As a kid I can remember being baffled by the Brawl For All. I knew wrestling was a work so I assumed the Brawl For All was as well - but it was mostly wrestlers people didn't really care about and they looked worse than when they were wrestling. Plus the crowd clearly hated it. It just confused me. It was cool seeing Bart Gunn and Butterbean's perspectives on their WM15 "match" as well. I watched that show recently and you can see Butterbean looks a bit embarrassed once the fight is over. Definitely one of if not the stupidest idea in wrestling history. You can put pretty much anything that's a work into a creative context and come up with some form of justification, but there is really none when it comes to the Brawl For All. I thought Vince McMahon got off a little lightly to be honest. They focused a lot on Russo and had Cornette bashing him as per - but that idea goes nowhere without McMahon being fully behind it. The fact he greenlit and continued on with it despite it clearly being a horrendous and poorly thought-out idea certainly doesn't paint Vinnie Mac in a very good light.

Looks like my FF7 Remake order has shipped, so should be getting that this week... that and Persona 5 Royal will definitely be filling my free time for the next few weeks at least.

There's a lot of really cool directions they could have gone with the Fiend character, but instead he's just some unhinged supernatural being with no obvious purpose who can only be beaten by Goldberg. Honestly I may even have gone to the extent of not having him wrestle - kind of like Crow Sting in 1997 - or only have him wrestle on very rare occasions and for very specific reasons. Wyatt isn't particularly good in the ring so limit his time there and instead focus on the things he excels at - namely promos and creative segments. I've never been big on the Matt Hardy stuff and I don't think the Broken character fits into AEW very well. I am willing to give it a chance but it really doesn't mesh with the more reality-based product they are trying to portray.

Also I just watched the Wyatt/Cena thing again and the thing that makes it difficult to accept as a serious piece if how hammy and silly some of Cena's acting is. The "ruthless aggression" part especially comes off as trying to be funny rather than disturbed or unstable. Wyatt plays his part well but Cena hams it up to make it come off as goofy.

In small doses it's okay, but they always have to go overboard with it. That's true for almost everything they do though!

They tried to kibosh the whole rematch clause thing a while back by saying it didn't exist anymore, but then started referencing it again in storylines shortly afterwards because it's WWE and they think we're all idiots who forget everything after a week has passed. IMO Wyatt should never have been given the title. It doesn't suit his character much like it never really suited the old-school Undertaker character. Most wrestlers should be there to win whatever title they're going for, but sometimes it's okay to have a guy (or girl) who is there just to wreak havoc or wreck people. That should be what Wyatt's character is all about. That's not to say he couldn't have had a title run at some point, but it didn't have to be so soon. In typical WWE fashion they hot-shotted the belt onto him because he got over big and then didn't have much of an idea about what to do afterwards. Wyatt didn't need the title and shouldn't have been given it. Also shouldn't have been beaten at least until WrestleMania, if not even longer than that. The thing I hate the most about what they've done with the character is the hocus-pocus, supernatural bullshit. It's exactly the same fuck up they made with Bray's original character. He was originally a creepy cult leader who used his words to entice and frighten people. Then he started gaining magic powers just because, and the whole thing became ridiculous. Obviously not helped by him losing practically every feud he ever engaged in. This new character started off as a creepy children's TV show host with a sinister and evil split-personality which was extremely vicious and almost impervious to pain. Cool. Now they're doing the supernatural powers thing again and I'm facepalming again.

If WWE was something other than WWE it would have been great - but unfortunately what they presented doesn't fit in with their universe in any way, shape or form. Even Undertaker and Kane at their wackiest never went to those levels. You never saw Undertaker literally taking Stone Cold to hell or some kind of demonic realm of existence. The matches were always based in reality - casket matches, boiler room brawls, buried alive matches, etc. Even when Taker was crucifying Austin and trying to embalm him it was all within current reality - albeit totally ridiculous for obvious reasons. The most you ever got in terms of outlandish stuff was lightning bolts every so often which was silly but still existed in our actual plane of reality. We are meant to accept here that Bray Wyatt not only has access to an alternate reality but that WWE cameramen were there filming the whole thing and broadcasting it. That kind of shit only really flies if you're a kid - yet the relative complexity of the segment in terms of what it was conveying is beyond what a child could make sense of. I'm always so-so on hokey stuff in wrestling, but this reminded me of the Dungeon of Doom type bullshit that infested WCW in 1995. Remember Hogan teleporting to the Dungeon's realm and the classic "it's NOT hot" line? This was just as bad, but people are so desperate for something, anything different from WWE that this nonsense is embraced rather than ridiculed. It's a bit of a sad state of affairs in truth but at the same time if somebody genuinely liked it then that's cool. It just wasn't for me.

