Working Man’s WWE TV Review: 12/20/20 – 12/26/20

Write to laugh; write to grieve.

What a beautiful mess of a business.

Rest in peace, Brodie Lee. Good wrestler. Good matches. Good inspiration. Good man. Good dad.

The Week in Review

Best Match: Steel Cage Match – WWE Universal Title: Roman Reigns [c] w/ Paul Heyman vs. Kevin Owens (SmackDown 12/25/20)

Best Promo: The Way celebrates Christmas (NXT 12/23/20)

Best Angles: Big E wins the Intercontinental Title (SmackDown 12/5/20)

Who made this worth it?: Leon Ruff, Kevin Owens, Daniel Bryan, Big E

Notable Trends: Happy Holidays

RAW (12/21/20)

This had a lot of recaps of what was bad TV to begin with. Like a bad wrestling Inception.

As the year winds down: Jeff Hardy‘s faith will not be broken, Randy Orton is acting, and AJ Styles and John Morrison are trading lines. Angel Garza, Retribution, and Charlotte Flair are around too.

Drew McIntyre, Sheamus & Keith Lee vs. AJ Styles, John Morrison & The Miz in a Holiday Street Fight was the main event.

RAW has lost me.

Rating: 1/10

NXT (12/23/20)

NXT did what we’ll call “get by” for one of the last shows of the year. The Balor/O’Reilly got hype, Bronson Reed and Mercedes Martinez re-established, and the Gargano Family made jokes. Actually good jokes.

Leon Ruff/Timothy Thatcher was a fun match that used an obvious dynamic well. There was a random Street Fight for the NXT Tag Titles too – Lorcan & Burch vs. Killian Dain & Drake Maverick. That kind of thing used to be exciting but didn’t really seem so here. I think there’s been more Ladder Matches than Street Fights this year though.

Unbelievable that they threw Velveteen Dream in the middle of the Undisputed Era/Pat McAfee and Pete Dunne stuff. Dream vs. Adam Cole was as forgettable a TV main event as I can remember. Wait.

Rating: 3/10

MAIN EVENT (12/23/20)

Nikki Cross and Mia Yim will always show up when they need to, but their match here felt pretty bleak. Lince Dorado vs. Tozawa was the second match, reverting us back to the Main Event standard of two generic matches. Sweet top rope back elbow by Tozawa.

Rating: 3/10

NXT UK (12/24/20)

The Christmas Eve edition of NXT UK was filled with NXT UK superstars wishing a happy Christmas over Zoom, plus two matches from back in January: the awesome Mark Andrews & Flash Morgan Webster vs. The BroserWeights tag from 1/15, and the not-so-awesome WALTER vs. Joe Coffey match at TakeOver: Blackpool.

Tyson T-Bone‘s figure collection is one to keep an eye on.

Rating: 3/10

SMACKDOWN (12/25/20)

There you go, WWE dropped the horseshit and announced four semi-important matches last minute and it was like their best TV of the year. Big E beating Sami Zayn to win the IC Title in a Lumberjack Match main event was feel-good TV, while the show opened with a Christmas Day Steel Cage rematch of one of the best matches of the year. Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens for the Universal Title was straight-up simple good wrestling, and Roman took a super fisherman’s buster because he’s just the coolest.

Asuka/Charlotte Flair vs. Sasha Banks/Bianca Belair vs. Bayley/Carmella was a match highlighting an incredible roster in the dumbest possible way: the WWE TV 3-Way Tag Match.

Daniel Bryan is revving up again too, which is usually exciting: he’s in the Royal Rumble and had another match with Jey Uso that just ruled. Besides some excellent selling of the leg by Jey, Bryan goes full speed on a missed Knee+ in the turnbuckle and they went all MMA at the finish.

Rating: 9/10

205 LIVE (12/25/20)

This week featured the rare Samir Singh singles match against Chase Parker of Ever-Rise, a match that featured Samir doing his best Bret Hart corner bump and an actually clever spot where the Bollywood Boyz tried the Killer Bees switcheroo spot but failed to fool the referee.

Mansoor (with a haircut!) showed up for his monthly good match too, this time with Raul Mendoza. Mendoza takes a wild shoulder bump into the corner, the near falls rule, and Mansoor does a tope suicida with his dick.

Rating: 5/10