Welcome to the “800th issue and Week 19 of the Wednesday Night Wars” edition of The Wrestling List. Let’s get into the recaps and random thoughts as we go along with the booking of these shows.
NXT starts with Matt Riddle and Pete Dunne riding to the ring in the BroMobile. I laugh at this and also their interview segment at Worlds Collide where Riddle is the talker and showboat to which Dunne plays the straight role of no expression. Cracks me up. You can do a lot of fun things with that combination and they already are. They talk about being champions of the Dusty Rhodes Classic. They are interrupted by O’Reilly and Fish. All a hype promo here building for their match at Takeover. First match of the night has Angel Garza returning after his night on Raw taking on Swerve Scott. Garza gets the pinfall victory here. Garza talks about wanting his cruiserweight title back. We go backstage where we see Undisputed Era causing trouble wanting Ciampa. Dijakovic takes on Dain in the next match. Dominik gets the win here and is joined by Keith Lee up on the stage after the match. Lee tells him that he has a match with him at Takeover for the North American title. The two show respect to one another and Lee congratulates him on getting the match. That will be a fun one. Interview in the next segment with Johnny Gargano and Finn Balor who are split screened in two different locations. Good back and forth here. Johnny saying that he wants the NXT version of Finn Balor instead of the Finn from Raw that lost to Lashley for 17 weeks in a row. LOL. Good line. Finn says he isn’t there in NXT to have a match of the year. Johnny says that he will take the NXT flag and drive it through Finn’s heart to which Finn says that he doesn’t have a heart. That was a good line and finish to the interview. Mercedes Martinez vs. Kacy Catanzaro is up next. Glad Kacy is back in the ring. Rumors were that she might be done. Solid match here with Mercedes getting the win. Backstage again where Undisputed Era continues looking for Ciampa. Well, Ciampa found them and attacks all of them. The fight goes into the building with Ciampa and Cole and to the announce booth. The rest of the Era catch up and attack Ciampa. Riddle and Dunne then get involved in the fight as well. Regal walks out saying if they want to fight, they’ll get to fight booking that match in the main event for later. Next is Jordan Devlin taking on Tyler Breeze. Awesome spot to start the match with Devlin attacking Breeze during his entrance as he was laying on the apron. Never seen that done and it looked vicious. Really good match here between the two. Devlin gets the win. Next segment is up as Bianca Belair walks out saying how she is ready for Takeover and that Rhea is apparently overlooking her after Rhea went to Charlotte on Raw. Charlotte then arrives. A big “welcome home” chant from Full Sail. Charlotte stirs the pot saying you realize that Rhea completely disrespected you. Rhea Ripley arrives with her and Charlotte facing off. Charlotte gives a gesture hand in the face to Bianca of you don’t belong in this to which Bianca takes that very well. LOL. Bianca tells her that you don’t even go here to which Charlotte tells her to step out saying this is a conversation for champions. That gets Rhea to step up saying I didn’t come into Raw disrespecting your home and you won’t do the same here. Bianca and Rhea then put Charlotte down. Then, they go back to talking at one another. One of those we can say what we want to each other but we won’t tolerate somebody else coming in and talking down. Main event time. Undisputed Era of Cole, O’Reilly, and Fish against Ciampa, Riddle, and Dunne. As Undisputed Era is doing their entrance on the ramp, they get jumped by the babyfaces. Ciampa got banged up on that opening sequence in the match. Tweaked that knee a bit. Ciampa is the one getting the hot tag too and he isn’t slowing down with that knee. A warrior here. Ciampa allowed Cole to get the tag so he could face off with him. Riddle and Dunne with some cool tandem moves. That team is really working. Strong gets involved in the ring which causes the DQ. Undisputed Era then destroys everyone. They put a X on the back of Ciampa playing off of what Ciampa did to Cole last week. As they are about to finish off Ciampa, the lights go out and we see the numbers, 2 5 20 up on the screen. The spotlights come back up and we see Velveteen Dream standing on the top rope. He jumps on everyone. Velveteen is back and he is all over Undisputed Era. I had been wondering how far off he was from returning and now we have our answer. Velveteen stands tall to end the show.
