Welcome to the “we’re off and running with Wednesday nights” edition of The Wrestling List. I am going to have to figure out when to send out the List now. I have been sending on Tuesday nights for the most part following Smackdown Live. However, things are changing starting last night so there will be a lot more to cover. Thursday may end up being the List sending day where I can cover NXT and later AEW as well. There is a lot to cover this week so let’s just jump back to the beginning of the week.
Clash of Champions. Enjoyable show. Match of the night for me was Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks. Just really good chemistry in that match and they were pounding each other. You knew this was just the first chapter in what was going to be something bigger. When the ref went down, that allowed for it to get a lot more physical. I did laugh at Corey Graves comment where he said the ref had been down for an hour after he took the “accidental” chair shot from Becky that was meant for Sasha but Sasha ducked which made the chair connect with him instead. On the other side of the Horsewomen, we had the Bayley and Charlotte match and we had the continued evolution of Bayley as a heel where she exposed the steel of the turnbuckle and nailed Charlotte into it while the ref didn’t see it. Bayley then got the pinball and took off with the title running out of there. New Raw tag team champions were crowned when Ziggler and Roode defeated Rollins and Strowman after an accidental collision between Rollins and Strowman. That led to the main event. Rollins retains which I was happy with. Rollins had to hit him with a lot to pin him. New Smackdown tag team champions were crowned as The Revival defeated The New Day. I enjoyed the women’s tag title match with Alexa and Nikki defeating Mandy and Sonja. I really like that team of Alexa and Nikki. And I popped big for an annoyed Alexa grabbing the mic from a hiding R Truth and Carmella and saying “grab you a ref and come get them”. LOL. In the meantime, R Truth is in shhh, don’t do that mode. LOL. I liked Kofi and Orton. Good back and forth there. Nice surprise with the return of Luke Harper as he interfered in the Roman/Rowan match. I was not expecting his return.
Raw and Smackdown. The big story on Raw was the focus around Bray Wyatt. At the end of Clash of Champions, he had laid out Seth Rollins on the ramp. Nice twist off of NXT Takeovers with putting the closing graphics up there and then having something happen. All through the show, we had moments where Bray’s influence was being seen. The upside down graphics at the beginning of the show. The funhouse stuff throughout the night where he talked about how it was time to go make new friends. The close of the show with the graphics and the funhouse song playing sounding like bad signal interference. He laid out Kane to close the show and then taunted a hurt Rollins in the corner. That Fiend Bray Wyatt is reallllllly working with me. King of The Ring finals were held. Baron Corbin won over Chad Gable. Not the result I wanted cause I just don’t think I can deal with Corbin King of the Ring promos. LOL. However, they really made Gable look strong in that match where he was close on several occasions to winning and the crowd was backing him. The Mike Kanellis stuff was silly and just annoying. The Rusev return didn’t help it any either. Not saying that as a knock on Rusev AT ALL. I’m saying that that segment was so bad that bringing back a returning Rusev couldn’t even help it to where the crowd cared. That might be the least reaction I have ever seen for a returning wrestler ever. That crowd did not care at all about that whole thing. Liked the tag match with Alexa and Nikki against Bayley and Sasha. It once again established the new heel of Bayley and the lengths that she will go to with injuring Alexa and taking her completely out of the match. Becky and Charlotte both got involved. On Smackdown, we got the return of Brock Lesnar who was announced as facing Kofi for the WWE title on the first Smackdown on Fox. More Shane and Kevin Owens stuff. I zone out when I see Shane. I’m not going to rip on it as much this week cause I have heard rumblings of where it is leading so at least it would make sense. We’ll see though. They need to take Shane off of TV for at least a year at this point cause he is that overexposed. Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns were both taken down by Rowan and Harper so it does appear that I’m assuming we’ll have a team up of Bryan and Reigns.
Let’s move to the biggest news story of the week. NXT’s live debut on USA last night. The first hour aired on USA and the second hour went to WWE Network. It will be like this for this week and next week. The reason is cause USA already had commitments to their show, Suits, which has two episodes left to air at 8:00. October 2nd, that will be out of the way and NXT goes to two hours. That is also the night that AEW debuts obviously. I really liked the episode last night. It thought it was a good mix of everything. I loved the open with Triple H starting the show as he always does with these big epic moments for NXT over the years. The twist of the pre tape and moving it into a live spot was very cool. Really neat idea. I loved the show opening with the women’s fatal four way. All of them worked hard and showcased the women’s roster of NXT and I popped big for Candice getting the win. She has worked hard and now is getting her shot in that championship picture. North American championship changed hands as The Undisputed Era did what they have talked about doing and that is having a hold on all the championships. Roderick Strong defeated Velveteen Dream to win the belt. I figured it was a matter of time before that happened and actually expected it to happen before now. Now, Undisputed Era has a stronghold so who will be the ones to take them down? We had NXT UK on this show as well. Pete Dunne is going to be a pretty good regular on NXT TV now. We also had the arrival of The Imperium including WALTER. That was a surprise. I will be very interested to see how much of them we see on NXT TV. They have been a force in NXT UK and if you have never seen WALTER, he is impressive. Everything he does hurts. LOL. Everything looks nasty. Everything hurts. Just a destroyer. The street fight at the end with Riddle and Dain ended up with a brawl with many involved. This show also had a lot of talent on it that I wasn’t as familiar with. Seeing a bunch of that over the last several weeks of NXT so you can see Triple H working on getting these names established as they move over to USA. Good start for NXT last night with the ratings as they drew 1.1 million viewers and had impressive demo numbers too that were better than Raw and Smackdown in areas this week. Triple H was asked this week in a conference call about the elephant in the room of will there be additional control of this show now that it is on USA? The name Vince McMahon was not said but everyone knew who this was in reference to and Triple H said that it is him and his team that was already in place running this show and it will remain that way. He named Shawn Michaels, Brian James, Matt Bloom, and Sara Amato by name specifically with his team.
Kenny Omega caused a stir today when he commented on the USA debut for NXT saying that all the talent on that show would be opening for him and that he would be the main event. Yeah, ok Kenny. LOL. AEW is doing a lot of talking as they head to the gate so they had better hope they knock it out of the park once they get to TV otherwise they have egg on their face.
WWE announced that Starrcade will return as a one hour special again this year taking place on December 1st on the WWE Network.
I am very interested to watch the new Chronicles episode on Sasha Banks. I haven’t had time to watch it yet but am hoping to this week.
The Arn Anderson podcast with Conrad Thompson is set to debut next week.
Have a great weekend!
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