Welcome to the “Week 20 of the Wednesday Night Wars” edition of The Wrestling List. Time to recap these show and give random booking thoughts as I live type these shows as I watch.
Let’s kick it off with NXT in Full Sail. Opening up with Roderick Strong walking with a purpose to the ring. He wants the music cut. Yep, clearly a purpose. LOL. He calls out Velveteen Dream and his disrespect in making this personal. Bronson Reed arrives and says he has a problem with Strong after the attack on him last week. Looks like we have a match as the bell rings. Match goes through two segments. The lights changed and we hear a voice of Velveteen. No Velveteen but it does lead to the distraction. Looks like Reed might be putting Strong away but Strong counters the top rope jump of Reed with a knee. Pinfall win for Strong. Velveteen now up on the screen channeling his Rick Rude/Jack Roberts angle with having Strong’s wife’s name on his tights. Velveteen shows a picture of Strong’s family and we are definitely playing a lot of families on WWE TV storylines lately with such others including Lacey Evans and her daughter. Video segment now with a road trip of Dunne and Riddle driving around with the big trophy in a convertible car. LOL. Funny video. You can really do a lot of fun segments with these two with their opposite personalities. Dakota Kai vs. Candice LeRae is next and I’m here for this. Big fan of both of these. Candice with three dives out of the ring on to Dakota. It doesn’t take long for Dakota to get the advantage. Candice hooks the Johnny submission on to Dakota. Dakota is able to roll though it and get the pinfall win. Candice is ready to continue the fight after the match on the floor but Dakota is able to land the first shot. She grabs the ring bell and nails Candice in the ribs. Before she can do more damage, Tegan Nox runs in and jumps on top of Dakota. Officials try to get them separated. From one of the Gargano’s to another, it’s time for Johnny Gargano against Cameron Grimes. They ran a video of the two having words backstage at a live NXT event this past weekend as the reason that this match was made. Simple things like that go a long way. Booking isn’t rocket science. Something as simple as that goes a long way. Some nasty spots at the end of this one. Grimes having a nice showing in this one but it is a submission victory for Gargano. Number one contenders match for the cruiserweight title is up next with Lio Rush taking on Angel Garza. Garza lands a nasty super kick and goes for the wings clipper but Lio is able to roll him up into a pin. Lio Rush is the number one contender. The champion, Jordan Devlin arrives on the stage to cut a trash talking promo to Lio. They will face off next week for the title on NXT. Bianca Belair is in action next taking on Santana Garrett. Bianca wins a squash match. Bianca gets on the mic and continues to be annoyed with being ignored by Rhea looking ahead to Charlotte. Rhea arrives. You know where this is going. Rhea says she is looking at going through Bianca. Bianca gets on the attack and leaves Rhea laying on the mat. Main event time with Adam Cole taking on Kushida. Non title match. Good match here with Cole getting the win with the last shot for the pinfall. Figured we were going to get a Ciampa moment here and here is the music. No one will survive. Out walks Ciampa on the stage for the face off as we lead into NXT Portland. Ciampa slowly walks to the ring. The two stand face to face in the middle of the ring exchanging words as the show goes off the air.
AEW opens up this week with a tag team title rematch. Page and Omega defend against SCU. As the match is set to start, we see a Dark Order promo up on the screen saying that they are watching the match. Daniels who is at ringside leaves volunteering to go and see what is going on with them backstage. So, we’ll probably get a camera shot here in a little bit where he is down. Maybe he will be down by Nakazawa who got laid out week after week despite knowing what surely was coming at him. LOL. Page and Omega retain the belts. Crowd was into this one. The Dark Order arrives during the match celebration. They surround SCU. No sign of Daniels. Best Friends run in to stand with SCU. Butcher, Blade, and the Bunny arrive. Ok, here comes a bunch of people. I don’t have the patience to type all of these. LOL. The Bucks arrive and the fight is on. Bucks battle with Butcher and Blade. Bucks have the ring to themselves and then dive on to the pile on the floor. Dustin Rhodes vs. Sammy Guevara is the next match. Hagar is at ringside causing distractions. Is he ever going to get in the ring? I said that last week too obviously. Dustin gets the pinfall with the final reckoning. Got a nice hometown pop from the crowd. Dustin gets on the mic and calls out Hagar. Dustin just said what I said “are you ever going to step in the ring?” LOL. Dustin saying Hagar is failing at his MMA career and is failing here too. He calls him out for a match at Revolution. JR points out on commentary that Hagar’s MMA career isn’t failing and has in fact never been beaten. Hagar walks to the ring but the segment ends before anything else is said. Tony is back interviewing with Miss Issac Yankem, DDS, renewal gimmick of Britt Baker. LOL. She has the heel heat for sure. Crowd is big against her. She gets the drowned her out type loud reaction from fans where they try to boo over her. Women’s title match is next with Riho defending against Nyla Rose. Nyla pulls a table from under the ring early on. JR with a nice “she’s not even from Dudleyville” line. LOL. Riho gets the advantage before Nyla can use it. Nyla with a nasty top rope knee drop to Riho who is leaned over the ropes. Riho still kicks out. Nyla then bites the face of Riho and nails a Death Valley driver off the top rope. Lot of women biting this week on wrestling TV. LOL. Riho kicks out. Fans are behind Riho here with her continuing to kick out. Riho with a Omega suppler to Nyla a couple of times. Riho with a northern lights suplex for a near fall. Crowd is into this one too with “this is awesome” chants. Riho with multiple double stomps off the top rope. Nyla Rose nails a power bomb and wins the women’s championship. Backstage promo with The Inner Circle. Jericho says that if Moxley survives this week, he has hired a bounty hunter for next week in Jeff Cobb to take him out next week. Video package runs on Jeff Cobb. Oh dear, Brandi is on commentary. Whew, this didn’t go well last time. MJF is up taking on Jungle Boy. MJF walks out with Wardlow and gives Wardlow the night off. Jungle Boy arrives accompanied by Jurassic Express. They walk to the back as well so this is seemingly one on one. Solid match here. Story of the match has MJF working on Jungle Boy’s back. MJF starts taunting Brandi from the ring. JR yells back at MJF. Ok, is Brandi a babyface now? LOL. Thought she was a heel? Wardlow is back. This helps MJF get the pinball win. Wardlow nails Jungle Boy after the match but here comes Jurassic Express which puts a stop to it. Promo for Omega vs. Pac in two weeks on Dynamite in a 30 minute ironman match. That should be fun. Main event time. Jericho, Guevara, and Hagar arrive up into the box seats. Crowd is trying the singalong but they can’t get in sync. LOL. Santana vs. Moxley. Moxley is walking in from the lobby area as he does his entrance through the crowd. His entrance has such a cool fun feel to it. Santana attacks him before he can get over the rail. Brawl is in the crowd. Lot of the match is each guy going for the other’s eye. Moxley hits the paradime shift for the pin. Ortiz attacks Moxley after the match. Inner Circle all runs in from the box seats. Well, Jericho isn’t running and instead sitting back letting his guys do the punishment. Jericho then whips Moxley with the championship belt. They all take turns beating down Moxley. Jericho calls to the back and here comes Jeff Cobb. This is my first time to see him. Heard of him but never have seen him. He slams Moxley to the mat as the show ends.
