The Best Opening Matches in WWE Pay-Per-View History

“If you can’t go on last, go on first”

The opening match of any wrestling show is arguably the most important of the whole night, while the main event is almost always the biggest, most important match of the show that everyone will be talking about the next day, the opening match is what sets the tone for the show going forward and often decides whether or not any given individual will keep watching the show the whole way through. As such, there have been plenty of absolute barn-burners and all-time classic matches that held the prestigious spot of being the first thing the live audience got to see.

To be clear here, I am not counting pre-show or dark matches in this list as these are usually put on before the full crowd has even entered the building and a large portion of the home viewing audience haven’t switched on. I’m instead referring to the first match to take place on the main portion of a WWE Pay-Per-View. This also means NXT Takeovers don’t count because let’s be honest, that wouldn’t be fair.

With that clarification made, let’s take a look at the best of these show openers.

10 – Daniel Bryan vs Dolph Ziggler – Bragging Rights 2010

Trust me, this isn’t the last time Daniel Bryan is going to appear on this list.

While the concept of Bragging Rights was one that would eventually bleed over into the annual Survivor Series event – and be much better off for it – looking back at the history of the two incarnations of the event, there was only ever one great match between the two of them and this was it.

Although the IWC (myself included) have all gotten a bit bored with Dolph Ziggler as a wrestler, there was once a time where he was one of the only bright stars in a sea of boring characters and dull wrestling matches. In fact, with the exception of CM Punk, it’s arguable that Bryan & Ziggler were the only two “internet darlings” in the company at the time so naturally, a clash between the two of them was always going to be something special.

What this match is, is two brilliant wrestlers that have flamboyant and exciting wrestling styles going at each other in a match that very rarely lets up to catch its breath. There are some slightly wonky elements, with Vickie Guerrero’s presence at ringside occasionally causing a break in the action and a weird non-finish where Ziggler got a three-count because the referee didn’t see Bryan’s foot on the rope, only for the decision to be waived off and the match continued.

Luckily, none of those issues stopped the match from having a healthy serving of quick back-and-forth action and near falls to ramp up the excitement and get the crowd on their feet for a show that, in the grand scheme of things, really wasn’t much to write home about.

9 – Brock Lesnar(c) vs Seth Rollins –   Wrestlemania 35
(Universal Championship)

This was more of a great moment than a match, however, a bell did ring, so it counts.

Wrestlemania 35 was a show full of crowd please, triumphant moments for the babyfaces and it made sure to spread them evenly throughout the show, this meant that when the show was just starting, we already had ourselves an exciting moment. After the US National Anthem played and Hulk Hogan was…there, Paul Heyman stormed to the ring and declared that if Brock Lesnar wasn’t going to be in the main event, then he was going to have his match now and get an early night.

It’s easy to forget now, but at this point, just about everyone was fully behind Seth Rollins as a babyface who was ready to slay the beast and finally take the Universal Championship away from Lesnar. WWE managed to not only pull it off brilliantly but do it in perhaps the most exciting way possible, with Lesnar beating down Rollins before he made a sudden comeback to pin the beast and win the title in just two and a half minutes.

Paralleling the moment from Wrestlemania 31 where he swiped the WWE Championship from under Brock Lesnar’s nose, Wrestlemania 35 opened up with Rollins swinging world title gold above his head in a moment that had me on my feet with excitement at home.

8 – The Miz(c) vs Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor – Wrestlemania 34
(Intercontinental Championship)

Triple threat matches on WWE PPVs can be a bit hit and miss depending on the participants involved. These kinds of matches need to be fast-paced and varied in their action, so when you’ve got a bunch of slow, lumbering guys in there it just doesn’t work, luckily, the three men in this match were quite the opposite. Rollins & Balor were allowed to completely let loose here, flying all over the place, keeping the excitement flowing the whole time.

The Miz couldn’t keep up with the pace of the other two, but he didn’t need to. Instead, The Miz was the perfect person to provide much more grounded action, stopping the whole thing from spiralling out of control with non-stop dives. The action between the three men had a nice sense of flow, with each combination of men in the ring had a slightly different feel to their fighting style.

There was a nice helping of storytelling in there too as The Miz attempted to renounce his evil ways (even if it didn’t last) sparing us from any interference by The Miztourage. As well as Balor & Rollins being so determined to one-up each other that at several occasions it almost allowed The Miz to slip away with the win. That didn’t happen though as eventually Seth Rollins came out the victor and spent the rest of 2018 in what I believe – from an in-ring standpoint at least – was the best year of his career so far.

7 – The Usos(c) vs The Wyatt Family – Battleground 2014
(WWE Tag Team Championships)
(2 out of 3 Falls)

A match that has been largely forgotten by time here and I can’t exactly say I blame people for that, I sure as shit can’t remember a single other thing that happened at Battleground 2014.

Looking back at 2014 today feels like looking into an alternate dimension, it’s all the wrestlers we know and love today, but not quite as we know them; case in point, The Usos. By mid-2014 I was fully into the world of WWE and I very vividly remember not giving much of a shit about The Usos. Their “tribal chanting” thing sat on the wrong side of goofy to me and, in all honesty, I didn’t see their appeal as wrestlers at all. This was the match that woke me up to the fact that these guys might actually be the amazing tag team we’ve seen over the past few years.

Pretty much everything I love about modern tag-team wrestling features in this match, the early stages where one team isolates the other didn’t last too long and once the match descended into chaos, it ebbed and flowed in such a way that allowed for natural peaks and troughs in the action that aligned with my energy levels as a viewer. The 2 out of 3 falls stipulation did wonders for the pace, allowing the action to slow all the way down at certain points before slowly building the energy and excitement up again.

I highlighted The Uso’s performance, but Harper & Rowan’s contributions to the match cannot be understated either. I know it’s common knowledge now, but at the time I didn’t realise how brilliant of a wrestler Luke Harper could be and Erick Rowan served his purpose as a slower big-guy too. The chemistry between the two teams was near-flawless and it’s one of those situations where everything came together to create a match that had just about all you could want from pure tag team wrestling.

6 – Bad News Barrett(c) vs Dean Ambrose vs Dolph Ziggler vs Daniel Bryan vs R-Truth vs Luke Harper vs Stardust – Wrestlemania 31
(Intercontinental Championship)
(Ladder)

Wrestlemania needs more of these, I mean, what else is the Cruiserweight title for these days?

Multi-man ladder matches are always pretty solid bets to get a crowd excited, but this one went above and beyond in terms of pure entertainment value. Everyone in this match served their own unique role that contributed to the break-neck pace of this match. You had Barrett coming in as the heel champion, Ambrose as the hungry challenger that isn’t afraid to get violent, Ziggler a face-technician that can bump like no-one else, Bryan who was making his big return and was beloved by everyone, Truth who was the comedy, Harper who was an all-rounder that could fill any role he needed to in the match and Stardust…who…well, let’s not talk about that.

When you’ve got such a huge variety of characters & wrestling styles colliding like this it’s always going to be an interesting watch and the action in this match was constant. There was very little room to breathe, but the amount of variety of people constantly coming in and out of the ring meant that it constantly felt like the match was being refreshed and doing something different. Just about everyone got a moment where they almost won the match and they were scattered through the match in just the right way to keep the tension rolling over with every single spot.

Speaking of spots, there’s just about every kind of ladder match spot you could want. We had people doing dives onto people and ladders; ladders would be sung around and smack people in the face; there was a big dive onto a sea of people and there was even a brutal looking powerbomb from the ring, to the outside, through a ladder. The finish was extremely crowd-pleasing, with Ziggler & Bryan fighting it out on the top until one of them fell to their doom and it kicked off Wrestlemania 31 with a massively crowd-pleasing win in the form of Daniel Bryan claiming his first reign with the Intercontinental Championship.

5 – Daniel Bryan vs Bray Wyatt – Royal Rumble 2014

While this match is generally remembered as a great one, I think the feud surrounding it is incredibly strange. This feud happened slap-bang in the middle of Bryan’s ascension to the top of WWE and was very much during the phase where WWE was trying everything they could to make sure it didn’t happen. After Bryan suffered yet another disappointing loss to Randy Orton, he found himself under attack from The Wyatt Family. For some reason, CM Punk decided he’d help out and they got the win…so feud over right? Well, apparently not as Wyatt continued their assault, focusing on Bryan as CM Punk had to deal with The Shield.

This led to a 3 on 1 match at TLC where Bryan got destroyed and eventually a slightly interesting, but also slightly bungled, storyline developed where Bryan seemed to join the Wyatt Family. While the moment where Bryan finally broke free from Wyatt was fantastic and led to arguably the best “Yes!” chant in history, it was a bit weird how the entire thing just consisted of Bryan & Bray losing to The Usos for 3 weeks.

Regardless of that, it brought us to this match. A match that was fantastic.  Bray’s style at the time was less of the slow & brutal that we see with The Fiend nowadays, instead, being a lot more frantic and fast-paced; he would still take his time when he got the opportunity to pick his opponent apart, but there was a much greater feeling of urgency to things. This played perfectly for Bryan’s style which was also pretty fast but focussed more on being plucky than being heavy-handed.

On top of the action being top-notch, they hit on some great story beats referencing the entirety of their rivalry up until that point. It had so many of those little touches that we only ever expect to see in NXT Takeover matches these days. Not only did this match help the rise of Bryan’s popularity amongst the fanbase, but it also put Bray Wyatt on the map in terms of the fans seeing him as a brilliant wrestler that could hang with all of their indie darlings.

4 – The New Day(c) vs The Usos – Hell in a Cell 2017
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
(Hell in a Cell)

Easily one of the best feuds of the past five years, this match was just one of the series of incredible bouts these two teams put on throughout 2017 and into early 2018 and this was arguably the best of the bunch.

By this point in 2017, The New Day and The Usos had wrestled each other on TV & PPV countless times and at face value, it would seem like that’s a recipe for disaster. Normally in WWE, when a feud lasts as long as this one did, people get bored of it and their later matches are met with indifference regardless of how good they actually are (see the Reigns vs Corbin feud from late 2019/early 2020 for proof of this). So, these two teams had to find a way to get p[eople to turn their heads and care about the fact that they’re fighting on PPV for the 4th time in the past year. Luckily, they were absolutely up to the task.

Up until this point in their feud, the two teams had done a great job of making each match feel slightly different in terms of its flow and rhythm, while still keeping up incredible action that got fans onto their feet. After rocking pre-shows and midcards for the better part of 6 months, these two teams were finally rewarded for their stellar work by getting the opportunity to create absolute magic, climaxing their now legendary feud in a Tag Team Hell in a Cell match for the ages.

Needless the say the action was damn-near flawless. Every movement in the match felt like it had so much thought and purpose behind it from the competitors. I often decry weapons matches as being boring, but the two teams here put the tools at their disposal to good use, scattering weapons in as exclamation points for the match, but never making them the focal point. Every inch of the cell was used to full effect and we saw some genuinely new and innovative spots like The New Day trapping one of the Usos in the corner of the cell by building a mini-prison out of kendo sticks. The Hell in a Cell stipulation is one that I think had been extremely played out at this point, but these guys did a fantastic job of finding fresh and interesting things to do with it.

The drama was also through the roof. From the moment the bell rang and the two teams start absolutely wailing on each other, there was so much intensity that absolutely did the epic scale of their feud justice. There were some truly ludicrous kickouts (in a good way) and the final segment where Xavier Woods tried his damndest to fend off both Usos while handcuffed is just brilliant and forged a sense of respect between the two teams that has lasted for years after the fact. Not to mention cemented both of these teams as two of the best tag teams on the planet.

3 – Kurt Angle vs Rey Mysterio – Summerslam 2002

See? I have watched wrestling outside of the past decade. Admittedly, it would’ve been hard to justify missing out what is undoubtedly an all-time classic Summerslam match.

Rey Mysterio had been in WWE for less than a month at this point and while the majority of the audience at the time knew who he was from his time at the forefront of WCW’s Cruiserweight Division, this was his first major opportunity to make a huge impact on the WWE and show that he was here to stay and hadn’t missed a beat since the WCW days. So, if you’ve got a highly-skilled technical wrestler who needs an opportunity to look great showing off everything they can do, who do you put them with? How about the greatest technical wrestler of the generation? Enter Kurt Angle.

Angle was coming off the back of an excellent feud with The Rock and The Undertaker going into Summerslam 2002 where he had often found himself the butt of the joke. He still got ample opportunity to look like a legitimate competitor, but the match at Vengeance treated him more like a third wheel, where his character elements are what really made him shine. So, this felt like a bit of a reset for his character, a newcomer had just shown up and handed him a loss and it was going to be his job to teach Mysterio a serious lesson, using his entire arsenal of fantastic wrestling.

