Welcome to the “Week 16 of the Wednesday Night Wars” edition of The Wrestling List.
Big news to start today which involves AEW and the Wednesday Night Wars. It was announced this week that TNT has secured AEW for TV through 2023. There are reports from John McMullen online of a $45 million a year deal. https://twitter.com/JFMcMullen/status/1217504456008458240?s=20 TNT also said they will be adding a second AEW show and it appears that will be the AEW Dark show which is currently airing on You Tube every week. The talk is that they will take that show and retool it a bit and air it on TNT as well. This is obviously a HUGE deal for AEW and this business in general. This means that TNT is behind them and like what they see out of them. TNT has said that they look at this deal as a we believe in what you are doing and want to show it kind of response. This puts more money into AEW and this is also big for the talent in this industry. The more money that goes around means more money for a lot of hard working talent. This could mean more signings for a lot of talent out there looking for a break. This also means that talent in WWE has more leverage if they are unhappy there. Anytime you have something successful going on, it is going to be good for everyone cause it gives people options of places to work. Very big news this week and it shows that AEW is here to stay.
Let’s get into live blog style of these shows this week as I give my random thoughts as I watch between the action and the booking of these shows and stories. AEW’s Bash at the Beach show opens up from Miami, FL with Miami Vice looking graphics. I do love that AEW is taking advantage of using these old wrestling names. Hard to get used to Bash at the Beach taking place in January of all months though. LOL. First match in the ring is The Bucks vs. Page and Omega vs. Best Friends with Orange Cassidy vs. Santana and Ortiz. Winner gets a title shot at SCU. The usual high flying crazy spots. I’ve given up on trying to live type these matches. Too much to type and keep track of and I don’t know the names of everything anyway. LOL. The finish has the Bucks doing the damage. Page does a sneak tag in and he and Omega finish it off for the pin. That stirs some dissension between the Bucks and Page. Commentary is putting over that the Bucks did the “heavy lifting” and then Omega and Page stole the win. Things seem to calm between the teams as the segment ends. This will be a story going forward obviously. Cody arrives next ready to speak on the challenge by MJF. Cody says he asked MJF what stipulations he would have to have to get a match with him. Cody pulls up the answers up on the screen which are a steel cage match with Wardlowe. Take ten lashes on live TV. The last is that he can’t touch MJF. Cody agrees to all of them wanting the match with MJF. Women’s match up next with Statlander and Shida taking on Brandi and Mel. Finish has Statlander pinning Mel with a modified piledriver. Next we have Moxley against Guevara. Cracking up at Jon Moxley arriving for his match driving out in his new car that he got from Inner Circle. Where is Moxley’s music? Not as much adrenaline in his entrance. Just goes to show how much music can mean. Moxley wins by submission. Jericho’s music hits. Then, the lights go out and the music stops. When the lights come back on, all of Inner Circle has surrounded Moxley in the ring. Inner Circle puts a beat down on Moxley. Jericho is whipping Moxley with the AEW title belt which looks all sorts of weak to me watching. Now, being there getting hit with a belt just of that size may feel worse than it looks. LOL. Commentary is putting over how Moxley has no friends and how this is the problem that he has no one to help him. Jericho pulls a spike off his jacket and jabs Moxley right in the face. JR is putting over that it was in the eye. Well, all right then. Jericho is interviewed backstage and asking about what just occurred. Jericho said that Moxley did this to himself saying we offered him everything and he turned on us. Eye for an eye. The interview ends with Hager doing an “arrrr” in a pirate voice. Guevara then hits on the interviewer saying “hit me up”. Six man tag up next. Whew, here comes the Butcher, the Blade, and the Bunny. Wow, Butcher and Blade, you all have an uphill battle. Getting laid out by a 60 year old guy easily last week did nothing for their upside. It’s those two teaming up with MJF taking