With a quarter of the crew down with COVID and a clip show for SmackDown, it was a pretty quiet ride home to New Year’s Day 2022’s “Day 1” Pay-Per-View.
WWE TV Recap (12/26/21 – 1/1/22)
Highlights:
- Randy Orton hugs Riddle (RAW 12/27/21)
- RK-Bronament – Final: Rey & Dominik Mysterio vs. Street Profits (RAW 12/27/21)
- AJ Styles vs. Apollo Crews w/ Commander Azeez (RAW 12/27/21)
Stuff Happening: Week Before Day One and New Year’s Evil, Bischoff’s Back?, Tiffany Stratton Debuts, WALTER on NXT, The Omicron Strain, SmackDown Clip Show
Good Work: Kevin Owens, Street Profits, AJ Styles, Odyssey Jones, Becky Lynch
RAW (12/27/21)
With key staff missing both on and off-screen, a few good matches and Kevin Owens hamming it up all show delivered a better than usual Monday Night RAW.
- The wrestling? Pretty good. I was as surprised as anybody. Riddle/Chad Gable and Randy Orton/Otis opened the show with decent matches, and The Mysterios and Street Profits closed the “RK-Bronament” with a crowd-pleaser.
-
The first two ended with Orton finally embracing his bro Riddle. WWE running the AJ Styles/Omos split last week and this sort-of payoff here on these end-of-year shows nobody watches seems like something someone might get concerned over.
-
An awkward setup that went from AJ Styles vs. Omos to Azeez to finally Apollo Crews resulted in them just winging it and a little return to form for AJ.
-
Damian Priest beating Dolph Ziggler over DQ closed the show, and — uh — Eric Bischoff helped The Miz and Maryse renew their vows before Edge gave the Mizanins’ the ol’ Bloodbath gimmick. Because there’s a PPV on Saturday.
NXT (12/28/21)
WWE’s attempt at cool vibes for the NXT intro keeps being funny, especially a week before something called New Year’s Evil.
- NXT 2.0 is usually pretty erratic; a outbreak Covid outbreak just made it moreso. Carmelo Hayes and Roderick Strong signed the contract for their Title vs. Title match next week, while the other two singles champions worked from home.
-
In place of Grayson Waller/LA Knight (fine) and Brian Kendrick‘s return to the ring (NOOO), Odyssey Jones called Grayson a bitch and Harland almost threw a Chase University student off the roof. Also, WALTER challenged Riddle and MSK to a 6-man tag. This show is wild sometimes.
-
Elsewhere: Tiffany Stratton had a pretty uninspired in-ring debut, Von Wagner beat Malik Blade, and Solo Sikoa vs. Santos Escobar killed some TV time as WWE determines what they want to do with them.
-
The main event was Io Shirai & Kay Lee Ray vs. Raquel Gonzalez & Cora Jade with the winners challenging Mandy Rose in a Triple Threat next week, a match that felt an easy out for whatever Mandy/Raquel/Cora was possibly going to be but nope — Cora over Kay Lee by rollup.
MAIN EVENT (12/29/21)
- This week, there was a T-BAR squash.
-
Veer Mahaan also wrestled a whole match with Shelton Benjamin.
NXT UK (12/30/21)
Pretty Deadly hosted a Special New Year’s Edition of NXT UK.
- It began with their NXT UK Tag Team Title win over Gallus from February, a match that wasn’t great but did get the titles off of Gallus.
-
The other featured match was a Triple Threat #1 Contender’s Match between Ilja Dragunov, Rampage Brown and Joe Coffey performance from June, which was a really great Dragunov performance before his even better one at TakeOver in August.
SMACKDOWN (12/31/21)
It’s the Top 10 Moments of 2021, hosted by Michael Cole! And Pat McAfee! And “The Man” Becky Lynch!
- Mostly just moments from WrestleMania and SummerSlam.
-
They highlighted Nikki A.S.H.‘s Money in the Bank cash-in, but for the actual “Top Moment” list chose Charlotte Flair winning the title back at SummerSlam. Someone chose to do that.
Rating: 2.0 / 5.0
205 LIVE (12/31/21)
-
Edris Enofe‘s introduction on NXT as a total loser has been a particularly weird one, so it was nice to see him pick up a win here over Guru Raaj (albeit with a scary Shooting Star Press).
-
Nigel McGuinness’ full-throated promotion of the Amari Miller vs. debuting Nikkita Lyons (two K’s) was something to hear, I will tell you that. Amari Miller’s mom was in attendance, and “Hey what’s up it’s your girl Nikkita Lyons” was how the latter introduced herself.
-
Dante Chen vs. Draco Anthony was the main event, two wrestlers I am still trying to get a read on.
