Christmas Weekend Recap (12/25/15 - 12-28/25)

Friday (12/25):

SNOOOOOW?! I have to drive! Also Vince is rocking his Sailor Moon sweatshirt :D #itschristmasmorning #snow #snowinvegas2015

A video posted by sheila antonio (@sajcfan) on Dec 25, 2015 at 7:13am PST

Briefly met up with my family at Sea Food City

A photo posted by sheila antonio (@sajcfan) on Dec 25, 2015 at 10:43am PST

• On Thursday, Vince and I picked up his bro from the airport and we went over to his parent's place to spend the night. We stopped by at Walmart to get a last minute gift for Freddy. I was amused at seeing a few copies of "12 Rounds 3: Lockdown" lying around.
• It SNOWED the next morning. I was not happy about it.
• I had to leave to meet my family (who were visiting from Arizona) at Seafood City. My uncle also came over to visit for a bit. My mom bought me too much stuff.
• Came back just in time for Christmas lunch.
• We exchanged gifts. We got a lot of gift cards. Vince and I were wearing our sweaters that we bought last weekend.
• I took a nap and woke up to watch the rest of the Doctor Who Marathon.
• We played Mahjong, which I had difficulty following.
• Then we went back home and fell asleep again.

Saturday (12/26) and Sunday 12/27:

• Stayed home all day, I think?
• Oh wait, we did go to Target. Bought more Marvel Disney Infinity figures (Hulkbuster and Ultron)

• Did some major house cleaning
• Watched the ending of ROH

Monday (12/28):

• We watched the first showing of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." As a casual fan, I was so blown away by the movie. It wasn't drawn out and it was easy to follow along.
• We went to Costco afterwards to do some shopping
• Went to Sweet Tomatoes for a late lunch
• Went around Best Buy then to Old Navy
• Went home to rearrange stuff and watch RAW via Taima
• I'm NOT doing a RAW post because it was another bad show. Really, the only highlights was Owens going berserk on Neville and Ambrose. It was damn awesome to see NXT killer heel Owens and Ambrose sold the hell out of that powerbomb table bump. I'm not too worried about Ambrose, who's been unusually resilient considering what happened just last week. 16 days as IC Champ!

Tribute To The Troops (12/23/15)

No, I'm not covering this show either since whatever happens here is considered non-canon. Except for Rusev finally tapping to Jack Swagger's Patriot Lock! Also, this was taped 2 weeks ago, way before Reigns and Ambrose became the World Heavyweight Champ and Intercontinental Champ, respectively. This is essentially a televised house show, filled with Americana-heavy stuff and celebrity messages thanking the troops.

The only portion I tuned into watch was the 16-man tag team main event with... **inhales** Roman Reigns & Dean Ambrose & Jimmy Uso & Jey Uso & Ryback & Kane & Bubba Ray Dudley & Devon Dudley vs Sheamus & Alberto Del Rio & Bad New Barrett & Rusev & Bray Wyatt & Erick Rown & Luke Harper & Braun Strowman. It was obvious that the babyfaces were going to win but the biggest surprise was seeing Ambrose clean house and doing Dirty Deeds to Luke Harper to pick up the win. I thought for sure that Reigns would win it for the team. I guess it was fair considering Reigns and Sheamus had a long opening monologue to kick off the show and brought back the dreaded "tater tots" line. Also, The Family had a great reaction to Wade Barrett saying he wanted some Spotted Dick.


This makes it 3 straight nights of Ambrose being in the main event AND winning. Not a bad week for the IC champ! Also I found this funny. I'm not witty enough to caption it.

Super Smack Down Live! (12/22/2015)

WWE is doing a big Christmas week where they'll be having a live Smack Down! show on Tuesday and Tribute To The Troops (taped over a week ago) on Wednesday on USA and a replay of Smack Down! for Thursday on SyFy. In light of how frustratingly boring Monday Night RAW was due to the Slammy Awards, this was by far a better show in terms of wrestling matches. It featured the Tag Team Title match with the Lucha Dragons and New Day and the IC Triple Threat match with Kevin Owens, Dolph Ziggler, and IC Champ Dean Ambrose as the main event.

The results/reviews can be found here along with some choice quotes.

From Prowrestling: 

The two title matches were both entertaining and I enjoyed this show so much more than the Slammy Awards sports entertainment nonsense we saw the night before. 

