>

Haha. I remember feeling like I was never gonna get to leave during Mania 32 in Dallas or 34 in New Orleans. I want to believe I helped end long azz 1-night manias forever by being tired af in those 2 crowds. I remember myself and a shitload of people around wherever I was sitting running out of gas bigtime AND multiple times on those shows.

For this one, yeah...it was a lot of stuff. And I'm not confident they got the match order 'right'. MJF had to be first if he was showing up at all. Page/Punk had to be last cuz duh. The rest of it? IDK!

I can't imagine if I would've started with the Buy-In too! I watched that the next day cuz you can't make me not love Danhausen (he's great at what he's doing and the Hook shit IS WORKING..its buying the kid time to fill in his blanks AND he gets to be a heater for a character who obviously needs a heater). Anyway, I came into the show tired from a long day outside, so at first I thought it might've been me. But I knew it wasn't just me when (God bless her) Martha kept on talking after the Coles won the Owen. I was forced to think 'man, what else do we have left besides the main?'.

Personally, I don't know if I have ever truly recovered from the main NXT Takeover era spoiling me rotten/giving me the rasslin I do adore the most for 2-3 hours and getting out of there. There was gonna be:

- Stuff you were excited to see (IE: anything with Velveteen for me, or some indy/Japan person being treated like THE SHIT making their badass debut in a good match)

- Some well-built rivalry/grudge match that WWE, the announcers, and the workers all did a great job of selling the hell out of before, during, and after. NXT was impressively produced IMO.

- Things that were better than you expected (IE: some random-seeming tag match that would get elevated by dudes being amazing for 18-ish minutes and forcing you to appreciate what they were doing),

- Some BANGER MAIN EVENT to close it all out.

And those NXT groups were small enough that they could do that, give most matches hella time, and still get us out of there in 3-ish hours..if not 2. 5 or 6 matches. Yes yes yes.

Now, with AEW basically being handed a whole roster of folks from WWE in addition to the group they put together on-purpose, they're catching hell with trying to balance 'getting people onto the show in something worthwhile', 'giving people more bang for their buck', and exhausting the fanhood of the people watching the shows at home. I mean I FUCKING LOVE WRESTLING but I don't know if any company with any card can throw 5 hours of wrestling at me at once and keep me rolling through it all in one sitting even 4 or 5 times a year.

The good news, as long as my DVR works and actually records the damn show (I got screwed with DoN), I can make any show a 2-day show! But it is something that has to be figured out by all of these feds. WWE has taken the hint from Wrestle Kingdom and they're down with the 2-night Mania from now on it seems. That is asking a lot of the in-person fan..buying 2 tix instead of one, having to manage 2 commutes to the stadium from the house, some hotel, or whatever, and two 6-8 hour shifts watching wrestling.