AEW opens up from Alabama with Jon Moxley against Ortiz. Santana at ringside. Jericho and Guevara on commentary. Ok, now they are showing close ups of people singing the Jericho entrance. They’re going to ruin this, aren’t they? They’ve overproducing it now for TV to where it looks forced instead of fun. Moxley gets the win here. He stares down Jericho from the ring. Santana then attacks Moxley from behind. Moxley then plants Santana. Moxley gets the car keys out and he spikes Santana in the eye with the key as revenge for what Inner Circle did to him. Jericho is screaming on commentary to not do it while yelling for everyone to go stop it. On another point, is Hager ever going to wrestle again? LOL. Is he just there to be the Inner Circle’s Mr. Hughes as a bodyguard? LOL. Solid opening angle to this show. Especially with the main event program kicking it off. Best Friends with Orange Cassidy vs. SCU is next. SCU picks up the win by pinfall. Here comes the Dark Order after the match attacking all four people. I say this every week but are they just irreparable at this point? I zone out when they walk out. Orange Cassidy faces off with the Dark Order. Dark Order tries to recruit him. He puts his hands in his pockets and gets attacked by Dark Order. Daniels arrives and calls them all out. They all back off and won’t go for him. Selling on commentary of well, of course, because that is who they are wanting to join them. Dark Order leaves. I have something on most every show that makes me zone out. Lana/Lashley/Rusev on Raw. Baron Corbin on Smackdown. Dark Order on AEW. I think NXT is the one show that doesn’t have something on it that makes me zone out. LOL. Dr. Britt Baker is next and she continues her heel evolution mouthing with fans as she walks to the ring. I think she just pointed to one of them’s teeth which might mean her next evolution is the female Issac Yankem. Baker vs. Yuka Sakazaki. First appearance for Sakazaki. Baker goes for the submission but Sakazaki rolls up Baker for the win. Baker snaps after the match going for the ring bell and nailing her with it. She goes for a second attempt but the ref pulls it away from her. She continues the attack and sits her mouth on the ropes. Baker stomps on her and we see that a tooth was knocked out. Oh no, this is a new Issac Yankem gimmick, isn’t it? Is this what she is going to do now cause this screams AWFUL. I love a 2020 twist on a 1995 gimmick that was garbage. LOL. Eight man tag next with Omega, Page, and The Bucks against Butcher, Blade, and Lucha Brothers. The adventures of Page and the Elite continue with Page walking out separately ahead of the rest. Page ends up taking the loss in this match. Story of the finish was that Page didn’t want to tag in the Bucks and it costs them the match. So, Page’s problems with The Elite continue. Back from commercial and Tony is ready to interview Omega. Before it can start, we see Pac backstage saying that this was supposed to be a contract signing but Omega won’t do it. He says Omega didn’t seem to care about what was happening to his friends. What about Riho who is standing there? Omega immediately steps up and says yes, you’re on, whatever you want. Pac walks off. Riho gets attacked from behind by Nyla Rose who leaves her laying. Next match is Kip Sabian with Penelope Ford vs. Joey Janela. Finish had Ford getting knocked off of the apron. As that happened, Janela rolled up Sabian for the win. Backstage to The Inner Circle with Jericho saying a great heel line of what kind of man does something like that with what Moxley did tonight? Obviously, they just did the same thing a couple of weeks ago making that a good heel line. Another backstage segment with Page being confronted by The Bucks asking what was going on out there. Saying he needs to figure it out or they are going to lose those belts next week. They said they think they know what the problem is and pull the drink away from him. Main event segment is waiting for Cody to take his ten lashes as he tries to get his match with MJF. MJF arrives. Cody arrives next. As he starts taking the lashes, MJF’s crew walks out on the stage to watch. As it goes along further, Arn Anderson arrives to offer support for Cody. Whew, those are some marks being left on Cody with those things. Now, here comes Dustin out to the ring. He wants to take the rest of the lashes. MJF says unfortunately, that isn’t how this works and get out of my ring. We’re only halfway. Two more given. Here comes The Bucks to the ring to offer support. We get to the last and Wardlow wants to do one. Super stiff one. Cody is struggling to get up off the mat to where MJF says I guess you don’t want the match. Brandi is out now trying to encourage him. Cody’s back looks BAD. Last one from MJF is across the chest. That is ten. Everybody enters to help Cody up. MJF then lands a kick as he and Wardlow run through the crowd. Many running out of the AEW locker room to go after MJF as the show goes off the air while Cody is up standing.
Ratings. AEW prevails once again. Both shows saw increases this week in viewers. AEW did 928,000 viewers compared to last week’s 828,000 so AEW had a significant jump this week. NXT did 770,000 viewers which was up from last week’s 712,000. 18-49 demo went to AEW with a 0.36 compared to NXT’s 0.22.
Show of the Night: Going even.
Match of the Night: I’m going with Breeze and Devlin from NXT.
