Book Review: Elantris

I didn't mind this book, but it did remind me of other, better books - particularly The Sacrifice by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The ending is extremely unsatisfying and was very obvious from early on. There was really no other way it could have gone. I read in the hope that I was wrong; that there was some twist coming. But there wasn't. There were bits and pieces I liked a lot, but because of the looming climax they never felt significant. Nothing did, really. All the struggles and conflicts are rather pointless, and although the characters don't realise that, we know it for a fact.

Returning to games

Today I played a bit more of some games I've already tried. Most of them I tried so long ago I've completely forgotten them, but I have tried them before (and there's probably a good reason I never went back to them).

Shadow of Mordor

Played another half hour or so and found myself in what appears to be a mandatory stealth section. And that might be about it for this game. I'll give it one more go and see if I can get past it another time, but alongside the repetitiveness of the gameplay so far; the utterly uninteresting plot; the weird controls; and the fact (which I failed to mention previously) that the whole map is hostile all the time so you can't just casually wander around grabbing collectables, I don't think I'm going to make it much further into this game.

In no particular order: games

I was going to try out Horizon Zero Dawn but it turned out I hadn't downloaded it. So while I was checking if I had enough disk space and if there was anything I should delete, I discovered that a good chunk of space was being taken up by Shadow of Mordor. I'd played a little bit of that, about half an hour or so, a while back, but never gotten back to it. So I played that instead. Then I tried out a few other games I hadn't gotten around to yet.

Also in this post, a review for Seen that I wrote a while ago but was holding onto for another one of these multi-game posts.

IMPACT Throwback Throwdown

Overall Rating: ★★★●★☆☆

Well, this was extremely silly, but quite entertaining. A bit slow in places, and a little too long, but over all pretty good.

ROH Final Battle

Overall rating: ★★★●★☆☆

I wouldn't normally have bothered watching Hour One but, since this was potentially the last Ring of Honor PPV ever, I decided to make an exception. Probably shouldn't have bothered. It wasn't bad, but the main show was already long enough and there was nothing amazing on Hour One. As for the main show, there were a couple of really good matches to start and the tag championship was amazing, but for a grand finale it was a little lacking.

NXT WarGames

Overall rating: ★★★●★☆☆

The big question here was: can this new version of NXT still deliver when it comes to TakeOvers? And the answer is... not really. The show was fine. But by TakeOver standards? It sucked.

WWE Survivor Series

Overall rating: ★★★○☆☆☆

This pay-per-view and the "draft" that preceded it make absolutely no sense. When they were picking people for each show, who was supposed to have been doing that? There are no general managers, just Adam Pearce and Sonya Deville jointly running both shows. The shows don't have identities. It's all just WWE. When the wrestlers were getting drafted they were all acting super happy about whichever show they got picked for, but why? What does being on one show or the other even mean? In real life I guess it affects their work schedule and who they get to see regularly, but that clearly wasn't part of the story. And now the two shows are competing against each other, but what does it mean to win or lose here? As far as I can tell, nothing. It means nothing. It's worth nothing. There is nothing at stake and no consequences. The whole concept was completely mishandled.

IMPACT Turning Point

Overall Rating: ★★★●★☆☆

I've given this show an extra point because of the bit where Jonah showed up. It was cool and I like him. And honestly, skipping two of the matches made the show a better length. X Division delivers, as usual, and the Iinspiration are still the best, but the main event was a real slog. 

ROH Honor For All

Overall rating: ★★★●☆☆☆

The show started well, but the second half was a real letdown. Disappointing matches and confusing storytelling. 

AEW Full Gear

Overall rating: ★★★●☆☆☆

There were a couple of high points, but this was a long, long, mostly boring show. There's so much potential in AEW and so often they waste it. It's hugely disappointing. They do some stuff right, but inconsistently. I just want it to be so much better than it is!

The Vaccinator

The Vaccinator by Michael Marshall Smith After a chequered and violent career, Eddie Kruger now lives in the Florida Keys. It’s a nice, quiet, peaceful life. Apart from the kidnappings. And the aliens.

IMPACT Bound For Glory

Overall Rating: ★★★●★★☆

I was really looking forward to seeing the Iinspiration, and I'm glad they were right at the start so I could enjoy that and not be distracted waiting for it. Because the rest of the show was also very good. Especially the X-Division championship, but really almost the entire show. A couple of low points, but honestly nothing terrible. I definitely recommend watching this one.

WWE Crown Jewel

 Skipped.

IMPACT! Knockouts Knockdown

Overall Rating: ★★★●★☆☆

I had been looking forward to this one, but it ended up being a bit boring. I'm not a big fan of the one-night tournament format. It feels lazy, from a planning/writing perspective, and doesn't allow for people to go as hard as they can if they're only wrestling one match. I'd much rather see a battle royale of some kind. Especially if you're going to have a bunch of "outsiders" involved who no one really believes can win it.

WWE Extreme Rules

 Overall rating: ★★★●★☆☆

This show seemed to exist only to kill some time. Basically nothing happened. It didn't even live up to its name. It got all the way to the main event before I realised "wait a minute; isn't this supposed to be Extreme Rules?" The only no-DQ match before that was the triple threat, and it was just a normal triple threat. No one used weapons or anything. I wasn't expecting AEW-style barbed wire and blood, but I expected something.

iMPACT! Victory Road

Overall rating: ★★★●☆☆☆

On the one hand, I want to give this show more credit because I wasn't really in the mood for it, so that certainly brought the score down. But on the other hand, how much credit do they deserve when they insist on trying to make me watch guys who were fired from WWE for assaulting their girlfriends and general arseholery? Do you know how many professional wrestlers there are in America who haven't been arrested for domestic violence? Hire some of them instead.

ROH Death Before Dishonor

Overall rating: ★★★●★☆☆

A couple of pretty good matches and nothing that wasn't worth watching if you have the time - except maybe the Pure Championship, but that one might be worth watching just for how unusual it was. But nothing that I'd say to go out of your way for either.

AEW All Out

Overall rating: ★★★●☆☆☆

Obviously the big news from this show were the three additions to the cast (remember when they said there were maybe ten people at most at WWE they'd want to hire if they became available? How many are we up to now?) but I find them rather a mixed bag. I like all three, but... one's a woman so there's not much chance she'll get a better shot here than she got at WWE; one's someone that I know a lot of people love but I guess I got back into wrestling a little bit late to really get on board when that hype train left the station; and one's absolutely fantastic, but I'm a little concerned about the way he'll be used and whether he'll really get the opportunity to shine that he had before. So I'm cautious at this stage. I'd like them to do well, but I often find myself wishing that AEW was better than it is.

NWA 73

Overall rating: ★★★○☆☆☆

They promoted this on iMPACT! so this was their opportunity to bring in new viewers, right? They convinced us to watch this show (along with EmPowerrr) so it should have been designed as a good introduction. But it wasn't. They (mostly) didn't bother explaining who anyone was or what was going on in the story, so it was basically just a bunch of generic matches between people I've never heard of for reasons I wasn't aware of. The crowd really seemed to enjoy hearing Ric Flair mumble-shout about his career, but I could have done without it. They really, really wanted me to care about shit that happened decades ago and I just don't. They set some stuff up for later shows that I won't watch. If this was their best attempt to draw me in, they failed.

