Last Updated on: 19th September 2023, 06:03 pm
A note from present day me before we get going here.
When I decided to let myself get months behind on all wrestling so that I could catch up on older shows I’d been putting off because WWE takes up so much time every week, there was a part of me that thought dude, you’re a fool. You’re never going to be current again. Little did I know I was actually kind of a genius. With everything getting cancelled and scaled down, I’m going to be the only one who isn’t going to run out of things to watch.
Also, these shows in front of no fans are something else, aren’t they? I’ve caught bits of them on TV while flipping around. It’s like watching a Tampa Bay Rays game, but with fighting. Or to put it in wrestling terms, it sounds like an episode of 205 Live in there.
Ok, here’s all the stuff I managed to jot down while watching things from the time between Hell In A Cell and Survivor Series.
A couple of thoughts about the first Dynamite now that I’ve had some time to process it.
I have no idea why nobody came out to help Cody when Chris Jericho was beating him up for like 5 straight minutes after his match, but over all I can’t tell you how nice it is to watch a wrestling show where the good guys have friends who will try to lend a hand when things go wrong. They might not always be successful, but the effort is there unlike, for example, Rey Mysterio and his young son getting killed to death by Brock Lesnar on Raw while all the heroes are nowhere to be seen until after the fact when they’re all wishing him well during interviews and talking about how much of a meany that Brock is. Where were you a few minutes ago when you really could have been useful, you cowards?
I’m glad that Jake Hager is getting a chance here. I never understood why WWE never really ran with him. He could have been a pretty solid heel, and his matches with Rusev early in that run showed that he could have been a more than capable patriotic American babyface, too.
Kenny Omega is dead, right? If he isn’t dead, I shouldn’t expect to see him for a good month or more, yes? If your goal is to treat this more like a somewhat realistic sport, there’s no way he should be doing anything on TV besides appearing in video packages where he’s nursing himself back to health so he can murder that son of a bitch Moxley.
I’m positive they gimmicked that glass table, but nothing about that landing there could have been overly comfortable.
By the way, an under-rated part of that whole segment is that Kenny didn’t come off as a total idiot. When the fans started cheering loudly at a strange time, he reacted to it and was ready for something to happen, not oblivious, frozen and distracted like he would have been were this WWE. I’m still wondering how none of this resulted in a DQ, but more went right than not here so I’m not going to get overly hung up on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bgcg_sSkfI
Well…shit. I knew this day would have to come eventually. When I took my WWE break, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to resist coming back. I’m a fool, you see. So I saved everything I would normally watch so that when I was done catching up on the stuff I’d been ignoring I could pick up where I left off. I see that October 7th’s Raw is next in my cue, so I guess it’s time.
Of course the first thing I see on Raw would be this nonsensical Rusev, Lashley and Lana shit. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s as though WWE is retroactively saying to me “welcome back, simpleton. We all know you’re not really going anywhere.”
When Natty put the sharpshooter on Lacey during the last woman standing match, how did not one of the 3 numbskulls on commentary mention that even though she can’t win with it, it’s good strategy to wear down your opponent? They got as far as the part where you can’t win with it why is she doing it and then just left it there so that Natty would look like a dumbass. Just awful, especially since 2 of them are supposed to be wrestlers and one of those wrestlers is Jerry Lawler.
Aleister Black and Street Profits promos back to back? Remind me again why I’m doing this.
When you haven’t watched for a while, you somehow forget just how unspeakably dull these Raw shows can be. Even when what you’re seeing isn’t all that bad, it’s just such a long, soul crushing slog that it doesn’t always matter. Three hours a week will never not be too much.
I really tried to like the Fury and Strowman segment that closed the show, honest I did. It’s not like it was horrible or anything, but it went on for far too long. Both guys escaping security and other wrestlers and getting at each other again is fine when you do it a couple of times, but I lost count after a while here. It also didn’t help that the announcers called it like it was just any other segment. Not a hint of anything approaching Jim Ross calling Steve Austin and Mike Tyson going face to face to be found. I know Jim Ross is a high bar, but at least try to show some emotion and convey to me that I’m watching something serious here.
Not like I need another show to watch, but I just checked out the first episode of NWA Powerrr (I don’t know why power needs 3 Rs) and it was an easy, fun hour of throwback style wrestling that I had a good time watching and would like to see more of. We got a couple of squashes, some chaos, some good interviews and a main event with the world title on the line plus the extra stipulation that if Tim Storm lost he was never getting another shot at it. If you can find the time, I very much recommend this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aegl1dWAT_8
Part of the way I’m going to find the time is by taking 205 Live off the schedule again. If I’m getting important cruiserweight matches like Lio Rush and Drew Gulak for the belt on NXT, what point is there to spending the time on a nothin’ happenin’ dead ass show in front of a dead ass crowd every week? I kid you not, I’ve been using it to help myself fall asleep sometimes when I’m having trouble late at night and it happens to be on the Network. They can’t merge it into NXT quickly enough.
