So good to see one guy clowning both sets of tag champions by himself. I know the one guy is Braun, but jesus. Do they not have 4 random dudes back there? Do we have to go out of our way at every turn to make sure that nobody ever cares about anything again?
Speaking of not caring about anything, they’d better have a plan for this Cedric Alexander and A.J. Styles business beyond the current A.J. beats him like a drum at every turn thing they appear to be going with.
Not sure that having Baron Corbin beat Chad Gable in the King of the Ring finals after weeks of everyone calling Chad a short little geek who doesn’t belong in the tournament is what I would have done, but I’m not going to complain too much…yet. I liked the match. Chad had the people behind him, he looked like he belonged in there and Corbin had to work hard for that win. The key now is what they do with Gable. If you’re smart, now is the time to keep the momentum going by letting him go on a tear through scrubs and lower card guys, throwing them around, looking impressive and getting some wins on his way back up. But since this is WWE and smart is often the last word that comes to mind when watching these shows, I’m guessing he’s going to be a short little geek that’s never on TV again within a month.
I did not enjoy the Maria gender reveal and who might be the father nonsense, but it was historic. The Maria on a pole line marks the first time the main roster Street Profits have been remotely entertaining.
It wasn’t the best wrestling show I ever saw, but the September 17th Smackdown did a good job of moving some things along.
I’m definitely interested in Kofi and Brock. That one kind of came out of nowhere and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. Do they do the obvious and have Brock just squash him? Does Kofi put up a good fight but lose in the end? Will there be a DQ or some sort of disputed finish that will let them make a feud out of it? Could Kofi actually win? Or here’s an idea. Maybe Brock is about to win when the rest of New Day runs out and they all beat him down 3 on 1. I don’t think people would see that coming. Not sure if I really want them to go that route since there’s such a face vs. heel imbalance across WWE, but New Day has felt like they’ve needed a new direction for a while now and that would certainly freshen them up.
As hard as I’ve been on the story as a whole, I didn’t mind the Shane and Owens lawsuit angle. It’s a little odd having the hero be the one suing, but I’ll let it go in this case because it doesn’t take much to make some sense out of it. If you can’t get a fair shake in the ring from a guy who’s entire identity is based on money, power and being untouchable because he’s the boss’s kid, why not use the fact that he’s gone too far this time to hit him where it’s going to hurt him? It’s not much, but it’s something. I’m sure we’re headed for another match and that’s no good, but for once there’s a piece of this dumb ass story that I don’t have to complain about, so we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
The first 2 hour NXT was a good show. NO surprise there. I knew it would be. My concern is more about what happens when we get to show 8 or 12 or 17. They’re already loading up the first few shows with big matches to start the USA era off hot and to get a jump on AEW, and I don’t know how you keep that going once you’ve burned through that many things all at once.
And on the subject of burning things out, that crowd was fantastic. I hope they can keep up that amount of enthusiasm once we get to show 8 or 12 or 17. Doing the show from the same place every week is risky because you’re drawing from a smaller pool of fans, and I hope they don’t run into the problem that Impact had at the old Orlando Impact Zone where eventually the audiences had seen everything and it was much harder to get them pumped up.
Was good to see Lio Rush back wrestling and being taken seriously again. Hopefully his match being for a Cruiserweight Title shot is a sign of things to come.
Usually when WWE mashes 2 songs together into 1 it’s obnoxious and awful, but Baron Corbin’s regular theme with bits of regal sounding king music sprinkled in is pretty great.
I didn’t watch much of it because I was more focused on hockey and baseball, but what a cool feeling it was to be able to flip over to TSN and see AEW Dynamite. It must have been a great show, because I’ve already talked to 2 lifelong WWE fans who are saying that this might be what makes them finally quit Raw and Smackdown. They’re like me in that they haven’t been happy with what WWE has been giving them for a long time, but actually giving up hasn’t seemed like a real option. I hope that this plus the internal competition from NXT and the pressure to live up to the huge TV deals they’ve signed will start making Raw and Smackdown better, but if it doesn’t happen soon main WWE might find itself down 3 more weekly viewers.