on DDP, QT Marshall, and Dustin Rhodes. We start with DDP and MJF in the ring. There we go, MJF tags out. Knew that heel tactic had to be coming. LOL. We’re basically just waiting for this DDP hot tag here at the end of the match. He’s in with MJF. Crowd is big behind DDP. DDP is laying waste to all three heels here. Lays out one with a diamond cutter. MJF low kicks DDP to block it on himself. DDP tags Dustin and Dustin hits a Canadian destroyer on to MJF. MJF does the back up on his feet stuttering sell. DDP lays out MJF with the diamond cutter. I thought that was the finish but the count is broken up. QT is taking out Butcher and Blade on the floor. DDP then does a dive off the top rope to the floor on to the pile. MJF sneaks in and rolls up QT for the win. They were in replay while the pin happened. So, we saw it on the smaller screen. I do want to go back and speak on that Canadian destroyer move cause of something that happened a few weeks ago. Dustin hit that move on the apron on Guevara. Just a nasty move on the apron. Not only did Guevara recover but he was back up on offense in one minute. Come on, that move should end the match much less be recovered from in a minute. LOL. Main event time with Pac against Darby Allin. I’m here for this match. Darby is way over getting Darby chants as he walks out. Good match here as expected. Surprised to see Pac get the win by pinfall with the black arrow to the back. Earlier in the match, Pac nailed Allin with a power bomb on the steps so that plays off of the back work that Pac had done in the match. Next week it will be Pac vs Moxley for the number one contendership to face Jericho. Pac talks to Tony in the ring. Pac says that he is the number one contender after what happened to Moxley saying it will be a forfeit. We cut to backstage and we see Moxley loaded into an ambulance with a bandage around his eye. The door then opens back up and Moxley walks out and walks back to the ramp. Moxley said he doesn’t care what it takes but that he will be in the match next week saying the title match against Jericho belongs to him.
NXT goes live from Full Sail University with Keith Lee opening the show talking about his win last week. He hypes up that he is going to start to derail Undisputed Era’s reign on championships by beating Strong next week. Era arrives and surround him. Lee is battling all four. Ciampa arrives to save Lee. He fights off Undisputed Era. Dusty Rhodes Classic continues next with Pete Dunne and Matt Riddle against Flash Morgan Webster and Mark Andrews. Solid match here. Riddle and Dunne get the win by pinball to move on to face Imperium in the second round. Ciampa makes his way back to the ring getting on the mic saying that it looks like Undisputed Era has a hit list but that he has one as well with Cole on it. Ciampa says he is getting Goldie back. Undisputed Era arrives again. They all attack Ciampa. Johnny Gargano’s music hits and he gets involved attacking Undisputed Era. The two then fight them off. We then have an awesome camera shot as Ciampa sits in the corner looking back at Gargano seeing that he saved him. The continued story and the way they do production work with these two just keeps adding to the story. Dusty Rhodes Classic continues with Alex Shelley and KUSHIDA against Drake and Gibson. Curious to see Shelley in the ring. Been a while since I have seen him. Looked very solid here. KUSHIDA had a big offensive run in this match that was fun to watch. Drake and Gibson prevail by pinfall. NXT Cruiserweight qualifier is up next with Tyler Breeze vs. Swerve Scott vs. Lio Rush. Fun match here as expected. I love Breeze getting to work back in NXT. I bet he has to love it too. Scott gets the win pinning Breeze. Cathy Kelley here as she is set to interview Gargano outside. Ciampa walks in and thanks him. They agree to team up to accept the challenge of Moustache Mountain. Undisputed Era runs in with security blocking them. Keith Lee then POUNCES ONE OF SECURITY INTO THE BUSHES. LOL. He then puts one into the car. Ciampa is looking around at the damage with a look of wow. LOL. Segment ends with Lee saying this ends next week. Main event time with the women’s battle royal to determine the number one contender. Taking part in is Candice LeRae, Mia Yim, Bianca Belair, Kacy Catanzaro (who I thought was maybe stepping out of the ring so this is a cool surprise. Big welcome back from Full Sail), Mercedes Martinez (making her NXT debut), Io Shirai (and she is just mega over as a heel), MJ Jenkins, Jesse Kamea, Deonna Purazzo, Vanessa Borne, Tegan Nox (first time back in the ring since the Dakota Kai attack), Santana Garrett, Kayden Carter, among others, and last but not least, Shayna Baszler who wants her title back. Shayna is doing damage through this thing taking out several. Kacy gets taken out by Io. Belair takes out Candice. Pretty awesome exchange leading to Candice’s elimination. Martinez suplexes Mia out of the ring so this is helping launch Martizez in NXT who now faces off with Shayna in the middle. The two exchanges punches for probably a minute. Martinez looks to be close to taking out Shayna but Shayna reverses it sending Martinez to the floor. Down to four. Belair, Tegan, Io, and Shayna. Winner gets the title match NXT Takeover: Portland. Tegan with a nice offensive run here going at everyone. Tegan chokeslams Io on to Shayna. Tegan goes to the top rope but Dakota Kai runs out and pulls her off the turnbuckle. That eliminates Tegan. I am really looking forward to their match. Shotzi Blackhart runs in and dumps out Shayna. Blackhart was apparently never eliminated. She gets the big eliminate Shayna moment and the crowd pops for it. Belair then dumps Blackhart. We’re down to Io and Belair and Full Sail is chanting Io immediately. They love them some Io at Full Sail. Io goes for a rana off the top rope. Belair counters her and holds. She then tries to send Io up and over which was a stomach turn moment of oh my goodness. The two battle on the apron and are unable to eliminate one another. We go back in the ring. One on one battle for at least five minutes here. This is great stuff. Belair launches Io out of the ring and wins. Bummer. I was hoping for Io. It will be Belair vs. the champion at Takeover Portland. Really fun match to finish NXT. Match of the night for me. Lots of good action and drama.
Show of the Night: NXT
Match of the Night: Women’s Battle Royal from NXT.
Ratings. AEW gets another win. AEW gets 940,000 viewers which was slightly down from last week’s 947,000 viewers so they have held consistent in the last two weeks. NXT gets 700,000 viewers which is slightly down from last week’s 721,000 viewers. 18-49 demo goes to AEW with a 0.38 compared to NXT’s 0.21. So, both shows basically held their viewers from the previous week. Just a very slight drop.
AEW announced that they have signed Tax to a multi year deal. Good news to hear on Taz. I haven’t figured out why WWE doesn’t seem to invite him to things or have interest in him. I’m just talking from an announcing perspective. Taz doesn’t get enough credit for how good of a commentator that he was in WWE. Highly underrated. Curious to see how AEW uses him. I assume he will step into the Dynamite booth whenever one of the three in the booth can’t be there and maybe he will keep calling AEW Dark.
I have heard great things about the NXT UK Takeover event this past Sunday. No surprise there. I really would love to watch NXT UK every week but have yet to commit the time to it. Just only so many hours to watch things. LOL. I did tune in to the close of Takeover to just see what was going on as I had just walked in the door. I turn it on and the crowd is popping like crazy. Undisputed Era ran in at the very end and attacked Imperium. That crowd went crazy for it. That will continue the story build of those two factions for When Worlds Collide. I expect we’ll see Imperium do an attack on Undisputed Era on NXT next week to set that up. Wonder if they do a finish where Imperium helps cost Strong the title?
I’m sure you’ve seen the story this week of Rocky Johnson’s passing. Just goes to show how big he of a star he was with all the mainstream coverage of him. He is also the father of The Rock of course. Rocky Johnson wasn’t somebody I got to see a lot of. What I have seen of Rocky Johnson as far as a regular in wrestling was all on Coliseum Videos and WWE on demand content. Rocky’s in ring career was done by the time I started watching so I knew him from watching tapes and also when he would make appearances in WWE over the years. Rocky Johnson was a huge star in the 70’s and 80’s and very popular with fans. A fun style that really grabbed fans. You can see how many lives he touched just with the outpouring of support from the industry, media, and fans.
That is it for this week.
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