Once again, we come to that strange and uncomfortable time on the Road to Wrestlemania where we still have two PPV's before The Showcase of the Immortals, so we have to have equally strange and often uncomfortable go-home shows on both Raw and SD that often. And this time, it's for Elimination Chamber where there is really only one match with any real importance and that's the Women's Tag Team Championship chamber match. Plus, while on the Mania March, we also have the added bonus of either praying Vince and Creative to let things happen from a purely organic storytelling standpoint as far as building the big upcoming matches, or they can really force things into place like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
On Raw, we definitely got a lot of square pegs.
The show started with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon welcoming back Becky Lynch who went to see her doctors and not WWE medical staff, but WWE medical staff conferred with her doctors and they said that she will be cleared to compete at Mania against Ronda Rousey, and they apologized to her for being unnecessarily dickish on last week's episodes of Raw and Smackdown respectively, and that her suspension was hereby lifted... if Becky would, in turn, apologize to them. If she didn't, she was going to lose her match to Ronda at Mania, and she was given the rest of the night to decide whether or not she was going to suck it up or blow her big Mania moment. This is pretty par for the course as far as top stars as we get closer to Mania: they've overcome Authority Obstacle A only to have Authority Obstacle B put in their path. And this segment was handled particularly well as far as keeping your interest piqued in watching what is most likely going to be another standard sub-standard go-home until the end. Ironically, though, I was feeling that this segment would have been better served without Hunter and with only Steph, and that's not something I say lightly because there are rarely moments where I think "the less Triple H, the better", but that was the case here. The conflict should really only exist between Becky and Stephanie because Stephanie is the better heel Authority figure in this story. Either way, though, it was still a fun way to keep us guessing on how The Man was going to respond. But before Becky was even out of the ring, Sasha's music hit which was initially confusing, because it seemed like she might come out to speak on her fellow Horsewoman's behalf, but it was just the bizarre segue into the next match...
...and that match was the three teams from Raw that would be competing in the Women's Tag Championship match battling each other to determine who was going to be the first team out in the Elimination Chamber match, so it was Boss 'N Hug vs The Riott Squad vs Nia Jax and Tamina. The Boss got hurt early in the match, leaving Bayley alone to fend off her attackers, and the match was all about getting Bayley over enough to be convincingly badass but not over enough to win it all by herself, because she was eventually overpowered by The Irresistible Force who hit the Samoan Drop on The Hugger to pick up the win, so Boss 'N Hug will be the first in the Chamber from Raw, and the same thing will happen tomorrow night on Smackdown, so as goes Raw... you know. I wasn't overly impressed with this match because I don't know exactly what kind of angle they're working with Sasha, but I'm always pleased when we see Bayley get some time to show how good she really is. Of all the Horsewomen, I've always felt she was the most underrated in the ring.
Then for some ungodly reason, we had Elias being constantly interrupted by either video packages or the fucking Lucha House Party before he got to sing his song. He eventually got to sing, where he started to get his groove back as a heel (even if there's no real excuse to have him turn heel) as he insulted the fine people of Grand Rapids, who were honestly kind of a shit crowd anyway. Kalisto asked if he could be allowed to play for a moment, and he played a very simple yet impressive few notes and Elias said that he would allow a duet, but of course, Kalisto took a guitar shot to the back. So I guess we're going to have a fucking feud between Elias and the members of the LHP. This is further evidence that they have no goddamn clue what to do with Elias after turning him heel to begin with, and he is rapidly going to lose his luster again. As much as they might like to think, Elias is not Kevin Owens (who is apparently coming back soon...ish and he's bowling!). KO cuts better promos and is about 500 times better in the ring, but they need someone who can get that crowd heat, so we have Elias for right now. The only positive takeaway from this feud is that at least it's not Jeff Jarrett anymore.
Then we had the most paint-by-numbers go-home matches of the evening, and that started with Finn Balor vs Drew McIntyre with Bobby Lashley and Lio Rush at ringside. The match is made for Elimination Chamber where it will be Finn vs Lashley for the IC title, but they did make that a little more interesting by having Lashley insist it would be a Handicap match with Finn having to fight both him and Rush. So at least that's something. But whenever you get one of these matches on a go-home, you know beat-for-beat how it's going to go; the babyface is going to fight from underneath for a bit, get overpowered by the heel, but the babyface will get the upper hand and be ready for the win until the inevitable DQ as the observing heel gets involved and the match ends with the heels stomping the babyface. Maybe someone will come in for a save, or maybe they won't. Well, that's exactly how this match played out. Lashley crotched Finn as he was about to try for the Coup de Grace, and the stomp from Bobby, Drew and Lio began until poor Kurt Angle came out to try to make the save, but he quickly was stopped by another party, and that was Baron Corbin. And since Baron Corbin was out there, it was beyond predictable that Braun Strowman would come out, and come out he did. Suddenly, we had a 6-man tag match. And that went pretty much as expected as well. First of all, I want to shout from the rooftops to beg someone in Creative or Vince or whoever to just stop with Kurt Angle wrestling. It's getting increasingly sad. He can barely move anymore, and he's going to hurt either himself or someone else with each German Suplex he does. He can't get them elevated enough, and either Kurt or his opponent is going to land badly on their head or neck. I don't like the idea of people being put out to pasture, but you didn't get Mick Foley as GM suddenly competing. He had a purpose, and he did it well enough. Anyway, skipping to the end, Braun got the Running Powerslam on Lashley and tagged in Finn to hit the Coup de Grace for the win. So, yeah, Finn is losing on Sunday, but at least it'll be a dirty enough win that he'll demand a rematch at Mania, have to go through a few obstacles to get it, but he'll eventually get it and we're going to get a Demon King entrance at Mania, and a Balor IC title win as a reward for all the shitty booking he's had to eat over the last year or so. And this match also likely means we're going to get Strowman and Angle against Corbin and McIntyre at Mania, since that seems to be the story they seem to keep falling back on. Or they'll all be in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal and McIntyre will win that. At this point, there are only a few stories they seem to be setting up for Mania, so everything else seems to be in their back pocket at this time.
