Nattie/Lacey: They told us on RAW six days before this that the feud was over, but upon realising they didn’t have a PPV card 2 hours before the show started they flung it together. As soon as Nattie won you knew they would bring it back on RAW, as clearly Lacey is the one going over in the end.
Becky/Sasha: Great match. Lots of innovative and impressive spots. It continues to be a shame how little Becky is over compared to the beginning of the year though. During large portions of the match the crowd was dead despite the match being a spot fest.
Reigns & Bryan/Rowan & Harper: Better than I expected thanks to the tornado tag stipulation. Interesting to hear from muting the crowd response for Reigns entrance again. At some point they need to get over that. Hope Bryan wasn’t hurt, he seemed to collapse with neck pain on the way back up the ramp.
Orton/Ali: Didn’t watch it. I remain unable to sit through a Randy Orton match in 2019. Would have been nice if Ali won, but let’s be serious.
Alexa & Nikki/Kabuki Warriors: Alexa cuts a heel promo on the pre-show, then the match starts and the Kabuki Warriors inexplicably wrestle the match as heels. No reason given as to why… nothing. New tag champs, no-one cared.
Viking Raiders & Strowman/The O.C: Felt pointless, much like most of the card. That was amplified by doing a DQ for something that happens in every tag or 6-man. Also out of nowhere Strowman has a devastating punch, how convenient.
Gable/Corbin: Their weakest match yet but still decent. Unfortunately ruined by all the Shorty Gable stuff. It’s death and he is a character that is not going to be allowed to get over. His fluke win meant nothing, especially after he was beaten up backstage straight after.
Bayley/Charlotte: Decent match, but Charlotte as a babyface is a bad move. It has never worked well in the past and won’t this time either. I see her feuding with Sasha post draft and the size difference will lead to sympathy on Banks. This was an obvious finish though as WWE race towards giving Charlotte the 17 kayfabe title reigns her father had.
Rollins/Fiend: A mess from start to finish. The red light bounced horrifically off the red, fake looking cage. I have enjoyed the Fiend character since week one, but always had questions about how you book the guy in ring. For that reason I think the gimmick has a relatively short shelf life. Last night likely sped that up.
It also killed Rollins as a top babyface, along with his finisher which he hit 11 (Yes, ELEVEN) times on the Fiend and only got a one count. To be fair I think Rollins needed to turn heel anyway after his social media idiocy really dented his popularity but this confirmed it. The sooner they switch up his character and start to rebuild him the better because he is such a talent in the ring.
Overall it was one of the most counter productive WWE PPV shows I can ever remember. The first two matches were great but everything after that was either boring, didn’t make logical booking sense or was really bad. Most will point to the main event as the real low point and I can certainly understand that, but I at least found that laugh out loud funny. Shorty Gable and phantom heel turns are just lazy.
The one positive out of that main event is that it really adds intrigue for tonight’s RAW. What do WWE do to stem the backlash? Does Seth get booed again? Do they just take the Fiend off TV? Earlier today they announced a rematch between the two on Twitter but then removed it. It’s fair to say they are all over the place right now and where they lands god only knows. It will be interesting one way or another though.
RAW is a show I only really skimmed this week so I don’t have a proper good and bad take from it. What I will say is that I found it really interesting that they not only kept Seth off the show, but they never even mentioned the main event until the third hour of the show. It will be interesting to see how the Universal Champion is received on SmackDown for the draft.
While it is really disappointing that the Kabuki Warriors (still a shit name) didn’t even get a turn and were just pronounced heels at the start of the match on Sunday, I am really enjoying the push they are getting. Despite Sane being about the most natural face on the roster she is embracing the heel persona well and it is great to see both her and Asuka finally featured. It does appear that despite them being tag champions Asuka will be getting a singles match with Becky Lynch soon as someone clearly in the last few days remembered the finish of their Royal Rumble match. Better late than never I guess.
Lastly I want to say the final angle with Tyson Fury was alright. It didn’t have the impact I think they would have hoped, but it wasn’t bad. It looks like they will be announcing the match for Saudi Arabia at the press conference on Friday which given Fury’s controversial opinions I’m sure the Saudi prince will welcome him with open arms.
I could easily go with the production again as I thought it was even better this week. Tony Schiavone positioning himself as a lapsed fan is a great way to connect with many viewers that are tuning in to TNT. However this week it can only be one thing. That Chris Jericho interview!
Jericho is an absolute master of his craft. He came out looking like the biggest star in all of wrestling, established his new faction and got them over. Sammy Guevara has a huge future ahead of him in my opinion and despite what many others believe I think Jake Hager can be very valuable. Shutting the ‘we the people’ chants down was brilliance and hopefully it is the last we hear of it.