I know I’ve been spoiled by all the years of it being on the Network, but these commercial breaks in the middles of NXT matches really aren’t working for me. Not sure how you fix that, but I hope they do something.
I liked a lot more about Dynamite this week than I didn’t (Young Bucks vs. Private Party made stars out of Private Party in one night), but it didn’t take long for AEW to annoy me. Kenny Omega was killed 7 days ago and now he’s just back and looking for a fight like nothing is wrong. Fuck off.
I’ve heard people kind of down on Darby Allin getting a title match, but I like it. Darby went to a draw in a match with Cody over the summer. Jericho is set to defend the belt against Cody at the pay-per-view in a few weeks. So If Jericho beats Darby, he has something to hammer away at in promos leading up to the Cody match. “I beat the guy you couldn’t, and I’m going to beat your ass too.”
At least we know that Eddie Edwards watches Impact. He knew that Reno Scum drugged him because the TV told him. Maybe he should call Alisha into the room now and again. She might be interested in a segment or two here and there.
So TNA just announced a 20 person call your shot gauntlet match for Bound For Glory. Next week they’re having a battle royal where the winner earns the right to enter last. That’s fine, but then they say that the runner up has to enter first. Why hang around and try to win especially if you’re being punished for being second best? Wouldn’t you, given the odds, be better off jumping out in the middle somewhere and taking your chances with the random draw?
Chad Gable is just Shorty Gable now? Do these people have any idea how to make a cool character at all? Do they think this poor guy shit in somebody’s bag? What even are they doing? It doesn’t make him endearing, it makes him a geek, especially when all he’s done since they started calling him that is get a fluke win, get his ass kicked backstage and then lose a rematch.
OMG you dopey, disorganized motherfuckers. Who came up with the idea of making the USA Network strategists look like such morons by blowing 2 separate draft picks to land Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross? They’re a team, and it was clearly stated minutes earlier that teams could go as a single pick unless you only wanted one member. And while we’re at it, what does it say about the value of Nikki Cross that the Fox side didn’t snap her up immediately and allowed USA to wait several picks before going oh yeah, maybe we want her too?
So if I’m to believe that Smackdown is anything other than absurdly fake, please explain to me the logic behind Bayley having brand new music ready to go at the end of her title win over Charlotte. It’s almost like production knew ahead of time that she was going to all of a sudden murder the inflatable tube people that went with her usual music and persona and would therefore need a new entrance.
Seth thought he put an end to his issues with the Fiend at Hell in a Cell? Dude! That match had no ending and he no sold everything you threw at him including your finisher like a dozen times. Who writes this shit?
And who do they write these shows for? Seth says he’s going to hunt the Fiend down and put an end to things once and for all tonight, and in response the Fiend sends word to the announcers that he’ll be presenting a new episode of his weird cartoon. Yeah, that’ll learn ’em.
Do they explain on either of these draft shows why the Fox draft room people randomly have a weird ass robot with them?
This Lana stuff is so embarrassing. Like to the point where I’m making sure the front door is locked so that nobody can walk in on me while it’s on.
Lol. Jinder Mahal got drafted way before Rey Mysterio. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of this, is there?
How much is everyone on this draft panel getting paid to be this useless?
The Street Profits are finally going to wrestle a match. Does this mean they can stop doing this awful hosting gimmick? Please?
So with as little explanation as possible and even less build, Lacey and Natty are just, like, a team that gets along now. Good luck getting anyone to care about that nonsense. Worse yet, they lost their damn match!
I thought the idea of the Firefly Fun House was that it was all in Bray’s mind, but apparently it’s just a place you can go that moves from building to building somehow. Lame. And poor Bray. The guy’s been a victim of arson twice in like the last 3 years and nobody’s doing anything about it. Forget Kevin Owens, the one who should be suing WWE is Bray Wyatt.
AEW is trolling me at this point. Kenny Omega, who is deceased, not only came back without a scratch on him a week later on Dynamite, but now he’s out here on Dark getting his ass kicked but still holding his own and ultimately winning a long Lights Out Match with Joey Janela. Whatever the story is supposed to be here, it’s not working for me. It’s more irritating than anything else and to be honest, it kept me from enjoying the match.
After 3 weeks of this Wednesday night war, it’s already clear to me why AEW is winning every week. As good as NXT has been, Dynamite comes off as such a bigger deal. In terms of energy, atmosphere and excitement, NXT just can’t compete. If you’re not watching AEW, it feels like you’re missing something. NXT doesn’t give me that feeling, much as I enjoy it.
One thing I do like about both shows is this weird thing they do where they advertise matches a week ahead and then next week comes and you get them.
