WWE Fastlane 2018 Thoughts and Predictions!

WWE Fastlane is rapidly approaching and I should be hyped… but i’m not. The PPV which is the last Smackdown branded PPV before Wrestlemania 34, should be doing its utmost to get me excited for Mania… but it just isn’t. The card feels like it’s full of filler, the storylines don’t feel to be progressing and the card makes me worry for Mania. In this weeks post I will provide my predictions on who I think will win each match and how I predict the card will go down. 

Beckly Lynch and Naomi vs Natayla and Carmella

Well talk about bland. As if we haven’t seen enough random mixtures of women fighting in tag matches. This match feels like lazy booking, it feels like the WWE are padding out the card as the runtime was too short. I don’t wish to come accross like I feel Lynch, Naomi, Nattie and Carmella aren’t amazing wrestlers (they are!), it’s just that this is a match we’d see (and will see many more times) on a standard episode of Smackdown. There’s no real point to this and I doubt many will really care who walks away with the win.

Prediction: I think this match will go on first and to hype up the crowd I expect the face team to win.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs Rusev

I’m so torn about this match. On the one hand I am extatic that finally Rusev is getting some big matches and will hopefully be elevated beyond mid-card hell. I am confident that he’ll put on a great match with Nakamura but at the same time I know Nakamura will win convincingly. With Mania around the corner and the dream booking of Royal Rumble winner Shinsuke Nakamura taking on AJ Styles, I am confident that the WWE would not compromise that matches momentum by allowing Rusev to pick up the win. I just hope that they at least let the Bulgarian Brute look decent.

Prediction: Shinsuke will win clean.

The Usos vs The New Day

Oh come on again?!?! How far we have fallen from the start of the brand split in regards to the tag team division. Both shows seem to have extremely dull tag scenes that force the same two or three teams to fight each other over and over and over. How many times can we see the Usos vs the New Day or the Bar vs The Miztourage. Please WWE give us something else. Where are Breezeango? I’d love to see them being given a title shot. I expect the winner of this match to finally end this feud and go on to fight the Bludgeon brothers at Mania. However something tells me to expect the ulta fabulous exciting 79th rematch between The Usos and The New Day…

Prediction: The New Day

Charlotte Flair vs Ruby Riott

One of the main issues I find with PPV’s this close to the big 5 is that I am confident no big changes will occur. Ruby Riott has breathed a breath of fresh air into the Smackdown womens division and I quite like the idea of a womens only faction using domination and fear to put the division on notice (although I do admit it was odd to debut the Riott squad and Absolution at the same time) I’d love to see Ruby take the belt and lead a chaotic reign over the division with a storyline involving another member of the squad stabbing her in the back to win the title. Alas I don’t expect Charlotte to drop the belt. Charlotte is a big draw and they will want her in a big match at Mania involving Asuka, which is seeming likely.

Prediction: Charlotte wins

Bobby Roode vs Randy Orton

This one is hard to call. While Roodes reign has been rather dull and uneventful, I did expect him to retain until Mania and defend against Jinder mahal in a losing effort (I imagine Vince flipping off all the fans as Jinder lifts the belt up). However you can never count out Orton. Randy can seemingly slot himself into a storyline he hasn’t been involved in and win big at the last moment. I mean who expected him to win the 2017 Royal Rumble? This one will be a close affair.

Prediction: Bobby Roode… maybe

AJ Styles vs John Cena vs Kevin Owens vs Sami Zayn vs Baron corbin vs Dolph Ziggler

The winner of this match is the fans. I couldn’t ask for 6 more entertaining men to fight in the ring. When people speak of the Smackdown 6 of old, I do feel we can make a strong claim for each member of this match to be the modern reincarnation. Everyman in the ring (bar potentially Corbin) has a strong claim on the belt and large chunk of the audience begging for them to win it. AJ vs Shinsuke would be the dream match at Mania 34, so AJ retaining would of course be golden. Kevin Owens has proved he can work a title and be a phenomenal champion while he was on Raw, I don’t expect a reign with the SD title to be any different. Poor beltless Sami is surely ready for a world title run soon right? Tied in with a backstab story against Kevin, it’d be golden. Ziggler is so underrated right now, his character work is golden, his in-ring work top tier and I feel a world title run would go so well with his arrogant i’m better than you gimmick. Corbin i’d argue isn’t ready to hold the World title and would at best be a placeholder before someone quickly took it back. Then we get on to John Cena. Cena is an odd one (especially considering he was involved in essentially this same match during the Elimination Chamber 2 weeks ago with the Raw roster). I feel that Cena beating Ric Flairs world record for title runs will become one of the main storylines within the WWE very soon. I just don’t know if they’ll use it yet. There’d be very little build up time for Mania and additionally i’m not sure many of the fans want Cena vs Nakamura… although when have WWE cared what we want?

