Working Man’s WWE TV Review: 12/13/20 – 12/19/20

It was the Night before Christmas, and —- wait; is that next week? What day is it? What’s going on?

The Week in Review

Best Match: Kyle O’Reilly vs. Pete Dunne (NXT 12/16/20)

Best Promo: Roman Reigns gives Kevin Owens a choice (SmackDown 12/18/20)

Best Angles: A-Kid challenges WALTER (NXT UK 12/16/20), Roman Reigns and Jey Uso attack Kevin Owens with TLC (SmackDown 12/18/20)

Who made this worth it?: Sheamus, Mustafa Ali, Pete Dunne, Kyle O’Reilly, Bayley, Roman Reigns

Notable Trends: COVID-19, All Elite Wrestling, Roman & Bayley’s SmackDown

RAW (12/14/20)

AJ Styles/Sheamus and Hurt Business were pretty good. Otherwise, boring HD content.

One could spend energy thinking about the conversations that led to delivering The Nightmare Before TLC promo or how embarrassing it would be if anyone I knew ever saw me watching any of the Elias and 24/7 Title segment.

Could think about how silly it is that there are a hundred hungry people that could be utilized “better” or at all while Randy Orton tries to set The Fiend on fire.

Could.

Rating: 1/10

NXT (12/16/20)

The Way is a cool name for the Johnny & Candice group! Ever-Rise crack me up! Kyle O’Reilly vs. Pete Dunne was so good I got a little got a little hot that this show is so bad!!!

O’Reilly/Dunne was for a shot at Finn Balor and was essentially THE straight singles match you expect from these two, considering both their general styles and how they’ve adapted to being a guy employed by WWE. It was very good.

The rest ranged from forgettable to bad, even a tag with Gargano opposite KUSHIDA.

The women’s division headlined another show too and was positioned as important without calling attention to it and that’s cool but they always run through these singles matches (Rhea Ripley/Toni Storm this week) so fast they run together.

Rating: 3/10

MAIN EVENT (12/16/20)

Main Event has moved from two generic wrestling matches a week to a match and promo a week that feel like they could’ve been on RAW in all the worst ways.

It opened with an unfunny 24/7 Title contract signing between two funny guys in R-Truth and Drew Gulak, then Nikki Cross beat Lacey Evans after a distraction mis-cue from Peyton Royce, who has anti-chemistry with Lacey.

Rating: 1/10

NXT UK (12/17/20)

NXT UK is about the kids: Ben Carter was introduced this week with a video feature, and his trainer Seth Rollins said he moves like Dynamite Kid and Eddie Guerrero… ah, just say the name Seth.

Then A-Kid challenged WALTER for an NXT UK Title match next year. It was a simple but awesome old school setup for what I’m sure will be a simple but awesome old school match.

Besides those two things, NXT UK is pretty bad. The women’s division is lost: Kay Lee Ray doing generic “who will challenge me next!?” promos, Piper Niven and Jinny doing hidden camera hijinks. Ilja Dragunov and Trent Seven are both rebooting their characters… or something.

I still dig the Wild Boar but main event and last segment – Gallus vs. The Hunt for the tag titles – was terrible, shoddy, confusing… all the bad stuff. It ended in a brawl between no less than Joe Coffey, Flash Morgan Webster, Mark Andrews, Pretty Deadly, and I think Ashton Smith & Oliver Carter. One of those WWE segments where they’re like, “Alright. So we got a bunch of people. Too many people. How can we showcase them in a way that doesn’t actually spotlight any of them?” Action.

Rating: 3/10

SMACKDOWN (12/18/20)

This has pretty much settled into the Roman Reigns and Bayley (who has fireworks now!) show, as without their weekly contributions it’s possible Friday nights are as bleak as the other ones for WWE TV. Sami Zayn and his Sami Awards were pretty swell too.

The Reigns feud with Kevin Owens (and an assist from Jey Uso) continued on well enough, while Bayley and Bianca Belair had a good first match and dropped excellent one-liners on each other:

“A role model is someone you aspire to be; Bayley is just someone I intend to beat – you see the difference?”

“Instead of picking a fight with me, I would PICK MY BRAIN!!!”

Rating: 5/10

205 LIVE (12/18/20)

It was Ever-Rise vs. Bollywood Boyz and Jake Atlas vs. Tony Nese this week. Another 205 Live where all I can offer you is, “it was fine.”

Rating: 3/10