I like that they explained before the Darby vs. Jericho street fight started that rope breaks would be enforced. Keeps the referees and the wrestlers from looking like idiots when in a supposedly no rules environment the ref calls for one and they listen to him.
Shorty Gable…excuse me, Shorty G, won a match and gave a nice inspirational speech that the crowd kind of cheered for. I look forward to him losing his next 37 matches in a row.
Who wrote Miz’s stupid line about Bayley being a champion who doesn’t talk? “Who do you think you are, Brock Lesnar?” Is that supposed to be an insult of some sort? Seriously, who wouldn’t want to be Brock Lesnar? He’s rich, he’s an accomplished athlete, championship level in multiple sports, beats everyone up at will, he hardly has to wrestle…gee, I know I’d be offended by the comparison. What an idiot.
Impact did a super job on this Moose vs. Ken Shamrock video package. I know you can’t do them all the time, but I wish companies would do more of these. I can’t wait to see the match now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml8yiTXoyvE
Unless the idea is that she came into the company with lots of hype and high expectations that she failed to live up to, Impact has done Tenille Dashwood no favours during this run. She comes in, wins a few matches that were way too competitive and not all that special, then loses her title match at the biggest PPV of the year. Not sure where you go from there if not a redemption story.
I’ll assume there’s an idea for how this is theoretically supposed to work (bitter old rich guy that’s sick of everyone trying to be like him, perhaps), but getting crowds to consistently boo RVD feels like an uphill climb.
Is Moose and Shamrock continuing beyond BFG? The match sure came off that way with all the interference it took for Moose to win it. It’s a little weird considering how they built it up.
I should be enjoying this Ricochet Drew McIntyre match here, but these fucking announcers and this real life superhero shit are making it near impossible. Like I’m almost to the point where I never want to see Ricochet again. He is not fucking Spider Man or Super Man or whoever the Jesus fucking fuck else man, you idiots! He is Ricochet, god dammit! Watch him. That’s all he should ever need to be.
And then he loses clean as a sheet and gets his ass kicked again afterwards! Hell of a super hero, you geeks.
I like the undesirable to undeniable features that AEW has been doing on Dark. They’re another nice way to get us invested in the people we’re watching every week. Hopefully some of them will eventually find their way to Dynamite. They could really help in the build to future matches.
As randomly as Lacey Evans turned face a couple weeks ago, she’s now a heel again. How are these shows so impossibly dumb?
It’s early, but my god most of these first few Fox Smackdowns have been fantastically dull. There’s seriously almost never anything to say about them. My biggest takeaway so far is that they’re really squandering this latest broadcast network opportunity. Maybe that’s not worth as much now as it used to be, but it’s still a chance to grab yourself a bigger audience thanks to the greater visibility that a platform like Fox provides. Not to mention that they’re getting paid great gobs of money to provide compelling programming, and they’re absolutely shitting the bed on that score. If I weren’t a lifelong wrestling fan and in the habit of watching basically no matter what, I don’t think I would watch this. What is supposed to be drawing me in? What’s holding my interest? What am I excited by? Who am I supposed to like? Dislike? Why am I supposed to feel these things? WWE has had almost a month to start answering these questions, and they haven’t. If I’m a new viewer, I’m almost certainly beyond giving them a chance to get to it by now.
Stupid question, but if according to his father Dominic Mysterio is slowly recovering day by day from the beating Lesnar gave him a mere 3 weeks ago, why would you bring him to the building knowing that Brock is there? That seems irresponsible. Only way it works is if at some point they explain that they all tried to talk him out of it, but the kid has heart and would not take no for an answer. This being WWE I don’t expect anyone to do that, but I’ll put it out there.
Why hasn’t Flip Gordon changed his name now that he’s a heel nicknamed the Mercenary? An evil Mercenary named Flip is just odd.
I love it when commentators go out of their way to make sure things make sense. I was just watching some New Japan and the bell rang to start an 8-man tag match even though everyone was brawling everywhere. Kevin Kelly was like “you might wonder why the referee would ring the bell even though we’re not down to 2 legal men. It’s referee’s discretion. He’s thinking I can throw this out if I need to, but I can’t disqualify anyone if the match hasn’t started.” Great!
Can people please stop saying that the reason WWE is boring and repetitive is the brand split? The rosters being cut in half is not the problem here. Bad writing and a lack of ideas is the problem here. There are more than enough people working for WWE. Finding something interesting for a bunch of them to do should not be an issue. Hell, even if you don’t want them all to do something interesting, they can easily be warm bodies that eat up time on some of these overly long shows and provide a break from seeing the same thing 5 weeks in a row. The only idea WWE really has, and this has been the case for years no matter whether or not the rosters are split, is to have the same guys do the same matches over and over but trade wins back and forth so that nobody ever advances or backslides or ends up any differently than they started.