Agreed, the match itself was good (although I'm not sure why Tamina was there) but it can only reach a certain level when the characters aren't interesting enough to be invested in. All of the wrestlers except Tamina have a big upside and the potential to be great, but WWE aren't giving them the opportunity to deliver that at the moment. I can give the Boneyard match a pass as it was at least based in reality - everything that happened there was plausible within the context of the WWE universe. The problem with the Funhouse "match" was that it was based in a fantasy world completely seperate from WWE. It was so far removed from normality that it became unrealistic to the point of taking me out of the moment and unable to suspend my disbelief in any way. It was like something out of a weird skit show or an Adult Swim feature. I give them credit for trying something different and a lot of people seemed to enjoy it, but for me it was just... weird. The idea isn't a bad one but the execution was too much for me to be able to take seriously. I guess part of the problem is that Cena isn't around for long running programs anymore, so they have to squeeze everything into a few short weeks and just one match. I do appreciate their attempt to think outside the box and be creative, but personally I felt it went overboard into absurd territory. When you consider this was all taped and there was plenty of opportunity for editing and retakes, it came across as lazy and formulaic to me, similar to the Goldberg/Strowman match which was basically the exact same thing. A bunch of finishers and a pin. I get that in a live setting with limited wrestlers you may need to do that, but you don't need to make it so simple in the type of environment they were in. Just very disappointing. I am glad at least that the title is off Lesnar now.

I think that was the intention, Hogan was 42 when he turned heel and Cena is also 42 at the moment so it kind of ties in. Reading more about the match (on reddit, obviously) it seems like it was meant to be a psychological deconstruction of Cena's fears and doubts. In a bubble it's actually kind of cool but still way too out there for me to take seriously.

https://streamable.com/2waocj - 8 seconds of total insanity. John Cena coming out cosplaying Hollywood Hogan on a ripoff WCW set, whilst a buzzard puppet representing Macho Man and a parody puppet of Vince saying "such good shit" are watching. WTF.

My thoughts on night two... Rhea Vs Charlotte - good match, as expected. I don't think Rhea suffered by losing, and I imagine she will eventually get the title back from Charlotte and look great in doing so. Black vs Lashley - a Raw match. Hard to care about it considering the lack of build up. Ziggler Vs Otis - if you've enjoyed the Mandy Rose storyline then I guess this was fine. Nothing special. Edge Vs Orton - should have been cut by at least ten minutes - overstayed its welcome but could have been very good if it wasn't so long. The ending was really good though. Street Profits Vs Theory & Garza - a Raw match. Whatever. Total time filler. Women's 5 Way - again hard to care about any of the participants considering how little they've been effectively utilised in the past year or so. Bayley's title reign has been awful. Cena/Wyatt - I don't even know what this was. I thought the Boneyard match was enjoyable, but this was just weird and stupid. There is suspension of disbelief and then there is total nonsense and this was on the total nonsense end of the scale. It will have people talking because of how utterly out there it was, but it went way too far into absurdity imo. With that said I did laugh out loud at the "such good shit" line from Vince. Don't tell me WWE doesn't pay attention to the IWC. What was up with the WCW/nWo flashback sequence? The rest of the segment kind of made sense in a warped way, but the WCW part came out of nowhere and I didn't understand what the point of it was. This was just a bizarre acid trip with way more misses than hits. Lesnar Vs Reigns, er, McIntyre - we've seen this before. The whole Lesnar experiment went stale a very long time ago. Judging by this match they have little to nothing left creatively for him. I hope he is kept away from the title for a long time. There are still things that can be done with Lesnar but he's run his course as champion. Match overall was basic and underwhelming. Would have been better in front of a crowd but even then the above criticisms would still be there for me. I think I preferred night one overall. WM without a crowd was, as I expected, tepid and lacking energy. I feel bad for Edge and Drew especially for having their 'big' moments in this kind of environment.

That Sting/Vampiro feud sucked so hard. I vaguely remember a stuntman pretending to be Sting falling off the top of the tron (whilst on fire) in one of their matches. Ugh. That was after the Owen Hart incident too, so even worse. This promo video almost makes the feud look passable.

