Welcome to the “War Games” edition of The Wrestling List. Time to talk Survivor Series, the Liv Morgan surprise return, and more.
Let’s get into Survivor Series. 46,000 at Petco Field in San Diego, CA. I enjoyed the show for the most part except for the fact that Xfinity internet was complete trash all night so I had to work around that. I did love the look of the atmosphere of the venue there. Good crowd energy there. You could tell they were trying to fit in as many people as they could as the War Games personal cages were gone and the fans were SO CLOSE to that entrance way. That felt to me like they were trying to do as many floor tickets as possible. With those cages gone, it meant that we had each War Games participant doing their entrance to music. I can’t remember there ever being a War Games where the participants weren’t out in the arena whether it’s those cages or around the ring like back in the day. It might have happened during the Russo era and I forgot but it was the Russo era and I choose to forget all of that stuff. LOL. One thing we did have trouble on with these entrances was talent doing their regular entrance instead of hurrying to the ring to help their partners. Now everyone didn’t do that. Also it wasn’t Jeff Hardy dancing on the stage while Matt gets beat up level either but it was distracting at times. The show itself opened up with the women’s War Games match. I really enjoyed this one but I had so many favorites in this one that it’s set up for me to like. AJ Lee climbing the cage while Becky worked to keep her out was a big highlight for me. Then, the spot with Rhea lifting AJ up on her shoulders to give the trash can to Iyo for her usual jump. This time she went swanton bomb jump from the cage. AJ gets Becky to tap so that is two matches in a row that Becky has tapped to AJ. Everyone worked hard in this match and it was fun. Next up was John Cena and Dom. Cena’s last PLE match. Loved the Cena entrance and just letting the moment take itself in. This was a very fun match and may be my match of the night. Great job by them to swerve us on a possible Dom injury. It looked very believable while I speculated on whether this was an Eddie trick. Roxanne and Raquel jump in the ring and attack Cena including a Pop Rox! Dom then jumps up and gets back in the ring for the fakeout. Dom hits the 619 and frog splash but the ref won’t count cause of being fooled by Dom. Roxanne and Raquel get kicked out. Cena and Dom go back and forth some more. We get a ref bump and Cena has the match won but no ref to count. Then, the music hits to a big pop as Liv Morgan makes her return. I was not at all expecting Liv as I figured we’d see her around Rumble time. Liv runs in and I felt she would tease attacking Dom and that’s what happened. She nails Dom and then turns to a shocked Cena. She jumps into Cena’s arms and then we get the full redo of the Cena heel turn. The hug, the closeup happy to evil face, low blow kick. Dom jumps up and nails the 619. Liv with a belt shot to Cena. Dom with the frog splash and a 1-2-3. Dom wins back the Intercontinental title. This was all very well done. Full works for me. Women’s title match with Stephanie defending against Nikki was up next. Nikki working trying to get back in heel mode right down to the new “Bella Gone Bad” shirt. The devil’s kiss on the announce table was brutal looking. Stephanie retains. Men’s War Games. CM Punk follows up on his wife as he and AJ Lee are the two to climb the cage into the match. Scary bump during it with Bron taking the doomsday device and landing hard on his neck. That was scary. I was distracted for probably the next five minutes keeping an eye on him to see if he was ok. Thankfully he was. The big moment of the match was obviously the masked man that climbed the cage at the end. Masked man attacks Punk and then hits a Rollins stomp to which the crowd all said ohhhhhh with the feeling of is that Seth Rollins? Yeah, it’s not Seth Rollins is my feel. If it is, he’s lied again on another injury. Rollins did an interview last week where he said it would be early spring for his return. So, we’ll wait and see who the masked man is who cost Punk the match. I’ve heard the rumblings on who it’s going to be. If it’s right, we’ll just see how it plays out.
On to tonight’s Raw. The women’s tag team titles got a lot of the focus tonight which was good to see. The show opened with Rhea and Iyo cutting a promo saying they want revenge on Asuka and Kairi and take the tag titles. Charlotte and Alexa walk out and they want the same thing. All four are in happy good spirits about it with each other saying let’s do it tonight with the winner getting the title shot. The match closes the show and it was very fun. We get to the finish and then Asuka and Kairi run in to attack all four women which throws the match out. Bayley and Lyra run out to help the babyfaces. Earlier in the night, we had Asuka confronting Bayley about Bayley not wanting to join her War Games team last week saying I would have won with you. Bayley’s point was of course why would I join you, you turned on me! I’m not helping you. Bayley and Lyra hammered on the heels on the run in. As Lyra was about to use the table, Liv Morgan ran out and knocked Lyra off the table. Roxanne and Raquel get involved too. The babyfaces get taken down. Now we’ve got a war for the women’s tag team titles. The show closed with a big Liv and Roxanne moment playing off the Judgment Day controversy when Liv got hurt and Roxanne inherited the tag title of Liv’s. The three women close the show with the belts overhead but Liv hands the belt to Roxanne for Roxanne to hold the belt up. The John Cena tournament continued. Solo and Gunther had an absolute slug fest of a match. This was pretty awesome. I loved the moment where Solo pulled back and screamed ready to land the spike and then Gunther just nailed him with a hard chop. The finish had the turnbuckle getting pulled off. The ref goes over and puts the buckle pad back on while the Solo heel double team happens. The ref saw nothing cause as we know refs can never multi task. They can only do one thing and focus on one thing at a time. LOL. The ref finally sees what’s going on. Gunther nails Solo and then low blows the other with a back kick. Gunther nails Solo’s spike hand again nailing it on the apron. He had worked on it throughout the match. The ref again has his back to the action and Gunther low blows Solo with a kick and power bombs him for the pinfall. In the other match, LA Knight defeated Jey Uso as Jey nailed the splash off the top but Knight kicked out rolling Jey into a pinfall. So, it will be LA Knight vs Gunther to decide John Cena’s last opponent. The post match with Jey was another part of the story as Jey sat in the corner looking extremely unsettled looking around the building contemplating the loss. He then trashes some of ringside and heads to the back. When he is caught up to for an interview, he just kind of rambles about voices telling him things. Is this the heel turn for him? Not sure. It’s definitely evolving into something anyway. We had Bron cut a big promo on War Games and CM Punk. It was revealed that that will be the title match for the Netflix one year anniversary show. Wow, did Bron sound like his uncle with some moments of that promo. Felt like a this is a Bron breakout type promo moment.
Other notes from Raw. How awesome was the spot where AJ Styles caught the bounce spot off the ropes into the Styles clash. MY GOODNESS. THAT WAS AWESOME! I had seen reports from the weekend of fans meeting Nattie and asking her when we were going to see this new gimmick style and she said tune in Monday. Well, we got it with a very well produced black and white training promo showing Nattie just absolutely wearing out Maxxine in a training session. I think the promo was made to make Maxxine look tougher of that she’s taking everything Nattie is dishing out here and asking for more. For me, I was too busy watching Nattie saying geez, she’s intense here and liking what I was seeing there. Triple H is going into a Tony Khan trap with overhyping shows. Recently, he posted about a Raw hyping it with the “landscape changing” line of a show and……it wasn’t. Today he posted that tonight’s Raw was going to be “epic”. It wasn’t. I liked the show but it wasn’t epic. I get that he’s obviously going to say every show is going to be awesome cause you want to hype your shows but he’s crossing a level here where people are going to stop taking it seriously. This is starting to trend toward a “Tony Khan has a big announcement” type overhype style. And that’s obviously not good cause then we just stop listening.
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