TNA last night had a good WOW AWESOME KILLAH X-Division champeenship match, with DJZ making a leap to rip the belt out of the Herd Dynasty’s hands as they hung in the air. Also, Crazzy Steve informing Broken Matt Hardy that his child was about to become “Rosemary’s Baby” was pretty clever. BMH speaking into his phone to coordinate his home security drone was unexpected, by the Seven Deities. They did cheesy horror movie stuff, like having Rosemary throw a baby doll off the balcony to make BMH think it was his baby falling to her death. Otherwise, the show was kinda “meh.”
The MacEntyre/Rex feud isn’t exactly sizzling. They haven’t had the former Damian Sandow cut any promos of consequence yet, and he excels at those. Moose seemed kind of confused on what he was supposed to do during the Lashley/Bennett segments. Maybe that’s why RoH hardly had him do any mic work. The only Knockouts match was Mariah Cannabis forcing Allie to lay down for her Hulk Hogan vs Kevin Nash style, so that greatly undervalued the women’s division, as usual.
Jack Gallagher is coming to Raw! (yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay)
His name has been confirmed for the new cruiserweight division, along with Johnny Gargano, Tommaso Ciampa, Rich Swann, The Brian Kendrick, TJ Perkins, Noam Dar, Gran Metalik and Akira Tozawa.
I hope they don’t make him change his style too much - his matches in the CWC have been the most entertaining by far.
In other news, season 3 of Lucha Underground begins on Wednesday night. They’ll be re-airing Ultima Lucha before hand, which I’m going to have to watch to catch up since I missed the last third of season 2. A couple of LU’s stars had some big wins at Triplemania this year - Drago and Aerostar won the AAA tag team championships from Angelico & Jack Evans, Johnny Mundo won the Latin American championship from Pentagon Jr., and Rey/Puma/Dragon defeated the team of Matanza, Mil Muertes, and Marty the Moth.
Sooo many promos that went on for soooo long. The Dana Brooke nonsense, the Club crap, the backstage stuff…It all went on for too long and just bored me.
The only semi-saving grace was the Sasha Banks promo, only because it had a swerve-y element to it and was almost believable. I say almost because I knew the moment Corey Graves said “I fear this is going to be a big and sad announcement” I immediately knew it was a work. She played it off like gangbusters tho.
I didn’t see the main event, anything interesting happen?
Sami hurt his ankle, so KO took advantage and won. The announcers kept trying to build up heat by talking about how the two hated each other blah blah blah, but it was pretty obvious from the start KO was going to be put over for his match with Seth at CoC, so the announcer buildup was all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Then Roman Reigns came out, then Chris Jericho, then Mick Foley announced KO vs RR next week, and if RR wins, it’s a Triple Threat match at CoC. Apparently the RR push is still a thing. No HHH appearance.
I think I FFed through at least half of this show.
Was disappointed that we got yet another Owens-Zayn match and Sami either still injured or still working the angle for some dumbass reason.
WWE, get Roman Reigns the fuck out of the main event picture for a while. Put him in on the losing end of a program with Rusev. People like me are going to continue to reject him as long as you stupidly keep pushing him in the main event.
This Sunday is Backlash, our first Smackdown-exclusive PPV of the New Era™. There’ve only been six matches announced, so I’m guessing we’ll get a couple surprise matches, but here’s some predictions for the matches we’ve got;
Dean Ambrose vs. AJ Styles for the world championship. (So help me, if they turn the belt blue to match the Raw title, I’m invoking the power vested in me by Sheamus to officially rename it the WWE Cool Ranch Championship.) Tough call, but I’m gonna say AJ wins - he’s on fire after making Cena lose his smile, and if he becomes champion, that’s a baked-in WrestleMania feud for when Cena comes back after his latest trip to Hollywood.
The Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler for the IC title. Ever get that feeling that you’ve seen the Miz and Dolph Ziggler fight for the IC title like ten times before? Yeah, me neither. I’m gonna say Dolph wins this one.
“Six-pack challenge” for the Smackdown Womens’ Championship; Becky Lynch, Tits Bella, Naomi, Carmella, Natalya, and Alexa Bliss. This is one where it’s hard to pick a winner because it seems like none of them should win. Nikki and Natalya are the obvious choices to win, but neither of them really need a title run. Naomi has no business being anywhere near the championship, and the other three could all use a title run, but feel like they’re still too green for it. I’m gonna go ahead and say Becky wins, because she’s the least green of the people in this match for whom a title run would be worthwhile.
The Usos vs. the Hype Bros for a spot in the tag tournament finals. Same problem as above - the Usos don’t need another title run, and the Hype Bros can’t win because Zack Ryder isn’t allowed to have nice things. The Usos are heels now apparently, so I’m gonna guess they win so the final is a heel vs. face match…
Tournament finals for the Smackdown tag team championships; the winners of the above match vs. Heath Slater and Rhyno. I so want Slater and Rhyno to win, even if it’s just a transitional run, which it might be if Rhyno ends up winning the election for the MI state legislature. It’s probably going to be the Usos, though, since I can’t see how he’ll have time to tour and wrestle on top of his campaign schedule of kissing hands and shaking babies. (That’s what politicians do, right?)
Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt, because we haven’t had a “Bray picks a fight with a babyface for no reason, cuts a bunch of promos about nothing, and then loses” storyline in like six months now and so creative thinks it’ll be fresh and original again. Randy wins.
Can’t say I’m terribly looking forward to this show - aside from the main event, this card seems pretty slapdash and predictable. Maybe we’ll get something crazy to make up for it, like a Yappapi Indian strap match, or CM Punk crawling into the arena on his hands and knees to beg for his job back after Mickey Gall hands him his ass the night before.
Heath Slater stock must have really taken off. They found seven kids with red hair to sit at ringside for him, turned the Usos heel, buried American Alpha in two seconds, and shilled for Rhyno’s campaign. Heath’s push is really having a ripple effect. Only Eva Marie has known such momentum, and they dropped her like a turd when they rebranded Total Divas into Total Bellas.
AJ should win. Ambrose just isn’t hot as the champion, AJ is and deserves it.
I’m going to go with the injuries done to American Alpha causing the loss to Slater and Rhino, who for some reason become the first Smackdown TTCs. Frankly, I’d rather see the Alphas win and Shane/DBD sign Slater anyway because he has “heart” (and is actually over!)
Miz-Ziggler. Frankly, I want to see Miz win this match, then drop the belt to Crews, since Miz is making the guy look really good in their matches. The down side is that we’d get a bunch of Ziggler “oh woe is me”, but if that led to him dropping the 90’s porn star name, I’d be for it.
If Becky Lynch isn’t the first Smackdown Women’s Champ, we riot.
Orton/Wyatt. Knowed called it. Wyatt gets his ass smacked, Orton stands tall, Wyatt crawls off for a couple of weeks before calling out Heath Slater. (Slater wins that program too.)
Actually, **Smapti **made the call on Wyatt/Orton. My prediction accuracy has been choking big time, so I’m not going to bother making any this time.
I did like Randy’s promo about the snake wanting both the hunter and the rabbit. A house show tour in my area advertises Dean vs AJ and Bray vs Randy, so I guess both those feuds will be extended.
Regardless, the Wyatt-Slater feud should be a blast. Slater not really understanding what Wyatt is on about, Wyatt frustrated because he’s threatening an idiot. Wyatt threatens to take the kids. Slater is all happy to get them off his hands for a while so he can have alone time with Beulah…
Eh, American Alpha is out (possibly because the audience would completely shit all over the match if they didn’t win) and we get Usos/Hype Bros in a match with the winning team facing Slater-Rhino.
I’m going to Usos winning that and facing Slater-Rhino, but that one is more difficult to call. I’d love to say Slater-Rhino, but I could see them going to with Usos to let AA chase the title and push the “Heath Slater needs a job” thing a bit more (completely over and past the shark, but this is Vince/WWE, remember.)
Okay, so I have two questions:
[ol]
[li]What do you mean by “green” in this context? Because I know of no definition of “green” as it applies to professional wrestlers, that can be plausibly applied to Becky Lynch.[/li][li]What do you mean, Naomi has no business being anywhere near the championship? Why the hell not? :mad:[/li][/ol]
I can answer your second question pretty easily: Because she’s just not very good.
She’s not over at all (which you can tell by the fact they had to change her character for the third time now), and her move set is very limited. She can do the high-kick thing which no sane human would think actually works, she does the rear view (get it? It’s cuz shes black and has a huge ass!) and that’s it.
Her athleticism is touted constantly, but she never shows it off.
Disagree. She bumps well, she sells well, she has solid matches with all her opponents… Her move set is hokey, but babyface move sets usually are. That’s one of the reasons why her heel run didn’t work: heels are supposed to lead the match, and generate sympathy for the babyface, which that kind of hokey offense isn’t conducive to. In fact, wrestlers whose move sets are mostly high spots are almost always poor heels.
Regarding her athleticism, I mean, granted, if you’d only seen Naomi on Raw or Smackdown, and never watch(ed) any of her matches on Superstars or Main Event or FCW, you might think that her athleticism is overstated, but she’s still arguably the most athletic woman on the main roster. Charlotte and Sasha may be as athletic; they’re certainly given the platform to demonstrate their athleticism more than Naomi is.
As far as her not being any good, she dragged a watchable match out of Rosa Mendes, for god’s sake. I mean, I’ll buy an argument that she’s not over, but not very good? Nah, not gonna be able to do it.
I’m going to take that Wyatt-Slater “feud” one further.
Wyatt ends up totally frustrated at trying to psych out an idiot and ends up ‘recruiting’ Slater for the family (with returning Luke Harper). Of course, Slater is so boisterous and happy about the whole thing, even in the middle of the creepy promos. Happy that the kids are down at the compound learning how to hunt and butcher animals, “Heck, they’re even learning how to read! Saw the youngest just the other day reading something called “the Necronomicon”.”
I’ll sign any release WWE wants to make that happen. On paper, no recompense. In private, send me an autographed picture of both men and a Bray Wyatt t-shirt in XL.
