So... Raw happened.
It started with a backstage brawl between Bobby Lashley and Seth Rollins, and quickly transitioned into John Cena coming out and cutting a promo about entering the Royal Rumble. Then he was interrupted by Drew McIntyre who wanted to stake his claim by beating Cena, but then Drew interrupted by Lio Rush and Lashley, where Lio said that if something wasn't done about Rollins, they were going to sue someone. Then Rollins came out again to continue beating on Lashley, and then Dean Ambrose came out to beat on Seth, and then Drew got in on the beating and then Cena came out to help Seth, but the tide turned when Finn Balor came out to back up the babyfaces. This naturally led to the opening 6-man tag match between the heels and babyfaces. It looked like Finn was about to win it when he hit the Coup de Grace on Ambrose, but Drew came in with a brutal Claymore that eventually led to everyone hitting signature moves and Seth hitting the Stomp on Dean for the pin and win. It was a somewhat solid match, but the beginning was too chaotic and overstuffed, and would have benefited greatly by being about 15 minutes shorter, and its only purpose was that it got Seth his IC title rematch with a Falls Count Anywhere stipulation that would be the main event.
And then we had the segment that turned the whole show around and dragged it into the ground for everything that followed.
When I heard that this week's episode of Raw was going to have a tribute to the passing of the great "Mean" Gene Okerlund and that it was going to be anchored by Hulk Hogan, I was extremely upset. First and foremost, Hulk Hogan is an unapologetic racist. It wasn't made any better by Vince's sudden urge to use Hogan's reappearance to hawk his merch earlier today. Now, I remember Mean Gene from when I was a kid, and it was a moving tribute, but it was book-ended by Hogan, ultimately cutting an in-character promo about all the deceased wrestlers from that era all partying up in Heaven. It felt very disingenuous and it only felt like an excuse to bring Hogan out on national television, but still without an apology and it felt like it was more about Hogan than Gene, and that really sucked.
Then there was a Lumberjack match for the Tag titles between The Revival and Roode and Gable. It again ended with another schmozz where Dawson had his foot on the rope but the ref was out of position and Roode and Gable retained. I get they're looking to extend this rivalry through the Rumble where we'll get what I'm guessing will be a title change, but Roode and Gable looked far too dominant through this whole match. It just fell really flat for me, so I'm just not really feeling this whole rivalry right now, and it's odd that the weak links here are Roode and Gable. They don't seem natural together, and they don't have the level of chemistry they need to get over, whereas The Revival are a strong and extremely fluid heel tag team.
And then it was Elias cutting typically fun promo on Baron Corbin, and then Corbin came out to have their match. Now, here's the thing that confuses me: Corbin is no longer an Authority figure on Raw, but he keeps coming out dressed as a maitre'd at your neighborhood Applebees? The one thing that I do respect about both Elias and Corbin is that they remain fully committed to their characters, and while I might prefer Elias as a heel, at least he's doing good work as a face too. So Corbin took advantage of a near ref-bump and got Elias with the End of Days for the win. This is a decent midcard feud that they can stretch out through the Rumble, but they'd be pushing it if they did it longer.
And then we got the Strowman/Lesnar face-to-face that we've been... well, that we were told we were getting, and surprise, nothing happened. Strowman properly hyped up their Rumble match for the Universal Title, and then Heyman was with Lesnar backstage, doing his part. There was name-calling and Lesnar came out, and you could almost see the adding machine in his head doing the math for his appearance on the show. "Only a few thousand bucks for this? I'm not actually going to do anything for that paltry sum." And Lesnar walked away from the ring. God-fucking-dammit, I am so ready for Lesnar to go do literally anything else. He could be undefeated in UFC for the next 30 years and I wouldn't care; I just want him away from WWE. And poor Braun. He deserves better than this shit. If he eats the pin again at the Rumble, I just won't have any faith at all that they'll be looking to take the title off Lesnar until Reigns is healthy again, and we have no idea when that will be, or quite frankly, if that will be. Leukemia is no fucking joke, and I think that we all have to face up to the fact that he might not be back.