Next up was Nikki Cross vs Ruby Riott in another set-up match for Sunday to show that Riott can compete occasionally in a non-tag match and pick up a win that is supposed to make it look like she has a fucking chance in hell at Elimination Chamber against Ronda for the Women's title match they're having. I honestly don't know why they're even bothering with this match. I know that Ruby has been an afterthought for most of the time that Ronda's been on the roster, because prior to that, she could have been seen as a legit competitor. But Ruby hasn't really lit the world on fire since coming up from NXT where she was pretty good, and honestly at this point, Nikki seems like a more convincing challenge for Ronda than Ruby does. Cross eventually got hit with the Riott Kick giving Ruby the win, but if I were Ruby, I'd be so pissed off that after the match was set with Ronda, the assumption from everyone in charge was that Ronda was still going to be the Raw Women's champ. I mean, the show started off with Steph and HHH still insisting that it was going to be Becky vs Ronda. Why in the living hell did they make this match, then, with Ruby for Sunday? It doesn't make sense, and I know it often doesn't because the main roster doesn't really know how to tell stories (because Vince), but do your fucking jobs, people.
Then more confusion occurred as Seth Rollins, who is currently non-kayfabe hurt, came out to cut a promo about his last 12 months and its ups and downs, but he was interrupted by Paul Heyman, who basically spent his time hyping up the Mania match between Seth and Brock, as well as putting over Seth as much as possible but still declaring that Lesnar would end up on top. Both of these guys do pretty amazing mic and promo work, so it would be simple enough to say that this was a really strong promo... that is, it was until it ended with Dean Ambrose coming out to the ring, standing there, and basically telling Seth to "slay the Beast". And that was it. So... what the fuck is happening here, Creative? Is Dean a face again? Has he reconciled with Seth in a way that we haven't been made aware of? Or is it just Creative throwing up their hands and saying "fuck it" because Dean's leaving anyway? Or did Dean go off-script, as is being reported by Meltzer? It was just 100% bonkers and it just cast aside months of storytelling.
It got even more confusing because the next match was a rematch of last week between Dean and EC3. And 50/50 booking reared its ugly head because it's obvious that Creative also has no idea what to do with EC3 and decided to have Ambrose go over him with a roll-up pin. So, basically EC3 looked like an idiot last week because he wasn't allowed to speak and he got a fluke win over Ambrose, and now he looks even more idiotic because he wasn't allowed to cut any kind of promo prior to the match and he still lost. So I'm assuming that we're going to have a rubber match in a few weeks (or possibly even next week or maybe a pre-show match at Elimination Chamber) where they'll either allow EC3 to speak and go over, or they'll just keep him a mute Chippendale's dancer and have him go over. Either way, expect him to win, because unless he's leaving too, he's going to have to go over in a way that actually shows that he's a possible mid-carder.
But all of the predictable or otherwise shitty booking that had been saturated throughout this episode of Raw was almost completely eradicated from our collective memory when we hit the Raw Tag title match between Roode and Gable vs The Revival. It's no secret that The Revival have been very disappointed with their placement on the main roster since their call-up from NXT. This was a team that had one of the best rivalries of 2016 in all of wrestling against DIY, and also had what was voted Match of the Year in 2016. It's also no secret that Vince likes one-on-one matches and is not a huge fan of tag teams. So their ring trunks #FTR meant something to different people; for some, it was #FollowTheRules, but the I, and most other fans, read was #FreeTheRevival, as they were essentially pushing for their release so they could go somewhere else and get paid to put on the kinds of matches they could do so well. But this match was not only a showcase for their particular brand of tag team action, but this was also the best match for Roode and Gable as well. This is what happens when you let a team go and do what they're supposed to do. This match had it all; it was technically savvy, it was hard-hitting, it told a great in-ring story, it had some incredible spots, it had awesome hot-tags and blind tags, it had fantastic false finishes, and when all was said and done, Dash and Dawson hit the Shatter Machine on Gable and won the Raw Tag titles. This match also had nearly everything working against it as well; the crowd was dead as hell for the first several minutes of the match, Roode and Gable haven't really been setting the world on fire either, and who expected anything different from The Revival? But we have to remember that before he came to WWE, Bobby Roode was a tag champ with Impact as one half of Beer Money, and Chad Gable was fucking awesome as part of American Alpha. This match felt a lot like a match that should have introduced the main roster to The Revival to establish them as "Top Guys". But now they are the literal top guys in the Raw tag division, and I couldn't have been happier with this outcome and with this match. This match made everyone look like a million bucks and it was one of the few matches on Raw so far this year that really had be on the edge of my seat. I'm hoping this leads to a long title reign by The Revival, and I hope that it leads to more matches like this.
