Every few months now WWE publicly fires double-digit numbers of talent and other staff, and this week saw the exits of Keith Lee, Mia Yim, Ember Moon, Nia Jax, Gran Metalik, Hit Row’s B-Fab and others. It’s become an expected, but uniquely terrible occurrence.
There’s capitalism, there’s douchebag capitalism, and there’s douchebag capitalism where you can see evidence on TV five days a week of corporate disorganization and if not spiteful carelessness then a resolute care for most of the wrong things.
As far as the actual wrestling went this week: not many highlights!
WWE TV Recap (10/31/21 – 11/6/21)
Highlights:
- RAW Women’s Title: Becky Lynch [c] vs. Bianca Belair (RAW 11/1/21)
- Finn Balor vs. Chad Gable (RAW 11/1/21)
- Cesaro & Mansoor vs. Angel Garza & Humberto Carrillo (SmackDown 11/5/21)
- Drew McIntyre vs. Ricochet (SmackDown 11/5/21)
- King Woods Acknowledges Roman Reigns or Jimmy Uso Bends the Knee: Xavier Woods vs. Jimmy Uso (SmackDown 11/5/21)
Stuff Happening: Even More Talent Cuts, Becky beats Bianca, Big E gets Challengers, Carmelo Hayes & Trick Williams Step Up, Roman Reigns Attacks King Woods
Good Work: Bianca Belair, Becky Lynch, Chad Gable, Big E, Mandy Rose, Dakota Kai, Carmelo Hayes, Meiko Satomura, King Woods, Sami Zayn, Drew McIntyre, KUSHIDA & Ikeman Jiro
RAW (11/1/21)
Big E as RAW ace is a nice dose of happy in between all the RAW.
- Becky Lynch defended the RAW Women’s Title against Bianca Belair to open the show and they had a good, competitive match that kept the title on Becky with a buzzkill cradle finish. Liv Morgan stepped up to Becky later in the show, continuing to send Belair down the path of… underdog? Lukewarm hero? What’s the idea here?
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Chad Gable had himself a night, bragging about his recent Master’s degree in a quality promo to Big E backstage then having a real good (and fresh!) match with Finn Balor. They jived with matwork and counters and as it seemed to be wrapping up, Gable really smoothly countered the Jon Woo dropkick with a jackknife cradle.
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Queen Zelina & Carmella vs. Rhea Ripley & Nikki A.S.H. was also a thing.
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RAW’s new class made noise: Austin Theory has moved on from Jeff Hardy to the Mysterio Family, Apollo Crews confronted Damian Priest, and Veer Mahaan was given a last name.
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RK-Bro did commentary over a Street Profits vs. Dirty Dawgs tag.
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WWE Champion Big E is getting shit from several different directions, among them Seth Rollins and Otis and Kevin Owens. Rollins has a title shot coming, but Big E vs. Kevin Owens closed the show with a match that was sort of unremarkable.
NXT (11/2/21)
NXT 2.0 continues to choose chaos, if they are still actually making choices.
- Mandy Rose can promo and she opened the show with one, which led to — well — a lot: Toxic Attraction attacked Zoey Stark backstage, then Io Shirai confronted Mandy which brought Toxic Attraction to the ring, only for Kayden Carter & Kacy Catanzaro to make the save. On their way to the locker room, Toxic Attraction ran into Dakota Kai, who wants to fight Raquel Gonzalez and made quick work of Cora Jade who rides a skateboard to the ring now. Whew.
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Bron Breakker squashed Andre Chase, Tony D’Angelo visited Lash Legend, and Xyon Quinn danced (and sang!) to HBK’s theme song.
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Cameron Grimes visited Duke Hudson poker room, Boa may’ve absorbed Mei Ying’s powers, and Imperium got horny.
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The Kyle O’Reilly & Von Wagner pairing continues to be a real dream-crusher of an experiment, just negative chemistry between two acts especially when facing Legado del Fantasma who just seem like an Elektra Lopez vehicle now.
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Before he was cut, Jeet Rama fell to the debuting younger Uso brother, Solo Sikoa. Seems like he could be good.
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After a Tommaso Ciampa promo and brief nod to the history between #DIY, Johnny Gargano & Dexter Lumis vs. Carmelo Hayes & Trick Williams delivered the most serviceable of WWE TV main events. Serviceable works, but it could’ve used a better show prior.