Lol. Last week Sin Cara loses to Andrade via 2-on-1 cheating. This week he gets a girl of his own to counteract it and even the odds, but loses via cheating anyway.
Awwwwwwww motherfucker. Of course Carin would have to be working from home during the Raw where we find out that Lana thinks Rusev is a sex addict who only wants to get her pregnant and ruin her career. Thank god we work in different rooms and she’s busy right now. I don’t think she noticed it.
I liked NXT this week, but WWE’s insistence on having specific stipulation matches at the same time every year makes it so predictable and heavy-handed whenever they try to set up something like a WarGames. It was especially so this year since they’re building for 2 of them and decided to start them both on the same night. It takes a lot of the enjoyment out of it for me when I know exactly what’s coming just because the calendar says November.
Not sure who came up with the line in Finn Balor’s promo about turning Johnny Wrestling into Johnny Watches Wrestling, but that person deserves a raise. Great stuff.
I know I’m supposed to be excited that there’s going to be a women’s match on Crown Jewel, but so far I haven’t gotten passed the “Christ, Lacey and Natalya again?” stage.
Does Kofi Kingston remember that he used to be champion? He sure got over getting his ass kicked in 7 seconds and slipped right back into pancake chucking goof mode quickly. Does he not want it back? And if he doesn’t care about it, why should I?
I don’t think these Saudi fans got the memo that Cain Velasquez is supposed to be the babyface here. Boy do they ever love Brock. Quite a few boos for Cain, it sounded like.
I like the idea that they were trying to make it look more like an MMA fight than a typical WWE match, but I’m not sure how your average WWE fan is going to react to it. Not necessarily because it was MMA looking, but because Brock beat him in 2 minutes and then destroyed him more after the match until Rey Mysterio was finally able to rescue him on his second attempt. Cain was given almost nothing in this feud aside from being put over pretty well when he first showed up. Yes Brock and Cain are in a way even now, but if you’ve never seen Cain fight you have no reason to see him as a major threat going forward.
Is Mansoor better than I thought or is Cesaro even better than I realized? That match was far beyond what I expected. If it winds up being match of the night I won’t be surprised.
Michael Cole: “On the 45th anniversary of the Rumble In the Jungle, we can call this the Showdown In Saudi.”
We could, but I suggest the Shitshow In Saudi. Has a nicer ring to it, not to mention a greater amount of accuracy. The only showdown I just witnessed was Fury and Strowman fighting a winning battle against having a good match. This was no good. At best it was boring. Eight minutes of virtually nothing capped off by Fury punching Braun out of the ring and winning by countout. Then, just to make sure no one benefits from any of it, Braun powerslams the guy afterwards. Knowing that millions of dollars were spent to bring us this match threatens to bring me to tears.
The women’s match was nothing special in the ring, but it didn’t have to be, honestly. The point is more that it happened at all. It would have been nice if WWE could have resisted the urge to do quite so much self back slapping all the way along, but that’s just what they do. It took away from whatever specialness the moment had, but it didn’t take away from the fact that the moment was special for some people.
I can’t say for 100% certain that Seth and Fiend was the most boring falls count anywhere match I’ve ever seen, but at the moment I can’t think of another one. And for a guy they call the architect because he’s supposedly the brains of whatever outfit he’s a part of, Seth sure is a dumbshit. Wyatt survived like 37 of my finishing stomps last time we had a match, so I’m sure that if I try the same thing over and over again this time that it will definitely work. At least Fiend won the belt, but this was absolutely the wrong time for that because this crowd gave 0 fucks about any of it. A hell of an accomplishment, because the crowd had been super lively through most of the show up to that point. Of course had they just done what they should have in the cell we wouldn’t have to have this conversation. This would have simply been a bad rematch and that would have been that. And for the record, let it be known that the match that could not be stopped for any reason stopped right on schedule. I would not be doing my job were I to fail to note this.
I’ve been hearing it for 35 years or better, but I’ll never like the term sports entertainment. It’s such goofy nonsense and not one person has ever sounded cool using it accept maybe this guy.
Just call it wrestling. It’s ok.
I feel bad for everyone who got stuck in Saudi Arabia, but it made for the most enjoyable Smackdown in forever. There was no time to rewrite everything to death and we got a lot of new faces. the new faces couldn’t have come at a better time since the Survivor Series theme is Raw vs. Smackdown vs. NXT. The lack of regulars meant there was a lot of time to introduce a bunch of NXT people to an audience who may not know them, and they got to look super strong. Adam Cole and Daniel Bryan had a really good match, one made even better by the clean finish instead of the usual crappy ass WWE DQ. It all has me kind of excited for what might be coming next. Hopefully they don’t ruin it once everybody makes it home and things get back to normal.
Katsuyori Shibata is going to be wrestling Kenta at some point, right? If not he’s taken some awfully big bumps for a guy who is as injured as he’s supposed to be.