Throughout the evening, we had a bunch of backstage segments with Becky who was either asking for advice or receiving unsolicited advice from different superstars. It was nice to see her with Finn and to have her say, at the end of their interaction, "Your abs are still awesome, by the way". But she also got advice from Ronda herself as well as the Machiavellian machinations of Alexa Bliss. But it was finally time to get her answer, and Stephanie, Trips and Becks all got out there for the end of the show, and Becks capitulated and apologized. Steph and Hunter said that she was free to have her Mania match, and there were no strings attached. So she started cutting a promo about the match, during which she was interrupted by Ronda, but before Ronda even got a word out, we got the most insane deus ex machina I've seen in pro wrestling recently, which was Vince McMahon coming out to the stage and saying that her apology was not acceptable to him and he was suspending Becky for 60 days, and that suspension ends 5 days after Mania, and she was going to be replaced by Charlotte Flair, who joined Vince on stage for this finale.
So let's break this down, because it broke Wrestling Twitter into a billion pieces: first of all, there is no fucking way that this is going to go down as it's been set up right now. Becky will absolutely be in this match as well, but it's going to be a triple threat. If you really think that Becky Lynch, the hottest thing in the pro wrestling world, is going to be left out of this Mania main event match, you're either very new to pro wrestling, or you're possibly insane. Becky has way too much of a groundswell and is too much a part of the zeitgeist in WWE to truly be left out in favor of Mania. Second of all, as I've been stating for the last week or so, Charlotte actually not only deserves to be in this match, but is necessary to it, no matter what the smart marks want to believe. She's going to absorb all the heat that Ronda has been getting for no reason other than she's not Becky, and she's going to make the match a lot less predictable. If you have Ronda taking time to start a family immediately after Mania, as has been speculated upon, there's zero doubt who would win, but you throw in this other variable, it makes things more interesting, and it's hopefully going to make the build to get Lynch back into this match really fascinating and perhaps make for some really compelling television. Third, it builds a more traditional Mania match that has a definite face and a definite heel. Would I prefer it if it was Becky vs Ronda one-on-one? Of course I would. But I'm also not going to be at Wrestlemania this year, and that's going to be a very long show. If you see how the Reigns/Lesnar match finished up last year's Mania and the total clusterfuck that was, a face-on-face match wrapping up the night (which it absolutely should; none of this dual main-event shit) would not play well to that crowd nearly as well as a triple threat will. And that's who this event is playing to; not to the nearly 2 million people who will watch it on the network either as a free trial or those of us who pay the $9.99 per month to watch NXT and the TakeOvers and the PPV's. Mania viewers can go to the bathroom, or get food or tweet along while they're sitting in their home or in some kind of Mania party at someone else's house, so the live shows should reward the people who are spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars to attend, rather than to those of us at home. So Becky vs Charlotte vs Ronda makes more sense at an event like Wrestlemania than it would at a Survivor Series or a Rumble or a Summerslam. So if you're one of the thousands of people freaking out about this, take a few deep breaths and stop freaking out.
However, if there is something about this that does legitimately piss me off, it's that Vince once again totally underestimated everyone's intelligence and just decided to shove Charlotte into this match instead of letting this story build in anything vaguely resembling an organic and reasonable reason that Charlotte should not only be in the match, but that she would totally replace Becky. So I'm angry about that, but I also, in a really stupid way, understand it. The Road to Wrestlemania is when everything traditionally starts to get way way more cartoonish as far as motivations and stories and characters. Even though the fanbase for wrestling has changed pretty radically in the last decade or so from mostly kids to the kids who grew up with it, Vince is still aiming the main roster shows at the dumbest people in the room, and that's how we get this as opposed to the years-long build to get Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa to where they are in NXT. So when it comes to the main roster, we have learned to always expect Vince to do the dumb thing rather than challenge the audience, and that's a bummer but we're choosing to invest in this product and not the other way around. Now, there was a bit of action as the show went off the air that was put on the website shortly after and that was Ruby and the Riott Squad coming out with Ruby cutting a promo on how she has been an afterthought in the upcoming Raw Women's title match this upcoming Sunday, and her and her squadmates are going to prove that Ronda ain't all that. Of course, that backfired, and Ronda and Becky joined forces for a hot minute and dispatched The Riott Squad with relative ease. I still feel shitty for Ruby, but who knows what's going to happen on Sunday?
Well, I got all that off my chest so it's time for Smackdown Live!
