Week In Wrestling: Wrapping Up

So as you may have noticed, I’ve dropped off the routine of doing my weekly wrestling roundups. I actually did write one for the 5th April episode of Dynamite, but it was pretty perfunctory, and I contemplated shifting this series to a fortnightly routine to make each instalment more meaty, but when it came time to watch this week’s Dynamite I found I couldn’t be bothered.

You’ve probably seen this coming – I’ve been scaling back my wrestling viewing for a bit – but I thought I’d post a quick article to discuss why this has happened.

1: Waning enthusiasm on my part. It’s only natural for this to be the case; if you’ve seen my other blogs you know that I’m not a one-trick pony and you’d expect my various interests to compete for time.

It’s not that I suddenly hate wrestling – in fact, I’m quite excited for AEW to be running All In at Wembley, and I am mulling over doing WWE’s Money In the Bank show in London (and the SmackDown the evening before it) as well, though I may have missed the boat on that one and if Vince continues his steady return to prominence in WWE I may give it a pass. It’s more that I’m at a point where I would probably enjoy more if I watched less of it – restricting myself to catching up on news and editing highlights and then watching major shows when they happen. I might find I end up dipping back into indies a bit more often that way, come to think of it.

Both WWE and AEW do a good job of making video packages for PPVs which showcase the most exciting moments of the build to a match anyway, so there’s not much need to sit through the weekly TV’s filler when the video packages are all-killer. There’s an old bit of wrestling wisdom about the danger of wrestlers becoming overexposed and fan interest in them waning – “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” – which somewhat dates from the territory days, when a wrestler could “go away” but still actively work by simply moving from territory to territory, but is still kind of true these days.

However, ratings competition being what it is, it seems like there’s little chance of the major stars of any major promotion deliberately going away for significant periods any time soon, but there is something I can do as a fan to make all the performers seem more special – turn that bit of wisdom on its head and ask “How can I miss you if I won’t go away?” By scaling back my weekly consumption, it will probably make the wrestling I do watch seem more special.

2: Both major companies being in a bit of a fallow patch. Another bit of old wrestling wisdom is that no company stays hot forever – everyone goes through their creative peaks and troughs, as bookers get themselves into ruts and start repeating themselves and rosters become played out due to every combination of match eventually being tried. Both WWE and AEW seem to be going through cooler patches at the moment, but there are particular reasons this time around to expect these patches to be especially cool.

On the AEW side of things, it’s no secret that there are intensive negotiations happening around the return of CM Punk. It’s understandable why; for better or worse, the “Brawl Out” scandal was the biggest AEW story of last year, and quite possibly the second biggest story in wrestling, with only Vince McMahon’s temporary ousting from WWE competing with it. Of course, it was a shoot, not a planned angle, and it caused tremendous backstage fallout and grief – but if Punk’s return could be negotiated, there’s no question that it would be a massive draw, and with All In needing to fill Wembley Stadium and a Chicago show planned hot on the heels of that, that’d be a great time to do it.

The problem is that whilst this negotiation happens, Tony Khan is essentially going to have to keep two booking plans in his head – one for if Punk is available, one for if Punk doesn’t come back. In fact, he might need to juggle three – because whilst some in the company (notably, and publicly, FTR) are advocating for a match of Punk and FTR vs. the Elite, rumour has it that the Elite don’t want to work with Punk, so there’d need to be a plan for if that can be overcome and a plan for if it can’t.

Punk vs. the Elite is, obviously, the big money match – because it was that backstage punch-up with the Elite which prompted Punk’s exit in the first place. That said, it’s understandable that the Elite have reservations, since what seems to have happened after All Out was that the Elite showed up with AEW’s head legal counsel to hand (which isn’t something you do if you are about to assault a guy) but Punk felt threatened and threw the first punch anyway. Given such circumstances, it makes total sense to be hesitant about working with the man, especially in a context where you need to trust everyone in the ring to look out for your safety.