It was a very simple story but it’s all the match needed. Mysterio was looking to prove himself against one of the best, while Angle was looking to protect his position in the company against a newcomer. What they put together in the match can only be described as a technical masterpiece. I used the term “back-and-forth” in my reviews a lot but this match really was the epitome of the term, as outside of Mysterio’s flurry at the beginning, neither man spent more than 90 seconds or so getting in offence at any single point in the match. There were constant counters, reversals and all kinds of interesting escapes that showed the full spectrum of what both men were capable of in the ring.

While it’s arguable that Mysterio should’ve won as he was the debuting superstar, as we can now say with the power of hindsight, the loss didn’t affect Mysterio’s star power at all in the long-run and the sheer quality of the match was enough to convince all of the fans who were still unconvinced that Mysterio was a top-tier competitor.

2 – Bret Hart vs Owen Hart – Wrestlemania 10

Even though Wrestlemania 10 ended with Bret Hart toppling Yokozuna to become WWF Champion, the moment that was ultimately be most remembered from that night is his loss in the opening contest to his brother Owen.

There was a lot of hype surrounding this match at the time of Wrestlemania 10. Things had been slowly building since the previous November, where Owen became distracted after accidentally knocking his brother off of the Apron in a Survivor Series elimination tag match, causing him to get eliminated. Owen would continuously ask his brother to face him in a match, but Bret kept refusing, not wanting to fight his brother. Eventually, Owen took matters into his own hands and attacked Bret at the Royal Rumble 1994 after the duo lost to The Quebecers.

After both Lex Luger and Bret Hart were declared joint winners of the 1994 Royal Rumble, a coin was tossed and it was determined that Luger would get his match with Yokozuna first at Wrestlemania 10, with Bret fighting the champion later in the night. In order to make it fair, Bret was forced to wrestle another match earlier on in the night and Owen was selected as his opponent.

As you’d imagine from wrestlers the calibre of Bret and Owen, two wrestlers who quite literally grew up training together, this match was virtually flawless. While it doesn’t look as flashy or as exciting as the kind of “masterpiece” matches we’ve come to expect today, I didn’t feel any less invested in this match than I do any NXT title bout. The psychology of the match is simple but incredibly effective as both of the brothers seem to have an answer for just about everything the other can throw at them. It’s so clear that they know each other in the ring better than any other wrestler ever possibly could.

The sly brutality of Owen as he maliciously targets Bret’s injured leg is just wonderfully horrible, made all the better by the way he seems to showboat after every little advantage he gets over Bret. He knows that no-one thinks he’ll be able to beat Bret and he’s relishing every moment he can show people how wrong they are. Then, he only went and bloody won the thing. Catching Bret out and rolling him after following Bret’s attempt at a Hurricanrana, Owen walked away with the shocking win, putting Bret on the back foot for his title match later in the night and triggering a feud with Bret that extended into the summer and brought us some equally brilliant matches.

Wrestlemania 10 is remembered fondly as a Mania with several iconic moments, but when it comes to pure-wrestling, nothing else that happened on the night could top this match.

1 – Daniel Bryan vs Triple H – Wrestlemania 30

Who would’ve guessed that a Triple H match would’ve been the one to top this list?

As I’ve covered before, Wrestlemania 30 is the best incarnation of the show of shows to happen over the past decade (and is also my personal favourite Wrestlemania) and a huge part of that is down to this fantastic opening contest. The story of the rise of Daniel Bryan going into Wrestlemania 30 is still one that’s relatively fresh in the minds of WWE fans the world over and this match was where we would finally see whether or not WWE were serious about giving the fans what they wanted.

Every second of this match was meticulously crafted to milk every last drop of drama and intensity out of the storyline. From the moment the bell rings, the crowd are a huge factor of what makes this match so brilliant. The sight of the crowd going nuts as Triple H and Bryan stare each other down in so incredibly emotional knowing everything that went into it and they are on tenterhooks for absolutely every moment of this match.

The opening few minutes of this match are absolutely fire as Bryan comes out of the gate with the kind of babyface intensity that makes him the most lovable babyface ever before the pace switches and there’s a good 8 minutes or so of Triple H dominating the match and doing everything in his power to put Bryan away. That would normally be boring, but a combination of pacing, variety and Bryan’s selling ability made it gripping stuff to watch. Bryan scattered in a couple of hope spots throughout to keep things ticking over too. The moments where Triple H drops Bryan down on the announce table, or the ring apron, or even locks in the Yes! Lock plays the live crowd and everyone watching at home into the hands of the drama of the match. Even watching it back now I still feel that pit of despair, with the thought that maybe Triple H really is going to win and all our dreams will be crushed.

Once Bryan breaks free of the beat down, the match moves at a mile a minute. Once again, the intensity shoots through the ceiling and the whole match becomes a fever-pitch, back-and-forth contest that doesn’t let up for a moment. Every strike from both men feels weighty and impactful, both in the physical and dramatical sense of the phrase. Even on a rewatch I find myself falling for every near fall and every kickout, remembering the desperation in every fan’s mind at the time, just praying that Daniel Bryan got his time to shine.

The sheer explosion of emotion from both the crowd and Bryan himself when he blindsides Triple H with the Running Knee and gets the pin is absolutely euphoric and makes this a match that I was always connect with emotionally and was the perfect opener for the biggest show of the year.

Triple Threat Review: Board Battlefield, Hard Reset Redux, Q.U.B.E

Welcome back to Triple Threat Review!

This is the ridiculously infrequent series where I pick three games at random off of my Steam list that I’ve never played before, play them for a couple of hours and tell you what I thought. Originally I scored them out of three, but I’ve since decided that was a bad idea and am instead going with a classic grading system. Every game will get a grade somewhere between “F” and “A+”, “F” being awful and “A+” being a game of the year contender.

If this is your first time here, then please check out the previous edition.

Now, let’s get to the games.

Board Battlefield

Developer & Publisher: Surrealscape Studios
Released: 10th August 2018
Steam Reviews: Mixed
Price: £1.69/$1.99/€ 1.59

The “casual” board game is one that has been attempted to great success throughout history, though it’s very rare to see in the video game sphere. Your household classics like Monopoly and Risk have countless video game adaptations; but most of the original digital board games you come across are designed for the board game enthusiast, rather than someone looking for a bit of light fun. So Board Battlefield is attempting to fill that void.

On the basic level, this game certainly fits into that genre. With a ruleset that can be learned in about two minutes and fairly quick games, it seems like something you can easily drop in and out of when you’re in the mood for a match. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much where the good points end

The ruleset itself is badly thought out, in order to win you must reach cross the 9×9 board to reach your opponent’s flag in the centre column, with only 3 types of units that have very basic functionality. The infantry can move forwards in a straight line, the artilleries can move diagonally, and the tanks can move in any of the four cardinal directions. This unit design combines with a couple of other factors to cause some pretty big issues.

Firstly, since the infantries can’t change the column their in at all, once the one in the middle dies, they become pretty useless, especially when the board get crowded with tanks and artilleries, they can’t really keep up with the fight effectively. Secondly, the way the artilleries are laid out, means that half the board is completely inaccessible to them. To compare them to the Bishops in Chess, the whole idea is that one can access one-half of the squares, while the other one can access the other half, but with the way the tiles are set up, it means that you can entirely avoid them as long as you’re paying attention to which squares they can’t touch.

Perhaps the biggest issue though, is the method by which you actually move your troops. At the start of your turn, you roll a die, land either a 1, 2 or 3, and pick one piece to move that number of spaces, this is a horrible way of doing things. I can understand why you’d want to limit the number of spaces you can move in a game like this, but having it down to RNG is awful. The game advertises itself as “a unique blend of skill and luck”, but when the luck is such a key element of the game, it makes the level of skill almost completely unimportant.

Finally, the game has an XP system, where through winning matches you level up and unlock new features that you can use in future games. These include: spawning in new units, placing landmines or bombing a massive portion of the map. A couple of the reviews I’ve read say that the game reaches it’s true potential once these things become available. So my question is quite simple. If those features are so important to making the game fun, why would you hide them behind unlocks? All it means, is you have to spend a handful of hours playing the unfun version before you can get a game worth playing.

I don’t hate the idea of Board Battlefield, but the execution is extremely lacking, even once you unlock the other features, the game doesn’t feel very well thought out at all. I’m tempted to cut it some slack since it costs the same as a cheap sandwich, but quite frankly for a game like this? I’d rather have the sandwich.

Grade: F

Hard Reset Redux

Developer: Flying Wild Hog
Publisher: Good Shepard Entertainment
Released: 3rd June 2016
Steam Reviews: Very Positive
Price: £14.99/$19.99/€ 19.99

I’ve never really been the biggest fan of first-person shooters, I’m not entirely sure why I just find the style of gameplay doesn’t really bring any joy out of me and considering it’s a genre largely dominated by the AAA military shooter, which is generally a style of game I despise, I struggle to find much fun in it. So, when I come across a first-person shooter trying to do something that isn’t the industry norm, I become intrigued.

I didn’t realise this at the time, but Hard Reset originally released in 2011 – with this “redux” version released in 2016 – and it does seem to have a lot of the design philosophies from that time period. 2011 was towards the end of the big first-person shooter boom where every studio under the sun wanted a piece of the pie and generally online multiplayer was the way to go. Hard Reset, however, decided it wanted to go more down the Halo route of a linear Sci-fi shooter instead.

I immediately groaned at this, since it wasn’t just a Sci-fi shooter, it was a dark and dreary Sci-fi shooter, and that ticks off pretty much all the boxes on my “games I don’t care about” list. Nevertheless, I persevered and was immediately greeted with a comic-book esque style opening, featuring Gruff McCoolGuy or whatever his name was. As with almost all games like this, the plot is completely irrelevant since the reason we’re all here to shoot the things.

The things in question are robots, just below zombies and nazis on the list of “dystopian future bad guys”, which would be fine if there were more than 4 different variations on them. This brings me to the first problem I have with the game which is a severe lack of variety, both in enemy and level design. Granted, I only played the first three levels and I get that it’s a rundown city, so everything’s going to look fairly similar, but not every level has to be raining at nighttime. Some levels could’ve at least been set in a big unique building or something like that. It means there’s no motivation for discovery in the game because I feel like I’ve seen everything already.

The enemy designs look pretty decent, but like I said there just isn’t enough variation in the types. Some are different colours but they all still do the same things, and it means I figured out my tactics to defeat each one straight away and I never needed to change it. This leads to quite the lack of difficulty throughout the game, the only tactics the game tries in order to up the difficulty as you progress is either throwing more things at you – which never really works – or giving you less room to manoeuvre, which is slightly more effective, but still not too much of a challenge to work around.

It’s not all bad though, as the most important aspect of the game – the shooting – is actually quite fun. It doesn’t have the same brutality to it as Doom or the same tactical satisfaction as in Farcry, but when I was blasting through waves of enemies with my shotgun I was having fun doing it. It has the kind of speed that I like from, first-person shooters and it feels like my shots have impact as enemies recoil after almost every hit.

Hard Reset may be a flawed game, but one that kept me hooked just long enough to develop a bit of a fondness for it. I probably won’t go out of my way to finish it any time soon, but the next time I’m in the mood to mindlessly shoot some things for a bit, I might come back around to it.

Grade: C-

Q.U.B.E

Developer & Publisher: Toxic Games
Released: 21st May 2014
Steam Reviews: Very Positive
Price: £6.99/$9.99/€ 7.99

Another one that’s slightly older now (although it did have a sequel released in 2018) in the big puzzling world of Q.U.B.E. Being a first-person puzzle game can be quite the tricky thing to do, especially on the PC market, because everyone instantly assumes you’re trying to be Portal, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t my first impression of Q.U.B.E.

Upon starting the game, you’re instantly greeted with a pristine white set of test chambers, as a mysterious voice – which may or may not be trustworthy – explains the situation to you. Needless to say, I started to roll my eyes at this, as I thought I was in for another Quantum Conundrum situation. However, once all the exposition had been dumped on my the puzzles started coming my way, and I was rather pleased with what I found.

The basic premise is that there are lots of differently coloured blocks in every chamber, and they all do different things based on their colour. You can interact with these blocks by either pulled them out or pushing them in to make your way to the exit on each level, and the difficulty progresses from there.