From F4W: 

The New Day and Dean Ambrose successfully defended their respective titles on a live Smackdown show. Ambrose took a nasty bump on his head but appears to be fine.

This is the "bump" they are referring to. It looks like there might've been a miscommunication between the two, with Owens performing an Exploder Suplex and Ambrose expecting a T-Bone (I had to look this up). Basically, it was a semi-botched move but Ambrose's quick reflexes protected himself from getting seriously hurt. That or he's doing a very convincing job in selling the injury.

The main event was entertaining and had great spots from all 3 guys. Ambrose is living up to his newfound workhorse character by successfully defending his title. I seriously hope he has more title defenses and retains the title a little longer. Owens had it for 84 days and Ryback had it for 114 days, the longest reign for 2015. He's halfway there to be a grand slam champion!

"THIS IS BORING": Monday Night RAW (12/21/15)

This was definitely a throwaway episode of RAW. This was the same night as The Slammy's, WWE's self-proclaimed "most prestigious award show", where the winners are voted by mostly casual fans. Inbetween announcing the categories, nominees and winners, there are usually wrestling matches to fill in the gaps. Last night didn't do much to progress any major storylines except for Reigns getting the upperhand on Stephanie, more development with Ziggler and Owens (which was the only great wrestling match), and the main event cage match with Ambrose coming off pretty strong.

Let's start off with the bad. First was the horrible opening segment with Stephanie and Roman Reigns, which resulted in a very childish shouting match, mostly from Stephanie, as she tells Reigns to get out of her ring. Then he turns her back to her and walks away, all while smiling at the audience, making her yell at Reigns to come back. She threatens Reigns - the same guy who took out HHH and Vince McMahon - by punishing his family, putting The Usos against The New Day and Ambrose against Sheamus in a cage match.

Next was the fact that a majority of the Slammy winners were not present to accept the award. It was the presenters that had to accept it on their behalf, such as Paul Heyman for Undertaker and Brock Lesnar (who was a no-show for his homestate), Bo Dallas for Sting, and Miz for The Rock and Ronda Rousey. The votes are legit but it was still incredibly disappointing to not see any of the winners appear to at least acknowledge the award.

There were a few wrestling matches scattered throughout the event. The crowd was noticeably bored with how uneven the show was progressing. Ziggler and Owens was the first great match of the night, mostly because of how lengthy and brutal it was. This re-established how much a threat Owens is and how great Ziggler can be when he has direction. This is leading up to a newly announced Triple Threat IC Title match with Owens, Ziggler, and Ambrose for the Live Smackdown for Tuesday.

Amidst this 3-hour buttnumb-a-thon were a few bright spots, such as a very bitter Kevin Owens ranting about losing to Neville for Breakout Star of The Year, The New Day threatening to spoil the ending to Star Wars: The Force Awakens for losing to The Usos for Tag Team Of The Year (yeah, seriously), and the return of Seth Rollins for accepting the award for Superstar of The Year. I'm not going to lie; Rollins has completely won me over. He suffered a devastating injury but still managed to make a live appearance, whereas a perfectly healthy John Cena didn't bother to show up (he is advertised to return next Monday). Although The Slammys is not to be taken seriously, seeing Rollins being genuinely thankful for the award made it a big deal for him. He vowed that he will reclaim his title next year.

The main event cage match started off with Sheamus Brogue Kicking Ambrose as he was entering the ring, with Barrett, Del Rio, and Rusev roughing him up a bit before throwing him back into the cage to start the match. Within a few minutes, the crowd was loudly chanting "SHEAMUS IS BORING." Things turned around quickly when Ambrose climbed up to the top of the cage and was cornered by Rusev and Del Rio. Rather than walk around the structure, Ambrose did an elbow drop from the top of the cage and unto Sheamus, which got a huge pop from the crowd. Reigns eventually showed up to help take out the rest of the League of Nations outside the ring and throw a chair to Ambrose.

BEST SPOT OF THE NIGHT

Ambrose used the chair to take out Sheamus and proceeded to climb out the of the cage. Sheamus caught up with him at the top, and they both duke it out, even as they both climbed down on the other side of the cage. Then there's the stupid rule where the winner is the one who gets out of it, which led to Ambrose falling halfway off the cage and unto the floor, making him the winner. As soon as Sheamus touched down, Reigns speared him and happily helped up Ambrose. This was the second great match of the night but it was criminally short for a main event.

