Breakdown: In Your House
- I waited a little too late in the day to do this. I'm going to have to catch the end of the show after Night of Champions due to the pre-show being extended which I forgot all about until just now.
- I love this ridiculous video package. Seen it before, I watched the Raw from the next night on the Network awhile back.
- I'm sick and tired sick sick sick and tired of sick and watching you watching you walk around round.
- This title's always sounded like they're having an emotional crisis while you don't want to kick them out of your place but don't want them there. So probably what Night of Champions will feel like.
- Yay for the Network buffering.
Edge vs. Owen Hart- Dun dun dunun dun dun dundundundun.
- Must resist Over the Edge jokes.
- Owen's theme here sounds way too similar to Rock's theme. I know it's on purpose but it's distractingly so.
- So does this match have any actual point? So far they're doing nothing but talking about how much danger Austin's in.
- The hell happened to Edge there? Did he botch a baseball slide that badly or was that on purpose?
- Not that they'll get the title shot!
- And still the commentary's just completely ignoring this match. And talking about Jim Carrey for that storyline that went nowhere.
- OMG BLOND GUY WHO LOOKS KIND OF LIKE EDGE I WONDER WHO THAT IS.
- Why
did they call him Dok Hendrix anyway?
- $2.49 a minute in Canada, maximum of three pounds in the UK. Who was paying for these call-in things?
Too Much vs. Al Snow & Scorpio- Was Too Much supposed to be gay? Scotty rubbing his face against Sexay's ass seems to suggest they were.
- I'd guess the temperature is just right for Scorpio tonight.
- I've never quite gotten Al Snow's choice of attire during the whole Head thing. he was supposed to be some deranged nut but he just dressed in ordinary wrestling gear possibly based off of Mr. Perfect's, the only remarkable thing about his appearance being the paint on his head. It's weird.
- King's reply to the son line was golden, mostly for how immediate it was.
- Too Much being one of the best teams of all time? Uh. . . Maybe Too Cool. Maybe. But not in 1998.
- Well, Snow's theme has way more talking in it tonight than I'm using to hearing.
- Demons of Destruction?
Marc Mero vs. Droz- The new Women's Champion, not bothering to bring out the belt with her.
- What was the deal with Mero in 1998 anyway? He seemed really prominent but at the same time they seemed to like to make him look like as much of a loser as possible.
- Really, the referee just responds to the choking with, "Don't do it again"?
- And he didn't hear Jackie lay out Droz? That was quite loud.
- So, Mero gets stomped the whole match, Jackie steals a rope break for him, then the next minute or two is just the two of them effortlessly slaughtering Droz. Good way to make both guys look bad.
- Noooo, I wouldn't say Bradshaw / Vader sounds like a slobberknocker.
- I can still totally see that phone number.
Bradshaw vs. Vader- Oh, it's no DQ, so this might actually be pretty fun.
- So Vader's randomly decided to dance during his entrance. Based on the Beach Blast match I'm guessing he did this a fair bit.
- Ha, that Bradshaw promo ruled. He sounded like he truly believes deep in his soul that Vader's a useless fatass.
- Bradshaw really don't pull off the short black-haired look. Either one or the other.
- That was the weakest stairs shot of all time.
- This kind of seems like it should be a more interesting brawl than it really is. Sort of comes off like they're just half-assing it, Vader's barely having any impact with his moves and Bradshaw's not a good enough seller to cover for it.
- Were they trying to position Bradshaw as a major top-level threat? He gets beaten to a pulp, shrugs off the Vader Bomb, and immediately hits the Clothesline From Hell twice before hitting a weak neckbreaker for the win while not remotely selling the beating he just took. That was Hogan in the early 90s or Cena in 2005 levels of, "Screw you, I win."
- That's a pretty decent Rock impression.
- The Road Dogg one could be better.
- And a terrible Jarrett one.
- Taker one, the voice is pretty close, the actual speech patters aren't right at all.
D'Lo Brown vs. Gangrel- So why isn't this match with X-Pac? And why did D'Lo lose the title to him anyway since he won it back a couple of weeks later?
- He's walking out in red and black lighting surrounded by smoke after emerging from a hole filled with fire and he's carrying a goblet full of blood. Yeah, he's allegedly goth.
- Noooo, if anything the entrance makes it easy to forget that Gangrel sucks.
- So this match actually is a heel vs. heel one. Oh, and I wonder if that guy who distracted Edge earlier has anything to do with Gangrel being after him. Wouldn't that make more sense if this were an Edge / Gangrel match?
- D'Lo does a running powerbomb shortly after a Droz match. Eh. . .
- Oh snap Bradshaw's on the superstar line right now!
- One will determine the new champion, the other is basically pointless since the winner never gets his title shot.