Like most puzzle games, I found myself speeding through the early areas before the game eventually introduced enough mechanics to grind me to a halt and have to think about what I was doing. The game splits itself up into chunks, and each section focuses on a different type of mechanic, for example: Manually positioning blocks to reach the exit, making a ball the right colour to go in a hole and using gravity manipulation to position blocks to open the door. So far though, the game has never overlapped any of these mechanics (aside from the very base ones) and I worry that it will never combine any of the things I’ve learned together to create a real challenge. Like I said though, I’ve not yet completed the game, so that may happen in the final levels.

The story so far has been something I’ve been happy to ignore, you have two voices in your ear telling you opposite things about what’s going on, and you can work out for yourself which one is lying. It’s certainly nothing new, and it really doesn’t help quell the number of people unfavourably comparing it to Portal, so I tend to just ignore it. It does, however, lead to long stretches between puzzle where you just stand there and watch the world very slowly go by while the game tells you the story, so that could’ve been implemented much better.

The only other big flaw is something that will admittedly only affect a minority of players but does seem pretty important. This game is entirely reliant on you being able to identify different colours in order to work out what each thing does, and while there are contextual clues around the world, there is no colourblind mode to play the game with. I did check and the sequel does have a colourblind mode in it, but one was never added to the original, so be warned.

Despite these flaws, the game is still a very fun and challenging puzzle game. it’s managed to nicely tow that line of difficulty where I’m not flying through everything, but I’m also not getting frustrated at them. It has a whole host of ideas that I’ve not seen anywhere before and the focus it puts on each mechanic individually is something I wish more puzzle games did. Is it as good as Portal? No, not by a long shot, but am I going to see it through to the end and have a good time doing so? Yes, absolutely.

Grade: B

So there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, if you’ve played these games then let me know what you thought of them, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back here this time next week where I’ll be running down the best Pay-Per-View openers in WWE history!

WWE Wrestlemania 36: Every Match Ranked

Well, it’s been one hell of a bumpy ride leading up to it, but Wrestlemania 36 is in the bag and it was genuinely so much better than I thought it was going to be. Given all the circumstances surrounding this one, I honestly thought we were in for some major disappointments on this show and while there were still some definite low-lights, I thought the positives far outweighed the negatives.

Well, I’m not going to waste any more time on the intro, there’s a lot to cover, so let’s get covering.

18 – Liv Morgan def. Natalya
(Kickoff Show)

I mean, what do you want me to say? It was a very short pre-show match that was announced 4 hours before the show began. It was fine, but not even slightly noteworthy.

There were EIGHTEEN matches on this show, I’m not wasting my time doing an in-depth analysis of this match.

17 – Cesaro def. Drew Gulak
(Kickoff Show)

Ditto, except this one was slightly better because it didn’t have Natalya in it.

16 – Edge def. Randy Orton
(Last Man Standing)

I honestly don’t know why I bothered getting my hopes up for this one.

I just thought that maybe given that it was Edge’s big return match and that this has been an extremely intense feud, that we’d get some really exciting action throughout this one, as these two men attempted to hospitalize each other. Instead, we got a Randy Orton match…in hindsight, I should’ve seen this one coming.

There was about a minute of exciting stuff at the start as Orton got the jump on Edge and I also enjoyed the finish, with it coming full-circle in their feud. The problem was that in between those interesting bits was OVER HALF AN HOUR of absolutely nothing even remotely interesting. I don’t understand how people can defend over 30 pissing minutes of these two men slowly ambling their way around the Performance Center occasionally stopping to hit each other with some extremely basic moves.

Even Edge’s elbow drop onto the table was something we saw night one with Owens & Rollins, so what’s the point? Even if I had enjoyed this match, I think I would’ve said that 36 minutes was WAY too long, but given that I hated a good 90% of it, I just don’t see anything redeeming about it.

15 – Braun Strowman def. Goldberg(c)
(Universal Championship)

Like I said in my predictions, I’m happy with the result. Braun as world champion is long overdue as he’s been on an absolute tear for the last few years, even if he has cooled off a bit now. That said, the match was trash.

Admittedly, it’s no different to most of the other Goldberg matches we’ve seen recently, but that doesn’t make it good. Somehow this one seemed even more plodding and formulaic than the previous ones. At least in his match with The Fiend, there was the odd hint of something a bit different happening, but this one really was just as simple as they come. Goldberg spammed the Spear 4 times, Braun kicked out. Braun spammed the Running Powerslam 4 times, Goldberg didn’t kick out. Maybe if this was the first time we’d seen a match like this then I’d be more positive of it, but it’s absolutely nothing special and ended up being very boring to watch.

As much as I’m happy Braun has won a world title, I don’t think anyone should be hoping for a particularly long or glorious reign here. As soon as all this has blown over and things are back to normal, Braun is going to be dropping that title to Roman Reigns and we can all get back on whatever course was originally planned for the summer.

14 – Elias def. King Corbin

Maybe it’s just because my expectations were so low, but I actually thought this match was ok.

It started out a bit slow with most of the trappings we’ve come to expect with a Corbin match. As Corbin took the time to slowly wear down Elias in a rather boring series of rest holds, but once we broke past that I thought business actually picked up a decent amount. Elias is one of those people that gets so few opportunities that I often forget that he’s a solid wrestler and I think he did a good job of displaying what he can do in this match.

It wasn’t anything special, but I think they made the most of the time they had to create a decent contest between two very clearly defined characters, which is really the bare minimum of what I want to see from wrestling. I’m also happy Elias got the win, I don’t think it’ll lead to him doing anything particularly interesting just based on his track record, but you never know.

13 – The Street Profits(c) def. Austin Theory & Angel Garza
(Raw Tag Team Championships)

Yup, it was tag team title match that hit all the right notes, was a nice bit of fun to bridge the gap between the marquee matches and I don’t really have a bad thing to say about it other than it didn’t blow me away.

The Street Profits retaining the titles was definitely the right move and I hope they get a chance to do something substantial with the titles following this match. I think a feud with The Viking Raiders could be gangbusters if AOP are out injured again. I’m not entirely sure what happens for Theory & Garza following this, I imagine Theory will go back down to NXT being able to brag about the Wrestlemania match under his belt, while Garza will go back to being involved with Andrade in the US title scene. Hopefully, a match between the pair is on the horizon.

Other than that, this match was fine. The right team won and I don’t think it hurt the team that lost too much. Also, Bianca Belair showing up was a nice surprise.

12 – Aleister Black def. Bobby Lashley

Here we get to the “it was fine” section of the show, where I struggle to find things to say about the matches because they were all “just fine”. The action was solid the entire way through and I think this match did a good job of doing what it was supposed to do (that being, make Aleister Black look good).

I thought the bit between Lana and Lashley where she told him to…stop beating up Aleister Black…because apparently, he wasn’t doing it the right way. Does seeing Lashley do the Spear get Lana off or something? Is that what we were supposed to infer from this? I guess it sows the seeds of descent between the couple, but after going through so much bollocks with them getting together in the first place, it feels like it’s way too soon for them to suddenly start falling apart.

The main thing I liked about this match was the finish. The Black Mas is just the absolute best move and it looks absolutely brutal whenever he hits it. That goes double for this instance, where Lashley ran directly into it. I just really hope that when things get back to normal, WWE actually gives Aleister Black something substantial to do. I love the guy as a wrestler, but I’m getting bored of these matches where the only purpose is to give Black a win, they need story and intrigue, otherwise, the audience is going to get very bored, very fast.

11 – Becky Lynch(c) def. Shayna Baszler
(Raw Women’s Championship)

Ok, I’ve got some pretty negative things to say in regards to this match, but first, the positives.

I loved the chemistry between these two here. Right out of the gate the intensity was palpable as both women just wailed on each other and I enjoyed that the more hard-hitting style prevailed throughout. Becky didn’t piss about character-wise and was all business when it came to taking on Shayna which was exactly what I was hoping for and Shayna responded by being her usual, wonderfully clever and brutal self. Those kicks Shayna was levelling Becky with towards the start were wonderfully vicious and that kind of offence was scattered through the whole of this match. I found myself really engaged in the action.

Then it very suddenly ended…in less than 10 minutes…with Becky retaining.

Let’s set aside for a second that the entirety of February and March was spent making Shayna look like an unstoppable beast only to lose. Let’s set aside the fact that Becky has already beaten absolutely everyone in the women’s division and there are no fresh matchups left for her to have with that title and her character is beginning to stagnate. Let’s instead focus on the fact that this match, the most heavily built-up women’s match for this show and the match that myself and many others were most excited to see only got EIGHT MINUTES. That right there is an absolute disgrace that spits in the face of how much WWE has built up women’s wrestling over the past decade. Becky Lynch main-evented Wrestlemania last year and now she’s having a half-length match that happens 3rd in the show so everyone’s forgotten about it by the end. That’s what I’m most angry about.

I mean, I’m not happy about Shayna losing either. I just don’t see where Becky can go from here, there’s no-one to face. If they’re just going to have a rematch where Shayna wins this time, then what was the point in her losing here anyway? Everything about this decision seems so backwards and pointless. I’m one of the few people that is still interested in the Becky Lynch character these days, but I can’t deny that I’m going to be getting off this ride if it doesn’t pick up soon and this was definitely not the way to go about it.

10 – Otis def. Dolph Ziggler

I’ve been on the fence about this storyline pretty much its entire lifespan. So I’m very glad to say that I enjoyed the storytelling in this match a great deal.

Admittedly, I’m not the biggest fan of Sonya just suddenly becoming Dolph’s cornerman despite heavily denying that she was behind the texts in the first place. Although, my main gripe is with the fact that Sonya Deville should be a Baszler/Rousey esque ass-kicker instead of standing around cheering on the guy she wanted to set her best friend up with. That said, having her present for the match was necessary given the way things played out.

The match itself was entirely just a big spotlight for Otis, who I’m very slowly coming around on. I’ve been extremely resistant to his extremely weird and stupid character presentation, but each time I see a match with him like this, I get just a little bit closer to being on board. As for the finish, I do love me a little bit of poetic justice and Ziggler certain got that and when it comes to Otis getting the girl, I certainly couldn’t shout down that decision. It was a warm and lovely moment for us all in these trying times.

9 – Bayley(c) def. Lacey Evans, Sasha Banks, Naomi, Tamina
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)
(Elimination Match)

This match was very clearly divided into three stages. There was everything up until Tamina was eliminated, there was the section where Bayley & Sasha worked together to dominate everyone else and then lastly, there was the final two.

The first phase was a lot more fun than I think it had any right to be. Unfortunately, I’m just never going to care about Tamina, I just don’t have it in me, but she put on a good showing here. Admittedly, she didn’t do a whole lot, but what she did do, she did well. Once she was gone, the match slowed quite a bit as Sasha & Bayley looked to pick Naomi apart and – aside from a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it comeback from Naomi – it was a lot of boring rest-holds and basic manoeuvres.

Once that was out of the way and Lacey Evens got involved in the action again, things really picked up. I enjoyed the subtlety in the way they went about sowing the seeds of descent between Sasha & Bayley. I always hate the trope where one person gets mad at the other for hitting them even though it was so very obviously an accident, so I’m glad that didn’t cause the pair to fall apart here. I also love that Bayley pushing Sasha out of the way of Lacey’s attack is what caused her to be eliminated. Not to mention, it was one HELL of a Women’s Right that Lacey clocked Sasha with, I’ve never liked that movie, but I definitely bought into that one.

Then we got down to the final two and things really got going. I think this is a good example of how far Lacey Evans has come over this past year when you compare her performance in this match to her performance against Becky Lynch at last year’s Money in the Bank. Not only did she do a good job of wrestling an entertaining match, but she also convinced me she was going to win at one point, I was genuinely surprised when Bayley kicked out of the Moonsault.

Sasha getting back into the ring in order to help Bayley win was a good way to go about things too and that subtle look on Sasha’s face after the bell, along with Bayley’s look of doubt over whether or not Sasha was about to start beating her up is all that’s needed to start building the tension between the two. The turn didn’t happen here, because it didn’t need to happen here, but it will and this will be where it started.

8 – Drew McIntyre def. Brock Lesnar(c)
(WWE Championship)

So, this does seem like a bit of an odd placing because, from a pure mechanical standpoint, it was the exact same formula as Goldberg/Strowman, which I decried as being boring. So what makes this different? Well on one level, I love Drew McIntyre and the fact that he won the WWE title (becoming the first-ever British WWE Champion in the process) makes me so incredibly happy that it jumps up a few places by default. It’s more than just that though because this match knew exactly how to play off of previous Lesnar matches like this in order to give us something great.