Overall, this was another bad episode of RAW made worse by The Slammys. Next week is the last RAW of the year which will hopefully start to shake things up for Royal Rumble next month.

Before I forget, Ambrose was shirtless again (thanks to Sheamus) and he suffered a nasty gash on his head afterwards. It didn't appear to be as serious as Reigns' head wound from last week. And yet WWE had to censor the video of Ambrose getting his head cleaned and stapled. This would seem like a standard video of a superstar getting treated but not with Ambrose. Here, he does a rendition of Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It" as he gets six staples to his head. This guy was in CZW, this is like nothing to him.

Weekend Recap (12/25/15-12/27/15)

Friday (12/25):

• Quick update on Vince's job situation: he had to turn it down. The biggest factor was whether the company could match what he was making at his previous job and they said it wasn't even close. Vince was bummed about the opportunity but we talked about it. So he has his old job to get back to.
• We ate at Paymon for dinner
• I bought tickets for ROH's 14th Anniversary show. Friday is the PPV. Saturday is the National TV taping. 

Saturday (12/26):

• We stayed home the whole day. I had to do some video editing
• For some unknown reason, we lost the signal to our living room TV. We can still watch cable TV in our bedroom. We can't call the cable company to fix this because I cancelled our cable a few months ago, so we're only paying for high speed internet. So we're halfway there to being official cordcutters.
• Played with Joel and Jonathan in a few quick rounds of L4D2.

Sunday (12/27):

• We ate at Egg Works for breakfast. I left a Yelp review.
• We went to Fashion Show Mall to buy some early presents for ourselves (I bought a Doctor Who 4th Doctor cardigan sweater and Vince a Sailor Moon sweatshirt) and gift cards.
• Also went to LV Premium Outlets to do the same. Vince bought a pair of new Nike shoes for ourselves as another early present. I was being very picky with the style and color of the shoes, as in I wanted it to look as close to a certain someone's shoes from last week's Monday Night RAW.

First time watching "Kingpin."

A video posted by sheila antonio (@sajcfan) on Dec 20, 2015 at 11:37pm PST

NXT Takeover: London

I'm pretty much going to do the same thing that I did for NXT Takeover: Brooklyn and just use a few gifs and short comments to sum up my watching experience. Unlike my WWE Raw and PPV recaps, I don't analyze or complain about storylines and character development. With NXT and their Takeover specials, I just sit back and enjoy watching it.

Asuka vs Emma was the opening match. Every time I see Asuka, the more I fall in love with this girl. She is unbelievably entertaining and terrifyingly brutal. Not to mention Emma came off looking as an equally legit threat to her. I hope Emma doesn't go back to the main roster.

Enzo and Cass vs Dash and Dawson was a great tag team match. While it was expected that Dash and Dawson would retain, the match was so good in convincing that there would be another title change. The London crowd chants were hilarious and not as obnoxious as the Full Sail crowd. Enzo and Cass have yet to win the title but when it finally happens, it's gonna be huge.

Apollo Crew vs Baron Corbin was a surprisingly good match and it made Corbin, who has made vast improvements since his debut, look like another legit threat. This was Corbin's first win and Crew's first loss. Corbin practically dominated Crews throughout the whole match, save for a minor botch.

Bayley vs Nia Jax was also another great match, mostly because of the fact that a fairly new wrestler was quickly given a title shot. We've seen how Bayley holds up against an equally technical and physical wrestler such as her rival Sasha Banks but we've never seen her against a powerhouse wrestler like Nia. Nia has a noticeably limited move set but when she hits them, it's damn powerful. And Bayley showed such tenacity by being persistent and hanging on. Bayley retained her title but as usual with NXT matches, both wrestlers came out looking good.

The main event match with Samoa Joe vs Finn Balor was another brutal match. Finn put aside his leather jacket wearing Balor Club persona to bring back The Demon, who was dressed all snazzy as Jack The Ripper. Joe was just incredible here and his offense was almost close to being stiff and hard-hitting when he fought against Tomasso Ciampa. And Balor did very well against a tag-partner-turned-monster-heel. I felt a little sad afterwards because it seems like Joe and Balor's feud might've just ended right there. However, I trust NXT to come up with an exciting angle for both starts moving forward.

