Tonight is WrestleMania, though Sunday night is too. Thanks to years of refined hype and even after a year (years) of passionate attempts to claw it away, the week before usually gets its’ shit together and brings the pro wrestling fan to a place of pro wrestling excitement.
I’m almost there.
Working Man’s Recap
Good Work (WrestleMania Employee of the Week Edition): 1) WALTER, 2) Io Shirai, 3) Sasha Banks, 4) Roman Reigns, 5) Daniel Bryan, 6) Big E, 7) Bianca Belair, 8) Zoey Stark, 9) MSK, 10) Tommaso Ciampa
World: WrestleMania Week, WALTER World Domination, RAW’s Gimmick-Led Angles vs. SmackDown’s Wrestler-Led Angles
Wrestling: Pretty much every match on TakeOver: Stand & Deliver Night 1 and NXT UK Prelude
Entertainment: Samoa Joe does TakeOver Pre-Show interviews, Daniel Bryan, Edge, Bianca Belair, Sasha Banks and Big E go-home promos (SmackDown 4/9/21)
RAW (4/5/21)
They crossed all the things off the Mania To Do List, but RAW’s list suuuucks.
Boring Drew McIntyre opened the show arguing with Bobby Lashley (The Champ) then closed it wrestling King Corbin for 20 minutes. It was actually kind of good. Corbin tried MMA stuff. Best part of the show.
Braun Strowman cut a big anti-bullying promo, but it’s too late to make the Shane McMahon feud not the worst. Miz & Morrison messed up Bad Bunny‘s car, so now it’s a tag match at WrestleMania. Omos got tricked and AJ Styles got pinned, all on their way to challenge The New Day for the Tag Team Titles.
Someone flipped a switch and now Riddle is making over-the-top weed jokes and has rainbow-colored CGI doves that fly all over the screen as he enters the ring. Still isn’t hitting; can’t say it does much for the Sheamus match either.
Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler got interrupted by their ten challengers after wrestling Asuka & Rhea Ripley, who tried to co-exist just days before their blah blah blah…
NXT TAKEOVER: STAND & DELIVER (4/7/21 & 4/8/21)
TakeOver: Stand & Deliver Night 1 seemed like the weaker one on paper, maybe not by quality but possibility. Everything more than delivered though, and sometimes on a wrestling-heavy show all you need is good wrestling.
WALTER/Tommaso Ciampa was another epic and unique NXT UK Title defense, Io Shirai closed the show with a masterful performance against Raquel Gonzalez, and MSK made a Triple Threat Match kind of work. Even the Pre-Show Zoey Stark/Toni Storm match was good.
Night 2 is lucky Night 1 exists. The Ladder Match opener and Women’s Tag Titles matches were good, but lacking. Gargano/Reed and Balor/Kross were just bad. And then there was the Adam Cole/Kyle O’Reilly experiment. I had thoughts about it in the Happy Thoughts.
NXT TakeOver: Stand & Deliver didn’t get me any more or less excited about NXT, but Night 1 had some pro wrestling I really enjoyed. Night 2 you might want to skip. Call it in the middle.
MAIN EVENT (4/7/21)
The Main Event Crew continued riding the clown car to WrestleMania: Mansoor beat Drew Gulak out of nowhere with a really cool leg-trap rollup, then Lucha House Party and the random team of Angel Garza & Akira Tozawa kind of tore it up for a few minutes. I need Metalik vs. Garza in front of a big crowd stat.
NXT UK PRELUDE (4/8/21)
This week’s NXT UK had the normal one-hour runtime, but it seems that a few weeks ago someone realized it was airing prior to TakeOver Night 2 so it was given the name NXT UK Prelude and off to work went the NXT UK office on putting together a 3-match card. They ended up with what was by default a top 2 or 3 episode of NXT UK because sometimes on a wrestling-heavy show all you need is good wrestling.
Time was still allotted for the Earlier this Week promos too: Andrews & Webster, Dragunov, Piper Niven, Jack Starz, Jordan Devlin, Amir Jordan, Kenny Williams.. all of them got to kind of sort of move their thing along.
Tyler Bate vs. Noam Dar (with Sha Samuels now) for a shot at the Heritage Cup was all psychologically sound and whatnot, Bate getting the first pin right away off a flash cradle and then both guys targeting each other’s legs which was a theme they used to jockey for control all match — including when Dar caught Bate’s rope-rebound thing with a legbar to get a fall. One of the rounds ran out during an airplane spin and Bate just absolutely nails a koppou kick – fun wrestling.
Meiko Satomura/Millie McKenzie vs. Kay Lee Ray/Isla Dawn was twenty steps ahead of any random high-flying tag the NXT UK dudes have put on, just a serious bunch of wrestling that will help re-energize the whole division. Looks like Aoife Valkyrie may help with that too.
WALTER went back-to-back great matches this week, first the epic with Ciampa and here something completely different as Rampage Brown was treated like an equal and tossing WALTER around right away. They had a pretty straightforward slugfest as the tension built and it eventually became a matter of Rampage kicking out again and again, putting WALTER in a pretty weird freakin’ position. It overstayed its welcome a little as Nigel McGuinness screamed about Kobashi/Misawa, but Rampage did throw one particular lariat that would make Kobashi proud.
WRESTLEMANIA SMACKDOWN (4/9/21)
Alright: I’m fired up, baby. Like RAW, SmackDown checked off the Mania To Do List but their list is pretty great.
Daniel Bryan, Edge, and Roman Reigns took us home with three excellent promos: Bryan’s intensity, Edge’s emotion, Roman’s disgust that he even had to do one. Rarely is the tone so on point, especially three for three.
Big E took us home, ready to kick Apollo Crews‘ ass in Tampa Bay. Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks took us home, especially Sasha who has basically become The Rock.
Rollins/Cesaro just got a video. What else is there to say!?
The matches weren’t much, a couple bummer WrestleMania Kickoff matches. Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode retained the Tag Titles in a Fatal 4-Way against three way more interesting teams, one of them Rey & Dominik Mysterio who not only got bumped from WrestleMania but didn’t even get to enter together because the match started with a brawl. Real father-son character building stuff.
The Andre the Giant Battle Royal was more forgettable than ever before, though Jey Uso was a good pick to win. I guess there was a Nia Jax/Tamina match too. Why does everybody have to always be brawling??
Fired up.
205 LIVE (4/9/21)
It’s a busy week, who has time for a fresh 205 Live!? Nigel McGuinness got the call to host a look back at three quality Cruiserweight Title matches: Cedric Alexander/Mustafa Ali at WrestleMania 34, Buddy Murphy/Tony Nese at WrestleMania 35, and Santos Escobar/Isaiah “Swerve” Scott at TakeOver 31.
