Welcome to the “Danhausen’s curse lives!” edition of The Wrestling List. It’s been a busy several days for WWE with the Elimination Chamber and into tonight’s Raw. Let’s get right into my thoughts of the shows.
I really enjoyed Saturday night’s Elimination Chamber show which took place from the United Center in Chicago. This was the first WWE show at the United Center since August 29, 1994 when SummerSlam 1994 took place in that building. I remember watching that show very well with so much fun with great friends and how excited that I was to see the United Center. SummerSlam 1994 was the very first event to take place in what was the brand new United Center. Not just first WWE show. I’m talking about first event of anything there. Bulls fan here for life so I was very excited about this new building and SummerSlam had added excitement to me of I’m going to get to see what the new Bulls arena looks like. It was mighty impressive. SummerSlam was fun. The Bret vs Owen cage match with me hoping big time that Owen was going to pull off the victory. They put on an absolute classic. The British Bulldog made his return on the show. The show also had the much hyped Undertaker return. The Undertaker vs Undertaker main event. Was the match good? No. But it was all about the spectacle of his return. On to current day, the building looked beautiful on Saturday night. I said that out loud as the show came on the air. CM Punk warmed my Chicago Bulls heart with his backstage walk to Sirius by Alan Parsons Project with the 90’s Bulls Michael Jordan tribute along with a CM Punk ring intro from Bulls iconic PA announcer, Ray Clay. Geez, I loved that whole thing. Chills and goosebumps. CM Punk has told the story of being at SummerSlam 1994 and it was nice to see him use the sharpshooter in his match with that memory of Bret vs Owen in the cage at that show. I also loved the Macho Man big elbow in the match which I love every time he does it anyway. But let’s remember that Macho Man Randy Savage was the host of SummerSlam 1994. Just so much throwback and excitement with WWE returning to the United Center.
Let’s get to the results. The show opened with the women’s Chamber match. As this match started, I was feeling that we’d get a Raquel win here but I was wrong. Very fun match here. Geez, Tiffany Stratton was taking bump after bump in this match and she ended up with either a bloody lip or nose. I couldn’t tell which it was. Geez, the first three matches of the night had bloody lips. Tiffany was taking a beating out there. Kiana James got a very high profile match here and looked good in the match. Alexa Bliss had my yell at the TV moment when she went for Sister Abigail and then pointed at the WrestleMania sign delaying the finisher allowing her to get the spray from Asuka. I yelled “just do your move instead of sign pointing”. LOL. It’s like Drew McIntyre when he loves to count down before hitting his kick. If you watch, most of the time when he counts, he gets countered instead. LOL. It was fun seeing it come down to Tiffany and Rhea for the win as I could have seen either getting the win but it felts like it would be Rhea’s. Rhea Ripley gets the pin and moves on to WrestleMania to challenge Jade for the title. On to the next match which was my main event of the night as an AJ Lee fan with AJ Lee challenging Becky Lynch. Loved the home court advantage for AJ. I really enjoyed this match a lot. I thought they had good chemistry with one another in the ring. Lots of good wrestling in this one. I did call the finish when I saw Becky working that turnbuckle. I said oh, this is going to backfire and then she’ll rant and rave about how she was cheated out of the title when she’s the one who actually took the buckle off. LOL. Jessika takes two ref bumps in a row while trying to stop Becky from cheating with the buckle. Becky gets the chair and then nails her finish on to the chair. I thought that was going to be the finish and then AJ kicks out so we had our big cheer hope spot of AJ is still in this. Becky ends up messing up and taking the buckle. AJ hooks the submission and Becky taps once again. Big pop over here! AJ Lee is the new Intercontinental champion! She’s 3-0 on getting Becky to tap. On to the title match with CM Punk defending against Finn Balor. I did not call this finish as I had predicted that Judgment Day would get involved and Finn would get mad about it. This would end up being the demise of Finn and Judgment Day. Didn’t happen so I missed on my call for that finish. This was a good old school type match here and I enjoyed it. CM Punk ends up getting the win following the GTS. Following the match, a very fun moment with AJ Lee running out. I laughed out loud at her holding out the IC title in an expression of “look what I got”. LOL. The championship couple celebrates together. It