The Young Bucks losing. I really feel that both the Bucks and Kenny Omega are too concerned with looking like they are trying to put themselves over. Private Party are a good act and it was a great match, but to me you want to feature the hottest acts at the top of the card. I’m sure the thinking is that the Young Bucks are already over and they wanted to ‘make another team’ but what they and a lot of other wrestling fans are forgetting is that many of the people tuning in to AEW have absolutely no idea who they are. They need to establish themselves before trying to put others over.
This is the same with Omega. While he is in a top feud with Jon Moxley he has hardly been made to feel special. He did have a match this week against Joey Janela that was taped for next week’s AEW Dark that is supposed to be off the charts, but that in itself is telling. Omega should be having these matches on the A-Show and establishing himself as the special performer that he is.
This was another great show. One that topped last week in my eyes. While the viewership did have a significant drop off I think that was sort of to be expected, especially given the marquee baseball competition. If they can stay above one million viewers I think that is a very good base from which to build on. I would be cautious that it was the second show in a row to end in all out chaos. Some of that is good but you don’t want to over-do it.
The pacing of the show. After stupidly throwing everything they had at the wall last week it was nice to see NXT settle back in to a well paced weekly show. I would like to see more angle and storyline progression but hopefully that will come with time. I have listened to people say they believe HHH is playing things too safe and while there may be some truth to that, I’d rather this than last weeks show every Wednesday night.
As sometimes happens with a good solid wrestling show, the bad is not necessarily anything completely obvious, but I have went for the limitations WWE puts on their wrestlers. This may not be apparent to most as NXT is known for it’s tremendous matches, but when guys are signed to WWE they have to work within certain guidelines. It really hit me during the Walter main event. While he has been really impressive since joining WWE, other than the match with Tyler Bate he is yet to show the quality of matches he did on the Indy scene. Again as I say, this isn’t his fault, he is told to work within the WWE parameters. I just feel wrestling is at it’s best when there are a load of different styles.
Another solid show. They continue to feature their top talent like Undisputed Era, Matt Riddle, Walter etc while putting a lot of focus on Cameron Grimes and Rhea Ripley. Unfortunately the viewership of the show fell for a fourth consecutive week and I feel it will take them booking some more exciting angles to turn things around.
There wasn’t much competition for best moment of the night in this episode… Bayley! Complete with a new heel haircut she came out, destroyed her inflatable tube men and went on to take the SmackDown Women’s Title back from Charlotte. This quick title change seemed to leave many confused, but it shouldn’t have if you are a regular reader of my articles. WWE is desperate to get Charlotte to the same amount of title reigns as her dad (17 in kayfabe terms), which is why she has managed to rack up a record 10 title reigns in just over 4 years.
What happens in the future is all for another day. Sure, Charlotte will likely win the belt back in about a month and everything will be back to the way it was, but for now it feels fresh and that holds a lot of weight for me. Hopefully we don’t have to wait too long for Charlotte to turn back heel, as she continues to be one of the worst faces in the company.
There is so many different things to choose from here, but I have went with the draft in general. It’s hard to know where to even start with this mess. The fact that the order in which stars were drafted was the exact order of a list printed on WWE.com was really sloppy. Even worse though is the fact that when they apparently noticed that fans online had figured it out they tried to make subtle changes. The problem is, the changes were even more dumb.
Early in the draft The O.C were drafted to RAW. A shrewd move from USA Network to get three wrestlers for one pick. An hour later all logic goes out the window when RAW drafts Alexa Bliss on her own despite her being listed as tag team with Nikki Cross. Now as stupid as it would be to just take Bliss, maybe for some reason they really didn’t want Nikki. I could handle that gap in logic. But no. Next thing RAW, the SAME SHOW that drafted Alexa, also drafts Nikki. This stuff is not hard. It takes a very small amount of thought and continuity.
This was not a great show. In-ring it was alright, but fans had tuned in for the draft and that portion of the show was a disaster. Another real low point was Kofi absolutely no selling his title loss from the week before. No interview talking about how disappointed he was, nothing! Instead he skips down to the ring smiling and throwing pancakes to the audience. If he doesn’t care then why should fans? I was against giving him the title in the first place but this is a slap in the face to all the fans who got behind him.
It remains to be seen how many shows I review next week as I am taking my girl and the kids away for a few days. Wrestling with Mediocrity will be up in some form though so keep it locked to the website for plenty more wrestling thoughts. As always follow me on Twitter @VizualDze for more!
All images used in this article are from WWE.com