- I like how King's going for crazy amounts of cheap heat on Canada even when on commentary where they can't even hear him.
- A HULKMANIA SIGN?! HOW OUT OF DATE! HOW OLD FASHIONED! With how ridiculous that is now, imagine what it'd be like in, I dunno, four years.
- Gangrel had just debuted and has a storyline building up with Edge, and he loses? Wha?
The Rock vs. Mankind vs. Ken Shamrock- So why is the commentary being done by Cornette and Shane seemingly doing an Eric Bischoff impression?
- So they really need to recap this segment of Taker and Kane beating down Rock for no reason?
- Nope, the winner of this match will face nobody.
- Nothing else matters to Shamrock, especially cutting a decent promo.
- I have no earthy idea what Mankind is talking about.
- Why did I never download Shamrock in 2K14? I should do that later. Rather have him than, like, Neidhart.
- That abdominal stretch looks quite contrived.
- You cannot be surprised King wants Austin to lose, JR.
- When was the last time someone referred to the People's Eyebrow by name on air, anyway?
- Why
is Mankind wearing a Dude Love shirt? That is pretty weird.
- Only the Rock can elbow drop two people at the same time? I kind of doubt that.
- See, double the elbow means half the selling.
- Shamrock, don't be an idiot, go to the other side while they're not paying attention to you.
- That's a good question, where
did that chair come from?
- Mark McGwire references. Oh, 1998.
- Rock's music was already playing, he'd already been announced as the winner, and Mankind was looking as the pin was counted. My point is Foley's kind of stupid.
Val Venis vs. Dustin Runnels- I'm guessing this isn't living up to the match before it.
- Why is Rock's music still playing?
- I still defy you to name which of these two was the face in this feud.
- That knees line was wonderful.
- Monica Lewinsky joke. 1998, everybody!
- Did I do a write-up on the Raw after this when I watched it? I'm wanting to say I did, looking over the results since this match is dull and it's feeling like I wrote stuff about it.
- If I did I can't find it because the search feature sucks.
- Yeah, seriously, is Dustin going to get any offense in this match whatsoever?
- Nnnnope, sure doesn't.
- Please, like Dustin's the only preacher to ever take a money shot on his chest.
Jeff Jarrett & Southern Justice vs. D-Generation X- There, finally reached the point of seeing the way I'm used to thinking of Jeff Jarrett. Well, on a WWE show, last saw this look period like three PPVs ago. Speaking of, been seeing a lot of him lately.
- Were Southern Justice supposed to be seen as threats? They look like they hanging out in a bowling alley.
- Slowed it to a Southern Justice pace. So a crappy, boring one?
- Is that one guy in the crowd wearing a Wario hat?
- No, just a plain yellow one. Shame.
- I always did by far prefer the red gear on X-Pac. Yes, that's the most interesting thing i've got to say right now.
- Actually, related, X-Pac and Road Dogg have on red and black, Billy Gunn's wearing dark blue. I guess to be fair no one on the opposing team matches at all.
- I guess to be fair I can see why they played the Godwins as related, they look exactly the same.
- Gee, I wonder if the guitar sitting there in the ring'll come back up.
- Sure did.
- Whichever one of Southern Justice isn't legal (I think it's Canterbury but didn't get a good look) totally could have broken that up. Also, the guitar had nothing to do with anything and I don't think Road Dogg ever tagged in.
- Also, nice that that was set up by the Jarrett / X-Pac hair vs. hair match and yet neither of them was involved with the finish.
- Time for the Night of Champions break, good timing that the match just happened at end like five minutes before the start of the preshow. Shame they're running that an extra hour or I could finish this show now and I wouldn't have the impending formatting nightmare this is going to be in the file.
- Billy Gunn gets the pin, but they stop playing the Outlaws music and start playing X-Pac's just because he successfully stood up from getting hit with a guitar?
Undertaker vs. Kane vs. Steve Austin- Why didn't they just formally call it a handicap match, anyway?
- And, this is jumping ahead a bit, but wouldn't proper storytelling have it with them having Austin dead and starting to fight over who pins him, and in the process he eeks out the win? At least as much of a copout as this is, it's far less so than Lesnar / Cena. At least it's conclusive.
- Pro-pro-hibit-defeating your brother Kane-pro-pro-hibited.
- I'm damn sick and I'm damn sick and tired sick and tired I'm damn sick and tired of this repeating bullshit.
- Austin 666? What?
- Well, at least Night of Champions didn't have Corporate Kane on it.
- Ha, nice to see Austin being proactive.
- This match isn't really terribly interesting after that though. At least Austin's working smart and trying to keep it one on one instead of overpowering both guys.
- Yeah, this match kind of sucks. After awhile it just turns into a standard 90s brawl, but is playing up the two-on-one thing too much to build any sort of momentum.