AEW booking has felt like it’s in a little bit of a holding pattern lately, and it may well be because of this – because unless and until this whole thing is resolved, the entire direction of the booking is in potential flux. In addition, Tony Khan’s attention has been split between AEW and Ring of Honor, what with their weekly show starting up, and many of the ROH storylines which had previously been advanced via AEW television time have been shifted over to that show – leaving a vacuum which is still in the process of being filled.

AEW will need to get their booking tightened up one way or the other by All In; if they don’t, they are in big trouble. Tony Khan has a 90,000 seat stadium to fill, and it will be deeply embarrassing if he falls far short of that target; it needs to be a big show, as big a deal as the original All In was, and if the booking is in a mess by the time we get there it’s going to struggle to be that.

On the WWE side of things, Vince’s heavy-handed return to the head of Creative for the RAW after Wrestlemania has shot the bottom out of locker room morale and fan confidence alike. Sure, since then Triple H seems to have being handling things, but the message has been sent: if Vince is in town and he feels like it, he can just take charge and do whatever he likes. The main reason I stopped watching NXT was because I got sick of getting invested in wrestlers there only for Vince to ruin them when they got to the main roster; if anything this is worse, because I feel like I won’t be able to get invested in anything on the main roster because at any moment Vince might come back for another one-off stint at Gorilla and wreck everything again – or push his way back in permanently. Moreover, Vince will have more formal authority than Triple H does in the new merged entity that WWE and UFC intend to form thanks to this deal with Endeavor – giving him further influence.

The Endeavor deal still might fall through – it’s possible some manner of legal challenge or regulatory block may come up, after all – but it seems very likely to come to fruition, but that won’t happen until the end of the year, and it feels likely that WWE booking will fall into a holding pattern at least until that happens.

We’re used to seeing a bit of a slump in WWE post-Wrestlemania, of course, though the honeymoon period after Mania typically lasts a bit longer; it’s come in hard and suddenly this time. In principle, the fact that the TV rights deals for RAW and SmackDown are up for renewal should prompt WWE to try and really drive up the quality of their booking, because under ordinary circumstances they would want to seem like a hot prospect in order to get the best possible deal. In practice, the hype around the UFC deal and curiosity about it may end up getting eyeballs on the product anyway – and may convince any potential television partner that they’ll want to secure those rights regardless.

As for other, smaller promotions with weekly TV, I just don’t know. Impact seem to be on an upward trajectory in terms of audience size, and I do think they have the best women’s division in the business, but the shaky production values on major shows keep bugging me. ROH is, whilst distinct from AEW, sufficiently close that it feels like yet another AEW B-show. NWA under Billy Corgan has become increasingly unpleasant, culminating with putting the world championship on Tyrus. MLW hired Enzo Amore, for crying out loud.

There’s other promotions out there, of course – but many of them don’t have weekly TV, and don’t seem to need it. Perhaps it’s time I shifted gears to keeping an eye on those instead. Whatever I end up doing, I’ll probably blog about it here.

Week In Wrestling: 27th March to 2nd April 2023

It’s week 40 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!

AEW Dynamite (29th March)

This kicked off with Jungle Boy vs. Matt Hardy, with All Ego Ethan Page trying to cheat on behalf of Matt and HOOK coming out to even things up. This led to a spot where Ethan swung at HOOK, missed, and hit Matt by mistake, setting up a win for Jungle Boy. With Darby Allin and Sammy Guevara shown watching backstage (in separate areas), it was pretty evident that the main story here was about the competition between Darby, Sammy, and Jungle Boy to be the next challenger for MJF’s world championship.

It was fitting, then, that MJF came out after Jungle Boy’s win to cut a promo on him in the ring. MJF was good as he always is, but I tuned out during this segment; ultimately, that segment with all four Pillars facing each other down in the ring two weeks ago demonstrated Jungle Boy is the weakest promo out of all of them, so having him go toe to toe on the mic with MJF had him hopelessly outclassed. The segment ended with a bit of physicality before MJF escaped, which was necessary because otherwise Jungle Boy would have been left entirely humiliated and diminished by the exchange.

Week In Wrestling: 20th to 26th March 2023

It’s week 39 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!

