Welcome to the “This Is Weird” edition of The Wrestling List.
Let’s start with Smackdown. The show was on FS1 due to the World Series and whew did the ratings plummet as a result. The show was down to 888,000 viewers. WOW. Jumping off a broadcast network over to FS1 is automatically going to drop the ratings as it just doesn’t have the same kind of availability. This also means that AEW beat Smackdown in the ratings but remember also that TNT gets in more homes than FS1 does. It will be interesting to see what the rating is this week when the show jumps back over to Fox. Let’s recap Smackdown. The show opened with Miz TV with Team Hogan and Team Flair. No Orton there so he was missing. Trash talking between teams and of course it goes right to the short jokes with Gable. Vince McMahon loves his making fun of size jokes. This of course ends up a in a brawl and sets up a match for later. As we went to break, New Day is shown walking through the back but it is only Kofi and Big E in person. On the iPad is Xavier Woods shown laying in his bed recovering from surgery. I liked that with giving the nod to Xavier as he recovers. Kofi and E lose to Ziggler and Roode when Kofi is pinned by Ziggler following the distraction. Whew, that doesn’t do much for Kofi especially considering he is already coming off of his championship squash loss. Revival runs in. Heavy Machinery runs in and we have a tag team brawl. Face teams prevail. Lacey Evans is next set up for a squash match. Although, she decides she doesn’t want to even share the ring with this woman. Lacey walks around the ring content with losing by countout. As the ten is about to happen and her opponent, Cameron Connors, is about to win, Lacey runs in and hits the knockout punch for the pinfall. The Firefly Funhouse was back. So, was the rambling rabbit and then the rabbit was gone again. I did laugh at the line from the rabbit of “there was a guy in a suit that kept firing me”. Gulak took on Calisto. Gulak started the match with doing his slideshow of easy Braun can lose to Fury. As he calls for slide two, Calisto attacked. I laughed at Corey’s line on commentary of “there were 345 slides in that presentation and I was curious to what the rest were cause that is a lot of ways to lose”. LOL. Calisto gets the win. After the match, Strowman shows up and lays out Gulak. I did like Strowman playing off the crowd of “one more time” wanting him to hit another slam on Gulak. Strowman gets on the mic talking about Fury and hyping their match. Michael Cole is in the ring next interviewing Daniel Bryan. Cole brings up how Bryan seems reluctant to participate in the yes movement again. He asks if the yes movement is in fact back and Bryan looks around at the fans all doing the yes chants. Before he can answer, Nakamura arrives with Sami. Sami brings up the old video of where Bryan said the yes movement was buried. Sami cuts a promo where he is trying to pull Bryan to their side while telling Bryan that he is at a crossroads of which way is he going to go. “Go backwards and revive the yes movement or move forward with us”. Sami offers a handshake. Bryan looks at that and looks at the fans. Bryan then walks off looking conflicted. So, we are getting the build tease of what will Bryan do? Surely he is reviving the yes movement. It seems to be the smart thing to do booking wise. Nikki Cross takes on Mandy Rose next with Bayley and Sasha at ringside on commentary. Nikki wins with the neck breaker and has a stare off with Bayley. Rey and Cain arrive for a promo and whew, they have nothing else to build this match except the line over and over again of I’m going to put a matching scar on the other side of your face. They have said that line to where I’m tired of it. Then again, I am not into this feud at all and couldn’t care less about that match on Thursday. After the promo, they show Brock and Heyman on the screen. Brock has Dominik and he is down. Rey and Cain run back there. Brock lays them all out including a F5 on to Cain who lands on Dominik and the stretcher Main event time. Corbin, Cesaro, and Nakamura vs. Reigns, Gable, and Ali. Hogan and Flair at ringside. Cesaro got a nice comeback against Reigns at the end but ends up being finished off with a Reigns spear and 450 from Ali.