There have been so many times since 2014 where we’ve seen matches go down exactly like this, always ending in the disappointment of Lesnar retaining. So they gave us that exact formula, Drew got a quick “almost” spot right at the start and then Lesnar got to work hitting suplexes and F-5’s and I bought into it. With each F-5 my mind immediately jumped back to all the other times we’d seen a promising title contender be put away and with the 3rd F-5 especially, I was certain we this was destined to end the same way.

And then it didn’t end the same way.

As where Goldberg/Strowman was a bunch of finishers with no point behind them. This match made each finisher count and each finisher build the tension to finish it and with every kick out Drew made, that tension built and built. Even once Drew had hit the 4th Claymore Kick, those past memories of Brock winning despite all odds flood back in and you expect him to kick out right up until the moment he doesn’t.

This match was by no means a masterpiece, that’s why it’s only half-way up the list, but it’s a clear example of why sometimes this formula works for a match when the circumstances surrounding it are right.

7 – Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross def. The Kabuki Warriors(c)
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)

Ironically, I think this match suffered slightly from its placement as the show opener.

Don’t get me wrong, I thought the in-ring action was great and I’ll talk more about it in a second, but the fact that it was first on the show, meant that I wasn’t used to there being no noise in the arena at all and I was quite off-put by the weird atmosphere it created. This is no fault of the wrestlers but the fact is, as the show went on I got used to that atmosphere and I wasn’t thinking much about it for the rest of the night, however, in this opening match I found it really jarring and I think it took away from my enjoyment somewhat.

That said, on a rewatch this morning, I thought it was a great match. Unlike a few other matches on the show, this one got plenty of time and all four women involved used that time to great effect in order to create the usual fun chaos that I love tag-team wrestling for. The quiet arena noise meant that they could add nice little nuances to character moments. I especially liked Alexa being told off by the referee and replying “sorry, old habits die hard” which was just a wonderful line that gave me a good giggle.

As for the titles changing hands, I certainly can’t find fault in the decision. I think this is a circumstance where I would’ve been happy either way, although perhaps switching the titles lends itself to having a greater variety of opponents and we can see some new matchups when things in WWE restart instead of retreading the same ground.

6 – Sami Zayn(c) def. Daniel Bryan
(Intercontinental Championship)

While this isn’t what I’d hoped it would be from an in-ring perspective, I still think these two were able to create something unique and interesting to watch here.

I adore the way Sami Zayn seems to be going about his matches now. He’s truly taking the phrase “chicken-shit heel” to its logical extreme and has created an absolute bastard of the character that I just desperately want to see get his arse kicked. Bryan did a wonderful job of playing off of this too, in fact, everyone involved in this story fulfilled their role to perfection, with Gulak doing all he can to make it fair fight as Nakamura & Cesaro just play directly into Sami’s schtick (although I’m still not 100% why they’re ok with helping Sami be champion, what do they get out of it?).

What really elevated this was that they made full use of the fact that we could all very clearly hear them talking in the ring in order to enhance their story. Zayn is an absolute master when it comes to words and his talent was on full display here as he pleaded with Daniel Bryan and said just about every manipulative thing he could think of in order to get Bryan to lower his guard. Once again, Bryan knew exactly how to respond to all of it, I especially loved the moment where he just let Sami walk off only to blindside him.

While I’m not the biggest fan of Bryan going down to one Helluva Kick, I think the manner in which Sami retained was perfect for the story that’s being told, both in this match and with Sami’s reign in general. I’m not sure if a rematch with Bryan or a match with Gulak is what’s going to be on the cards next, but whatever it is, I want to see more stuff like this, it’s very entertaining.

5 – John Morrison(c) def. Jimmy Uso, Kofi Kingston
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
(Ladder Match)

As we were expecting earlier this week, The Miz was pulled from this match due to health concerns and this became a triple threat ladder match instead of a tag match. Luckily, it didn’t hamper the quality of the match one bit as these three men worked their absolute arses off to make an extremely fun match.

As is always the way with a big ladder match, listing spots really is the only way to get across how brilliant it was. Things started off with the three men exchanging Monkey Flips of all things, which is a bit weird but I’m into it, which led directly into all three men grabbing their own ladders and scrambling for the titles at the top. From there the match devolved into all the crazy trimmings we’ve come to expect from ladder matches. Ladders were used in some brutal looking spot, people jumped onto them, threw others down onto them, used them as an aid to leap great distances and just generally flung themselves about the ring every which way.

I know people were a bit confused by the finish, but I actually thought it was very unique and clever. With all three men unhooking the titles and holding onto the at the same time, I loved the way they exchanged glances being like “well…now what?” only to start fighting to try to be the last men holding onto the titles. This was made even better as Morrison won the match essentially by accident, yanking the titles off of the hook as he was knocked out and fell to his doom. It follows the pattern of how Miz & Morrison have been retaining their titles thus far and just allows The New Day and/or The Usos to continue their beef when things in WWE get rolling again.

4 – Kevin Owens def. Seth Rollins (twice)
(No Disqualification)

While you could argue that the in-ring action wasn’t as good in this compared to a match lower down in the list like the Smackdown Tag Title match, I think the story told and more importantly, the way it was told, is what puts this one up so high in my book.

The first half of the match was full of the fantastic action you’d expect from two top-tier wrestlers such as these. After seeing him spend all of 2019 floundering character-wise it’s such a refreshing feeling to see Rollins go back to his true heel routes as it’s absolutely where he shines. Owens meanwhile, just gets more and more brilliant as a babyface each and every day. He was so amazing as a heel that I honestly wasn’t sure a face turn would work, but he has this way of making everything word and facial expression seem so sincere and real that I just can’t help but route for him.

When the DQ finish happened I’ll admit I was ready to go off on one about what wasted potential this whole thing was, but I soon ate those words. Owens picking up the mic and goading Rollins into restarting the match was such a brilliant moment and does wonders to make Owens look like such an incredible badass. I wasn’t quite on board with the people comparing him to Stone Cold up until now, but that moment drew those same feelings out of me.

It was an incredibly well-told story of Owens trying everything he can to get his Wrestlemania moment and beat Seth Rollins and he sure as hell earned it in this match. Not just with calling Rollins out but the jump off of the Wrestlemania sign was such a brilliant visual and I’m sure it’ll be making the video packages for years to come. This match ticked almost all of my boxes and I’m very happy it went down the way it did.

3 – The Undertaker def. AJ Styles
(Boneyard Match)

I really did not think I’d love this as much as I did. Seriously, this was brilliant.

I can totally understand how it might not be for everyone and if you’re someone who didn’t like this match then I understand, I genuinely do, but I had so much fun watching this one play out that I can’t say a bad word about it.

It was incredibly goofy and incredibly dumb but in just the right way. I often talk about certain things in wrestling “falling on the wrong side of silly” and this is the correct side of silly that I’m referring to. The crew who put this together did an absolutely wonderful job of creating such a tense atmosphere throughout the whole thing that was absolutely perfect for telling the story they wanted to tell and absolutely no small detail was left out.

AJ’s entrance was perfect and seeing a new side of Biker Taker was exactly what this match needed. It wouldn’t have worked with “The Deadman” I don’t think, so instead we got the American Badass who wanted nothing more than to put this young punk down and I was just so into it. The camera work was a little shakier than I would’ve liked but I still think it was shot wonderfully, it wasn’t shot like a wrestling match in the slightest and that’s exactly how it should’ve been. It played out like a major fight-scene on a TV show and it absolutely worked.

Of course, Gallows & Andreson got a bunch of randos to dress and druids. Of course, all of those druids then attacked one at a time easily allowing The Undertaker to dispatch of all of them in record time, why wouldn’t that happen exactly like that? The whole thing had a wonderful sense of flow to it as each man took just the right amount of phases on offence, with The Undertaker showing AJ that he can still go in Act 1, AJ getting the upper hand and pushing Taker to the brink of defeat in Act 2 and The Undertaker quite literally rising from his grave and putting AJ in his place for Act 3.

If you’re going to do a match like this that’s totally weird and out there, then this is how you’ve got to do it. It can’t just be a regular match that’s shot in a slightly weirder way, that’s the kind of thinking that turned me off of The Final Deletion, it has to be an entirely different feeling fight, favouring in-depth storytelling over exciting action and shot like it’s for a TV Show.

Like I said, I can understand why this might not be for everyone, but it was 100% for me and the simple fact of the matter was that I could not wipe the smile off of my face the entire time I was watching it; and at the end of the day, that’s all I want from my entertainment.

2 – Charlotte Flair def. Rhea Ripley(c)
(NXT Women’s Championship)

While this show is mostly going to be remembered for the weirder matches (more on that in a moment) I think it’s important to note that we still got some absolutely brilliant traditional wrestling matches and this is far and way the best example of that on the show.

Giving these two the opening slot on Night 2 was the perfect place for it to go, it meant the match got a whopping 20 minutes, which was plenty of time to pull off all the brilliance that two wrestlers as amazing as these can pull off. Despite not taking place at a Takeover event, it was most certainly a match worthy of the name NXT.

The dynamic between these two was absolutely perfect, with Rhea coming in with a head full of steam and ready to prove her worth, while Charlotte has that little element of cockiness to her, not necessarily because she’s buying into her own hype, but because she knows it drives Rhea insane. Those moments at the start where Charlotte is clearly not taking things seriously and easily slipping out of Rhea’s manoeuvres was such a great character touch and Rhea responded perfectly, as she got visibly frustrated at Charlotte’s attitude.

Once the action got underway properly, it was a fantastic technical wrestling contest that you’d expect from two of the best wrestlers on this show. There was plenty of back-and-forth with both women get to look fantastic. I loved the thread of Charlotte viciously destroying Rhea’s knee and Rhea desperately trying to not let it affect her. Ever time Rhea got back up on offence my blood started pumping and I felt the excitement of the match the whole way through.

In my predictions, I described Rhea losing to Charlotte as “catastrophic” but in hindsight, having now watched the match, I actually don’t hate the decision as much as I thought I would. I still think Rhea winning would’ve been the better choice, but looking at the arguments for what could come for both Rhea and Charlotte in the coming months, I actually think there’s a clear upside here. For one thing, whoever on NXT dethrones Charlotte is going to get a HUGE boost and for Rhea, there’s a whole host of possibilities. She could show up on Raw or Smackdown and start tearing the house down like the star she is, or she could even enter an extended programme with Charlotte on NXT where they trade the belt once or twice in Takeover matches.

I can’t deny that the voice in the back of my head that is extremely worried that Rhea is going to go the same way that Asuka did after she lost to Charlotte is screaming right now. However, I’m choosing to remain optimistic as it was such a brilliant match and I don’t want to be a downer.

1 – The Fiend Bray Wyatt def. John Cena
(Firefly Fun House Match)

This was MENTAL. When I saw the Boneyard match Night 1, I honestly didn’t see how this would be able to top it, but my God this was something truly special and something that could only work with a character like Bray Wyatt.

After Cena spent the weeks leading up to this saying he was going to bury Bray Wyatt and finally rid the WWE of him, calling him “overhyped” and “overprivileged” this was a complete and total dissection of John Cena as a character. Cena has taken plenty of losses over the past few years, but it never feels like he’s actually been humbled by any of them. He always comes back a few months later his same old-self ready to try and take someone else down. So this incredible story was told here of Bray Wyatt forcing John Cena to face everything he’s ever done in his career in order to show him the inherent hypocrisy in everything he preaches, along with the buried anger at how his role in WWE has changed.

The sheer level of genius behind the twisted humour of ever segment is just incredible, helped so much by the fact that John Cena was clearly loving every second of it and performed his role to the absolute best of his abilities. The parodies of various segments in John Cena’s career, be it his debut against Kurt Angle, his Dr of Thuganomics side and even comparing him to nWo Hulk Hogan with how he ran roughshod over the whole company for several years. It wasn’t just shots at Cena though, there were parodies of 80’s WWE and they were even allowed to take a shot at Vince McMahon himself, using his now-infamous “such good shit” line that Jon Moxley used to criticise Vince on his Talk is Jericho appearance (which, by the way, is a great way to defang all the shots AEW are taking at WWE).

That wasn’t even the best part though. The best part was that this actually managed to undo the damage that Wyatt’s loss did to Cena at Wrestlemania 30. Bray’s whole point in that feud was the Joker-esuqe idea of “it doesn’t matter if you beat me, because if I turn you evil in the process then I still win” they even went as far as redoing that pivotal moment where Cena had the chair in his hands. At Mania 30, Cena refused to hit Bray with it, but here, after being faced with all of his failures and buried anger, he barely hesitated in swinging it at Bray.