NWA EmPowerrr

Overall Rating: ★★★★★☆☆

It was weird how many AEW wrestlers were on this show, given that there wasn't even any cross-promotion involved. It made NWA look like they couldn't put on a show of their own. They did do some cross-promotion with iMPACT!, but the iMPACT! wrestlers were mostly just in the Invitational Cup, so that makes all the AEW wrestlers in regular matches seem even weirder. The commentary wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad as Pat McAfee. Over all, it was mostly fine, if a little slow, with some high points.

NXT TakeOver 36

 Overall rating: ★★★★★★☆

The million dollar championship was all right as a warmup, and there were a couple of all-time great matches, but unfortunately the main event was a bit of a letdown. If it had ended with the women's championship instead of the men's (or the UK men's championship - although that would be a weird choice since it's another show's belt), it would have left a much better impression. Still absolutely worth watching, just temper your expectations for Kross vs. Joe.

ROH Glory by Honor Night 2

Overall rating: ★★★★★☆☆

This was better than night one, but still a lot of filler. And the main event cage match was just a bit too much, and a bit confusing at times with all the people who ran in to interfere. I feel like I've seen way too many people, recently, do the thing where they get some supposedly sharp implement and very deliberately cut their opponent's forehead and it always looks real weird and unnatural. Stop doing that.

WWE SummerSlam

Overall rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆

Some terrible writing, boring matches, and bad results. Nothing worth seeing on the entire show. A dismal failure.

iMPACT! Emergence

• Singles (Matt Cardona vs. Rohit Raju): 4/7. You know what? I don't think I care about Matt Cardona. I don't know why I'm supposed to like him or what his deal is. He had that sort of half-arsed feud with Brian Myers that dragged on and fizzled out, and now he's got Chelsea Green with him, but I don't what that does for either of them, story-wise.
• Intergender Tag (Tasha Steelz, Savannah Evans, Fallah Bahh & No Way vs. Decay): 5/7. I don't like 4-on-4 matches and I don't like ad-hoc tag teams, but I do like Decay a lot, and there were some cool moments.
• Singles (Steve Maclin vs. Petey Williams): 4/7. I don't know who either of these guys are. They're vaguely familiar, but that's it.
• Singles (Taylor Wilde vs. Madison Raine): 5/7. Tenille Dashwood and Kaleb with a K are always good entertainment and their new alliance with Raine is going well.
• #1 Contender Four-Way (Moose vs. Ace Austin vs. Sami Callihan vs. Chris Sabin): 6/7. Moose and Austin are always entertaining.
• X-Division Championship (Jake Something vs. Josh Alexander): 6/7. Two big beefy boys hurling themselves and each other about the room. Nice. I've been wondering though: what is the "X division"?
• Intergender Tag (Deonna Purrazzo & Matthew Rehwoldt vs. Trey Miguel & Melina): 6/7. Purrazzo and Rehwoldt are very good and they work very well as a tag team.
• Men's Tag Championship (Good Brothers vs. Violent By Design vs. Rich Swann & Willie Mack): 2/7. I don't like tag team triple threats. I don't like Rich Swann. I don't like Rhyno as a heel, and I don't like VBD as a faction; they just come across as all talk, even when they're winning. I'm sick of the Good Brothers and the current direction of the entire Elite faction.
• World Championship (Brian Myers vs. Christian Cage): 4/7. I Find Brian Myers confusing. I can't tell if he's supposed to be (annoyingly) as good as he thinks he is, or if he's supposed to be a delusional narcissist. I feel like he's stuck somewhere in between.

Overall rating: 5/7. There were definitely some good matches and moments, but also some stuff that I didn't care for or could have skipped. And unfortunately, the last two matches (which ideally you'd like to be the best part of the show) were some I'd have been just as happy not to see. Especially that tag championship. I almost did skip that one. But I am very glad to see Matthew Rehwoldt doing well. I always liked him in WWE.

ROH Glory by Honor Night 1

• Singles (Silas Young vs. Rey Horus): 4/7. I don't understand the point of having these regular, one-on-one, no special rules matches for no stakes on big shows like this. Just do it on the weekly TV show.
• Six-Man Mayhem (Demonic Flamita vs. Eli Isom vs. Dak Draper vs. PJ Black vs. Mike Bennett vs. Danhausen): 4/7. I really wish they'd explained the rules of this match because I didn't know what was going on. Two people are legal at a time, but there's no teams and no tags, you can just come in any time there aren't two competitors in the ring, and whoever gets in first becomes legal. That much I figured out fairly quickly, but I didn't know if it was first-fall or elimination. And that's pretty important to establishing stakes. As it went on I figured out it was first-fall, but why not just say that at the start? This is not a common match type. Anyway, the rules are weird and I don't think this match type works well at all. But Dalton Castle was very good on commentary, and Danhausen is very fun.
• Tag Team (The Allüre vs. Vita Vonstarr & Max the Impaler): 4/7. Max the Impaler is very cool but this was just another regular match for no stakes.
• Singles (Brian Johnson vs. EC3): 4/7. If they didn't have enough interesting matches for a two-night event, maybe they should have just done one night.
• Singles (Bateman vs. Mark Briscoe): 4/7. This was supposed to be a tag team match, which would have been a little more interesting since the Briscoes are a good team, but Jay Briscoe got covid so it was another disappointing match. Actually, I'm pretty frequently disappointed by Bateman; I keep waiting for him to be as cool as he looks like he should be and he's just not.
• Pure Championship (Rhett Titus vs. Jonathan Gresham): 5/7. Finally something interesting. These two are both members of The Foundation, so that automatically changes the dynamic, and Pure Rules is a neat twist on a standard match. Not as cool as Heritage Rules from NXT UK, but still neat. And the championship on the line, so there are actual stakes! Still, not a particularly great match.
• 8-Person Tag (VLNCE UNLTD vs. La Faccion Ingobernable): 4/7. A lot of faffing about and time-wasting at the start of this one, and too many people in the match. Even the commentators seemed genuinely confused about what was happening at times.
• World Championship (Flip Gordon vs. Bandido): 5/7. I expected this to be a lot faster and more spectacular, tbh. It was ok, but not really main-event worthy, you know?

Overall rating: 4/7. An extremely long and unremarkable show. Nothing terrible, but nothing great either. And there's still another night to go.

iMPACT! Homecoming

• Homecoming Tournament Round 1 (Hernandez & Alisha vs. Deonna Purrazzo & Matthew Rehwoldt): 5/7. Nice to see Rehwoldt (formerly Aiden English) again, and the match was decent. Seemed like they were probably holding back though, because they still have to wrestle again later.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 1 (Thicc Mama Pump & Little Petey Pump vs. Matt Cardona & Chelsea Green): 6/7. I got a laugh out of Jordynne and Petey's Scott Steiner gimmick, and the bit when they had to help each other to lift Cardona was good too. Plenty of really good, fun tag teaming throughout.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 1 (Tommy Dreamer & Rachael Ellering vs. Brian Myers & Missy Hyatt): 4/7. The joke was ok, but it dragged on a bit.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 1 (Decay vs. Fallah N Flava): 4/7. Why would Fallah agree to be in an intergender match if he's not willing to fight a woman? That's just dumb.
• Singles (Willie Mack vs. Deaner): 4/7. To be honest, I wasn't really paying attention to this one. I don't care about these guys and I was just waiting for the next round of the Homecoming Tournament.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 2 (Deonna Purrazzo & Matthew Rehwoldt vs. Matt Cardona & Chelsea Green): 5/7. Felt like a bit of forced gender segregation in this one, but it was quite good regardless.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 2 (Decay vs. Tommy Dreamer & Rachael Ellering): 5/7. The bit where they were all biting each other was hilarious. Otherwise it mostly felt like filler.
• X Division Championship (Josh Alexander vs. Black Taurus): 5/7. This probably deserved a higher rating but I just wasn't really here for it. I just want more Homecoming matches.
• Homecoming Tournament Final (Deonna Purrazzo & Matthew Rehwoldt vs. Decay): 5/7. The best part of this tournament was the comedy bits and this match was a little lacking in those. It was a decent match though.
• Hardcore (W Morrissey vs. Eddie Edwards): 2/7. Didn't really pay any attention to this one but I left it on in case anything cool happened. It didn't.