- So Austin's kind of an easily-distracted idiot.
- And there is way too much of, "Austin hits someone with a chair, someone hits him with it," in this match.
- And now it's just Kane and Taker arguing over who should win. So why didn't this end with Austin squeaking out the win again? Like, I get they had to get the title vacant for Survivor Series to set up Rock / Austin at Mania but it seems like a backward way to do it.
- Convenient those sit-ups were done nearly simultaneously but not exactly so, just so Austin could kick them both soon as it happened.
- Then there was Night of Champions 2009 where Orton simultaneously tapped to two people in front of the ref and the match just kept going for no reason. Precedent!
- Did every PPV in 1998 end in an extended angle to set up the next show? Good thing today's shows never do that!
Night of Champions 2014
- Fun, thanks to the extended pre-show this will be my longest write-up to date. Expect a lot of repetition with my comments in the PPV thread, I'm not watching a live WWE show without being part of it.
- Judging by the ad, the bonus match is apparently the Usos against Cesaro. Yes, I know they were showing the clip from the Mania 30 kickoff, still.
- They really should flash through the block, scratch, and current logos on the THEN. NOW. FOREVER. screen.
- If Florida-Georgia Line performs. . . Ugh, please no.
- No Big Show in a surprise match, I'm so happy.
- Well, three matches this year, it's been a hell of a lot more than three since returning.
- Ha, really, they had a random clip of Lesnar roaring in the Taker recap?
- Do NOT make Show talk about Lesnar. Don't. DON'T. PLEASE. PLEEEEEEEEAAAAASE.
- I love these time calculation bits, really puts it into perspective how screwed Cena is.
- That looks like it says #Brocky'sCena.
- This Henry segment's just making me think, man, I could be watching Taker / Kane / Austin right now. I'm sure it sucks but it'd be better than this.
- I reeeeeally don't care about Orton / Jericho.
- Actually, Booker, everyone pretty much saw it coming.
- So are we just supposed to ignore that Sheamus / Cesaro for the US title already happened on PPV once this year?
- Yeah, Cesaro will totally be taking that next step in his career by winning a title he first won two years ago and did f***-all with.
- This song is. . . Wow.
- I left the room a sec, where did Booker go?
- Was that a Diesel chant?
- Bookdust!
- It does indeed have everything, Renee. Except entertainment value. Not an ounce of that.
- I'm pretty sure this exact same situation has occurred on a Jerry Springer episode actually.
- "I've been sifting through all of your tweets." Like he's the only one doing it. All alone. I like that visual.
- I like how they're trying to make it look like people were horrified by Lesnar's performance instead of cheering it like mad.
- Yeah, they seriously expect us to see Cena as the face in all of this.
- I wonder what alignment of Christian we're getting tonight.
- It's Christian.
- No countdown tonight or saving it for the match?
- But whose ass cream was it?
- They're recapping something for the second time inside of just the preshow?
- Canadian Cool?
- There wasn't one fart in that segment, liar.
- Orton's going to rip off Jericho's balls?
- This is a pretty cool intro honestly, though I don't really get why they had this filmed.
The Usos vs. Goldust & Stardust- Two shows in one night with Goldust on them! He got offended by Benoit taking his spotlight.
- Don't play up the injury, that implies the Usos are going to win.
- So Goldust stole Cody's robe?
- And Cody doesn't even have one on to match it.
- Oldust - the height of comedy.
- Shut up, JBL.
- Uh, I'd hope he knows how precious that is, he's had the tag titles with Cody before.
- Damn, I hoped that was it.
- Why is the ref wearing gloves?
- Haha, glove slapping, that's incredible.
- Now to find the Cosmic Keyhole.
- And neither of them has taken a drink from their Mountain Dew.
- Kizarny rizeturn cizoming?
Cesaro vs. Sheamus- WEEOOOWEEOOOWEEOOOWEEOOOWEEOOOWEEOOO.
- Survive if he lets you.
- Los Caronies implodes!
- What is up with Sheamus's beard tonight? Did he decide Zeb had the right idea?
- This match is honestly pretty slow so far for these two.
- Why does Sheamus jumping with both feet hurt less than doing it with one foot?
- I keep reading that hashtag in the corner as JUSTdie.
- Wow, Cesaro countered Sheamus's stupid chest punches. Weird you don't see that happen more often.
- I like how Cesaro's countering all of Sheamus's usually heavily telegraphed moves.
- I didn't care at first but, as I pretty much expected honestly, this has turned into a great insane brawl.
- Rocky Balshowa is on the scene.
- At least they're not singing, but commentating won't be much better.
- What did the troops ever do to you, WWE?!
The Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler- Digging the matching scarf dress coat things.
- Screw that, tell me where to find new episodes of the other, better cartoon.