AEW Dynamite (22nd March)

The opening match was Sting, Darby Allin, and Orange Cassidy vs. the Butcher, the Blade, and Kip Sabian. This seemed to be a bit random until we were told this arose from action which took place at AEW’s house shows, which they have just started running regularly – and with other such callbacks to the house shows seeded throughout the night, the message here seemed to be that unlike in WWE, AEW house shows are canon, which is an interesting departure. Sting got the pin here, whilst Darby spent the post-match gazing lovingly at the Double Or Nothing banner, pining for his title shot at MJF.

Speaking of championship matches, Top Flight challenged for the Ass Boy’s tag team championship and fell short, so AEW could come out, get in the Ass Boys faces, and set up a match – either FTW get the belts off the Gunn brothers, or they leave AEW for good. This nicely plays with the speculation around whether FTW intend to sign new contracts or explore other horizons, so we’ll see how this goes – but wouldn’t this be that much better if they were facing an actual credible heel team?

Week In Wrestling: 13th to 19th March 2023

It’s week 38 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!

AEW Dynamite (15th March)

We opened with MJF celebrating his birthday and his defeat of Bryan Danielson with a “Re-Bar Mitzvah” – the idea being that by winning the Iron Man match, he’s now not only a man, but an Iron Man. The festivities were interrupted by Jack Perry, so I guess Perry’s an antisemite now. Jack got the microphone, but was interrupted by Sammy Guevara – but then when Sammy was about to speak, Darby Allin came out to perhaps the biggest face pop of the lot.

This left us with a ring full of four AEW originals who’ve been there from the start, one of them the world champion, the other three seeking a title match. This felt like an exercise in demonstrating that AEW can, in fact, make new stars, and in some respects it worked on that level – though equally, I am not 100% convinced that these guys wouldn’t have been just as ready for this segment a year ago. I am also not sure anyone who’s come into AEW subsequent to these guys who didn’t already have substantial star power (like Moxley) has really attained the same level – so are AEW really good at making new stars in the present day, or are they reliant on the new stars they made in their first year or two?

Week In Wrestling: 6th to 12th March 2023

It’s week 37 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!

AEW Dynamite (8th March)

Excalibur opened the show by mentioning it was International Women’s Day, which presumably means we’re getting a special focus on the women’s division tonight… Right? Well, let’s see how that pans out.

First up was Orange Cassidy vs. Jay Lethal for Cassidy’s All-Atlantic Championship, with the referee corps coming out to prevent Jay’s allies from coming out to ringside. This had much less of Orange’s usual comedy schtick than we are used to seeing, the story of the match being that the combination of a hurt left knee and Jay’s technical ability meant Cassidy could not afford to slack off on this one. Eventually, Cassidy wore Jay down to the point where his left shoulder gave out on him during an attempted Lethal Injection, giving Cassidy the chance to get in an Orange Punch, get the pin, and retain the title.

Post-match, Cassidy was attacked by Jeff Jarrett, who busted his guitar over Cassidy’s dodgy knee; later in the show Tony Khan announced that Jeff Jarrett would challenge Cassidy for the belt next week, and then somewhat incoherently talked about “levelling up” the championship, which I think entails retitling it the International Championship instead of the All-Atlantic one. All this is in service of a tie-in with the new Shazam! movie, which may explain some of the incoherence, but even so this was a bit of a muddled announcement and just highlights why Tony doesn’t make for a good onscreen host.

Week In Wrestling: 27th February to 5th March 2023

It’s week 36 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week! I didn’t watch any of the weekly shows this week, largely because both AEW and WWE had sold me on their next PPVs, but had simultaneously been doing a lot of stuff on their TV which had been irritating me, so I didn’t want to get demoralised by nonsense filler with no PPV implications. I did, however, watch Revolution, AEW’s next milestone PPV.