Overall Rating: 5/7. I've got to compare Homecoming to WWE's Mixed Match Challenge and it comes up short. Of course, MMC was a whole series and not just a single event, so there was more time to establish the teams and do more with it, but even as far as the matches went I feel like this was something of a missed opportunity. There were definitely some fun bits and some good wrestling, but it could have been much better than it was.

WWE Money in the Bank

• Women's Money in the Bank Ladder Match (Alexa Bliss vs. Liv Morgan vs. Nikki ASH vs. Natalya vs. Tamina vs. Zelina Vega vs. Naomi vs. Asuka): 4/7. Some cool moments but ladder matches are still dumb. Especially after having watched the Ultimate X match on Slammiversary, which is the same concept but done much better. And Pat McAfee is still terrible on commentary.
• Raw Tag Team Championship (The Viking Raiders vs. AJ Styles & Omos): 4/7. Styles and Omos doesn't make sense to me. Styles doesn't need a big guy to do his fighting for him. He's not MJF. He'll cheat to win, sure, but he's not a coward who can't fight his own battles. And, like so many others, the Viking Raiders lost something essential when they transferred from NXT. This match was definitely less than the sum of its parts.
• WWE Championship (Kofi Kingston vs. Bobby Lashley): 1/7. I don't even know what the point of this was.
• Raw Championship (Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair): 5/7. Maybe my expectations were too high for this. I dunno, I felt it was lacking something. And I didn't like the ending.
• Men's Money in the Bank Ladder Match (Kevin Owens vs. Riddle vs. Nakamura Shinsuke vs. Ricochet vs. John Morrison vs. Big E vs. Seth Rollins vs. Drew MacIntyre): 4/7. I liked Rick Boogs when he was Eric Bugenhagen. I do not like Rick Boogs as Nakamura's sidekick. And Riddle can fuck right off. I did enjoy the Morrison/Rollins team-up though; it's the sort of thing I wish would happen more in these multi-competitor matches.
• Universal Championship (Edge vs. Roman Reigns): 2/7. This is bor-ing.👏 👏 👏👏👏 

Overall rating: 3/7. I've got to give Money in the Bank some credit for actually having a meaningful gimmick rather than just being a longer version of a normal show or being centred around a cage or no-DQ match with a dumb name, and the MitB contract is a great tool for future story-telling; unfortunately I just don't like ladder matches. Also, it was weird that neither of the MitB ladder matches was the main event. It's supposedly the whole point of the show.

iMPACT! Slammiversary 2021

• Ultimate X X Division Championship (Trey Miguel vs. Ace Austin vs. Petey Williams vs. Rohit Raju vs. Chris Bey vs. Josh Alexander): 7/7. Basically Money in the Bank but with scaffolds and ropes instead of ladders, and for the championship. It's a fun gimmick. Getting rid of the ladders is a good for a change because, well, if you've read my previous reviews you know how I feel about ladders in wrestling. The match itself? A lot of fun moments and some good wrestling. Exactly what you want from this kind of special event.
• Mixed Tag (Bryan Myers & Tenille Dashwood vs. Matt Cardona & Chelsea Green): 6/7. This match was announced as Cardona teaming with a mystery partner. If I'd known he was engaged to Chelsea Green that would probably have been a pretty big hint, but I was curious to see who it was going to be, and the answer was underwhelming. I know Green from NXT, where she was part of the Robert Stone Brand, but I don't really recall anything about her herself. Mixed tag is always fun, even if the gender segregation is dumb and unnecessary, but the finish raised an odd point; apparently a low blow is only a disqualification if it's done to a man? Weird rule.
• Singles (W Morrissey vs. Eddie Edwards): 1/7. Skipped.
• Tag Team (Shera and Madman Fulton vs. FinJuice): 2/7. Pointless, but short.
• Singles (Moose vs. Chris Sabin): 4/7. This match, along with the previous two, could have been scrapped in favour of the Knockouts Tag Team Championship, which was on the pre-show for some reason.
• Four Way Tag Team Championship (Violent By Design vs. Rich Swann & Willie Mack vs. No Way & Fallah Bahh vs. The Good Brothers): 4/7. No Way (Jose) seemed like he was supposed to be a surprise, but one of the commentators kind of spoiled it on the previous episode, so that was weird. Also, he's got the exact same gimmick from WWE, including the conga line, which I didn't get the impression was ever particularly popular or successful, and now just seems like he's got no other ideas.
• Knockouts Championship (Deonna Purrazzo vs. Thunder Rosa): 4/7. Thunder Rosa was another mystery competitor, and this one was actually a surprise - and a welcome one. I like Thunder Rosa and I feel like she was mostly wasted on AEW. That said, the match was just ok.
• No Disqualification Impact World Championship (Kenny Omega vs. Sami Callihan): 5/7. There were some good bits, but it was too long and just too much. The blood was badly done and unnecessary, and the sheer number of different weapons they brought in felt like they were running through a checklist.

Overall Rating: 4/7. This show seemed to be more about revealing new and returning characters than anything else. On top of Chelsea Green, David Finlay, Juice Robinson, No Way and Thunder Rosa, we also had Mickie James and Switchblade Jay White show up between matches. I don't know why you'd want all of those reveals on one show; it's just distracting and waters down the impact each of them can have. And it's a real shame that the best match of the show was also the first match of the show, and that the Knockouts Tag Team Championship changed hands on the pre-show.

My Day on a Plate

2.30pm Tea.

4.30pm Sandwich: ham; cheese; red onion; apple; Wasabi-flavoured mayonnaise, and tea.

5.30pm Sandwich: ham; tomato; mayonnaise.

6pm Sandwich: ham; tomato; mayonnaise.

7pm Chia seeds and psyllium husks in a glass of water.

9pm Sandwich: ham; cheese; sweet mustard pickles.

1am Tea.

2am Salad: kale; cabbage; carrot; broccoli stems; balsamic vinegar; sesame oil; salt.

4am Sandwich: crumbed hoki fillets; mayonnaise.

Mork and the Farmer

The following story (384 words) takes place in the setting of a pen-and-paper roleplaying game I'm currently playing, a world of sword and sorcery at the beginning of an industrial revolution.

