Working Man’s WWE TV Review: 1/5/20 – 1/11/20

Can be hard to say interesting things about a program that isn’t interesting.

Small picture interesting, at least. Big picture interesting is something else: we’ve got a wrestling show on FOX every Friday night, Paul Heyman is running RAW, WrestleMania is coming up, and everything kind of sucks. How does that even happen? Fascinating!

NXT is cool in a vacuum but it’s not moving the business yet, while all of its top stars feel like they’d be a lot more interesting on RAW or SmackDown.

Also, maybe not.

Monday was a miss and Friday nights feel more dire than usual. I think Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a more entertaining option for FOX on Friday nights, and I’m talking like Season 4 Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where Coulson was barely around and Nathan Petrelli became a sleeper agent general and they went to the future or whatever.

Seth Rollins is a Messiah now and The Big Show is back.

I’ve got two nice things to say about RAW. The top of the card got a much needed re-shuffle with Rollins, Kevin Owens and Samoa Joe all switching sides of the babyface/heel divide. And whoever is calling the shots is utilizing the undercard a lot better than normal: guys like Akira Tozawa and No Way Jose may not be getting THE PUSH but they at least feel like they’re a part of the show.

Otherwise, they did a Mystery Partner story all show for Owens and Joe that ended up being Big Show, which if you slice in four is equal parts awesome, hilarious, terrible, and meaningless. They faced Rollins and AOP and had a pretty standard 6-man tag outside of the crowd going CRAZY for Big Show’s hot tag. Huge “WE WANT BIG SHOW!” chants – HUGE.

Heads up: Brock Lesnar is defending the WWE Title in the Royal Rumble.

Rey Mysterio vs. Andrade opened another year with a great match, just killing it for 10 minutes (a sunset flip bomb on the apron into the post!?) before they got bogged down by STORYTELLING – a Rey win tease and restart, Zelina Vega going down, Rey’s awkward loss. Andrade taking Rey’s mask was a cool thing, but I think they blew it off an hour later with the unmasked Rey attacking Andrade backstage and just… taking his mask back.

There were things that weren’t good complete packages but had positive bits. Drew McIntyre has a new gimmick where he counts down from 3 before the Claymore kick and it’s pretty great how stupid and simple it is. Becky Lynch punched Asuka in the head which was nice and to the point. Sarah Logan getting an angle with Charlotte Flair was nice for Sarah. Aleister Black vs. Shelton Benjamin was a cool idea but too quiet and short to make an impact.

There were also things that were just bad and had no redeeming value. Erick Rowan‘s box gimmick is still creepy and embarrassing. AJ Styles vs. Akira Tozawa got me all hot and bothered before it quickly became just a way for Styles to use Randy Orton moves. And Rusev gave his all on that serious promo but it was the most tone deaf stuff in the middle of this stupid wedding business.

Rating: 3/10

Stacked show, kept moving, well laid out, fresh wrestlers, a tag tournament, an exciting start and exciting main event – got crushed in the ratings. DAMNIT.

Opening segment was a talker, but highlighted not just a stacked NXT women’s division but the NXT UK one too. Lots of fun little deliveries and reactions, those swell little things that make the obviously scripted wrestling more entertaining than it should be: Toni Storm‘s “remember when I beat ya?” to Rhea Ripley, and Candice LeRae coming out and being like “yep, I guess I’m here!” Character building!

Ripley, Storm and Candice faced Bianca Belair, Io Shirai & Kay Lee Ray in a solid match that went 15 mintues with a looong beatdown on Candice right away that outside of the company mandated chinlocks stayed pretty interesting, with Belair in particular bringing the heat. The hot tag to Toni didn’t really get the love it could’ve though, and then Ripley just kind of squashed Belair. Not into the Belair loss, but very into LeRae staring down that NXT Women’s Title.

Tommaso Ciampa is a professional wrestler with a reason for doing what he is talking about – it is awesome, and shouldn’t be something I have to point out as a unique exciting thing. I am in no way prepared for a 20-minute Ciampa vs. Adam Cole match, but these promos Ciampa is cutting are great TV.

The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic had two Round 1 matches on this show and they were both very good. Imperium did some incredible rapid fire double teaming that made a Forgotten Sons match good – really is amazing how quickly that Marcel Barthel and Fabian Aichner became a seamless tag team unit. Based on this match alone Blake Murphy might actually still be an amazing tag wrestler, but Steve Cutler doesn’t seem like the right fit for whatever is going on. Pour one out for Blake & Murphy.

Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish vs. Wolfgang & Mark Coffey absolutely ruled, and I am as astounded as you are. Everybody in this match has a tough guy gimmick but here they all actually came off as legitimate tough guys. They laid everything in, O’Reilly was bumping all over the place, Mark Coffey did a dive, and Wolfgang was busting his tail like a guy working on the USA Network for the first time. Wild match.