Prediction: AJ retains

Top 12 Most Interesting Facts About Starcraft!

Starcraft is a game that will forever have a place in my heart. A punishingly difficult but overwhelmingly rewards strategy game that has on multiple occasions taken the gaming landscape by storm. In this list I collated 12 of the facts that I’ve found most unique or interesting.

After Hours Gaming League

The After Hours Gaming League is a league setup to pitch major companies against one another within Starcraft 2. Companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Twitter took part for the chance to give Day9’s $5,000 donation to a charity of their choice.

Korean Airforce Team

In Korea all males must serve National service at some point in their lives before the age of 30. This caused many issues for the blossoming Starcraft scene in the mid 2000’s as some legends like H.O.T Forever and Boxer were forced to enlist. The Military provided a solution to this creating Airforce Ace. This professional team would function like every other major pro team and conduct a training regiment and compete in major tournaments. This team would allow those many pro’s to continue competing into their 30’s.

Player Match Fixing

Starcraft BW and SC2 have both suffered from major match fixing scandals featuring top level pro’s. The players in both cases were approached by betting organisations and offered cash in order to purposefully lose specific games. Within the BW betting scandal many high level pro’s were indited such as Savior. Players were permanently banned from competing, finned millions of WON and some sentenced to probation, community service and gambling addiction programs. Similarly SC2 pro’s Life, Bboongboong, Yoda, Gerrard and Bbyond were arrested and sentenced to jail time and fines for their involvement in match fixing.

Starcraft was sent to Space – STS96

Astronaut Daniel Barry flew a copy of Starcraft into space on board the space shuttle discovery during STS-96 which was the first mission to dock with the International Space Station. Starcraft was the first and only video game to be taken to space.

Sarah Kerrigan is named after Nancy Kerrigan

Starcraft character Sarah Kerrigan, also known as the Queen of Blades is named after Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan, who was also known as the Queen of Blades.

Starcraft Ghost

Starcraft Ghost was the project that never come. Shown off at an E3 event in the early 2000’s, many were excited for this change in the Starcraft landscape by allowing players to move to the ground level and control Nova a Terran ghost that is able to use stealth abilities to overcome her enemies. However this project would never see the light of day. After several delays and redesigns Starcraft Ghost was put on the shelf indeffinetely and instead a novel was released.

viOLet and sports visas

On December 11, 2013, viOLet was recognized by the United States government as a professional athlete and was granted a P-1A visa. He was the first StarCraft player ever to receive such a recognition.

120,000 2005 Starcraft arena finals in Korea

120,000 spectators came to an outdoor stadium in Busan, South Korea, to watch StarCraft at the 2005 SKY Pro League final — roughly 40,000 more than attended the Super Bowl that year.

Blizzard Scrapped their initial idea for Starcraft and remade it (Orcs in Space)

Blizzard created and then scrapped their original concept for Starcraft which was little more than a space port of Warcraft 2, it became known as Orcs in Space. After attending a trade show with Diablo and Starcraft it became clear that the fans were not interested in Orcs and Space and the project was not going in the direction that the fans wanted. Blizzard would scrap the project and rebuild Starcraft from the ground up. This would lead to Starcraft being the masterpiece that it’d become.

4.5m of 9.8m SC copies sold where in Korea

South Korea was a cultural phenomenom when it comes to video games and specifically Starcraft. With the nations early investment in high speed internet, multiplayer gaming was incredibly popular in the country during the late 90’s / early 2000’s. Starcraft became a game for families to watch (on 24 hour Starcraft channels) and play together. 4.5 million of the 9.8 million copies sold were sold in South Korea.

Optimus Prime in SC2

There is an Easter Egg in SC2 which features a truck in the colours of Optimus Prime hidden on the map.

Starcraft was the first Esport title to be featured at the Olympics

In 2018 Starcraft became the first esports title to be featured at the Winter Olympics in Pyongchang. While not part of the main tournament it does show an impressive step in the growing industries acceptance in the general sports world. While it may just be esports on a side stage in 2018 by 2020 or 2022 we might see esports hitting the main stage.