Week In Wrestling: 26th December 2022 to 1st January 2023

Here’s week 27 of my ongoing what’s-going-on-in-wrestling coverage.

WWE RAW (26th December)

Nothing new to report! WWE ran a clip show, despite having a live show going down tonight in Madison Square Garden (in which Bray Wyatt actually wrestled for once). Why they did this, I cannot fathom; they’re pretty infamous for not broadcasting their MSG shows usually, because apparently the venue charges out of the nose for the staff needed for that, and I can see the point of not doing TV on Boxing Day to give your talent a break, but if you’re not giving them a break and making them work the day after Christmas anyway, why not put it on television? Weird.

AEW Dynamite: New Year’s Smash (28th December)

We opened with Bryan Danielson vs. Ethan Page, with MJF in the skybox smirking and yelling distracting stuff at them (since Danielson and Page were squabbling over who gets to go after the World Championship next). Max only did that early on in the match, mind – which I think was a good call because it would have got irritating after a while, and a few shots of the spotlit skybox made it clear that his presence was still annoying and distracting to the competitors (especially Page), so why make the match obnoxious to watch when the point has been made?

What ensued was a bit of a war between the competitors, with Stokely Hathaway helping Page try and heel his way to victory whilst Danielson had nobody in his corner and tried to win on pure technical skill. This felt like a really useful match for Page to have. The crowd was mostly behind Danielson, as you would expect – he’s the face and he’s the more famous name – but enough of the crowd got behind Ethan in the duelling chants to suggest that he’s getting a bit of momentum behind him. He didn’t get the win this time, though, so it looks like Danielson’s still on course for a bout with MJF.

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Next up was another Blackpool Combat Club-connected match, in which Claudio Castagnoli and Jon Moxley came after Top Flight in revenge for their elimination from last Rampage‘s trios battle royale at Top Flight’s hands. With the veterans getting the win, the most interesting thing about the match was probably the backstage segment that preceded it, in which Dark Order tried to stop Hangman Adam Page from going out to confront Moxley yet again (the story here being that his delay in coming back from his concussion is in part because he keeps aggravating the issue by confronting Moxley before he is ready). They hinted he’ll be ready to come back in a couple of weeks, so I guess we’re going to finally see him back doing something of substance soon.

The Elite vs. Death Triangle match in the best-of-seven series led to another very predictable win for the Elite, to ensure that the seventh and final match of this interminable series will indeed be taking place. The wrinkle this time was that before the bell even rang they started out brawling in the back, and since the match was Falls Count Anywhere it was all legit; this was exactly the sort of spotfest you’d expect, but I liked it better than much of this series so far, especially since it’s been a while since we’ve had a cinematic-style match in AEW (which is what the backstage segment of the match in effect was). Once things got back in the ring, I found I lost interest again.

The sole women’s division action on the show consisted of Ruby Soho and Willow Nightingale tagging against Anna Jay and Tay Conti, and honestly this felt like an illustration of how the AEW women’s division has failed to really develop much further this year. I say this not because I dislike any of the women in this match, but the whole thing felt like a big nothingburger compared to the match which Anna and Tay were in almost a year ago to the day – their epic street fight on Rampage against Penelope Ford and the Bunny, which felt like much more of an occasion than this did. TayJay stole a win, but it didn’t feel like it meant anything.

The main event felt even less special – it was Wardlow coming after Samoa Joe for the TNT title, after having been clonked with a pipe by Joe in the back in an earlier segment. Of course Wardlow wasn’t winning – he’s lost all the momentum he had since the height of his feud with MJF – so the whole thing felt like a foregone conclusion, and indeed it was. Still, Wardlow did a good job of selling that bad leg and convincing us that he might pull through anyway, and the post-match angle was a fairly dramatic way to draw Dynamite‘s year to a close, with Joe cutting Wardlow’s hair to add insult to injury and Darby Allin coming out to confront him.

A swift squash of Baylum Lynx by HOOK did little beyond reminding us that the Firm have it in for HOOK and that HOOK and Jack Perry have each other’s backs in that situation. Jericho cut a promo on Action Andretti, whilst Wheeler Yuta set up a future confrontation with Swerve Strickland and his new crew. All of this largely felt like stuff which was in a holding pattern, probably because the holiday season isn’t really the right time to deploy major developments in any angles. The result that this felt less like a full Dynamite and more like an extra-packed episode of Rampage.

Still, the Acclaimed’s diss track on Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal was pretty good.

Impact Wrestling (29th December)

This was also a clip show, and once that became apparent I skipped it.

WWE SmackDown (30th December)

WWE put on a more stacked than usual show for the end of the year, so despite me skipping SmackDown in recent weeks I decided to watch this one.

We started with more Bray Wyatt business, though thank goodness this at least set up a match – LA Knight vs. Bray at Royal Rumble. Uncle Howdy even did something for once – namely, come down to the ring, stand next to Bray as though aligning with him, and then smashing him into oblivion with a Sister Abigail. We’ll see how this develops but at least there’s now a finish line in sight. It was later announced what had previously been leaked – that it’ll be a “Pitch Black” match. It’s some sort of Mountain Dew tie-in, but beyond that nobody has any idea of what a Pitch Black match actually entails – hopefully it will be a more elegant corporate tie-in than that horrible Thunderdome-era match when the Miz got eaten by zombies as a Walking Dead promotion.