Well, that’s one way to get out of doing a proper 2 out of 3 falls match. Mark Haskins and Jonathan Gresham get caught in a double pin in the first fall, the referee gives them each a win and off to the third we go. It’s different, I’ll say that.
No matter what else happens at Unauthorized, Joe Hendry doing singing commentary during Ultimo Guerrero vs. Jonathan Gresham was worth my time.
Oof. Now there’s a drinking game I’m not sure I have the guts to try. You and someone else each pick a match participant. Each time your guy makes a cover but doesn’t get the win, you have to do a shot. Maybe I’d try it for a squash, but no way in hell anyone makes it out alive after anything competitive.
It’s not every day you see a tag team turn on each other and win the match anyway.
That didn’t take long. One Raw and I’m already pretty much over this year’s brand vs. brand Survivor Series invasion story. And as usual, it’s for pretty much the same reason. Basically, who cares? What reason does anyone have to give shit number 1 about the brand lines? Seriously, until a month ago they had a fucking wildcard rule that they couldn’t even keep straight and essentially ignored forever in order to get around having to have any kind of exclusivity. If this is ever going to work, they need to be patient enough to not mix the brands for at least a couple of years. Maybe then you’ve got something special when they come together. And perhaps then you can solve the other big problem with these things, that being why is this so important that people who generally hate each other are suddenly coming together to battle a common enemy? When WCW and ECW invaded WWF, that made sense. They were competition for years. But this here is all guys who work for the same company and were sharing a dressing room up until a few weeks ago. Why are they suddenly mortal enemies aside from it being November and that’s what we do in November?
I’ve heard more than one person say that they really don’t like Aron Stevens on NWA Powerrr. He has go away heat, they say. I don’t really understand this. He entertains me being what he’s supposed to be right now, a goofy, comic relief heel. And I can absolutely envision a time when he loses one too many matches, snaps and becomes something completeley different.
I’m not a hard person to please. When Ciampa told the O.C. that he didn’t care that they beat up the Undisputed Era when they invaded NXT, I was so happy. None of this I like you in 1 context but not a few minutes later in another shit. Even the stuff at the end of the main event made sense. Finn comes out to give an assist to the O.C. as a nice little nod to the old Bullet Club days, Adam Cole goes after the O.C. for beating his ass earlier and then after Ciampa because of course he does. I could have done without the non-finish, but I’ll still call it a win.
Dakota Kai is turning heel eventually, right? It sure seemed like the start of a slow turn when she didn’t get picked for WarGames.
Cody nailed it again. The promo he cut on the go home Dynamite for Full Gear was so great.
And my god, this Jericho video. Such a hilarious, magnificent asshole, this guy. Virgil was also a nice touch.
I want to watch their match right now.
Not sure how Cody loses, but I think he’s going to. It’s much too early to be switching the title. Only thing I can come up with is MJF turning on him, but it seems too early for that, too.
Sasha Banks has new evil theme music complete with the happy singing chorus from her old song awkwardly shoehorned into it. Why even bother?
Strowman and Fury are friends now. If it means they won’t try to wrestle each other again, I’m down.
Curious whether or not I’m supposed to understand why Reigns and Corbin are feuding. If the answer is no, congrats on a job well done. If it’s supposed to be yes, I’m going to need more than a few lame dog related insults and something or other about locker room leadership.
Jim Ross and Excalibur are becoming an excellent commentary team. I’ve really noticed it watching Full Gear. They play off of each other very well. They’re both extremely knowledgeable and are able to fill in details for each other when there’s something one of them doesn’t know about a particular person, style or era. They make everything, even the smallest things about a match, seem important. They analyze the match and let it be the story, the way it should be. They’ve taken a show that was already very good and made it more interesting and exciting.
Enjoyed the Young Bucks vs. Santana and Ortiz. Good action and the right team won. I had seen some people picking the Bucks, but that didn’t make sense to me. They’re much more established and didn’t need the win. And they were able to still keep the people happy in the end anyway thanks to the Rock & Roll Express getting a bit of revenge for Santana and Ortiz attacking them on Dynamite.
I think I may have seen the Rock and Rolls on more shows in the last year or so than I did back in the 80s. Not a complaint.
Happy that they didn’t go ahead and switch the tag belts here. No belts need to be changing in AEW just yet, plus there’s a lot of mileage to be gotten out of an SCU vs. Lucha Bros title feud.
Loved Cody and Jericho. It was a world title match that felt like a world title match. It wasn’t just guys doing moves for the sake of moves. It was a wrestling match, it was a fight, it was a struggle. And all the way along you had no idea which way it was going to go. MJF throwing in the towel was interesting. It signaled that a heel turn was coming, but you didn’t know when. He did it at just the right time. Would Cody have gotten out of the submission? Was he going to be seriously hurt if he couldn’t? We’ll never know. It was perfect. If they wanted to, they could have slow burned the tension between those 2 for a while before pulling the trigger. I was a bit let down at first when MJF just hauled off and kicked him in the nuts after his fantastic sad act, but when I think about it a little more, this was pretty much the only time they could have done it. What bigger moment could there have been for Cody than this aside from maybe a rematch, but to do that they would first have to find their way out of the Cody never gets another shot stip and that wouldn’t have been easy.
