Mezmero

I like how Mat thought it was MadeInBangladesh who called him out about his favorite five list from last week. But guess what? It's ME Elfring! It's ME Elfring! It was me all along Elfring! You all bought it! Hook, line, and sinker! You all bought it! Even my family! Even my immediate family bought it! Every damn one of you were made fools of!

My current Fave Five are as follows:

I'm squarely behind Mat's assessment in thinking Raw was okay but still not great. I think the thing that bothers me the most is how just about every match other than the Divas had a commercial break. They're really stretching stuff out which feels unnecessary given the breadth of the backstage roster. I know Mat watches Main Event so he should know by now that the promo of the week belongs to MizTV yet again. It was glorious until the ending which was sort of meh.

I'm going to try to go to PWG tomorrow because WWE is just not doing it for me. Any chance Corey's audio will stop producing a buzzing noise in my right headphone channel every time he speaks? Thanks for the podcast guys.

@inferiorego: I figured as much which is why I deleted the comment. It's actually a good idea to push Kofi Kingston as much as you can since WWE aren't going to. If we need any more evidence for why The Nation of Education needs to be a thing, well then here ya go.

Finally The Mock HAS COME BACK to Comic Vine. The Mock has a question for that jabroni @undeadpool: Do you like pancakes? It doesn't matter if you like pancakes! You're saying that you have problems with your monitor well let me tell you what I'm gonna do. The Mock is gonna take that monitor, shine it up real nice, turn it sideways, and stick it straight up your candy ass!

Sorry for posting that Bro Men promo Mat. That segment was so horrible when I first saw it that it made me watch Impact. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately?) no promos have been as awful or goofy as that one but they're still pretty bad. Mostly it's a bunch of matter-of-fact, super bland macho stuff of: "You have the title, but I will win that title tonight. And neither you or anyone else will stop me." I don't want to blame the wrestlers because most of them are pretty talented in the ring but their promos are sooo boring. Maybe they're given nothing to work with other than the actual booking but I never care about who wins any of these matches.

As much mess as I talk about TNA, Raw this week was horrible. Outside of Dean Ambrose, Damien Mizdow, and sort of The Rock, this was one of the worst shows in a while. It's almost like they were punishing New York for being such a rowdy audience. I thought the Edge and Christian show afterwards was kind of funny and it made me realize that I missed a lot of really dumb Ruthless Aggression era stuff. I wonder if those two guys would be any good at color commentary.

Thanks for the podcast this week Mat.

I may not comment on every episode but I never miss a week. Thanks a bunch for the podcast guys.

I'll be curious to see if they address the capacity of her super squirrel cheeks. Squirrels are so overpowered in Marvel.

@d9000: Yeah I try not to cut slack to WWE either. I mean if you want me to be honest I think I'm ultimately not a WWE fan at least not anymore. However I am a fan of Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, The Miz, Luke Harper, and a handful of others who are good enough at the wrestling side and character side of things that they aren't hurt as much by WWE's inability to write and book a consistently compelling product.

As far as AJ Styles goes I would definitely consider him one of the best in the world at the moment. As amazing as all his matches with the younger dudes in G1 were I actually think I might have enjoyed his match with Minoru Suzuki the most. If you wanna know how to work arms in a wrestling match, Suzuki puts on a clinic and Styles sells it so well. That match was definitely a case where you don't need to know anything before hand to enjoy the show other than the fact that Bullet Club is real. I feel sort of crummy after I found out Styles was at PWG last month since it's literally within walking distance.

Oh come on dude I'm talking about creative side being boring not the actual wrestling. Not that WWE is perfect in that aspect either but do you honestly get excited when you see Gunner and Samuel Shaw shooting the breeze back stage? How about when Anderson tells MVP to stop being such a jerk? Or when Bobby Roode tells Eric Young how ready he is to fight? If you're a show on national television you need to at least make the home audience care about the characters and they are incapable of that. I just think if Mat is anything like me, he's not going to like TNA.

@madeinbangladesh: Oh I've seen plenty of awful stuff they've done simply through Botchamania. I think for me wrestling is at it's best when it's the full package. When it's part ballet, part opera, part comic book, and all parts are working in unison it can be glorious. TNA mostly has the ballet down but the other two parts? NOPE! It's hard to get invested in matches with such horrible build up attached to them. I almost wish the creative side of things were still a horrible train wreck for me to enjoy but right now it's worse than that, it's boring.

@madeinbangladesh: I've been watching I guess since the Menagerie debuted. I don't remember that match but for me personally it feels rather unremarkable. I mean 90% of the times that Taryn is trying to sell on the ground she looks like she has a big smile on her face. Even in the thumbnail you can see her corpsing. I'm sorry but I'll never consider someone who can't sell properly a good wrestler.

While I appreciate that Impact does hardcore matches fairly regularly whenever they make Knockouts do no DQ matches it feels like just a cheap way to get pops from the crowd. The spots begin to feel unnatural in that way and the match just feels formulaic instead of trying to tell a story. It ends up looking more like they're trying to go through the motions and just trying to meet the quota on spots.

I'm not gonna sit here and say that the Divas are any better. I admit they've been doing worse and worse lately as far as plot and character work but there are at least a few of them that I've grown to at least like which is more than I can say for knockouts. While Corey and Mat think Paige v AJ has been good, I honestly think Paige has had her best matches on the main show against Naomi. She unfortunately is kind of a non character even before the Funkadactyls broke up but I think she's at least entertaining in the ring and doesn't botch as much as some of the other Divas. And of course I love watching the NXT ladies the most right now.