Just like NXT Takeover: Brooklyn, the rest of the matches that were filmed in London will air next Wednesday on the WWE Network. It also marks Sami Zayn's return too, although I didn't check if he's going to actually wrestle in a match. HHH announced that NXT is going to start doing major US tours throughout 2016, including doing a takeover special right before Wrestlemania Star. Here's hoping they come to the West Coast pretty soon!

"YOU DESERVE IT": Monday Night RAW (12/14/15)

I can't believe this. We not only got a new Intercontinental Champion with Dean Ambrose from TLC on Sunday, we got a new World Heavyweight Champion with Roman Reigns, all within 24 hours! And the title change happened on Monday Night RAW, which is only the 2nd time it has happened this year. Holy crap!

RAW started off with Stephanie, still reeling from last night's event and calling out Reigns. Reigns came out with a mic (uh oh) and briefly mentioned that it was his daughter's birthday. They had a pretty good back and forth until Stephanie slapped Reigns. Several times. HARD. She said she didn't have the power to fire Roman but she knows someone who can, Vincent Kennedy McMahon, and he was on his way to the ring. You know WWE's getting desperate if they're involving Vince McMahon, who hasn't been on television for a year.

This is day 1 of Ambrose as IC Champ and he was the first match of the night as he went up against Dolph Ziggler. And damn, does Ambrose look good with the belt! Their match had the same tone as their Survivor Series semi-finals match, which was mostly technical. It was getting pretty good until Owens showed up and tossed Ziggler out of the ring, resulting in a no-contest. A pissed off Owens proceeded to Pop Up Powerbomb the HELL out of Ambrose twice. Ziggler got back into the ring to brawl with Owens but was quickly overwhelmed, which led to Owens powerbombing Ziggler unto Ambrose. This was scarily reminiscent of NXT Owens, where he was a merciless killer heel. I am happily anticipating all the mic time and promos that Ambrose and Owens will be cutting.

Vince McMahon arrives (interrupting a match between R-Truth and B- Dallas) and calls out Reigns. He wanted him to apologize for injuring HHH and calling the McMahon's a disgrace, which Reigns refuses. Sheamus comes out and said that he'll beat an apology out of Reigns. He even put his title on the line! Let me repeat that: the champion is issuing the challenger (who lost twice) another rematch. It took Reigns making another stupid balls joke directed at McMahon to make the title match official. And McMahon got the last laugh by kicking Reigns in the balls. Eesh.

The matches that followed were for the most part quite entertaining. The Wyatt Family and Team ECW got a TLC rematch which was more brutal and violent than their tables match, ending with Wyatt Family getting another win. This was a simple reminder on how booking was done right. They brought in veterans to put on a good match and to put over the new talent. This probably marks the end of their feud so it'll be interesting to see who the Wyatt Family will focus on next.

The New Day, in what seemed to be a completely out of character moment, acknowledged The Usos and Lucha Dragons for putting on the best match of the night for the fans from TLC. They extended the olive branch and wanted to call a truce between the two teams, which they obliged. When the New Day went back to being obnoxious about being tag team champs again, The Usos and The Lucha Dragons ganged up and took them out. This was an unusual segment because The New Day never insulted them or attacked them at all; they were being completely respectful. Is this a preview of The New Day becoming faces or The Usos becoming heels?

Fast forward to the main event, which was another slow and brutal match with Sheamus and Reigns. When it seemed like Reigns was going to win, McMahon, who was sitting at ringside, interfered by pulling the ref out before the 3 count. Alberto Del Rio and Rusev came out and Reigns took all of them out with a Superman Punch, including McMahon. Reigns spears and pins Sheamus and wins the match. This same Philadelphia crowd, who booed the hell out of Reigns for winning the Royal Rumble back in January, was now cheering "YOU DESERVE IT!" to him. 

I'll be honest, I have very mixed feelings about this payoff. On one hand, Reigns and Ambrose, the current full-time babyfaces of WWE, are ending the year as new champions for the first time in their singles career. And as I noted earlier, they did a title change on a non-PPV event, which is also a big deal. On the other hand, it felt like Sheamus' cash-in to become the WHC and the formation of the League of Nations was just to make them as obstacles for Reigns to overcome. This was a great moment for Reigns but it doesn't excuse the long and rocky build up from Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania to help him get over. Not to mention the mixed up booking in making him an underdog (Bryan), a superman (Cena), a crazy thief (Ambrose), and an authority defying rebel (Austin).

