Some weeks I don’t feel creative with an intro. This is one of them.
RAW (8/26/19)
RAW this week wasn’t like, “good,” but it also doesn’t feel so lazy lately. There’s a tangible sense of some kind of grasp at logic around what’s aired on this 3-hour TV show, even if all of it isn’t hitting. I can’t tell you Sasha Banks promo was on fire, but it was good restrained follow-up to her return. I can’t tell you I enjoyed watching a 40-minute Tag Team Turmoil Match, but it showcased quite a few tag teams that don’t normally get that.
King of the Ring continued too this week with Drew McIntyre vs. Ricochet having a great Round 1 match. Drew vs. a little fella is when Drew suddenly becomes really good. The side slam into stuff like the barricade and apron was a favorite of mine on Superstars back in 2009, and continues to be great a decade later. There was a lot of Ricochet doing wild stuff with Drew bringing him back down to earth: the Ricochet catch into the northern lights and a roll-through followed by Drew just tossing him away, the dive over the stairs into the Glasgow Kiss. Good stuff. The Miz vs. Baron Corbin wasn’t bad but not exactly my idea of a good time, as much as I enjoyed that Survivor Series match. Nice End of Days at the end though.
“If Cedric Alexander gets injured, someone needs to replace him.” INCREDIBLE statement of a fact by Michael Cole wrestled Cesaro in a non-KOTR match that was pretty great. What’s not to enjoy about Cesaro and Cedric just getting some TIME in the third hour of RAW? Maybe Cedric kind of over-did it with that knee sell, otherwise that gave the match a thread and these guys paired off was good stuff.
Bayley/Nikki Cross was too short to be anything – their SmackDown matches were better. Sasha Banks vs. Natalya was all about Sasha back to bumping on her head on suplexes and a cool variation of the Bank Statement for the tapout. Rob Stone winning the 24/7 Title on FOX Sports was on one hand harmless fun, on the other a brilliant initiative to seamlessly integrate the WWE brand into the FOX Sports family.
Street Profits hyping the Tag Team Turmoil Match ruled, the actual match not so much. I appreciated acts like The Viking Raiders and The Revival getting showcased, but this milked a LOT of time out of a severely underdeveloped tag division. Plus the last half was all the new team of Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode and no I did not need “frequent tags” from those two, no I did not need Ziggler taking heat from The Revival. If you need highlights, I’ve got two: Dawson hit a sweet brainbuster, and dagnabbit Otis is a charmer.
Big fan of RAW keeping Seth Rollins off TV for a week, as he’s over-exposed and heading into two title defenses in one night at Clash of Champions. Give the guy a rest, you know? Also sometimes he sucks. Plus it gave Braun Strowman room to play Top Guy this week vs. AJ Styles, and those two had a decent main event with AJ doing some fun selling (“oh god”) and Strowman eventually dishing out powerslams to The O.C. to a reaction that the reaction Strowman used to get for that kind of thing would laugh at… then cry.
SMACKDOWN (8/27/19)
Lot of good wrestling here on Tuesday night.
Like all presumably fun WWE feuds that have to run through multiple pay-per-views, Kofi Kingston/Randy Orton is starting to tread water and at a stage where they’re getting all PERSONAL with FAMILY and it just feels so fake and hokey. Plus their brawl tonight ended with a draping DDT off a table in the Gorilla Position. How do you work that goofy spot into a feud that’s now about Randy threatening Kofi’s son?
Round 1 of the King of the Ring concluded this week with Chad Gable vs. Shelton Benjamin in a match that was fun, moreso because it’s two guys who are good enough to get people flipping out even if they’ve been treated like such chumps on TV to the point where it’s so challenging for the match to even feel like it matters. Amazing sunset flip spot by Gable.
Mustafa Ali vs. Buddy Murphy meanwhile which was not just a fun King of the Ring TV match but a great showcase/introduction of these two guys to SmackDown. It was a match with a directive: go do cool shit on television. It wasn’t as epic as some of their 205 Live battles, but maybe more effective. Buddy doing the Dirty Dancing lift and dropping Ali outside, and Ali’s Tornado DDT in the ropes were tremendous spots.
How is Jimmy Hart the perfect role for El Generico? Sami Zayn talking shit and laughing maniacally as Shinsuke Nakamura beat down babyface The Miz was GREAT.
Bayley vs. Lacey Evans got some time and it was REAAAALLLL solid. I dug it because it got time, but it also felt too long sometimes – that kind of thing. Either way Bayley has just become a seasoned pro at this point and threw a hell of a lariat towards the end. Her win felt EARNED, baby.
Not sure if I preferred Big E doing the New Day intro and charging down the aisle all serious, or an alternate universe where E doesn’t do the intro and charges down the aisle all serious. Either way, BIG E BEAT RANDY ORTON’s ASS. Then he did the ass slap spot and stuff before The Revival ran-in.