I’m pretty sure that if I were 18 years old, I wouldn’t be able to stop saying good things about Moxley and Omega. But now that I’m a 40-year-old man, a 40 minute death match isn’t necessarily what I’m looking for out of my wrestling. I’m not trying to say that it was bad or that it took away from the show. It wasn’t and it didn’t. Just contrived contraptions and dudes carving each other up and smacking each other with stuff isn’t really my thing most of the time anymore. I respect the effort and if it was your match of the night I’m absolutely happy for you, but I don’t need to see another one of these for a while.
Top to bottom, I loved Full Gear. I was super excited going in and I wasn’t disappointed. I’m so happy I watched it and I can’t wait to watch more AEW now so I can see where everything goes next.
That didn’t take long. Less than a minute in and Raw is already a dumb television show. If Natty couldn’t be there due to family obligations and they knew that, why not delay her and Charlotte’s tag title match instead of randomly throwing Becky in there? Especially since, if memory serves, it was Natty who got the win for her team to earn the damn thing in the first place.
Well…at least Becky was the one to get pinned, so there’s a reason for a do over if they don’t forget what they just did.
If you told me that Seth Rollins and Walter were going to have a match and it would be boring and forgettable, I doubt I’d have believed you. Unfortunately I just saw it happen, so you would be right.
How does something as impossibly bad as Rusev, Lana and Lashley keep getting worse?
Usually these UK crowds are pretty good, but from the sounds of it this one is enjoying Raw even less than I am. I can’t imagine why. I thought everyone liked spending their hard earned money on several hours of bad promos, worse storytelling, meaningless wrestling and a parade of losers made up of everyone from their home country.
I liked the match as a match, but why did Adam Page and PAC wrestle again? I thought their issue was settled at the PPV. Rematching them right away seemingly out of the blue and having PAC win felt kind of WWE to me.
The whole Corbin Reigns thing is extremely stupid, but I have to admit that I laughed at the yappy dog barking along in rhythm to Roman’s music.
I’m really not feeling this whole WarGames thing to start with, and this gaggle of good guys coming out to save Shayna after she comes out on Smackdown to start trouble with Bayley and Sasha isn’t going to help. If they’re just going to all work together like that, how am I supposed to believe that they hate each other enough to risk life and limb to fight against each other in a big, scary cage?
By the way, who the hell is on any of these Survivor Series teams? Aren’t we like a week away? Glad this whole invasion thing is so super important.
And did Nikki get on the team for getting the win in the big dumb tag match, or are they going to go the heel route and say that she’s not on because she didn’t win the one she was supposed to win?
I’m not there yet, but between this goddamn Lana shit and this fucking Survivor Series being such a thrown together mess WWE is pissing me off so much that I almost want to quit again.
Maybe I’ve said it before, but nobody seems to be listening so let’s try it again. It wouldn’t be all that hard to make this brand vs. brand stuff feel important. All we need are some actual stakes. Maybe the members of the winning team get the last 5 entries in the Royal Rumble. Perhaps you let each of them challenge anyone they want to a match, regardless of brand. Maybe you just give them all a bunch of extra money. Just let me believe they’re fighting for something other than whatever night of television they happen to be on and a specifically coloured shirt. Nobody cares about that. There’s no pride associated with it. Christ, 2 of the shows are on the same damn channel and the one that isn’t now was until a few weeks ago.
Why did Samoa Joe choose the middle of Charlotte’s promo to walk out and sit down at commentary? That was odd. Maybe he enjoy’s Charlotte’s robot talking as much as I do?
Imbecile Raw commentator: “The O.C. could not have planned for their numbers advantage to be equaled out.”
He says this as the Street Profits come out to keep them from taking 3-on-1 advantage of Humberto Carrillo. I can see the issue. These 6 men have only been feuding with each other for like 3 weeks now. No way to plan for that.
Credit where it’s due. The Lana stuff really has me paying attention. As soon as I realized her and Lashley were heading to the ring, I dropped what I was doing, sprinted in from the kitchen and turned the sound down before anyone could start talking just in case Carin didn’t have her headphones on.
I’m not a fan of tag partners that don’t get along, but I’m also not a fan of guys who are supposed to be partners at Survivor Series fighting against each other for no reason. If the idea is supposed to be teamwork to achieve some sort of goal, why aren’t they teaming together in order to build some chemistry? Wouldn’t that make more sense?
