Welcome to the “2009 Randy Orton has entered the chat” edition of The Wrestling List.
I’ll go ahead and start there with probably the biggest WWE news over the last week. Smackdown on Friday night concluded with the contract signing between Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes. I did not expect the Orton heel turn. I don’t think I really expected a turn all around. For some reason, I just had my mind in a normal segment mode. Why? I have no idea. LOL. I should have known better. I think my mind was just not full on the show or something and I was going through the motions. Well, I got snapped out of the motions. LOL. We get to the end of the segment and Orton kicks Cody low. Then, he just full lays waste to Cody. Orton full snaps. He snaps to the point that even his friend, Jelly Roll, walks over to try and calm things with Orton shoving him down too. As Orton is backing up the ramp, Orton has a look of that he’s balancing not thinking straight. He disappears as officials are tending to Cody who is bloodied. Then, we go next level up. Orton comes out through the crowd and stands on the announce table. Cody is laying on the steps and Orton just blasts Cody with the chair while laying on the steps. That was quite the visual as Orton stands over him in full 2009 mode. Orton takes the chair in the ring. Sits down with the belt in his lap looking at the belt…….with the fans chanting “Randy, Randy, Randy”. That’s where I’m going next with this. That segment was awesome. However, the first thing I initially said was why are they trying to turn Randy Orton? Orton has reached the stage a long time ago of when legends get to a certain stage where fans just aren’t going to boo them cause they love them too much. The reaction to Orton during this Cody attack was mostly cheering for him. Now the question is…..can they get fans to boo Randy Orton? I think most of us were expecting a Cody heel turn before there would be a Randy heel turn. Cody had shown signs at times lately of maybe he turns. That would be a big deal too obviously turning Cody cause he’s such a huge babyface for the company. The kids love him. He’s great with them. He’s just such a great babyface. Was the way to go to turn Cody? I don’t know. It would have had some mileage for sure. Will the fans boo Randy Orton? We’ll find out soon enough. Orton is good enough to get them to do it obviously but Orton is Orton and he’s another legend that fans love to cheer no matter what. At WrestleMania, I fully expect the crowd to be more with Orton than Cody. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think fans want to see Orton get his 15th championship. Last year’s WrestleMania had fans cheering for a heel John Cena against Cody Rhodes. And the Cena heel turn overall was a terrible idea. But that’s another story. LOL. Are we about to go another WrestleMania with a heel getting cheered in the main event?
Tonight’s Raw closed with an awesome CM Punk and Roman Reigns segment. Earlier in the night, we were seeing what looked like the Bloodline starting to reform and getting back to their old ways with Roman and the Usos all hanging out. Reigns started the final segment cutting a promo which was then interrupted by Punk who took his time entering the ring playing mind games. Good stuff here. Last week, we had a bunch of confusion of ok, who is the babyface and who is the heel? Tonight, it felt like they were doing a very big job of making sure to make it clear. Punk walking to the ring high fiving all the ringside fans. Punk playing to the fans. Reigns saying “this is who you cheer for?” Reigns and the Bloodline back together. LA Knight confronting the Usos earlier saying we’ve been on the same page but if the Bloodline is back, we’re not on the same page anymore. Clearly, Punk babyface. Reigns, heel. Their back and forth was so good. Punk talking of how the “Phil” comments don’t bother him as his family calls him Phil all the time anyway. Punk fires back with a line that I popped for with him saying “I’m certainly not going to call you Joe cause it would be an insult to another Samoan that I love dearly” in reference to Samoa Joe. Great stuff there. Punk mentions the situation from last week saying right thing, wrong messenger and you sent your boys to handle your business. Reigns talked of how he’s tired of the same old part timer comments coming at him. Reigns mentioned the part time top money saying maybe you should talk to your wife about that part time top money. Reigns went to leave at one point with Punk walking out and blocking him saying this is my show, my ring, and I tell you when you can leave. Reigns annoying goes back in the ring. More words exchanged including Punk calling him “young boy” which is the line he used on Jey and Jimmy last week. Reigns eventually gets to the line of getting annoyed calling Punk old and Punk nails him with a punch knocking him down. Officials stand next to Punk looking to make sure the situation doesn’t escalate further. Reigns lays on the mat laughing while also selling the punch.