Putting the analytical smarkiness aside, it's hard to not acknowledge how this is a feel good moment for Reigns. This was the plan along for him and while he'll never escape the "tater tot"s and "wrinkly prunes" lines, there's no denying that he's come a long way as the silent enforcer from The Shield. The major positive I see with this is that creative will finally cool down on focusing solely on making Reigns look strong and spend time in building up the roster. The road to sign-pointing Wrestlemania is underway with Royal Rumble on January 24. The PPV is taking place in Florida, so expect to see a lot of NXT appearances.

WWE TLC 2015 PPV

"THANK YOU ROMAN!"

If there's one thing about professional wrestling sports entertainment, when it's good, it's fucking great. The general apathetic attitude and low expectations for the last PPV of the year resulted in a pretty decent show, at least better in comparison to the disappointing Survivor Series PPV. The changes and progress that the fans wanted happened last night and that eagerness to see the fallout is carrying over for Monday Night RAW. One thing is for sure, it got a lot of people talking in a good way.

Let me be clear: TLC was decent but the buildup for some of the matches like Rusev vs Ryback, Del Rio vs Swagger, and even Team ECW vs The Wyatt Family, were poor or rushed. Even though they had a few good matches and standout moments, the PPV was just that, decent.

Here are the match results:

• Sasha Banks (w/ Naomi and Tamina) defeated Becky Lynch
• The New Day defeated The Lucha Dragons and The Usos
• Rusev w/ Lana defeated Ryback
• Alberto Del Rio defeated Jack Swagger
• The Wyatt Family defeated Team ECW
• Dean Ambrose defeated Kevin Owens
• Charlotte w/ Ric Flair defeated Paige
• Sheamus defeated Roman Reigns

First off, let me just say that I'm scarily becoming like Vince in making mostly accurate predictions. We were able to call out what the next matches would be without looking at live reports. Vince predicted that they would start the PPV strong with the Tag Team Triple Threat match. And that was a smart decision.

I was fearful of this match, mostly because there's a lot of high flyers getting mixed up with ladders and I was afraid that someone was going to get injured. Still, it was a solid match with great spots and with Xavier Woods at commentary, who did an awesome job putting all the other teams over and calling out moves like a pro commentator. Vince predicted that the Usos would win and I said New Day would retain, and thankfully, the latter happened.

Going off from their win, I also predicted that all the heel champs (yes, even current Divas champ Charlotte) would retain their titles. And it looked like that was the trend for the non-title matches, which saw The Wyatt Family defeating Team ECW and Rusev defeating Ryback. So when Ambrose and Owens' match was coming up, I was fine with seeing another heel champ retaining their title until... until...

THIS FUCKING HAPPENED

Dean Ambrose defeated Owens via Hurricanrana to become the new IC Champ! This was truly the biggest surprise of the night. It was a long-awaited payoff for Ambrose when he first set his sights on taking the IC title away from Bad New Barrett back in January. Even though their buildup to this feud was briefly sidelined, with Owens getting sick and Ambrose siding with Reigns and The Usos, not to mention having Ambrose toss popcorn and soda at Owens' face instead of cutting a promo, this was still the only match I cared about. Overall, the match was entertaining and it even had a great moment where Owens barely made a rope break using only one finger! Ambrose was the only babyface to win a match and it was also the only title change in the PPV. This was great for both parties; Ambrose is a new champ and Owens is free to possibly go after another title and having bigger feuds.

The main event TLC match between Sheamus and Reigns was met with apathy and smark from the Boston crowd. They even chanted, "WE WANT CENA! CENA SUCKS!" and "NXT!" because they all know how the match was going to end. The match itself was quite intense, slow, and methodical, but no one was really invested in it. Sheamus was able to retain the title, thanks to Del Rio helping Sheamus up the ladder and Rusev putting Reigns in the Accolade. We were getting a repeat of Reigns looking defeated and walking away as Sheamus celebrated in the middle of the ring on the shoulders of Del Rio and Rusev. And then something miraculous happened; Reigns showed character progression.

