[jetskid48]

Why? Because someone had to do it.

[Batman]

Once again, I'm typing up my 12-Pack ballot, and I have a DHM that's longer than the rest of my ballot, so I'm cutting it and putting it here in the Wrestling discussions instead, to keep the focus of the 12-Pack on the positive:


Man. Other than the last half of the final, that tournament sucked ass. Hell, there was only a match and a half on that whole show that didn't suck.

AJ Styles deserves all the praise he gets here every week, but his performance last night was seriously lackluster (in the ring, that is--his backstage confrontation with Angle was quite good.) First off--motivated by rampant machismo?--he didn't bounce around like he should have for Kong.

Then before the next match he came out selling his ribs (rather than reminding anyone of his own fuck-up by selling his nose)--some long term selling of Kong's offense is good, right? I say no--the move he was selling was a sit-down splash, so he was basically selling her fatness, not her power.

And then Homicide rolled him up for the win, and...normally, I say that if the referee says the shoulders are down, then they're down; it's pro wrestling, (Daniel Puder.) But, boy, his shoulders weren't anywhere near down. I suppose that part of the blame should go to Hector and Homicide, but...I'm a lot higher on LAX than AJ this week. Besides, he was the one eating the pin, I figure it's his responsibility to make sure his shoulders are down.

So, yeah. Fuck AJ this week.

[Jobber Blitz]

And fire Russo.

[bdbdbd]

If they were going to chant Fire Russo it should have been done when he added Kaz (or whomever) to the Main Event. Five minutes of haircutting and two women acting completely in character isn't a reason to fire the booker, though having the interference directly lead to the end of the finish was unnecessary.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the hell out of the show. Loved Storm just ignoring Sting and sitting on the apron and drinking, then chilling on the turnbuckle and it finally getting to Sting. AJ coming back to the ring and testing out the ropes before he got into the ring.

The only really off thing for me was the finish to the tourney finals. they made a big deal out of Homicide not being legal to get pinned, then without their being a tag he was kosher to make the pin. I'm hoping someone catches that and they have some blowoff rematch...without holding the belts up please...on Impact in the next few weeks.

[ALL CAPS]

May 12, 2008 14:22:47 GMT -5 bdbdbd said:

If they were going to chant Fire Russo it should have been done when he added Kaz (or whomever) to the Main Event. Five minutes of haircutting and two women acting completely in character isn't a reason to fire the booker, though having the interference directly lead to the end of the finish was unnecessary.

Yeah, the weirdos in the Impact Zone aren't really good at picking their moments. It's a classic case of misdirected hostility. They basically wanted to see Love get her head shaved for being a bitch, and instead of being pissed at her character, they decide to pick this moment to get pissed at the writer for not forcing the performer they wanted to see shaved get shaved. It's fucking lame. I think it's the worst part about being stuck in one place for so long. The same people show up and eventually they group-think themselves into doing nonsensical things that HURT the overall presentation simply because they're being selfish dolts. But honestly, it's not THEIR fault. It's just a bad situation.

I didn't have a problem with Kaz being added to the main event. I mean, what the hell do you want them to do? Angle hurt his damn neck. They wanted Joe to go over two dudes, and he did... and he went over the more "impressive" of the two by pinning Steiner. That makes perfect sense to me. I was just disappointed that they missed a perfect opportunity to have Petey CD Kaz to not only help Steiner, but build his upcoming match against Kaz for the X-Title. It writes itself.

The booking/writing issue I had was that they built Joe up a lot IN the ring, but outside of it, they're tearing him down. His character is an unreasonable, and more importantly, unlikable prick. Half the crowd turned on him after that confrontation with Nash. Not only did Joe not do what he said he was gonna do (tear Nash apart if he saw him), he basically pissed and moaned about shit like a 13-year-old douchebag to one of the most charismatic guys in wrestling. Now, I'm all for "shades of grey" character development, but if you're gonna sell Joe as the face of TNA and a worthy champ, you have to at least make his character FOCUSED so that we can grab on to something to like aside from his ring work. Right now, I get excited to see Joe wrestle, but couldn't care less about what he has to say.

As for the rest of the PPV, I think it's kind of telling that I was most excited for the TerrorDome and the chick match than anything else on the show.