ROH Best in the World

• Tag Team (PJ Black & Brian Johnson vs. the Briscoes): 5/7. It was fine. I like the Briscoes.
• Singles (Flip Gordon vs. EC3): 4/7. Slow.
• Six-Man Championship (Dak Draper, Dalton Castle & Eli Isom vs. Shane Taylor Promotions): 6/7. Not really sure what's going on story-wise, here, but I think that's intentional. Dalton Castle sabotaging his own team for reasons that are not yet evident. Lot of cool wrestling though.
• Last One Standing (Josh Woods vs. Silas Young): 4/7. Last One Standing matches can be really cool, but usually they're just long and slow.
• Singles (Jay Lethal vs. Brody King): 6/7. This is the one that should have been a Last One Standing match.
• Pure Championship (Mike Bennett vs. Jonathan Gresham): 6/7. Pure Rules is really cool. You can have a slow match that's still really engaging and builds intensity as it goes.
• Television Championship (Dragon Lee vs. Tony Deppen): 5/7. Possibly should have been rated higher but felt like a step down after the last one.
• Tag Team Championship Fight Without Honor (Violence Unlimited vs. The Foundation): 6/7. "Give up or I'll stab you with this fork" is a novel way to take advantage of a No-DQ match.
• World Championship (Rush vs. Bandido): 7/7. Extremely impressive. 

Overall rating: 5/7. Some of it was very good, but it was very long. It didn't need to be so long.

Life: it's better than the alternative

But is it though? How can we know. It's not just comparing apples to oranges, it's comparing apples to unicorns.

WWE Hell in a Cell

• Smackdown Championship Hell in a Cell (Bianca Belair vs. Bayley): 4/7. When Bayley said "Ref, I'm done." why was that not a submission victory for Belair? Bayley's fantastic, but this felt like a boring rehash of something I've already seen.
• Singles (Seth Rollins vs. Cesaro): 4/7. This is still going on? Who even is Seth Rollins any more? He seems to have lost his cult, but he's still basically being that same character? Why is he fixated on Cesaro?
• Singles (Alexa Bliss vs. Shayna Baszler): 7/7. Alexa Bliss has mind control powers now.
• Singles (Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens): 4/7. Kinda hard to care about... whatever Sami's complaining about now and whatever Kevin's deal is here, when I just found out Alexa Bliss has mind control powers.
• Raw Championship (Charlotte Flair \vs. Rhea Ripley): 3/7. I wanted to see the big strong girls smashing into each other - big hits and throwing each other around - but they didn't really go for that. And Charlotte was using kind of sneaky and underhanded tactics, which seemed unnecessary. Overall unsatisfying.
• WWE Championship Hell in a Cell (Bobby Lashley vs. Drew McIntyre): 2/7. Again? Why? Still don't care about Bob Lashley (or MVP) and I'm kind of sick of Drew McIntyre as well.

Overall rating: 4/7. The thing about Hell in a Cell is, what's the point of it? It doesn't add any special rules or win conditions like a cage match, it's just a no-DQ match with limited potential because you can't get out into the rest of the building or bring in any non-standard weapons. It's supposed to be more extreme, but it's not. Scrap this dumb gimmick.

Cruel Summer

The unconventional drama takes place over three summers in the 90s when a beautiful and popular teen goes missing, and a seemingly unrelated girl transforms from a sweet and awkward outlier to the most popular girl in town, eventually becoming the most despised person in America. Each episode is told from alternating POVs.

pogdesign.co.uk

I watched this as it aired but I didn't want to recommend it until it finished because I felt like the ending could really make or break it. And now that it's over? I am going to recommend it. But there is one little thing that I really wish they'd changed. So first I'm going to talk about the show spoiler-free, and then there'll be a gap so that if you want to watch it without spoilers you can stop there. And then I'll talk about that one thing.

WWE NXT TakeOver in Your House

• North American and NXT Tag Team Championships (MSK & Bronson Reed vs. Legado del Fantasma): 7/7. Excellent tag teaming, cool moves, great finish. Just an all round fantastic match.
• Singles (Mercedes Martinez vs. Xia Li): 5/7. Some good moments but a bit underwhelming overall. Looks like this story is still building though. And I'm still waiting to see if Mei Ying has any kind of supernatural powers.
• Million Dollar Championship Ladder Match (LA Knight vs. Cameron Grimes): 5/7. Some good bits, but it's just so frustrating watching them pretend they can't climb a ladder. For one moment I thought Grimes was going to get the belt by climbing the scaffold instead of a ladder and if he'd done that it would have redeemed the whole thing, but he didn't.
• NXT Women's Championship (Ember Moon vs. Raquel Gonzales): 6/7. Solid match. Some shenanigans from Dakota Kai, but not too much, and obviously this faction feud has more room to continue.
• NXT Championship Fatal Five-way (Johnny Gargano vs. Kyle O'Reilly vs. Pete Dunn vs. Adam Cole vs. Karrion Kross): 6/7. Started slow but had some great combos and an excellent finish.

Overall Rating: 6/7. No real surprises but every match was entertaining and I'm interested in most of the stories going on. Note: I will never care about Cameron Grimes.

iMPACT! Against All Odds

• Tag Team Street Fight (The Good Brothers vs. Tommy Dreamer and Sami Callihan): 4/7. Not enough build-up in either the story or the show. Even if I'd cared about this match, which I didn't because I don't know why it was happening, it should have been later in the show.
• Singles (Joe Doering vs. Kojima Satoshi): 5/7. I think the main draw for this match is just seeing Kojima, but I don't know who he is so that's not doing it for me. It was an ok match though?
• X-Divison #1 Contenders Match (Petey Williams vs. Trey Miguel vs. Ace Austin vs. Chris Bey vs. Rohit Raju): 6/7. I wasn't too impressed with this match (although it did have a few cool moments) until the ending. Which was fantastic. Bumped it up a whole point.
• Singles (Rich Swann vs W Morrissey): 1/7. Skipped.
• Singles (Tenille Dashwood vs. Jordynne Grace): 4/7. I like Tenille but I'm not really sure what's going on with Jordynne and Rachael Ellering at the moment.
• Knockouts Tag Team Championship (Fire N Flava vs. Kimber Lee & Susan): 4/7. A bit slow.
• Men's Tag Team Championship (Decay vs. Violent By Design): 5/7. Some cool bits.
• Knockouts Championship (Deonna Purrazzo vs. Rosemary): 5/7. Solid.
• Men's Championship (Moose vs. Kenny Omega): 5/7. Another slow one, and no surprises.

Overall Rating: 4/7. Felt like everything was basically just in a holding pattern. Nothing really happened.

Consolidated Steam Reviews

The latest of these is already two years old since I mostly just review games on my blog now, and the oldest is from over ten years ago, so these are not fresh takes. I might not even agree with all of them any more. I'm just putting them here for completeness.

9 BC (games)

Nothing particularly outstanding in this batch. Some I might come back to, some I definitely won't. Some I like in theory and some that are just not for me.

KBAM Games #-A

I'd played some of these before but couldn't remember anything about them. Most of them I didn't even recall once I started playing. Most of them I won't bother playing again.

Controller-Enabled Games T-Z

Is this the last of them? No, just the last of the ones with full controller support so I didn't have to bother switching the HDMI cable from the TV to the monitor - which honestly shouldn't be the hurdle it is, but is frequently more effort than I can be bothered putting in.

And technically I have actually played some of these before, but I couldn't remember anything about them so I gave them another shot. Probably shouldn't have bothered.