The show started with who we all knew it was going to start off with as they first showed a video package of the ending of Raw, and then introduced Charlotte to cut a heel-as-fuck promo on how she deserves the opportunity more than Becky because she's not just some flash-in-the-pan like Becky is, but she's a proven commodity and this was a "best for business" decision. She trolled the hell out of the crowd by chanting Becky's name with them for a bit and then trolled The Man by dedicating her upcoming win at Mania to Becky, her "best friend". She also said that she was going to be ringside for Ronda's match against Ruby Riott at Elimination Chamber to "scout" her, but then also continued to make the save from the previous night at suggesting that her match might not be against Ronda, and that she promised to not get involved and then winked at the camera. This is 1000% absolutely the Charlotte I love most. She's a born heel with a superiority complex. It's really magical to see how solid of a heel Charlotte can be, and at this moment, she's probably the biggest heel in the company. She knows how to work the crowd and god damn, she clearly shines brightest when she's playing heel. As far as that wink is concerned, well... I'll keep that on the backburner for right now and discuss that in the now-traditional "Hopes and Predictions" column I'll be doing for Elimination Chamber this week.
Then we got our Women's Tag title triple threat as a repeat of last night as this match's result will determine which of the Smackdown teams will start off in the Elimination Chamber along last night's losers, Bayley and Sasha, so we have Fabulous Glow, Fire and Desire and The IIconics. This was a better match for the teams all around than it was last night because we didn't have to deal with the clunky moves from Tamina or Liv, even if Mandy Rose is still not that great. But we got part of the comeuppance that Mandy deserves as Sonya got a superkick from 'Mella and then Naomi got the tag to finish Mandy off with the split-legged moonsault giving Fire and Desire the loss, but Billie and Peyton got in the ring and lit into Fabulous Glow and stood tall in the ring. I don't know about you... well, you'll just have to read "Hopes and Predictions"!
Now, we have to talk a bit about the other big event this Sunday, and what is kind of bumming me out about it. The other big Elimination Chamber match is the match for the WWE Championship which was going to be Daniel Bryan vs A.J. Styles vs Samoa Joe vs Jeff Hardy vs Randy Orton vs Mustafa Ali. Unfortunately, thanks to the bump he took last week against Randy Orton and another bump he took in a house show over the weekend, my boy Ali is not cleared to compete because his fucking eye is nearly swollen shut. So he's going to be replaced by a member of The New Day presumably because they're still trying to preserve the Rey Mysterio/Andrade feud without inserting either of them. Personally, I think this would have been a good place to put a forgotten superstar in there instead. Like a Tye Dillinger or Shelton Benjamin rather than keep dipping into the New Day well. But they're still over as hell, so, I guess you go with what works.
Then we had a McMiz TV segment where Shane and Miz cut dueling promos on The Usos leading to their Smackdown Tag title match this Sunday. This was quality stuff, particularly from Miz and Jimmy and Jey. You can always count on the Usos to cut a fired-up promo, and you can always count on Miz to undercut it with some humor. Miz did so as he threw in a joke about the whole Mandy Rose incident, and of course that led to escalating tension until Uce threw a... ahem... superkick par-tay on McMiz, laying them out. So yeah, the "Best Tag Team in the World" are retaining. The musical chairs on the Smackdown Tag titles between New Day, The Usos and The Bar have played out a little too much, and right now, I'm grateful that Luke Harper is still out because I was not invested in the title run of The Bludgeon Brothers at all, so it's hopefully time for Sanity to get a shot soon. I'm just wondering how much longer the Miz face turn is going to go. I'm having a hard time not believing that this isn't going to lead to a Shane vs Miz match at Mania.
Then we get a promo from Daniel Bryan that kicks off the Gauntlet match that will determine who will be the last to exit the chamber for WWE Championship title match, and fuck me, I know I keep espousing the greatness of The New Daniel Bryan but it never goes without saying that this is my favorite Daniel Bryan yet. But we were then introduced to which member of New Day will be in this Gauntlet match, and it's Kofi Kingston who started it off against The American Dragon. And this match will be known as the "Best Case for a Kofi Kingston Singles Push" because this match was all about Kofi, and it was awesome. I'm going to assume that this booking was meant for Mustafa since he was the biggest babyface in this match since A.J. is working as kind of a tweener right now, and while Hardy is a babyface, his stock doesn't need to be lifted since he's comfortable being a decent mid-carder. It worked to everyone's strengths in really smart ways. The best part was the opening between Kofi and Bryan since each competitor made the other look terrific. Of course Rowan and the other members of New Day would get involved but because of all their outside shenanigans, both parties were ejected by the ref. But Kofi would eliminate Bryan, Hardy and Joe by reversing the Coquina Clutch into a pinning predicament, but Joe fucking spiked Kofi with a massive uranage and got him in the Clutch again, and A.J. was out next, and Kofi was still raring to go. Kofi would eventually tap to the Calf Crusher, and that left Orton, whose music hit but he was nowhere to be found, but of course he found himself behind Styles and hit him with the RKO and got the Gauntlet win, so yes, Orton will be the last out. A great match for Kofi, but it worked for Bryan dipping into his more brutal and conniving side, Hardy and Orton didn't have to work too long, Joe was brutal and unforgiving, and A.J. was the sacrificial lamb eating the RKO.
So while this Smackdown was relatively uneventful in regards to everything that transpired on Raw, it was a better overall show as per usual and it felt like a much more well-rounded go-home show. Also, not as many square pegs. Or really any. Smackdown felt like everything made sense for the most part. I can't really find much fault in this episode.
