Welcome to the “why doesn’t Roman Reigns carry his own belt” edition of The Wrestling List.
Backlash was this past Saturday night. The show opened up with Bron Breakker and Seth Rollins. These two had quite the war with one another with Bron getting the win following two spears with the first being a counter spear to Seth jumping off the top rope. Sami Zayn and Trick Williams continued what seems to be the ongoing double turn. Sami getting more boos. Trick getting more cheers. To me, the double turn has already happened. Trick gets the win and retains. Danhausen vs Miz and Kit was the hi jinx that was expected. I wasn’t sure who the partner would be which ended up being Mini Hausen. Tons of comedy spots in this one. Iyo Sky vs Asuka was my match of the night which was up next. Really fun match which you know you’re going to get with these two. “We Want Kairi” chants during the match. I haven’t typed up a List since the release of Kairi Sane and I’m obviously very sad with it. Fan of Kairi for a very long time. We had this build to this storyline and……we never get a pay off for it. Kairi is such an awesome talent and she’s gone. So, I was glad to hear the “we want Kairi” chants. Iyo gets the win. Post match, we had Asuka in tears hugging Iyo which sure had people talking that is this Asuka saying farewell???? I kept thinking Asuka was going to nail Iyo and then maybe we’d get a one last appearance by Kairi to pay off the storyline. Same story though is that the talk has been that she is already back in Japan quickly after her release. Even if WWE wanted to do something like that, I’d be pretty cranky about being released and then asked hey, can you come in and fly all the way from Japan to Tampa for a one shot. So, I didn’t really get to take in the Asuka moment cause I was distracted thinking wait, is Asuka about to nail Iyo and then Kairi gets the last thing on Asuka. John Cena announced this new championship idea which I’ll save for its own paragraph later. Main event time with Roman Reigns and Jacob Fatu. Reigns is in trouble at the end but sends Fatu into the exposed turnbuckle and then nailed a spear for the win. So, that adds to the fuel of this storyline of Fatu fought to get his match with Roman to prove himself and then Roman had to cheat to beat him. Post match, Fatu just destroys Roman. Throws Pearce out of the ring. Roman was demolished.
Tonight’s Raw was just there for me. Just ehh. Not bad. Just there. I’m not going to cover everything and am just going to hit a few topics. The Roman and Fatu stuff continued with Roman doing the Fatu is going to acknowledge me ceremony. Fatu shows up and he isn’t here to acknowledge Roman. Jey tries to “talk sense into him” which doesn’t go well for Jey. Jimmy not taking the hint of what happened to Jey tries next to talk Jacob down and he doesn’t even get words out before Jacob puts him down. Brawl in the ring between Roman and Jacob. Jacob ends up getting the best of Roman. Security arrives. Really cool spot to close the show with the tease of the show is going off as Jacob is walking out. Jacob then runs back toward ringside and puts Roman, Jey, and Jimmy through the barrier which looked awesome. On another Roman storyline note, why can’t this guy carry the belt from shows? LOL. He shows up, asks for his title, and walks into the show. You aren’t even keeping your belt with you??? The show opened with the stuff with The Vision against The Street Profits and Joe Hendry. Six man tag there which ends up with Rollins getting involved. Rollins offers his hand to Dawkins as a peace offering. Dawkins accepts and Rollins pulls him up. I laughed after cause Seth helps the guy up and then moves out of the way letting Dawkins take a spear from Bron instead of him. LOL. Ford comes in the ring and is yelling at Seth while Seth isn’t understanding. I’d be mad too. LOL. I don’t know if that was the intended plan on that spot but it sure made Seth look bad to me. Hey we’re good, oh, you’re taking this one. LOL. I loved the finish of Iyo Sky and Sol Ruca where Iyo basically lured her into using the soul snatcher. She paused and didn’t go in letting Sol go airborne. When Sol landed. Iyo rolled her up for the pin. Post match, Sol had a smirk of ok, you outdid me there. Before the match, Iyo and Asuka had another moment where Asuka told Iyo that she was waiting on someone to take over for her and that she knows it’s Iyo and is glad it is Iyo. Asuka then walked out the door which sure looked like a goodbye. I said geez this is getting sad for Iyo. She said goodbye to Rhea after WrestleMania, Kairi is gone, and now Asuka. Next week, we’ll have Paige and Brie defending the tag belts against Roxanne and Raquel.
We’re about 8 months into this WWE and ESPN rights deal and I hate this thing. What I’m also noticing is that it’s like both sides aren’t happy with the other. The hardcore ESPN audience is annoyed that WWE is on their networks. Then, there is us with the WWE fandom and we’re not happy with being on ESPN. It’s like none of us want the other and we’re stuck with each other. We got forced into paying $30 a month for ESPN Unlimited which is basically paying $30 for just one show a month if you don’t care about ESPN for anything else besides that. Depending on how the calendar falls, you might not even get a WWE show with your $30 like back in December where there wasn’t a PLE that month with Saturday Night’s Main Event being the only main roster show and it’s on Peacock. My next problem is the newest things that ESPN has started doing with airing the first hour on the main ESPN networks. So, I’m paying $30 for one show and now you’re going to give the first hour of it away for free. So, Backlash goes for 2 hours and 46 minutes on Saturday night according to when I looked at the clock when the show ended. The first hour aired for free. So, I just paid $30 for 1 hour and 46 minutes of content. Not much value there except them saying thanks for the $30. TKO has gotten quite the reputation of just draining all of us fans for money and seemingly enjoying do so. Ticket prices. Pay content. Fanatics. Now, Club WWE with whatever that is going to cost. It’s long out of hand and they don’t care.
We’re about to get a full power shove of matches getting set up fast with Saturday Night’s Main Event and Clash In Italy happening a week apart at the end of May. Not much time there to build so it’s going to be fast with matches being announced and then remembering which match is on what show.
The John Cena announcement at Backlash was something that had a bunch of speculation of what it might be. Would it be a WrestleMania announcement? Would it be something involving the new Club WWE? That’s what I thought it would be. I fully expected this company to send him out there and announce hey, spend a bunch more money on this after you’ve mortgaged your house for these tickets already. LOL. And I said I hope they boo the announcement if that is what this announcement is. It ended up not being anything speculated. It was the announcement of a John Cena classic where it would be a showcase of WWE vs NXT talents as a way to put a spotlight on the younger talents. He said there will be a championship title with his name on it given to the winner of it. This won’t be tournament style with winners advancing. The matches will take place. The fans will vote who they want to give the championship to at the end and it can be the winner or loser of the matches. No mention on when or where this will take place. So, there is a lot of gaps here. One, do we need another championship belt in WWE???? This is getting to be Tony Khan level at this point. And you know WWE is just loving the idea of selling a replica belt with Cena’s name on it to make more money. My next thing is ok, so the fans vote on this. There is no booking of hey, let’s have this person win the tourney. It’s literally up to the point of view of the fans of what they are looking for with what they want in a champion of this. Doesn’t this complicate matches? What is the reward for making your opponent look good? If you’re a good seller and you just sell your brains out for your opponent, doesn’t that work out against you with part of your audience? Those of us that love watching good selling are going to take that into account. But let’s say if you’re more of a kayfabe style fan, they’re thinking geez, that person just got demolished. So, how does that work and is there a world where you wouldn’t want to make your opponent look as good cause it could work against you. I don’t know. It’s weird.Â
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