[Batman]

I really disagree with you about Joe and Nash. Nash is a funny guy. And in real life, a guy who is laid back about the wrestling business and who stays focused on the paycheck and not on the "glory" might be relatively pleasant to hang out with. But in a wrestling storyline a guy that would kinda like to be champ because the champ gets paid most? That guy should be a bigger heel than Gorgeous George. I'm happy they're finally splitting the two, they're like oil and water.

Joe's promos are angry, intense, and confident--like his wrestling--and that's how it should be. Being proactive about a likely wolf in the fold and standing up for yourself instead of waiting passively to get stabbed in the back is not pissing and moaning, and it's not a heel move.

[ALL CAPS]

It's not that it's a "heel" move or not that I have a problem with. My problem is that Joe's character is hard to like. He doesn't trust people. He's mean. He's arrogant. He's inconsistent... one week he wants you to think everything is cool and collected, the next week he a raging monster that'll destroy anyone in his way. He basically lacks a "hook" that I (and possibly other casual wrestling fans) can relate to. If Joe's the guy that's gonna help take TNA to the next level, they've gotta do something more with him and keep him consistent so that people will think he's cool. Right now, he's all over the map. It may be consistent with his character, but his character kinda sucks.

[Batman]

Yeah, that's definitely a "we're gonna have to agree to disagree."

I love the Joe character. I agree that he's "all over the map" but I would characterize that as interesting, complex, and not one-note, instead of confusing or "hook-less."

Yeah, he oscillates between rage and calm. But they both come from the same place--his confidence. His rage is at the effrontery of anyone thinking they can take his title. His calm is from his dead-certainty that they will fail.


mta - Hey, that's pretty good. I'm stealing that for my ballot....

[Lucky]

I'm with Serg. He shouldn't trust Nash. Fuck, he'd be an idiot to trust him. He'd be Sting. Nash is by his own admission an opportunistic and untrustworthy bastard. He freely admits he's using Joe for money. He's been telegraphing a heel turn on Joe for months. He comes out of Scott Steiner's limo on PPV. We SEE Steiner offering him the first title shot if he helps him win and appealing to Nash's stated interests in a very rational and convincing way. And the mere fact that (A) Nash was with Steiner in the first place, (B) he hadn't talk to Joe about any of this, and (C) he's fucked people over many times should be more than enough reason for Joe to say "Fuck you!" to Nash. '

He is mean, he is arrogant, he is a loner. He's always been all of those things. Why is it a problem now? Its what I love about the guy. And I love that he can be perfectly calm and confident one second and then when the moment is coming just be ready to kill. Even when he's calm there's an intensity to his promos that suggests the anger is RIGHT THERE waiting to boil to the surface. And its always been that way with his character.

Nash is a potentially valuable ally who is also a very large risk. Joe and Nash have never been 100% on the same page and Joe's questioned his trustworthiness before. I personally LOVED the Joe/Nash segment. And Joe telling Kev to stay the fuck away, Nash saying "If you need me, signal and see if I come", and Joe saying "I don't need or want you" and NOT needing him was perfect. On the other hand the one thing about Joe's character I really don't like is the misplaced anger. And attacking Borash makes him just look like a bully.



Show was good, I thought, but not great. The tourney was rather meh. Not actively bad or anything but Kong didn't do what I hoped, nothing interesting came of the Deuces Wild stuff, and it was basically very by the numbers and simple. I was into LAX so I was into it, but it seemed like they were kind of holding back for the first 2 matches so they'd have something for the final and by the 3rd one they weren't clicking with Team 3D. Which they never really have and such a large team isn't the best matchup for LAX. But I still marked out for Hector's blown spot, all of LAX's regular spots, and the title win.

I THINK I really liked the Terror Dome but it was hard to tell over my nausea. I really hope that TNA's director gets fired today. His insistence on making camera cuts ever 3 seconds in that match made it crazy. I get that 10 guys inside of a cage makes it tough to get camera shots. But in a situation like that best to go simple, I'm pretty sure. All that jumping around led to confusion, missed spots, and (in my case) nausea. And some of it just made no fucking sense. I swear at one point Sharkboy and Sabin are fighting on the top rope and there's a camera showing it from behind Sabin's right shoulder. So then it cuts... to a camera beind Sabin's left shoulder! The fuck! Why do you have 2 camera men recording the same damn thing feet away from each other? And why did you jump to the opposite camera shot that was actually worse than the first? And he'd piss me off more later. But it was a fun spot fest and Kaz looked real good winning it.