AEW Double or Nothing 2021

• Singles (Brian Cage vs. Adam Page): 4/7. These two are both good, and I guess it's building the Team Taz story, but it wasn't clear what the point of the actual match was supposed to be.
• AEW Tag Team Championship (Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston vs. The Young Bucks): 4/7. Both teams are good, but the match didn't really interest me because it was pretty clear which way it was going to go.
• Casino Battle Royale (21 competitors): 6/7. I always love a battle royale. This wasn't the best one, but it wasn't bad.
• Singles (Anthony Ogogo vs. Cody Rhodes): 4/7. The framing where the American is automatically the good guy just doesn't work for me (or, I suspect, for most people outside of America) and so the story they're trying to tell is in conflict with the reality that Anthony's been making some very good points and Cody's been... bad. The match was ok though, and I must admit I did like Cody's outfit.
• TNT Championship (Miro vs. Lance Archer): 6/7. Took a bit for me to get into it, but once I did I was 100% on board.
• AEW Women's Championship (Shida Hikaru vs. Dr. Britt Baker): 5/7. Had a few good moments, but everyone knew how this was going to end and it took a bit long to get there.
• Tag Team (Sting & Darby Allin vs. Scorpio Sky & Ethan Page): 2/7. Why do they keep saying this is Sting's first match in six years? He was in the stupid street fight at Revolution. I bumped this up a point because Page held Allin over his head and threw him, like, two metres. It was pretty awesome. But I could not give less of a shit about Sting or Darby Allin.
• AEW Men's Championship Triple Threat (Pac vs. Orange Cassidy vs. Kenny Omega): 6/7. Almost great, but this Kenny/Bucks/Good Brothers team just doesn't work for me.
• Stadium Stampede (The Pinnacle vs. The Inner Circle): 6/7. Some very good pieces that didn't really mesh at all. You could probably fix it with editing and get a 7/7.

Overall Rating: 5/7. Nothing was quite as good as it should have been, and some things could easily have been cut. Like the two non-championship singles matches - they weren't bad, they just didn't need to be there. They could have been on Dynamite.

WWE WrestleMania Backlash

• Raw Championship Triple Threat (Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka vs. Rhea Ripley): 5/7. Had its moments, but I really would have preferred to see any two of them in a singles match. There was one really good bit where just Ripley and Flair were in the ring and it was like, that, that's the match I want to see. And then Asuka was back and... meh.
• Smackdown Tag Team Championship (Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode vs. Rey Mysterio): 3/7. It was all a bit obvious.
• Zombie Lumberjack Match (The Miz vs. Damien Priest): 5/7. Fun concept. Not sure it quite worked, although the bit where Miz and Priest were both fighting the zombies was good. It would be really cool if, next time we see them, Miz and Morrison are zombies. But I doubt they will be.
• Smackdown Championship (Bayley vs. Bianca Belair): 6/7. Bayley is great.
• WWE Championship Triple Threat (Drew McIntyre vs. Braun Strowman vs. Bobby Lashley): 5/7. I wish it had just been McIntyre vs. Strowman.
• Universal Championship (Cesaro vs. Roman Reigns): 7/7. Cesaro is great. Pat McAfee's commentary was distractingly bad, but in the end it didn't matter.

Overall Rating: 5/7. No real low points. The Smackdown Tag championship wasn't great, but it was fine. I do wish they'd cut back on the number of triple threats, but they were fine.

iMPACT! Under Siege

• Singles (Brian Myers vs. Black Taurus): 4/7. I don't remember why these two are fighting. It was ok.
• Tag Team (Kimber Lee & Susan vs. Taylor Wilde & Tenille Dashwood): 5/7. I don't know where this story is going, but the match was surprisingly straight-forward and good.
• Men's Tag Championship #1 Contenders (Ace Austen & Madman Fulton vs. TJP & Petey Williams vs. XXXL vs. Rohit Raju & Shera): 4/7. Too many people involved, and the stupid "only two wrestlers legal at a time" rule is still bad.
• Singles (W. Morrissey vs. Willie Mack): 2/7. Don't like Morrissey; don't like his gimmick.
• Knockouts Tag Championship (Jordynne Grace & Rachael Ellering vs. Fire N Flava): 5/7. Weird ending. I like Rachael Ellering though.
• X Division Championship (Josh Alexander vs. El Phantasmo): 5/7. I like El Phantasmo.
• Knockouts Championship (Deonna Purrazzo vs. Havok): 5/7. A bit slow, but not bad.
• Six-Person Tag (Kenny Omega & the Good Brothers vs. Eddie Edwards & FinJuice): 5/7. I would rather have watched just the Good Brothers vs. FinJuice again.
• Impact Championship #1 Contender (Chris Sabin vs. Chris Bey vs. Sami Callihan vs. Matt Cardona vs. Trey Miguel vs. Moose): 5/7. Should have been an elimination match. Why don't they do more elimination matches?

Overall Rating: 4/7. It was an ok show, but pretty low-key. Basically just a regular episode.

iMPACT! Rebellion 2021

• X Division Championship Triple Threat (TJP vs. Josh Alexander vs. Ace Austin): 5/7. Just a good match.
• Eight Person Tag (Violent by Design vs. James Storm, Chris Sabin, Eddie Edwards & Willie Mack): 1/7. Too many dicks on the dance floor. And I'm not thrilled to see William "Big Cass" Morrissey again.
• Brian Myers vs. Matt Cardona: 4/7. After all the build up, this was just ok.
• Knockouts Tag Team Championship (Fire N Flava vs. Jordynne Grace & Rachael Ellering): 5/7. This was a good one, and I like Rachael Ellering.
• Last One Standing (Sami Callahan vs. Trey Miguel): 7/7. Forget the barbed wire and blood, this is how you make a match seem brutal.
• Men's Tag Team Championship (FinJuice vs. the Good Brothers): 6/7. Two great teams doing some great wrestling.
• Knockouts Championship (Deonna Purrazzo vs Tenille Dashwood): 6/7. Tenille was robbed!
• Title vs. Title AEW & iMPACT Men's Championship (Kenny Omega vs Rich Swann): 6/7. Very nice to hear Mauro Ranallo on commentary again. He's really very good at it.

Overall Rating: 5/7. If it weren't for the fact that I don't like those big multi-person tag matches, I'd have nothing much to complain about here. Good show.

Prize-Winning Casserole from 1979

Wrestlemania 37

 Night One

• WWE Championship (Drew McIntyre vs. Bobby Lashley): 3/7. Bobby Lashley is just a very strange and awkward man and I will never care about anything he does. Lio Rush couldn't help him, Drew McIntyre couldn't help him, and MVP certainly can't help him.
• Tag Team Turmoil (Lana & Naomi vs. Carmella & Billie Kay vs. The Riott Squad vs. Mandy Rose & Dana Brooke vs. Natalya & Tamina): 2/7. A gauntlet match with weird ad-hoc tag teams featuring a bunch of people way too good to waste on this garbage.
• Seth Rollins vs. Cesaro: 6/7. When Cesaro balanced Seth on his shoulders and spun him around, hands-free? Magic.
• Raw Tag Team Championship (The New Day vs. AJ Styles & Omos): 2/7. You're telling me Omos is so powerful that he can easily beat Xavier and Kofi practically on his own? Come on.
• Cage Match (Shane McMahon vs. Braun Strowman): 1/7. Guys. Dudes. What is this? What are you doing?
• John Morrison & The Miz vs. Damian Priest & Bad Bunny: 6/7. Wait, this was actually good? How?
• Smackdown Championship (Bianca Belair vs. Sasha Banks): 6/7. Unlike the last one, this one being good didn't surprise me.

Night One Rating: 3/7. Would have been 4, but they lost a point for making me see Hulk Hogan, Jerry Lawler and JBL on my screen. Aside from that it was just really inconsistent.