AEW Revolution (5th March)

The Zero Hour preshow included a trios match of Mark Briscoe and the Lucha Bros. against the Varsity Athletes (Josh Woods and Tony Nese) and Ari Daivari, all managed by Mark Sterling. The latter are jobbers being given a nice PPV evening paycheque; the former are solid talents who weren’t in the shuffle for the main card but for one reason or another kind of deserve to appear, the Lucha Bros. because they are pillars of what I feel is a depleted tag team division, Mark Briscoe because he deserves all the spotlight he can get given his recent bereavement (and the grand job he’s done of soldiering on through his work). Briscoe and the Lucha Bros. got the win, because of course they did.

The PPV proper opened with Chris Jericho vs. Ricky Starks, with the Jericho Appreciation Society banned from ringside. Ricky entered taped up and selling the war wounds of his feud with the JAS, and the story of the match was that Jericho was using his superior strength to give Starks an absolute beating, but with Ricky’s superior stamina and speed eventually giving him the advantage as the match went on.

Week In Wrestling: 20th to 26th February 2023

It’s week 35 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week! Didn’t actually watch much this time around, but I did catch Dynamite.

AEW Dynamite (22nd February)

I skipped the opening match of this because it was another zero-build Orange Cassidy title defence for the All-Atlantic Championship, and I’m kind of cool on Orange Cassidy these days. I don’t dislike him, but also I feel like I’ve seen all I am going to see from him and one more match won’t offer any great revelations.

Things perked up with Ricky Starks coming out to the ring to cut a promo. He addressed all of Jericho’s chicanery he’s done to avoid a rematch with Starks, and declared that he was fine to move on from it. He also had an open contract for anyone who wanted to come get a match with him at Revolution, and lo and behold Jericho came out, mocked Starks for not being on his level, and made like he was about to leave.

Week In Wrestling: 13th to 19th February 2023

It’s week 34 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!

AEW Dynamite (15th February)

We opened this week with an 8-man tag match, with Orange Cassidy, Daddy Ass, and the Acclaimed facing off against Satnam Singh, Sonjay Dutt, Jay Lethal, and Jeff Jarrett. Naturally, the match landed differently due to the death this week of Jerry Jarrett, but Jeff is apparently the sort of guy who deals with grief by diving into his work and he was up to his usual heel tricks this time.

Eventually the Ass Boys showed up at the top of the ramp to taunt the Acclaimed about losing the tag titles last week. It didn’t work, and Sonjay Dutt ate the pin and the Acclaimed got the win. It looks like the trajectory here is the Acclaimed getting their rematch at the PPV, and I guess while it will be enjoyable to see the Ass Boys get theirs, it still feels like not so long ago there were plenty of tag teams more deserving of PPV time in AEW.

The announcement later in the show that the world tag team championship match at Revolution will be a four-way helps somewhat, that said, though it does mean that the Ass Boys’ first big defence is already going to entail a bunch of extra star power to boost it, which just comes across as Tony Khan realising that the Gunns aren’t big enough draws for the match sufficiently by themselves.

Week In Wrestling: 6th to 12th February 2023

It’s week 33 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!

WWE RAW (6th February)

Edge and Beth Phoenix came out to open the show and address their business with the Judgment Day. Whilst Beth stood in the background looking jacked, Edge took the lead on the mic and put his opponents over by taking the tack that he did his job too well – he’d founded the Judgment Day to elevate the talent he’d hand-picked for it, and they were now all in a better place for it. (Mami got a particularly good pop when he mentioned her Royal Rumble win.)

As Edge came to a boil, Beth challenged Finn and Rhea Ripley to come out – but instead Finn came out flanked by Priest and Dominik, with Mami nowhere to be seen. Dominik got incredible heel heat with his fake tough guy act, and perhaps that was the point of holding Rhea back – people love Mami too much, so if the Day need to be booed in a segment you hold her back and you send out prison badass Dom.

All of this was in service of setting up Finn and Rhea vs. Edge and Beth at Elimination Chamber, a match which clearly Rhea isn’t going to take the pin in because she needs to be kept strong for Wrestlemania – but since Finn could get pinned without making Rhea look bad the match can go either way, so that’s intriguing.

