne without me, but I do at least have an ear perked in advance of the road to Wrasslemania.
I think I give the overall PPV a B. It’d be higher except it truly was a two match PPV, and honestly while Ambrose and Wyatt worked a legit match the schmoz ending was very obviously just “we’re giving you this taste for free and going to foreshadow a match up at TLC that you’ll need to pay $9.99 for.” Which I understand as the only free PPV WWE has done their overwhelming motivation is to capture more Network subscribers, but in a PPV with only two good matches, making one of them a no-ending warm up for next month’s PPV kinda weakens it a bit.
The four-way tags are a terrible format because they require stupid things to happen, they did one of those a few months ago that was equally bad. That being said, Mizdow did steal the show and I think we’ll get a lot of entertainment value out of those two over the next few months, I just hate the stupid four-way tag format.
Both Divas matches were unwatchable, but mercifully brief.
The Survivor Series match I felt was legit. Great psychology, several talents were well showcased. Most importantly Cena was pushed out 3rd and Ziggler carried the show. Watching Rollins and Ziggler there at the end you really feel those two have a main event 20-25 minute match in them headlining a future PPV.
If you’re going to bring Sting in I think the way they did it here was about as best as you could hope for, we all know Sting doesn’t have his A game or even his B game left in him physically but it’s still cool to finally see him in a WWE ring. Likely it will be H and Sting at 'Mania, but I’m actually okay with that. H can really slow a match down in a good way and tends to work well with a range of other types of wrestlers. I know a lot of people dislike Triple H but I first came back to wrestling to watch WM30 and I thought Triple H / Daniel Bryan was the best match on the card. Sting is no DB at 55 but I actually think of all the guys on the roster right now Triple H is probably the best pick for a match up with Sting just in terms of what we will see in ring.
The only other guys I think would match up well with Sting would be RKO…no one wants to see Sting-Cena and after that no one else on the roster has the stature. I suspect Undertaker may be legit retired from wrestling or they’d have brought him back to start a program with Sting.
I’d also guess we now see a Cena-Big Show feud, which I’m fine with because it locks Cena away in a meaningless snooze feud with a wrestler no one cares about, giving some of the young talent some main event time away from Cena.
I also thought they did a decent job of preserving Rusev’s heat with how they used him. In the early part of that match he was the first Team Authority member to start turning the tide and looked pretty powerful against everyone he grappled with. Then the suicide splash through the Spanish Announce table was impressive enough that no one is going to care he was counted out afterward. I still think the Russian gimmick simply only has a limited amount of legs, and it’s unlikely Rusev will be used meaningfully once it peters out, but while it lasts I’m enjoying seeing a wrestler like him (non-traditional look, good in ring skills) get some time in the spotlight.
Yeah, wasn’t until he was in the ring when I went “Oh crap, how do they get him out of this without him being pinned or submitted?” Counted out or disqualified were the only two options.
Q: What do WWE management and wildlife preserves have in common?
A: No Hunters allowed.
I didn’t catch the return of Fandunghole as I was watching the Denver-Miami game. Swagger vs Cesaro was good for a warm-up match. I think at this point, Cesaro is filling the Dean Malenko role in WWE. He’s teacher/enhancement talent because creative doesn’t know what to do with him.
The 8-man tag match was a lot of fun, with Damian flopping around while the other guys launched themselves over the ropes at each other. He’s still going to be 2nd banana to Whiz for a while, but at least he’s finally wearing gold. I still prefer his Intellectual Savior of the Masses angle, but whatever it takes to get out of mid-card hell, I guess.
The Divas match was better than expected. I forget that they don’t have to worry about cable time restrictions on PPV, so they get more time to work their trade. I love Summer Rae’s prissy heel angle, and the fact that she’s a home girl (Raleigh NC REPRESENT) has nothing to do with it. 
Ambrose-Wyatt was awesome, but the end was kind of a letdown when it turned out to be a springboard for advertising TLC. Still, Ambrose got to be crazy dangerous and their feud will continue, and there’s time to work in the Daddy Ambrose angle like I’ve been suggesting, WWE…
Bellas-AJ had a lascivious lesbian lip lock moment (alliteration ftw), but otherwise allows AJ an out to have a little Punk, if that’s actually the reason.
Adam Rose and the Bunny: I think it would have more appropriate for SurViVor Series if those two had a stewpot match. Loser gets locked in a stewpot that’s set on boil.
Main Event was a fucking thriller with plenty of cool developments and surprises.
Bullet points:
[ul]
[li]I like how Seth becomes further entrenched in his architect role. He would sneak in Curb Stomps to help his teammates get victories, verifying his claims to be the brains behind The Shield. [/li][li]The Big Show swerve was a surprise, even though he’s swerved plenty of times in his career. Now that his actions were shown to be premature, how is he going to salvage this? Is he going to weep crocodile tears in front of Cena and beg his forgiveness, or is he going full heel?[/li][li]CENA’S NOT THE SAVIOR? Huge surprise! I fully expected him to be the lone against-all-odds remnant of the team, especially given his pre-match speech to his teammates. Apparently, WWE is aware of the dangers of overexposing him, and understand the value of Ziggler.[/li][li]ZIGGLER WINS! ZIGGLER WINS! Good for Dolph. I fully expected his rise to the top to be on Cena’s coattails, but such was NOT the case! Apparently favoritism among WWE’s bookers is not a thing, and they actually do have long-range plans they commit to. Sorry I doubted them. At least until their next boneheaded decision.[/li][li]Sting finally emerges from the shadows. Will he be a new authority figure, or will they reprise his ominous silent harbinger angle from WCW? I’m guessing he and Hunter will have a retirement match sometime down the line, but it’d be interesting if he never says a word until then.[/li][/ul]
Overall, an awesome PPV event and a hell of a lot of fun to watch. My expectations were low, and it felt great to giggle and mark out like a kid again.