This WWE conference call with the stockholders this week. Well, it was interesting for sure. This was the first WWE conference call since the announcement last week of Barrios and Wilson being gone. The stock has responded big dropping 20% at the news. When asked why they were gone, Vince basically said it was a difference of opinion on direction of the company. Basically, it sounds like the same old story. Vince is going to Vince and if you disagree, there is problems. Keep in mind that this is the same two people that helped close the biggest TV deal in the history of the company with the new Fox deal. Triple H and Stephanie got that thing going. Barrios and Wilson helped close it. Vince was not part of it. I think this company has made some huge strides with Barrios and Wilson there and expanded. Doing all this while the creative end of the company has been the usual weak spot of the company. Basically, they are doing all this to grow the company with the creative flaws. I was reading the recap of it seeing what WWE would do to spin this. Surely there is something they will do to put their spin on it which they always do when they have bad anything regarding numbers or whatever. There has been talk for a while now that WWE is about to unveil a tiered version of the Network. Basically, pay $5 more and get more content such as other promotions such as EVOLVE who had their show on the Network a few months ago. Kind of one of those tactics of we can’t add more subscribers so let’s see if we can get the diehards to pay more. However, Vince said that they were in a position to do that but also in a position to sell rights to “the majors” in over the top services on streaming their events. That reads that WWE could sell the rights to another service to stream their events. For example, you would have your $9.99 WWE Network service but maybe they pull the PPV’s off of there and you have to subscribe to another service such as Hulu for those. I am using that as a complete hypothetical using Hulu’s name. WWE would get money for licensing the rights out to them. Well, I think this is a terrible idea. LOL. WWE Network is approaching its sixth anniversary. You have pushed, pushed, and pushed that look we have all of our PPV’s on the WWE Network. Come to us. We have it all here. Then, you ponder taking part of the pull for subscriptions off of the Network and sending them somewhere else. That will confuse fans and also make people cancel. With NXT off of the Network now, they don’t have that as a Network grab anymore except for the Takeover shows. Then, how much are you looking at paying for watching the PPV events? I quit buying PPV’s before the Network arrived except for WrestleMania every year. They weren’t worth $40-$45 for every show. I and many weren’t getting our money’s worth out of them. When they moved to the Network, I was all in on that. Great value with all you get now for your $9.99. I have been a subscriber since day one of the Network. If you take the PPV’s away from the Network, you are left with basically a Netflix style format. How many fans are going to stick around with only that format? Now you’d have Takeover events probably on there. However, that would turn many into a cancel and resubscribe deal instead of being every month. I think if they go this route that it does more harm to the Network than it would help. This is something that is in talks. Nothing has been done yet to show they are going that direction. He said if they did go that route that it would be announced in the first quarter numbers call of 2020. They puts that right around WrestleMania weekend. This just all seems crazy to me that they are even considering this. I think the tiered thing is the way to go if you are going to go any direction. Offer something awesome to those that want to jump up. They sent out a survey a couple of years ago basically feeling out fans on a tiered version and what they would like included. There were a lot of great ideas that I saw to where I thought, yeah, I’d jump up if they did some of this. It wasn’t just programming. Some of it was like exclusive deals such as ticket access, merchandise access, subscriber gifts, etc. Several things like that which were really cool. Offering EVOLVE and such wouldn’t make me jump up just cause I don’t have time to watch everything. I still want to watch NWA and haven’t gotten to it yet on You Tube. LOL. This is a story to keep an eye on. The last couple of weeks just feels like something is off within that company behind the scenes. To kick the people out that would have been in charge if anything happened to Vince is a major deal. How off were the ideas on directions for this company for them to be booted like that? We know Vince is not someone that is easy to deal with. Even that statement comes across as soft. He is difficult to deal with. We all know that. Many have stories going back decades of how stubborn he is. It’s Vince’s way or the highway. Triple H has even said that the way to get something approved to Vince is that you have to learn how to pitch it to him where Vince feels like it was his own idea. LOL. Make no mistake. This behind the scenes with Barrios and Wilson being gone is a major story. The XFL also gets going this weekend so Vince has two major things going on. The hope among many of us has been hoping that Vince would put all his focus on the XFL and let someone else handle the WWE side. Anyway, this is going to be a story to follow. What is the direction of this company behind the scenes? We’ll soon find out. Messing up the Network is not one of them.
Goldberg will be appearing on tonight’s Smackdown on Fox.
Highly recommend the WWE 24 on last year’s WrestleMania. So much great behind the scenes of that show and interactions. Ricochet walking back from his first WrestleMania match and Shawn Michaels walking up to talk to him and congratulating him was a very cool moment. Lots of good stuff on this show.
Miz and Mrs has returned with its new season but the ratings are significantly down. I have my theory on it. When it was doing well, it was behind Smackdown. I would often just leave my TV on when it would follow on Smackdown. It now airs following NXT which does not have the viewer base of Raw or Smackdown so you have a smaller lead in. I also have not been watching it as I can’t watch NXT live so I don’t have the option of having it follow my program. Maybe you move Miz and Mrs to where it follows Raw? I don’t pay attention to what else USA has on it set schedules but I think the ratings fall is basically a blame that is just doesn’t have the Smackdown lead in anymore.
I hope this List even made sense this week. I typed it super fast and with no proof reading. No time. LOL. Have a great weekend
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