It’s the start of a new year and time for week 28 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!
WWE RAW (2nd January)
We opened with a Bloodline invasion of RAW, interrupting the opening title sequence as they showed up at ringside and just started disrupting shit and declaring a “hostile takeover”. With Adam Pearce’s security team unequal to the task of ejecting them, it fell to Kevin Owens to throw down with them, with the faces piling out of the locker room to give him backup. An annoyed Pearce declared that if the Bloodline wanted to be on RAW, they were going to be, and he was putting each of them in a match tonight.
This felt like a good way to spice up the Bloodline’s brand-crossing appearances and make them feel like more of a big deal. It’s evident why the Bloodline keep showing up on RAW – they’re the hottest commodity in WWE right now, and NBC/Universal wouldn’t want them to be Fox exclusives.
It also helped remind us that Adam Pearce is the authority figure on RAW, and having someone like that is useful for at least maintaining the kayfabe pretence of a sporting presentation rather than total anarchy. Pearce was further cemented as an actual authority figure, rather than a dude people ride roughshod over, in the backstage segment where he decided on which RAW stars would face the Bloodline in which combination of matches.
The first of these was Elias vs. Solo Sikoa in a Music City Street Fight, since this show was emanating from Nashville. This is basically an ordinary street fight, with musical instruments scattered around at ringside to act as convenient weapons and props. Although I don’t believe the return of Elias’ old gimmick is entirely motivated by a desire to upstage Jeff Jarrett’s guitar schtick in AEW, I’m sure WWE regard that as a happy side effect; we got several guitars smashed into one of the competitors, including one delivered by some guy I’ve never heard of called Hardy, who has apparently provided one of the theme songs for this year’s Royal Rumble. This match didn’t inspire me much, and I was glad when Solo put Elias down to end it.
The other Bloodline match was a trios match of the Usos and Sami Zayn vs. the Street Profits and Kevin Owens. This, of course, plays into the reasons why Roman Reigns sent Sami and the posse out to RAW in the first place: Owens and John Cena beat Reigns and Zayn on SmackDown, this is the payback (as well as Sami’s chance to make good his failure last Friday night). The story in this match was that Montez Ford’s head wasn’t entirely in the game at first, because of events in Bianca Belair’s match prior to this (of which more later), but he came alive once he got the hot tag from Kevin Owens and nearly got the pin on Sami.
In the end, the Bloodline pulled out the numbers game, with Solo Sikoa returning to attack at ringside as the referee’s attention was elsewhere, leading to Sami getting the pin – but, crucially, on one of the Street Profits, not on Kevin Owens. Ultimately, the Street Profits were here to eat a pin – everyone else is more essential to the ongoing story here, and in keeping with that after the match the Bloodline dragged Kevin Owens into the ring and put a hellacious beatdown on him. Sikoa went to get a chair, Sami got in his face and for a moment it looked like he was objecting, but then it was evident he planned to use it himself, but then Sheamus and Drew McIntyre mounted their own cross-brand invasion to run off the Bloodline and make the save.
In non-Bloodline business, Alexa Bliss got her shot at Bianca Belair’s RAW Women’s Championship. As I think most people were expecting, it turned into spooky Bray Wyatt nonsense; Bliss started out coming across like she wasn’t taking the challenge entirely seriously, then when she got the upper hand on Bianca a guy in an Uncle Howdy mask at ringside distracted her, then we had the Wyatt imagery come up on the Titantron and Alexa sold getting possessed, attacked the referee to get herself disqualified, then beat the shit out of Bianca and gave her two nasty-looking DDTs on the steel steps and strolled off. We were later shown that Bianca refused a stretcher and was helped backstage by Montez Ford, so I guess they’re not going for a long kayfabe injury absence for her.
The bigger question is what happens next with Alexa. It feels like the logical route here is for her to transfer to SmackDown, because that’s where Bray and Uncle Howdy are. It really won’t hurt having her over there either, because whilst Charlotte’s return has helped prop up the women’s division over there, having Alexa along too won’t hurt, and the RAW division feels healthy enough that it can spare her.
At the same time, though, if Alexa disappears from RAW, how does Bianca get payback? Does WWE have Alexa pull double duty? Do they run an angle where Bianca chases her to SmackDown? Or do they have Alexa stick on RAW and basically be an outpost of the Bray Wyatt story there, perhaps to compensate NBC/Universal for Bray being a Fox-only attraction? We’ll have to see, but I’m not sure any of those options is without risk.
Dexter Lumis had a match against Chad Gable which showed no sign of having any importance in any respect, so I skipped it. More significant was the video package which ran after it, which went all-out to hype Cody Rhodes, suggesting that his return is imminent.
