This is the week where everything begins to change! Kinda. Sorta. NXT’s move to USA Network started, albeit only the first hour was shown on national TV with the second airing exclusively on the WWE Network. It was almost like a weekly NXT show/Takeover PPV hybrid. A very strong showing for their first week led to an impressive 1.18m in viewership as well.
I found myself worried about the rating on Thursday. If it had been low there would have been pressure to change up the formula for prime time with a decent chance of Vince and Kevin Dunn sticking their oar in. As it stands though, I think Helmsley will be left to his own devices which is a heartwarming thought.
One of the many things that impressed me as well was the way they laid seeds for next weeks show. They did it in a natural way, building foundations for feuds to progress rather than nonsensical hot shot cliffhangers we have seen on SmackDown and occasionally RAW in recent weeks.
Match of the night was the women’s number one contenders match where Candice LeRae picked up the win. In truth every match was either really good or served a storyline purpose. I particularly like the booking of the Undisputed Era holding all the gold. Walter inserted himself into a top mix as well, but I haven’t heard anything about him changing his stance on living in the US so I think for now he is likely a visitor on NXT’s main roster.
RAW this week was a decent show, but it did have a few really infuriating moments. First let’s start with the good. Bray Wyatt is absolutely superb as the Fiend and was the MVP of the show by far. I do worry about the shelf life of the character though. It feels like it will be a difficult gimmick to keep strong after a few loses, which is why I find it weird that he is being thrust into the title picture so quickly.
Baron Corbin and Chad Gable was another huge positive for the show on Monday night. That’s two weeks in a row on RAW that Corbin has delivered in the ring. Now to be fair he has been in with world class talent on both occasions but he has held his own. The KOTR is a gimmick more suited to a heel, but there was certainly an argument to be had that Gable would gain more from the win than the bartender. Unfortunately as it stands I would strongly imagine Gable will fade back to obscurity pretty quickly now.
Wrestling twitter decided to throw it’s toys out of the pram at journalist Dave Meltzer again this week. The story goes that Dave was told by a source in the creative process at WWE that “Vince has decided to bury Cedric Alexander”. Naturally this led to an out cry of people hearing this information second, third and sometimes fourth hand.
I honestly wonder what those angry about this report actually believe. Do they think Meltzer lied and invented the story? That the journalist, a noted admirer of Cedric, made the whole thing up? Because that’s literally the only sensible reason to be annoyed at him. At no point did he claim that he had 100% verified this with Vince himself, although I’m sure many “wrestling news sites” framed it that way. All he said is that was what he was told. And let’s be honest, his booking at the PPV and on RAW certainly lead you to believe that is the case.
If you ask my best guess on what happened, Vince decided Cedric wasn’t getting over as he had hoped and during a creative meeting for the PPV and would have commented something along the lines of “AJ goes over strong, I’m done with Cedric’s push”. Upon hearing that and seeing both nights play out, the source (in his own words, not Vince’s… Not Dave’s) has went to Meltzer and said Vince has decided to bury him. Now given this is almost certainly the events that unfolded, where does the rational hate for Dave Meltzer or any other wrestling journalist come from?
The Answer: Narrow minded, pro WWE trolls who sometimes even without knowing it get upset any time something negative is said about their favourite wrestling company.
Then there is the tag team divisions. Braun Strowman loses clean to Seth Rollins on Sunday, so obviously Vince needs to rehab him immediately. There are literally 100 guys backstage he could have beaten up, but instead he is booked to single-handedly go out there and wipe out BOTH sets of tag team champions. Apparently because Robert Roode was scheduled for the main event he was spared and allowed to run to the back. How that is protecting someone is beyond me.
The other main issue I had with RAW was Kane, a retired mayor, beating up a host of current stars. I get what the thinking behind it was, you want to make Kane look strong before feeding him to the Fiend, but there are much better ways of achieving the same goal. WWE are terrible for making their current stars feel like less than the previous generation and it hurts the product.
Lastly I want to comment quickly on the Mike Kanellis. This poor guy. It seemed for a month or so like Vince had gotten bored of humiliating him, but they brought it back this week. On a positive note it did lead to the return of Rusev who is one half of my favourite wrestler/manager combo right now, but unfortunately the segment he returned in sucked so badly he got little to no reaction. One can only hope he is distanced from this pathetic excuse for a storyline as soon as possible.
Can we please end the suffering of the Kofi world title reign yet? I have honestly had about all I can take at this point. Sunday saw another subpar match that the fans couldn’t care less about. At one point fans could even be heard chanting “Stupid” at Kofi. It was a nice idea with a great culmination at WrestleMania, but it has been downhill ever since. I refuse to believe for a second that Vince thinks it is a good idea to go in to SmackDown on Fox with a pancake throwing midcard tag team wrestler as his world champion. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lesnar win the belt in the next few weeks.
The entire paragraph above was written based off of the PPV Sunday night. As luck would have it, Lesnar actually appeared on SmackDown to lay down the challenge for October 4th. This is a smart move on two levels. One, it hopefully gets the belt off Kofi and they can start to try rebuild the prestige of the belt. Second, it’s a big hook for fans to tune in on that first week of SmackDown on Fox. Historically when WWE move nights/channels they drop around 10%. Well this is an excellent incentive to remind people the switch is happening and why they should tune in.
Kevin Owens was back on TV, not even missing a week despite his ‘firing’ seven days ago. It also appears that his Twitter hints of heading to NXT may have been just an attempt at changing the narrative away from how pathetic his character looked at the end of last week’s show. It’s so sad that a guy like Owens, so talented he was being talked about as the next Steve Austin a couple of months ago is now running about crying and threatening lawsuits on Shane for being mean.
The worst part is they will no doubt try to heat the Kevin Owens character up again in the near future and expect people to forget how damaged he has been by all of this. Some will, but I certainly won’t. And I can tell you one thing, I reckon it is almost impossible at this stage for Owens to be a top guy given how his character has been treated. A total waste of a great talent, but there is a lot of that going around.
It’s hard to know where this Reigns/Rowan/Harper/Bryan storyline is going. In the short term it looks like Reigns/Bryan v Rowan/Harper. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bryan align with the former Bludgeon Brothers and the whole thing to have been an elaborate setup. I mean that would make no sense, but let’s be honest, none of this has made any sense from the start.
Think back to when Bryan was sitting on the sidelines having been told he would never be allowed to wrestle in a WWE ring ever again. Now imagine at that time I outlined his return up to this point and told you that was actually how it was going to play out. Would you believe me? Of course not. No-one could fathom that level of incompetence.
That will wrap up this pretty long edition of Wrestling with Mediocrity. Once AEW starts and there is a minimum of four shows to review each week I may switch to a format of choosing one positive and one negative aspect of each show to talk about in order to keep this at a sensible length and not leave me spending half the week writing it.
Until next week, see ya!