Women's BR really sucked. Ladder match was better but not terribly good. The ladies tried big ladder spots we've seen before but not from women. Which was cool, but they didn't do them terribly well. And we saw Roxxie get busted open or blade and that's kind of new for women. But none of it really had omph. The ok work of Kim, Roxxie, and Love saved it a bit in the end but still didn't make it good.

And yeah, that "Fire Russo" chant was kind of odd. I mean you knew someone was being shaved. You weren't chanting that for the weeks of buildup. As angst said, you were pissed it wasn't the heel. It was some of that thing Rick used to argue that JJ was a great heel because TNA fans really hated him. I think he was over the top with it and he was ignoring the stagnancy of JJ but there was some truth to it. JJ was good at pissing the crowd off and they wanted to see him get his comeuppance. Noone's sick of Love and they didn't seem to be waring against Russo before that. It was just that a popular face got it that they started to boo Russo instead of the heels. Russo's just an easy target. Meanwhile I think while the match was very blah the angle was done well. Roxxie did it very well, looking shocked, sad, and finally angry and strong. The faces all comforting her and standing by her was very well done. Love and Sky play the bitches perfectly and their efforts to help Kim win to save Love's ass (or head) was natural and right. TNA might have been better off without this angle and I hope Roxxie was a willing player in this, but it was done well. And despite my prediction of ODB, Roxxie was a much better and more sympathetic woman to play the role of the Beautiful People's victim. Who are doing a good job being the heels of the division.

I was really into the title match but I don't think it was a MOTY or anything. I really liked Kaz getting another break into main event and while he wasn't as exciting as he was against Angle he more than held his own and had a good showing. I agree with angst that they should have had Petey play a more direct role for the natural story. The 2nd time he took Steiner to the top for the Flux Capictor I started to wonder if there was a chance in hell he could do it. Steiner busted his ass and was at his best. He made Kaz and Joe look good and put on his work boots. Steiner was way more believable in that match than I thought he would be a month ago, but when Steiner wants to he can be on his game and TNA did a pretty damn good job building what seems to have been a sacrificial lamb. And Joe was Joe. I already ranted about him.

[iamdoug]

It seems like a lot of people weren't pleased with the deuces wild tournament, but personally I thought it was booked well. I appreciated the fact that not a single "egotistical eight" team made it past the first round. They shouldn't have and they didn't. Then in the second round the long term tag teams got a chance to win over not really established tag teams. TNA showed that you can't be a great singles wrestler and just expect to walk all over the tag division. To me they showed a lot of respect to those titles that night.

A.J. did seem a little off that night, but hey no one is perfect all the time. However I think he sold just fine for Kong. If Kong is going to be tossing someone around it should be a Hemme or a Rave or a Sharkboy. Not a former world champ who's fought guys like Abyss and in Elevation X, and gone toe to toe with your current world champ. Kong played her part just right. Just like any other monster heavyweight, she demolishes the curtain jerker's and goes toe to toe with the legit contenders. If anyone should have been tossed around by her it should have been the comedy act Eric Young. But that's just my opinion. I enjoyed the terrordome for the spotfest it was, and thought the ladder match part of the makeover battle royal was a good first attempt for the knockouts.

The main event was a lot of fun and probably some of the best ring work I've seen out of Steiner in a long time. I enjoyed sacrifice, although I do agree that the fire Russo chant bummed me out because it seemed silly and unnecessary, and I personally was not happy to see Not Crystal back again.

[Batman]

I absolutely didn't have a problem with the established tag teams beating the impromptu ones. I had a problem with them doing it so cheaply. If they wanted to build the established tag teams and show that singles wrestlers can't out-tag tag specialists they could have had the impromptu teams--I don't know--try, maybe? To me, they seemed not so much to be telling the story that the finalists had more tag experience than the teams they beat in the semis, but more that they had an easier path. AJ and Eric got the only wild card team that really worked together and put up a real fight, and Christian and Rhino got waffled by Booker post-match.

Hmm. I want to write about AJ and Kong, but I need to go do RL. I'll be back to expand on that later.

[jetskid48]

I thought it was a good showing from TNA. Some notes I guess...

Without reading too thoroughly, I see some of the things I had a weird feeling about Joe with last night were expressed. Maybe it's part of his character that he really needs to get worked up, and he's at his best really angry, but there was a bit too much directed in all directions last night that came almost whiney (although, on reading other's thoughts, its more like out of control than whiney) when he should have been directing it fully towards Nash who was actually doing the heel type stuff.