was fun to see the social media video of the two interacting in between their matches as she had won the title and then he was about to go to the ring. Who was in the box? I said ok, is this Danhausen??? He had just wrapped up with AEW so this seemed logical. You have a surprise in a box so what else can it be other than something comedy like. If you were expecting Chris Jericho to pop out of a box to return of all things, what are you thinking? LOL. Enter Danhausen with a Broadway type entrance. Good for him on getting a WWE deal! Happy for him! Final match of the night with the men’s chamber and I did call the masked man stuff with how it would play out. I didn’t get the actual finish of it though. I said the first masked man would be a fake followed by the real one being Seth Rollins taking out Logan Paul. I haven’t called much right lately so at least I got something right on Saturday night with predictions. LOL. My storyline logic rant at the TV moment was saying why is no one shutting the cage door???!!! I can understand it with Rollins but there are 50 officials out there and nobody thinks to close it before someone else can enter??? LOL. Enter Drew McIntyre. He attacks Cody. Orton comes over to help and RKO’s Drew followed by Cody hitting crossroads on Drew. I did not call the next moment at ALL cause I expected them to both take out Drew and say ok, it’s us now to battle it out. Nope, Randy Orton nails an immediate RKO on to Cody when Cody was getting up from the Drew attack. Orton gets the win and moves on to WrestleMania. It made full sense for Orton to be in the mode of hey, I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. Championship opportunities have been few for him and he saw the opportunity and took it. Following the show, a furious Aldis ranted on Drew getting involved saying it will now be Drew defending against Cody on Smackdown this week for the title. A furious Drew shows up which continues to the “Drew is his own worst enemy” story. This goes back a couple of years now where Drew does something dumb and then gets mad when it backfires on him. LOL. Again, I really enjoyed this Chamber show. The most I’ve enjoyed a WWE PLE in several months.
Let’s move to Raw. Tonight’s Raw had a theme of The Vision is getting their payback from everywhere. The show opened with a furious Paul Heyman, Logan Paul, and Austin Theory over what happened at the Chamber with them promising retribution. However, retribution was coming for them. Several masked wrestlers showed up one by one leading to them being chased out. Paul Heyman is left in the ring by himself and he is suddenly face to face with a masked man coming down the aisle. However, the crowd starts popping and another masked man starts popping up on the apron behind Heyman. He pulls the mask off and it’s Seth Rollins with a chair. He nails a Shield like heel turn chair shot to the back of Heyman and then nails the stomp. Brutal turn of events having Heyman just demolished by Rollins so quickly. Heyman is taken out to an ambulance where Logan and Theory catch up saying what happened to him??? As they are tending to him, a car pulls up and Jimmy Uso is there for revenge destroying Theory. We then see LA Knight in the driver’s seat of the ambulance driving it off with Heyman inside. Weeks of payback for The Vision showed up and showed up hard tonight. CM Punk and Roman Reigns had their face to face in the ring tonight with a back and forth promo that got personal on both sides. Good back and forth between the two and I’m sure we’ll see plenty more of this leading up to Mania. The Danhausen curse lives! We see Danhausen talking to Pearce on his wants for his signing including such things as his name on a trailer and also that he wants the Triple H pointing picture. LOL. Judgment Day walks up and Pearce introduced them to Danhausen who downplay and mock Danhausen. Danhausen then curses Dominik right before his Intercontinental title match to which Dom immediately looks uneasy of wait, what was that and is this a problem for him???? Penta challenges Dom for the title. Dom said that he wanted to prove he could win it himself but as the match got near the end, Dom asked JD for help to which Finn showed up saying no, Dom said he wanted to do it himself. JD is arguing saying Dom is asking for help right now. Penta takes out the Judgment Day. I wasn’t crazy about Penta screaming in injury type agony seconds earlier about his shoulder only to do a full daredevil dive over the ropes 30 seconds later but here we are with a lot of today’s wrestling. LOL. Selling is fun. Penta wins the Intercontinental title which is his first title in WWE. Big moment for Penta and I’m sure this won’t be the last championship win for him. AJ Lee cut a promo saying she was done with Becky and how she has a locker room of great talent that she