Now I have to talk about Dean Ambrose for a moment. As I've stated in previous columns, I don't think he looks comfortable at all in his heel role, but tonight, thanks to a backstage promo, we got a little of what's going on in his head. He said something about not liking the fact that he's doing this to Seth, and that's the only real solid character moment he's had as a heel other than coming out with his gas-masked acolytes. Of course he had to ditch those guys when Seth came out disguised as one of them, but that made him at least seem badass. I'm still not down with it (and what the fuck was up with the chain wallet, or whatever that was on his gear tonight?) but at least I think I have a clearer understanding of what his character is supposed to be.
Moving on, we got a mixed tag match with Mahalicia v Apollo Crews and Ember Moon. This was a very very quick match, and Foxy sold getting hit with the Eclipse like a fucking champ. If this is what it takes to make Apollo seem legit, I'm all for it. He's really an incredible athlete and a natural babyface, but he's really lacking in charisma, but I think if they continue to showcase his athleticism and maybe give him some longer matches, he might start to get over. And I don't know what the hell Creative was thinking when they started out with Jinder and Alicia berating the crowd. That was just stupid.
Then we got another segment that I was dreading, and that was the "A Moment of Bliss" segment where Alexa was given her own Miz TV-esque bit where she was going to interview Ronda. I was happy that it would give her something to do, but I've seen Alexa run segments into the ground before, particularly with her "This is Your Life" garbage she did with Bayley. And it started off a little cringey with her screaming for her cup of coffee to be delivered to her out on stage, but once Rousey came out, things started to coalesce, but also started to get weirder. Ronda ran down Charlotte and Becky for a bit and decided to put over Sasha as the real Cinderella story of WWE, which was not surprising since she's stated a few times already that she wanted to face off against Sasha. But then Nia came out to interrupt declaring that she should be facing Ronda again, but The Boss came in and shut that shit down and said that she would have a match with Nia to determine who was going to face Ronda at the Rumble for the Raw Women's title.
So that match began almost immediately and of course, Tamina was in Nia's corner and Bayley was in Sasha's corner. Nia and Sasha have faced off before, and there were spots in this match where I honestly thought one or the other had been hurt. Nia brought Sasha down off the turnbuckle and hung Sasha's throat over the middle rope, and then later, Sasha did a 'rana on Nia off the apron, and it looked like both of them might have been hurt. The winner of this wasn't in doubt, but I liked the ever-escalating desperation of both competitors, until Sasha locked in the Bank Statement for a second time, forcing the submission win. Ronda and Sasha at the Rumble for the title should be really fun to watch, and I'm looking forward to that, and this doesn't necessarily wave off the Boss 'N Hug Connection, but it does beg the question as to when they're actually looking to premiere the Women's tag division.
And then onto the main event where Seth couldn't wait to get his hands on Dean, so we got another blindsided attack from him. And Seth had his foot on the gas from the opening, pummeling Dean into the backstage area and almost ramming him in the head Terminator 2 style with some scaffolding. Dean finally started getting some shots in, but Seth seemed to really have his number throughout, and he had a great spot where he does his scurry up the turnbuckle to grab for the superplex which he hits solidly, and instead of transitioning into the Falcon Arrow, he transitioned into a Buckle Bomb, and from there, it seemed to be all Seth, but here's where some actual storytelling kicked in; after he hit the Stomp again on Dean, he was pulled off him before the ref could finish the count by Lashley, who proceeded to decimate him, because there's no DQ's. Eventually Dean crawled into the cover for the win and to retain. But at least they sold the story the show opened with, and that's more of the examples of Booking 101 that the main roster should be concentrating on.
Now it's Tuesday night, and it's time to talk about Smackdown!
