This week featured the second night of the 2021 WWE Draft, not in effect until a few weeks from now because maybe they want to assure everyone has returned safely from Saudi Arabia.
Also, there’s a King of the Ring for ladies now.
WWE TV Recap (10/3/21 – 10/9/21)
Highlights:
- King of the Ring – Round 1: Rey Mysterio vs. Sami Zayn (SmackDown 10/8/21)
- Paul Heyman with The Bloodline in-ring promo on Brock Lesnar (SmackDown 10/8/21)
- King of the Ring – Round 1: Finn Balor vs. Cesaro (SmackDown 10/8/21)
- Edge returns and challenges Seth Rollins to Hell in a Cell (SmackDown 10/8/21)
- Trey Baxter vs. Grayson Waller (205 Live 10/8/21)
Stuff Happening: WWE Draft Night 2, Saudi Arabia, Tony D’Angelo Debuts, Noam Dar Heritage Cup #1 Contender, King of the Ring and Queen’s Crown
Drafted by RAW: Becky Lynch, Bobby Lashley, Seth Rollins, Damian Priest, AJ Styles & Omos, Kevin Owens, Street Profits, Finn Balor, Karrion Kross, Alexa Bliss, Carmella, Gable Steveson, Dana Brooke, Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode, Jaxsyon Ryker, Veer, Liv Morgan, Mia Yim, Tegan Nox, Shelton Benjamin & Cedric Alexander, The Miz
Drafted by SmackDown: The Usos, Sasha Banks, King Nakamura & Rick Boogs, Sheamus, Shayna Baszler, Xia Li, Viking Raiders, Ricochet, Angel Garza & Humberto Carrillo, Ridge Holland, Sami Zayn, Tamina Snuka, Jinder Mahal & Shanky, Natalya, Shotzi Blackheart
Good Work: MSK, Bianca Belair, Rey Mysterio, Sami Zayn, Paul Heyman, Finn Balor, Cesaro
RAW (10/4/21)
Besides the second night of WWE Draft announcements, RAW had a lot of half-angles or half-introductions.
- Drew McIntyre challenged Big E then they teamed up and wrestled the Dirty Dawgs. Street Profits challenged New Day. Bill Goldberg and Bob Lashley had words. Humberto Carrillo cheated in a tag match. Stuff like that.
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Jeff Hardy challenged for the U.S. Title, lost, cut a promo, and got laid out by Austin Theory.
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Rhea Ripley & Nikki ASH retained their WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles over the last champs, Natalya & Tamina.
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Bianca Belair vs. Charlotte Flair headlined with Becky Lynch on commentary and a Sasha Banks run-in after. The work is fine but the world stays messy.
NXT (10/5/21)
In its’ latter days, NXT used to have a good Cameron Grimes or Roderick Strong match then a bunch of shit. Now it’s more consistently watchable, though there’s no good match. Nothing I’d really recommend to seek out actually, but stuff is moving in a direction whether it’s a good one or not.
- Mandy Rose beat Ember Moon in a decent opener, then she and the Toxic Attraction gals scrapped with Raquel Gonzalez and the NXT Women’s Tag Team Champions later.
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Bron Breakker is challenging that old man with the NXT Title at Halloween Havoc.
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Duke Hudson plays poker now.
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Pete Dunne vs. Cameron Grimes was one of those matches that might’ve been a nice 3-star attraction on black-and-yellow NXT, but here it just felt out of place. Either guy should probably move on from NXT before they do something stupid, like start hanging out with Von Wagner.
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Joe Gacy beat Ikeman Jiro, smiled, and had a staredown with Harland. Harland is the former Parker Boudreaux, who used to kind of look like Brock Lesnar and now looks like Luther.
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Tony D’Angelo! Debut match!
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The main event was a Fatal 4-Way for the NXT Tag Team Titles, MSK vs. Carmelo Hayes & Trick Williams vs. Grizzled Young Veterans vs. Briggs & Jensen. It was alright but between Carmelo Hayes wasting his Breakout Tournament shot and the post-match angle blatantly positioning Briggs/Jensen over MSK, it all felt off.
MAIN EVENT (10/6/21)
- Maybe one day Ricochet will beat Karrion Kross.
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Correction from last week: THIS Main Event may have been MACE & T-BAR‘s last time as a tandem, and they beat the Viking Raiders! Hooo boy! Do you smell that? That’s a thing happening.
NXT UK (10/7/21)
When the main event of your show is a 20-minute Noam Dar/Wolfgang European Rounds match, you should put other good stuff on it. NXT UK did not.
- Fans are back next week with an Ilja Dragunov/A-Kid main event, two objectively good things.
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The empty BT Sport Arena era ended with Jinny beating Emilia McKenzie and challenging Meiko Satomura, Sam Gradwell beating Mark Andrews, and Noam Dar downing Wolfgang for a shot at the NXT UK Heritage Cup. It felt like the same show they’ve been running for two years, but somehow worse.
SMACKDOWN (10/8/21)
Four good wrestlers having two good first round King of the Ring matches made this a good show.
- Becky Lynch and Bianca Belair admirably filled time in opening segments on both RAW and SmackDown this week, on RAW with Charlotte Flair and SmackDown with Sasha Banks. Highlight was definitely Bianca lifting both Becky and Sasha. They’re positioning Bianca well with these segments, but the problem is they still mostly suck.
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The King of the Ring is back and headed to Saudi Arabia. In the meantime we’ll get good wrestling. Rey Mysterio vs. Sami Zayn got to happen before Rey’s jump to RAW and just rocked for a while before the Mysterio angle at the end. Finn Balor vs. Cesaro was about as expected for a TV match, which was still really good.
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The first Queen’s Crown is headed to Saudi Arabia too and this is not exactly the Mae Young Classic. Zelina Vega beat Toni Storm and Carmella beat Liv Morgan in two very short very stupid matches.
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MACE did a promo, but so did Roman Reigns‘ wise man Paul Heyman who really put in a day’s work to sell the Brock Lesnar match. Excellent promo.
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Edge showing up at the arena to kick Seth Rollins‘ ass was filmed almost beat-for-beat like a prime Stone Cold Steve Austin so I had to respect it a little. Strong close to the show.
205 LIVE (10/8/21)
205 Live is much better when it isn’t the same bored wrestlers doing the same matches every week, I will tell you that much.
- Sarray! Is back! And she beat Amari Miller in a fine match.
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The Creed Brothers! Squashed again. Julius Karelin lifted his opponent into the ring.
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Malcolm Bivens! Cut a promo. “Lauryn Hill said it best…”
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Finally, Trey Baxter! Had a match with Grayson Waller that will be my first 205 Live recommendation in a long time. Watch this man roll backwards into a tilt-a-whirl DDT and be amazed, then stick around for the good underdog selling and match framework too.
