Busy week. We had our son’s first birthday party over the weekend. Then I went to Las Vegas for a work conference. I gambled and lost 90 cents.
RAW (3/18/19)
This had a couple fun matches and that should be commended but it was a pretty weak evening of wrestling TV.
Also, is the new GM the commercial break? Because that lady is making a lot of calls now.
In theory everything they’re doing with Brock Lesnar and Seth Rollins is fine but I’m not quite feeling it. It’ll click when the bell rings. Until then, we go through The Big Book of WrestleMania angles. This week, Rollins assaulted Drew McIntyre with a chair to send a message to Brock. Oooh!
Finn Balor & Braun Strowman vs. Bobby Lashley & Lio Rush kind of ruled, highlighted by Braun vs. Lio which is magic. Lio is owning this role – his cowering and freaking out over Braun early was great, and he was SO game for Braun’s ass-kicking. He goes SO HIGH when Braun throws him! I loved him getting a hot near fall on Braun off the frog splash too. Really fun tag.
Cracked up over the crowd booing Alexa Bliss throwing to Michael Cole for the WrestleMania card rundown. A Moment of Bliss isn’t accomplishing much other than keeping Bliss doing something, which I guess is the point but it would be nice if it felt like it added something to the show. I guess getting a pretty girl on TV is supposed to add something to the show. But that’s an assumption made by a team that is sometimes questionable in their assumptions.
All for No Way Jose getting … something? Even if it was a pretty basic enhancement match for Elias.
No, Baron Corbin is not ideal as Kurt Angle‘s final opponent. We’ll see how it goes. I have no idea what Angle is capable of anymore, but it is so awesome that he’s spending his final days in the ring working with young guys that haven’t become the main eventers one might have thought they’d be early on – McIntyre, Corbin, Apollo Crews and now Chad Gable have gotten features they wouldn’t otherwise get without the very generous Angle. What a guy.
Loved the look of boyhood glee on Angle’s face as Gable came out to wrestle him. Very cool that this happened, even if it is soul-crushing that the Jason Jordan as Angle’s Son payoff will probably never happen. Angle is definitely a step or two behind in the ring but he and Gable had a fun little tribute match together.
Beth Phoenix might not be my fav on commentary but she’s a heck of a promo. Very clear, audible, and timed for maximum effect. Not everyone can do it, people. She and Natalya sparred with Sasha Banks & Bayley who are sparring with The IIconics while Nia Jax & Tamina are still causing trouble en route to what I assume will be a 4-Way Match for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles. “[Beth Phoenix’s] the one you’re riding the coattails of just so you can have a match at WrestleMania” – HOLY SHIT, SASHA. CHILL.
Huge Chicago pop for Ricochet. He had a great formula TV match with Jinder Mahal – Ricochet blew everybody’s minds while Jinder slowed that shit down when he had to. A Sasuke Special on RAW is amazing.
Dana Brooke getting a smack in then getting destroyed by Ronda Rousey was great TV.
Apollo Crews vs. Baron Corbin was a fine 4-minute match. Crews is in a weird spot where he seems well-liked backstage and is solid in the ring, but if they bump him up any further it might not work.
Batista fuckin’ rules. Legend. Great promo. Triple H can suck it, but glad we’re getting one last run of Batista promos.
Drew McIntyre is probably namedropping leukemia one too many times, but he and Seth Rollins went hard, as they tend to do. Seth is bumping like it’s Mania season. Nothing that re-invented the wheel but a very good RAW main event.
SMACKDOWN (3/19/19)
The fundamentals of SmackDown live are strong, my friends, but this was not a great show. The first half felt pretty uninspired, while the last half was a Gauntlet Match which was good but not good enough to make this show not one of the weaker SmackDown’s in a while.
The Miz commits even if the material stinks. “You weren’t born the best in the world – you’re a McMahon, you were born the worst” was a fine line though. But serious babyface Miz still feels kind of silly. Even if he commits. Which he does.
Sasha Banks & Bayley vs. The IIconics was kind of crap, right down to the finish that did nothing for nobody except for the writers as they were able to move their plot forward even if the way they did it was stupid.
WWE bringing in Rey Mysterio‘s son for a feud with the guy who fucks with everybody’s families is good, if not telegraphed stuff. I need Samoa Joe getting really personal with Rey and Dominick in the lead-up to WrestleMania. NEED IT. Just don’t bring Eddie into it.
Rey vs. Joe is no Rey vs. Andrade, but it is also Rey vs. Joe. And I assume Rey vs. Joe vs. Andrade. And probably Rey vs. Joe vs. Andrade vs. Ali. And that’s good, right? Maybe? There’s a lot of singles matches on this show!! Oh, and what’s Kevin Owens up to?
The Kevin Owens Show with Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair was more of the same, though Owens was solid in the role. I guess one of the vulnerabilities of pivoting the storyline you planned out because of crowd reaction is that there’s no clear map for how to get past the finish line, because you’re not going to recreate that initial magic again. So we get promos. Lots of promos. Eh. It really does stink how cooled off this whole Becky/Charlotte/Ronda thing feels, to the point where the idea that it could main event doesn’t even feel all that exciting anymore. Crappy!
Kofi Kingston ran through a Gauntlet Match to try and get to Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania. It was solid, because Kofi is a solid wrestler. He wrestled Sheamus for 10 minutes and it was solid. Worked Cesaro for a bit and it was solid, including Cesaro’s deadlift tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. Rowan CLOBBERED Kofi on the outside with a lariat that felt like more of a straight-up tackle. He got DQ’d a minute later.