Night Two

• Randy Orton vs. The Fiend: 7/7. Alexa and Randy have been doing great work on this storyline and I love that it's apparently not over, and now I guess Alexa has become more powerful than the Fiend? Is that what happened here? I don't know where they're going with this, but I've loved every bit of it so far!
• WWE Women's Tag Team Championship (Natalya & Tamina vs. Shayna Baszler & Nia Jax): 4/7. The women's main roster tag division really needs some actual teams and stories. Basically the only thing happening right now is Shayna and Nia's half-arsed repeat of The Bar's story, and whatever is going on with Reginald.
• Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens: 1/7. What did Sami and Kevin do to deserve this?
• United States Championship (Sheamus vs. Riddle): 2/7. Ugh. Riddle. Would be 1/7 but at least he lost.
• Intercontinental Championship Nigerian Drum Fight (Big E vs. Apollo Crews): 2/7. They didn't even have anyone playing the drums. It was just a stupid no-DQ match with thematically appropriate props. And it's really weird to have Apollo put on that accent and claim to be descended from royalty. It's all just weird. And not in a good way.
• Raw Championship (Rhea Ripley vs. Asuka): 7/7. These two are both great.
• Universal Championship Triple Threat (Daniel Bryan vs. Edge vs. Roman Reigns): 6/7. The only real issue with this one was that I never believed Daniel Bryan had a chance of winning it.

Night Two Rating: 3/7. Would have been 4, but they lost a point for making me see Hulk Hogan (again) and Logan Paul. And again, wildly inconsistent.

---

Overall Rating (-1 point for every terrible person featured): 1/7. Because the scale doesn't go any lower.

iMPACT! Hardcore Justice 2021

•  Triple Threat Tag (Ace Austin & Madman Fulton vs. TJP & Fallah Bahh vs. Josh Alexander & Petey Williams): 5/7. It's always annoyed me that only two teams are legal at any given time but now that WWE's given up on that nonsense it's going to annoy me even more that other shows are still doing it.
• Chairly Legal Match (Shera vs. Hernandez): 5/7. The gimmick was supposed to be "chairs are legal", which would at least have distinguished it from a regular no-DQ match, but as usual it turned out to just be a standard no-DQ match with themed props around the ring.
• Doc Gallows vs. Black Taurus: 5/7. Given that the Good Brothers have a championship rematch coming up, the outcome of this match was pretty easy to predict.
• Mystery Crate Match (Johnny Swinger vs. Matt Cardona): 2/7. I'm never sure how ironic the "Swinger's Palace" segments are supposed to be. Is it dumb and shitty on purpose, as a joke, or is it just dumb and shitty? And does it matter?
• Flashback Moment of the Week (Rob Van Dam vs Sabu): 6/7. It was half a match from ten years ago, but it was still one of the bext parts of the show. Some creative use of chairs.
• Sami Callihan vs. Sam Beale: 3/7. Filler.
• Hardcore Blindfold Match (Bryan Myers vs. Jake Something): 5/7. Didn't mind this one. It was something a bit different.
• #1 Contender Weapons Match (Jordynne Grace vs. Susan vs. Tenille Dashwood vs. Havok vs. Rosemary vs. Alisha Edwards): 6/7. I always love some supernatural shenanigans, and the actual match was good too.
• Old School Rules Title vs. Career Knockouts Championship (Deonna Purrazzo vs. Jazz): 6/7. Good match, believable stakes.
• Eight-Man Hardcore War (Violent By Design vs. Team Dreamer): 4/7. WarGames is dumb, but you're not going to improve it by half-arsing it.

Overall rating: 5/7. Should have gotten rid of Johnny Swinger and ended on the Knockouts Championship. But mostly just get rid of Johnny Swinger.

TVs: how do they work?

 My HD Smart TV started displaying static. Like, old-fashioned, analogue-TV's-not-tuned-in static.

NXT TakeOver: Stand & Deliver

 Night One

• Pete Dunn vs. Kushida: 4/7. It was an ok match, but there was nothing particular about it to grab my attention.
• #1 Contender Gauntlet Eliminator Match (Leon Ruff vs. Isaiah Scott vs. Bronson Reed vs. Cameron Grimes vs. Dexter Lumis vs LA Knight): 5/7. Took a bit to get going, but once it did it was pretty good.
• NXT UK Men's Championship (Walter vs. Tommaso Ciampa): 5/7. It seemed unlikely that Ciampa would move to NXT UK, or that the UK championship would move to NXT.
• NXT Men's Tag Team Championship Triple Threat (MSK vs. Grizzled Young Veterans vs. Legado del Fantasma): 5/7. All three teams were legal at the same time! They got rid of the stupid rule where you have to be tagged in by your opponent!
• NXT Women's Championship (Shirai Io vs. Raquel Gonzales): 5/7. Shirai jumped off a giant skull. She wasn't inside a garbage bin though.

Night One Rating: 5/7. It was all good, but nothing really stood out.

Night Two

• Cruiserweight Championship Unification (Santos Escobar vs. Jordan Devlin): 2/7. Jordan Devlin.
• NXT Women's Tag Team Championship (Shotzi Blackheart and Ember Moon vs. The Way): 5/7. I really like all of these wrestlers, but the match itself was a bit hard to care about because I didn't think there was any chance of Shotzi and Ember losing the titles so soon.
• North American Championship (Bronson Reed vs. Johnny Gargano): 6/7. I would have preferred a different outcome.
• NXT Men's Championship (Finn Bálor vs. Karrion Kross): 5/7. I want to like Karrion Kross, but I don't feel like his heart's really in his gimmick. Scarlett is obviously 100% into it, but I'm not so sure about him.
• Unsanctioned Match (Adam Cole vs. Kyle O'Reilly): 4/7. If it's unsanctioned, why is it happening in the CWC, in front of the NXT audience, broadcast on the WWE Network? If it's not a sanctioned wrestling match, why should it end with a pin? Why is advertised as part of the show? Nothing about this concept makes sense! Also, all the stuff with the chain was very dumb.

Night Two Rating: 4/7. Less consistent than the first night, with some higher highs and lower lows.

---

Overall Rating: 5/7. I don't think there was anything in this show that I'd actually been looking forward to, and nothing that really surprised me either. For a two-night, Wrestlemania-week event, I expected more.

Ring of Honor 19th Anniversary Show

• Television Championship (Tracy Williams vs. Kenny King): 2/7. I think the lack of a crowd really hurt this one. It's just hard to really get into a match when there's no crowd response. I dunno, maybe I'd have enjoyed it more later in the show, but maybe not.
• Flip Gordon vs. Mark Briscoe: 2/7. I barely paid attention to this one, to be honest.
• Dalton Castle vs. Josh Woods: 2/7. At this point I was starting to think I was just wasting my time watching this show.
• Grudge Match (Jay Briscoe vs. EC3): 3/7. I'm not sure what the actual grudge behind this was, and I don't know what EC3 actually wanted, but he did keep yelling about honour a lot. I do like EC3, but yeah, just not sure what was going on here.
• Triple Threat (Flamita vs. Bandido vs. Rey Horus): 6/7. This was incredible. The lack of an audience hurt it a bit, but it was still super cool. Three luchadores just doing non-stop luchadore stuff. I'd watch this all day.
• Unsanctioned Match (Matt Taven vs. Vincent): 2/7. I've got to give them credit for not having an "unsanctioned" match on the premises or during the actual show. Makes much more sense this way - even if showing the video still kind of makes it seems like they actually did sanction it... But the match was dumb. Listen, AEW tried having some guys fight each other in an empty building for no clear reason and it was dumb. This was a different building, and there was a better excuse for the ring being there, but it was still dumb.
• Pure Championship (Dak Draper vs. Jonathan Gresham): 5/7. Pure Rules is a neat twist on an otherwise standard match, and this match was fantastic. Again, the lack of an audience brought it down a little, and I felt like the end dragged on a bit, but still a very good match.
• ROH Tag Team Championship (The Foundation vs. La Faccion Ingobernable): 4/7. Just an OK match, but made slightly more interesting by the ongoing drama between LFI and their manager.
• ROH Championship (Jay Lethal vs. Rush): 5/7. Rush is very entertaining, but this match too would have greatly benefited from a live audience, and went on a little long.

