The Big Show was so synonymous with WWE that at some point it became a bummer when he, one of the largest human beings on the planet, showed up on TV.
Even he had enough.
I like wrestling for a lot of weird reasons and one of them is stuff like this. You can keep your Harry and Meghan; my palace intrigue is this weird shit. Big Show and Chris Jericho leaving WCW for the WWF was a big one-two punch in maybe not industry power structure but certainly perception, and here are these two guys doing it again.
Anyways – time to catch up on WWE TV. Oh no.
Working Man’s Recap
Good Work: The Miz, Damian Priest, Malcolm Bivens, Bailey Matthews, Daniel Bryan, Apollo Crews
World: RAW is Bad, The Miz Does it Again, Bad Bunny, Adam Cole turns on The Undisputed Era, New NXT UK Tag Team Champions, Sasha vs. Bianca
Wrestling: Tyler Bate vs. Bailey Matthews (NXT UK 2/25/21), Jeff Hardy vs. Sheamus (RAW 2/22/21)
Entertainment: Cameron Grimes is a Million Dollar Man (NXT 2/24/21), Apollo Crews promo on his true self (SmackDown 2/26/21), Bianca Belair chooses Sasha Banks (SmackDown 2/26/21), Roman Reigns chokes out Daniel Bryan (SmackDown 2/26/21)
RAW (2/22/21)
The Miz is the WWE Champion and he always powers through and delivers, but until next week (vs. Lashley?!) the RAW title is more confusing and distant than repetitive and boring I don’t know if either is better.
Probably an issue I didn’t notice until afterwards that Drew McIntyre wasn’t on the show too.
Stuff “happened”: Mustafa Ali may have dropped Retribution, Angel Garza hit an awesome clothesline, and Riddle is just like RVD but way worse. Damian Priest (with Bad Bunny!) had a cool showcase with Garza where they established like 10 signature Priest moves too.
Triple H’s former boys had a night too; Sheamus was moving with extra urgency against Jeff Hardy, but Ric Flair did horrible scene acting with Charlotte and Randy Orton… puked “some sort of black liquid.”
RAW!!!
NXT (2/24/21)
Instead of nonstop back-and-forth Good Wrestling, NXT lately has leaned towards short TV matches and for a show that needs help that is good… but the stories they’re doing seem extra goofy in the serious NXT environment. Xia Li both kicks ass and casts spells – maybe choose one.
The show closed with Adam Cole laying out Roderick Strong, a solid extension in a story that still needs more to make up for how dormant the Undisputed Era was all year.
MSK got a strong promo reacting to their Dusty Classic win, I liked the enhancement match 201 feel of Io Shirai/Zoey Stark, and Imperium trying to recruit Killian Dain could be interesting but probably just sets up two weeks of tags.
All in on Johnny Gargano and The Way, but Dexter Lumis as their dance partner? That feels like it’s putting too much faith in the idea of Dexter Lumis.
Don’t ask me about Karrion Kross vs. Santos Escobar.
MAIN EVENT (2/24/21)
Mansoor and Drew Gulak opened with the most OK match followed by Elias/Jaxson Ryker vs. Humberto Carrillo/Akira Tozawa during which all I could do was speculate on just why the Elias and Ryker pairing even exists. I came up with NOTHING.
NXT UK (2/25/21)
NXT UK is all sorts of questionable, but this week saw the TV debut of William Regal’s unassuming rookie son Bailey Matthews against Tyler Bate and it was tremendous. Matthews is pretty fresh out of the New Japan Dojo and they basically had a high-end Young Lions match with tons of cool suplexes and holds. It ended with a perfect rolling koppou kick followed by a wonderfully stiff Tyler Driver.
Aoife Valkyrie has sick music.
Tyler Bate and Trent Seven introducing themselves to self-care is interesting.
There were a ton of near falls before Pretty Deadly won the NXT UK Tag Team Titles from Gallus in the main event, and Nigel McGuinness hysterically oversold every single one of them.
SMACKDOWN (2/26/21)
SmackDown may have gotten the memo that there is a WrestleMania coming up. There wasn’t much wrestling here but the promo game was strong, especially Daniel Bryan talking his way into getting choked out by Roman Reigns (and probably the Fastlane main event).
Otis is a monster! Seth Rollins wants Cesaro to be his Arn Anderson! Apollo Crews has a scarf!!!
Bianca Belair vs. Sasha Banks at WrestleMania is money too.
205 LIVE (2/26/21)
“Curt Stallion tags in, maybe he’ll pick up the pace… nope”! – Nigel McGuinness
Still kind of a show here.
August Grey got distracted a lot against Tony Nese but still won.