With that, the journey was complete, Bray had proved that he was right all those years ago and that Cena is a complete and total fraud when it comes to what he preaches. So all that was left was to dispose of him physically, which The Fiend did in no time at all in the most brilliant fashion possible. That moment at the finish, where The Fiend was holding Cena and it zoomed in on Cena’s face, using Cena’s very own words from a few weeks ago “ending the existence of the most overhyped and overprivileged WWE superstar” as the final nail in his coffin was absolutely fantastic writing.

Not only did this match exceed my expectations, but I honestly can’t even sit here in hindsight and think of anything they could’ve done to make it better. Instantly, The Fiend’s loss to Goldberg is forgotten about and Bray Wyatt is the most feared character in WWE once again.

On top of that, this was something truly unique and something that only could’ve happened at a Wrestlemania like this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy about the circumstances surrounding it, but WWE proved once again that when their backs are against the wall, they knock it out of the park every single time.

I don’t think we’ll ever see anything quite like this again and I mean that in the best way possible. THAT is what this show is going to be remembered for and I honestly think this whole show will go down as one of the best Wrestlemanias we’ve ever seen for that very reason.

WWE Wrestlemania 36: Predictions & Analysis

Ok…ok. Let’s all just take a second to breathe…

We all nice and calm? Yes? Good. Now WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!

I mean, obviously, we know what’s going with the world as a whole, but as to what WWE are doing with this show…I honestly don’t have the words. First, there was talk of it getting postponed until June, then they announced they were going to do it from the Performance Center with no crowd, then suddenly it was a two-night event and now it turns out it’s technically already happened because they TAPED it last week and NOW there’s a whole bunch of confusion over who actually is and isn’t wrestling on the show. A bunch of reports came out about Asuka, The Miz & Cesaro all refusing to wrestle, but apparently, that might’ve been WWE leaking some fake info to throw people off the scent? I honestly have no idea what going on, but it sure it WILD.

The real kicker is that despite all of this craziness, I can’t help but feel incredibly underwhelmed.

I know, of course, it’s not WWE’s fault. No-one could’ve seen this coming and given the circumstances, there is honestly no “right way” to go about this. Running the show at the PC has its downsides, but rescheduling for June, when we don’t know if the current global crisis will be over by then is arguably just as bad of a decision. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not nearly as excited for this show as I was a month ago and I honestly don’t think it’s going to be as good as it could’ve been. Again, not WWE’s fault in the slightest, but it’s still true.

Still, I’m not going to go in with the mindset of hating it, I’m going to do my best to give it a chance since, on paper, almost all of these matches promise great things. It’s true that the lack of a crowd will take something major away from the matches, but they could still be fun to watch.

So let’s get predicting.

OH and just to clarify, I haven’t seen any spoilers from last week’s tapings of this show because that would defeat the point.

Aleister Black vs Bobby Lashley

Oh goodie, it’s a “we need to fill two nights” kind of match.

It’s hard to be critical of a match like this because we’re all well aware that it wouldn’t be happening if the current situation wasn’t as it is; or at the very least, we would’ve got some build to it if the circumstances were normal.  I think it could be a pretty good match, Lashley can pretty selectively put on surprisingly good matches so if everything comes together between these two we might be spending Monday talking about how we were pleasantly surprised by this one.

Aleister Black has got to win though, for the same reasons he’s had to win every PPV match he’s had over the past year or so. I’m really hoping that this match ends the “match for the sake of giving Black a win” phase of his story and we actually give him something with a bit of meat to it next. Still, as far as high-profile wins go, I think beating Lashley is a good one.

Elias vs King Corbin

Ironically, this is a match I’m pretty certain would’ve happened regardless of the circumstances and yet I care so much less about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Elias and Corbin’s ok, but I’m just not buying the animosity between these two. The upside of Corbin’s character is that all he has to do is say a few mean words and you can understand the other guy wanting him to take him down a few notches, but I really think that both of these guys could’ve been doing something a little more interesting. Then again, we’re not getting another Corbin vs Reigns match, so I guess I should be happy about it.

I’m pretty certain King Corbin is going to win this one. He’s spent the past few months losing to Roman Reigns over and over again and it’s not like WWE have ever cared about building Elias up as a legitimate star. I imagine Elias will use Gronk’s help to get one over on Corbin after the bell, but I’m fully expecting the actual win to go to Corbin.

Otis vs Dolph Ziggler

I really didn’t think this would get this far, but good on everyone involved for making it work.

I’ve made it clear before that I’m not really digging Otis as a personality, I think he falls just on the wrong side of silly for me. That said, I’ve actually been relatively invested in this storyline, I think it’s been well-written for the most part and has served its purpose of building Heavy Machinery up and stopped them from being “just another tag team” which so many pairings are right now.

I’m not overly invested in the outcome of this one, but I think if they get the level of shenanigans right, then I’ll come away from it having an enjoyable time at the very least. I’ve got to go with Otis on this one though, otherwise, this whole thing will have been for nothing in my view, it’s not like Dolph Ziggler needs the win and after this whole saga, I think we all just want to see the happy ending where the guy gets the girl…and then the girl’s friend starts beating the shit out her.

The Street Profits(c) vs Austin Theory & Angel Garza
(Raw Tag Team Championships)

I mean…ok?

I know there have been plenty of weird decisions made in the build to Wrestlemania this year, but this strikes me as one of the weirdest. At least when Andrade was in the match I could say it made some amount of sense and if he got injured then fair enough on finding a replacement but…why Austin Theory?

Don’t get me wrong, I like Theory, I think he’s a great wrestler, but out of everyone on the whole roster they could’ve picked to fill this role…why him? There’s no rationale behind this as far as I can tell and I don’t just mean in storyline, I mean in general. Admittedly, I certainly can’t think of anyone better to put in that spot, but it still feels weird.

Regardless of the strangeness surrounding it, I’m pretty confident this will be a good match. I have very little negative to say about any of these 4 men when it comes to their in-ring work and provided this gets a decent amount of time, this could be the sleeper hit of the weekend. The Street Profits should win this one because Theory & Garza winning would be stupid and they’d probably only hold the belts for about a week.

The Kabuki Warriors(c) vs Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)

Alexa Bliss! I remember her.

I don’t mean to poke fun, but it really feels like Alexa has been away from the ring for ages now thanks to various injury scares and it’s almost like I’ve forgotten who she is to some extent. Her character is in this weird limbo where she hasn’t quite found her feet as a face yet outside of being Nikki Cross’ friend because everyone loves Nikki Cross.

Once again, I think the match will probably be a really fun one to watch, but I can’t say I’m all the invested in it. The Kabuki Warriors feel like they’ve been champions forever and I totally forgot that Bliss & Cross are actually who they won the titles from in the first place. It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw some form of character surprise here, with someone turning on their partner, although I couldn’t pick who. I don’t have any reason or justification behind that claim other than a gut feeling though, so who knows?

Picking a winner is a bit of dilemma too because I don’t feel like there’s much else for Asuka & Kairi to do with the titles. Which is extra weird when you consider they haven’t been defended for ages because Asuka’s been tied up with Becky and Shayna since January. On the other hand, I also don’t see any value in Bliss & Cross winning the titles back from the women they originally lost them too. I might be overthinking this, but I’m going with Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross to win the titles since Bliss has only recently returned to the ring. In addition to this, I can see Asuka & Kairi getting much more prominent roles as singles competitors to take on Shayna throughout the summer. I also think that Alexa’s already done all there is to do as a single star (at least until there’s a new crop of female talent on Raw & Smackdown), so the tag belts feel like the right move for her & Nikki Cross right now.

The Miz & John Morrison(c) vs The Usos vs The New Day
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
(Ladder Match)

Now, THIS is the kind of thing that gives me life. Crowd or no crowd, crazy ladder spots always look cool…assuming this match really is happening…

I honestly don’t know what else to say about this match other than it’s got a 99.9% chance of being brilliant. We already know that The Usos & The New Day have some of the greatest in-ring chemistry currently in the WWE, so you pile on top of that ladders upon ladders AND a wonderfully heelish tag team for both of them to be trying to take down and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a brilliant match.

Not only will it be a brilliant watch, but I’m also pretty even when it comes to picking a winner. I don’t think it will be The New Day and they’re the former champions, but between the other two teams, I think it could go either way. On the one hand, Miz & Morrison are still pretty hot as a team right now and they haven’t had a long enough reign to really show their true potential for what they can do with the belts in the modern-day. Then on the other, you have The Usos, who feel like they’ve been inches away from taking back the Tag Titles ever since they returned late last year. In the end, I think I’m going to have to go with The Miz & John Morrison because I’m picking a lot of face wins and a lot of title changes on this show, so this is a nice heelish win (probably achieved through sneaky methods) to balance things out.

Kevin Owens vs Seth Rollins

How long has this match been building now? Since about Survivor Series?

I’m not complaining too much, as I actually think Rollins’ heel turn and character change has been very entertaining for the past few months, but this feud has in some way been a part of Raw for so long that it’s going to feel weird without it. Assuming this is their only match…which it almost certainly won’t be, but that’s not important.

This match seems like a sure-fire hit to me. Both of these guys are brilliant wrestlers who seem to know each other quite well and I’m sure they’ll put on something fantastic to watch. I imagine they’ll be shenanigans galore involving AOP, Viking Raiders & Buddy Murphy in one way or another, but I don’t think it’ll take anything away from the match. Ultimately, the only thing that could potentially drag this match down is the same thing that could potentially ruin every match for the next two nights, which is the lack of a crowd.

This is one of the matches I’m least confident about picking a winner for. Both guys haven’t had many major wins recently and both arguably need them. I think Owens has the potential to be one of the biggest babyfaces in recent memory if his rise is booked well enough, but on the other hand, I think WWE are really high on Rollins’ new gimmick right now and I fully expect him to be the first challenger for the WWE title following Wrestlemania. I genuinely went back and forth on this one so much, this is actually the second time I’ve had to rewrite this section this week because of how much I’ve been flip-flopping. I’m going with Kevin Owens, I think he’s got the most to gain from this win and it’s not like it will hurt Seth all that much to lose after the year he’s had. Not to mention, with one member of AOP being out of action again, it seems like his group might be falling apart sooner than expected.

Sami Zayn(c) vs Daniel Bryan

Yes, yes, ALL the way yes, hook this match directly into my veins.

Since I first started watching NXT in late 2014, this is the match I’ve wanted to see. If you’ve ever read any of my wrestling-based posts before then you’ll know how much I adore Daniel Bryan as a competitor and I feel a very similar way about NXT Sami Zayn. Now, admittedly, this isn’t NXT Sami Zayn, but I still think it’s going to be just as great, if not better. I was very much against Zayn winning the title from Strowman last month, but seeing the direction his character has gone in since winning it and how truly insufferable he’s become, I take it all back, this is brilliant.

There’s so many moving parts in this story too. I had no idea that Bryan vs Gulak would lead to them forming this student/mentor relationship, where the veteran Daniel Bryan is the student, but by God is it entertaining. Then there is the additional factor of Nakamura & Cesaro as “The Artist’s Collective” which is as good of a name as I suppose and we’ve got ourselves 5 of the greatest in-ring technicians of this generation involved in this match.

I’m also quite in the air about the winner. Zayn’s barely had a cup of coffee with the belt and given how amazing of a character he’s been, it’d be a shame for him to lose the title so soon. Then again, that’s also what I thought about Strowman’s run with the title and look what happened there. Not to mention Daniel Bryan with the Intercontinental Championship will inevitably lead to another run similar to Seth Rollins’ time with the title a couple of years ago where every match he has with it is amazing. I’ve also realised that Bryan winning the IC title is pretty much the only logical way to progress this story Bryan has going on with Gulak right now. So for all of those reasons, I’m picking Daniel Bryan to win this one.

Bayley(c) vs Sasha Banks vs Lacey Evans vs Tamina vs Naomi
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)
(Elimination Match)

I’ve not been a fan of how the Smackdown Women’s title has been treated so far this year. This match is just another mark that goes to show how bad of a job WWE has done of building the Smackdown women’s roster to a point where there’s a legitimate contender for Bayley come Wrestlemania; especially when she’s been tearing the house down as a character for well over 6 months now.

If this gets given a good amount of time (and with two nights, it bloody well better) I think this could be a lot of fun. Multi-wrestler matches are always able to keep up a much more frantic pace and the elimination stipulation adds for lots of story potential in order to keep everything ticking over nicely. Four out of five of these women are good-to-great wrestlers and I’m optimistic at what they could put together here given the opportunity.

