Viva le Backlash

[JLM]

The two count/Simplement Deux chant wore on me as the show went on, but they made many of the entrances feel huge and they stayed hot for the full three hours despite being served the most blatant of filler PPVs, so I can't be mad at them. 

[Statto]

5 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

They've all probably paid about a billion euros for a seat each so let them do what they want. 

I LOL'd at them popping big for the announcement of it being the highest grossing arena show in company history. 

"Hooray! We've paid way more on average for our tickets than any WWE crowd ever!" 

[JLM]

Haha yeah, bragging about the attendance always comes across as thanking everyone for turning up, I can see why a live crowd might feel like they're part of a communal effort to break an attendance record. This bragging about the highest gross, particularly when delivering a B-show like this one, really does feel like you're rubbing it in their faces. YOU LOT GOT RIIIIIIINSED, GIVE YOURSELVES A BIG HAND. 

Edited May 4 by JLM

[Snitsky's back acne]

36 minutes ago, Joe Blog said:

I wonder if they are gearing towards

Rock, Solo, Tama, Tanga vs Reigns, Usos’ and Fatu at this point. Keeps the Bloodline self contained to some extent.
 

I was thinking this. Roman can do the whole 'I love Tama and Tanga but they're not blood' thing. Have Rikishi make an appearance to talk Jey into forgiving Jimmy.... There's all sorts they could do. 

[air_raid]

Just now, Snitsky's back acne said:

Have Rikishi make an appearance to talk Jey into forgiving Jimmy.... There's all sorts they could do. 

He’ll need Jimmy to forgive him first.

[Kfogg1991]

Well I am fucking more than happy to throw my hands up and admit I was wrong about this card. It turned out to be a very very strong show with just one that I didn't enjoy or have the stand out showing that the rest of the show had.

 

Very very happy I watched it live and they proved they can go in and really put on a fantastic match instead of being raped of time and only getting five minutes or whatever.

[Supremo]

Is it even a modern pro-wrestling pay per view if the hard work of everyone involved isn’t instantly undermined by a dickhead promoter at a press conference, completely mishandling the topic of sexual misconduct?

He’s terrible at this stuff. He had to have known someone would ask and that’s the best he could come up with. Must have forgotten his Serious Spectacles.

Edited May 4 by Supremo

[SuperBacon]

30 minutes ago, Kfogg1991 said:

Very very happy I watched it live and they proved they can go in and really put on a fantastic match instead of being raped of time and only getting five minutes or whatever.

Pack it in with this word.

[DavidB6937]

I enjoyed it. Not one I'll watch again or think about much after the fact but I just love wrestling with an enthusiastic crowd. Always a million times better.

[Dr. Alan Grant]

If any of this Bloodline stuff leads to Haku coming in and popping out somebody’s eyeballs, it’ll all be worth it.

[Daaaaaad!]

49 minutes ago, Supremo said:

He had to have known someone would ask and that’s the best he could come up with.

Hilariously, he actually brought this on himself as Byron had already given them the last question. But Jéan-Paul Levesque had to go and show off in front of his French exchange family didn't he? So he pulled the billy big bollocks and said they had time for one more, only to be dealt an actual question rather than a softball one about them having the momentum of a runaway freight train. The Demon Headmaster rimless specs had already come off, so he was comically unprepared.

Great show for what it was; a B-show elevated hugely by a hot crowd as anticipated. 'Il es vraiment phenomenal' has been running around my head since the main event began. Really amusing stuff. It'd be like them having the Clash at the Castle main event be Cody Rhodes vs. Darren Agadoo.

The women's tag match though, what the fuck went on there? I was watching with a couple mates and we saw all sorts of stuff start to go on. I wondered aloud if this was only falling apart because we had an idea of what to look for and whether it would be noticeable to a less nitpicky audience. What is very clear, though, is that there really is a good reason Jade is in a tag team with Bianca instead of going straight to singles. I wonder if in hindsight they wish they hadn't had her first title match be with a still relatively green Belair against two women for whom English is not a first language. There was one point where I'd swear she simply laid down to allow a pin.

[TheScarlettChad]

1 hour ago, Kfogg1991 said:

Well I am fucking more than happy to throw my hands up and admit I was wrong about this card. It turned out to be a very very strong show with just one that I didn't enjoy or have the stand out showing that the rest of the show had.

 

Very very happy I watched it live and they proved they can go in and really put on a fantastic match instead of being raped of time and only getting five minutes or whatever.

You sure love the word Fuck.

 

[SpiritOfTheForest]

The dullest of all observations here as I'm someone who doesn't watch any more but my interest was piqued from both the sensible start time and the enthusiasm I saw online about the crowd - so I gave it a watch on the old dodgy box and the press conference followed immediately after the show.

Anyway dull observation: I had no idea Paul Levesque was pronounced like "Lev-eck". For the last almost 20 years I've read it as "Lev-es-kay"!

[JLM]

50 minutes ago, Daaaaaad! said:

 

The women's tag match though, what the fuck went on there? I was watching with a couple mates and we saw all sorts of stuff start to go on. I wondered aloud if this was only falling apart because we had an idea of what to look for and whether it would be noticeable to a less nitpicky audience. What is very clear, though, is that there really is a good reason Jade is in a tag team with Bianca instead of going straight to singles. I wonder if in hindsight they wish they hadn't had her first title match be with a still relatively green Belair against two women for whom English is not a first language. There was one point where I'd swear she simply laid down to allow a pin.

Asuka tagged herself in and they did that sequence where both of them hit Jade with a bunch of  strikes. Kairi then clearly forgot she wasn't legal. She took Jade down and tried to pin her. Ref told her she wasn't legal. Kairi then inexplicably went to put on a cross arm breaker, then sort of gave up on that and the referee gave up on telling her she wasn't legal. Then they bundled their way over to the Kabuki Warriors corner, where Asuka tagged herself in AGAIN. Then she bundled Jade over to the ropes a second time, where Kairi blind tagged herself in to get back to the order they wanted. I think. 

Jade chokeslamed Kairi, which she had already just done in the previous sequence. Graves even said "deja vu" on commentary. I think maybe at this point they realised they'd already done the chokeslam near fall and were meant to be doing the cross arm breaker spot Kairi had fucked up earlier by not being legal. So she sort of fumbled at Jade's ankle immediately after being chokeslammed and Jade hit the deck. Then they did the double arm breaker spot. 

There were other moments in the match where Jade really blatantly stopped dead and wasn't sure what to do next, but that was the major breakdown and I think it's probably more on Kairi than Jade. I'm also surprised Asuka just stood there like a lemon while Kairi lost the plot. Jade is clearly not ready to freestyle when everything goes tits up, but Asuka  is an experienced WWE pro at this point and I'd have thought she'd be able to steer things back on track. 

But yeah, as you say, putting two relatively green talents (easy to forget that with Belair because she's so good for her experience level) against two non-English speakers and having them do a 17 minute match was a bold choice. 

 

 

Edited May 4 by JLM

[air_raid]

I haven’t seen it, but are you guys quite sure it wasn’t “seulement deux” which would mean “only two”? Makes a hell of a lot more sense in context.

6 hours ago, SpiritOfTheForest said:

Anyway dull observation: I had no idea Paul Levesque was pronounced like "Lev-eck". For the last almost 20 years I've read it as "Lev-es-kay"!

That’s pretty odd. If the S wasn’t silent, l’d still assume the ending was pronounced the same as in pique, boutique or Baroque.

Although if the S is silent it at least explains why I once saw his ring name misprinted as “Jean-Paul Leveque” in an Apter mag. The reporter spellled what they’d heard the ring announcer say.