Until the trip to Crown Jewel, everyone floats. Then revised rosters, then a Survivor Series. WWE in the fall continues…
HEY! NXT UK has crowds back.
WWE TV Recap (10/10/21 – 10/16/21)
Highlights:
- King of the Ring – Round 1: Xavier Woods vs. Ricochet (RAW 10/11/21)
- Bianca Belair & Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair (RAW 10/11/21)
- Big E & Drew McIntyre vs. The Usos (RAW 10/11/21)
- Carmelo Hayes uses his championship opportunity (NXT 10/12/21)
- NXT UK Title: Ilja Dragunov [c] vs. A-Kid (NXT UK 10/14/21)
- King of the Ring – Semi Final: Finn Balor vs. Sami Zayn (SmackDown 10/15/21)
- Street Fight – SmackDown Tag Team Title: The Usos [c] vs. Street Profits (SmackDown 10/15/21)
- Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks (SmackDown 10/15/21)
- Odyssey Jones vs. Roderick Strong w/ Diamond Mine (205 Live 10/15/21)
Stuff Happening: Crown Jewel, King of the Ring and Queen’s Crown, Big E/Drew McIntyre, Halloween Havoc, Carmelo Hayes wins NXT N.A. Title, Supersized SmackDown
Good Work: Xavier Woods, Andre Chase, KUSHIDA, Carmelo Hayes, Ilja Dragunov, A-Kid, Finn Balor, Sami Zayn, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks
RAW (10/11/21)
A few good matches between a bunch of junk won’t make a great show, but the matches were nice.
- Bianca Belair/Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch/Charlotte Flair had some good exchanges between the usual place-setting. Good promos in the lead-up too. Becky compared teaming with Charlotte to the smell of piss.
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The New Day was all over this show and of any WWE wrestlers that should be all over a show, they would be a top pick. Big E & Drew McIntyre played odd couple against The Usos in a main event that wasn’t quite Usos/New Day but pretty cool otherwise.
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King of the Ring Round 1: Xavier Woods advanced over Ricochet in a pretty awesome 10-minute match, then Jinder Mahal advanced over Kofi Kingston because fun things like a Kofi vs. Woods semi-final match are frowned upon.
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Queen’s Crown Round 1: Shayna Baszler advanced by crushing Dana Brooke, then Doudrop advanced over Natalya which is something new though I still can’t even wrap my head around the implications of “Doudrop.”
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Randy Orton RKO’ing AJ Styles after Riddle wrestled Omos would’ve been this week’s best example of a vet milking the Saudi Show build, but then came Bobby Lashley cutting another promo on Goldberg who wasn’t even there.
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Elsewhere: Austin Theory beat Jeff Hardy, John Morrison is full zen, and Mustafa Ali beat up Mansoor.
Rating: 2.75 / 5.0
NXT (10/12/21)
NXT 2.0 continues to figure itself out, though an assumed send-off at the end of the show took an interesting turn.
- Carmelo Hayes is the new NXT North American Champion, defeating SmackDown-bound Isaiah “Swerve” Scott right after Swerve had (surprisingly) retained the championship against Santo Escobar.
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Dummy me was practically outraged when I thought Hayes had used his Breakout title shot for a 4-Way Tag Team Titles match, so this was an appreciated and (actually) cool surprise. Hayes is positioned to be a guy for 2.0 if there’s any effort behind it.
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The rest of the new class established their thing or got in place for Halloween Havoc in a couple weeks.
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Joe Gacy lost to Tommaso Ciampa then maybe aligned with creepy Harland. Andre Chase and Tony D’Angelo stayed funny.
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Xyon Quinn squashed, Duke Hudson squashed, and Ivy Nile squashed.
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After Ivy’s squash, Ikeman Jiro challenged Julius Creed – and got squashed. Really do love squashes.
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Mandy Rose challenged Raquel Gonzalez and it looks like the NXT Women’s Tag Team Titles are getting a Triple Threat Match.
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Kyle O’Reilly walking out with Von Wagner made for a funny visual, like Kyle’s got a new big brother or something — really wish the match with Pete Dunne and Ridge Holland was better though.
MAIN EVENT (10/13/21)
- T-BAR, now seemingly alone, secured victory over the 24/7 Title division’s Drew Gulak.
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Humberto Carrillo (very wet bad guy now) accompanied Angel Garza to the ring and watched his cousin get in place for a Starship Pain.
NXT UK (10/14/21)
The folks are back at BT Sports Studios, which is a desperately welcome addition even if NXT UK needs a lot more than fans in the stands to work.
- Blair Davenport over Stevie Turner and Sha Samuels over Flash Morgan Webster comprised a forgettable undercard, while the Nina Samuels Show and a Jordan Devlin/Joe Coffey meeting in the assistant GM’s office setup future stuff.
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Ilja Dragunov vs. A-Kid was a completely different match from Ilja’s wars with WALTER in that it was all about LIMBS. Each tried over and over to get the upperhand with some genuinely cool matwork and counters before Ilja realized he had to bring the pain.
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The limb work is impressively tricky, but beyond a few offhand references from Nigel nobody is highlighting how tricky it is or how it’s even relevant in the grand scheme of wrestling. It results in a good bordering on great match with a ceiling.
SMACKDOWN (10/15/21)
Supersized SmackDown meant another half-hour of SmackDown at the end of the show, and like RAW a few good matches carried the night.
- Finn Balor advanced to the King of the Ring finals over Sami Zayn. They had their reliably good match with a few neat curveballs like Balor randomly throwing hands.
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The Usos and Street Profits work well together and here they had fun with a Street Fight. It wasn’t high art but it was good TV.
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At the top of the second hour, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks had that match you have when you’re going your separate ways and the only other shot you have at greatness together is in the Saudi heat.
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Elsewhere: Promos from Edge and Seth Rollins, a contract signing for Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar. Sonya Deville and Shayna Baszler united to beat up Naomi to maybe get some heat, and King Nakamura & Rick Boogs interrupted Happy Corbin & Madcap Moss to throw to commercial.
205 LIVE (10/15/21)
For now, 205 Live as NXT 2.0’s C-show is a lot better than demoralized cruiserweights having the same matches every week.
- Boa (still with Mei Ying!) took down 40-year-old Jeet Rama and Briggs & Jensen did a squash match.
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The real story was Roderick Strong vs. Odyssey Jones, a template of what an NXT 2.0 C-show with effort might look like. Reliable Roddy provided the in-between for a few awesome Jones spots, including Jones’ eventual Flair bump for the finish.
