Four new champions, two new rosters, and just one gloriously similar way of wrestling — welcome to the Working Man’s WWE TV Review for the week before Halloween.
WWE TV Recap (10/24/21 – 10/30/21)
Highlights:
– Fatal 4-Way Ladder Match: Finn Balor vs. Kevin Owens vs. Rey Mysterio vs. Seth Rollins (RAW 10/25/21)
– Lumberjack O’Lantern Match – NXT Tag Team Title: MSK [c] vs. Imperium (NXT 10/26/21)
– NXT Heritage Cup: Tyler Bate [c] w/ Trent Seven vs. Noam Dar (NXT UK 10/28/21)
Stuff Happening: Becky & Charlotte Shoot Heat, RAW Season Premiere, Bearcat Lee Returns, NXT Halloween Havoc, Dakota Kai Returns, Toxic Attraction Wins all NXT Women’s Titles, Imperium Wins NXT Tag Titles, Noam Dar Wins NXT UK Heritage Cup, SmackDown Kills Time, Sonya Deville Bullies Naomi
Good Work: Big E, Kevin Owens, Io Shirai, Carmelo Hayes & Trick Williams, MSK, Tyler Bate, Noam Dar, Shotzi, King Woods
RAW (10/25/21)
Relaunches are one of the few things WWE has remained pretty good at, so that this was such a mediocre show is a little concerning. At least the Becky Lynch and Bianca Belair confrontation seemed to go as planned.
- Three of RAW’s new tag teams — Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode, the Street Profits, and Chad Gable & Otis — wrestled a Triple Threat match for a shot at RK-Bro‘s Tag Team Titles. Ziggler & Roode won, then lost to RK-Bro.
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The Becky Lynch and Bianca Belair confrontation seemed to go as planned.
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Queen Zelina celebrated her coronation with a half-English accent, Damian Priest obliterated T-BAR, and Austin Theory is doing a thing with Dominik Mysterio now.
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Liv Morgan and Carmella switched brands and wrestled again.
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Keith “Bearcat” Lee was re-introduced with a match against Cedric Alexander, which was the ol’ “fine for what it was.” Lee blocking Cedric’s handspring setup with a body attack was neat.
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Seth Rollins, Rey Mysterio, Finn Balor and Kevin Owens all introduced themselves to the RAW audience by bumping all over the place in a Ladder Match for a shot at Big E, which Rollins won. Even on normie RAW, Owens was an absolute lunatic.
NXT (10/26/21)
NXT 2.0 stacked the deck for what they called Halloween Havoc, with four title matches and three new champions. Welcome to the new era that kind of just feels like a shot at what was supposedly going to be the new era.
- WWE main roster isn’t fun enough to have Halloween parties anymore I guess, so NXT did one. KUSHIDA, Cameron Grimes, Kyle O’Reilly, Tony D’Angelo, Elvis Robert Stone and others all got varying levels of character development. Carmelo Hayes & Trick Williams met Dexter Lumis & Johnny Gargano at a haunted house too, which provided the same.
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The title changes were OK. RAW closed with a Ladder Match and NXT opened with one, Toxic Attraction defeating champions Io Shirai & Zoey Stark as well as Indi Hartwell & her pal Persia Pirotta for the NXT Women’s Tag Team Titles. Io was nearly as much of a lunatic as Owens.
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Raquel Gonzalez entered in a motorcycle then lost the NXT Women’s Title to Mandy Rose in a Trick or Street Fight.
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MSK vs. Imperium was a good tag match within a silly Lumberjack-O-Lantern Match, and then Imperium actually won the NXT Tag Team Titles.
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The three title changes setup what ended up the biggest surprise of all: Tommaso Ciampa retaining his NXT Title from New Hero Bron Breakker in a 10-minute wrestling match. Neither guy came out of this looking much better than before.
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Elsewhere: Solo Sikoa (debut) suplexed vampire LA Knight. Joe Gacy and Harland beat up Malik Blade. Roderick Strong/Odyssey Jones II.
MAIN EVENT (10/27/21)
- Veer got a vignette on RAW then beat Jaxson Ryker (who goes WHOAAAA now) on Main Event.
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John Morrison vs. Apollo Crews was a series of wrestling maneuvers.
NXT UK (10/28/21)
It was the kind of NXT UK where they setup things like Gallus/Charlie Dempsey, Rampage Brown/Flash Morgan Webster, and a Triple Threat #1 Contender’s Match. These are the days of our lives.
- Mark Coffey vs. Rohan Raja. Amale vs. Myla Grace. Dempsey vs. Danny Jones. These were the matches on the show.
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Tyler Bate vs. Noam Dar for the Heritage Cup was a match on the show too, and I might have really liked it if I didn’t sort of resent NXT UK. Heritage Cup/European Rules is a nice concept anywhere but WWE, and the rounds system just seemed to break up some compelling and eventually hard-hitting wrestling.
SMACKDOWN (10/29/21)
Love King Woods, but this felt like the most inconsequential SmackDown since the Thunderdome. Like RAW, it was another lacking launch of an updated roster.
- Shotzi went toe-to-toe with Charlotte Flair (sort of) then turned heel on Sasha Banks (I think). It was a good if not confusing showing.
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Drew McIntyre vs. workrate guys (Sami Zayn last week, now Mustafa Ali), on SmackDown has been a welcome approach, especially compared to almost anything he did as WWE Champion on RAW. Post-match Ali took some questionable material and made a quality promo out of it too.
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A pair of gentleman named Happy Corbin and Madcap Moss beat Shinsuke Nakamura & Rick Boogs in a Trick or Street Fight after interference from Angel Garza & Humberto Carrillo.
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No follow-ups from Sheamus, Ridge Holland, or Aliyah.
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The Usos vs. The New Day headlined, and it might have been the most mid-level Usos/New Day there ever has been. Kofi Kingston getting named King Woods‘ Hand of the King in the middle of the show was kind of adorable though.
205 LIVE (10/29/21)
Tough to really analyze any of the new class when they are mostly doing the same thing. Three very quiet WWE developmental matches this week.
- Jeet Rama in his amateur singlet casually walking past Mei Ying on the way to his match with Boa was fun.
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Sarray wrecked Valentina Cortez with a dropkick.
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Xyon Quinn downed the very strangely marketed (even for WWE) Ru Feng in a very short main event.
