Welcome to the “Week 18 of the Wednesday Night Wars” edition of The Wrestling List. Live typing as I watch these shows. Recapping and giving random thoughts on booking and such as we go.
AEW is back on land this week from Cleveland after last week’s show from the Jericho cruise. The show opens with Jon Moxley on the mic doing a promo. He says he knows he is outnumbered but doesn’t care and calls out Jericho. Jericho arrives and there is the pause with the music where they are clearly trying to recreate the Jericho cruise sing along. Jericho is alone at first and he and Moxley go back and forth on the mic for a bit. Then, Jericho brings out The Inner Circle. More talking. And as you would expect, this ends up in a brawl with Moxley not caring about the numbers. They are separated by security. MJF arrives and have you ever noticed just how MJF’s music even sounds like a jerk heel is on his way to the ring? LOL. He is doing commentary on the first match of the night. First match in the ring is the Bucks against The Butcher, The Blade, and accompanied by The Bunny. Bucks get the win by pinball. After the match, the Butcher attacks the Bucks but Omega runs to the ring to help. Here comes Adam Page who takes his time out there, hits a move to finish it off, and then leaves. The awkward relationship with Page and the Bucks and Omega will clearly be a story going forward. Nyla Rose defeats Big Swole by pinfall in the next match. Next is Cody with Arn Anderson against Kip Sabian with Penelope Ford. I love Cody’s entrance and music. Just has such a big feel to it and he just has it with that charisma. Ford continues to interfere. At one point, she throws her shoe in the ring as a distraction. The ref has to throw the shoe out right before he starts to count shoulders on Sabian so that one moment allowed Sabian an extra second for the kickout. Arn gets the shoe and walks in the ring. Ref tells him to get out. Arn is mad over the shoe and bumps the ref. Ref tosses Arn out. Arn then throws the shoe out into the crowd for a souvenir for a fan. That whole thing just looked so forced more than anything. Cody ends up winning not long after following the crossroads. We get Dr. Britt Baker next and whew, she has X Pac heat this week. Looks like I wasn’t the only one that thought her promo last week was not good. Last week, she ripped on Tony. This week she is ripping on JR. Trying to make out what the crowd chants are at her but they have the crowd mic turned down a bit to where I can’t hear it. They seem like they are trying to drown her out. I still don’t know why they felt the need to turn her. She wasn’t getting big reactions but it isn’t like the crowd wasn’t reacting at all to her either. Like I said, she is getting X Pac heat now after last week’s promo. Backstage to where the Bucks and Omega are being interviewed…..which appears to be the locker room…in the dark. Can they not turn a light on in there? LOL. Odd look for that interview. Back to the in ring now as SCU takes on The Hybrid 2. SCU gets the win by pinfall. Dark Order is shown backstage where they are warning Daniels and SCU. Daniels tells them to bring it. Yeah, I just don’t think they can recover Dark Order with me after that closing segment from 2019. They just can’t be taken seriously. I think I say that every week in here. LOL. Main event time as Jericho, Santana, and Ortiz take on Darby Allin and Private Party. Darby is way over. I think this guy could be this generation’s Jeff Hardy if they keep the momentum up. I like him. Crowd is singing the Jericho entrance again and they cut the song off right at the back end of the chorus allowing the crowd to finish just like last week. Finish has Cassidy getting a two count on Jericho and as Cassidy argues over the two count with the ref, Jericho nails his finish for the pinfall. They then jump back in the ring to attack Private Party and Allin. They get Darby’s skateboard and hit him in the throat with it. As they try to do it a second time, Moxley arrives with a bat and fights them all off.
NXT is back in Full Sail after a very successful Worlds Collide show in Houston. We open up with Beth at the commentary desk and my first thought is wow, big week isn’t it Beth? Quite the week for her and her husband. She is of course in injury selling mode putting over the emotions of what happened to her husband. This week’s show is all about Dakota Kai and Tegan Nox for me. Been ready for this match for a while now. We open the show with Finn Balor taking on Trent Seven. Solid match here with Balor winning by pinfall. Next is Shotzi Blackheart taking on Deonna Purrazzo. Shotzi is definitely starting to get over with the crowd so the big moments she has had over the last few weeks is working such as taking out Shayna in the battle royal. Shotzi gets the win here and rides out in her DX tank. LOL. Keith Lee is out next cutting a promo about his championship victory. Here comes Damien Priest who is looking for a challenge. Enter Dominik who gets involved in the conversation. Priest and Dominik begin to exchange words. Lee lets them have it and leaves while Regal makes the match. Impromptu match between Priest and Dominik. Crucifix bomb into the apron looked absolutely nasty. Good match here with Dominik prevailing by pinball. Cathy Kelley here who interviews Ciampa about the upcoming announcement of who will the challenger for the NXT title and he says it will be him and he is going to make sure of it. Back from commercial and we see Undisputed Era laid out unconscious outside while Ciampa walks by. All but Cole obviously. Ciampa walks to the ring with a table. He has a can of spray paint and he is spray painting nWo…..oh wait, no, he is spray painting a X on the table. Cole arrives seeing what has happened to his team. Cole walks out to the stage with a mic. Cole says is everyone just supposed to feel sorry for you cause you got injured as champion? Ciampa tells Cole that he is going to walk up there and he is going to put Cole right through the X on that table. Here comes Regal. Regal says that Cole was already in his office not caring who he faced at Takeover Portland. The match was already about to be set and Regal was about to walk out and present it to Ciampa before this all even happened. Cole is going right to the ring here and pops Ciampa