The segment ended with the Judgment Day planning to beat down Edge and Beth so that they didn’t even make it to Elimination Chamber. The Street Profits ran in to make the save, leading in to the singles match of Priest vs. Dawkins with a spot in the Elimination Chamber match for the US title on the line. Priest won, leaving Dawkins’ fellow Street Profit to face Montez Ford to face Elias for the last spot in the Chamber.

Ford was more successful (nobody would believe Elias could win the US championship from his current spot on the card), so that’s your men’s Chamber rounded out. Austin Theory was at ringside to do commentary during the Ford vs. Elias match, and then got obliterated by an ambush from Seth Rollins, just to remind us that there’s only two or three people who play major roles in the US championship scene these days and those are Theory, Rollins, and Bobby Lashley (though Bobby now seems to be pivoting away from it).

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As for the women’s Chamber match – the prize being a shot at Bianca Belair’s RAW Women’s Championship – we had a four-way contest for a spot between Candice LeRae, Michin, Carmella, and Piper Niven. Prior to the match, we had an odd segment with LeRae, Gargano, and Dexter Lumis, in which Dexter revealed that Nikki Cross has been spying on Mr. and Mrs. Wrestling for some reason. Michin and LeRae had some moments of co-operation within a match which was in principle all against all, though at least in context it somewhat made sense (they were specifically collaborating to take down Piper Niven, and commentary put over the idea that if you don’t put Niven down, you can’t get the pin on anyone else). Eventually it would be Carmella who got the win, in a result nobody watching other than Corey Graves seemed enthusiastic for.

The mid-show slump came early this time, with the second match on the card being Baron Corbin vs. Dexter Lumis. I think Lumis won – I took the time to take the recycling out so I didn’t watch. Later on, we had a spot where JBL declared he was done trying to “polish a turd” and washed his hands of Corbin, so I guess he’s going to get yet another repackaging. I’d say I hope this time’s the charm, but he’s had so many chances I don’t see how it can be.

Things perked up with Brock Lesnar coming out, mulling over his Royal Rumble elimination at the hands of Bobby Lashley, and to offer a contract for Lesnar vs. Lashley at Elimination Chamber. That brought out Lashley to recap their history, take the contract, but not sign it immediately – he’s going to “take it under consideration”. This naturally led to Brock losing his temper and giving Bobby an F5 or two for his troubles, to the delight of the crowd, so that’s a hoss fight we’re likely to get down the line. (I would not be shocked if it ended up being delayed to Wrestlemania, that said.) In potentially related events, Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin faced off against Alpha Academy, with MVP showing up in Alexander and Benjamin’s corner – so the teased Hurt Business reunion may be officially on.

Chelsea Green came back at the Royal Rumble, but since then has just appeared in backstage segments harassing Adam Pearce and being a “Karen”. She got a match tonight, though, after berating Pearce for one, so he sicced Asuka on her, who got the win in part due to outclassing Green, in part because Green got distracted by Asuka’s various Elimination Chamber opponents appearing at ringside to taunt Green, and then get a promo cut on them by Bianca Belair.

Naturally, we had a bit of Cody Rhodes business to continue his build to his match with Roman Reigns bit. This time he came out, started in on a promo along the lines of last week’s, and then Paul Heyman came out. They had a bit of a moment in the ring, Paul congratulated Cody on his Royal Rumble win, and Cody offered an account of his personal interactions with Heyman, including an anecdote about how Heyman offering Dusty Rhodes a stint on ECW helped rebuild Dusty’s confidence in a dark time in his career and for his family, and Heyman sold being emotionally moved by all that before bringing the subject back to his boss – the Tribal Chief, Roman Reigns.

Heyman then built up some steam talking about how Dusty Rhodes trained and prepped a swathe of new talent at NXT – including, most particularly, Roman Reigns himself, and highlighted how Cody didn’t go through the NXT system and so wasn’t trained and prepared for the spotlight by Dusty. This culminated with him telling Cody that he was Dusty’s favourite son… but Roman Reigns was the son he always wanted. Cody moved in to get in Paul’s face, and warned Paul that he hadn’t wanted to make this personal… but now Paul had, but Paul wasn’t going to pay for it – Roman would. Great interaction all round, and whilst it did have that somewhat over-polished, over-calculated air of a lot of Cody’s stuff, Heyman did a lot to make it seem if not natural, then at least narratively satisfying.

