Mixed Match Challenge is dead and Fan Service is alive. Welcome to a fine week of WWE TV.
RAW (12/17/18)
The strike is over, the strike lasted 2 weeks.
Not that RAW is suddenly approaching good TV, but WWE trotting out their leadership team (and Shane McMahon) to admit culpability for doing bad TV is interesting. And I’ll take interesting in my wrestling, even if it feels like a cheap trick to get them through Royal Rumble season without a complete fan mutiny.
The thing about this show above all else is that it didn’t feel cynical. Yes, The McMahon’s portraying themselves as suddenly benevolent leaders is cynical, but the matches and angles felt like there was faith actually being put in the roster to do good work. They didn’t make them all seem like complete nobodies lucky to be in the circus. Thanks to this wretched fall season, the puzzle pieces are all still all over the floor, but it didn’t feel like they were being pissed all over tonight.
There was the NXT call-up announcement, but I dug that they utilized people already on the roster in situations where you could actually maybe care about them – referee Heath Slater getting his revenge, Tyler Breeze answering Dean Ambrose’s Open Challenge, Crews/Gable/Roode as Babyfaces Who Dislike Baron Corbin. Of course poor Mojo Rawley still didn’t get a moment. But roster utilization, man. What a concept.
So “we’re sorry we’ve sucked, now we’re gonna make TV you like because YOU are the authority” is an interesting deal, even if the show tonight still had to rely on the obliterated RAW roster.
Vince, Steph, Triple H and Shane kicked off the show and kind of sort of took accountability for producing bad content. Their solution? “We’re gonna give you what you want.” What does that mean? We have no idea yet. Apparently new superstars and new match-ups, but if what surrounds the new still sucks, it might just still suck.
Either way, trying to turn a company – THIS company – babyface is a wild thing and it’ll be interesting to watch play out. At the end of the day all The Wrestling Fan really wants is interesting stories and cool in-ring shit and maybe a little bit of logic, but hey – let’s try this.
I think this week was the payoff to the GM Baron Corbin deal, and let me tell you this: as stale as he is both as a wrestler and guy doing 5 promos a show, Baron Corbin the employee admirably performed a tough gig. Kurt Angle returned and beat him up with Apollo Crews, Chad Gable and Bobby Roode, and if I’m The Authority now I probably would have made it so Crews had a reason to go after Corbin. Either way, this was pure fan service to start the show – I still don’t know why I should root for Crews, Gable and Roode, but as a metaphorical demolition of one of RAW’s most glaring issues I enjoyed it.
And then there was Ziggler vs. Balor. Oh dear. They did their stuff that everybody has seen way too much of. Balor kicked out of a Zig Zag. Drew McIntyre got involved. Let’s send Finn to SmackDown.
Dean Ambrose continues to be the worst character on WWE television. He calls Seth Rollins out because he wants Rollins to admit that he was right and Rollins was wrong. Like, huh? Wrong about what? What are we doing here? This is a guy capable of good promo work – we’ve seen it. Why does it all suddenly suck when he’s on presumably his biggest run yet? The writing is terrible but the promo delivery doesn’t help anything. It’s so bad that I’m starting to think it might be some 2018 3D chess heel bullshit.
Tyler Breeze answering Ambrose’s open challenge was a cool deal for Breeze and led to a very… OK match. The only good thing Ambrose did was a nasty Dirty Deeds. Rollins, dressed as one of Ambrose’s weird SWAT people, attacked Ambrose afterwards and looked very fired up to get this feud back on track. Breeze’s opponent on NXT last week Ricochet got a name drop on RAW too – by referencing other properties that we own, WE’RE SHAKIN’ THINGS UP.
Lars Sullivan, Lacey Evans, Nikki Cross, Heavy Machinery, and EC3 are all on their way to the main roster. Wow! I am sure this has all been thoroughly thought out.
Elias and Lashley are still feuding. Also, Owens and Zayn are back soon. OK.
LUCHA HOUSE RULES ARE DEAD YAAAY! The 4-way tag match (Revival vs. Lucha House Party vs. B-Team vs. uhhhh oh yeah AOP) felt like a lot of work to get to a Revival win. Decent action here and there but eh. The RAW tag division is still the RAW tag division.
