From Quebec and the West Coast to New York and Rio de Janeiro (allegedly), by way of an influence as Vince McMahon’s trusted advisor across four decades, Pat Patterson was no doubt one of pro wrestling’s very best performers and one of the most influential people in the history of pro wrestling.
He contributed a lot to what I like about all this, and now that I think about it three big things too: 1) the Royal Rumble concept helped hook me on wrestling in the early 90s, 2) the Stooges wit Gerry Brisco kept me and dad laughing with wrestling in the late 90s, and 3) the Boot Camp Match with Sgt. Slaughter from a WWF DVD hooked me on seeing so much other old and different wrestling.
Pat Patterson got “it” about pro wrestling, whatever that is, and we should have more of those people. Respect and peace.
The Week in Review
Best Promos: MAYBE Pat McAfee and The Brand on WarGames (NXT 12/2/20)
Best Angles: Roman Reigns and Jey Uso assault Kevin Owens with chairs (SmackDown 12/4/20)
Who made this worth it?: Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, Pat McAfee, Io Shirai, Daniel Bryan, Roman Reigns
Notable Trends: Anti-Booking, ThunderDome Sucks, The Tribal Chief
RAW (11/30/20)
Tonight’s main event – Drew/Sheamus vs. Miz/Morrison – felt like something out of 2011, but I found myself happy cause it felt kind of new? What kind of hell is this???
Kofi & Woods are good, otherwise this was a lot of progressively bad wrestling. Riddle made dorky weed references and I find myself puzzled by the approach to Ricochet where he “stays true to himself” as a big fat loser who can’t even beat Slapjack after interference, followed by Mia Yim losing to Dana Brooke – who did that interference – later in the show. It’s just a special kind of anti-booking that feels hostile towards everybody involved.
AJ Styles got a shot at the WWE Title beating Keith Lee and Riddle in a Triple Threat Match that did not really stand out from all the other Triple Threat Matches this year.
NXT (12/2/20)
Lots of WarGames promos.
Tony Nese + Jake Atlas = Tony Atlas. They wrestled and aren’t a tag team, but this show made me bored.
Not Pat McAfee‘s best promo, but besides Io Shirai‘s Orihara moonsault the highlight of the show.
The returning Imperium and The Grizzled Young Veterans tried.
LOTS of WarGames promos.
MAIN EVENT (12/2/20)
The show also opened with Humberto Carrillo and Angel Garza going 5 minutes, which is some kind of thing.
NXT UK (12/3/20)
Elsewhere, there were a couple so-so grudge matches and promos to setup next week’s so-so grudge matches. The Mark Andrews & Flash Morgan Webster angry promos the last few weeks took any steam out of The Hunt match for me, and there’s too much available footage of actually cool grappling to spend much time on Joe Coffey vs. Alexander Wolfe.
SMACKDOWN (12/4/20)
Rey Mysterio, Daniel Bryan & Big E vs. Sami Zayn, Dolph Ziggler & Shinsuke Nakamura was an actually classy Pat Patterson Tribute Match with a looseness and pairings you rarely see on WWE TV, or at least lately: Bryan/Ziggler and Mysterio/Nakamura in particular were fun, as was Ziggler popping the boyz afterwards and doing Dark Match selling for the good guys’ finishers.
It had a couple downers: Carmella‘s repackage probably won’t make Sasha Banks anything more than a disconnected superstar (respect) before Mania season, and the King Corbin/Murphy match was less interesting than Cutler & Blake finally being re-introduced – though everything was less interesting than Dominik Mysterio‘s bright pink turtleneck.
Kevin Owens delivers when there’s something for him to think about, except for that boring Universal Title reign a few years ago. He’s next up to take on Modern Day Villain Roman Reign, and besides great promo work SmackDown tonight brought three hooks to the saga of the Tribal Chief:
Roman let cousin Jey Uso get beat up for a while before entering for the tag main event, demolished Otis without tagging in, and didn’t lay back cracking chairs over Owens’ body with Jey again and again before he did the same to Jey too.