The main event was the much-delayed cage match between Bayley and Becky Lynch. Time was when this would have been a major PPV draw, but neither of the Horsewomen have a clear trajectory for Elimination Chamber – or, for that matter, Wrestlemania, and a definitive finish here would seem to draw a line under their feud. As it turned out, Damage CTRL attempted to intervene to help Becky, which led Lita to emerge to stop them – so whilst Becky won, I’m sure Bayley will find a way to turn Lita’s presence into cause for a rematch. Will we see more of Lita? Maybe, maybe not; though it would be weird to pull her out like this and then not do anything with it, this was originally planned for the nostalgia episode for RAW‘s 30th anniversary so it’s possible this was the originally planned finish of the match.

AEW Dynamite: Championship Fight Night (8th February)

This is one of those special-branding episodes of Dynamite AEW like to do – this time the schtick is that most of the matches have significant championship implications. First up was an “eliminator” match between Takeshita and MJF – if Takeshita won, he’d get a crack at MJF’s world championship, if he lost he goes to the back of the queue. Obviously, MJF vs. Bryan Danielson is the money match for the next PPV, so Takeshita clearly isn’t going to get the title – but the possibility he might get a title shot spiced up this match (because he could win this and then lose his shot). The purpose of this match seemed to be to give MJF a bit of a chance to get practice in before his PPV match with Bryan, which people will have high technical expectations of; on the strength of some of the reversals MJF pulled off, I’d say he’s ready.

Naturally, MJF won in a heelish manner, and bashed his head open for good measure, which prompted Bryan Danielson to come out to make the save. Danielson had his own match this episode against Rush – which, if he won, would secure his championship match with MJF at the PPV in a one-hour Iron Man match. Before Danielson came out to face Rush, however, MJF came out selling a limp to treat us to another promo (having already given a backstage response to his win over Takeshita), in which he claimed that Bryan Danielson wasn’t going to come out so demanded that Aubrey ring the bell and do a ten-count so that Bryan could be counted out and Rush get the win.

It turned out that his goons had trapped Danielson in the trainers’ room – forcing him to bust his way out (aggravating his banged-up shoulder in the process) and then sprint to the ring to beat the count. We then had the treat of the Rush vs. Danielson match with MJF losing his temper on commentary, lashing out at Aubrey Edwards for not counting fast enough and griping with the regular commentary team. When Danielson pulled out the win after a gruelling match, MJF came down to the ring to crack him on the head with the Dynamite Diamond Ring and split him open like he did Takeshita for good measure. Security came out to try and make the save when MJF put Danielson in the Salt of the Earth armlock and things went to break. All of this should set up a killer match at Revolution, and with several weeks of build before then we should have a fun ride to get there.

The Bunny got an eliminator match of her own against Jamie Hayter, hoping to secure a win and get a shot at Hayter’s Women’s World Championship, which she lost because the feud between Saraya and Toni Storm and Hayter and the other homegrown AEW talent is the story here. This was advanced by a backstage segment where Saraya and Toni spraypainted Leva Bates with an L for loser, NWO style.

We got some non-championship action in the form of the gauntlet match of Ricky Starks against three members of the JAS in sequence – with a match against Chris Jericho as the prize if he got through the gauntlet. Cool Hand Angelo was first; next up was Daddy Magic. The third was going to be either Sammy Guevara or Daniel Garcia – not sure why they wouldn’t just have him face both, but there you go. When I first heard the match announced last week, I didn’t realise the “Gauntlet” was an actual gauntlet match – I thought it was going to be successive matches on different weeks, so either they didn’t communicate that well or plans changed.

Either way, Cool Hand was dealt with fairly quickly, then Daddy Magic got dispensed of even faster. Garcia came out to his music, only for Sammy Guevara’s music to play when Danny was halfway down the ramp. Garcia showed every sign of being annoyed by this, but rolled with it, and soon the plot became apparent – they were going to keep it ambiguous which of them was actually entering the match right to the end, with Sammy’s fakeout giving Garcia a chance to ambush Starks and get an upper hand. Eventually, a “masked fan” at ringside – who turned out to be a disguised Jericho – got a crack in at Starks, giving Garcia the win. Not sure where this feud goes from here, it feels like it’s losing momentum when it should be gaining it.

