Raw, NXT & Impact October 12th-14th 2015
I’m trying a new thing for Raw where I try to recall everything that happened nearly a week later. Sadly all I’m remembering is ‘Roman Reigns dying harder on live TV than R. Budd Dwyer.‘
So WWE and every other wrestling fan knows Chicago is one of those older-male-mostly-cunty wrestling towns. And WWE knows that there’s a certain section of WWE fans that aren’t taking to Reigns. So why oh why oh why they sent him out to speak in front of the unwashed masses like Andy Kaufman reading The Great Gatsby is a mystery not even Poirot could solve. Crowd booed, chanted boring and Reigns sounded discombobulated. Reigns still sounds forced on the mic, he doesn’t have natural charisma when talking but definitely had it when he wasn’t talking as part of The Shield. Granted, the Wyatt feud has been entertaining and is one of the only actual honest-to-God feuds on the main shows, but WWE fucked themselves by having Reigns pick Jericho to team up with (hey remember that? You’d better, WWE’s not mentioning it) to take on The Wyatts and then do this promo where he explained how important this feud has become. Why were you wasting time with teaming up with Jericho then? Ambrose doesn’t waste time teaming with part-timers or cutting a soliloquy, he goes and KICKS ASS. Incidentally, Ambrose is over as fuck.
Cena wrestled Ziggler in the Raw Big Match John match of the week. Nice we have a guaranteed good match every week, even if it’s the same Cena formula. I’m not complaining, Tanaka & Awesome had the same match every time too. Sucks that Ziggler & Cena would wrestle each other rather than do something about being beat the fuck up by The New Day last week. WWE may be the worst show for watching long-term. By that I mean ”two weeks or more.” Oh and a guy in the crowd proposed at the start of the match. Huh.
Rest of the show (aside from New Day, obviously) was a mess of forgettable shit. Including the WWE World Title Match and main event of Hell In A Cell.
NO WAIT I TELL A LIE. They aired a nice video package about the praise WWE received for Bayley vs. Banks on NXT…and then tried to insert it into the Divas Revolution. HAHAHAHAHA. NXT’s focused on making entertainment, WWE’s focused on patting their back over accomplishments and look insecure as fuck. LOOK WOMEN ARE AWESOME, ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHO SAID OUR WOMEN ARE SHITTY LOOK SILLY NOW, HUH? Then Naomi did her arse-jiggle corner move on Nikki.
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Takeover Respect gets recapped so I’ll recap it here to simulate the reading experience: Balor & Joe won the Dusty Classic, Asuka killed Brooke, Crews pinned Breeze and Bayley & Banks had their second Match Of The Year.
Bayley comes out to ”Match Of The Year” and ”Thank You” chants. Crowd fucking loves her.
Oh here’s Blake, Murphy & whatshername. She gives credit to Bayley for helping her raise the value of women in NXT…and then takes her belt.”People like you aren’t meant to be this”. Blake & Murphy stare her down but it’s hard to look menacing with hair like theirs.
Last week on WWE.com, Regal congratulated Balor & Joe for their Dusty Classic win. Still confused by that, like the NXT Champ and Samoa Joe Belushi need the rub, but it’s not the end of the world. Joe wants a title shot but Regal says there’s going to be a Number One Contender’s Battle Royal next week and Joe can win that if he wants. Joe seems pissed because he’s undefeated. They’re pretty much re-doing Joe’s original TNA run story and I have no issues with that. Hey if you’re going to steal, steal from the best.
Oh, right the battle royal is now because that was from last week. I must be getting old or really stupid. They do the old Royal Rumble ‘montage with guys who say how/why they’re going to win’ which is always welcome. Rhino talks while in a dark bit of the backstage, just like in ECW. Sadly he doesn’t threaten to rip off a guy’s face and make him eat it so he has to shit out his own face.
Tag Champs Vaudevillains take on Dawkins & Fulton. I don’t even remember Dawkins & Fulton. Gotch makes the hot tag and get a quick win.