The show kicked off with The New Daniel Bryan cutting a promo from the concession area and ripping into all the people eating unhealthy foods and the rampant consumerism as he got to the merch stand, all the while comparing all the waste and trash to A.J. Styles. It's just an absolute fucking delight to see our heel champ actually get to get angry at people about things he actually believes deeply in as a person. On his way into the arena, he continued to berate the crowd as he tore up A.J. signs and called people impotent. He got attacked by R-Truth once he got over the barricade and that led into the first match of the night. It's 2019 and Truth is fighting the WWE champion, proving he's more relevant now than he's been since likely a decent amount of time before I started watching. The match was brief as Truth got a few shots in, but Bryan is doing a fantastic job of selling how dangerous a smaller guy can actually be and eventually hit the running knee for the win. Of course, there was a post-match run-in by Styles which just continues to prove that their rematch at the Rumble will be pretty goddamn great.
Then came what could have easily been my favorite match of the night if it hadn't been for the main event, and that was Rey Mysterio tagging with Mustafa Ali vs Andrade Almas and Samoa Joe. What's making me so happy over the last several weeks is how WWE is really doing a great job of getting Ali over on the main roster and how they're also reintroducing Almas and Zelina Vega after underutilizing them for so long on the main roster. The booking for this match was great by setting up a David v Goliath scenario with Joe and Ali, as well as setting up another potentially fantastic rivalry between Almas and Mysterio. And Mysterio hit a Canadian Destroyer on Almas that has been gif-ed to hell on Twitter and deservedly so. Ultimately, Almas countered the 619 and hit the hammerlock DDT for the win, and it was much deserved. If they start a program between Almas and Mysterio, I'm all the way in for that.
Then we had Rusev cutting a sad promo about how Lana was hurt last week by Shinsuke, which cut to Shin in the TV control room showing that it was Rusev's Machka kick that caused him to fall backwards on Lana. So Rusev stormed backstage looking for Nakamura but of course it was all a trap as Shin laid Rusev the fuck out with a couple of knees to head and using the environment to his advantage. So far, the past few weeks have done more to make the US title relevant again than just about anything during Nakamura's relatively uneventful reign.
Then we had Miz and Shane backstage where Miz genuinely couldn't understand why Shane hadn't used his influence to book the two of them against The Bar for a future championship spot rather than the Usos. The look of seemingly genuine confusion on Miz's face as Shane explained that he wouldn't take shortcuts was a thing of beauty, and that's just one of the many reasons I love Miz. But that kicked off the match between The Bar and Jimmy and Jey. And it was a hell of a matchup. I'm kind of over The Bar, but give me the Usos just about any day of the week. But for unknown reasons, they felt they had to schmozz this up by having Mandy Rose come out in just a bath towel and distract Jimmy, asking if she left her gold shorts in his hotel, which led to a distraction win by The Bar as Sheamus knocked Jimmy off the apron and Cesaro hit Jey with the Gotch Neutralizer for the win. But then it got more interesting as Miz came out and invited The Bar to be the first to face the Greatest Tag Team in the World for the titles at the Rumble. Sheamus hit Miz with the Brogue Kick and said they accepted Miz's challenge. I'm still not sure if I'm going to enjoy Miz as a babyface, but we'll see how it all turns out. If I were to predict it now, I'd say that Miz ends up doing something shitty and we'll have Miz vs Shane at Mania. I loved the match until Mandy made her appearance, but Naomi jumped both Mandy and Sonya backstage, getting the best of them for a bit until the numbers game proved too much for her and Jimmy had to break it up. I don't know what Mandy Rose has to gain at this time by angering Naomi from a kayfabe standpoint, but it's giving Naomi something to do now that Asuka is on her own as the champ.