If I don’t quit, part of the reason will be that Daniel Bryan is just the goddamn best. He’s a fantastic prick heel and every bit as good as a fiery, sympathetic underdog hero. And no matter which one he needs to be, he makes it seem so effortless because he’s so talented in every possible way that he can make the best of whatever is thrown at him. Plus he just had the best Erick Rowan match I think I’ve ever seen.
I’m a little surprised that USA Network is letting WWE get away with plugging Smackdown Live moving to Fox so much.
Now that they’re heels, they should call Sasha and Bayley the Boss and Thug Connection.
That Shane and Owens segment seemed really rushed. Not that I need to hear Shane struggle to spit out his lines for 20 minutes, but we went from lawyers and lawsuit negotiations to a ladder match with careers on the line without any real suspense. Yes, I said we’re getting a ladder match. Jesus. And I hope Owens is smart enough to get some sort of nobody can interfere provision written into that contract or we’re right back where we started…again. Oh, and if all of a sudden Owens is saying that this isn’t about money, why did he spend weeks whinging about his fine?
Oh hey, Raw has fireworks again. I guess if you’re not going to stop dropping illogical turds on a weekly basis you might as well polish those suckers up and hope to distract a few folks.
Has anyone made sure that Dominick Mysterio is still alive? Kid took a hell of a beating from Brock there.
And we’re resetting the babyface count on this show to 0 not counting the agents that came out to help, correct? Why wasn’t the locker room emptying once he attacked a fucking child? Yes I’m aware that the child is larger than his father, but if the idea is that he’s just a kid, what the fuck sort of cowardly, immoral degenerates are all of these heroes? But hey, at least a few of them offered their best wishes well after the fact, which I guess in WWE land makes it all ok.
Cedric Alexander got beaten by AJ Styles again. Must be a day ending in Y. At least they got to have an actual competitive match this time.
Um, why are Rusev and Lana suddenly having marital problems? Why did Lana randomly show up with Bobby Lashley and start making out with him during Rusev’s match? Why is there so much soap opera, daytime talk show garbage on these shows lately?
If you missed Matt Riddle vs. Adam Cole from the October 2nd NXT and based on the first week of the NXT vs. AEW ratings war there’s a decent chance you did, go watch it. Hell of a match.
I’m still not quite used to NXT matches having commercial breaks in the middles of them.
They’re calling it the NXT Cruiserweight title now and they scrapped this week’s 205 Live with basically no notice. Would be weird if they just brought it back next week, so hopefully that means it’s done.
Tommaso Ciampa is back!
I like that Finn Balor came out to confront Cole at the start of the show and then Ciampa did the same at the end. They’ve already got the next two title matches lined up, and they’re both ones I want to see. All I ask is that they don’t book a stupid 3-way, at least not until both Balor and especially Ciampa who never lost the belt get fair 1-on-1 matches for it.
How better to kick off the Smackdown on Fox era than with a long ass talking segment? At least the Rock was there, but still.
“Could you imagine a WWE without Shane McMahon,” asks Michael cole. Yes. Yes I could.
Owens won the ladder match. Thank god. It wasn’t as much of a 1-sided murder as it maybe should have been, but hopefully the decisive finish means we’ll be rid of Shane for a while.
Are they actually setting up a match between Strowman and Tyson Fury or is this just a thing they’re doing to get mainstream sports coverage?
Roman Reigns just pinned the unstoppable Erick Rowan after Daniel Bryan took out the unstoppable Luke Harper on free TV 2 days before the big tag match at the PPV. Boy, I sure can’t wait to shell out money to see if they can overcome the odds.
Well, Kofi and Brock just happened. And they did the obvious and had Brock squash him. They even did it in like 8 seconds so we’d know that all of those months of us cheering for him and being told that he was a serious champion were worthless. No, I’m not holding my breath waiting for the Kofi Kingston redemption story.
The post match stuff with Cain Velasquez was pretty good though and the announcers actually did their jobs and explained to us who he is and why Brock was so afraid of him. I feel much more certain of this turning into a match than I do of the Tyson Fury stuff.