Is there no other way to build invasion storylines than having random dudes run in and/or walk out to ruin matches? Asking for a friend who hates a very good Kevin Owens Drew McIntyre match right now because of that shit awful finish.
Nice to see Rey endorse Humberto, but did they really make the poor guy stand there through that entire Paul Heyman segment even though his promo was over just so that Rey could happen to see him and talk to him?
Let me see if I have this right. Ryder and Hawkins have a tag title match against the Viking Raiders. The AOP attack Ryder and Hawkins, taking them out. This leads to Randy Orton and a mystery partner getting the title match? Wwwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttttttt?
Not that it matters, because a highly original brand supremacy brawl has broken out.
God do I ever hate this show sometimes.
But wait. Just when all hope seems lost, HHH announces that this Wednesday, NXT will have “an open door policy”! Now we’re talking! That’s going to be so different from…every show since the end of October. Fuck off.
Did I miss it, or has AEW not explained what the person who wins the Diamond Dozen ring gets? Besides the ring, of course. Does it give them an extra bump in the rankings? Does it give them the right to choose some sort of match? Is it just a cool ring so you can come on TV and say “hey, look at this cool ring I won”? If it is a bragging rights thing, then MJF needs to win it. Bragging about a fancy ring is a perfect heel bit, especially for a guy like him. Would make a nice piece of the Cody feud, too. Maybe down the line Cody challenges him for it or causes him to lose it to someone else as payback. You took my chance at the title, now I’m taking something you love.
There’s nothing wrong with the name Diamond Dozen, but quite often it sounded like the announcers were saying “dime a dozen”. That’s a bit of a problem.
It doesn’t take much to entertain me. It was silly, but Jericho making Hager say “sorry” for him because he couldn’t bring himself to do it and then SCU using entry level reverse psychology on him to get Scorpio Sky a title match was fun.
And I cannot stress enough how nice it is that the good guys usually have friends who will help them when things go wrong.
There was a lot of good wrestling on NXT this week. Revival and Undisputed Era was great, Riddle vs. Ricochet and Lynch vs. Ripley were fun while they lasted and there was nothing, aside from it being the second one in 2 weeks for the same reason, wrong with the ladder match. In fact there was nothing bad on the show whatsoever outside of the same everybody running in all the time and illogical switching of alliances business that I’ve already complained about and by itself, it was excellent. But this invasion and WarGames stuff, I’m over it. There isn’t one valid reason why any of it is taking place, so no matter how good this or that show might be, I just don’t care. Plus 2 WarGames matches on one show is going to be too much WarGames, even if both are good. I like good wrestling as much as anybody, but give me something to sink my teeth into. Make me believe that there’s a sense of urgency and gravity to any of it. Right now it all just feels like November. I can barely tell you what’s on Takeover, and don’t even get me started on Survivor Series. I’m pretty sure we still don’t have teams. And how many people are in the ring at once in these 3 team elimination matches? That seems important. The show is 4 days away. If I’m supposed to care enough to watch it, you should at least try caring enough to plan it.
If I’ve never said it, the middle of this here 8-man tag on Smackdown seems like a good time to remind everyone how much I hate hearing about how much a guy likes to have fun. I’m glad he’s happy, but right now he’s about to get beaten up. He has more important things to worry about than putting smiles on faces.
Shorty G is still a very terrible name.
The women’s WarGames was excellent. Of the two it was the one I was most interested in, at least as much as I’ve been able to muster up interest for this weekend of shows.
Assuming nothing bad happens (injuries, main roster booking), Rhea Ripley could be a gigantic star some day. She’s strong, she’s good in the ring, she can talk if she has to and the crowds love her. If anyone is going to take the belt off of Shayna, she should be the one.
I knew the Dakota Kai turn was coming, but it still caught me by surprise when it came. I figured they’d wait until some important point in the match and then have her suddenly attack someone after she fought side by side with her team forever like they would normally do in WWE, but instead she went after Tegan Nox before either of them had a chance to get into the match. It was great. The attack on the knees meant something because they’ve told the real life injury story about as well as they could have, and they’ve done a decent job of playing up the friendship aspect of it. Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here. A Nox and Kai feud should have some decent legs (could…not…resist…awful…pun…), and there are also plenty of other matches to do since the entire team should want to kill her now. Oh, and we have to figure that she was the one who took out Mia allowing her to take her spot on the team, so there’s that too.
I’m not sure how I feel about WarGames being used as a set-up for the future rather than a last resort to settle a bunch of longstanding issues, but this time at least, it worked.
The men’s match is going to have a tough time following this. I know they’ll try, but they’ve got their work cut out for them.