Then we had our main event where we got the much-anticipated triple threat between Carmella, Charlotte and Becky for the right to challenge Asuka at the Rumble for the SD Women's title. It was clear from the get-go that this was going to be special. One of my favorite spots in the match was when Carmella very fluidly transitioned into her Code of Silence submission on Charlotte; Mella is upping her game because she knew that Charlotte and Becky were going to steal the show, so she definitely left her mark on this match. There were just a bunch of great moments over all, like Charlotte hitting an avalanche Natural Selection on Becky that almost got her the win, and the forearm vs Flair chop bit had me smiling ear to ear. When all was said and done, though, Charlotte got dumped out of the ring by Mella, and a possum-playing Becky locked in The Dis-Arm-Her on Mella for the win and I was shocked... I couldn't believe that The Man won this match, because it may very well cost her a spot in the women's Rumble match, and that's the match that we were all positive that Becky should win so she can challenge Ronda at Mania. Although, that could very well still happen because Carmella has a guaranteed #30 entrance at the Rumble match anyway, so if I were to book it, I would have Mella's music hit but the camera cut to backstage and have an incensed Becky, after losing to Asuka (let's face it; they're not taking that belt off The Empress any time soon), taking Mella out and enter in her spot instead. It's been done before, and I think that this would be an opportune time to pull that trick back out. This is going to be a good time to build their rivalry over the next two episodes to somehow get them to a Falls Count Anywhere or a Street Fight or some kind of stipulation that would allow Ronda to get involved again and cost Becky the match, giving Becky that extra incentive to get into the Rumble by any means necessary.
I'm going to take a few moments to talk about All Elite Wrestling, because their big press conference happened earlier today and a few things were made clear; AEW definitely seems like it wants to be different and it wants to be better for the talent than other promotions, and that's a very good thing. They also got a huge get in Chris Jericho signing with them as well. Jericho doesn't have that many matches left in him, more than likely, and he probably wants to end his career with a promotion that wants to make positive change. But Kenny has yet to sign with them, and that still leaves the door open for him jumping into WWE. I don't think that's going to happen and I don't even honestly know if I want that to happen. But at the same time, Kenny making a shit-ton of money at WWE and becoming a massive superstar there would also be pretty cool. And if it's Kenny's intention to sign with AEW regardless, it's going to probably be later rather than sooner. There was also some hulabaloo online about people wearing AEW merch not being allowed into SD tonight, or being forced to wear WWE gear instead. I don't know if I altogether buy that, because there was a few people on hard camera side that were wearing Bullet Club and Young Bucks gear. It doesn't really pass the smell test for me.
Anyway, we'll talk more likely tomorrow as we get to NXT!
Until next time, kids...
It started with a backstage brawl between Bobby Lashley and Seth Rollins, and quickly transitioned into John Cena coming out and cutting a promo about entering the Royal Rumble. Then he was interrupted by Drew McIntyre who wanted to stake his claim by beating Cena, but then Drew interrupted by Lio Rush and Lashley, where Lio said that if something wasn't done about Rollins, they were going to sue someone. Then Rollins came out again to continue beating on Lashley, and then Dean Ambrose came out to beat on Seth, and then Drew got in on the beating and then Cena came out to help Seth, but the tide turned when Finn Balor came out to back up the babyfaces. This naturally led to the opening 6-man tag match between the heels and babyfaces. It looked like Finn was about to win it when he hit the Coup de Grace on Ambrose, but Drew came in with a brutal Claymore that eventually led to everyone hitting signature moves and Seth hitting the Stomp on Dean for the pin and win. It was a somewhat solid match, but the beginning was too chaotic and overstuffed, and would have benefited greatly by being about 15 minutes shorter, and its only purpose was that it got Seth his IC title rematch with a Falls Count Anywhere stipulation that would be the main event.
And then we had the segment that turned the whole show around and dragged it into the ground for everything that followed.
When I heard that this week's episode of Raw was going to have a tribute to the passing of the great "Mean" Gene Okerlund and that it was going to be anchored by Hulk Hogan, I was extremely upset. First and foremost, Hulk Hogan is an unapologetic racist. It wasn't made any better by Vince's sudden urge to use Hogan's reappearance to hawk his merch earlier today. Now, I remember Mean Gene from when I was a kid, and it was a moving tribute, but it was book-ended by Hogan, ultimately cutting an in-character promo about all the deceased wrestlers from that era all partying up in Heaven. It felt very disingenuous and it only felt like an excuse to bring Hogan out on national television, but still without an apology and it felt like it was more about Hogan than Gene, and that really sucked.
