Welcome back to Wrestling with Mediocrity. Unlike the WWE, I do not plan to keep you here for 17 hours worth of wrestling content this week. Seriously, if you add it all up that is what WWE put out from Saturday – Thursday. An average of just under 3 hours worth PER DAY. If you watched all of that you are an absolute lunatic and I urge you to stop reading this article and turn yourself in. You are a danger to yourself and others.
Starting chronologically we had NXT Takeover on Saturday night and as usual it was an incredible show. I realise fans don’t see it this way, but the fact that WWE still tries to pretend it is the minor leagues is laughable. In terms of the female wrestlers, Kairi Sane and Io Shirai are better in-ring than anyone on the WWE main roster. Then you have the likes of Ricochet, Johnny Gargano, Adam Cole and others on the male side who are every bit as good as Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins and AJ Styles.
From top to bottom Takeover was excellent. The women’s title match struggled for crowd reaction a bit at first after the Ricochet match, but they got them in the end. I am so glad Helmsley finally took a chance on Matt Riddle. It felt like for so long that he wasn’t going to be given an opportunity due to his past. His first few months in NXT have been strong and hopefully he continues to develop because he is one of the small percentage that come along with an IT factor.
The Royal Rumble show itself was on paper a good show with the right people going over, however the execution left a lot to be desired in my opinion. It has been a long while since Vince was able to book something that genuinely annoys me. Over recent years I have became to numb to it that I just find it funny. However watching the show along with me were a few lapsed wrestling fans and I was told in no uncertain terms that they won’t be returning for WrestleMania.
I had told them about Becky Lynch becoming a breakout star and how people were comparing her to the new Steve Austin. Twenty minutes into the show she had TAPPED OUT clean in the ring. They pointed out that not in a million years would Austin have tapped. I had no response. They were right. To make matters worse, she then appears after #30 has entered the Rumble, demanding to enter without any legit reason and is 5 minutes later trying to get sympathy due to a fall from about 3ft in the air. Meanwhile Charlotte (the heel this week) had entered at #13 and put a serious shift in.
Now had Becky passed out instead of submitting in the title match she would have had a justifiable reason for being upset and demanding another shot. After tapping out though it just looked like sour grapes. Since Sunday the internet has been divided on this subject. Some are upset and others believe it doesn’t really matter and that it will be forgotten about in a week or two. The sad thing is that it will be forgotten. Vince McMahon has spent years conditioning fans to not care about finishes and unfortunately it looks like even with a lot of hardcores that he has succeeded. Obviously the tap out isn’t going to kill Becky’s popularity, but when she inevitably only gets over to a certain level it will be because of instances like this.
Obviously this was totally out of Becky’s control but I also don’t think it helped that her big win came after what was the longest Royal Rumble match in history. That’s right. Despite it being a 30 participant Rumble and the intervals supposedly being 90 seconds it managed to somehow outlast the 40 man Royal Rumble in 2011. It was unfortunately sloppy in large parts with most intervals ending up being over two minutes (some nearly three!) due to the competitors in the ring being unable to remember their spots and get them done in time for the next woman to come out.
This brings us on to other match results that looked great on paper. Ronda should absolutely have beaten Sasha Banks, but did we really need to see Sasha visually tap out on the outside of the ring and then get pinned? What about Bálor? I agree Lesnar should have retained and put someone over on the bigger stage at WrestleMania, but why did he need to tap out and then take another kicking post match? The Bryan/AJ finish I am willing to take a wait and see approach on. On the face of it Eric Rowan being involved doesn’t scream great idea, but Daniel Bryan can make a lot of things work and I do like the idea of him having a posse.
Rollins winning the men’s Rumble was also the right call. Many have called this particular match boring and while I can’t say I disagree you have to remember that they were in a pretty bad spot. The match started SIX HOURS into the show (if you include the pre-show) so getting people excited, in the building or at home, was going to be a massive chore. Even poor Kofi saw little reaction from his trademark “I’m no oot” spot after it was stolen by not only Naomi, but Kacy Catanzaro earlier in the night. I would love to see them retire the spot for a few years. I am fully aware wrestling is fake, but I don’t need slapped in the face with it via annualised spots.