Overall Rating: 3/7. This show could have got a decent overall score, I think, if it had an audience. Put other wrestlers around the ring like AEW, do masks and social distancing like NJPW, or do some kind of remote/fake audience like WWE, but do something. The empty, silent room just doesn't work for wrestling.

iMPACT! Sacrifice 2021

• Tag Match (Decay vs. Reno Scum): 6/7. Decay are really growing on me. I don't know what this match was about or why it was happening, but it was cool.
• Intergender Tag Match (Tenille Dashwood & Kaleb with a K vs. Havok & Nevaeh): 4/7. Tenille and Kaleb are the kind of bad guys who get beaten up a lot and win by sneaky cheating. And that's fine. But this didn't feel like a PPV match. I'd probably have rated it higher if it was on a regular episode.
• Tag Match (Violent by Design vs. James Storm & Chris Sabin): 4/7. I guess Rhino is joining VBD? Okay. I feel like this storyline is going nowhere though.
• Hold Harmless Match (Eddie Edwards vs. Brian Myers): 3/7. I liked how Matt Cardona interfered to keep it fair after Hernandez interfered first, but otherwise I didn't really care about this one. Are they building up to a Myers vs. Cardona match? Why? Just do it.
• Knockouts Tag Team Championship (Fire 'N Flava vs. Jordynne Grace & Jazz): 4/7. I didn't think Jordynne and Jazz would win and they didn't.
• X Division Championship (TJP vs. Ace Austin): 5/7. I like both of these guys but I just wasn't feeling it.
• Knockouts Championship (Deonna Purrazzo vs. ODB): 4/7. What was the point of Deonna's friends being banished? It didn't seem like it made any difference.
• Men's Tag Team Championship (The Good Brothers vs. FinJuice): 3/7. I didn't think FinJuice could possibly win this, so I wasn't really paying attention. And then they did and I was like "Wait, what? Wish I'd actually watched this now." I blame the writing for not convincing me that it was a possibility.
• World Title Unification (Rich Swann vs. Moose): 1/7. Don't care; didn't watch it.

Overall rating: 4/7. I'm kind of tired today so that might have diminished my enthusiasm, but this basically felt like a really long episode rather than a PPV.

AEW Revolution 2021

• Tag Team Championship (The Young Bucks vs. the Inner Circle): 5/7. Jericho and MJF aren't particularly great as a tag team, but they're not bad. I didn't think they had any chance of winning though, so it didn't feel like the stakes were really there.
• Casino Tag Team Royale: 7/7. I always love a battle royale.
• Women's Championship (Shida Hikaru vs. Ryo Mizunami): 5/7. I felt like this was a bit of a letdown after some of the tournament matches that led up to it.
• Miro and Kip Sabian vs. Best Friends: 4/7. Miro has been pretty funny in this storyline but none of the others have really sold me on it and I just don't care about seeing them actually fight.
• Big Money Match (Adam Page vs. Matt Hardy): 6/7. I love the Dark Order coming out to support Adam Page and I hope they stay friends forever.
• Face of the Revolution Ladder Match (Cody Rhodes vs. Penta El Zero Miedo vs. Lance Archer vs. Scorpio Sky vs. Max Caster vs. Ethan Page): 3/7. Ladder matches are just not good. Everyone's climbed a ladder before; we know it's not that difficult.
• Street Fight (Sting and Darby Allin vs. Team Taz): 1/7. I don't need to see a 62-year-old man wrestling, or Darby Allin doing anything, and if you're going to do a pre-taped match then there'd better be some impossible stunts, magic, or at least a ridiculous arena to fight in. A wrestling ring set up in an empty warehouse just isn't it.
• Men's Championship Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch (Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley): 1/7. This was a dumb premise to begin with, and it was always going to be bad, but the "explosion" at the end was just the most pathetic thing ever.

Overall rating: 4/7. Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch. Who thought that was a good idea?

Simple trick for getting a free house

All you have to do is take out a home loan and buy a house then, instead of living in the house, you get someone else to live there and pay off the loan for you. When they're done paying, you somehow still get to keep the house even though they paid for it and they get nothing.

Weirdly, this is practically impossible to do if you don't already own a house, and just gets easier the more houses you already have.

And even though you obviously just stole a house, you don't have to go to prison. No one will even suggest it. Everyone will just act like that's a completely normal thing to do.

WWE Elimination Chamber 2021

• SmackDown Elimination Chamber (Cesaro vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Jey Uso vs. Kevin Owens vs. King Corbin vs. Sami Zayn): 6/7. Started a bit slow but picked up once everyone was in the ring.
• Universal Championship (Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan): 5/7. Surprisingly entertaining for what was such a brief match and such a foregone conclusion.
• United States Championship (Bobby Lashley vs. Riddle vs. John Morrison): 2/7 I'd rather Matt Riddle was not on this show; I don't care about Bobby Lashley; and I knew John Morrison wasn't going to win. So I didn't care about this match.
• Women's Tag Team Championship (Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler vs. Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks): 4/7. Bianca and Sasha don't have any reason to be a team (and nor do Shayna and Nia, really), and the stuff with Reginald seems weirdly pointless.
• WWE Championship Elimination Chamber (Drew McIntyre vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Kofi Kingston vs. AJ Styles vs. Randy Orton vs. Sheamus): 5/7. Why did AJ Styles cheat to give himself a disadvantage? In this type of match you want to enter as late as possible, so breaking out of your pod to get into the ring early is counter-productive. Also, disappointed that his pod didn't then get selected to open (to mark his official entrance into the match). I don't think they really thought this through. Also, like the other Elimination Chamber match, it didn't really get good until everyone was in anyway.
• WWE Championship Money in the Bank Cash-in (Drew McIntyre vs. the Miz): 4/7. I'm just glad the 2020 MitB story is finally over. Everything from the nonsensical race up the building, to Miz suing Otis, to Miz cashing it in but then getting it back, has been garbage.

Overall rating: 4/7. Having two men's elimination chamber matches instead of one men's and one women's was a weird choice. And cancelling the Raw Championship match instead of replacing Lacey Evans was another weird choice. The show had its moments, but a lot of it felt haphazard or less than it should have been.

The Watch

I originally wrote a review of each week's episode as they came out and posted them on my Facebook. If you already read them there, there'll be nothing new here. I have very slightly rewritten them to reformat them into a single review of the entire series, but have made no significant changes.

