So that sound you’re hearing is Triple H scrambling to find someone to replace Brock Lesnar in the Royal Rumble this Saturday after what just came out came out.
Women's RR Winner: Meh. Nothing against her, but I would much rather someone else get an opportunity. I can see why, though, they booked her to win. Men's RR Winner: Couldn't have been more obvious of a choice than him.
Felt like the big issue with the entire show was that the outright best match of the night (the Women’s RR) happened first and then they sorta treaded water for the next three hours before essentially just ending up right where they were exactly one year ago. This all could have been solved if they had just let Cody beat Roman last Mania but instead we’re having to run things back/Seth Rollins shredded his knee making Punk/Seth less likely to be a thing in time for April.
Literally starting the entire night off with the biggest return of the event (Naomi) was cool but I feel like it probably set everyone’s expectations a little too high for the rest of the night. R-Truth is currently having his Sami in the Bloodline streak where every single thing he does just seems to put him more and more over with the audience and TNA having a major presence at WWE’s second biggest event (with all due respect to Summerslam) in its portfolio seems to point to Vince really REALLY being gone at this point.
And despite all the trades indicating that Bron Breakker was the last-minute Lesnar replacement, my head cannon will forever be that the Lesnar replacement rush job was actually whatever the hell that McAfee spot was.
I had no particular affinity for Wade Barrett, but I'm a big fan of not using the same announce team for the PPV/PLEs that you use for the weekly programming. That's one of the reasons why Monsoon/Ventura was the greatest duo of all time, in my Personal Record Book™.
Which I guess is a roundabout way of saying I would have preferred if they'd kept Cole/Graves to strictly PLEs.
yeah PLE should have an A-list announce crew that is special. That was one way the PPVs had an air of specialness that the average PLE outside the big 4 typically lacks and starts to feel like an expanded Raw or Smackdown because of it.