wants to wrestle. We see Bayley and Lyra talking about what is next for them and Lyra pumping up Bayley to get her name in the mix for a challenger. Bayley says you deserve it too and they both happily agree to pitch one another for a challenge to Pearce. As they go to Pearce’s door, Iyo Sky walks out giving them a bad look as Iyo has clearly been inside pitching herself too. We get the news that next week will have a number one contender’s match between Bayley, Lyra, Raquel, Asuka, Iyo, and Ivy. That should be all sorts of fun! Gunther and Dragon Lee had a fun match with it looking very close that Dragon Lee was going to get a countout victory after he nailed the operation dragon on the floor on Gunther. Gunther got back in the ring right before 10. Gunther got back on offense hooking a sleeper and also pulling Dragon Lee’s mask off to which he tapped out. His face was not shown as Gunther had the sleeper hooked over his face.Â
Other notes from Raw. No women’s matches tonight??? They were featured in a bunch of segments but frustrating not getting any matches. Kairi and AJ Lee in the backstage segment was hilarious. Kairi had just taken her verbal abuse from Asuka. Enter AJ Lee into the frame with AJ saying “hey girl….you good? Blink twice if you need any help” LOL. Will the Danhausen curse become a thing? Danhausen running around causing chaos cursing people would be a funny bit if it gets momentum with people afraid of it.
It was announced today that legendary WWE tag team, Demolition, will FINALLY get their place in the WWE Hall of Fame. This is so beyond long overdue. One of the very greatest tag teams in history. Ax and Smash were such a big part of tag team wrestling in the 80’s and early 90’s. From being a scary heel tag team managed by Mr. Fuji to becoming a babyface tag team after the double turn at Survivor Series 1988. They won their first tag team titles at WrestleMania IV defeating StrikeForce. In a rematch later, they would storyline injure Rick Martel putting him out of action for many months. Their alliance with Fuji would end at Survivor Series 1988 when Fuji pulled the rope down causing Demolition to be eliminated. They dumped Fuji who was then helped up by The Powers Of Pain. That feud of the face paint would continue for the winter and spring months culminating in a handicap match at WrestleMania V with Demolition facing The Powers Of Pain and Fuji. They also broke the record for the longest WWE tag team title reign with that first reign. This record would stand until it was broken by The New Day in 2016. Demolition would drop the tag team titles to The Brain Busters of Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard in a 2 out of 3 falls match on Saturday Night’s Main Event in 1989 when an interfering Andre The Giant helped the Busters win the titles. Demolition would regain the tag team titles from them months later in a TV match on Superstars to win their second championships. They would not long after lose the belts to the new tag team of The Colossal Connection of Andre The Giant and Haku on an episode of Superstars. Demolition would become the first ever team to 3 peat by winning the WWE tag team titles in a rematch at WreslteMania VI at the Skydome in Toronto in front of 67,678 fans. Demolition would add a third member of Crush to add into the mix to help with Ax’s availability as he had bad health problems going on at the time so they could mix Crush into the lineup if need be. Demolition would turn heel in the time after WrestleMania VI leading to them dropping the titles to The Hart Foundation at SummerSlam 1990 in an awesome 2 out of 3 falls match. The finish had the recently debuting in WWE, Legion Of Doom, coming out to help the Harts who caught Demolition trying to use the 3 on 2 man advantage. We got some of the LOD vs Demolition feud that we desperately wanted as a dream match but we didn’t get it to the full extent of what we hoped. If you were a fan in this era, the Apter magazines always talked of that dream match of those two tag teams and it’s a shame that Vince McMahon didn’t give us the full power of what it deserved. Demolition would do the three member thing for a while up to the point of Ax leaving the company after Survivor Series 1990. Demolition faded out quickly after that. When you think of talent that is not in the Hall of Fame and who deserves to be in, Demolition is the name that frequently gets brought up. Their records stand for themselves. If you were a fan in that era, you know what a force that tag team was. The face masks. The face paint. They had a theme song by Rick Derringer that absolutely just made you love their entrances. One of the very best entrance songs of ALL TIME. Here comes the Ax. Here comes the Smasher. They’re Demolition. Hall of Famers.Â
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