So we'll be back Thursday morning with this week's NXT episode and possibly some time tomorrow or Thursday night, we'll get into my "Hopes and Predictions" column for Elimination Chamber!
Until next time, kids...
On Raw, we definitely got a lot of square pegs.
The show started with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon welcoming back Becky Lynch who went to see her doctors and not WWE medical staff, but WWE medical staff conferred with her doctors and they said that she will be cleared to compete at Mania against Ronda Rousey, and they apologized to her for being unnecessarily dickish on last week's episodes of Raw and Smackdown respectively, and that her suspension was hereby lifted... if Becky would, in turn, apologize to them. If she didn't, she was going to lose her match to Ronda at Mania, and she was given the rest of the night to decide whether or not she was going to suck it up or blow her big Mania moment. This is pretty par for the course as far as top stars as we get closer to Mania: they've overcome Authority Obstacle A only to have Authority Obstacle B put in their path. And this segment was handled particularly well as far as keeping your interest piqued in watching what is most likely going to be another standard sub-standard go-home until the end. Ironically, though, I was feeling that this segment would have been better served without Hunter and with only Steph, and that's not something I say lightly because there are rarely moments where I think "the less Triple H, the better", but that was the case here. The conflict should really only exist between Becky and Stephanie because Stephanie is the better heel Authority figure in this story. Either way, though, it was still a fun way to keep us guessing on how The Man was going to respond. But before Becky was even out of the ring, Sasha's music hit which was initially confusing, because it seemed like she might come out to speak on her fellow Horsewoman's behalf, but it was just the bizarre segue into the next match...
...and that match was the three teams from Raw that would be competing in the Women's Tag Championship match battling each other to determine who was going to be the first team out in the Elimination Chamber match, so it was Boss 'N Hug vs The Riott Squad vs Nia Jax and Tamina. The Boss got hurt early in the match, leaving Bayley alone to fend off her attackers, and the match was all about getting Bayley over enough to be convincingly badass but not over enough to win it all by herself, because she was eventually overpowered by The Irresistible Force who hit the Samoan Drop on The Hugger to pick up the win, so Boss 'N Hug will be the first in the Chamber from Raw, and the same thing will happen tomorrow night on Smackdown, so as goes Raw... you know. I wasn't overly impressed with this match because I don't know exactly what kind of angle they're working with Sasha, but I'm always pleased when we see Bayley get some time to show how good she really is. Of all the Horsewomen, I've always felt she was the most underrated in the ring.
Then for some ungodly reason, we had Elias being constantly interrupted by either video packages or the fucking Lucha House Party before he got to sing his song. He eventually got to sing, where he started to get his groove back as a heel (even if there's no real excuse to have him turn heel) as he insulted the fine people of Grand Rapids, who were honestly kind of a shit crowd anyway. Kalisto asked if he could be allowed to play for a moment, and he played a very simple yet impressive few notes and Elias said that he would allow a duet, but of course, Kalisto took a guitar shot to the back. So I guess we're going to have a fucking feud between Elias and the members of the LHP. This is further evidence that they have no goddamn clue what to do with Elias after turning him heel to begin with, and he is rapidly going to lose his luster again. As much as they might like to think, Elias is not Kevin Owens (who is apparently coming back soon...ish and he's bowling!). KO cuts better promos and is about 500 times better in the ring, but they need someone who can get that crowd heat, so we have Elias for right now. The only positive takeaway from this feud is that at least it's not Jeff Jarrett anymore.
Then we had the most paint-by-numbers go-home matches of the evening, and that started with Finn Balor vs Drew McIntyre with Bobby Lashley and Lio Rush at ringside. The match is made for Elimination Chamber where it will be Finn vs Lashley for the IC title, but they did make that a little more interesting by having Lashley insist it would be a Handicap match with Finn having to fight both him and Rush. So at least that's something. But whenever you get one of these matches on a go-home, you know beat-for-beat how it's going to go; the babyface is going to fight from underneath for a bit, get overpowered by the heel, but the babyface will get the upper hand and be ready for the win until the inevitable DQ as the observing heel gets involved and the match ends with the heels stomping the babyface. Maybe someone will come in for a save, or maybe they won't. Well, that's exactly how this match played out. Lashley crotched Finn as he was about to try for the Coup de Grace, and the stomp from Bobby, Drew and Lio began until poor Kurt Angle came out to try to make the save, but he quickly was stopped by another party, and that was Baron Corbin. And since Baron Corbin was out there, it was beyond predictable that Braun Strowman would come out, and come out he did. Suddenly, we had a 6-man tag match. And that went pretty much as expected as well. First of all, I want to shout from the rooftops to beg someone in Creative or Vince or whoever to just stop with Kurt Angle wrestling. It's getting increasingly sad. He can barely move anymore, and he's going to hurt either himself or someone else with each German Suplex he does. He can't get them elevated enough, and either Kurt or his opponent is going to land badly on their head or neck. I don't like the idea of people being put out to pasture, but you didn't get Mick Foley as GM suddenly competing. He had a purpose, and he did it well enough. Anyway, skipping to the end, Braun got the Running Powerslam on Lashley and tagged in Finn to hit the Coup de Grace for the win. So, yeah, Finn is losing on Sunday, but at least it'll be a dirty enough win that he'll demand a rematch at Mania, have to go through a few obstacles to get it, but he'll eventually get it and we're going to get a Demon King entrance at Mania, and a Balor IC title win as a reward for all the shitty booking he's had to eat over the last year or so. And this match also likely means we're going to get Strowman and Angle against Corbin and McIntyre at Mania, since that seems to be the story they seem to keep falling back on. Or they'll all be in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal and McIntyre will win that. At this point, there are only a few stories they seem to be setting up for Mania, so everything else seems to be in their back pocket at this time.