Bayley was out with Damage CTRL crowing about her victory over Becky Lynch, which prompted Becky to come out to confront her. This initially set up a two-on-one handicap match of Lynch vs. Damage CTRL, but then Mia Yim – or Michin, as she seems to now be billed as – ran out to even things up. Strictly speaking, it feels like that should be a DQ – if a match is announced as two on one you can’t just add yourself to it – but in the long run that doesn’t matter enormously because Michin at the pin from IYO to keep the tag champs looking strong and ensure that Becky still had reasons to be grumpy going forwards.
RAW is usually the Judgment Day Show, but I guess they were kept off this episode to make space for the Bloodline invasion, and perhaps to give them a well-earned rest, making this the first time they haven’t been a big presence on RAW for ages. We did at least have our weekly dose of Mami Rhea, but it was in the form of replaying the social media video of her and Dominik showing up at Rey Mysterio’s house on Christmas Eve, just like they did at Thanksgiving, only for the Mysterios to call the cops and get Dominik arrested.
Hilariously, this was followed up with a video promo from Dominik acting like he’s now a hardened jailbird, when he was bailed out within hours and he was freaking out like his whole world was ending when he got put in the police van. The combination of white vest and toothpick suggested influences from Razor Ramon, just to complete the absurdity. This was fun, funny, and a good way to keep Judgment Day prominent whilst giving everyone else in the group a bit of a break.
The main event was Seth Rollins challenging Austin Theory for the US Championship, because that belt exists in a pocket universe where only Rollins, Theory, Bobby Lashley, and occasionally Mustafa Ali exist. I am long since past caring about this so I skipped to the end. Oh look, Theory pinned Rollins clean, fine – can he finally put Seth behind him now, please?
On the whole, this was a bit of an up-and-down episode of RAW – the Bloodline stuff was grand, and other significant stuff happened, but it felt like the main event was lacking. The Bliss/Belair match could have happily gone in the main event slot and ended the episode with something meaningful.
AEW Dynamite (4th January)
This was the debut of a brand new look for Dynamite, a welcome sprucing-up of its aesthetic (it now looks less like it’s cosplaying NXT 1.0, for one thing). It unfolded in front of a red hot Seattle crowd, so perhaps in some ways holding off on visiting the Pacific Northwest has paid off for AEW, because it seems like the pent-up demand helped make this episode feel special.
First up was Jericho vs. Ricky Starks, a great match enhanced by the emphatic support of the crowd for Starks and thunderous boos for Jericho. Despite extensive cheating by 2point0 on behalf of Jericho, Ricky pulled out the win, which prompted the rest of the Jericho Appreciation Society to come out to beat on Ricky, which in turn prompted Action Andretti to come out to make the save, only to get beat on when a low blow stole his momentum. It looks like the feud between this lot will stay hot for a while, and if it keeps yielding matches like that then long may it run.
Hangman Page still isn’t cleared to compete – at least in kayfabe – but he hopes to be ring ready to face Moxley next week. This played into an excellent promo battle, which even mic problems early on in Mox’s promo couldn’t derail. (Moxley, if anything, did a grand job of channeling his frustration into his promo.) This really helped set up next week’s action, so mission accomplished there.
Next up we had the Acclaimed defending their tag team championship against Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal. This came in the wake of Jeff venting his spleen on social media about Max Caster’s rap from last week, sowing the idea that he was shoot upset about it. Given what an old-school carny Jeff is, my feeling is that it was most likely a work, especially since it fed into the story of the match fairly naturally, setting up a lot of animosity between the factions.
We even had a teased Jarrett/Lethal win, with some cheating on the part of Sanjay Dutt and Satnam Singh when the referee’s back was turned. The problem was that the entire referee corps and come out to eject Dutt – so they were able to tell the ref about his mistake and restart the match, to get a feel-good Acclaimed win. If Jeff Jarrett is being used onscreen in AEW to get the faces wins like this, I am happy with that.
In other tag team news, the Gunn Club held an in-ring funeral for FTR and ran them down, to no comeback because FTR hadn’t made it back from Japan yet. With the Top Guys having lost the ROH, AAA, and IWGP tag team championships of late, being punked on live television by the Ass Boys feels like an attempt to seriously cool them off, though given the not-too-subtle signalling that they intend to leave AEW this is probably not a surprise (though it’s still a shame to see Tony Khan resorting to these tactics.)
Bryan Danielson handily put away Tony Nese in a match which existed largely to set up his confrontation with MJF. After some back-and-forth the course to their match at Revolution was laid out: to get it, Bryan must become the number 1 contender by winning a match each week until February 8th. In return for agreeing to that, Bryan got to name the stipulation: it’s going to be an Iron Man match. We’ll see how that goes. In other news, AR Fox got beat by Swerve Strickland and his new goons in a match which made no impression on me whatsoever.