MAIN EVENT (11/3/21)
- After Shelton Benjamin trips Jaxson Ryker on behalf of Cedric Alexander, Kevin Patrick asks Byron Saxton: “you doubted this would happen!?” Byron responds grimly, “Well I hoped it wouldn’t happen.” What a show. What a company.
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Liv Morgan defeated Tamina in the opening contest.
NXT UK (11/4/21)
Nathan Frazer challenged Mark Andrews towards the end of the sow, and I will tell you this: after a year-long stay in NXT UK, I did not recognize Nathan Frazer. He just looks like some guy. I had to look it up.
- Rampage Brown vs. Flash Morgan Webster — 3 months in the making — opened the show and had an OK match with an overtly re-done tope tornado DDT spot in the middle.
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Beyond the bell, where things on NXT UK really happen: Rampage Brown attacked Ilja Dragunov, Trent Seven apologized to Tyler Bate for throwing in the towel, and Xia Brookside called her dad after Sid Scala didn’t give her a title shot.
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Besides an Isla Dawn squash, the only other wrestling was the main event: Meiko Satomura vs. Jinny for the NXT UK Women’s Title. Jinny hasn’t made much in-ring progress stuck in this landscape for the last 5 years, but it was pretty good — mostly because Meiko is pretty great.
SMACKDOWN (11/5/21)
“I take one vacation and SmackDown sucks… it’s almost as bad as RAW” – Roman Reigns. He’s not wrong, it’s just weird that he and WWE have the ability to recognize it.
- Good night for WWE and ability to recognize things in general. Carrillo & Garza got introduced in-ring with a random but game Cesaro & Mansoor team, and Ricochet rejected Mustafa Ali‘s team offer by referencing how Ali treated his last partner like dirt. Was expecting a Retribution reference for a second even.
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Drew McIntyre‘s match with Big E at Crown Jewel was tremendous, but another welcome addition to SmackDown stems from someone’s sudden ability to recognize that McIntyre works best with high-flyers he can just toss around and do cool shit with. He had a great 5-minute match with Ricochet, an old buddy from the Royal Rumble. They packed in like 7 wild spots and capped it off with a moonsault into a Claymore kick to the face.
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Someone also recognized that Sami Zayn is an ideal candidate to jostle around backstage and introduce some of SmackDown’s newest talent like Aliyah and the B-Fab-less Hit Row. Sami obnoxiously rocking out without his original theme is like Hit Row with B-Fab — not as good as it could be.
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Elsewhere: Shotzi bellowed about Sasha Banks, Sonya Deville continued harassing Naomi in the workplace, and The Viking Raiders visited Happy Time then beat its’ goofball hosts via countout.
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Also, the undeniable charm of King Woods carried a fun opening segment that led to Woods vs. Jimmy Uso in a main event where the loser would have to bend the knee and acknowledge something or another. They had a hot TV main event, not a big surprise considering this is two fifths of the greatest tag rivalry of all-time.
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Out of either unmotivated incompetence or inspired subtlety, it wasn’t acknowledged last week how Woods and Kofi were scrapping with The Usos and Roman Reigns a few weeks before the Survivor Series, an event traditionally home to a Universal vs. WWE Champion match that in 2021 would be Reigns vs. Big E. We are pretty overtly headed to some kind of confrontation and while Fall is traditionally the dumb(est) season in WWE, Reigns and E is a nearly can’t-miss program.
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Unless E loses the title in the next few weeks.
205 LIVE (11/5/21)
This was a very Diamond Mine-based edition of 205 Live, and while they were missed on Tuesday night it made for a decent 205 Live.
- Roderick Strong opened with young Ru Feng and it was no Odyssey Jones match but it was solid vet vs. young lion wrestling.
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Valentina Feroz beat Shanghai’s Erica Yan real quick. Like two minutes.
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The new tag team of KUSHIDA & Ikeman Jiro faced The Grizzled Young Veterans in the main event, and while I’m fully cynical about how and why their team came together the rock solid GYV provided a solid foundation for two of the more of lovable fellas left in WWE to have a fun tag team match.
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The Creed Brothers of The Diamond Mine distracted KUSHIDA and Jiro to give GYV the win.
