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WWE King & Queen of the Ring 2024 Predictions
Welcome to Saudi Blood Money XI from the Jeddah Superdome in Saudi Arabia. It is WWE’s first of 2 trips to the kingdom in 2024 and today is the finals of the King of the Ring Tournament and Queen of the Ring Tournament.

How did we get to the finals?

It was a 16-man and 16-woman tournament that began on May 6th and May 10th’s RAW and SmackDown respectively.

On the Men’s side:
- 1st Round on RAW:
  - Gunther defeated Sheamus
  - Kofi Kingston defeated Rey Mysterio
  - Ilja Dragunov defeated Ricochet
  - Jey Uso defeated Finn Bálor
- 1st Round on SmackDown:
  - Randy Orton defeated AJ Styles
  - Carmelo Hayes defeated Baron Corbin
  - LA Knight defeated Santos Escobar
  - Tama Tonga defeated Angelo Dawkins
- Quarter-finals on RAW
  - Gunther defated Kofi Kingston
  - Jey Uso defeated Ilja Dragunov
- Quarter-finals on SmackDown
  - Randy Orton defeated Carmelo Hayes
  - Tama Tonga defeated LA Knight
- Semi-finals on RAW
  - Gunther defeated Jey Uso
- Semi-finals on SmackDown
  - Randy Orton defeated Tama Tonga
Which now means that Gunther (RAW) will take on Randy Orton (SmackDown) to become King of the Ring.

On the Women’s side:
- 1st Round on RAW
  - Shayna Baszler defeated Maxxine Dupri
  - Iyo Sky defeated Natalya
  - Lyra Valkyria defeated Dakota Kai
  - Zoey Stark defeated Ivy Nile
- 1st Round on SmackDown
  - Nia Jax defeated Naomi
  - Jade Cargill defeated Piper Niven
  - Tiffany Stratton defeated Michin
  - Bianca Belair defeated Candice LeRae
- Quarter-finals on RAW
  - Iyo Sky defeated Shayna Baszler
  - Lyra Valkyria defeated Zoey Stark
- Quarter-finals on SmackDown
  - Nia Jax defeated Jade Cargill via DQ
  - Bianca Belair defeated Tiffany Stratton.
- Semi-finals on RAW
  - Lyra Valkyria defeated Iyo Sky
- Semi-finals on SmackDown
  - Nia Jax defeated Bianca Belair
Which now means that Lyra Valkyria (RAW) will take on Nia Jax (SmackDown) to become Queen of the Ring!

Let’s have a look and predict the rest of this card:

Title Matches
- Gunther (RAW) vs Randy Orton (SmackDown) in a singles match in the finals of the King of the Ring Tournament. Winner will receive a world title match on their respecitive brand at SummerSlam.
  - PREDICTION: I can see this being a match of the night and potentially having “King Gunther” at the of the night is going to be a welcome sight to see. Gunther to win and become King of the Ring.
- Lyra Valkyria (RAW) vs Nia Jax (SmackDown) in a singles match in the finals of the Queen of the Ring Tournament. Winner will receive a women’s world title match on their respecitive brand at SummerSlam.
  - PREDICTION: Never bet against the Irish. Lyra is going to take it home to Ireland. Queen Lyra to win and become Queen of the Ring.
- Becky Lynch (C) vs Liv Morgan in a singles match for the Women’s World Championship
  - PRECICTION: Becky is Irish. See my last point about Lyra. Becky to win and retain the Women’s World Championship
- Sami Zayn (C) vs Chad Gable vs Bronson Reed in a Triple Threat match for the Intercontinental Championship
  - PREDICTION: This may pip Gunther/Orton as these guys can work. Expect some hard hitting wrestling, but I don’t think Sami is going to drop the title any time soon. Sami to win and retain the Intercontinental Championship
- Bianca Belair & Jade Cargill (C) vs Candice LeRae vs Indi Hartwell in a tag team match for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship
  - PREDICTION: Nothing much to say here but Bianca and Jade will retain the WWE Women’s World Championship here.
- Cody Rhodes (C) vs Logan Paul in a singles match for the Undisputed WWE Championship
  - PREDICTION: Cody ain’t losing the title any time soon. Cody to retain the Undisputed WWE Championship.
And those are my predictions.
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25 May 2024
Let me off this crazy AI train!
Over the last year or two, we have inundated with AI tools and slowly over time, new tools have been developed.