In the women’s division, Saraya chose Toni Storm to be her tag partner against Jamie Hayter and Britt Baker (who are now calling themselves “The Killer and the Pillar”), much to the annoyance of Hikaru Shida. Apparently, negotiations with Sasha Banks have fallen through, though I suppose it’s possible that Sasha will align with Hikaru and we’re all being swerved. We also had a tag match of Jade Cargill and Red Velvet against ex-Baddie Kiera Hogan plus magical permaface Skye Blue, largely teasing further tensions between Jade and the Baddies. Skye’s got a bout at Battle of the Belts against Skye Blue for her TBS championship, and giving that shock win to Skye off the back of the Baddies abandoning Jade would be wild… but probably also needs more build.
However, perhaps it’s the season for shock wins; Darby Allin prevailed against Samoa Joe to reclaim the TNT championship in his home town (and, I suspect, free up to Joe to concentrate more on being ROH TV champ). Maybe the new year calls for more of a shakeup than just a new aesthetic? It’s not like AEW couldn’t do with it right now, and with an episode of Dynamite this strong, it feels like a step in the right direction.
Impact Wrestling (5th January)
The opening bout was Masha Slamovich vs. Taylor Wilde, with Deonna Purrazzo on commentary to build to their 4-way match at Hard To Kill where a number 1 contendership for the Knockouts Championship will be at stake. Slamovich is someone who seems to be generating a bit of buzz of late, and this was my first exposure to her work; she certainly looks the part, and the match itself was pretty good, with some fast-paced suplexes which came across particularly well. Purrazzo managed to get under Slamovich’s skin enough to distract her, leading to Wilde stealing a win and Slamovich taking her frustration out on ringside staff, so I guess Slamovich/Purrazzo is the rivalry to look out for at Hard To Kill.
Black Taurus faced a debuting Anthony Greene, whose gimmick seems to be “Johnny Swinger, only not a joke”. Greene ate the pin, Taurus moves on to bigger things, since he’s going to be coming after Trey Miguel’s X-Division championship. For his part, Trey attacked Greene after the match with a cheap shot, so I guess he turned heel while I’d drifted away from Impact. Jonathan Gresham also had a squash match against Ernest Anthony.
Moose came out to deliver a promo on Joe Hendry, who he will be trying to take the Digital Media Championship from at Hard To Kill. Joe Hendry appeared at the top of the ramp, riposted, and debuted new entrance music for Moose based on Joe’s own. It was hardly an Acclaimed-worthy diss track, though the “got rejected from football” line was pretty funny.
The last match was Matt Cardona (supported by his Major Players tag team partner Brian Myers) vs. Chris Sabin (with Alex Shelley), as a taster of the tag team elimination match for the Motor City Machine Guns’ tag titles at Hard To Kill. It was OK, but not much of a main event – but it actually wasn’t. After the match, Bully Ray showed up – having been told by Scott D’Amore to stay home last week – and made a fuss about wanting to confront Josh Alexander, who’d also been told to stay home until Hard To Kill. This led to Scott coming out to try and get Bully Ray to wise up and go home. Eventually, Bully got under Scott’s skin enough to prompt Scott to get physical, leading to a beatdown and Scott going through a table – which was meant to be on fire, but as seen on the latest Botchamania they couldn’t get the lighter fluid to ignite, though the episode did a decent job of editing the fumbling around trying to light the table out.
On the whole, another good episode, with lots of good build for Hard To Kill, more or less selling me on actually watching the PPV.
Vince McMahon Comes Back To WWE (6th January)
As I feared would happen, Vince decided to reinsert himself into the WWE power structure, using his power as majority shareholder to force it through. In the end, the gambit was simple: he just declared he was electing himself to the Board, and lo and behold it happened.
His declared reason for doing this was so he could shepherd a process of looking at “strategic alternatives”, such as selling the company or taking it private, in order to get that done prior to the media rights negotiations for RAW and SmackDown happening (since any buyer would likely want input on those). Whether this is how it pans out remains to be seen; Triple H is in charge of Creative for now, but he could be out tomorrow if Vince’s whims flow that way.
That said, I don’t think the idea of exploring a sale is 100% bullshit. If Vince could have done this gambit to reinstate himself at any time, why bother with that figleaf in the first place? And I can absolutely believe that Vince has spent the last few months cooling his heels informally getting a buyer lined up. Even then, however, if Vince sells the company that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s gone – he might get a Dana White-like permanent legacy position running day-to-day matters on behalf of whoever buys.
Either way, this whole thing is a net negative. Vince’s poor handling of Creative turned off audiences and derailed wrestlers’ careers, but what is far more serious is that he was a serial abuser of women with a bad habit of doing utterly unacceptable shit and then trying to make it go away with NDAs and money. It is not good that he is more involved with WWE’s operations, and is a bad thing even if he never goes near Creative again.
Nothin' Means Nothin'! 