Welcome to the “week two of the Wednesday night wars” edition of The Wrestling List. I think my plan so far if I can keep up the pace is to send a List on Tuesday covering Smackdown/PPV’s/Raw and then send another one on Thursday or Friday covering NXT/AEW. Tentative plan. Both shows were good this week as expected and I liked the booking on both shows. We needed that based on the end of the Cell event and then Raw.
Let’s get into NXT. Awesome opener with Drew Gulak and Lio Rush. Liked that a lot. Triple H is already working hard to reestablish Lio Rush after he got dismantled with booking on the main roster. Nice Eddie Guerrero tribute during the match on Eddie’s birthday. There was also a Viva La Raza comment in the Inner Circle promo by Jericho on AEW. Nice to see Eddie getting tributes on both shows. Rush gets the pinfall and wins the cruiserweight title. Regal goes to present the belt to Rush. Gulak pulls it away. Gulak hands the belt to him and shakes his hand. We get the announcement that Tegan Nox will be on NXT next week. That is going to be an awesome comeback story. Hoping she has a bunch of success with her comeback. Rhea Ripley defeats Aliyah. Shouts that she wants Shayna. Breezango with a men at work entrance is ready for action against Ever-rise but that team was taken out by The Forgotten Sons. So, it is The Sons against Breezango. Fandango was looking strong in this match with a couple of awesome spots at the end. Sons get the win. Cameron Grimes wins a squash against Boa. Kilian Dane arrives who beats up Boa too. That includes him throwing him on to the NXT announce table. Roderick Strong kicks off hours two taking in Isiah “Swerve” Scott. First time seeing Scott and that guy impressed me a lot. Loved the punch and chop exchange toward the end. Stiff punches and chops. Strong had a nasty double stomp to Scott on the floor as Scott’s feet were stuck in the ropes. Strong gets the win. Really enjoyed that match a lot. Undisputed Era all celebrate together as they had walked out during the match as well to watch. Velveteen Dream appears on the podium cutting a promo and embarrassing Strong. As their attention is on him, Ciampa arrives walking to the ring with a crutch and then grabbing a chair. Ciampa’s music is one of my favorites in WWE and probably my favorite in NXT. Ciampa says “Goldie, daddy’s home”. LOL. Dakota Kai took on Bianca Belair. I thought Dakota would get the win here with her comeback. Belair gets the win and she says what Rhea did earlier and that she wants Shayna first. Main event time with Kushida and WALTER. Loved this match. I loved the moment that really got this thing going where Kushida slapped WALTER and woke the big man up early. They really made Kushida look strong here. He gets close to a tap out win and then kicks out of the WALTER powerbomb. WALTER then finishes him off with a lariat. Good stuff in this match. Both guys looked awesome. Fun show.
AEW opened up with the tag team championship tournament. Young Bucks vs. Private Party. After what fans dealt with this week, I think a fun tag team match was what many needed to open this show. Crazy spots. Private Party pulls off the upset. Good way to start and that puts the surprise for Private Party getting them over bigger. I liked this next segment a lot with Chris Jericho and crew walking to the ring. Jericho did an awesome job in this promo getting over that group and I like the name, Inner Circle, for them. Crowd is popping big for them too which is going to be a challenge for them as heels. LOL. He puts over the TNT premiere last week and the numbers they did and the crowd chants thank you Jericho. Jericho tells them to shut up. LOL. When Jericho gets to Jake Hagar, the crowd goes into “we the people” chants and Jericho shut that down quick shooting on it saying that chant is terrible and it is buried. He shoots saying that was a stupid idea from a bad creative team and now it is gone. Wow. LOL. Apparently you can also say the S word across TNT as Jericho said that at one point. Really good promo where he spent time on each member of Inner Circle. Good stuff there. Jimmy Havoc and Darby Allin faced off next to determine who would face Jericho for the title next week on Dynamite. Allin won with the coffin drop for the pinfall. I can see that move being a lot of fun in different spots. Whew, I hope he doesn’t do the one again that he did months ago with the landing on the apron. That was a scary bump! Priestley and Sakura took on Riho and Britt Baker. Baker got Sakura to tap with a submission. Priestley and Baker then faced off after the match. Shawn Spears vs. Jon Moxley was next. I really liked the reveal of that entrance on Spears. I did not think he was on the ramp when that was revealed. I thought he was in the ring. Very well done. Moxley with a big pop. Pac on commentary. He stayed quiet until provoked to when he said “have you seen my win loss record?” LOL. Tully Blanchard accompanying Spears to the ring and playing the heel manager. Tully is doing it well including him shoving Moxley into the steps at one point and using classic heel manager distractions. Tully in that role will be fun. Moxley got the win with a pinfall. After the match, Omega arrived with a barbed wire bat and barbed wire broom. Moxley walked up and faced off with him on the ramp. Omega throws him the bat to make the fight even. Wow. They never get to touch though as Pac nails Omega from behind. Moxley is mad at Pac for interfering in it. Next was the main event of Dustin Rhodes and Hangman Page against Jericho and Guevara. Dustin looks awesome in the ring and he looks so reenergized. Hagar was at ringside as well and got involved. Jericho pinned Dustin to win the match. They continue to beat on Dustin with the triple team. Page gets back up after he had been taken out by Hagar. Page and Hagar battle back and forth and go backstage fighting. The lights go out. When they come back on, Cody is in the ring. He nails a nasty crossroads on Guevara. Cody faces off with Jericho but he is nailed from behind by Santana and Hernandez. MJF then arrives and they do an awesome tease here where you think MJF is going to turn on Cody and nail him with the chair. Instead, MJF goes after Inner Circle. Jericho ends up taking him out. Then, the Bucks arrive. Allin arrives as Jericho is walking up the ramp. Allin rides down the ramp on his skateboard and jumps with it toward Jericho taking him down. I popped for that fun spot. Jericho talks trash on Allin paying next week and the show ends. Good show. I liked it. There was a promo airing during the broadcast saying last week pulled in 7 million viewers. They are obviously including DVR and delayed viewing numbers there.
What were the ratings? Well, AEW gets another win in week two and it wasn’t close. Both shows lost viewers from last week. I expected AEW to likely lose viewers cause most shows on TV drop their premiere audience. This rating is kind of a mess with AEW cause they had to simulcast on TNT and Tru TV due to baseball running long. They drew 1.018 on TNT and 122,000 on Tru TV. NXT did 790,000 viewers on USA. So, both shows did see a drop. AEW doubled NXT in the 18-49 demo numbers so AEW is definitely grabbing that younger audience which is a very big get for AEW.
I’m going to do this hopefully weekly and please realize we know everything is good on these shows so I could really rank any of it in these categories. Just going with what I enjoyed most.
Show of the Night: NXT
Match of the Night: WALTER vs. Koshida – NXT
Line of the Night:
Ciampa slapping Garza after what Garza said to him.
Cathy Kelley: What did he say?
Ciampa: I don’t know.
Some other notes from the week.
I am hearing great things about the Ciampa WWE Network special that debuted last night. Sounds like a must watch. Vickie Guerrero’s podcast debuted today and her first guest is Edge. I am looking forward to hearing their stories about their run on Smackdown together.
That is it for tonight! Don’t forget that the WWE Draft begins tomorrow night on FOX on Smackdown. This thing is really being pushed like a real draft and talent being put in two different pools. Certain talent will be available to draft tomorrow night. The other group of talent will be available to draft on Monday night on Raw. With the FOX involvement, I fully expect this to look very sports like and there is going to be a lot of mainstream names involved in this. Have a great weekend!
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