WWE Hell in a Cell

Overall Rating: ★★★●★☆☆

If you cut matches 6 and 7 (albeit for very different reasons) and then reversed the order of the show, it would have been amazing. Although then it would have been even weirder that the women's championship wasn't a Hell in a Cell match.

NXT In Your House

Overall Rating: ★★★●☆☆☆

It's honestly hard to believe, sometimes, that NXT used to be an extremely good show. It's just so incredibly underwhelming now.

WWE WrestleMania Backlash

Overall Rating: ★★★○☆☆☆

What a nothing of a show. Might as well have been an episode of Raw or Smackdown.

WrestleMania

Overall Rating: ★★★○☆☆☆

This show was long, slow and bad - with, it must be said, a few high points. And the main event of day two was actually totally worth watching. It's just a pity they spent so much time on boring bullshit and advertising. After all the day-two hype on day one, I was really looking forward to at least not getting that on the second day, but then they used that time to recap day one instead which was worse.

NXT Stand and Deliver

Overall Rating: ★★★●★☆☆

As usual, my preferences do not align with the people making the show and the main event disappointed me while some of the earlier matches were very entertaining. Overall, the show was better than I expected but not as good as I'd hoped

WWE Royal Rumble

Overall Rating: ★★★●★☆☆

Most of this show was pretty good, even despite the fact that I wasn't particularly interested in any of the storylines. The women's Rumble was fun (although not a standout over all), but the men's Rumble was pretty disappointing. I'm never going to dislike a battle royale, but these weren't the best.

WWE Day 1

Overall rating: ★★★○☆☆☆

I'm very tried today, so not in the best state of mind to watch this, but there was nothing I was actually looking forward to or even cared about the outcome of - except Big E's championship, but I didn't have high hopes for that even before Lesnar showed up.

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.

WWE Crown Jewel

 Skipped.

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.

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.

WWE SummerSlam

Overall rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.