Next up was Sheamus vs. Solo Sikoa. Sikoa got the win, and he and the Usos were on the verge of giving Sheamus a serious beatdown when Drew McIntyre returned to make the save. It looks like a Sikoa vs. McIntyre feud is in the offing, which makes a lot of sense given the outcome of Clash At the Castle and wouldn’t be a terrible use of the two of them at WrestleMania, if the plan is to give all the Bloodline members at least one match on the card.

We then had Ronda Rousey pull double duty. First was Raquel Rodriguez, getting her shot at the SmackDown Women’s Championship which she won in a gauntlet match; she sold having her arm still weakened all match, and eventually lost as a result of pulling off a devastating move which, alas, caused her to land on the bad elbow, creating a moment of vulnerability Rousey exploited. Then, unexpectedly, Charlotte Flair showed up and challenged Ronda to a championship shot bout – and Ronda egotistically agreed. This went badly for her, with Flair taking out Shayna Baszler with a boot to the face, exploiting Ronda’s exhausted and battered condition after her match, and got the win, meaning that Charlotte starts 2023 holding the championship.

This could have come across much worse than it did. The fact that Raquel was selling a kayfabe injury during the match is a big help – it establishes a narrative that she could have won if she hadn’t been wrestling with a handicap, justifying keeping her close to the top of the card, and the fact that she took Ronda to the limit means that Charlotte wasn’t just swanning in and taking the title off a Ronda at 100%, which would have kind of buried the rest of the SmackDown women’s division because it would imply that Charlotte can do what they couldn’t and is therefore a far bigger deal than any of them.

Of course, she kind of is, and that’s why her return is so useful for SmackDown; the women’s division has had a perilously shallow bench and it’s needed a big talent like her to bolster it. It’s not necessarily the fault of the talent themselves – they have suffered from poor booking, and the rehabilitation process has been underway to an extent, but it’ll take a while to repair what Vince’s mismanagement broke. By comparison, say what you like about her rumoured behind-the-scenes politicing, but Charlotte has definitely managed to ensure her image was more protected than many on the roster, and that makes her potentially valuable going forwards.

That said, a lot is going to hinge on how she is booked going forwards – will she be using her drawing power to help elevate other talent, or is this going to be a reign of terror where the division becomes booked around her exclusively? We’ll have to see. I think there’s the potential for the former to happen, but I think it will need Triple H to sell Charlotte on that direction for it to happen; that said, Charlotte has always seemed to have a good working relationship with Trips (as do all the Horsewomen), so if anyone can persuade her to play ball it’s him.

Really, the person who came out the worst in all this is Ronda – who looked like a big fool for agreeing to a match she wasn’t obliged to take and losing the gold as a result. I can’t get too upset about this – as well as doing obnoxious stuff like adding oxygen to Sandy Hook conspiracy theories in her life outside of wrestling, Ronda has been totally underwhelming during this run. Yes, she’s been working heel and that helps to an extent, but even taking that into account she just seems to have half-assed the entire thing. She just doesn’t give the impression she cares much – and sure, that can be a heel character trait, but when there’s rumours that you genuinely don’t care on a shoot level, that’s only going to add fuel to the fire.

I feel a little bad for Shayna; being aligned with Ronda should have meant big things with her, but it feels like it’s just shackled her to a sinking ship. Hopefully a better berth can be found for her soon. But Ronda absolutely didn’t merit her spot at the top of the card this deep into this lukewarm run in WWE, and removing her from it was absolutely the right call.

After a brawl between Braun Strowman and the Imperium to keep Braun’s chase for the Intercontinental Championship ticking over, we had the main event – John Cena and Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn and Roman Reigns. All evening, the question here was whether Roman was becoming jealous of the fan response Sami Zayn has been getting; we had Paul Heyman planting the seed that he might be, but then Roman denied it when Sami raised it in their pre-match conflab.

Cena and Owens eventually won, and perhaps the most interesting thing about the match was how incidental Cena seemed to it. I’ve never been a big fan of his – I’ve been known to cheer for him live, but that was at a house show where he was going no-DQ against Seth Rollins, fresh from the heel turn which destroyed the Shield, and I was only too happy to see him beat the shit out of an extremely hateable Seth at that point in time.

I think the problem I have with him is that his whole look and character just comes across as “big child”, and he was certainly mugging it up this time to emphasise that. I guess that explains his appeal to kids – he’s someone they can see as a self-insert character – but it makes it very difficult to take him seriously. He cut a figure in this match several times more goofy than any of the other participants, and that includes Sami Zayn, who’s managed to balance comedic moments with serious emotional stakes pretty well during this whole storyline.

As it panned out, it would be Sami who took the pin, which may have ramifications for him down the line; in terms of long term plans, it keeps Kevin Owens a thorn in the side of the Bloodline, whilst Cena’s not likely to come back unless and until a WrestleMania feud is set up for him. (Rumour has it he’s going to be having a match against Logan Paul, which should be a good use of both of them.)