Welcome to the “R Truth tries to jump start sign pointing season” edition of The Wrestling List.
I watched some of the TLC event last night. I honestly cared so little about this show with the build that I fast forwarded through a lot of it. Several matches that I just cared little about and I just watched what I wanted to watch. I think I finished the show in an hour and a half. LOL. Buddy Murphy and Aleister Black had a fun hard hitting match as expected. That match was stiff! Liked the finish with Alesiter and him going toe to toe and but Aleister nailed that kick to end it. I was curious to see how they would book Bray Wyatt with this being the funhouse version against The Miz instead of The Fiend. A very happy entrance and a happy Bray Wyatt with the entrance and even during the match. Looked like he was having fun even when Miz had him down in a submission. The Fiend keeps being teased of coming out but we get a surprise when somebody jumps in the ring with a hoodie on covering his face. It is Daniel Bryan who pounds on Bray Wyatt. He then reveals the buzz cut hair cut and starts leading thunderous yes chants from the crowd. Somebody posted the decade challenge picture thing of what Daniel looked like in 2010 compared to what he looked like last night. He looked exactly the same with the hair cut. Pretty awesome comparison. Becky and Charlotte vs. Asuka and Kairi got to close the show and it was a nasty match as expected.
Raw opens up tonight from Des Moines, Iowa. I really don’t expect much with this show. We are in holidays mode here so we are in filler time until we get into January. We open up with Seth Rollins and AOP. No real opinion on the union of him and AOP. it was predictable weeks ago obviously. The groundwork of that they were going to be together was easy to see. Just no real opinion. We’ll just see how it plays out. Usual heel promo. We’re in charge. Take notice. He says he is going to go ahead and apologize in advance for what they have to settle tonight. War Raiders up next against Gallows and Anderson. OC prevails in what was a long match. Only the second loss for the Raiders. Rowan wins a squash match next. Lashley and Lana are next. Mute button. I’m typing other parts of the List as this segment is going on. LOL. We get a US title qualifying gauntlet match next. R Truth walks out declaring that he is going to win this to get an opportunity at the US title and then also be 24/7 champion while pointing at the WrestleMania sign that……isn’t there yet. Just a reminder that we are just weeks away from sign pointing season where we will have talent pointing at the sign every week. Truth takes on Tozawa first but the 24/7 brigade arrives and Truth runs away. Tozawa moves on to face Ricochet. Ricochet prevails there. Matt Hardy’s music hits to a big pop. Ricochet is able to counter the twist of fate into a rollup for the three count. Crowd boos that. Carillo is up next against Ricochet. Lawler asks Joe saying “you’ve been around the business for a long time, have you ever heard the term babyface?”. Joe paused like I did where it sounded like Joe wasn’t sure where he was going with that. I wasn’t either. Lawler said he has that young baby face look to him talking about looks. I wasn’t sure which way he was going with babyface there. Zelina arrives to watch this match to scout for Andrade. Carillo wins with a nasty Canadian destroyer looking move. My goodness. That looked nasty. Time for the last competitor in the match which is Andrade. Andrade runs in from behind and attacks Carillo to jump start his match. Andrade pulls the padding up off of the floor and nails a nasty DDT into the concrete on Carillo. Isn’t this a DQ? LOL. Rey walks out and has seen enough. Andrade and Zelina walk out through the crowd. Rey stays with Carillo to check on him. Sooooo, was that a DQ or is it a no finish? As Carillo is being stretchered out, Rollins and AOP arrive with a target of Rey. They beat down Rey saying this is the steel pipe that Rey gave Owens last week to use on them so they were just returning it. Charly interviews Rollins and he challenges Rey for a match for the US title next week on Raw. Women’s tag team champions are up next as Asuka and Kairi make their way out after their TLC win last night. One on one match as Asuka takes on Deonna Purrazzo from NXT. Interesting that they have her graphic as being from NXT as I haven’t seen much of her there. All of her video was from the Mae Young Classic. I remember her name in that tournament. Pretty awesome start to this match when Purrazzo just puts a foot in the face in Asuka to start the match. Match is booked very competitive. Asuka wins by submission. Sit-down interview with Carly talking to Becky asking about the loss last night. Becky says that she has been off in the last few months. She hypes up Asuka with how good Asuka is. Becky says that Asuka is the one person that she hasn’t been able to beat and that she needs to prove this to herself that she can beat Asuka. Main event time with Randy Orton taking on AJ Styles. Finish has AJ going for the phenomenal forearm and he lands right into a RKO. Orton wins. After the match, Gallows and Anderson attack Orton. War Raiders make their way out. They go at it with Gallows and Anderson. OC end up leaving the Raiders laying. That is your Raw for the night. Like I said, we are big time in holidays filler time. There is very little anything storyline that is progressing.