For over 10 minutes, Reigns wrecked havoc in the ring. He wasn't just mad that he lost. He was absolutely pissed. He took a chair and started beating up on Del Rio, Rusev, and Sheamus. Several referees, Stephanie, and HHH came out to stop Reigns. HHH tried to calm Reigns down and stupidly turned his back on him, giving Reigns and opportunity to beat the hell out of him with a chair. The crowd, who was chanting for Cena earlier in the match, was now cheering for Reigns. He was finally being the silent bad-ass monster that the fans have been waiting for. And it worked. The crowd chanted, "THANK YOU ROMAN," as he walked back up the ramp, not looking the least bit sorry in taking down LON and HHH.

Now I'm eager to watch RAW tonight. The Authority (mostly Stephanie) will probably make Reigns' life a living hell to get back at him. Which is fine but they have to do a few things here with Reigns' character. Don't make Reigns talk. Don't make him cut another recap promo with a smile on his face. Make Reigns go into berserk mode and live up to his new shirt motto, "Spare no one. Spear everyone." He's not working as another John Cena or Daniel Bryan, so make him be himself. Maybe having the Lunatic Fringe as a buddy might've rubbed off on him after all.

CONGRATS, DEAN AMBROSE!

"TATER TOT SON": Monday Night RAW (12/7/15)

Waiting for changes to happen on Monday Night RAW.

Realizing it's the same old shit.

This is the go-home show? This is supposed to be the show to give the PPV a final push and make people tune in for Sunday? What seemed promising at the beginning, in the form of an unprecedented 16-Man Fatal Four Way match for the first hour, devolved into a mess for the second and third hour. There was no serious story progress and character development and motivation was all over the place. Oh, and Reigns made WWE WHC Sheamus look like a chump again, guaranteeing that Reigns will not walk out with the title this Sunday due to shenanigans. 

On a plus side, they did acknowledge that it was Dean Ambrose's birthday! Also, Popcorn Ambrose made his return and... he came off as a bigger bully than Kevin Owens. At least he got to be in the same ring with Tommy Dreamer! Dreamer threw Moxley into someone's chair 5 years ago at Dragongate.

There were meaningless matches throughout the night and it looks like everything was being rushed to create more time for the final segment of the night with Reigns and Sheamus. From the look of things, there is going to be a lot of anger and frustration from wrestling articles and podcasts for this week's RAW.

From F4W: 

This was a show booked in reverse. We got a solid first hour and it just lost steam from there. Reigns and Sheamus feels like a cold program, which anyone who watched Sheamus win the title would have predicted. I might regret writing this, but Reigns doesn't have that special quality as a main eventer. He can't carry a 10-minute talking segment and the fans don't see him as a top of the card talent. 

From RollingStone:  

They threw everything at the wall last night, from unisex unicorns and 16-man tags to some meta-insight on Lana and Neville getting a backstage pep talk from Donny Deutsch. Very little of it stuck. 

From AV Club:  

As we head into Sunday’s PPV, I feel nothing but apathy, and occasionally downright hatred. Raw is in a dire state right now, and tonight’s episode is a pretty good representation of everything that’s currently wrong with the product. 

From Prowrestling: 

WWE is in a bad place right now. It's not going to change overnight because they are relying mostly on wrestlers who were damaged because of their own parity booking. I would be understanding if the creative was good and it was just taking time for them to establish or reestablish some of these wrestlers, but that's just not the case. There's no light at the end of this tunnel.

From PWTorch:

Overall, an excruciatingly long promo exchange exposing Reigns’s weaknesses and masking his strengths to get to physicality, which seemed to cross over from a “sample of the TLC action” to basically a free meal.

The common theme with all of these reviews was not just RAW being disappointing, messy, and predictable but how the final segment with Reigns and Sheamus, the headline event for TLC, was the major low point of the show. Reigns' weakness is doing long promos and they did it to him again by making recap his rise from The Shield to getting the WWE WHC title, all while climbing up on a ladder to literally illustrate his point. And then he and Sheamus just talked and talked before getting into a brawl that went outside the ring. This was slow and boring to watch - it was noted that empty seats can be seen towards the third hour - which doesn't say much on what to expect for Sunday.