Then there was a Lumberjack match for the Tag titles between The Revival and Roode and Gable. It again ended with another schmozz where Dawson had his foot on the rope but the ref was out of position and Roode and Gable retained. I get they're looking to extend this rivalry through the Rumble where we'll get what I'm guessing will be a title change, but Roode and Gable looked far too dominant through this whole match. It just fell really flat for me, so I'm just not really feeling this whole rivalry right now, and it's odd that the weak links here are Roode and Gable. They don't seem natural together, and they don't have the level of chemistry they need to get over, whereas The Revival are a strong and extremely fluid heel tag team.
And then it was Elias cutting typically fun promo on Baron Corbin, and then Corbin came out to have their match. Now, here's the thing that confuses me: Corbin is no longer an Authority figure on Raw, but he keeps coming out dressed as a maitre'd at your neighborhood Applebees? The one thing that I do respect about both Elias and Corbin is that they remain fully committed to their characters, and while I might prefer Elias as a heel, at least he's doing good work as a face too. So Corbin took advantage of a near ref-bump and got Elias with the End of Days for the win. This is a decent midcard feud that they can stretch out through the Rumble, but they'd be pushing it if they did it longer.
And then we got the Strowman/Lesnar face-to-face that we've been... well, that we were told we were getting, and surprise, nothing happened. Strowman properly hyped up their Rumble match for the Universal Title, and then Heyman was with Lesnar backstage, doing his part. There was name-calling and Lesnar came out, and you could almost see the adding machine in his head doing the math for his appearance on the show. "Only a few thousand bucks for this? I'm not actually going to do anything for that paltry sum." And Lesnar walked away from the ring. God-fucking-dammit, I am so ready for Lesnar to go do literally anything else. He could be undefeated in UFC for the next 30 years and I wouldn't care; I just want him away from WWE. And poor Braun. He deserves better than this shit. If he eats the pin again at the Rumble, I just won't have any faith at all that they'll be looking to take the title off Lesnar until Reigns is healthy again, and we have no idea when that will be, or quite frankly, if that will be. Leukemia is no fucking joke, and I think that we all have to face up to the fact that he might not be back.
Now I have to talk about Dean Ambrose for a moment. As I've stated in previous columns, I don't think he looks comfortable at all in his heel role, but tonight, thanks to a backstage promo, we got a little of what's going on in his head. He said something about not liking the fact that he's doing this to Seth, and that's the only real solid character moment he's had as a heel other than coming out with his gas-masked acolytes. Of course he had to ditch those guys when Seth came out disguised as one of them, but that made him at least seem badass. I'm still not down with it (and what the fuck was up with the chain wallet, or whatever that was on his gear tonight?) but at least I think I have a clearer understanding of what his character is supposed to be.
Moving on, we got a mixed tag match with Mahalicia v Apollo Crews and Ember Moon. This was a very very quick match, and Foxy sold getting hit with the Eclipse like a fucking champ. If this is what it takes to make Apollo seem legit, I'm all for it. He's really an incredible athlete and a natural babyface, but he's really lacking in charisma, but I think if they continue to showcase his athleticism and maybe give him some longer matches, he might start to get over. And I don't know what the hell Creative was thinking when they started out with Jinder and Alicia berating the crowd. That was just stupid.
Then we got another segment that I was dreading, and that was the "A Moment of Bliss" segment where Alexa was given her own Miz TV-esque bit where she was going to interview Ronda. I was happy that it would give her something to do, but I've seen Alexa run segments into the ground before, particularly with her "This is Your Life" garbage she did with Bayley. And it started off a little cringey with her screaming for her cup of coffee to be delivered to her out on stage, but once Rousey came out, things started to coalesce, but also started to get weirder. Ronda ran down Charlotte and Becky for a bit and decided to put over Sasha as the real Cinderella story of WWE, which was not surprising since she's stated a few times already that she wanted to face off against Sasha. But then Nia came out to interrupt declaring that she should be facing Ronda again, but The Boss came in and shut that shit down and said that she would have a match with Nia to determine who was going to face Ronda at the Rumble for the Raw Women's title.