I watched the Austin interview with Goldberg. It was fine for what it was. You know what you are going to get out of Goldberg. It was an interesting interview. They discuss his upbringing in the business about how a lot of the criticisms that he has from his early career about being a pain is because of who was leading him at the time with the backstage politics with him saying that he was too green to know anything. When asked about the streak ending to Nash, Goldberg said at the time that it didn’t really bother him cause he didn’t see it as a big deal. He was just doing what he was told and didn’t know enough about the business to understand how big of a deal that it was. Looking back with what knowledge he has of the business now, he has a very different look at it now. He tells the story of how when the streak was building up in 1998 that he wanted to lose a match to Bobby Eaton. He loved Bobby and talked of how much Bobby did for him in the business with helping him learn. So, they were set to have a match and Goldberg pitched losing to Eaton. You know how that was met by everyone. Goldberg just saw it at the time as wanting to do something for someone he really liked. He didn’t see it as no, that would be insane to do. LOL. Austin and Goldberg discuss the infamous match at WrestleMania XX where the crowd knew both of them were leaving and booed them out of the building. Goldberg points out how furious Lesnar was and how that building got in his head that night. Austin joked that he was thinking about running the ropes back and forth with doing something silly just to get the crowd to relax and cheer at something. Try to deflect it was his goal but he said that he decided against it afraid that it would be trying to upstage those two. Goldberg puts over Sarge huge at the WCW Power Plant for helping him learn in training and understand the business. He tells the story of in his second match that he took a second rope suplex from The Barbarian and when he got to the back, Eric Bischoff told him, don’t ever do that again. You are supposed to destroy. They watch his debut match and discuss it. They also talk about the match with Hogan at the Georgia Dome and watch the finish of it. Austin brings up the infamous limo injury where Goldberg got so mad trying to bust the windows in this segment on live TV on Nitro that he was so determined to bust it that he hurt himself. If you remember back in the day, that silly stunt put him on the shelf for months where WCW was without one of their top stars when they needed him. Goldberg takes the blame for it saying he messed up and that was angry that night at Scott Hall and took it out on that limo. When you watch this interview, he is not a Scott Hall fan. He takes shots at Hall multiple times. He discusses his short WWE run in 2003-2004 where he said people didn’t like him and he knew it. He said that he was defensive going in there cause he knew he was going to be seen as the enemy and it made people not like him including Triple H. Austin and Goldberg talk about how they used to always get recognized for the other back in the prime of the Monday Night Wars and how it bothered each of them tremendously cause they were so competitive for their own brand. They couldn’t stand when they would get mixed up for the other out in public. Now, it doesn’t bother them at all and they laugh about it saying it was just how strong of personalities that they were and that they were both so determined for their own company. Goldberg said he got mistaken for Austin even the other day. The two have a lot of respect for one another and said they have gotten to know each more in recent years. When they were in WWE together back in 2003-2004, Goldberg said that they were purposely kept apart and that the company didn’t want them to be together on screen. It’s an enjoyable interview. It isn’t anything must see like the Undertaker interview was but it is enjoyable.