Kevin Owens Stunned Elias.
Epic Daniel Bryan walk-and-talk promo to end the show, but YIKES at this whole Roman Reigns business. I am so into the week-to-week mystery storytelling but this is Handmaid’s Tale Season 3 levels of slow and none of the plot twists have actually felt like a big deal or been filmed particularly well.
205 LIVE (8/27/19)
This show is ending soon, right?
There were parts of Kalisto vs. Ariya Daivari that I liked, like the dueling Eddie corner taunts, or the nasty leg pick that knocked Kalisto off the apron, or a dropkick from Daivari that sent Kalisto flying to the floor and popped Nigel McGuinness so hard. But the main thing I didn’t like about it was that it went almost 20 god damn minutes.
“Clearly, just being the premiere athlete isn’t working.” Jesus Christ, Tony Nese, what finally tipped you off?
Not sure why they wrote off the poor Singh Brothers as going to Bollywood to re-focus or some bullshit. Maybe they’re headed to Full Sail?
Some days I am in the mood for an Oney Lorcan tight motherfuckin’ bodyscissors opposite Humberto Carrillo flying all around, and some days I am not. This was not one of those days.
NXT UK 58 (8/28/19)
TakeOver: Cardiff is on Saturday and we are… we are headed there. Yes.
Sounds like Jack Gallagher/Kassius Ohno and Piper Niven/Rhea Ripley are the pre-TakeOver matches that’ll air next week, and Cesaro is headed to Cardiff. Nice.
This show had three matches. None of them were good. Ilja Dragunov vs. Tyson T-Bone had a great camera shot of Dragunov struggling in a hold and just getting sledgehammered in the chest by T-Bone, otherwise I’m not sure I quite get this Dragunov business. Joseph Conners vs. Oliver Carter seemed to be setup to debut and showcase Carter, but ended up any other Conners match complete with Conners win. You can do a cool reverse neck snap all you want, Mr. Conners, I’m still onto you.
Jordan Devlin vs. Kenny Williams was a turd dressed as a good match. Williams did a loony lariat that Devlin countered with a standing Spanish Fly for a near fall and then the crowd chanted THIS IS AWESOME and long story short I almost cancelled my WWE Network subscription right there.
Did they just play the same Toni Storm/Kay Lee Ray video package 3 weeks in a row and hope nobody would notice?
NXT (8/28/19)
NXT is a couple weeks out from 2-hours on cable TV every week, so they’re tying up some loose ends and building up a thing or two.
Io Shirai squashed a poor gal and I loved her hair flip pose where she wasn’t looking at the camera but you also know she knew the camera was looking directly at her. What I did not enjoy was Beth Phoenix rightly calling a palm strike and Mauro immediately blurting out, “SHO-TAY”!
Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic was good again, because I imagine it’s hard not to be. These guys are the exception to the wrestling rule when it comes to monsters as high-flyers, and while this didn’t come close to their first NXT match for me it provided a fun in-between as we head into what I imagine are a lot more of these matches. At around 10 minutes it felt pretty short, and read more like a brief showcase than a big epic heavyweight encounter like the last one. Dug the powerbomb catch, dug the Feast Your Eyes, but most of all dug Lee’s nod to tell Dijakovic that yes he WOULD be slamming his head into the turnbuckle.
“I know what you’re gonna say – you’re gonna say that you’ve beaten everyone here.. but you haven’t beaten me, BITCH,” exclaimed Rhea Ripley, as Full Sail went crazy and Shayna Baszler actually backed off and in just 30 seconds a new star was born.
Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish regained the NXT Tag Team Titles to close the show, I assume to officially send Street Profits to RAW but maybe not. Either way, good match – maybe as quality as their TakeOver opener, just lacking the heat. Dawkins is doing more awesome amateur takedowns than usual these days and Ford as per usual is a freak of nature. O’Reilly and Fish kept their beating snug and legit, which led to a hot-ish tag to Dawkins that included a great spot where he just straight-up shoved Fish into O’Reilly and speared Fish.
MAIN EVENT (8/28/19)
Dana Brooke vs. Lacey Evans had a match here that probably would’ve ruled in a studio setting – alas, it did not take place in a studio.
SLATER GATOR reunited for a match with maybe The Saddest Tag Team, Eric Young & Mojo Rawley. It was a tag match, you know?
WWE TV Match of the Week: Ali vs. Buddy Murphy in the KOTR Round 1 on SmackDown
WWE TV MVP of the Week: Rhea Ripley
To a weekend of wrestling we go…
RAW: 6/10
SmackDown: 7/10
205 Live: 3/10
NXT UK: 3/10
NXT: 6/10