Nope. I don't know if you've seen many of Bayzler's matches in NXT but there's a finish they've done a few times where she locks in her submission finisher, then the opponent rolls backwards and pins her whilst still in the move. It was that. Problem is the match was too short for that to be credible. Yeah, me too. Her badass theme and stable made her an amazing heel, and she looks the part. There are a lot of people who dislike her in-ring style but I think it fits perfectly with her MMA-based character. I was always invested in her matches. The match she had with Sane at one of the Takeovers where Sane beat her for the title was brilliant. Really sad to see how Sane (and Asuka) have been wasted on the main roster, and Baszler losing like this to Lynch doesn't give me much hope for her. Am I the only one who hates WWE trying to make Lynch into the female Stone Cold? It's so transparent and lame. I don't think Vince gives a shit about NXT and I don't think he cares about what anybody has accomplished down there. Generally speaking the people who have done the best after going to the main roster are those who didn't have a huge impact in NXT. I swear Vince sees success in NXT as a bad thing. Can't understand why he treats the call ups so shoddily otherwise. Titus' slip is the best and only good thing to come out of these stupid Saudi shows. I have to admit I found it hilarious that when the Saudis asked for Yokozuna (apparently not knowing he was dead) WWE brought in some random sumo to play the part. Just emphasises what a farce the whole thing is. Asuka has a huge upside but since losing her undefeated streak to Charlotte a couple of years back has gone into a downward spiral and never really come back. She was awesome in NXT but now is just another wrestler, much like Kairi. We've seen so much of Owens and Rollins in the build up (including those never-ending multi-man tags) that the feud already felt tired before the match even happened imo. It also hurt the match that nothing was really on the line. Owens beat Rollins - and what? Are there any consequences? I imagine it'll be as you were on Raw which makes the match itself kind of pointless. No stakes. I've said before that Rollins really reminds me of Hollywood Hogan back in the WCW days as far as his heel work goes - but whenever Hogan wrestled there were always huge stakes involved. Usually the title as 95% of the time he was the champion. But even if not there was always something big to gain from beating him. That isn't the case with Seth so it was hard for me to get especially invested in seeing Owens win.

One thing I do appreciate about P5 and something which most of my favourite games boast is the excellent soundtrack. The music in the game is top notch. The above is pretty much burned into my brain forever after I listened to it for 45 minutes on loop fighting the 'ultimate' bosses in the game. You can only challenge them after completing the game once and doing a second run, and JHC are they difficult. I lost to them at least a dozen times before finally beating them after about 2 months of trying. A triumphant victory but probably too much time invested.

Undoubtedly one of my favourite games of all time, although it really does depend on what you like. I could completely understand someone not really feeling it. I've already logged 50+ hours in Royal having played 200+ on the original - although in my defence lockdown has played a part in the amount of time I've logged on Royal so far! I've had it on whilst doing other things too which will artifically inflate the play time somewhat. Quite a few people in the UK already have the FF7 remake by the looks of things - unfortunately gamecollection look to be sticking to the official release date or close enough. With that said Royal is more than tiding me over until it arrives so it doesn't bother me.

Agree, for the finish to work the match needed to be a lot longer. They've had Bayzler be so vicious and dominant pre-match that an after-match attack would have looked tame, short of practically murdering Lynch. I am not sure where they go from here but I imagine a rematch fairly soon. I genuinely think both Corbin and Elias would have gone down a storm in the Attitude Era. Not as main eventers but as mid-card players. Corbin is fantastic at being a smarmy heel you want to see get beaten up. Unfortunately his matches always stink, which is a problem in the current era where match quality is a big part of the package. Back in the AE Corbin's matches would have been short, screwy and continued developing his character or that of his opponent. He would have been a great henchman to Vince in the way Bossman, for example, was. The other issue with Corbin is modern WWE creative just sucks and the audience ends up just wanting Corbin gone rather than getting his comeuppance. As for Elias, he's not up to much as a face but again an outstanding heel when given the material to work with. Remember that segment a while back where he got mercilessly booed for something like 6 or 7 minutes? I think Owens was there too. That shows Elias has the tools to do the job - but again not really up to it in the ring and shackled by a sub-par creative team. It's a shame for both of them. My view based on how I've seen them use Zayn on the main roster is that Vince just isn't a fan. I don't think he sees Zayn as threatening or interesting, hence relegating him to the role of a manager. I could be wrong and maybe it is injury related, but my gut tells me it's something else. It could definitely work, but they'd need to prepare for it well ahead of time. Next year is probably too soon as I believe they've already announced the date and location. If they want to do a two-nighter again then preparation should start now to get it ready for 2022. Oh yeah there's a lot of ways to make it work, but if there's one thing WWE creative are good at it is picking the wrong option - or picking the right one but still screwing it up (eg. Dean Ambrose' heel turn). No doubt. Unfortunately it is hard to write them off as non-canon if they are changing major titles and setting up WM feuds at these repulsive events however.