I thought the Nash/Joe setup was great though. Whether they're going to give it another month to simmer (doing a Joe/Someone else feud first -- like Sting for Bound for Glory...that's this month, right?) It's a nice slow burn that Nash while Joe has been using the personality faults of Nash for his advantage up to now, he's finally realizing that Nash will only use Joe until the point that he doesn't help him anymore, then move on. It's some good psychology by working with existing personality traits and seeing how they mess, and then ultimately clash.

As for the main event, I thought Kaz and Steiner stepped up nicely. It wasn't the greatest match or anything, but it was serviceable for Joe's first defense. Really, TNA again was saddled with a last minute fuck up to their plans (Hall the first time, now Angle) and they had to do their best to work with it. It really was a great time to give Kaz a shot at a main event because you really didn't have to sell the show on him main eventing, and you can see how the reaction is to him for free.

I loved the ending to the TerrorDome match, but I wonder how the match could be so devastating yet no one at all bled or anything. The match will also always seem like a midcard match because of how it was first presented and seems less devastating than WCW's cage or the WWE's cage of that sort. I did like the changes they made to make the sides vertical unlike AAA's one for it allowed them to do more moves from the sides that would have been hard on a concave surface.

On to the women's match, I said in the chat I ultimately thought it would be Roxxi (although I had Angelina Love as the black horse shavee), and it made sense. I can't imagine she did this without a promise of a big push. It seemed with a shaved head, she had to really show her face to the crowd for once (it seemed she always kept her head down in a brooding way in the past) I wonder if that's gonna bring out a confident streak, and make her look past the image insults of the Beautiful People; once she gets her revenge eventually...she moves on to the knockouts belt?

The tag tournament pretty much was booked in the most obvious way, but I thought it was done well, and most importantly, correctly.

-No wildcard team won, and that's how it should have been. I would have liked to see more out of Kong and less out of Super Eric, but we can't always get our way.

-AJ had an off-night, but its good it only happened in a minor match. If he's going to fuck up though, I'm glad they had the quick thinking to have a new finish done quickly.

-The Booker heel turn was done incredibly perfectly. It went perfectly with his promo with Sting from a few weeks ago where he said more important than anything else, he wanted to win. While he didn't want to see Roode win anything, once he realized he lost, he knew he couldn't take it anymore. I'm a fan of getting Booker to be relevant again.

-LAX winning the belts was the right call. They have turned things around and gotten momentum on their side, and the addition of Hector was the final piece to making them great again. Their work all night was good and the sick bump Hector hit was cool also.

Overall, I enjoyed this ppv. Next month (I think) is Slammiversary, so I'll finally get to see my first King of the Mountain Match - Oh yeah, that's what Joe has to do next...not Nash - so that's something to look forward to.

[eliasvict]

I'd love to see an interview segment with just Kaz and Joe. Imagine the awkwardness that would ooze from that. I just still don't get Joe and I have been watching a while now. The guy's got the physique of a 5-gallon bucket.

And Kaz? (Shudder)

How about an interview with Joe, Kaz and Robert Roode. That would rule.

And I'm not just bagging on OG TNA guys either. AJ, Eric Young, Daniels are gold. Can't get over Kaz though.

[Lucky]

Kaz has never come off as having any personality to me and I don't even love him as a worker. He really wouldn't have been my one of my first 6 or 7 picks for an X Division wrestler to get a push over the last year and be booked as capable of playing with the big guys. But I also think he's a capable hand with the ability to wrestle a good match. He's kind of a guy who can have some flashy spots and wrestle up to the level of his opponent. But I don't see him as any kind of star.

Joe's I've said my peace in and personally I just got over the physique. And for the first 6 months or so I watched Joe I didn't get it. I was unimpressed with his physique and while he was quick and agile for a dude his size I just didn't see what the fuss was about. Then one match I just "got it" and I stopped caring that he was fat. I don't even know what it was so I can't recommend it. I dunno. I guess if being fat is a deal breaker it just is, but I have no idea how or when I stopped caring about that.