When looking towards the result, that’s a little more tricky. I think there are two competitors with a pretty good chance and one more with an outside chance, those women being Bayley, Sasha Banks and Naomi respectively. Bayley vs Sasha is something we’ve all been begging to see for literally years, but since her big return last September, Sasha’s got no major wins at all. So here’s how I think the final three will go down:
– We’ll be left with Bayley, Sasha and Naomi
– Bayley & Sasha will try to double team Naomi, but she’ll break through it
– Some sort of situation will happen where Naomi lays Sasha out, but Bayley immediately shit-cans her out of the ring, leaving Bayley and an unconscious Sasha in the ring
– At which point, Bayley will pin Sasha to eliminate her, going on to use some sort of underhanded tactic to defeat Naomi too.

I’m picking Bayley to retain for a couple of reasons. One, because I think she’s doing fantastic as champion and I don’t want to see it end. Two, I’m predicting a lot of title changes on this show, especially with the major men’s and women’s titles and this is the only one I can see not changing hands. Finally, if a Sasha face turn is where this is leading, then I think it makes more sense for Sasha to be chasing the belt for the next couple of months instead of Bayley and Bayley deliberately eliminating Sasha from this match will give her some legitimate beef to build off of.

Rhea Ripley(c) vs Charlotte Flair
(NXT Women’s Championship)

When Charlotte Flair won the Royal Rumble, I (and I think many others) was a little worried that we were going to end up with Charlotte vs Bayley, a match we’ve seen plenty of times by now and don’t need to see again. However, rather uncharacteristically, when faced with two bad options, WWE managed to pick a third option that was better in literally every way and now Rhea Ripley gets to be the absolute star she deserves to be.

As much as I ragged on WWE for mishandling the Smackdown women’s division, the NXT & Raw women’s division have both been on fire for a long time now and that goes double for NXT. Over Survivor Series weekend, Ripley went from a fairly popular babyface to the single most over wrestler on the NXT roster and her title win against Baszler last December is easily one of my favourite WWE moments from last year.

I don’t think Ripley could’ve got a better opponent than Charlotte either. Not only is Charlotte a masterful technical wrestler, but her character and attitude are the polar opposite to everything Rhea Ripley is known for. It creates this perfect underdog story where the rough-around-the-edges personality of Ripley is attempting to prove that she’s on the level of arguably the most successful female wrestler of all time.

I’m picking Rhea Ripley to win here because she just HAS to. Not only is she still incredibly over with the NXT fanbase, but she’s riding such a strong wave of momentum that losing to Charlotte could be catastrophic to her career trajectory. On top of that, how weird would it be if Charlotte was NXT Women’s Champion? I know we’re supposed to see NXT as an equal third brand now, but I just can’t picture Charlotte holding that title and going up against wrestlers like Dakota Kai, Bianca Belair and Io Shirai on a monthly basis, as brilliant as that would probably be.

John Cena vs The Fiend Bray Wyatt
(Firefly Fun House Match)

Well, not a bad consolation prize for Wyatt, admittedly.

In a twist that I don’t think many saw coming, this feud has weirdly benefitted from the lack of a crowd these past few weeks. Wyatt’s always had a much more sinister delivery style, but the total silence of the room he’s in adds so much to that feeling that it genuinely felt extremely creepy. Cena’s done a brilliant job – like he always does – of building up the hype for this match too. He’s playing more into Wyatt’s promo style and presenting himself as a slightly edgier version of himself than normal too. The verbiage Cena’s been using recently as he runs down Wyatt is a little bit of pulling back the curtain, but I think it works for the story that they’re trying to tell.

I honestly don’t know what this match is going to be like, but I feel confident in saying that it’ll be a good one. Wyatt’s brought something unique to the ring every time he’s wrestled as The Fiend and Cena hasn’t put on a bad match since about 2015, so I’m confident they can pull this one-off.

The Fiend Bray Wyatt has to win here. I know I stressed that it was vital for Ripley to win, but I’d argue Wyatt getting the win over Cena is even more important. After being made to look like a total chump against Goldberg at Super ShowDown, The Fiend is on the cusp of going the way of every other unique wrestling character from the past decade. That is to say, absolutely nowhere for the rest of time. If Wyatt loses to Cena, then it’s over, not just for The Fiend but for Wyatt as a whole in the WWE, there’s simply nowhere else for him to go. HOWEVER, a win over Cena will be the perfect way for The Fiend to regain his credibility and it might just be enough for WWE to pull out of this nosedive they’ve taken the character on since February. So this one really needs to happen.

The Undertaker vs AJ Styles
(Boneyard Match)

I’m looking forward to this one, but I’m also a little bit wary of it.

When The Undertaker wrestles a match these days, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s going to be a total shitshow (see Taker vs Goldberg) or surprisingly great (see Taker & Roman vs Drew & Shane) but this is AJ Styles we’re talking about and he can carry just about anyone to a 4-star match. I mean come on, if he can carry Shane McMahon to a surprisingly great Wrestlemania match, he can do the same with The Undertaker, no problem. That said, the idea of a “Boneyard Match” seems a bit weird and one of those situations that’s only happening because of the circumstances. I remain optimistic that it’ll be something unique and interesting, but I’m mostly expecting it to be reminiscent of the House of Horrors; a nice little oddity, but not all that good.

The story for this one’s been a little bit weird as it’s mostly just consisted of Undertaker repeatedly laying AJ out and many people have been criticising this for making people not care about the match, but I wholly disagree, all I ever needed to be fully invested in this match was the sentence: “The Undertaker versus AJ Styles.”

I’d love to say AJ will get the win here, but there’s simply no way that’s happening. There’s no way AJ is going to be getting another world title reign anytime soon and let’s be honest, that’s the only other place to go after you beat The Undertaker at Wrestlemania. The Undertaker is going to walk away with the win here following what was hopefully a really good 20-minute match.

Edge vs Randy Orton
(Last Man Standing)

Another match taking place on-location and I don’t exactly see how this one is going to work. Are they just going to have a ring in a different place from the PC? Or is this actually going to be taking place in someone’s backyard or something? At least with the Boneyard Match, I can picture the kind of atmosphere they’re going for, but this seems a little odd.

That said, it’s Edge’s big return match, so I’ve got very little to complain about. Just looking at that match graphic still fills me with excitement at Edge finally being able to return to the ring. As I didn’t become a wrestling fan until 2013, Edge was already retired by the time I start watching and it’s exciting to be a part of a brand-new match of his that actually stands a chance of being pretty good, unlike many other returning legend’s matches.

I know, it’s a weapons match, involving Randy Orton, which are usually my two biggest turn-offs when it comes to a big match, but there’s so much intensity between these two and such a brilliant story, that I honestly think this could be one hell of a match. Not to mention, since this is Edge’s big return match, I’d say odds are pretty good he’s going to go all-out to prove he’s still got it, which I’m sure he does. Edge is going to win this one because come on…how could he not?

Goldberg(c) vs Braun Strowman
(Universal Championship)

Welp, there goes everything I’d already written about this match.

Despite the question decisions leading up to it, I was actually quite looking forward to Goldberg vs Roman Reigns. I thought it had some real star power behind it and had an outside chance to be a really fun match, in a car-crash sort of way. However, circumstances change and Roman Reigns pulled out of the match due to health concerns(which is 100% a fair decision and people having a go at him for it are just being arseholes. The man had a leukaemia scare last year you heartless wankers).

So now, with about as much ceremony as you’d expect given the situation, Braun Strowman has been inserted in to fight Goldberg instead and…ok? Maybe if WWE were in a position to give us some build for this then I’d be more excited to see it, but as it stands, just seeing these two guys slapped next to each other and being told to fight doesn’t do anything for me. I could sit here and speculate over whether or not I think this will be a good match, but I don’t think much more effort will go into this than the usual Goldberg affair.

As for a winner, I guess it could be seen as up in the air a bit. Goldberg was very obviously supposed to lose the title here to Roman, so they might just go through with that, plus WWE love to “surprise” us with the last-minute replacement winning (although, since they do it almost every time, it’s not much of a surprise). There’s also the fact that I doubt Goldberg will actually be able to lift Strowman up for a Jackhammer, but they can work around that. Despite all that, I’m still going with Goldberg to retain. Once all this is over, Roman is winning that Universal title one way or another and we’ve already seen Roman vs Braun far too much for it to be exciting. There’s also the fact that WWE has shown zero evidence that it’s ever been willing to get behind Braun as a top guy (even though they should) they’ve had so many opportunities over the past three years and they’ve backed away from it every single time.

I certainly wouldn’t be upset if Braun won the title, but I’m still leaning towards Goldberg retaining at the right move here.

Becky Lynch(c) vs Shayna Baszler
(Raw Women’s Championship)

Ohhh, it’s so close I can almost taste it and it tasted wonderful.

This is easily the match I’m most excited in seeing on this show, mostly because of how long it’s been rumoured and how long we’ve had to wait to see if it was actually going to happen, but here we are and I’m hyped.

While many people have seen their interesting waning in Becky Lynch recently, I entirely disagree with that viewpoint. After dispatching of Asuka I think she’s taken a really interesting character turn of not taking any threat seriously and I love that. She’s spent a year on top of the Raw women’s division and has beaten literally everybody, why should she take this upstart seriously? If the match leans into this story as well, then I think we could be in for a brilliant story-heavy match, which tend to be the kinds of matches were Baszler really shines. Her heel-work is outstanding and in order for the audience to buy-in to her big time, she needs to let it flow in every way possible.

As you can probably tell from how much I’m gushing, I think this match is going to be great. Both of these women have already proven themselves time and time again to be two of the best women’s wrestlers on the planet – Shayna in NXT and Becky over the past 18 months on Raw & Smackdown – and seeing them clash like this is bound to be something special and is likely to launch the Raw women’s division into a new era.

As you’ve probably guessed, that “new era” entailed Shayna Baszler taking Becky down and walking away with her championship. Not only would a loss here be potentially devastating for Baszler’s career, knocking her down way too soon in the same way Asuka got knocked down at Wrestlemania 34, but also if Becky did retain, where would she go from here? There’s no-one left for her to fight, even if they did a shake-up, the only wrestler from Smackdown on her level that she hasn’t had a high-profile match with yet is Bayley and she’s tied up in a different storyline. We need fresh matchups and fresh faces at the top of the Raw women’s division to prevent it from stagnating this year and having Shayna at the helm will be the perfect way to do that. Not to mention it could lead to an Okada-Esque downward spiral for Becky that could make for a very interesting story.

Brock Lesnar(c) vs Drew Mcintyre
(WWE Championship)

I honestly didn’t think we were ever going to see this. For the past year, I’ve felt like WWE were never going to get behind Drew like they should. He kept taking really major losses to guys like Ricochet and Dolph Ziggler when he really needed to be winning on a regular basis. Then suddenly, 2020 began and it’s like something totally switched in the minds of creative and they decided Drew needed to be the biggest badass the world has ever seen. Beating Orton & Styles in a triple threat match, eliminating Lesnar from the Royal Rumble and then winning the damn thing after Roman seemed the sure-fire winner and suddenly he’s the most legit title contender Brock’s had in years.

For the longest time, I’d believed Drew was at his best when he was a heel who could destroy just about anyone, but since he’s turned face I’ve been so much more into him as a character because aside from being a wonderful man in real life, he’s transformed into this tough-guy, good-guy that gets what he wants seemingly through sheer force of will and I’m totally behind him now.

I think this will be a great match too. When Brock’s enjoying working with someone, he will go all-out to put on a good match with them, just look at his matches with Styles, Bryan & Rollins for proof of that and from what I’ve seen between these two interacting on TV and what Drew’s been saying in interviews, it’s clear Brock is loving working with Drew. I’m expecting this to be a mega-hoss fight in the best possible way, we’re going to see these two men try to destroy each other in just about every way possible and I think it’s going to be amazing.

I’m always hesitant to pick against Brock, especially considering Vince can lose interest in his pet-projects at any moment, but I’m sticking to my guns and saying Drew Mcintyre is coming away with the title here. Everything about the build to this match just feels like it’s his moment and I really hope it comes to fruition. I don’t often get patriotic, but if this Wrestlemania gives us the first-ever UK-born WWE Champion, it will have a place in my heart forever.

So there you have it! Those are my predictions for the hot-mess that will likely be Wrestlemania 36! Let me know what you think is going to happen, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. As this event is running over two nights, I’m going to wait until Monday and review both nights as a whole, ranking every match across both nights in one big article. So I hope to see you there!

