THIS WEEK!
Survivor Series is next weekend so everybody loves everybody, even Rhea Ripley who hates everybody.
Tyler Bate and Kassius Ohno have a good match that nobody will watch, while Lio Rush and Angel Garza had a good match that everybody should.
And… Wait. Excuse me? CM PUNK IS BACK?
A WEEK BEFORE FOUR DAYS OF SHOWS IN CHICAGO???
I guess I’ll have some thoughts on that when there are thoughts to have.
RAW (11/11/19)
Survivor Series is on the way and outside of the occasional injection of NXT fun this show is still a rough way to start a week.
Imperium showed up because this was taped in Manchester, so that was cool. Otherwise, I don’t know. Seth Rollins is still the Top Guy and making questionable alliances to battle a team from NXT and a team from SmackDown, Lana is faking a pregnancy, The O.C. is basically ripping off The Riott Squad’, and anybody lucky enough to get on TV is wrestling a decent meaningless match.
The Kabuki Warriors vs. Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles is a heck of a match to open a show with but it ended up just the usual, some decent wrestling sequences as background noise for Shayna Baszler showing up and getting attacked by Bayley. The Becky hot tag kinda got over. Kinda.
The Lana/Rusev/Lashley SEX STORY continued and sucked. Sex, cheating, pregnancy – all these things have a place in wrestling, but not when the material is this bad. Lashley’s dumb jock delivery “oh you’re not pregnant?” at the end cracked me up, but that’s a side note in some bad bad television.
Guys wrestled, sure. The release-seeking Sin Cara went hard versus Drew McIntyre, taking punishment on top of punishment to get this fucker over. That rana catch into a powerbomb on the floor was nuts. Cedric Alexander/Andrade was a cool few minutes. Erick Rowan got a squash and I liked how the guy who wrestled him threw a punch then shook his hand like it hurt. Rowan is also talking to and carrying around a cage with a sack over it or something. The Viking Raiders beat Mark Andrews & Flash Morgan Webster in a pretty quick but real fun match that properly showcased everybody.
Love R-Truth but the 24/7 Title stuff has got to evolve. Give Rowan the strap to skulk around or something.
WALTER showed up with his boys on Monday Night RAW for a One Night Only appearance and thankfully it was made the most of, with a challenge to and quick match with Rollins followed by a stacked 8-man tag between Rollins, Kevin Owens & The Street Profits vs. WALTER, Alexander Wolfe, Marcel Barthel & Fabian Aichner. I can’t say any of this showed off Imperium very well but it was a fun bit of TV. The Rollins/WALTER singles match ended up only a minute or two while the 8-man was the usual Fun WWE Tag with some fresh faces, highlighted by Rollins doing a superplex to WALTER and Montez Ford’s INCREDIBLE tope with his legs crashing onto the commentary table.
Solid main event with Randy Orton, Ricochet & Humberto Carrillo vs. The O.C. though the path of Randy Orton lately is a zig-zag mess. Now he’s a good boy again… or is he?? Also, I mean – does anyone REALLY care about any of this? Either way Humberto ruled here – he’s got the baby face and the in-ring talent, and if they don’t pull out the rug from him because he isn’t super over 3 weeks in there might be something. I said that about Cedric though and that poor guy isn’t doing much right now is he?
NXT (11/13/19)
There is so much good wrestling on this wrestling show, and this week didn’t feel like a random collection of Very Good Matches That Run Together either – there was a bonafide MOTY contender, Angel Garza and Mia Yim cemented themselves as players, Finn Balor and Bayley showed up, and Keith Lee and Dominik Dijakovic were FINALLY positioned as the stars they might be able to be. Home run show.
Lio Rush vs. Angel Garza for the Cruiserweight Title blew my mind, an opening contest that ranks up there with a million opening contests I’ve seen on Pay-Per-View. Amazing flying, precision, skill, and speed, enhanced by big bumps and big charisma. They worked real snug too – the strikes all hit, and Garza’s dropkick counter of Rush’s springboard stunner was jaw-dropping. They really went all in on teasing the Garza win and Full Sail felt more wrapped in than usual. I don’t even know if they needed all the backflip stuff and Rush’s finish looked kind of silly, but either way this was so good. Both these guys have something extra.
Man Aliyah just keeps on trying huh. She shows up once a quarter with some new gimmick or fashion choice and I’m conflicted on whether to appreciate it or not. Her opponent Xia Li decided to do a Koji Kanemoto tribute or something, just ripping her up with reckless shots. The spin kick out of nowhere finish was awesome, too bad it broke Aliyah’s nose.
Might be a little concerning that even with a two-hour weekly show the participants in the WarGames matches have, as tradition, finally become clear with just a week before showtime. They did some inter-weaving for the fellas to get there – first another eh heel Finn Balor promo followed by a Matt Riddle attack because Johnny Gargano is injured and Balor needs a dance partner at TakeOver to contrast his abs against.
Then The Undisputed Era surrounded Riddle before Tommaso Ciampa and Keith Lee ran out for the save and everybody got in some WORDS on the microphone. I can’t say this whole segment was COMPELLING but it also had Riddle yelling “YA LITTLE PUTZ” and Strong saying “YA BIG DUMMY” so maybe it was great.
Keith Lee and Roderick Strong had a real good match in the middle too. Tremendous work here by Roddy Strong, a guy I never imagined working in WWE because I am a very stupid person. They probably could’ve kept this a little shorter but Strong was working his ass off to get Lee over – running into him him like he was a brick wall, getting tossed all over the place, but also keeping up with him in a weird way.