Next up was Nikki Cross vs Ruby Riott in another set-up match for Sunday to show that Riott can compete occasionally in a non-tag match and pick up a win that is supposed to make it look like she has a fucking chance in hell at Elimination Chamber against Ronda for the Women's title match they're having. I honestly don't know why they're even bothering with this match. I know that Ruby has been an afterthought for most of the time that Ronda's been on the roster, because prior to that, she could have been seen as a legit competitor. But Ruby hasn't really lit the world on fire since coming up from NXT where she was pretty good, and honestly at this point, Nikki seems like a more convincing challenge for Ronda than Ruby does. Cross eventually got hit with the Riott Kick giving Ruby the win, but if I were Ruby, I'd be so pissed off that after the match was set with Ronda, the assumption from everyone in charge was that Ronda was still going to be the Raw Women's champ. I mean, the show started off with Steph and HHH still insisting that it was going to be Becky vs Ronda. Why in the living hell did they make this match, then, with Ruby for Sunday? It doesn't make sense, and I know it often doesn't because the main roster doesn't really know how to tell stories (because Vince), but do your fucking jobs, people.
Then more confusion occurred as Seth Rollins, who is currently non-kayfabe hurt, came out to cut a promo about his last 12 months and its ups and downs, but he was interrupted by Paul Heyman, who basically spent his time hyping up the Mania match between Seth and Brock, as well as putting over Seth as much as possible but still declaring that Lesnar would end up on top. Both of these guys do pretty amazing mic and promo work, so it would be simple enough to say that this was a really strong promo... that is, it was until it ended with Dean Ambrose coming out to the ring, standing there, and basically telling Seth to "slay the Beast". And that was it. So... what the fuck is happening here, Creative? Is Dean a face again? Has he reconciled with Seth in a way that we haven't been made aware of? Or is it just Creative throwing up their hands and saying "fuck it" because Dean's leaving anyway? Or did Dean go off-script, as is being reported by Meltzer? It was just 100% bonkers and it just cast aside months of storytelling.
It got even more confusing because the next match was a rematch of last week between Dean and EC3. And 50/50 booking reared its ugly head because it's obvious that Creative also has no idea what to do with EC3 and decided to have Ambrose go over him with a roll-up pin. So, basically EC3 looked like an idiot last week because he wasn't allowed to speak and he got a fluke win over Ambrose, and now he looks even more idiotic because he wasn't allowed to cut any kind of promo prior to the match and he still lost. So I'm assuming that we're going to have a rubber match in a few weeks (or possibly even next week or maybe a pre-show match at Elimination Chamber) where they'll either allow EC3 to speak and go over, or they'll just keep him a mute Chippendale's dancer and have him go over. Either way, expect him to win, because unless he's leaving too, he's going to have to go over in a way that actually shows that he's a possible mid-carder.
But all of the predictable or otherwise shitty booking that had been saturated throughout this episode of Raw was almost completely eradicated from our collective memory when we hit the Raw Tag title match between Roode and Gable vs The Revival. It's no secret that The Revival have been very disappointed with their placement on the main roster since their call-up from NXT. This was a team that had one of the best rivalries of 2016 in all of wrestling against DIY, and also had what was voted Match of the Year in 2016. It's also no secret that Vince likes one-on-one matches and is not a huge fan of tag teams. So their ring trunks #FTR meant something to different people; for some, it was #FollowTheRules, but the I, and most other fans, read was #FreeTheRevival, as they were essentially pushing for their release so they could go somewhere else and get paid to put on the kinds of matches they could do so well. But this match was not only a showcase for their particular brand of tag team action, but this was also the best match for Roode and Gable as well. This is what happens when you let a team go and do what they're supposed to do. This match had it all; it was technically savvy, it was hard-hitting, it told a great in-ring story, it had some incredible spots, it had awesome hot-tags and blind tags, it had fantastic false finishes, and when all was said and done, Dash and Dawson hit the Shatter Machine on Gable and won the Raw Tag titles. This match also had nearly everything working against it as well; the crowd was dead as hell for the first several minutes of the match, Roode and Gable haven't really been setting the world on fire either, and who expected anything different from The Revival? But we have to remember that before he came to WWE, Bobby Roode was a tag champ with Impact as one half of Beer Money, and Chad Gable was fucking awesome as part of American Alpha. This match felt a lot like a match that should have introduced the main roster to The Revival to establish them as "Top Guys". But now they are the literal top guys in the Raw tag division, and I couldn't have been happier with this outcome and with this match. This match made everyone look like a million bucks and it was one of the few matches on Raw so far this year that really had be on the edge of my seat. I'm hoping this leads to a long title reign by The Revival, and I hope that it leads to more matches like this.
