Welcome to the “Wednesday Night Wars Week 4” edition of The Wrestling List. I enjoyed both shows a lot this week. We had some great action and some swerves thrown at us.
Let’s start with NXT. The opening match at Full Sail this week was Rhea Ripley taking on Bianca Belair. Ripley gets the win as we continue the build of this division all lining up to be the next challenger for Shayna. Matt Riddle was up next taking on Cameron Grimes. Tyler Bate was shown sitting in the crowd which will be foreshadowing for the post match. Riddle defeats Grimes with the pinball. In the post match, Riddle goes for a fist bump on Grimes but Grimes wants nothing to do with it. Riddle and Bates do a fist bump at ringside. Grimes and Bates have words and Grimes gets the worst of it taking a punch from Bates who lays him out on the floor. Breezango is out next with a surprise partner of Isaiah Swerve Scott taking on the team of Ryker, Cutler, and Blake. Scott had a very awesome showing recently on NXT TV and I am very impressed with him. Fun to watch. Scott ends up getting the pinfall here. Angel Garza took on Jack Gallagher so we continue to see some of the 205 roster sliding it over here at NXT. Whew, if you’re Triple H, you have your hands full with how the main roster is making the 205 talent look compared to what Triple H is trying to do with them. Garza gets the pinfall here. Lio Rush was at ringside watching the match and Garza and Rush had words after the match. Next up was a number one contender’s match for the WWE women’s tag team titles. Dakota Kai and Tegan Nox taking on Shafir and Duke with the winner facing Asuka and Kairi next week on NXT. Interesting to see Shafir and Duke in the ring as most of what we have seen from them is straight up run ins for Shayna. I like the pairing of Tegan and Dakota. Tegan wins with the shiniest wizard for the pinfall. After the match, Asuka and Kairi appeared up on the screen to hype the match for next week. Main event time and it is NASTINESS. I LOVED this match! North American title on the line with Roderick Strong defending against Keith Lee and Domink Dijakovic. The double-decker suplex power bomb out out of the corner was NASTY. There was just so much great in this match. Impossible to recap it all. Just go watch the match. Lee hits a power bomb and is ready to put it away. Strong flies in with a kick taking out Lee and stealing the win by pinning Dominik. Strong retains. Undisputed Era run out to celebrate with Strong. Ciampa’s music then hits and he walks to the ring with the crutch. Gargano’s music hits and he stands next to Ciampa. Don’t you just love the storytelling of Ciampa and Gargano to where every time they stand next to one another, we wonder what is going to happen? I mean just between them. Not even who is on the other side of the ring. LOL. DIY chant from Full Sail. The two give each other a look and appear to be on the same page. I’m already ready for Ciampa to swing at Gargano. LOL. Here comes the twist. Finn Balor’s music hits and he stands with Ciampa and Gargano…..for a moment. Balor attacks Gargano. Undisputed Era attack Ciampa. Balor continues hammering on Gargano around ringside including a nasty running kick that takes out Gargano and the front row. Pretty awesome visual. Undisputed Era and Balor give each other a look after standing over their opponents. So, we have a Balor heel turn. I’m good with that. It puts a new edge and spin on Balor putting him back in NXT. We have seen the face Balor run in NXT over a couple of years. Now, we get a heel run with him going back.