Ambrose and Owens have a contract signing for Thursday Night Smack Down. Hopefully, they'll get to do more here besides having another concession fight. Owens being out last week shouldn't be a reason for a such poor build up for their match, and I hope Ambrose isn't going to side with Reigns in another multi-man match for the final go-home show.

TEAM BAD DAY

Happy Dirty Thirty Deanee

First off, it's Jonathan Good Dean Ambrose's 30th Birthday. This is a wrestler who was once part of the mysterious heel stable called The Shield, who made their debut in November 2012. He looked liked a normal guy with slicked back hair compared to the half-blonde Seth Rollins and the silent and stoic Roman Reigns. Vince showed me one of Jon Moxley's promos from 2009 and I was just floored, I couldn't believe this kind of guy was now in WWE. This was also a time when I was just a casual fan of wrestling, so I didn't know a thing about "the indies", WWE's developmental system (then called FCW, now called NXT), and the reason for their name to change once they signed on.

Ambrose was always interesting to watch on screen and I couldn't understand why at first. He didn't really share any similarities to my previous favorite wrestlers at the time, who were unique (Batista), a rebel (CM Punk), and an underdog (Daniel Bryan). And then I realized why I was starting to like him; Ambrose was charismatic. So goddamn charismatic. It was enough to make me a fan girl again. The last time I was a fan girl, it was for David Tennant, which was cut short after he left Doctor Who. I admire the guy and his work, which, sadly, I can't say the same for my first celebrity crush Jim Carrey.

Last year, Vince and I went to WWE RAW on August 18, our first WWE show in 4 years. Seeing the wrestlers in the ring is such an awesome experience and seeing your favorite wrestler performing live is just as incredible. I've also met Ambrose not once but twice this year. And there's something weirdly surreal to be a fan of someone who's nearly the same age as you. I'm actually a year older than Ambrose! This level of fandom is currently annoying Vince and I feel this might last longer due to how more immersed I've become in pro-wrestling. I have since gained admiration for other WWE wrestlers as of recent, such as Kevin Owens, Cesaro, Sami Zayn, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, Bayley, etc, but Ambrose remains as my reason to stick with WWE.

----------

On a side note, can I just say how awesome this is for Renee Young to do? Ever since she confirmed that she and Ambrose have been dating, she has been the subject of ridiculous and stupid comments from jealous Ambrose fangirls. These girls refuse to believe they are dating and that their fans are only "shipping" them, all because Ambrose didn't claim her. And even when he finally did, they still attack Renee for doing this for attention! Ambrose stays off social media because he's a private person and he has a small circle of people he trusts. Renee posting this pic means they're acknowledging their relationship again, which is really sweet. It's already causing Tumblr to lose their shit (I'm on the side that's happy for them).

On another side note, WWE is not shying away in acknowledging their 2nd biggest babyface's birthday. They have a section on their homepage that links to a video playlist of his craziest moments, he's leading in a silly poll on which wrestler would do great in ECW, and WWE Studios wished Dean Happy Birthday (his movie is coming out on DVD/Blu-Ray on 12/22). I'm wondering if they'll acknowledge it on RAW tonight.

Weekend Recap (12/4/15-12/6/15)

Friday (12/4):

• Had a somewhat stressful day at work. It involves making a company Holiday Thank You Card. I came up with a concept that it seemed like people like but then I had to make more and more changes based on one person's opinion, like they don't like the color, or that I need to work harder at making randomly scattered snowflakes look random.
• Went to eat at Sweet Tomatoes for dinner. We went to best Buy and bought a 2nd PS4 controller with the Best Buy gift cards.
• Played Gauntlet together

Saturday (12/5):

• We stayed home the whole day. Vince had to work on some IGT stuff. Still waiting for the call...
• I just basically binge watched to catch up on a few shows like Doctor Who, Last Man on Earth, and Gravity Falls.

Sunday (12/6):

• Met with Joel, Pam, and Nikki at KoMex Fusion. Pam and I first met Nikki at the Hello Kitty Warehouse sale over a year ago. She helped us find some stuffs for us, including the Guam Hello Kitty plushies and Tokidoki stuff. Pam kept in contact with her since then and this was my 2nd time to meet her.
• After lunch, Joel, Pam, Vince and I went to Fry's. Vince got a PS4 charger station.
• Played L4D2 with Joel and Jonathan. Took us over 2 hours to beat one map because of the final stage, so we had to switch from hard to normal. Vince and I made it.
• Watched ROH. Dalton Castle's boys don't want to go back to him! Damn you Silas Young!
• I'm curious about Monday Night RAW. It's the go-home show before TLC and so far only 3 matches have been confirmed, which is terrible considering that last year had 9 matches confirmed before the PPV. "Make Roman Look Strong" Tour continues!

