This started earlier in the week and I’m not sure what is going on. I’ve been in talks with tech support with less than great results. I’m still working on it and things do seem to be speeding up at least a bit. I’m very sorry for the issues and hopefully things get back to normal sooner than later. Thank you all for your patience.
KB
Hope you all have a good day and get to spend time with your family. It’s one of my favorite days of the year and hopefully yours’ is a great one as well. Thank you for everything you do for me by coming here, as it has changed the way I can live my life in ways I can never imagine. I’ll be trying to do a bit better in the new year about getting more content up as I really don’t like how much I’ve slowed down. Thank you all for sticking with me.
On a more important note, and I know that a lot of you might not be fans so I’ll keep this short: Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus. If you’ve never looked into him, give him a try. As someone who has been a fan on him my entire life, I can more than recommend him and guarantee it makes things better.
Thank you all again for everything and Merry Christmas.
KB
It’s that time again. The Royal Rumble is in about five weeks so it’s time for me to redo some of them. As usual I’ll be redoing the most recent, but I’d like you all to pick the other redo. You can pick any in history except for the ones listed below, which I’ve either done too recently or too often:
1992
2000
2008
2022
Vote in the comments, with the count-up starting on December 22.
KB
There can be no denying that Roman Reigns’ 1,166+ day reign as the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion has been nothing short of epic. It may very well be the greatest title reign in professional wrestling history. Yes, Hulk Hogan had one, and Bruno Sammartino had two reigns longer than the one the Tribal Chief is currently in the midst of. But as a certain Voice of the Voiceless once said, “Wrestling at Madison Square Garden once a month is easy.”
Indeed, you never saw Hulk Hogan go one-on-one with a superstar like Brock Lesnar in a Last Man Standing match. But Reigns has done exactly that and more since dethroning the late Bray Wyatt in a triple-threat match back at Payback in August 2020. Back then, Donald Trump was still president of the United States, WWE events were still taking place behind closed doors and the UEFA Euro 2020 football tournament had been postponed until the summer of 2021.
Indeed the world was a much different place back then. But one thing that has remained constant to this day is Roman Reigns. He remains the Universal Champion and he added the WWE Championship to his collection at last year’s WrestleMania when he defeated Brock Lesnar in a winner-take-all unification matchup.
But what have been the best title defenses throughout this scintillating 3+ year reign? Let’s take a look.
Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar had met countless times before. One of them far surpassed expectations – namely their first-ever encounter in the main event of WrestleMania 31. The rest had been duds, to say the least.
Lesnar has been no stranger to being the betting underdog. He was made a +230 underdog by a popular UFC MMA sportsbook for his clash against Mark Hunt at UFC 200. He was once again the underdog on this night, but when he brought a forklift – yes, you read that right – to the ring for this Last Man Standing match, it gave fans the opportunity to forget that the former UFC Heavyweight Champion was almost certainly losing at the end of the night.
The Beast Incarnate battered the Undisputed Champion from pillar to post. He smashed him with suplexes, chairs, stars, F5s and just about anything else he could get his hands on inside Nashville’s Nissan Stadium. But he was unable to put Reigns down for the count of 10.
With all the chaos ensuing, both the fans in attendance and those at home had almost forgotten the no-disqualification rules. Naturally, interference from Reigns’ Bloodline possie should have been expected, and it duly arrived. The Usos were flattened by Lesnar, as was Paul Heyman and strangely Austin Theory.
But that gave Reigns the distraction he needed and he proceeded to Spear his challenger through a barricade. Then, repeated title shots to the skull were enough to get the job done, and Reigns’ reign of terror had no end in sight. 18 months on, it still doesn’t.
The stars had aligned, hadn’t they? The prodigal son had returned home, won the Royal Rumble match, and embarked on a mission to finish his story—the story of winning the WWE Championship, the one title that his legendary father had never won. The fans certainly seemed to think the reign of terror was over, as did the experts, as did the bookmakers. When Cody Rhodes made his way to the ring to main event his first-ever WrestleMania at the awe-inspiring SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, he would surely be ending the night as the new Undisputed WWE Universal Champion. Wouldn’t he?
Well, unfortunately for the American Nightmare, no he would not. With a 1,000-day title reign on the horizon, Triple H and the powers that be within the writing room decided that the Head of the Table’s title reign was simply raking in too much cash and ultimately opted not to pull the trigger on crowning a new champion. Whether that decision was the right one or not differs depending on who you ask. However, one thing that isn’t up for debate is the fact that the match itself was the greatest of Roman’s title reign and one of the greatest WrestleMania main events of all time.
The 83,000 fans in attendance were all certain that the night would end with a new champion and that added an interesting subplot to the contest. Throughout the reign, it was rare for fans to actually believe that Reigns may well lose. That wasn’t the case on this night, but the writing was on the wall.
Interference from the Usos and Solo Sikoa couldn’t keep the challenger down. Interference from Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens couldn’t keep the champ down. Something had to give. Unfortunately for Rhodes, one final distraction from Paul Heyman, a Samoan Spike from Solo, and a second devastating Spear was enough for the 1, 2, 3. The fans at SoFi’s collective jaws dropped but once more, Roman Reigns had successfully retained his championship. And he had done so following one of the few matches that actually lived up to expectations.
It’s that time again. We’re on the way to the Survivor Series and that means I need to redo a pair of shows. As usual I’ll be doing last year’s edition but you get to pick the other one. Vote in the comments on which show you want me to redo. Any are eligible, save for the following, which I’ve either done recently or too often:
1987
1999
2003
2005
2007
2021
Pick away.
KB
As you might guess, the review won’t be up ASAP. I’ll be coming back to the hotel and doing the show as fast as I can, wifi depending. Collision will probably not be up until tomorrow.
KB
I’m pretty sure I found the setting that was messing with things. Please let me know if it’s working on your end so I can know if I have more to do. Thank you all for your patience as my goodness that would have driven me crazy.
KB
So as you might have noticed (but hopefully not), a lot of the reviews aren’t scrolling properly. This seems to be a recent issue and I’m trying to see what can be done to fix it. At the end of the day, I’m not a tech guy and really don’t know what I’m doing. One thing that has worked, at least in Firefox, is turning on Reader Mode, which strips away everything else and leaves just the text. That’s just a stopgap workaround for now though and I’m still looking to see what it is. I’m sorry for the issues but I’m just now seeing what is wrong in the first place.
KB
Some of the comments are being sent into the spam filter again. I’m keeping an eye on it but if your comment doesn’t show up for some reason, please bear with me for a bit as it went through. I’ll just need to find them elsewhere.
KB
So I learned something this week: don’t review wrestling shows when you’re on some strong antibiotics and cough syrup. I’ve been looking back at some of the things I put up and I have pretty much no memory of putting them together. I remember watching the shows and writing the reviews, but the details are not quite how I remember them going. Apparently I was wrong when I said the medicine didn’t affect me as….yeah there are some bad misfires in there. I’m still on some of them for the next few days but I’m mostly out of the woods. I’m sorry in advance if there are even more head scratch inducing moments than usual.