A Monday night Wrestling List. This is like old times with typing up a List after Raw goes off the air! This was Monday night tradition for well over a decade for me.
Tonight’s Raw took place from Boston, MA with the attention of the show being that this is John Cena’s last hometown appearance as he’s down to the final four of his appearances left for the retirement tour. HUGE response from Boston for Cena tonight. That was fun to watch. Dominik gets to play spoiler getting the heat from the crowd interrupting the Cena promo. Dom was going at Cena in his promo like I really haven’t seen him do with most anyone else. Then, we got a level of Super Cena going back at him saying “wrong place. wrong guy” and that he was going to make Dom pay. Match was made by Triple H who had been in the ring introducing Cena to the Boston crowd and had stayed out there. Match was good and had a ton of crowd heat on it. I was shocked to see Cena get the win and take the Intercontinental title. I really felt like we’d get a run in finish to maybe set up Cena for War Games or something. I say that cause I really didn’t think Cena was going to win the title. So, Cena takes the frog splash and rolls through it picking up Dom for the AA winning the title. My reaction to the TV was arms out of like wait, really? It was a big moment as this was the only championship that Cena hasn’t won in his career. This was something I had forgotten until it was mentioned on commentary during the match which was definite foreshadowing. I get them wanting to make him a grand slam champion as that completes the set of all singles titles for him. I was just surprised that that was what they did with Dom to lose the title. Big moment. I get it. It just shocked me as I liked Dom as Intercontinental champion. I kind of expected that Cena might find his way into War Games and maybe he still does. Now, it very well looks like he’ll be defending the Intercontinental title at Survivor Series. To summarize, we’ll see. LOL. That was not the only championship to change hands tonight and, geez, are the belts changing hands like crazy lately. We went from long term title reigns in the Triple H regime to where championships are flying all over the place now. The women’s tag team titles changed hands as Nia Jax and Lash Legend got involved against Charlotte and Alexa Bliss. Asuka and Kairi are the new women’s tag champs. The four continued to beat down Charlotte and Alexa in the post match. Iyo Sky got involved. The numbers still were against her. Rhea Ripley runs down and evens the odds including a nasty looking razor’s edge over the ropes sending Kairi on to the heels on the floor. Rhea yells War Games so I’m for this War Games match. Looks like it will be Rhea, Iyo, Alexa, and Charlotte vs Asuka, Kairi, Nia, and Lash Legend. The other War Games looks to be getting set up too with CM Punk being surrounded by The Vision and Logan Paul. Heyman was on the mic cutting a promo about how Punk had no friends. Enter Jey Uso. Enter Cody Rhodes. Punk looks around and checks to make sure they’re with him and they are. So, we’ve got a three on three here. I assume we’ll end up with Roman on the Punk side. You can tell that the Seth Rollins injury really did mess up a lot of their plans to have to Plan B for a match for War Games. WWE also just feels off lately too as a whole so the build to this Survivor Series show has just felt off. Another big moment tonight also had the Nikki Bella heel turn on Stephanie tonight. This felt like it was brewing. Just seemed like it was where WWE was going with this.
It cracks me up that WWE and TKO decided that the way to fix the WrestleMania ticket sale struggles is to do a big fancy promo commercial for it. The problem isn’t it needs more flash. It’s that you’re charging like $50,000 for tickets. LOL. The ticket prices for WWE shows are out of control. Absolutely out of control. Showing no signs of changing either when that one TKO executive a few weeks ago said they were actually too low and were going to raise them saying they could get more. Geez, read a room that these ticket prices are just stupid insane.
I’m just not into this John Cena tournament to decide who his final opponent will be. Just not something I care about. Will there be fun surprises in this tourney? Likely so. I hope we get Joe Hendry at some point. For a nostalgia perspective of Cena opponents this year that we didn’t get, RVD would be fun but I don’t see him randomly showing up and running through a tourney obviously. RVD has said he was going to work a match with Cena this year but then he got injured and couldn’t do it. Who do I want for Cena’s final opponent? Edge. That’s obvious from me. I assume that can’t happen as I assume his AEW deal is still locked for a bit. But I don’t know. Gunther was announced as returning next week versus Je’Von Evans which should be a very fun match. I assume Gunther would be the winner of this tourney just based on what I’ve seen so far of entrees which is very little. It is interesting that they made the decision to not make Gunther as the surprise person for next week and instead announced it will be someone else. The overall tourney. Just anticlimactic for me. I’d rather just pick an opponent. Maybe when we get to the end of this thing, I end up saying ok, I was wrong, that worked out and was fun.
I love the tag team of Bayley and Lyra. I assume we are going to get a feud with them. That has felt like the direction since the beginning of this reunion of them but I really hope they don’t do it. I enjoy them as a team. I like their chemistry in ring and also with their characters. I like how their characters play off each other. Lyra has learned how to semi handle Bayley channeling between the hugger and ding dong hello. Lyra’s facials make me laugh too as she hasn’t known what version of Bayley she is going to get.
If you get the chance, go out of your way to watch or listen to the Mickie James interview with Chris Van Vliet from a couple of weeks ago. It’s so good. She said that she really didn’t plan on being this open on so many topics but she really let the walls down opening up on a lot of topics and she said she was glad she did. Mickie James fan here and I’ve met her back years ago and she couldn’t have been nicer. Really enjoyed this interview with her.
The combination of Joe Hendry and Thea Hail. This could be very fun. I’m just glad Thea is getting something fun to do. She’s just been in flux since moving away from Chase U. Thea really shines at comedy type stuff so this could be fun.
Like I said earlier, championships are changing hands like crazy. We went from rare for belts changing hands to several changing in the week. John Cena tonight. Asuka and Kairi tonight. Chelsea Green on Friday. Jade Cargill a week ago. If I forgot someone, I apologize cause it’s a bunch. LOL. I didn’t put Punk in there cause that happened off injury obviously with them needing to put the title on someone else. I’m thrilled to have Punk as champion for sure. WWE just feels so off lately with booking. I don’t know what is with it. It just doesn’t feel like Triple H booking. The shows are just often stale lately. Sometimes it just feels like we get the same segments every week. Some storylines just feel like they aren’t going anywhere. Just feels like treading water at times.
So, what’s the deal with Saturday Night’s Main Event? Cena announced tonight that NXT would be showcased on that show with NXT taking on main roster people? It was kind of confusing how he talked about it so I’m unsure on the plan for that. However, Cena did push a definite NXT presence on the show.
That’s it for tonight’s List. Have a great night!
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