Matt Riddle‘s explanation of his tag team with Pete Dunne – The Broserweights – was one for the ages. Pro wrestling is as simple as this, everyone.

Austin Theory being back to beat Joaquin Wilde was nice – gotta set something up for when Heyman decides he wants Adam Cole and The Undisputed Era on RAW.

The Johnny Gargano/Finn Balor feud feels like such an odd non-factor, and despite his terrible Tommy Dreamer impersonation I am not quite as sold on Gargano’s connection to NXT and its’ fans as everybody making this show seems to be.

I thought the Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic vs. Cameron Grimes vs. Damian Priest main event to see who challenges for the NXT North American Title was a home run – Lee had another superstar performance on top of all the other ones, while Cameron Grimes came out swinging as a squirrelly bastard who can not only work an NXT main event with established acts but can do a German suplex hold so good you’d think he trained in the New Japan Dojo. Lee vs. Dijakovic was impressive as always, while Lee swinging 6’5″ Damian Priest around like a baby was one of the damndest things I’ve ever seen.

Rating: 8/10

Pretty sure me, D-Von Dudley, and Zack Ryder were the only people who watched Mojo Rawley vs. Curt Hawkins and Natalya vs. Chelsea Green.

Rating: 2/10

With TakeOver: Blackpool II set for Sunday, this week’s NXT UK slot on the WWE Network was filled with a 40-minute “Prime Target: TakeOver” special. It was real good, providing both a recognition of the little brand they’ve built up and a well-done recap for anyone who has understandably missed all 76 hours of NXT UK television before this.

Rating: 8/10

Watched this show with a couple of BoyZ who don’t watch wrestling and while it was two of the more embarrassing hours of my life, I can still say The Usos rule.

Low stakes, bad acting, too much talking, and every match had interference or some other bullshit. The big end of the show was Robert Roode returning from a Wellness suspension. C’mon.

“I know I hurt your feelings when I let Dolph Ziggler step on your mom’s fruitcake” – how is this a line someone allowed to appear on prime time television? C’mon.

Wrestlers being “buried” and “wasted” has become a cliche, but IC Champ Shinsuke Nakamura losing to Braun Strowman clean after every single avenue of interference and cheating from Cesaro and Sami Zayn was an absolute trip through counter-productive pro wrestling. C’mon!!!

Mandy Rose‘s sweet knee smash couldn’t finish Alexa Bliss, but a distraction by Otis carrying a sheet cake and a rollup sure could! C’MON.

John Morrison had some jokes on MizTV to open the show, but still screams guy on a different planet from whatever WWE is producing. Good to see him back with The Miz, a natural next step for both guys as they hit 40. They’ve got a pretty basic feud with The New Day going on, which this week resulted in a pretty soft Miz vs. Kofi Kingston match.

Lacey Evans and Bayley really did admirably beat he shit out of each other backstage, but advertising Sasha Banks wrestling then just being like, “Nope – not here, idiots!” seems like an awfully disheartening way to try and get wrestling heat. Still can’t get past Evans being a carbon copy of Liberty Belle from G.L.O.W. right now either.

Good to see The Usos back wrestling, for real – a nothing tag with King Corbin & Dolph Ziggler was brought up a notch simply by The Usos being The Usos. It’s nice to see directionless talents like The Revival and Robert Roode seemingly aligning under the King, but a primary problem is that everybody’s still a chump and based on past evidence it’s likely the alignment is just going to end one week soon and never be mentioned again.

Rating: 1/10

We’ve got a briefly cool Lio Rush vs. Isaiah “Swerve” Scott match turning into a tag with The Singh Brothers doing nothing but chinlocks, while Tyler Breeze made his 205 Live debut going 15 minutes with Tony Nese in a match that was mostly Tony Nese beating him up. No hope here on 205 Live, it all sucks real bad folks.

Lio Rush’s backflip off the apron to the floor responded with a front flip from the ring to the floor and staredown by Swerve was awesome, the kind of thing that’d be a real popular GIF if anyone cared about 205 Live anymore. They wrestled a minute before The Singh Brothers came out to slow it down, brother.

Ariya Daivari showed More Aggreesion in a squash match, while Nese didn’t think his opponent was going to last long here on 205 Live before he was defeated by a fluke rollup.

This has been going on since November of 2016. Think there have been like 6 weeks where any of it made sense.

Rating: 1/10

WWE TV Match of the Week: Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic vs. Damien Priest vs. Cameron Grimes in an NXT North American Title #1 Contender’s Match

WWE TV MVP of the Week: BRO – Matt Riddle