Throughout the evening, we had a bunch of backstage segments with Becky who was either asking for advice or receiving unsolicited advice from different superstars. It was nice to see her with Finn and to have her say, at the end of their interaction, "Your abs are still awesome, by the way". But she also got advice from Ronda herself as well as the Machiavellian machinations of Alexa Bliss. But it was finally time to get her answer, and Stephanie, Trips and Becks all got out there for the end of the show, and Becks capitulated and apologized. Steph and Hunter said that she was free to have her Mania match, and there were no strings attached. So she started cutting a promo about the match, during which she was interrupted by Ronda, but before Ronda even got a word out, we got the most insane deus ex machina I've seen in pro wrestling recently, which was Vince McMahon coming out to the stage and saying that her apology was not acceptable to him and he was suspending Becky for 60 days, and that suspension ends 5 days after Mania, and she was going to be replaced by Charlotte Flair, who joined Vince on stage for this finale.
So let's break this down, because it broke Wrestling Twitter into a billion pieces: first of all, there is no fucking way that this is going to go down as it's been set up right now. Becky will absolutely be in this match as well, but it's going to be a triple threat. If you really think that Becky Lynch, the hottest thing in the pro wrestling world, is going to be left out of this Mania main event match, you're either very new to pro wrestling, or you're possibly insane. Becky has way too much of a groundswell and is too much a part of the zeitgeist in WWE to truly be left out in favor of Mania. Second of all, as I've been stating for the last week or so, Charlotte actually not only deserves to be in this match, but is necessary to it, no matter what the smart marks want to believe. She's going to absorb all the heat that Ronda has been getting for no reason other than she's not Becky, and she's going to make the match a lot less predictable. If you have Ronda taking time to start a family immediately after Mania, as has been speculated upon, there's zero doubt who would win, but you throw in this other variable, it makes things more interesting, and it's hopefully going to make the build to get Lynch back into this match really fascinating and perhaps make for some really compelling television. Third, it builds a more traditional Mania match that has a definite face and a definite heel. Would I prefer it if it was Becky vs Ronda one-on-one? Of course I would. But I'm also not going to be at Wrestlemania this year, and that's going to be a very long show. If you see how the Reigns/Lesnar match finished up last year's Mania and the total clusterfuck that was, a face-on-face match wrapping up the night (which it absolutely should; none of this dual main-event shit) would not play well to that crowd nearly as well as a triple threat will. And that's who this event is playing to; not to the nearly 2 million people who will watch it on the network either as a free trial or those of us who pay the $9.99 per month to watch NXT and the TakeOvers and the PPV's. Mania viewers can go to the bathroom, or get food or tweet along while they're sitting in their home or in some kind of Mania party at someone else's house, so the live shows should reward the people who are spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars to attend, rather than to those of us at home. So Becky vs Charlotte vs Ronda makes more sense at an event like Wrestlemania than it would at a Survivor Series or a Rumble or a Summerslam. So if you're one of the thousands of people freaking out about this, take a few deep breaths and stop freaking out.
However, if there is something about this that does legitimately piss me off, it's that Vince once again totally underestimated everyone's intelligence and just decided to shove Charlotte into this match instead of letting this story build in anything vaguely resembling an organic and reasonable reason that Charlotte should not only be in the match, but that she would totally replace Becky. So I'm angry about that, but I also, in a really stupid way, understand it. The Road to Wrestlemania is when everything traditionally starts to get way way more cartoonish as far as motivations and stories and characters. Even though the fanbase for wrestling has changed pretty radically in the last decade or so from mostly kids to the kids who grew up with it, Vince is still aiming the main roster shows at the dumbest people in the room, and that's how we get this as opposed to the years-long build to get Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa to where they are in NXT. So when it comes to the main roster, we have learned to always expect Vince to do the dumb thing rather than challenge the audience, and that's a bummer but we're choosing to invest in this product and not the other way around. Now, there was a bit of action as the show went off the air that was put on the website shortly after and that was Ruby and the Riott Squad coming out with Ruby cutting a promo on how she has been an afterthought in the upcoming Raw Women's title match this upcoming Sunday, and her and her squadmates are going to prove that Ronda ain't all that. Of course, that backfired, and Ronda and Becky joined forces for a hot minute and dispatched The Riott Squad with relative ease. I still feel shitty for Ruby, but who knows what's going to happen on Sunday?
Well, I got all that off my chest so it's time for Smackdown Live!
The show started with who we all knew it was going to start off with as they first showed a video package of the ending of Raw, and then introduced Charlotte to cut a heel-as-fuck promo on how she deserves the opportunity more than Becky because she's not just some flash-in-the-pan like Becky is, but she's a proven commodity and this was a "best for business" decision. She trolled the hell out of the crowd by chanting Becky's name with them for a bit and then trolled The Man by dedicating her upcoming win at Mania to Becky, her "best friend". She also said that she was going to be ringside for Ronda's match against Ruby Riott at Elimination Chamber to "scout" her, but then also continued to make the save from the previous night at suggesting that her match might not be against Ronda, and that she promised to not get involved and then winked at the camera. This is 1000% absolutely the Charlotte I love most. She's a born heel with a superiority complex. It's really magical to see how solid of a heel Charlotte can be, and at this moment, she's probably the biggest heel in the company. She knows how to work the crowd and god damn, she clearly shines brightest when she's playing heel. As far as that wink is concerned, well... I'll keep that on the backburner for right now and discuss that in the now-traditional "Hopes and Predictions" column I'll be doing for Elimination Chamber this week.