So that match began almost immediately and of course, Tamina was in Nia's corner and Bayley was in Sasha's corner. Nia and Sasha have faced off before, and there were spots in this match where I honestly thought one or the other had been hurt. Nia brought Sasha down off the turnbuckle and hung Sasha's throat over the middle rope, and then later, Sasha did a 'rana on Nia off the apron, and it looked like both of them might have been hurt. The winner of this wasn't in doubt, but I liked the ever-escalating desperation of both competitors, until Sasha locked in the Bank Statement for a second time, forcing the submission win. Ronda and Sasha at the Rumble for the title should be really fun to watch, and I'm looking forward to that, and this doesn't necessarily wave off the Boss 'N Hug Connection, but it does beg the question as to when they're actually looking to premiere the Women's tag division.
And then onto the main event where Seth couldn't wait to get his hands on Dean, so we got another blindsided attack from him. And Seth had his foot on the gas from the opening, pummeling Dean into the backstage area and almost ramming him in the head Terminator 2 style with some scaffolding. Dean finally started getting some shots in, but Seth seemed to really have his number throughout, and he had a great spot where he does his scurry up the turnbuckle to grab for the superplex which he hits solidly, and instead of transitioning into the Falcon Arrow, he transitioned into a Buckle Bomb, and from there, it seemed to be all Seth, but here's where some actual storytelling kicked in; after he hit the Stomp again on Dean, he was pulled off him before the ref could finish the count by Lashley, who proceeded to decimate him, because there's no DQ's. Eventually Dean crawled into the cover for the win and to retain. But at least they sold the story the show opened with, and that's more of the examples of Booking 101 that the main roster should be concentrating on.
Now it's Tuesday night, and it's time to talk about Smackdown!
The show kicked off with The New Daniel Bryan cutting a promo from the concession area and ripping into all the people eating unhealthy foods and the rampant consumerism as he got to the merch stand, all the while comparing all the waste and trash to A.J. Styles. It's just an absolute fucking delight to see our heel champ actually get to get angry at people about things he actually believes deeply in as a person. On his way into the arena, he continued to berate the crowd as he tore up A.J. signs and called people impotent. He got attacked by R-Truth once he got over the barricade and that led into the first match of the night. It's 2019 and Truth is fighting the WWE champion, proving he's more relevant now than he's been since likely a decent amount of time before I started watching. The match was brief as Truth got a few shots in, but Bryan is doing a fantastic job of selling how dangerous a smaller guy can actually be and eventually hit the running knee for the win. Of course, there was a post-match run-in by Styles which just continues to prove that their rematch at the Rumble will be pretty goddamn great.
Then came what could have easily been my favorite match of the night if it hadn't been for the main event, and that was Rey Mysterio tagging with Mustafa Ali vs Andrade Almas and Samoa Joe. What's making me so happy over the last several weeks is how WWE is really doing a great job of getting Ali over on the main roster and how they're also reintroducing Almas and Zelina Vega after underutilizing them for so long on the main roster. The booking for this match was great by setting up a David v Goliath scenario with Joe and Ali, as well as setting up another potentially fantastic rivalry between Almas and Mysterio. And Mysterio hit a Canadian Destroyer on Almas that has been gif-ed to hell on Twitter and deservedly so. Ultimately, Almas countered the 619 and hit the hammerlock DDT for the win, and it was much deserved. If they start a program between Almas and Mysterio, I'm all the way in for that.
Then we had Rusev cutting a sad promo about how Lana was hurt last week by Shinsuke, which cut to Shin in the TV control room showing that it was Rusev's Machka kick that caused him to fall backwards on Lana. So Rusev stormed backstage looking for Nakamura but of course it was all a trap as Shin laid Rusev the fuck out with a couple of knees to head and using the environment to his advantage. So far, the past few weeks have done more to make the US title relevant again than just about anything during Nakamura's relatively uneventful reign.