As much as I’m a fan of many of of them individually, a one-hour Gauntlet Match with the RAW’s women division that started with Bayley vs. Foxy for 10 minutes was not what the doctor ordered. All these guys need a little more of a push before getting sent out there for an hour. It got eerily quiet at points, especially during Natalya vs. Ember. Bayley and Mickie had some nice ideas (like Mickie grabbing the bottom rope for a near fall) but didn’t mesh. Riott putting Nattie in holds 40 minutes in wasn’t ideal wrestling TV either.
Always leave it to Sasha Banks though. She brought it home well against Natalya, even if it ended with Natalya fighting through and deadlifting out of the Bank Statement and tapping her out with the Sharpshooter to end the big reset show. Not sure that’s what the fans wanted, you know? Sweet Sharpshooter sell by Sasha though, and I was beyond impressed they were able to follow through on the run-up powerbomb spot they almost lost each other on.
SMACKDOWN (12/18/18)
Oddly enough this was a weaker show than usual post the “WE’LL BE GOOD NOW” promo but the main event was awesome and Mustafa Ali is on SmackDown now and some folks (Naomi, Mandy, Gallows & Anderson, SAnitY, Rusev) got some love they usually don’t.
Vince McMahon’s pivot to babyface was completed with his appearance and metaphorical endorsement of Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, Asuka… and Naomi! All the promo work they did prior was good, but Junior showing up made it a moment.
Asuka vs. Naomi didn’t have the best execution of the long title fight they were going for but I dug how much time it got and the finish (a Naomi springboard caught with an Asuka Codebreaker for a near fall followed by the Asuka Lock) was awesome. Plus Naomi going toe-to-toe with Asuka on chain wrestling early was very cool.
The Jeff Hardy/Samoa Joe feud continued with a little time-killing in the form of a Samoa Joe non-apology and Jeff calling him out for not winning any championships.
The Miz/Shane McMahon will-they-won’t-they thing also continued with a little time-killing in the form of Miz asking Vince for a tag match with Shane and instead finding himself teaming with Mandy Rose vs. R-Truth & Carmella. I popped for R-Truth thinking Mandy was Maryse.
The Usos vs. the “overlooked” Gallows & Anderson was not great but if ya got The Club under contract you should probably use them somehow. Anderson still seems vaguely motivated but Gallows feels completely shot as a high-level professional wrestler. At the end of the day, they had a bad Usos match and that doesn’t give much hope for them having a good match with anybody. Jey getting caught in ropes after Anderson blocked his tope and struggling to escape during the picture-in-picture commercial was a fun spot.
LOL @ the SAnitY run-in being completely dead. It seems like they want to use some of the guys they don’t use all the time now, but I hope they don’t get cold feet when said guys get no reactions because they weren’t used in the first place.
Nakamura introducing the WWE TV Universe to clips of Total Divas Rusev was phenomenal. Unleash this guy and he’s the biggest babyface in the world.
“YES THIS SIGN WASTED PAPER” = amazing amazing amazing sign, and Daniel Bryan’s staredown of said sign made it even better. Bryan preceded to shame Fresno, CA for being the most polluted city in California and then he made an Isaac Asimov and it gets me so happy and emotional that Daniel Bryan is not just back, not just a heel, not just WWE Champion, but he also has Vince McMahon’s complete trust to say and do whatever.
AJ Styles/Mustafa Ali vs. Daniel Bryan/Andrade “Cien” Almas – WHAT A MATCH TO BOOK. And it was a blast of a match, real formula but it’s four great wrestlers doing the formula. Almas is such a treat whenever he’s on TV and just casually crushed it with AJ Styles. Almas should really be around more – loved him not getting the memo and doing the YES chants as Bryan did the kicks, or his complete professionalism in catching Ali to complete a hurricanrana off the steps that Ali almost tripped on.
Ali took heat for most of the match including some really hard chops and it was very good because Ali will sell a beatdown like a professional. Then AJ and Bryan squared off for a bit, and finally MUSTAFA ALI PINNED DANIEL BRYAN. Incredible. Welcome to SmackDown, Ali.
205 LIVE (12/19/18)
I should probably go on strike with this show next. I mean I watched Noam Dar vs. Hideo Itami this week. I heard Percy Watson utter the saddest sentence I have ever heard, “I want to see Noam Dar take it to Itami!” I heard Nigel’s hilariously half-hearted call of a “falling knee strike” for Itami’s finish.