Every Episode of Doctor Who Series 6 (2011) Ranked

After easily knocking it out of the park with Series 5, the pressure was really on for Moffat & Smith to make Series 6 just as good, maybe even better and well…let’s call it an incorrect dismount. I don’t hate this series and I honestly wouldn’t say there are even that many bad episodes featuring, however, there is a lot of mediocre stuff crammed into this one. Furthermore, I’d also say that this is the first series of the revival so far that hasn’t featured at least one “All-Time-Great” episode.

That said, there was still a lot of enjoyment to be had and Matt Smith’s performance as The Doctor hadn’t missed a beat since Series 5 and there are several episodes in this series where I’d argue that his acting alone is what saved it from being awful. Still, let’s take a look at each episode and see how things panned out.

12 – Let’s Kill Hitler

Ok, so now we’ve got to talk about River Song…oh boy.

So first of all, as a character, I like her. She has surprisingly great chemistry with just about anyone she shares the screen with and is one of the only characters whose personality remained consistent throughout the entirety of Moffat’s time in the role. She hits that sweet spot of being exactly the kind of hero The Doctor is while having some minor differences in her outlook on the world to make her feel like she’s actually a different person.

I’ll get more into the mystery surrounding her a bit later down the list because this episode takes place at a point where the mystery has been revealed. We know who she is, we know why she is and this episode decides that it’s going to rip that apart for the sake of a couple “gotcha” moments.

This whole episode suffers from the prequel problem because we know all of the future events that happen past this episode. Doctor Who is usually ok at weaving around these problems by using the “time can be rewritten” line, but the show went to great lengths to establish that the events at Lake Silencio (events in both River’s and The Doctor’s future) are fixed points and thus, can’t be changed.

I’ll admit, the moment where “Mel” regenerated into River was cool and I didn’t see it coming, but that’s pretty much the only positive thing I have to say about this whole thing. The scene immediately after where The Doctor & River are trying to one-up each other was very weird and felt more like a scene that got cut from Sherlock but Moffat didn’t want to let go of and then we have to watch The Doctor crawl around in pain for twenty minutes while rambling on about nothing in particular.

The only thing this episode actually accomplished was introducing the concept of the Teselecta (an concept I like a lot) but it’s not like that couldn’t have been done some other way that didn’t involve a load of Hitler gags along the way.

I think that’s what really bothers me about this episode, is that it lands on the wrong side of silly, while still trying to put forth serious plot developments and emotional moments. Don’t get me wrong, when done right, mixing in the silly and the serious can create some truly special stuff (just watch The Empty Child) but there’s no cohesion between the two sides of the writing here and it ends up just giving me emotional whiplash and causing both the jokes and the drama to become meaningless to me.

11 – The Girl Who Waited

I honestly thought I would like this one more when I rewatched it.

The main problem I have with this episode is the level of totally forced melodrama. For one thing, as an audience, we know that there is absolutely no chance that “old Amy” is going to actually be a part of anything past this episode, so there’s no tension there. There’s also this sort of forced conflict between The Doctor and Rory since The Doctor can’t get directly involved in the action and that’s fine to a certain extent, but it doesn’t really come across as all that interesting and once the business with the two Amys gets going it gets pushed to the side completely.

As for “the business with the two Amys” it doesn’t land for me at all. There was the potential to do something really hard-hitting emotionally here with the older Amy having to look upon the younger version of herself that will never have to suffer what she did but that conflict is quickly cast aside in exchange for them getting along and making jokes about Rory’s arse. Which, in a bubble is fine, but sticks out like a sore thumb when everything around it is being played off so seriously.

This brings me to the ending where The Doctor turns into a total arsehole who refuses to take responsibility for anything. First of all, we all knew he was lying when he said old Amy could come with them, so that twist held no weight for me at all and The Doctor just decides to make Rory make the horrific choice of which Amy to keep just because he doesn’t want to deal with it. I mentioned in the Series 5 review that Amy’s Choice is the only episode that actually nails the drama & tension in Amy & Rory’s relationship and watching this one back really affirmed my point on that one. The drama is forced, meaningless and ultimately forgotten about by the next episode.

10 – Closing Time

I had my problems with The Lodger, but at least it felt like these were characters who were evolving and growing with each other and had personalities outside of “James Corden” but this episode felt to me like it was written with the mindset of “James Corden said he’d do another episode, so we’re going to write one…also Cybermen, cos why not?”

I normally enjoy the more light-hearted episodes like this one, but a lot of the humour doesn’t quite land for me in this one. The Eleventh Doctor seemed to have a very large personality shift towards the end of his run from a serious, war-weary traveller who can still bring fun and joy to those around him into a cartoon caricature who doesn’t act even remotely like any kind of actual person ever would and this is the first time that I notice these features of The Doctor’s character coming through a bit too strong.

There are so many sequences in this that are entirely dedicated to The Doctor being absolutely silly to the point of not even seeming aware of any form of social conventions to ever exist. The Doctor is an alien, I know, he’s eccentric and weird and he doesn’t necessarily understand human culture, but this takes those ideas to such ridiculous lengths that it stops being funny and starts feeling stupid. If you want to take a look at how to do this right, just look at the dinner scene in Boom Town, or the cyanide scene in The Unicorn and The Wasp or even The Lodger from the previous series.

Outside of that, this episode continued the descent of the Cybermen into a total side-show of a villain that poses basically no threat whatsoever and exist only for marketing purposes because casual fans of the show recognise them. The Cybermat was something that was just played off for laughs and the process of being converted into a Cyberman – a process that used to involve removing your brain while you’re still alive and turning your body into metal – is now just a vague energy thing that can apparently be overcome if you just REALLY don’t want it to happen.

It’s no coincidence that when, in Series 12, when it was first revealed that the Cybermen were going to be heavily involved that everyone felt disappointed. Thankfully, Chibnall surprised everyone by doing what I think is an amazing job with them (more on that another time), but it’s episodes like this that contributed to the Cybermen becoming one of the most disappointing villains in the modern era of the show.

It has some saving graces, there are a handful of funny jokes in there and James Corden does do a good job of keeping his character consistent, but there’s just too much dragging this one down for me to say I liked it.

9 – The God Complex

Once again, good concept, nice twist, not the best execution.

One of the biggest problems I have with this episode is how heavily it leans on its secondary cast. This isn’t bad on its own of course, episodes like Midnight and The Impossible Planet are great largely because of their secondary cast, but this is a situation where the characters that are introduced are entirely uninteresting and the episode relies really heavily on them to carry some pretty major scenes.

We’ve got the competent would-be companion, which is something we’ve seen so many times by this point that I knew she was going to die the moment The Doctor said he liked her. The guy who’s already gone a bit mad (I don’t remember their names and I don’t care about to look it up) by the time they get there was a good way of adding the mystery of what’s going on, but he’s not much of a character and the other two secondary characters are just there for the sake of it, one so they can die and the other to make unfunny jokes at their expense.

As for the monster and the mystery of the episode I thought it was fine. The monster doesn’t look very impressive but that’s not all that important, the concept of it being a creature that feeds off of people’s faith is nice and I actually think the idea of using people’s greatest fear to make them fall back on their greatest faith was a very clever twist. What I’m not so keen on, is the solution. The idea that after almost two whole series of travelling with The Doctor and forming such an incredibly strong bond with him, that one speech where he denounces his own actions will totally break this rock-solid faith Amy has in him? Not to mention that Amy has been listening as The Doctor goes through all this, so surely he knows him well enough to know exactly what he’s trying to do.

Then The Doctor just drops them off with a new house and car and is like “I can’t watch you die” out of absolutely nowhere and it makes no sense. It’s such an incredibly quick character turn for The Doctor, especially when you consider that when the start of Series 7 comes around, he’s flopped right back to wanting to keep them around at all times. It has no impact on any episode following this one and was just an excuse to get the two of them out of the way for an episode so we could give James pissing Corden the spotlight again.

Like I said, there’s a lot of really good ideas floating around here, but it has so much dragging it down throughout that I always come away from the experience feeling deflated.

8 – The Curse of the Black Spot

It’s pirate time!

I’m not entirely sure how to feel on this episode. It’s fun and stupid in places but the plot is surprisingly downbeat and muted for the most part. Where The God Complex has a good concept that was squandered, this was a pretty ok concept that was executed just about fine. The whole idea of the medical lady acting EXACTLY like a Siren is extremely weird and doesn’t make any sense if you think about it for any time at all, but I’m willing to forgive that for the purposes of adding to the fun, pirate theme.

I’d say the biggest problems here are a combination of setting and dialogue. A pirate ship is a very cramped setting and there’s not exactly much room for action to take place, this led to large chunks of the episode being very dialogue-heavy and unfortunately, I just wasn’t feeling it with this one. Most of the secondary casts and are just generic pirates, even the captain, who gets a much more significant amount of development doesn’t stretch very far away from those stereotypes, even his “redemption” at the end didn’t feel like he’d changed very much as a person, he just has a spaceship now.

When there was action though, I found myself getting into it like I’ve said, it was quite clearly written with a bit of fun in mind instead of being serious or tense and I can appreciate that for what it is. The twist for this one though, I can’t say I’m too thrilled with it – the “they’re not disintegrated, just teleported” twist has been done to death by this point – but I also can’t think of another way they could’ve resolved the episode while on a pirate ship.

It’s one of those rare cases where we have an episode that wasn’t all that great, but I can’t even say it could’ve been great if it was executed better. The concept was fine, but there was only so far it could go, which ironically means I’m not all that disappointed with it like I am with other episodes.

7 – The Wedding of River Song

OooK, time to talk about this series’ arc.

When it comes to set up, intrigue and the pace at which certain things were revealed, I think the series arc of Series 6 was a good one. When it comes to this episode concluding it, I’m somewhat in the middle on it. My main problem with the whole thing is how these series of events even triggered to begin with. How can River sudden overpower the suit? Why does changing a fixed point in time change things to this degree? Come to think of it, what even ARE fixed points in time? I mean, obviously, I know what they are mechanically, but their implications of the universe at large seem to be extraordinarily vague. On the surface, they seem like a clever device to prevent some of the problems that time-travel fiction normally suffers from, but when you think about it for any length of time, you realise they actually just create a whole new set of problems. A set of problems this episode brings right to the forefront of debate.

Aside from that, the whole plot feels quite loose and weird. We’ve got characters with extremely selective memories as to what they’ve retained during the fuck-up with time and it means we can’t really get any kind of emotional character progression or revelations. Why does Amy have to forget Rory again? What does that achieve from any kind of character perspective? All it does is allow the episode to kill about 5-10 minutes trying to push them together again, even though this timeline is going to be aborted by the end of the episode.

The action also has no flow at all. We go from The Doctor explaining past events, to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it action scene, followed by MORE of The Doctor explaining the plot, followed by Amy explaining everything the audience already knows about The Silence. At this point, we’re almost two/thirds of the way into the episode and we haven’t learnt anything new or done anything exciting. When the action finally does kick-off it has very little bearing on anything and simply serves as a stop-gap before our final talking scene to resolve the plot. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy talking scenes, I think they’re what makes this show shine above all others, but these are scenes filled with information that is either irrelevant because it’s an alternate timeline or stuff we already knew from earlier in the series.

Then there’s the resolution and here’s where I really don’t know how to feel. On the one hand, it was very clever, setting up the Teselecta like they did and having it be the perfect get-out-of-jail-free cards for this plotline, however it does cause a bit of confusion. Was The Doctor in the Teselecta all along or was it only the time where he survives? If The Doctor didn’t die, then how did it create a fixed point in time? And if we were to assume for a moment that The Silence’s plan was a success, wouldn’t that erase the OTHER fixed point in time where The Doctor supposedly dies on Trenzalore?

See what I mean? Fixed points in time create so many problems.

You might think from all of my complainings, that it should be lower down on the list but, for some reason, whenever I go back and watch this one, I actually have a decent amount of fun with it. The “all of history happening at once” thing might not make any sense but the shots of steam trains & hot air balloons running through London as Pterodactyls fly about the place is inherently fun. It’s the right kind of silly that I love this show for.

Like I said, I’m very “in the middle” on this one. It’s flawed, for sure, but it has its moments the keep me mildly enjoying it throughout.

6 – The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People

This episode could’ve been something really minor and only ever used to set-up the twist at the end, but thankfully, it turned into something quite good on its own.