Kofi surviving and going to WrestleMania seemed inevitable, so I’m into them pulling the rug out AGAIN. But it might feel a little redundant to spend an hour of your TV show on an angle that feels kind of telegraphed. I wrote last week about the modern day wrestling angle, in which the majority of the fun is simply watching something successfully go from point A to point B. When you know where things are going though, you’re looking at the whole thing with a new set of eyes. You’re asking, how are they going to go about making this obvious thing interesting? The answer is… this week they kind of didn’t. The Gauntlet Match finish certainly added heat to this thing, but did 45 minutes of Kofi selling? I don’t know.
Either way I can 99% guarantee I’ll be marking out for something that happens with Kofi next week. Peaks and valleys, baby.
205 LIVE (3/19/19)
Oh god, Tony Nese? Really? Tony Nese?
I want to be into it. I really do. Buddy Murphy facing his Arn Anderson at WrestleMania is a fine story, but only if they had been actively building to it any more time than once every couple months. And, I mean – Tony Nese. I don’t know. The guy can do some crazy stuff. But he’s also… Tony Nese. I’m sitting here, trying to muster excitement over any of this. And I can’t, I just can’t.
The match with Cedric Alexander started kind of lame and got kind of great – 205 Live is gonna 205 Live. Good Lumbar Check near fall, mostly because nobody kicks out of the Lumbar Check.
The show opened with Mike Kanellis vs. Akira Tozawa and they brought some decent “will Kanellis actually win?” drama and then Kanellis won. I dunno. Maybe it’s impressive that Kanellis is getting people to bite on near falls 15 minutes after Kofi Kingston lost his WrestleMania spot. Maybe. Actually, maybe that was Tozawa’s doing. Or maybe they simply worked together and provided an equal amount of vaguely dramatic wrestling.
NXT UK 35 (3/20/19)
Pete Dunne vs. WALTER at TakeOver: New York – yes.
Oh god, Ligero and Eddie Dennis had a competent wrestling match.
Kenny Williams and Amir Jordan bantering was… not terrible.
I like the idea of Sam Stoker & Lewis Howley. At least they have a THING. And that thing is feeling like a tag team parody of Switchblade Jay White. I also like Wild Boar and Primate Jay Melrose. Fine squash.
OK – the “hard-working” Ashton Smith is by far the funniest WWE moniker of all time.
Smith wrestled new roster member Kassius Ohno, and for a guy who went on a rant last week about being able to wrestle European-style, Ohno only really did wristlocks and elbows.
The best part about Gallus is that they have been soundly defeated by the top babyfaces and there is not enough roster depth for them to have a compelling feud somewhere else on the card, so they just keep talking about absolute bullshit.
Oh god, Tyler Bate and James Drake had a competent wrestling match.
NXT (3/20/19)
Triple H as Benevolent God Promoter, part Vince McMahon and part Ian Rotten, is far superior to Triple H as guy who is really mad about Dave Batista.
Tommaso Ciampa needing neck surgery is complete trash. I’m not sure I’ve completely connected with the Ciampa/Gargano feud for a good while now, but individually each guy has excelled in their role and worked themselves into what feel like legit main event acts. It all ending like this is a bummer. If the plan was for Gargano to finally triumph over Ciampa at WrestleMania TakeOver and hug Candice and all that – damn. At least we got Gargano pushing Ciampa down at the end of an NXT TV show? Get well, Tommy Champs.
There was one match on this show. Respect.
We also got a look at Ciampa going into surgery (neck surgery after knee and double shoulder surgeries… arghgghfd), a Forgotten Sons promo, a Kona Reeves cameo, promos from all the guys in the main event, and Bianca Belair talking shit.
Aleister Black vs. Ricochet vs. Matt Riddle vs. Velveteen Dream vs. Adam Cole was your main event, to determine who faces assumed #1 contender Johnny Gargano at TakeOver: New York in a 2/3 Falls Match for the NXT Title. And look – what are you even supposed to do with a Fatal 5-Way Match? How does this type of thing even exist? And why is it not as it should be, which is two pairs of guys brawling and then one guy awkwardly just left out.
In order to make this thing kind of work, WWE always has a guy or two or maybe three do some neat wrestling sequences while everybody else disappears for a while. I guess back in the day you’d call that sellin’, but sellin’ is traditionally supposed to add a sense of realism to the fake wrestling match and not re-enforce how planned out and fake it is.
It’s an odd formula, but I also couldn’t tell you a better way to work this stupid match in the first place.
So some very cool wrestlers did a bunch of very cool wrestling. The crowd popped. Mauro Ranallo yelled. There was a Tower of Doom spot. A This is Awesome chant. Matt Riddle had a heck of a performance. Ricochet’s rana to the floor was unreal. Only some of those were things that I liked. It was a fun match handicapped by the fact that it was a dumbass Fatal 5-Way match.
MAIN EVENT (3/20/19)
This show might’ve actually been worth watching.
Curt Hawkins vs. Rezar was cool because they got a couple great near falls on the Hawkins actually winning. Best losing streak match yet.
Lucha House Party and TITUS O’NEIL vs. The Revival & The Ascension was kind of what you’d expect, but had one of the all-time awkward WWE commercial break cues, as Gran Metalik and Scott Dawson locked up, backed off… and they cut to commercial. Then they got to the Titus hot tag and it was over, just like that.
WWE TV Match of the Week: I guess it was that 5-Way Match.
WWE TV MVP of the Week: In honor of that 5-Way Match, here were my fav 5 this week: Lio Rush, Beth Phoenix, Kofi Kingston, Matt Riddle and Batista
Eh. The Road to WrestleMania is stuck in some traffic.
RAW: 4/10
SmackDown: 6/10
205 Live: 5/10
NXT UK: 2/10
NXT: 7/10