right in the head with the mic. I love that Cole isn’t backing down here. Not playing a cowardly heel. Going right at Ciampa. Cole has the advantage for a few seconds before Ciampa gets back going and puts Cole through that table. Ciampa then gets the contract and signs it. Ciampa is also cut open which I am guessing is from the mic pop. Ciampa then puts his own blood on the contract as well. Pretty awesome segment here. I’m going to call that Cole wins this first match making Ciampa chase this for a little bit. I can’t see this being a one and done. And here we go. It’s time for Dakota Kai and Tegan Nox. Here for this! Great story build on this over the last several months! Tegan arrives in the ring. On the screen plays the heel turn by Dakota at Takeover Wargames. Dakota is using this as part of her entrance. LOL. Dakota gets the advantage early on. Oh, stiff shot into the staging area by Tegan on Dakota. That looked stiff. Dakota going for a chair. Tegan countered kicking her before she can use it and then posts Dakota. Now, Tegan has the chair and the ref has her put it down. While this is happening, Dakota has the knee brace and is ready to use it but Tegan blocks and suplexes out of it. Dakota with the chair but here is Candice LeRae arriving to pull the chair away. Tegan uses the brace as the ref was turned and follows with a kick to win the match. Ok, way too short. I wanted way more. This needs to continue at Takeover Portland. Chelsea Green is in the next match accompanied by Robert Stone. She takes on Kayden Carter. Let us not forget that Chelsea is always allowed on the E and C podcast while Ryder is still banned. LOL. Story had Chelsea getting too overconfident in the match and it costs her with Carter rolling her up for the pin. Carter gets her first NXT victory pinning Chelsea. Main event time with the Dusty Rhodes Classic final. Dunne and Riddle against The Grizzled Young Veterans. Winner gets the tag team title match at Takeover Portland. Dunne and Riddle get the win and win the Dusty Classic. Awesome pyro in the ring with the trophy as they celebrate. I love that the Dusty Classic has become such a tradition. An annual thing that can be done to remember Dusty.
Show of the Night: I’m going even. I enjoyed both.
Match of the Night: Riddle and Dunne vs. The Grizzled Young Veterans from NXT.
Ratings. AEW prevails again. Both shows had a bit of a drop this week but AEW led the way. AEW had 828,000 viewers which is down from last week’s 871,000. NXT had 712,000 which is down from last week’s 769,000. 18-49 demo goes to AEW with 0.34 compared to NXT’s 0.22.
This is a major story that broke yesterday. Most people will have no idea who they are but it was announced that co-presidents of WWE, George Barrios and Michelle Wilson were no longer with the company. This was a MAJOR shocker here. The questions that we have is why, why, why, and oh, why. The story so far out there besides the silly rumors is that it comes down to a situation where Vince has one vision for the company and they have another vision. Vince is going to Vince. Clearly some kind of differences happened here and it was big enough for Vince to go a different direction. Barrios and Wilson were a very big part of this company and crucial to the company’s success. Wall Street reacted accordingly with the WWE stock price going down. The thing that will be very interesting to watch is the next earnings call which is on February 6th. They were always a part of these conference calls and often Barrios would be the bigger voice of the ones on the call answering questions. Investors are going to have some major questions on this next call. With this call coming up, it makes you wonder if this next earnings report coming out is going to be a very bad one. We’ll hopefully learn more in the near future but make no mistake that this is a major shake up in that company and should not be underrated.
Worlds Collide took place on Saturday on the WWE Network. This was a very fun show. My match of the night was DIY against Mustache Mountain. I haven’t paid a ton of attention to Mustache Mountain so this was the biggest stage that I have gotten to watch them on and wow, are they good??!! Ciampa and Gargano looked awesome teaming back up. I loved the moment of Ciampa doing his crazy pat on the back sitting on the apron clapping spot. Then, Gargano got up and did it with him. I popped for that. I like when Ciampa does that anyway so the fact that Gargano was up there doing it with him made me laugh. Lots of awesome spots in this match. DIY gets the win and they shake hands after the match in respect. I loved this match a lot. IMPERIUM and Undisputed Era was great as expected. Unexpected moment at the beginning when one of IMPERIUM got taken out. It looked legit too. Triple H said on the post show interview that he had gotten knocked out from the kick and they chose to get him out of there. The way they were working the cameras at the time made it sure look legit cause they were keeping the cameras off of him. Everything since still makes it sound like this was a legit injury and not a work. It made it even more impressive when IMPERIUM made their run to win the match as WALTER just did what WALTER does and destroy. Fun show. I recommend it.
If you have never seen the Paige documentary movie, Fighting With My Family, produced by The Rock, it is now up on Hulu to stream. I can’t recommend it enough. I saw it in the theater last year and I loved it. Very good.
Up Up Down Down had the Royal Rumble live stream of gaming on Monday and it was a lot of fun as expected. We got the long awaited rematch of Tyler Breeze and Alexa Bliss. As expected, the whole room was against Tyler and cheering on Bliss. LOL. This was a lot of fun. If you aren’t watching Up Up Down Down, what are you even doing? I watch it often. If you want to see the long awaited Up Up Down Down championship rematch, here is the link cued up to the time of it.
WWE announced that Andrade has been suspended for 30 days due to a wellness policy violation. No word on what they do with the U.S. title.
Brie and Nikki Bella both announced that they are pregnant. This is Nikki’s first. This is Brie and Daniel’s second child.
That is it for this week. Have a great weekend!
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