"This is the state of WWE": Monday Night RAW (11/30/15)

So I watched tonight's RAW in hopes of seeing how desperate WWE was going to get and, while it had direction, the results were quite messy. It was still better than last week's RAW, however, this show felt like a month's worth of stories crammed into 3 hours. Here's hoping that WWE would actually follow through with this.

Let's start with the good. A brand new stable emerged in the form of League of Nations. Sheamus, Rusev, and Barrett - already known as the European Ultras - welcomed Alberto Del Rio to their fold. This probably meant that they quickly dropped the MexAmerica (and Zeb Colter?) storyline. Sheamus, who was a boring heel met with groans, showed so much personality and cockiness. It was actually nice to see the rest of his guys get the spotlight too.

We also got A New Day filled RAW, appearing in nearly every hour, doing commentary, and doing an awesome WWEShop Cyber Monday ad. These guys are having so much fun that you forget they're suppose to be heels.

And we saw development with the Divas! Charlotte and Becky had a match where Charlotte faked a leg injury while Daddy Ric Flair distracted Becky long enough to lose via rollup. Becky was upset while Charlotte maintained that she was teaching her that they're not on NXT and they're in the big leagues... but you're still my girl! Charlotte is starting to turn heel, Paige is the fan favorite tweener, and Becky is the pure-heart babyface.

The biggest surprise of the night was seeing Tommy Dreamer, an ECW original, coming over to the Dudley Boyz as they issued their challenge to the Wyatt Family. It's not known if Dreamer is going to be with WWE full-time. It's a great way to keep the Dudleys active since they've sadly gotten stale after losing numerous times to The New Day.

The bad was everything else about the show. This was clearly The Roman Reigns Show, who stole the opening segment by Superman Punching Sheamus and taking his belt, all with a big fucking smile on his face. Stealing titles! That sounds so rebellious and fun for Reigns to do! You know who else was doing that? DEAN FUCKING AMBROSE. Reigns' little act pissed off HHH and Stephanie, who informed Reigns that Sheamus is going to defend his title tonight and that he has 5 minutes and 15 seconds (the length of his reign as a champion) to beat him. And just so that we don't forget how much the odds are stacked against Reigns, HHH informed Ambrose that if Reigns loses to Sheamus, he would lose his IC title shot with Owens, which made him pretty angry. Stephanie also informed The Usos that they'll lose their Tag Team title shot with New Day if Reigns loses as well. It's a thinly veiled attempt of getting the fan support from Ambrose and The Usos to root for Reigns.

Of course, Reigns wins via DQ and Sheamus remains the champ, which led to the giant clusterfuck of a main event that saw Reigns, Ambrose and The Usos vs League of Nations AND The New Day. Ambrose ended up being the hot tag (which was said to wake up the audience) and he took out all the heels until he got overwhelmed. Ambrose got pinned by Sheamus and was beaten down by all the heels until Reigns came in to help him. RAW ended with the heels standing strong over a defeated Reigns. Commentary made it a point to focus on Reigns being overwhelmed and not catching a break.

Overall, this was an acceptable RAW. RollingStone, Wrestling Observer, ProWrestling, and AV Club seems to think otherwise. As an Ambrose fan, I was not happy on how he was utilized as a prop for Reigns to get over. Although it was nice of HHH to acknowledge Ambrose and Owens IC title match for TLC, it was even weirder to not see Owens at all last night, despite being advertised. There was a rumor that Owens fell sick and had to fly back home, which means he won't be on Smackdown this week.

I saw this little gem on instagram. Ambrose might've done this move during the commercial break. I love how you can hear the audience laughing after the loud thud. He's a such a goddamn lovable babyface.

Not sure what Dean was thinking.. #WWEraw #wwepittsburgh

A video posted by @bathin_ayyyypex3 on Nov 30, 2015 at 8:52pm PST