- This commentary is even worse than usual.
- HAHA KING DIED ONCE.
- This commentary is seriously making this match unbearable to sit through.
- Wait, really, they didn't bother having Night of Champions announce table covers even?
- They just attacked Miz! That should be a DQ!
- I'd been saying for years, the first person to lose the Money in the Bank cash-in, their career was over.
- Amazing how those two idiots shut up and suddenly the match improves.
- Honestly I was hoping for Miz to win it. He needs it more than Ziggler does. Though man, how many times has he had that title now, like five?
- Two title changes, one retention so far.
- Dean Ambrose time?
- Seriously, Seth, wet your hair down before you put the vest on!
- Why is there a referee in the ring?
- Notice it's, "We want Ambrose!", not, "We want Reigns!"
- Hey, they updated the logo on the briefcase!
- So, we go from backing out of an announced Rollins / Ambrose match to having an unannounced one?
- Ambrose didn't pay for his cab, that dick.
- That elbow drop was awesome!
- Hey, Joey Mercury!
- Does arena security have the authority to do that?
- He came from that cab, Seth. You saw him pull in.
Mark Henry vs. Rusev- Funeral services for Mark Henry will be held on Thursday.
- Really? Is there a reason for that besides for Rusev to interrupt it?
- Please hurry up and cut it off already Rusev.
- After that, I'm pulling for Putin.
- You know how awesome Rusev's match with Swagger was last month, or Henry's match with Orton at Night of Champions 2011? This isn't like those.
- "Rusev is hiding Mark Henry!" That'll get him some jail time in the motherland.
- Mark Henry taps out for the good ol' USA.
- Shut the f*** up, JBL.
- Why is Henry selling his leg?
Chris Jericho vs. Randy Orton- Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.
- That is at least the third time tonight that segment's been recapped.
- You sure as hell weren't watching the great old Attitude Era Raws on the Network.
- Who'd Orton beat to become the youngest World champion anyway?
- Does anyone even care if this match gives me anything to talk about? Honestly?
- Please, nobody ever drinks their Mountain Dews during the show.
- Don't you mean a Barry Windham in his 40s?
- Hey, someone who didn't go by the honor system of staying on the rope!
- Well, that was a pretty good sequence out of the Walls, give them that. Kind of went on too long but still.
- I'm feeling like they're going to do the RVD in 2007 route. Jericho gets the shock win to try to trick people but Orton kills him anyway.
- DON'T JUMP AT ORTON. You're unbeatable if you don't jump at him.
AJ Lee vs. Nikki Bella vs. Paige- Why is it relevant what Brie thinks of this match?
- "I'll crawl through the fires of hell to face you, Nikki!"
- Find new words, Jesse!
- "Take Raw 4 Hours." You, sir, are a goddamn terrorist.
- Seriously? Mid-match hand-kissing?
- So Paige is rapist Bayley now.
- Yeah, Nikki Bella is a rebel.
- Nikki's so arrogant and convinced she's better than Brie, her shirt says Bella 02.
- This actually has turned into a decent, if disjointed match.
- Why? What's the point of AJ winning it back if in a position for Paige to easily cheat her way to winning?
Brock Lesanr vs. John Cena- If Cena wins I put a hold on my bank card. Or not, I'm enjoying the daily PPV thing.
- In three hours Big Show's the only one who's touched his Mountain Dew.
- Then there's Cena's mantra - LOSE, BITCH, MOAN, REPEAT.
- PLEEEEEASE let this be a squash.
- You're in for the fight of your life, can you not pose?
- Is Cena going bald? He has a very noticeable streak of missing hair on his head.
- Ha, not even a two count. Maybe they'll do this right after all.
- German suplex #1.
- Whole lot of Kimura action so far.
- German suplex #2.
- I always mark for the three amigos.
- I'm seriously going to be pissed if Cena wins this.
- I like that this time around Heyman looks quite bored with the proceedings like, "Yeah, we know where this is going."
- German suplex #3.
- The ref needs to break out his gloves.
- Please don't let there be a third. Please. I didn't buy that one but a third would give me a heart attack.
- Well, greats like Triple H and... That's about it really. Michaels I guess.
- Lesnar looks weird and naked without elbow pads or wrist bands.
- F*** THIS COMPANY.
- Well, at least the cash-in didn't get wasted but... That's seriously how this f***ing ends?
- Why isn't this show over already? Whatever, back to Breakdown.
Breakdown was largely middle of the road with a blah main event but a great cage match, Night of Champions was very up and down and I don't really know if I'd recommend it or not. Based on the ending I'm inclined to say no, particularly since most of the show just seemed designed to retcon out SummerSlam's existence.
In either case, next up we've got... Sweeeeeeeeeeet. WrestleMania 19 it is.