Serg, Kip and Morgan TRIED to work together. Tenay and West made a point to say that they were the first two to really be communicating. They lost when they failed to communicate with each other and both went for their finishers at the same time, resulting in Morgan kicking Kip. And Roode and Booker weren't happy together but they didn't seem to turn on each other like Storm and Sting. So I don't know, I thought it worked logically enough. If anything TNA was just weirdly formulaic about it because they had 1 team that couldn't work together at all and fought, 1 team that tried to win the match but couldn't come together as a team, 1 team that tried to come together as a team but didn't have the experience or communication, and one team that did come together as a team but just weren't good enough.

Which is what I think the "problem" with the tournament was. It wasn't bad or anything. It was just completely there. They managed to display every possible result of a random pairing while seemingly trying to convince us that a true tag team will still come out on top. Which is a logical story but not a very interesting one. Everyone did basically EXACTLY what we would think them likely to do in real life. So it was completely uneventful. Add in that there really weren't any matches to speak of or really great spots (and the Guerrero spot didn't look good). It was a very underwhelming and forgettable tourney.

I have no problem with the "established" tag teams beating the random teams... but I too would have liked to see ONE of them come together successfully. I don't know if I said it anywhere but I really had developed an idea in my head that I liked where Roode and Booker surprisingly work together and make it to the finals. Everyone can be shocked that Booker could work with Roode after what happened with Sharmell and their war. He wouldn't be friendly, just cooperative and professional and show some heelish tag work. Then when he is questioned he can just make a point to say that what happened before was personal and this is business. He got his revenge, he protected his wife, that's over. Now its about tag gold and winning. And if Roode is the guy, its not what he wanted but he'll play with the hand dealt. Seeing them win a match or even make it to the finals (especially if they beat Sting along the way) I thought could have made for a better story and probably some better matches than what we got with Team 3D.

[Batman]

Eli is posting from that one alternate universe where Joe and Kaz are awkward on the mic, rather than impressively natural and at-home. (And they have goatees....)

Poor Eli.

To go back to my response to Doug:

When I said that AJ should have bounced around more for Kong, I didn't mean that she should dominate him like he was a curtain jerker. I meant that he should have bounced around more for her power offense, and then come back with his speed and agility, just like he would with Abyss, for instance.

Rather than (I would say) dead-weighting her....

[iamdoug]

I can understand where you are coming from, but I don't know if AJ is really the one to blame for that. I mean outside of her back fist and butt drop, what did Kong even attempt. There where a lot of quick tags and Kong really was more punch punch tag than anything else. If she had hit a power slam or avalanche or that underhook faceplant, and AJ had shrugged it off I'd understand more. Like I've mentioned earlier, AJ did seem off all night. I don't see this as him not selling for Kong, as the match just never clicked this was easily the worst match on the card I'll give it that, but I can't really single out any one performer whose fault it was.

[ALL CAPS]

May 12, 2008 16:44:05 GMT -5 Lucky said:

I'm with Serg. He shouldn't trust Nash. Fuck, he'd be an idiot to trust him. He'd be Sting. Nash is by his own admission an opportunistic and untrustworthy bastard. He freely admits he's using Joe for money. He's been telegraphing a heel turn on Joe for months. He comes out of Scott Steiner's limo on PPV. We SEE Steiner offering him the first title shot if he helps him win and appealing to Nash's stated interests in a very rational and convincing way. And the mere fact that (A) Nash was with Steiner in the first place, (B) he hadn't talk to Joe about any of this, and (C) he's fucked people over many times should be more than enough reason for Joe to say "Fuck you!" to Nash. '

He is mean, he is arrogant, he is a loner. He's always been all of those things. Why is it a problem now? Its what I love about the guy. And I love that he can be perfectly calm and confident one second and then when the moment is coming just be ready to kill. Even when he's calm there's an intensity to his promos that suggests the anger is RIGHT THERE waiting to boil to the surface. And its always been that way with his character.

Nash is a potentially valuable ally who is also a very large risk. Joe and Nash have never been 100% on the same page and Joe's questioned his trustworthiness before. I personally LOVED the Joe/Nash segment. And Joe telling Kev to stay the fuck away, Nash saying "If you need me, signal and see if I come", and Joe saying "I don't need or want you" and NOT needing him was perfect. On the other hand the one thing about Joe's character I really don't like is the misplaced anger. And attacking Borash makes him just look like a bully.