Well…they did their best. I think there are going to be a lot of people who liked it much more than I did. I didn’t dislike it, the issue is more that I was just tired. I’d already seen a very good WarGames and I don’t think I needed a second one no matter how crazy it was going to be. It’s like I said earlier. Two WarGames matches on the same show was too much WarGames. I’m positive that if I went back and watched it by itself later I would be much higher on it. In fact I’ll go as far as saying that starting the show off with a WarGames match took me out of the rest of the night. WarGames should be something you work up to. When that’s how you’re setting the tone, anything that follows ends up feeling like a come down.
Kevin Owens as the mystery man made sense since Undisputed Era attacked him on Raw, but it doesn’t do much for the brand loyalty concept I’m supposed to buy into tomorrow. Would love to see him back in NXT full time, but I don’t think that’s happening.
Main Survivor Series card is only a few minutes old and the stupid commentary is already getting on my nerves. Michael Cole keeps calling this “a 5 woman elimination match.” Not sure if somebody is telling him to say that or if he came up with it himself, but there are 15 women in the thing, so it’s dumb sounding and obviously wrong.
Why are the women’s tag champions representing one brand when they’re technically the champions of all three?
Um…what just happened to Io and Candice? Did something actually go wrong there and everyone missed it or was that supposed to be a lame ass way of getting 2 people out of the match at once with a fake injury?
Oh hey. Asuka and Charlotte aren’t getting along. Trouble between teammates in a brand match at Survivor Series? That’s new.
And we’re into ridiculously quick pinfall territory, the point in the proceedings where you can’t not look like a geek.
This thing is a complete mess.
And now Io and Candice are back. Ok then.
So wait. If they can come back, does that mean that since Asuka just walked off after misting Charlotte that she’s not officially eliminated either?
I guess she is, because Ripley just pinned Sasha and won.
I’ll give them this much. They’re trying with Ripley. She won on Smackdown, pinned the champ at Takeover and now this. Would have been better if she had done it alone, but you can’t win ’em all. These days I’ll settle for winning any.
Wow. They actually took the time to acknowledge Owens showing up at Takeover and have Seth confront him about it. I was sure they would just leave that one hanging there. I have no faith in these people anymore.
I sure hope Adam Cole is getting paid like the MVP he’s been lately. His match against Pete Dunne was very good, and it follows up on his crazy night at WarGames plus everything else he’s been doing on TV lately with what I think is still a legitimately messed up arm.
Daniel Bryan just did about as well as I think you can possibly do against the Fiend in his dominant, no selling everything gimmick. Fiend won pretty convincingly, but not so much that they wouldn’t be able to drag at least one more match out of this.
The red lighting during Fiend’s matches doesn’t bother me since I don’t have to look at it, but I still appreciated the “awful lighting” chant I’m pretty sure I heard at one point.
Guh. Another “5 man elimination match” with 15 dudes in it. The ring announcer is saying it too.
Welcome to the geek squad, WALTER. Eliminating a champion as unique and dominant as he’s been after one kick is not a great start to this match. Can’t blame the crowd for booing the hell out of that.
Well…at least WALTER got to do something before he went down. Poor Damian Priest only got to eat an RKO immediately.
This match sucks. Nothing but a parade of absurdly quick eliminations and people arguing with each other. Riddle rolling up Orton for a flash pin is at least maybe notable, but none of this is making for entertaining television.
And before I can even finish typing that sentence, Riddle is eliminated to make sure nobody gets over.
And Strowman just got counted out for some reason. Fuck this match.
Seriously, fuck this match. Guys are going down so easily you have to wonder if they even want to be in it. Terrible.
I was about to lose my mind when Roman stopped Seth from getting eliminated so that he could take out Ciampa instead, but I guess it makes some sense. Those 2 are at least friends and can work together to take out what’s left of NXT.
Things picked up a little when it came down to Reigns and Keith Lee, but this whole thing was quite awful considering all the talent involved.
Why did they announce Brock and Rey as a “no holds barred, no disqualification match”? Has there ever been a time when one hasn’t meant the other?
Brock overcomes a 2-on-1 Mysterio family plus pipe advantage to win in like 5 minutes. Not completely pointless, I guess.
Really not feeling this show very much.
Main event looked fine, but I’ll confess I was done. I ended up reading something about optimizing ad units and understanding traffic patterns for a while. I think the crowd was done too, by the sound (or lack thereof) of them. Cool that Shayna won, but Bayley being the one to tap was strange considering how much they had been emphasizing her new aggressive side and her feeling that the others were overlooking her going in.
And then Becky, arguably the most beloved hero this company has, attacks Shayna for no reason like a total asshole to end the show. Who doesn’t love a poor sport good guy, am I right?
Other than a couple of matches (Dunne Vs. Cole and Nakamura vs. Styles vs. Strong), there’s no reason you need to bother watching this unless you’re into the invasion stuff for whatever reason.
I’m wondering why I came back. WWE has the deepest pool of talent of any company at any time in history, and it’s largely wasted by incompetence and silliness. It’s so sad.