Dawson & Dash laugh at the quick win and claim their win over the tag champions in a non-title match was more impressive and also makes them the number one contenders. Makes sense. But they have Enzo & Cass to deal with. Make your minds up lads.
WWE features EVOLVE on their site and there’s a wrestler called Evee. Who else knows more about evolution than Evee?
Nia Jax makes her debut and pins Evee easily. Crowd dug her and her unconventional shape.
Then a Battle Royal happened which was fun to watch but isn’t to read about. ”and then another guy got thrown out, and then another guy got thrown out” etc. Crews won, which was a nice surprise. Joe looked pissed. Well, more than usual.
Overall
The Divas Division is going places in NXT but the men are playing catch-up. Aside from Crews, Joe & Balor, everyone else is aimless. Then again, it’s the first show after a Network Special and chapter ones are always a bit muddled. I’ll be watching next (nxt) week anyway so who gives a fuck.
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I skipped Impact last week after Josh Matthews made the comment about Internet Nerds asking why Austin Aries was in the World Title Series after losing a career vs. name match to Spud. Belief-beggaring that they’d use the term ”internet nerds” in 2015 when every cunt alive’s on the internet. Nobody explained why Aries was allowed back in either, so they sure showed us.
So yeah, Matt Hardy won the TNA Title in the main event of TNA Bound For Glory then immediately vacated it via YouTube due to EC3’s not-properly-explained injunction against TNA. EC3’s injunction should get blamed for every unexplained storyline, like Superman Prime punching reality. So now there’s a massive title series with pretty much every wrestler (signed and er unsigned) in different groups wrestling each other for points to advance. I groaned loudly when they announced it (again, via YouTube) but it does make every match meaningful, something TNA was struggling with for ages. And it’s a great lazy answer too:
Why is Eric Young vs. Abyss happening?
IT’S THE WORLD TITLE SERIES, FUCKER.
Why’s Mahabali Shera wrestling Crazzy Steve?
IT’S THE WORLD TITLE SERIES, FUCKER.
Rinse, repeat.
They’ve got a new set (well, green screen) for Matthews and Dinero. They look like tiny people aboard the (sinking) alien spaceship The SS Impact. Whether or not this is better than the garden shed set they used before is debatable but at least it fits the rest of the show’s theme.
Every time a match happens they have pre-filmed thoughts from that group’s roundtable show up. Nice idea but for whatever reason the bigger video screen is given to the fucking interview. There’s a match on!
In fairness, there’s a large subsection of TNA viewers who don’t watch for the wrestling. Cough.
Kenny King pinned Aiden O’Shea. By the time you’ve read this he’ll be back in ROH. Jim Cornette likes him. Every time someone leaves TNA but they’ve got pre-taped matches, they should just have Grado come out dressed as them and then lose straight away.
We get post-match comments from the wrestlers (with a POST MATCH COMMENTS graphic on screen) and then a leaderboard reminds us of their points. I’m enjoying the ‘sports show’ feel they’re trying with this.
Storm vs. Roode headlines and they do a good job of recapping how good their feud was via the power of editing and instagram filters. Actually the majority of 2011 TNA footage was shot without white balancing so they don’t need it. Hey, forward thinking! Decent match, but in today’s climate it’s hard to overlook Storm possibly maybe apparently appearing on NXT soon. Although for once the guy who is staying with TNA actually wins.
So expect Roode to show up in EVOLVE next week.
Overall
If you ignore EC3’s injunction (so TNA pre-records the start of the World Title Series but doesn’t come up with a reason for it, so they have Matt Hardy win clean and then remove it due to ‘reasons’) and King & Storm getting wins despite being 50% gone, the World Title Series is actually alright. There’s a focus to the product, everybody’s getting time to shine and it means there’s no stupid reasons for people to wrestle. So for the mean time, I like it.
Until they run the Knockouts group and have the intergender match later on urghhhhhh.