Then we got our Women's Tag title triple threat as a repeat of last night as this match's result will determine which of the Smackdown teams will start off in the Elimination Chamber along last night's losers, Bayley and Sasha, so we have Fabulous Glow, Fire and Desire and The IIconics. This was a better match for the teams all around than it was last night because we didn't have to deal with the clunky moves from Tamina or Liv, even if Mandy Rose is still not that great. But we got part of the comeuppance that Mandy deserves as Sonya got a superkick from 'Mella and then Naomi got the tag to finish Mandy off with the split-legged moonsault giving Fire and Desire the loss, but Billie and Peyton got in the ring and lit into Fabulous Glow and stood tall in the ring. I don't know about you... well, you'll just have to read "Hopes and Predictions"!
Now, we have to talk a bit about the other big event this Sunday, and what is kind of bumming me out about it. The other big Elimination Chamber match is the match for the WWE Championship which was going to be Daniel Bryan vs A.J. Styles vs Samoa Joe vs Jeff Hardy vs Randy Orton vs Mustafa Ali. Unfortunately, thanks to the bump he took last week against Randy Orton and another bump he took in a house show over the weekend, my boy Ali is not cleared to compete because his fucking eye is nearly swollen shut. So he's going to be replaced by a member of The New Day presumably because they're still trying to preserve the Rey Mysterio/Andrade feud without inserting either of them. Personally, I think this would have been a good place to put a forgotten superstar in there instead. Like a Tye Dillinger or Shelton Benjamin rather than keep dipping into the New Day well. But they're still over as hell, so, I guess you go with what works.
Then we had a McMiz TV segment where Shane and Miz cut dueling promos on The Usos leading to their Smackdown Tag title match this Sunday. This was quality stuff, particularly from Miz and Jimmy and Jey. You can always count on the Usos to cut a fired-up promo, and you can always count on Miz to undercut it with some humor. Miz did so as he threw in a joke about the whole Mandy Rose incident, and of course that led to escalating tension until Uce threw a... ahem... superkick par-tay on McMiz, laying them out. So yeah, the "Best Tag Team in the World" are retaining. The musical chairs on the Smackdown Tag titles between New Day, The Usos and The Bar have played out a little too much, and right now, I'm grateful that Luke Harper is still out because I was not invested in the title run of The Bludgeon Brothers at all, so it's hopefully time for Sanity to get a shot soon. I'm just wondering how much longer the Miz face turn is going to go. I'm having a hard time not believing that this isn't going to lead to a Shane vs Miz match at Mania.
Then we get a promo from Daniel Bryan that kicks off the Gauntlet match that will determine who will be the last to exit the chamber for WWE Championship title match, and fuck me, I know I keep espousing the greatness of The New Daniel Bryan but it never goes without saying that this is my favorite Daniel Bryan yet. But we were then introduced to which member of New Day will be in this Gauntlet match, and it's Kofi Kingston who started it off against The American Dragon. And this match will be known as the "Best Case for a Kofi Kingston Singles Push" because this match was all about Kofi, and it was awesome. I'm going to assume that this booking was meant for Mustafa since he was the biggest babyface in this match since A.J. is working as kind of a tweener right now, and while Hardy is a babyface, his stock doesn't need to be lifted since he's comfortable being a decent mid-carder. It worked to everyone's strengths in really smart ways. The best part was the opening between Kofi and Bryan since each competitor made the other look terrific. Of course Rowan and the other members of New Day would get involved but because of all their outside shenanigans, both parties were ejected by the ref. But Kofi would eliminate Bryan, Hardy and Joe by reversing the Coquina Clutch into a pinning predicament, but Joe fucking spiked Kofi with a massive uranage and got him in the Clutch again, and A.J. was out next, and Kofi was still raring to go. Kofi would eventually tap to the Calf Crusher, and that left Orton, whose music hit but he was nowhere to be found, but of course he found himself behind Styles and hit him with the RKO and got the Gauntlet win, so yes, Orton will be the last out. A great match for Kofi, but it worked for Bryan dipping into his more brutal and conniving side, Hardy and Orton didn't have to work too long, Joe was brutal and unforgiving, and A.J. was the sacrificial lamb eating the RKO.
So while this Smackdown was relatively uneventful in regards to everything that transpired on Raw, it was a better overall show as per usual and it felt like a much more well-rounded go-home show. Also, not as many square pegs. Or really any. Smackdown felt like everything made sense for the most part. I can't really find much fault in this episode.
So we'll be back Thursday morning with this week's NXT episode and possibly some time tomorrow or Thursday night, we'll get into my "Hopes and Predictions" column for Elimination Chamber!
Until next time, kids...
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