Raw opened with Paige leading Asuka and Kairi to the ring. Paige cuts a promo on her successful team and then Asuka puts the mist in Paige’s eyes. As Paige is screaming that she needs water and can’t see, Becky Lynch arrives and hammers on both of the tag team champions. Then, the scheduled match takes place with Becky and Kairi. Interesting that we now have another of the good girls turned heel now with Kairi. Never seen this side of a character out of Kairi so it will be interesting to see how it works. Lawler had a line of “if Becky snaps again, does that make it a ginger snap”. Thank you Memphis, good night. LOL. Becky got the win via tap out. R Truth took on Buddy Murphy next. The 24/7 crew ended up involved when they started chasing the champ around the ring. Funny when Truth got in the back of the line chasing the circle when the champ was right behind him. When Truth got back in the ring, Murphy finished him off. Ricochet takes on Drew McInytre next. Hogan in Ricochet’s corner while Flair was in McIntyre’s corner. I did like the face-off with Hogan and McIntyre going eye to eye on the floor. Been a while since I have seen Hogan stand eye to eye with someone so that brought back some old school feels. Match ended when Orton jumped in hitting a RKO on to Ricochet. Huge pop for it too as the show was in his hometown of St. Louis. Squash match next with The War Raiders squashing two guys named Rizzo and Bryant naming them the Chicago Cubs. They also wore jerseys. An attempt to get something out of the Cubs/Cards rivalry. Sin Cara introduced Catalina who would be in his corner against Andrade and Zelina. Catalina ended up taking out Zelina on the floor but the distraction was enough to where Andrade got the pin on Sin Cara with the feet on the ropes. Charlotte Flair and Natalya were up next and their opponent……The Iiconics and I popped when that music hit. Glad they are finally back on TV. I do wonder if they turn up the ring mic more when they are in the ring so you can hear all the screaming. LOL. Nattie wins with the sharpshooter on Billie. As Peyton went to stop the hold, Charlotte knocked her down which led to Billie having no choice but to tap out. Seth Rollins vs. Rowan in a falls count anywhere match. I kind of laughed when the match ended up in the concourse of the arena after AEW just did a brawl in that portion of the arena last week. Lots of crazy spots in this one. The match ends when Rollins has Rowan down in the backstage area right by a forklift. Rollins yells at the workers standing around it saying who can work this thing and one guys outs his co-worker saying he can! LOL! That co-worker was wanting nothing to do with it so that was a funny simple thing to laugh at. Rollins ends up with Rowan pinned under the forklift and gets the there count. Humberto took on AJ Styles next. Another match to put over Humberto with pushing the top talent to their limits. AJ gets the win. After the match, we have a similar moment to last week. Rollins offered the handshake and it was accepted. This week, Styles does the same thing but pulls it back laughing. Humberto punches Styles but the OC gets involved. Street Profits get involved and even up the odds running off the heels. Next is amazingly the main event segment. Divorce court with Lawler hosting this with Lana and Rusev. THIS WAS SO BAD. LOL. What broke up your marriage? Lana says he wanted to sleep with her all the time to which I am saying to my TV, “WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON AND WHY IS THIS ON MY TV????!!!” LOL. It ends up leading to the story of that Rusev wanted kids while Lana says that he was cheating on her. Lashley gets involved. It ends up in a brawl. I don’t care. Match ends. Segment ends. As the show goes off the air, we get the PERFECT timing of a fan yelling “this is weirddddddd” as the show fades to black. I could not have found a better way to end that. LOL. Well played wrestling fan. Well played. I want that whole angle to go away.
The Raw rating fell to 2.1 million last night which is down from the previous week’s 2.3 million.
WWE announced the on sale date for WrestleMania tickets for 2020 and also announced the new schedule for the weekend. The WWE Hall Of Fame ceremony will now take place on Thursday. Smackdown on Friday. NXT Takeover on Saturday. WrestleMania on Sunday. Raw on Monday. Having the Hall of Fame leading off WrestleMania weekend will take some getting used to. I knew Smackdown being on Friday would have to change something for the weekend.
If you were thinking of getting the new WWE 2K20 video game, don’t do it. The game is filled with glitches and many issues. The game has gotten so much heat online that 2K had to put out a statement of that there will be an update for it “in the next two weeks”. It isn’t hard to find videos of the glitches online. They are BAD. Along with glitches, there was the realization of somebody being able to win the money in the bank match via pinfall. Sony has even been offering refunds for it cause the heat from it has been so bad. So, what happened? Well, I don’t know if this is it but it is telling. The 2K games did have two partners working on development together. Yukes and Visual Concepts. It was announced earlier this year that Yukes was out and would no longer be involved in working on the games. The how’s, why’s, and such are unsure on who parted with who but the talk was that Yukes was wanting to do more innovating things with the WWE games instead of just updating the same thing every year. With Yukes out, this game went wayyyyy downhill. I don’t know if that is the reason that this game is so bad but it is out there as a real possibility. It almost feels like the game wasn’t done with some of the things you see. The graphics look noticeably worse from previous versions of the game. So, if you want this game, back off on it. Either wait and see if this update does ANYTHING to fix the problem or just buy last year’s version which you could probably get for $20 now. I have also heard rumblings of NBA 2K20 also getting a lot of criticism this year too which makes it show that this wasn’t just something with one game. The heat was so bad that the hashtag of #FixWWE2K20 was the top trend on Twitter the day of the release. Stay away from that game.
If you haven’t been listening to the Arn Anderson podcast with Conrad Thompson, I highly recommend the Leaving Crockett episode. Arn goes over the behind the scenes of him and Tully leaving Crockett for WWF in 1988. All the build to what led to the decision. The final straw. Their last shows with Crockett. The reaction to them leaving. I learned so much in that podcast of stories I had never heard of them leaving. Great stuff!
That is it for tonight. Have a great night!
About the Author