See, I see a LOT of that in Joe's character. I understand very well who he is. Internally, he's very consistent with what his character would do and why. He just seems all over the map with the how and when. I would have been impressed as shit if as soon as he saw Nash enter that room he just spun around and laid him out (like he boasted he was gonna do earlier in the night). Fuck that alliance. If Joe is such a hot head and a loaner, and his anger is always right there under the surface, I want him to fucking brawl with Nash. Joe's attitude should be "fuck that guy, we're at WAR". That i could get behind. That would be dynamic and interesting. Instead, Joe yells a bunch of meaningless bullshit at him and I can bet they'll be back together within 2 Impacts. It's very Sting-like and I don't want Joe to just be an angrier Sting. I want him to be smarter than that.

I guess my problem, as I described earlier, is that Joe's character is obviously established, but not INTERESTING. Inside the ring he's all business, but outside of it, he seems to be all talk. As of right now he's just your basic angry guy that thinks he's awesome. That's kind of fucking boring. Right now, I don't feel like Joe could explode at any moment, but I did way back when he should have gotten his title shot initially. Back when he was fresh. The more we've gotten to know Joe's character, the less I've come to like it. I still love his ring work, but I honestly don't like who he is. And it isn't his heelishness, and it isn't an X-Pac factor, it's just that his character lacks a dynamic quality that'll help him AND TNA go to another level.

It might be a simple matter of tweaking a few things here or there. But right now, Joe, the character, is just kinda "meh" to me.

[Lucky]

If Joe actually takes Nash back and then gets turned on... I'm gonna be annoyed. Because I agree, it makes him come off as just an angry Sting. Nash didn't turn on Joe Sunday night. Joe shouldn't now trust him. Nash still possesses the same negative qualities. He's still an opportunist, he still thinks of Joe as more of a cash cow than a protege or friend, and he's still unable to be trusted. So while Joe can reasonably not go to war with Nash since Kev didn't do anything, he should still be of the mind that "We're done." If he has Nash standing behind him on Thursday I'll need a hell of an explanation to buy into that not being a Sting move.

I don't know. Joe the character is ok with me right now, but he's not captivating me. Joe the Champ is shaping up kind of like I wanted it. He's just taking on all the challengers that come in front of him and beating them clean. No backups interfering, no cheap victories. "You want the title? Take it from me!" So I'm just enjoying the ride at the moment after all that delay. And presuming he comes out of KotM as champ I think I'm going to keep enjoying the ride for 1 more month. But after Slammiversary I do think Joe needs an actual feud rather than a challenger. Something of interest. And it looks like it will be Nash.

Thing is, Joe has always been a lone wolf, shit talking, ass kicker. He doesn't crack a lot of jokes like Christian, he doesn't cheat and attack people a ton like Angle, and he isn't trying to save anyone like Sting. So I'm not sure Joe is ever going to be that much more interesting. But at the same time Joe can work with a guy like Christian and be "cool" enough to play along, like he was in that Samoan Peep Show segment.

[Byrntrigan]

I finally watched Sacrifice today and it was pretty good, but I feel they completely wasted some interesting ideas on the Deuses Wild Tourney. You wanna turn Booker, fine, but make Roode a part of it.

Show them start working together and then finally Roode does something heelish, and Booker doesn't object. They win, and at the end Booker then waffles Cage & Rhino and finishes trhe heel turn. They wouldn't have to have won the tourney but just that little touch would have not made it completely obvious that not one of those types of teams would win.

Also, with Kong, I wonder if they were protecting her or protecting the men from her.

Reminds me of Disco Inferno & Jaqueline

[Lucky]

I absolutely think they were protecting Kong and the men. Which is why I'm not sure I'm with Serg's objections. And why I absolutely was against the people who wanted to see her go against Hernandez or win. Kong is a monster but she's still smaller than most men in that tournament. Logically, she shouldn't be up to snuff with Hernandez. Hernandez should win that fight fairly easily. Not only should he be stronger, not only is he bigger, not only has he shown more speed and agility, but he's also spend much more time fighting people as big and bigger than Kong while Kong has spent much of her time fighting women half her size.

AJ and Eric were the right opponents for her since she could believably work with them, but at the same time they did what they are clearly capable of doing and could handle her fine. I would have liked to see her hit a big spot on Eric but I think they clearly wanted to protect him and I don't blame them. Disco was a joke when Jacqueline pushed him around and beat him. Toss in AJ having a horrible day and it was very blah.

[Batman]

Maybe you're right.

I'm going to hold off on arguing this point further until/unless I see her work with some different opponents.