The show started really hot with the Oba Femi/Brock Lesnar stuff. Geez, I LOVED THAT! The show started with Rollins and his merry men around the ring calling out The Vision. A ROUGH looking Paul Heyman slowly walks out. He looked battered including a very red eye selling the Rollins attack. I saw fans joking saying how did Heyman get his eye to look like that. One easy way for me would be to accidentally put in an eye contact backwards and trust me when I say, that will irritate your eye and redden it really fast. LOL. Heyman is livid but worn. Rollins calls him on out. Heyman then says the saying of what happens when you mess around and find out and at that point, I say uh oh, Brock Lesnar. We’re getting Rollins and Lesnar at WrestleMania. Lesnar walks out with a look of destruction on his face for Rollins. Lesnar destroys all of Rollins merry men. He then goes face to face with Rollins in the ring. The lights go out and Oba Femi’s music hits. Ok, good swerve here as I said nope, now we’re back to Lesnar and Femi for Mania. Oba walks to the ring and looks like a monster. Rollins stands in the corner with a smirk toward Brock of have fun with this guy. Oba and Lesnar stand face to face and Oba picks up Lesnar on his shoulders and plants him hard with a power bomb. It looked awesome! Again, looked like a monster. The camera then picked up Lesnar on the mat saying to Oba, “stand on my chest” to which Oba does that. Oba points at the WrestleMania sign of I’m accepting your open challenge. Lesnar was all in on making Oba look like a monster here. We later got the official word of Oba vs Lesnar for WrestleMania. That is going to be awesome and that match is going to HURT. LOL.
My dream match of the night for my fandom was AJ Lee vs. Bayley. First time they’ve had a match since NXT in 2013 when AJ went down to NXT working that show with Bayley. My two favorite wrestlers in the ring against each other once again. Fun match. Loved it. AJ Lee gets the win with the submission victory when she just full cranks back on that arm on the black widow to retain the Intercontinental title. When we come back from commercial break, Becky Lynch has attacked AJ Lee in the aisle way and is just destroying her including the finishing belt shot. This will clearly be WrestleMania with those two which I’m all good with. We’ll have a stipulation most likely on this rematch this time. What about Bayley’s journey to get back to WrestleMania? We cut backstage later with a disappointed Bayley who is speaking very frustrated to Lyra. Lyra then yells right back at her of we’re going to find a way to get you there. Asuka and Kairi walk up with Asuka talking trash of how they cost her last week. Then, Asuka teases of themselves going for the tag titles. Lyra then pumps up Bayley saying let’s go talk to Pierce cause that’s our ticket for both of us to WrestleMania, the tag team titles. Bayley and her walk off very happy.
Other notes from Raw. Good crowd tonight in San Antonio. They were hot for this show and added to the show. Randy Orton started to do a live interview on camera with Michael Cole. The interview is set to start but Orton holds it off while he finishes up his phone call. Orton then goes to do the interview but says he’s changed his mind. We do get something out of Randy as he said he was a killer and someone two weeks ago reminded him of that. He followed with the line of “there is only one royal family” playing off of Cody. So, who was on the phone and who was the person that reminded him? With him doing the family line, my first thought was is it his dad? And was it his dad on the phone too? This whole segment pushed hard of Orton is full heel now. I cracked up at Danhausen making his pitch to join New Day to replace Xavier Woods. Then, him throwing the curse and Kofi grabbing Waller in front of him to take the curse zap instead of him. Danhausen disappears and Kofi and Waller argue over who got the curse. LOL. Two nasty bumps in that match with Stephanie and Raquel. Iyo does the run in and takes a nasty bump landing off that announce table. It’s followed right up by Stephanie throwing Liv over the timekeepers barricade for a nasty bump. Stephanie pinned Raquel in the match. Liv had gotten involved in that match and Iyo ran out to counter her. Liv revealed tonight that she had been planning to get Finn out of Judgment Day since joining and that the only reason she hadn’t done it sooner was because of the relationship between Finn and Dom. I love Kairi’s facials standing next to Asuka. She just looks constantly disturbed. LOL. Penta retained the Intercontinental title against a surprise opponent in Dragon Lee. This was a fun match. Nasty dive table spot in this one. Nattie defeated Maxxine in another match with Nattie getting the tap out win.
Some other happenings from Smackdown last week. Alexa Bliss and Charlotte challenged Nia Jax and Lash Legend for the tag titles. The Bellas did a promo before hand saying they would be next for a tag title match and they sat ringside during the match. During the match, they do the usual spot of someone gets thrown on to the people sitting ringside. So, the Bellas get nailed while sitting. The match continues. Alexa and Charlotte are about to win the match and then the Bellas jump in the ring attacking the champs for retaliation causing the DQ. Alexa and Charlotte are rightfully upset that they cost them the tag team titles. The Bellas seem annoyed that they’re annoyed while saying they’re next for a tag title match. The Bellas haven’t won a match and they just get approval for a title match just because they want it. Ok……so there’s that lack of logic storyline. The Drew “I quit” storyline was back again. That’s gotta stop. I don’t know how many times we’ve done the storyline of Drew does something dumb, costs himself, gets punished, loses, and quits. There are better things to do with Drew other than this same storyline over and over. I absolutely loved the backstage segment with Tiffany starting to talk to the camera and then Chelsea rolling up in her wheelchair talking trash behind her. Tiffany turns and rolls Chelsea off frame while then turning back to the camera with what she was saying. In the far background, you see Alba running across the screen chasing Chelsea to help stop her. That was comedy gold. LOL.
Roxanne Perez announced on her Instagram that she is back in the gym working toward her return. She’s been out with a surgical health issue for a couple of months now. Excited for her return!
That’s it for tonight!
About the Author