Let’s move over to AEW. AEW started hot in Pittsburgh with the continuation of the tag team championship tournament. Lucha Brother against Private Party. I LOVED this match. The rana into the stunner by Private Party looked awesome! Lucha’s end up getting the win and move on to next week’s tournament final. Next is the other half of the tournament with SCU of Kazarian and Sky against The Dark Order. Whew, I was concerned thinking surely they won’t put Dark Order over here. Let’s also point out that at this point, we are 30 minutes in and no commercials. Inner Circle arrived during the match causing quite the commotion in the crowd. They say they have tickets and walk up to their suite to watch the show. On commentary, they put over that Inner Circle was not scheduled to be on this show. Sky hit a nasty DDT on the apron. They apron bump like crazy in AEW. SCU gets the pin on Grayson to move on. This is the logical final with SCU against The Lucha Brothers for the final next week after what Lucha did to take out Daniels from the tournament. Now, the story is SCU is going for revenge on them to win the tag titles. It has been announced that The Rock N Roll Express will be there to present the new tag titles to the winners next week. Omega vs. Joey Janela is next. Yet another apron bump with Janela missing the apron moonsault. Omega is victorious. Next up is a live events promo advertising the future shows with the voice over from Schiavone and how awesome was that for a throw back??!! Took me back to the WCW days. Cody arrives with an awesome entrance. Tony is set to interview him in the ring as he has a big announcement. Then, we start hearing air horns as Inner Circle interrupts him from up in their suite. For guys that have tickets, security did a lousy job of catching those things that are banned from events. LOL. Cody continues to try and talk. Jericho starts booing on a mic while calling Cody a coward saying he didn’t have the guts to come up there. Cody starts to make his way up but Jericho says what are you going to do? You’re 1 against 4. Dustin’s music hits. Jericho says ok, you’re still 2-4. MJF arrives. Then, we get a surprise when we hear “it’s me, it’s me, it’s DDP’. Here comes Diamond Dallas Page. We’ve even 4-4. They all hop the rail and make their way up. Inner Circle backs themselves into a room and lock the door while mocking Cody and crew. Cody grabs MJF’s scarf and uses it to protect his hand as he punches through the door to get in the room. The brawl is on. They brawl out into the lobby of the arena where fans immediately start running out there to see it. LOL. Cody shoves Jericho into the Dippin’ Dots which was a pop for Paducah. Great job to Dippin’ Dots who is already on that playing off of that moment on Twitter! Security ends up escorting Cody and his group out while Jericho yells I have a ticket. LOL. I loved that whole segment. Next is The Young Bucks taking on The Best Friends. Orange Cassidy was out there with the Best Friends getting involved a couple of times. Tag team wrestling is a lot of fun in AEW. Bucks get the win and then get on the mic afterwards calling out Santana and Ortiz with the challenge for Full Gear. The Bucks accept the challenge. Britt Baker had a very well produced video package air next pushing her hometown return. Baker gets a nice hometown pop as she takes on Jamie Hayter. Baker arrived with the Steelers mascot. I think it was the Steelers mascot. I caught it really quick. Baker wins by submission. Hayter was doing a lot of heel work in this match. She was about to be interviewed backstage after the match and was attacked by Brandi. Main event time. Moxley against Pac. Moxley was attacked on the way to the ring by Pac who hit him with a chair. Match goes on and the time limit is clearly coming into play as it continues to count down. Nasty 450 on the floor by Pac but misses the 450 in the ring. One minute remaining. Moxley hits his finish and slowly goes for the cover with 30 seconds left. Pac kicks out right before the time limit. Time limit draw on this match. Moxley is livid after the match and DDT’s the ref as the show ends.
Show of the Night: I’m going with a tie here. I enjoyed both shows.
Match Of The Night: Tie here.
Strong vs. Dominik vs. Lee from NXT
Lucha Brothers vs. Private Party from AEW.
Line of the Night:
“He is wearing a scarf. What kind of man wears a scarf?” Jericho on MJF. The joke being to all of us watching of that Jericho used to wear one too. LOL.
So, the ratings? AEW goes 4-0 on NXT. However, both shows continue to lose audience. AEW dropped to under a million for the first time. AEW had 963,000 viewers. NXT had 698,000 viewers. So, we have to see where the level off is going to be with these shows. Good news is that both AEW and NXT did see the slightest uptick in that 18-49 demographic. That is a very important thing and something that Turner is really paying attention to. They are happy with that 18-49 demo they are getting with AEW. One thing that I really notice with Wednesdays is that it is our sanity keeper as fans when we get bored on the main roster shows often. Wednesdays is the adrenaline rush of fun that we have needed with NXT and AEW. Enjoying both shows a lot! That is it for this week. Have a great weekend!
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