Isaiah “Swerve” Scott isn’t hitting for me so him going over Bronson Reed wasn’t my cup of tea, even if Reed again showed off that he is a very fun big boy pro wrestler. It was a match that didn’t need to be so even, and had some neat stuff that ended up just running together into forgettable – could’ve used a Swerve and Reed squash in the time they used.
Oh no a Forgotten Sons vignette oh no.
The Pete Dunne, Killian Dain and Damian Priest 3-way feud isn’t the most exciting story but every interaction these guys have had promise they’re going to do some wild stuff at TakeOver. Priest in particular is standing out as a bad bad man.
Mia Yim vs. Io Shirai in a WarGames Advantage Ladder Match sure was a coming out party for Mia Yim, though let’s give some respect to Io Shirai for having absolutely no fear at all for all the ladder bumps she took. This was a fun ladder match with some hurty-looking spots before Shirai dropkicked a ladder into Yim’s face and the blood IMMEDIATELY began flowing. The crowd bought in as Yim struggled back, before Dakota Kai tried to help and finally Kay Lee Ray flew in from the UK to cost Yim the match and join Team Baszler. Yim’s final bump to the floor through (?) a table was DISGUSTING, my WORD.
Shayna Baszler came off as the Final Boss in a video package earlier in the show and she came out at the end to applaud her team, only to be attacked by Bayley who ended up the true dominator as she revealed she was the one laying out Marina Shafir, Jessamyn Duke and all of Team Rhipley throughout the night.
TREMENDOUS WRESTLING SHOW!! Wednesday Nights are fun.
MAIN EVENT (11/13/19)
The double RAW/SmackDown taping in the United Kingdom means we’ve got Scott Stanford throwing to tape. And he’s one of the best damn throwers to tape there is.
NXT UK 69 (11/14/19)
Ah NXT UK. I’d accept you if you were at least cool matches in a vacuum where guys actually developed but it really just seems like the most boring possible holding pattern for a ton of presumably talented professional wrestlers. SHAME.
Xia Brookside vs. Kay Lee Ray didn’t really click but people like Xia. Piper Niven got another feature and she seems nice. Ligero vs. Travis Banks is just an unappealing match, capable guys who on this show are just happy-go-lucky athletic pro wrestlers. Then Joseph Conners ran-in and did a promo. Joseph Conners.
The main event – Tyler Bate vs. Kassius Ohno was a match that I’m not sure was as charming as it thought it was early, but they built and built it into epic territory. Bate’s kip-up and Tiger Driver struggle and MASSIVE bump off the back body drop that countered it were so good, like best wrestler in the world good, while Ohno is this guy who is capable of doing literally anything – it’d just be nice if there’d be faith in these acts going anywhere on this show. It would’ve probably made the early stuff a lot more interesting.
SMACKDOWN (11/15/19)
Just an unappealing disorganized show heading into Survivor Series, even with Daniel Bryan going after the top title and The Undisputed Era showing up and Sasha Banks making the most of Rhea Ripley.
Most of the show was about the NXT invasion kind of sort of continuing. Kofi Kingston & Big E vs. The Revival for the SmackDown Tag Team Title was the Hour 1 main event and given that it got some time these guys did their usual fun stuff. Kofi and E took a couple nasty bumps (Kofi to the post, E on the commentary table) that properly teased a title change before The Undisputed Era ran-in.
Bayley and Nikki Cross did a few wrestling moves to each other before all kinds of folks got involved – Sasha Banks, Shayna Baszler, Carmella, Dana Brooke, Rhea Ripley, Mia Yim, Dakota Kai and Tegan Nox. Now Nikki Cross is suddenly pals with Sasha Banks while Rhea Ripley and Shayna Baszler, on opposite ends of WarGames teams the night before Survivor Series, are sisters in arms. Everybody complains about this stuff but COME ONNNN.
Holy shit T Sasha’s wheelbarrow counter into the Bank Statement on Rhea though.
Strange Survivor Series bedfellows aside, the most mind-boggling part of this show was the idea that otherworldly being Bray Wyatt is the guy that would somehow politely accept a re-designed SmackDown blue version of the Universal Title. There might not be much incentive to try with this stuff anymore but to run with something like this and just gloss over how weird it is isn’t even lazy, it comes off as actively trying to make it bad.
The end of the show saw Wyatt allude to his history with Daniel Bryan before a very haphazard match was setup between them for the Universal Title at Survivor Series. It’ll probably be good but WHAT.
The start of the show with King Corbin, Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode bringing out a dog mascot to make fun of Roman Reigns is either best left ignored or the intentional murder of the biggest TV deal WWE has ever had. The Ziggler/Roode vs. Mustafa Ali & Shorty G tag had a nice camera shot of Ali’s tope and a cool Chaos Theory to 450 finish.
Also, Braun Strowman laying out The B-Team and DREW FUCKING GULAK – no.
205 LIVE (11/15/19)
Love seeing Angel Garza go 10+, have a soft spot for Jack Gallagher, but their match was the usual decent wrestling annihilated by the 205 Live atmosphere and positioning.
The Singh Brothers did a gimmick where they defended the 24/7 Title in a Handicap Match against a jobber, and while that’s not a bad idea it came off pretty crap. Why did USA want to keep the 24/7 Title around again?
Love Raul Mendoza, love Lio Rush – keep them away from this show. Tony Nese and Ariya Daivari working heel opposite them = BOOOOOO.
WWE TV Match of the Week: Lio Rush vs. Angel Garza for the Cruiserweight Title
WWE TV MVP of the Week: Angel Garza
The main roster sucks but the NXT brand WILL carry this company to the Survivor Series.
RAW: 3/10
NXT: 10/10
NXT UK: 5/10
SmackDown: 4/10
205 Live: 3/10