The whole concept of the flesh is something that I find really interesting. The idea of creating an exact physical copy of you will always be creepy, even if you’re the one in control of it and if anyone ever pitched the idea in real life, I would almost certainly immediately picture them going rogue like this. That said, given the circumstances of the operation their running, it actually seems like a reasonable solution. It’s too dangerous to send in real people but too expensive to send in machines that will likely get damaged and replaced, so the flesh is a cheap and efficient alternative. But at the same time, of course, they were going to become sentient and try to replace you, you idiots.

The secondary cast are a large part of what makes this episode as good as it is. They really benefited here from having two-parts to work with as we got a really good idea of all of these people’s backgrounds along with their personalities. It makes things all the tenser when people inevitably start dying and we understand the personal stakes of everyone involved.

Speaking of tense, just about every confrontation between a person and a ganger has that in spades. I love the several sequences all the way through part-two where the two factions keep almost coming together as various people keep switching sides. Amy and Rory both get really nice rolls in this too, with Rory being extremely sympathetic towards the gangers, while Amy just can’t quite seem to comprehend them as real forms of life, especially when the ganger of The Doctor comes into play. This creates an interesting dynamic that thankfully doesn’t rely on any pointless relationship drama between the couple and gives The Doctor(s) a great role as the person trying to mediate the two sides.

What I’m not the biggest fan of is how it ends up just being a big “run away from the monster” sequence right at the end. I don’t mind that being a factor of the finish – you’ve got to get some action in there somehow – but I would’ve liked a slightly more peaceful ending than all the gangers killing each other (with a “noble sacrifice” to boot) and The Doctor & co being able to leave without having to worry about any of the consequences of the serious debates they took part in.

Also, the twist with The Doctors and their shoes was a good one, even if I saw it coming a mile off.

5 – The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon

From the end of the arc, we now look at the beginning.

This episode is pretty much entirely set-up for the various elements of the series’ arc and, for my money, it did a great job of it. Starting off the episode with watching The Doctor being murdered was quite the shocker and a really good way to kick things into gear in a big way immediately. Subverting that reveal by giving us an earlier version of The Doctor to run with for the whole season made that even better, immediately throwing so many questions into the air.

The plot that follows is great fun. The secondary cast really shines here, with Canton Everette Delaware III being an absolute stand-out in terms of one-off characters. He takes all of the best traits from your stereotypical 1960’s American and portrays this sassy, no-nonsense man that bounces really well off of the entire main cast. Nixon is also a joy to watch whenever he’s on-screen, even though most of the jokes are at his expense, the way he plays this down-to-Earth character that would rather just not have to deal with all this shit is weirdly endearing. I’d make a joke about Nixon as a president, but I’m not American and thus know very little about him other than that thing with Watergate.

As an introduction to The Silence, this does a great job of clearly establishing what they can do and making them seem like a rather formidable foe…aside from the bit where The Doctor and River just shoot a bunch of them, that was really weird. Speaking of River, I would’ve liked her to be a bit more involved in the development of the mystery since she knew exactly who the girl in the space-suit was the whole time. Looking back on it already knowing everything about River, she really does just seem clueless about the whole thing, I think it would’ve been great if she was subtly manipulating the mystery a bit more and pushing The Doctor towards the answers which she already knew.

One of the best things about the episode is the resolution. Them tricking The Silence into wiping themselves out was a very clever way to resolve things and follows the ethos that The Doctor needs to do more often, which is using his enemy’s greatest strengths against them. It was something we saw a lot of in the Davies’ era but it’s been a bit lost since then, with this being the glaring exception to that rule.

I’d honestly expected to have a bit more negative to say on this one, but looking back on it, I think it’s a really fun series opener that hits all the right notes and sets up a good mystery for the rest of the series. Ticks all of my boxes for sure.

4 – The Doctor’s Wife

This is an episode that my first instinct is always to cringe at it purely because of the title, but then I watch it and remember it’s nowhere near as bad as it first sounds, in fact, it’s a hell of a lot better than I could’ve hoped for.

The whole concept in this episode of the TARDIS becoming a human is…well, it’s not a great one. I like the idea of the TARDIS as this entity with its own consciousness and stuff, but to quite literally personify that consciousness seems like it was a bit much to me and I’d rather they hadn’t done it. That said, the writing and performance for the human TARDIS in this episode is surprisingly well done and although I’m not sure it’s how I would’ve liked it to be done, I still had a lot of fun with it.

It’s extremely well performed, for one thing, Suranne Jones who played Idris did a wonderful job of capturing a lot of the modern Doctor’s personalities in her performance, I really got the feeling that this was a being that had been with The Doctor for the entirety of their travels. I quite like how in awe The Doctor is at the whole situation too, the way he can’t seem to wipe the smile off his face when talking about her, even in the face of an undefined entity that’s trying to kill them. Speaking of which, the voicework by Michael Sheen who plays House is so wonderfully menacing, he feels like a being of pure malevolence and it almost gives me chills at certain points.

I wish The Doctor was a bit more active throughout the first two acts of the episode, but he really comes into his own at the finale. He’s able to bring this great confrontational energy to the whole thing and knows that the only way he’s going to beat House is by outsmarting him. My only nitpick about this is The Doctor’s line “fear me, I’ve killed them all” in reference to him wiping out the Time Lords, it’s very out of place compared to every other time The Doctor has ever brought up the Time War. It was a very effective line for the trailers though, so I can’t criticise it too much.

This is an episode that always pleasantly surprises me with how good it is when I watch it back. I never go in expecting very much and always come out the other side having enjoyed the experience immensely.

3 – A Good Man Goes To War

It’s just so much fun. There’s honestly very little else to it.

The longer the modern series goes on, the less often The Doctor gets to look like an out-and-out hero. It’s always weighed down with this darkness to it and often I think it dampens what should be some very triumphant moments. This episode stands as one of the exceptions to that point because, although it does take a bit of a turn at the end, for the most part, The Doctor looks like the hero we know he is all the way through this episode.

I think the pacing in this one is very well written. The way the first ten minutes or so before The Doctor shows up is built up very slowly, giving us an idea of exactly who this organisation are and even a look into some of the people behind it. While I’m generally not a fan of the narrative that The Doctor is this transcendent entity known throughout the entire universe (because let’s face it, in the grand scheme of the universe, 2000 years old is barely a blip) I buy that there’d be certain groups of people dedicated to doing everything in their power to track him down.

Then, once The Doctor does show up, things start moving a mile-a-minute and all I can do is sit back and enjoy the ride as The Doctor calls up just about every favour he’s ever been owed, giving us a fun look at all of the returning monsters & allies that the BBC still have the prosthetics for. The only thing that could’ve made it better is John Barrowman (who was originally planned to be in this episode until scheduling conflicts made it impossible and I’ve never been more upset to hear what could’ve been). It’s pure fanservice but it makes me happy every time I watch it back.

I’m not entirely sure I buy the idea of a child being conceived while the TARDIS is in-flight causes it to become part Time Lord (especially since The Timeless Child went and put a clear bookmark on the origin of the Time Lords) but I certainly think it’s the best explanation anyone could’ve come up with for the story Moffat wanted to tell and my nitpick is admittedly a minor one, so I’ll let it slide.

Then we get to the River Song reveal.

The thing is, while River being revealed as Amy & Rory’s daughter is a cool twist and a good use of time-travel mechanics in fiction, it doesn’t actually make much of a difference to any of the character’s stories as a whole. It doesn’t change the relationship between River and The Doctor at all, nor does it even seem to matter very much to Amy & Rory in the long-run. In terms of affecting the plot on any major scale, all it really means is that we don’t have to waste any time for the rest of the season trying to hunt down a baby. Overall, I felt that it’s a satisfying conclusion to that mystery, I just wish it had a bit more of a knock-on effect past this episode.

Outside of that, this episode is an absolute blast and I’ll never get bored of it.

2 – Night Terrors

I know, I was surprised too.

For every ranking so far, I’ve gone into it having a pretty solid idea of what the top 3 is going to look like and the so far the rewatches have brought no surprises on that front. So when I got around to Night Terrors I was expecting it to land somewhere in the middle purely because I don’t remember very much about it. Then I watched it and discovered that it’s a well-paced, tense and exciting ride through a plot that is way more compelling than it originally sounds.

At its heart, this is a story about a child learning to cope with their fears and trauma, alongside a father learning to understand his son and find the right ways to care for him. Only the child in question is an alien with undefined abilities to trap people in a wardrobe and turn them into creepy dolls. Storytelling 101, if you ask me.

This whole episode has total control over levels of tension at any given moment. The scenes where The Doctor is sitting there and calmly talking to George should be relatively easygoing, it’s just The Doctor trying to comfort a scared child and yet there’s this raw atmosphere to every scene on the estate that makes the whole thing feel absolutely terrifying, even when there’s nothing, in particular, going on. I love the slow pace of every scene The Doctor has in this episode while on the estate, as he tries to navigate George’s fears along with Alex’s insecurities about his ability to be a father and to understand his child. It’s got that same feel as Midnight, where everyone involved is trying to reach the same goal, but the methods through which The Doctor wants to go about this causes tension between the other people around the room; and while I wouldn’t say it’s anywhere near the stratospheric quality of Midnight, it certainly does a good job of capturing those same feelings.

It doesn’t just rely on those slow-paced talking bits though as scattered throughout the whole thing are the scenes in the dollhouse, where Amy and Rory slowly discover what’s happened to them and learn more and more about the amount of danger they’re in. Where the pace in the state scenes stays pretty constant throughout, the dollhouse scenes are a gradual acceleration as more and more of the mystery is uncovered and Amy & Rory slowly fall into a more and more desperate situation, climaxing in Amy being caught and converted by the dolls. Obviously, there was no long-term tension in that as there we all knew Amy would be fine by the end of the episode, but in the moment it was very surprising and led to this air of uncertainly surrounding how this is all going to resolve itself.

I can understand how some would view the resolution and ending as a bit cheesy, but I think it was well-earned through the episode. Things were slowly built up between Alex and George through their scenes with The Doctor and I felt I properly understood the perspectives and emotions of both characters. The over-the-top factor was all somewhat the point, as George’s whole fear was that his mum and dad were going to get rid of him, so having him see his father burst through a terrifying danger in order to save him is exactly the kind of thing that would establish that child’s trust in their parents and fix everything.

Maybe I’m ranking it highly because I went into it not expecting much, but I stand by this placement as I found myself loving every second of this one.

1 – A Christmas Carol

During his time as head-writer of Doctor Who, Steven Moffat did three Christmas specials, two of which were loose parodies of existing stories. One was very good, one was terrible. This is the good one. In fact, it’s so good that I’m not even going to spend time bitching about the fact that it completely breaks the rules of how time travel in Doctor Who works.

I like how up-front with it’s premise this episode is. Outside of the title being the exact same as the story they’re parodying, it gets right in and lays out all the information we need to understand every character’s motivation in the story. Amy & Rory are in a ship that’s going to crash because of an electro-storm, The Doctor is trying to stop the storm, but the only person who can is a selfish arsehole; and with all that out of the way, all the episode has to do is tell Kazran’s story in the most compelling way possible.

The way the tale plays out is surprisingly similar to how we saw young Amelia Pond’s story play out in The Eleventh Hour, except this time, The Doctor keeps coming back and we get see Kazran develop throughout his whole young life. While this is a compelling enough story on its own, it gets a whole new layer of genius when we see this story being told through the eyes of old Kazran as he develops brand new memories based on the adventures he has with The Doctor.

Through the use of young Kazran, we get to see exactly how he became the person he does in the present and despite being a total arsehole, he becomes a sympathetic character that we just want to see change for the better. I know Moffat can’t be given all the credit for this as this is an almost identical character progression to Scrouge in Dickens’ original version, but it feels like it’s told from a completely new perspective here.

My favourite moment is the kicker right near the end, the thing that finally makes Kazran change. It wasn’t his adventures with The Doctor, it wasn’t the people he was sentencing to death pleading him, it wasn’t even the love he felt for Abigail; it was his younger self watching the man he had become and realising who he really was. A pretty consistent theme throughout all of modern Doctor Who is how children see the world through different eyes than the rest of us and it took Kazran seeing himself through a child’s eyes to finally make him realize who he was.

Although the ending feels a little bit rushed and the fact that the isomorphic controls suddenly didn’t work for Kazran makes no sense whatsoever, it served the purpose of bringing Abigail into the finale and giving us an ending that is a little bittersweet, but ultimately still leaves me feeling nice and cosy inside. Which is exactly what a Christmas episode should be doing.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and please let me know what you thought of this season, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back here next Friday, where my coverage of Wrestlemania 36 begins!