NXT TakeOver Vengeance Day

• Women's Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic Final (Ember Moon and Shotzi Blackheart vs. Dakota Kai and Raquel González): 7/7. It took me a little bit to get into it because I wasn't expecting the show to start in top gear, but it did and it was great.
• North American Championship (Johnny Gargano vs. Kushida): 7/7. Johnny Wrestling on top form.
• Men's Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic Final (MSK vs. the Grizzled Young Veterans): 7/7. Perfect tag team wrestling from both teams.
• NXT Women's Championship Triple Threat (Io Shirai vs. Mercedes Martinez vs. Toni Storm): 6/7. On almost any other show this would have been a highlight, but on this show it just wasn't quite as intense and focused as the other matches.
• NXT Men's Championship (Finn Bálor vs. Pete Dunne): 7/7. Almost painfully good.

Overall rating: 7/7. Aside from the extremely weird and lame Josiah Williams song at the start and the one Cameron Grimes promo in the middle, this was almost perfect from start to finish.

iMPACT! No Surrender 2021

• Six-Person Intergender Tag (Tenille Dashwood and XXXL vs. Decay): 4/7. Either do proper intergender matches, or do mixed tag matches. This weird hybrid where you pretend it's intergender but it's actually not is bad and dumb.
• Brian Myers and Hernandez vs. Eddie Edwards and Matt Cardona: 3/7. I would have preferred to see Myers vs. Cardona one-on-one, so the other two dudes were just an unwelcome distraction.
• Deaner vs. Jake Something: 3/7. The result was obvious, but hopefully it'll lead to something more interesting.
• Triple Threat Revolver (Daivari vs. Suicide vs. Willie Mack vs. Ace Austin vs. Trey Miguel vs. Chris Bey vs. Josh Alexander vs. Blake Christian): 7/7. This is a neat concept for a match. Basically a gauntlet match, but it kind of fixes the problem with regular gauntlet matches by putting an extra person in there so that it's not such an uphill climb for one of the first in to make it all the way to the end. And then it finishes with that sudden-death feeling of a triple threat. Plus, there was some really good wrestling in this one.
• No Disqualification Tornado Knockouts Tag Team Championship (Fire n Flava vs. Havok and Nevaeh): 4/7. They seemed weirdly reluctant to use weapons, but also obliged to? I feel like, if you're going to bring weapons into a match, you've got to commit to them. Don't just put the kendo stick down; use it till it breaks.
• X Division Championship (TJP vs. Rohit Raju): 5/7. Started off really strong but slowed up a bit as it went on.
• Six-Person Tag (Deonna Purrazzo, Kimber Lee, and Susan vs. Jordynne Grace, Jazz, and ODB): 4/7. So, Susan is some kind of alter-ego or suppressed personality or something, right? I feel like we're just waiting for the other version of her to reappear and that's when it's going to get good?
• Triple Threat Tag Team Championship (Chris Sabin and James Storm vs. the Good Brothers vs. Private Party): 4/7. I don't like tag team triple threats. Why are there only two people in the ring at a time? That whole thing where the third team is just sitting on the sidelines until one of their opponents tags them in is weird and doesn't really make sense. I get that it creates a different dynamic to a regular triple threat, but is it better? I don't think so.
• World Championship (Rich Swann vs. Tommy Dreamer): 1/7. Very slow and boring and I don't want to watch Rich Swann.

Overall Rating: 4/7. Some of it was very good, some of it was very bad. Some of it was setting up things that may be very good later.

WWE Royal Rumble 2021

• WWE Championship (Drew McIntyre vs. Goldberg): 1/7. I barely even watched this one because who cares.
• Smackdown Championship (Sasha Banks vs. Carmella): 4/7. It was just a match.
• Women's Royal Rumble: 6/7. This is where the show should have started. If Rhea Ripley or Alexa Bliss had won it would have been 7/7.
• Universal Championship Last Man Standing (Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens): 5/7. I'm not really into this Roman Reigns storyline but it was a good match.
• Men's Royal Rumble: 5/7. Rating it lower than the women's just because there was no one I particularly wanted to see win it. Throw Adam Cole, Johnny Gargano, and Walter in there and suddenly I'm way more invested. Add Tyler Breeze and Drake Maverick for a bit of fun and you've got a 7/7 match.

Overall Rating: 5/7. Cut the first two matches and you've got a really good show. Part of my lack of enthusiasm for the men's rumble was probably down to how long the show was.

iMPACT! Hard to Kill 2021

• Intergender Tag (Decay vs. Tenille Dashwood and Kaleb with a K): 3/7. Quite a good match, but the way it was sort of intergender and sort of not was very distracting. They seemed to be trying to pretend that it was purely coincidence that the two teams happened to tag out at almost the same time every time, but it was extremely obvious and weird.
• Old School Rules Six-Man Tag (Violent by Design vs. Cousin Jake, Rhino, and Tommy Dreamer): 4/7. "Old School Rules" I guess just means no-DQ, and 3-on-3 tags are almost never good. This one was OK. It had its moments.
• Knockouts Tag Team Championship (Fire N Flava vs. Havok and Nevaeh): 5/7. Good tag match, but the ending was a bit weird. The commentators were talking about something else, like as though the ending had caught them by surprise, so it fell a bit flat.
• Matt Cardona vs. Ace Austin: 3/7. Basically just a debut for Cardona.
• X Division Championship Triple Threat (Manik vs. Chris Bey vs. Rohit Raju): 5/7. Who is that mysterious masked man? There's just no way to know!
• Knockouts Championship (Deonna Purrazzo vs. Taya Valkyrie): 4/7. A bit slow. Felt more like a TV match.
• The Karate Man vs. Ethan Page: 6/7. I appreciate that they were trying something different, and I certainly didn't foresee it ending that way.
• Barbed Wire Massacre (Eddie Edwards vs. Sami Callihan): 2/7. They tried way too hard to convince us this was serious hardcore danger with the result that it ended up being pretty boring.
• Six-Man Tag (Kenny Omega and The Good Brothers vs. Rich Swann, Chris Sabin, and Moose): 3/7. Ordinarily I'd skip a Rich Swann match, but I wanted to watch Kenny and the Good Brothers. It was OK.

Overall rating: 4/7. Felt more like an extended TV episode than a PPV, especially compared to recent AEW and NXT episodes that have featured similarly gimmicky matches.

iMPACT! Genesis 2021

• Super X Cup Round 1 (Ace Austin vs. Suicide): 4/7. Ace Austin looks like Andy Samberg.
• Super X Cup Round 1 (Blake Christian vs. KC Navarro): 4/7. Blake Christian seems kind of boring.
• Super X Cup Round 1 (Cousin Jake vs. Daivari): 5/7. I've only just started watching so I'm still picking up the story, but I like Cousin Jake and I want to see what happens to him.
• Super X Cup Round 1 (Crazzy Steve vs. Tre Lamar): 4/7. Crazzy Steve is pretty much just the Joker, right? Like how Glacier is just Sub Zero.
• Super X Cup Semifinal (Ace Austin vs. Cousin Jake) 4/7. Kind of wanted Jake to win, but also Austin still looks like Andy Samberg, so...
• Super X Cup Semifinal (Blake Christian vs. Crazzy Steve) 3/7. Neither of these guys particularly appeal to me.
• Jordynne Grace vs. Jazz: 4/7. I like these two but this was just a friendly contest for no stakes so it's hard to care about.
• Super X Cup Final (Ace Austin vs. Blake Christian): 4/7. I feel like they should probably have had the final match on a different day. Maybe swap this out for a second women's match.
• I Quit Match (Willie Mack vs. Moose): 5/7. This was probably better than I'm giving it credit for; I just don't know these guys so I wasn't invested.

Overall rating: 4/7. Probably not the best one to start on because of the tournament taking up most of it, but it wasn't bad.