Several WWE stars were granted releases last week. Several have been wanting it for a while. Luke Harper, Sin Cara,
I listened to the Kelly Kelly podcast with Lilian Garcia over the weekend. Just a really good interview. Lilian does so good in these interviews with learning more backstories of talents that I haven’t heard. The Lacey Evans interview a while back was awesome. I also really enjoyed the Kelly Kelly one. She tells of how she got into the business and has so many good stories. I didn’t know a lot of her backstory and this was a very good interview.
Both NXT and AEW will start hot this Wednesday night. NXT has announced that Adam Cole and Finn Balor for the NXT championship will open the show with no commercial interruption. AEW countered announcing that Omega and Page against The Lucha Brothers will open their show and “as always – it will be commercial free”. NXT also has Rhea Ripley challenging Shayna Baszler for the women’s championship.
Conrad Thompson and Bruce Pritchard did a podcast watch along last week with the WWF Tuesday In Texas PPV from 1991. I was of course in for this one. I don’t do a lot of the watch alongs but I did do this one as I obviously wanted anymore back story that I could get on this show. I did not get to watch this show live back in the day. Comcast carried Survivor Series the week before so I saw the Hogan loss to The Undertaker. I did not like watching Hogan lose as a kid. LOL. However, Comcast did not carry this show the following week so I had to wait until the weekend to hear the results of it on WWF TV. I later watched it on the Coliseum Video release of it on one of the Supertapes. I agree with them that this was a very good show especially with as short as it was. We had the championship rematch of Hogan and The Undertaker but we also had the return of Randy Savage who had just been reinstated against Jake the Snake Roberts. Those two matches pulled this show huge for interest. The storyline of Savage and Roberts had went back to SummerSlam where Roberts interfered in Savage and Elizabeth’s wedding reception. Savage had tried for months to be reinstated to get to Roberts and was retired after losing the retirement match back in March at WrestleMania VII. We thought at the time that Savage was going to get reinstated in time for Survivor Series after the cobra attack. However, it was announced that Savage would be back on this Tuesday In Texas show. If you were like me, you loved an insane Randy Savage that was going to make someone pay. Right off the bat, Savage attacks Roberts down the aisle and we are off to the races in this one. The match was short with Savage pounding on Roberts but the post match has Roberts continuing that slide into the story of just what a heel that he was. The post match attack on Savage and Elizabeth put the story even more up adding to this feud that would continue. Hogan and Undertaker. I wish they had taken questions cause I have a logic one that has bothered me since I was a kid. LOL. Survivor Series 1991. Flair puts a chair in the ring interfering in the match and Taker tombstones Hogan on to the chair pinning him for the title. WWF President Jack Tunney says that he knows of the controversy of the interference. He announces that he CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT REVERSING THE REFEREE’S DECISION and will instead have a rematch. On Tuesday In Texas, Tunney is watching at ringside. Flair gets involved again. Taker tries to use the urn but Hogan counters it and uses it on Taker. Hogan then hits the leg drop for the win and regains the title. Flair is holding up Tunney so he can see the urn interference. A week later, Tunney announces that he is stripping Hogan of the title due to the end of the match and that the belt will be put up as vacant with the winner of the 1992 Rumble getting it. WAIT, WHAT? I thought the referee’s decision is final????? I wanted to send that question into them and explain that storyline logic to me. LOL. That has bothered me for nearly 30 years now. LOL. This podcast was a fun trip down memory lane. I didn’t really learn anything new in this other than it was WWE experimenting with a show on another night with a shorter show seeing how it would draw with PPV buys. Both of them loved the show then and loved it again watching it last week. This show really is an underrated show from that era. That Savage/Roberts match really leads the show with intrigue. Then, the championship rematch sets up the 1992 Royal Rumble and continues the storyline of the incompetence of Jack Tunney as WWF president. LOL.
Alexa Bliss will be the guest on Backstage tomorrow night on FS1. Gotta say that Alexa may be sliding into that number one spot of favorite wrestler. She has been in that number two spot for several years but with how indifferent they are booking Bayley as a heel, Alexa might slide over into number one. I’m close to declaring it. They have just taken all of Bayley’s personality away and made her very indifferent.
That is for tonight. Have a great week!
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