Then again, after Lio Rush wrestled Husband of Bayley Aaron Solow in a squash that was more a reminder than a match, a newly clean-shaven Brian Kendrick & Akira Tozawa wrestled a dress shirt-wearing Drew Gulak & Jack Gallagher in a 20+ minute Street Fight and not everything worked but a whole lot of it did. There were less high spots and more guys choking each other with wire and microphone shots to the head. Between the wire choking and Tozawa chucking chairs directly at guys’ heads, plus Buddy Murphy being the only guy in the company who is allowed to regularly land on his neck, it appears that 205 Live is where all the rules go out the damn window.
Tons of highlights here: Gulak getting tied up with rope on the outside post and taking repeated chops, Gulak rolling Tozawa in an office chair into a Gallagher boot, Tozawa doing a full-speed tope directly into a trash can. There were also a lot of instances of guys just charging into another to save their partner as well as a bunch of screams of agony. All these guys should be proud of this match but disappointed that it feels so meaningless.
NXT (12/19/18)
A show that will be defined by the Steel Cage Match, but there was a lot going on here: Marina Shafir & Jessamyn Duke’s TV wrestling debut, Io Shirai’s first match on NXT, and Dominik Dijakovic’s NXT debut all preceded it.
Shafir looked especially hesitant but her and Duke vs. Shirai and Dakota Kai was a solid developmental match that more than smooth tag formula wrestling had a little character. It also had some cool stuff from Io. I see no reason to believe Shafir and Duke don’t become awesome eventually.
How soon before Dominik Dijakovic loses the first name? He had a solid debut squash, though didn’t make any kind of immediate impact.
Heavy Machinery squashed a suitable pair of geeks as The Undisputed Era watched.
Johnny Gargano vs. Aleister Black in a Steel Cage sure felt a lot better than the last NXT cage match between occasional dark match participants Tye Dillinger and Eric Young, but it still didn’t do a ton for me. Not enough violence, not a lot of truly compelling moments – just the occasional big slam and Holy Shit chant. Gargano can still go, but if he’s missing anything it’s credibility as a tough guy, so a cage match just came off kind of weird despite these two blowing my mind at TakeOver. I did like that Johnny’s early bumps into the cage were so crazy they babyfaced him – if he’s heel for real now, I want to see him try and pinball around.
That #DIY reunion though – it’s that weird place you didn’t think it’d go, but here it is. Wild. Cool.
MAIN EVENT (12/19/18)
Your buddy, your pal (his words, not mine) Scott Stanford hosted a special holiday edition of Main Event this week, which meant RAW and SmackDown footage instead of two nothing matches.
NEW DAY’S WWE 2018 PANCAKE POWERED YEAR END SUPER SPECTACULAR (12/20/18)
HOWEVER! This happened. And it was a total acid trip of a year-end WWE recap show, the usual stuff combined with New Day in front of a green screen doing weird shit. I liked it, at least as much as one person can like fast-forwarding through video packages and watching New Day be New Day.
At one point, a giant Becky Lynch appears and intimidates New Day into screaming on the floor.
Also, Big E gets real about Big Uce. And The New Day sings Dean Ambrose’s new siren theme.
Finally, the 2019 breakout predictions video package was overwhelming in how much talent WWE has waiting in the wings – Velveteen, Gargano, Ciampa, Sane, Baszler, Riddle, Ricochet, Black, Undisputed Era… and that’s just a few. Crazy.
I’m all for New Day being WWE’s hype men, but would love to see some other weird stuff – give me an hour of Daniel Bryan propaganda masked as a 2019 recap next year.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
WWE TV Match of the Week: Tie between AJ Styles & Mustafa Ali vs. Daniel Bryan & Andrade “Cien” Almas on SmackDown and Brian Kendrick & Akira Tozawa vs. Drew Gulak & Jack Gallagher in a Street Fight on 205 Live
WWE TV MVP of the Week: Mustafa Ali – welcome to the A show, brother.
WWE heads towards the last week of 2019 with a very… OK week of TV. The promised shake-up clearly won’t begin in earnest until next year, so this week had a few interesting bright spots overwhelmed by a lot of average or uninteresting stuff.
RAW: 4/10
SmackDown: 6/10
205 Live: 6/10
NXT: 6/10