Then we had Miz and Shane backstage where Miz genuinely couldn't understand why Shane hadn't used his influence to book the two of them against The Bar for a future championship spot rather than the Usos. The look of seemingly genuine confusion on Miz's face as Shane explained that he wouldn't take shortcuts was a thing of beauty, and that's just one of the many reasons I love Miz. But that kicked off the match between The Bar and Jimmy and Jey. And it was a hell of a matchup. I'm kind of over The Bar, but give me the Usos just about any day of the week. But for unknown reasons, they felt they had to schmozz this up by having Mandy Rose come out in just a bath towel and distract Jimmy, asking if she left her gold shorts in his hotel, which led to a distraction win by The Bar as Sheamus knocked Jimmy off the apron and Cesaro hit Jey with the Gotch Neutralizer for the win. But then it got more interesting as Miz came out and invited The Bar to be the first to face the Greatest Tag Team in the World for the titles at the Rumble. Sheamus hit Miz with the Brogue Kick and said they accepted Miz's challenge. I'm still not sure if I'm going to enjoy Miz as a babyface, but we'll see how it all turns out. If I were to predict it now, I'd say that Miz ends up doing something shitty and we'll have Miz vs Shane at Mania. I loved the match until Mandy made her appearance, but Naomi jumped both Mandy and Sonya backstage, getting the best of them for a bit until the numbers game proved too much for her and Jimmy had to break it up. I don't know what Mandy Rose has to gain at this time by angering Naomi from a kayfabe standpoint, but it's giving Naomi something to do now that Asuka is on her own as the champ.
Then we had our main event where we got the much-anticipated triple threat between Carmella, Charlotte and Becky for the right to challenge Asuka at the Rumble for the SD Women's title. It was clear from the get-go that this was going to be special. One of my favorite spots in the match was when Carmella very fluidly transitioned into her Code of Silence submission on Charlotte; Mella is upping her game because she knew that Charlotte and Becky were going to steal the show, so she definitely left her mark on this match. There were just a bunch of great moments over all, like Charlotte hitting an avalanche Natural Selection on Becky that almost got her the win, and the forearm vs Flair chop bit had me smiling ear to ear. When all was said and done, though, Charlotte got dumped out of the ring by Mella, and a possum-playing Becky locked in The Dis-Arm-Her on Mella for the win and I was shocked... I couldn't believe that The Man won this match, because it may very well cost her a spot in the women's Rumble match, and that's the match that we were all positive that Becky should win so she can challenge Ronda at Mania. Although, that could very well still happen because Carmella has a guaranteed #30 entrance at the Rumble match anyway, so if I were to book it, I would have Mella's music hit but the camera cut to backstage and have an incensed Becky, after losing to Asuka (let's face it; they're not taking that belt off The Empress any time soon), taking Mella out and enter in her spot instead. It's been done before, and I think that this would be an opportune time to pull that trick back out. This is going to be a good time to build their rivalry over the next two episodes to somehow get them to a Falls Count Anywhere or a Street Fight or some kind of stipulation that would allow Ronda to get involved again and cost Becky the match, giving Becky that extra incentive to get into the Rumble by any means necessary.
I'm going to take a few moments to talk about All Elite Wrestling, because their big press conference happened earlier today and a few things were made clear; AEW definitely seems like it wants to be different and it wants to be better for the talent than other promotions, and that's a very good thing. They also got a huge get in Chris Jericho signing with them as well. Jericho doesn't have that many matches left in him, more than likely, and he probably wants to end his career with a promotion that wants to make positive change. But Kenny has yet to sign with them, and that still leaves the door open for him jumping into WWE. I don't think that's going to happen and I don't even honestly know if I want that to happen. But at the same time, Kenny making a shit-ton of money at WWE and becoming a massive superstar there would also be pretty cool. And if it's Kenny's intention to sign with AEW regardless, it's going to probably be later rather than sooner. There was also some hulabaloo online about people wearing AEW merch not being allowed into SD tonight, or being forced to wear WWE gear instead. I don't know if I altogether buy that, because there was a few people on hard camera side that were wearing Bullet Club and Young Bucks gear. It doesn't really pass the smell test for me.
Anyway, we'll talk more likely tomorrow as we get to NXT!
Until next time, kids...
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