More specifically, in the last couple of weeks, we have seen leaps in this technology, including OpenAI’s GPT-4o that had a fairly impressive demo:

While the tech is cool, I am just not happy as to how they (and may other LLM’s (Large Language Models)) have gathered their data.

And it seems that on a daily basis, there is some company that they are adding a AI tool or are using AI to determine the user’s gender or looking at your work DM’s.

https://eigenmagic.net/@NewtonMark/112455578857917485/embed

On top of that, I have read stories over the last 6 – 12 months that LLMs are apparently crawling websites to gather information and data for their LLMs.

We get to last week and Google I/O showed off a plethora of new AI tools for their existing services, including Google Search. So instead of showing links and content belonging to bloggers who spent hours or even days on writing blog posts, they are just being summarised on Google with no accreditation to the author of those posts.

This can be fixed of course by adding udm=14 to the end of the Google Search URL… or just use another search engine. While writing this blog post, I was alerted to DuckDuckGo has started to implement some sort of AI tool and changes the results similarly to what Google is doing.

So for search, I have switched to a SearXNG instance.

Then Microsoft holds an event where they showcase new Surface devices that has a new NL processor, dubbed “CoPilot+” – One “feature” is titled ‘Recall’ which would allow you to go back to a previous point in time and pick up where you left off. An old version of a document, an Excel sheet that you deleted, all back!

While Microsoft claims that none of the information leaves the computer, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did ‘phone home’ and contribute to Bing AI’s LLM in some capacity. Yes, it can be disabled, but you don’t know what it is doing on the back end.

Maybe I am just too sceptical about the claims. Maybe I need a tin foil hat.

What is clear though is that, until there is regulation on what AI can do, it’s a hellscape right now. The technology is growing quicker and quicker by the day, it seems, and there doesn’t appear to be an end.

What about me? I dislike AI. I have disliked what Microsoft, Google, Discord, DuckDuckGo, Slack and countless other companies have been shoehorning AI into products that are probably not needed. Let’s see how far down the ‘AI Rabbit Hole’ that we can dig…

I have been putting it off for the last couple of years, but I plan to use Linux going forward. I will eventually transition away from Windows. Games are the biggest hurdle in that of course, but with the leaps in progress they have been making via the Steam Deck and Proton. I will detail more about this transition in another post.
- Follow me on the Fediverse: @padraig
- Gemini: gemini://padraig.blog/log/let-me-off-this-crazy-ai-train.gmi
22 May 2024
WWE Backlash 2024 Results
WWE Backlash from Lyon, France was a great show and the crowd were really behind everyone. I would not be surprised if they run future shows in France.

Results
- The Bloodline (Solo Sikoa & Tama Tonga) w/ Tanga Loa defeated Randy Orton & Kevin Owens in a Street Fight.
- Bayley defeated Naomi & Tiffany Stratton in a triple threat to retain the WWE Women’s Championship
- Damian Priest (C) defeated Jey Uso in a singles match to retain the World Heavyweight Championship
- Bianca Belair & Jade Cargill defeated The Kabuki Warriors (Kairi Sane & Asuka) in a tag team match to become the NEW WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions
- Cody Rhodes (C) defeated AJ Styles in a singles match to retain the Undisputed WWE Championship
With Bianca’s victory, she becomes the 9th woman since 2019 to win WWE Women’s Triple Crown, winning the RAW Women’s Championship, SmackDown Women’s Championship and now the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship with Jade Cargill.
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- Gemini: gemini://padraig.blog/log/wwe-backlash-2024-results.gmi
5 May 2024

Welcome to the new padraig.blog. If things feel off, please let me know on Mastodon

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