Agree, the match was getting good but felt cut short. I have also seen the way Becky pinned Bayzler done a few times in NXT so that was a bit underwhelming. I also feel like the wrong person went over. I imagine Shayna will get the title soon, maybe even at the next PPV, but she should have won it here imo. All that build to lose in her first attempt is very WWE and part of the reason I much prefer AEW. Their booking is far more logical. Problem is you have two wrestlers here who aren't particularly good at wrestling. Both great at character work but boring as hell in the ring. Without a crowd it just enhances those flaws. I was actually hoping that with it being taped and the ability to edit and redo things that WWE would have a longer Goldberg match with some unusual spots. Instead it was the same old boring formula. Strowman as champion is fine but they've waited at least a year too long to give him the belt, and everyone knows he's only holding it in Roman's place. Considering it's the Undertaker I'm willing to give them a pass on the fantasy stuff. It can work in the right circumstances (some of Matt Hardy's TNA stuff for example) but it's baffling that they have a graveyard match and decide that's the time to bring back ABA Taker. Imagine the pop he would have got coming out as ABA Taker at a normal WM with his old music. Would have been epic. This not so much. WWE barely seems to see Zayn as a proper wrestler any more tbh. He's basically a slightly buffed up manager. Would have been cool for them to put on a clinic but considering the context I understand why they did it this way, even if I disagree with it. 100% agree with that. I hope they make this the norm in future although I get the feeling they won't due to logistics. Yeah she really is irritating in this role. She was great with Sanity back in NXT but this Alexa sidekick gimmick is the worst. It was clear when it started that the idea was eventually for Alexa to double-cross Nikki after using her, starting a proper feud, but that got shelved and instead they've stuck with this for a while. I'm sure eventually they'll go back to the original intention (probably when they lose the titles) but as it stands their team sucks. Styles has looked insanely weak the entire feud to be fair so at least they're being consistent. Remember he got beat with a single Chokeslam in Saudi Arabia!

Just finished WM night one. Overall the empty arena makes it difficult to grade as wrestling just isn't the same without a crowd. With that said an admirable job by all involved. Most of the matches I felt were pretty meh, but I enjoyed Owens/Rollins. Also really liked the Taker/Styles Boneyard match. It'll polarise opinion for sure but I thought it was a great and creative way to get around current restrictions and move away from the empty arena setting.

I already have the Network for old WCW/WWF stuff so I'll just watch WM on there. Going to be a really weird show.

New Jack is in work mode 99% of the time so it's hard to take a lot of what he says seriously. Especially that incident with Vic Grimes when he threw him off the scaffold. He admitted in a shoot interview years ago that it was just a botch from Grimes and nothing to do with him, and he didn't have any hard feelings towards Grimes over his brain injury. If you watch the footage it's clear that Grimes propels himself over the scaffold and just jumps too far and nearly misses the ring. A monumentally stupid stunt regardless, but Jack barely throws him at all so I don't buy the story that he tried to kill Grimes.

I can remember a long time ago (when I was still playing it on the PS1, so at least 20 years ago now!) I went through the whole process of creating the best chocobo. Can't remember if it was golden or black now but it took forever. I eventually did it though. I think you gain access to a specific island by doing so. Also makes winning the races at the Gold Saucer very easy Midgar Zolom is practically impossible to beat without the battle hack early on in the game. I just used to run past it, but yeah it's strange that it instantly respawns after you've beaten it. You also see it impaled on a tree from memory so I guess there are just a lot of them living in that little pond ? One thing that always stuck with me regarding the cutscenes was the one where Cloud puts Aerith in the water at the end of the first disc. **SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ANYONE WHO INEXPLICABLY DOESN'T KNOW THE STORY AND IS PLANNING TO PLAY THE GAME AT SOME POINT** I remember somebody saying that if Aerith was dead her body would float, not sink, so the fact she sunk to the bottom suggests she was still alive and Cloud technically drowned her ? makes that scene a bit darker in retrospect!

I'm guessing you meant FF7, unless there's a special version of FF8 I haven't played ? but yeah the original FF7 is still an absolute classic and a blast to play through. Some of the graphics look very outdated nowadays but it has enough nostalgic charm for me that I can ignore stuff like that. For me everything about the original game is close to perfect, with only the translation and at times abundance of random battles a bit of an annoyance. Good thing is on the rereleased PS4/XBOX/Steam version you can turn off random battles and also speed the game up with helps immeasurably with the more tedious parts of the game.

Nothing controversial at all. The segment was hit or miss depending on how much you like the 'broken' MH character but absolutely no reason for anybody to censor it.

Yeah it was. That's really strange.

FF7 remake has been released early in Australia due to Coronavirus. Wondering if I'll get mine earlier than expected now. Considering I already have P5 Royal taking up a fair amount of time I'm in no rush tbh.