The Elite defended their trios world championship against Top Flight and A.R. Fox, which the Elite won, so I guess… that’s it? It feels like Top Flight are constantly on the verge of getting some sort of significant push or breakthrough but whenever it’s about to happen they suddenly lose all momentum, and I don’t get why that is.

Main event was The Acclaimed defending their tag team championship the Gunn Club, with Daddy Ass swearing to stay out of it so the Acclaimed can deal with his dipshit sons without his intervention. This led up to a spot towards the end where the Gunns had the Acclaimed on the back foot and the referee down, and were about to indulge in some cheating, and Billy came out to remonstrate with them in the sort of spot which teased a potential Billy Gunn betrayal of the Acclaimed, but in which he turned out to be acting in their interests all along, and ended up getting smashed hard over the head by the championship belts. More shenanigans ensued, with the Gunns exploiting the groggy, concussed state of the referee to get a cheaty win and win the belts.

This felt terrible. There were lots of shots of aghast fans, and certainly I guess that’s the reaction they want as heels, but AEW was meant to be the home of high-quality tag team action in reaction to WWE treating their tag division as an afterthought and a joke, and now a very WWE-style tag team are champs and they seem to be cold as hell – the fans don’t like them, but they don’t enjoy booing them either it seems.

Week In Wrestling: 30th January to 5th February 2023

It’s week 32 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!

WWE RAW (30th January)

The RAW after a major PPV is usually a big deal, and this was no exception. We started with Cody Rhodes coming out to mark his Rumble win and address his coming bout against Roman Reigns. He got his promo out, then the gents of Judgment Day came out to shoot the shit with him, setting up a match between Finn Balor and Cody for later in the night. This was… fine. Cody is today’s white bread/vanilla ice cream babyface, so studiedly inoffensive that I find little which annoys me enough to tune out, but nothing which leaves me especially hooked. Edge showing up at the end to attack the Judgment Day was the most fun part of this segment.

As for that main event, it was the usual Judgment Day numbers game business, spiced up by the fact that Cody was on the receiving end and by Edge coming in through the crowd to attack Priest and Dominik towards the end. Rhea would beat down Edge after he got a nasty spear on Dom, prompting Beth Phoenix to emerge from the back and spear Ripley in turn (so I guess a Beth vs. Rhea match is the direction for Elimination Chamber), and with Edge acting as a distraction on the outside Finn wasn’t able to get a diving move on Cody off, took a string of Cross-Rhodes, and ate the pin.

Judgment Day’s other business, of course, revolved around Rhea Ripley’s win in the women’s Rumble. She decided to forego the ambiguity as to which title she’d go for, and declared her intent to go after Charlotte’s SmackDown women’s championship. This makes a lot of sense – Charlotte won the NXT women’s title off Rhea back in the extremely weird 2020 Wrestlemania that aired before no fans in the Performance Center bunker, this is a chance for Charlotte to do the job for Rhea and for Rhea to get Grand Slam status.

Of course, some may question whether Charlotte will do the job, or if WWE will ask her to put over Rhea in the first place, but I think that’s what makes this a good match – the direction is obvious, Rhea is a hotter commodity than Charlotte at the moment (she got a great pop for her entrance here), Charlotte gets to be appeased with a Wrestlemania main event spot even if she doesn’t win, and there’ll be ample scope for her to stay in the main event scene going forwards. The logic behind Rhea winning is so self-evident that it risks becoming too much of a foregone conclusion – so having her opponent be a perceived company favourite like Charlotte, who fans feel gets too many wins she doesn’t entirely deserve, is a good way to keep things nail-biting.

Of course, if Mami goes to SmackDown, that likely changes my schedule, because my weekly dose of Rhea is the only bit of WWE television I consider must-see on a consistent week-to-week basis.