Show of the Night: Going with AEW here.
Match of the Night: Page and Omega vs. SCU from AEW
Ratings for this week. AEW prevails again getting 817,000 viewers which was down from last week’s 928,000. NXT had 757,000 which was down also from last week’s 770,000.
WrestleMania is going Hollywood again. It was announced that next year’s WrestleMania will return to Los Angeles. You’ll remember that WrestleMania goes Hollywood was the theme for WrestleMania 21 back in 2005.
The Rock’s daughter, Simone Johnson, has signed a developmental deal with WWE. That will be a fun story to follow. Yet another generation from that family. She is training down at the performance center.
Shayna Baszler’s made a Raw appearance this week attacking Becky Lynch. Guessing this is setting up the angle for WrestleMania between the two. That seems like a no brainer match for Mania. Not sure if she is moving up full time there but it sure felt that way.
I listened to Jerry Lawler on the recent Stone Cold podcast. Lots of good stories looking back on Memphis wrestling and his early WWF run. One thing that was interesting about the current product was Lawler talking about changes that Heyman has been doing to Raw and that was letting talent be more themselves instead of just reading off of a script. Lawler said he witnessed in recent memory where a writer would hand off a script for Flair to read for a promo. Think how silly that sounds. One of the greatest promo men in the history of the business being told here is what you should say. I’ve said for a while that we can’t figure out how good talent are a lot of times cause they are just reading what is given to them. Sounds like Heyman is putting his input in with that and trying to let talent be themselves more.
Anybody else scared at the potential of this Goldberg/Bray Wyatt title match? I am terrified that Goldberg is going to run through Bray and win the title ruining Bray in the process.
WWE has announced that John Cena will be on the February 28th edition of Smackdown. I’ll be curious to see if he gets involved in WrestleMania this year.
Matt Hardy appeared on Raw this week and did an angle where he stood up to Randy Orton over what Orton did to Edge. Really good segment between the two where Hardy was laid out by Orton. This looks to be Hardy’s last appearance on TV as his contract is set to expire. Hardy has been releasing “free the delete” videos for a while now teasing his exit. This looks to be it. Hardy also posted on Twitter “GOODBYE” with a link to that segment on Raw.
Next guest for Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions is going to be The Big Show. That should be a fun discussion with those two. He is a fun guest on the regular podcast. Rumor is that Bret Hart has done one of these as well so hopefully that one will air soon.
Chris Jericho posted a picture online of himself with EC3 teasing that he might be on his way to AEW. Who could blame him? EC3 seemed ready for something to get rolling in NXT and you know Triple H had plans for him. Then, he got move up to the main roster where he has never been on TV. When he is, it is getting squashed or chasing in the 24/7 segments. I never do understand why Vince moves people up when he clearly has no plans for them. You know Triple H is sitting there saying, hey, quit taking my talent for nothing when it happens. Another example has been Sanity with Eric Young. Moved up. He’s an enhancement talent now.
I watched the XFL debut this past weekend. I was curious to see how it looked and how it started. I’m not a football person obviously. I rarely watch it but enjoy it when I watch it. Football is just rarely ever on my radar. I really enjoyed what I saw. The production on it is really good. Having coaches, refs, and well seemingly everyone on mics was fun. Even the replay center official was hooked to a mic where we could hear that conversation. I liked having the camera right in the mix of fumbles and such where they were right there in the pile. Feedback on Twitter was very positive on that opening day. Ratings were solid. Definitely a positive weekend for the XFL’s restart.
NXT Takeover Portland is this Sunday on the WWE Network. This is the first time for NXT to get the traditional Sunday event spot on a weekend by themselves. Lineup: NXT championship match with Adam Cole defending against Tommaso Ciampa. Street fight with Tegan Nox and Dakota Kai. Tag titles on the line as Undisputed Era defends against Dunne and Riddle. North American title match with Keith Lee defending against Dominik Dijakovic. Johnny Gargano vs. Finn Balor. Women’s championship with Rhea Ripley defending against Bianca Belair. This should be a very fun show.
That is it for this week. Have a great weekend!
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