The other reason the men’s Rumble finished on a bit of a low was the surprise of Nia Jax entering at #30. I have yet to hear from anyone who didn’t groan at this particular booking decision and it was a real blow for the many fans of Mustafa Ali as she tossed him out in short order. There were a lot of jobbers in that Rumble, but Mustafa was the one sacrificial lamb for Nia. Again we are just supposed to forget about that two days later though as on SmackDown he was chosen for the world title elimination chamber.
I don’t have a lot to say about RAW. There was plenty of good and bad on the show but I came away liking it overall due to the strong Becky/Ronda interaction. It was interesting that it came directly after what I believe to be Ronda’s worst solo promo and match in a WWE ring. She has been excellent up to this point but she completely lost her way during the initial promo and I think that bled into the match. It took Becky coming out and the intensity of the crowd to bring her back and to her credit at the point she recovered extremely well. It is honestly hard to imagine how Vince can honestly think adding Charlotte and making the match a three way improves things, but I suspect he just doesn’t want the first female WrestleMania main event to not involve her.
The Dean Ambrose situation is a weird one. I do think he is legit leaving in April, but there is certainly cause to doubt that with WWE choosing to make a public statement about it. Something they would never normally do. My guess is that they are annoyed with Dean and have publicly announced his intentions to leave to kill his money negotiations with the likes of NJPW and AEW. It is funny that everyone under WWE contract who pulls a frowny face automatically gets linked with AEW despite them specifically saying they don’t want too many people from the WWE. Ambrose is a friend of Cody though and there is reportedly a lot of interest in him.
On TV this week we got some really strange turns. Elias is now randomly a heel. Then, 24 hours later in an equally bizarre move Rusev turned. That wasn’t the end of it though, he also aligned himself with Nakamura, the guy is was mid-feud with. Why? Because Vince. Is it coincidence that both turns were guys who in recent months had been turned face due to fan reactions? Almost certainly not.
TV ratings continue to become a major concern. These are numbers you would expect to see in the middle of football season, not on the road to WrestleMania. If the trend continues I would expect to see Vince become increasingly desperate and start to show some really obscure shit at the wall in the hopes that it sticks. Maybe we can get a new era again? It’s been a month. Actually quick bit of backtracking, but recent NXT call-ups like EC3 and Heavy Machinary, why weren’t they in the Rumble?
You may have noticed, but almost every single title challenger on SmackDown is chosen via a multiple person match on TV. The rare exception is when they just have the multple person match on the PPV instead (see Elimination Chamber). This time it was the Uso’s seeing off New Day, Heavy Machinary and The Bar to earn a shot at Super Shane O’ Mac and Miz. At some point I would love to sit and do some research on how many tag title matches The Uso’s have been involved in on PPV. I would hazard a guess that they rival John Cena for the most PPV matches involving a title in history.
I realise now I forgot to mention the SmackDown tag title match at the Royal Rumble. I had predicted a title change and to the surprise of absolutely no-one that is what we got. Complete with 49 year old non wrestler Shane not only kicking out of The Bar’s finisher, but then picking up the pin. The angle continued on SD with Miz’s father finally being proud of him. I still see this ending with Shane turning on Miz leading to a match at WrestleMania which I have less than no interest in him.
That will do me for this week. Another long one. I always plan to keep these short but once I get going it is hard to stop. I promised I would see this main roster arc through until after WrestleMania, but I am considering after that switching to focusing more on NXT and some retro shows. I have never missed a Takeover show but I rarely catch NXT TV due to there not being enough hours in the day. As things currently stand though I would much rather spend my time watching a one hour, sensibly booked weekly TV show. We will see how things go. Anywho, until next week rest up. You have all earned a well deserved weekend break from WWE.