Have they announced any matches for Hell in a Cell? I can think of the 2 cell matches, Bryan/Reigns vs. Rowan/Harper and Charlotte vs. Bayley, but that’s not going to fill 37 hours. It almost seems like they forgot they had a PPV coming up. Although to be fair, until my cousin texted me for predictions, so did I
Oh man. This should be fun. Nobody really spoiled anything, but I’ve been told that I’m going to hate this show. Nicest thing someone said to me about it is “well, at least it ended earlier than usual.”
I’m a little surprised that they put all that work into reintroducing Sasha only to have her lose to Becky in the cell, but I’m a fan of champions not losing all the damn time and the match was pretty good so I won’t complain.
I’m not going to say I didn’t like the Reigns and Bryan vs. Harper and Rowan tornado tag match. I did. But I would have liked it more if I hadn’t already seen Bryan and Reigns get the better of them 2 days earlier on Smackdown. I wonder what happens to Rowan and Harper now. Do they disappear again?
Orton and Ali was fine enough, but the crowd seemed dead after the two wild matches in a row. It didn’t help that nobody is all that invested in Ali since he’s been back, to the point where anybody who did care enough to chant was doing so for Orton during his big comeback. I hope they decide what they’re doing with him, because he’s a talented dude that could be a decent star if not booked like the rest of the treadmill geeks.
Why are Natalya and Lacey wrestling on Raw tomorrow? I just watched Natalya decisively win the feud on the kickoff show.
I must have missed their turn, but Asuka and Sane were kind of wrestling heel all match and then eventually won the women’s tag titles with a little bit of old school mist to the face. If there’s any justice in this world they should dominate whatever passes for the women’s tag division on all 3 shows for a good while, because they’re great and it’s time those belts finally got to mean something.
Other than too much time and not enough matches to fill it, I’m not sure what the reason was for that random 6-man with the OC, Braun and the Vikings. An absolute waste of time with a trash DQ finish for no real reason. Why did the OC get DQ’d? All they were doing was winning too much. And then the Viking Raiders just beat up Gallows and Anderson like they’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks anyway, so it’s not as though any of this protected anybody. Oh, and apparently Braun is a high level power punching boxer now, knocking AJ into the middle of next week with one punch. I guess maybe they are going further with this Tyson Fury stuff.
Chad Gable has two pretty good matches with Baron Corbin, both of which he easily could have won and one of which only didn’t result in a true victory because Baron got himself disqualified when he was about to get beaten. The crowd is cheering for him as he heads into a third match with Corbin. Gable finally gets his win, only to have the idiot ring announcer declare that “Shorty Gable” is your winner. That’s the name Corbin gave him before the match started, and at no point did he ever intimidate the guy into using it. What the hell? I don’t hate this show yet, but I’m getting irritated.
Why did Charlotte beat Bayley? Nothing at all against her, but things seemed more interesting with Bayley as champion. I guess maybe it doesn’t matter since Sasha lost too and my idea was that they would both be singles champs and then win the tag belts and have a run with everything for a while, but now I have no idea what’s happening.
Speaking of which, am I supposed to feel sorry for post match sad Bayley or dislike her for being upset that she lost something important to her? I can’t figure it out. Seems the crowd can’t, either. Some are booing, some are shouting encouragement, some are asleep.
And now one of the backstage interviewers calls Gable Shorty and makes it sound like a mistake. Hate is a strong word, but I’m just about done with this waste of time.
Corbin attacks Gable and lays him out. Why? This feud does not need to continue. It was at a logical end point.
Ok friends, you win. I hate this show. They didn’t announce a decision, but I do believe I just saw a guy get disqualified for using weapons in a Hell In a Cell match where weapons are clearly legal and had been liberally used up to that point. Was it the dastardly Fiend? NO, it was Seth Rollins, who we’re supposed to be rooting for but who the crowd totally turned on by the end because he over did the weapons to such a degree as to get sympathy on a crazy monster demon man. A crazy monster demon man who then proceeded to shrug it all off and beat the absolute hell out of him, I should point out. The fans were pissed, loudly chanting things like “bullshit” and something that sounded an awful lot like “AEW.” Somehow this was all even worse than last year’s non-finish in the Strowman Roman HIAC. WWE should never be allowed to do a cell match again. This was some Vince Russo level horseshit right here. It feels like a big fuck you to everyone, including the TV companies that now have to pay them billions of dollars for programming no matter how many fans they run off. Awful, just awful.