Sadly I will not be able to go to PAX South this year, and therefore go to the Royal Rumble and NXT Takeover San Antonio. However, I am instead going to Wrestlemania 33 in Orlando instead, and the NXT Takeover, Raw, and Smackdown that week as well.
While the Rumble is my favorite of all PPVs, I've already been to 3 of them, and never have been to a Wrestlemania. My only concern is that I've already also seen John Cena win 2 of his 15 World Titles live in person, and I have a feeling that I'll be seeing him tie Flair live too. Either way, the Mania spectacle will be a fun time, and a bucket list item.
A few weeks ago, the nostalgia hit me and I won the European title in WWF No Mercy for the N64. I did so with Edge and just used a surprising amount of spears. The nostalgia is all still there.
Pre-show match between Big Cas and Rusev was just complete BS. Hopefully they will bury this storyline.
The Tag-Team match to open the show was good. I don't quite like the ending but it was different and particularly I love Cesaro now holding a championship which he definitely deserves. He is in my book the 5th best wrestler in WWE right now (behind Styles, Nakamura, Zayn, Owens). The New Day also should move on and be given something new to do. It is kind of unfortunate that the title is now split with Shaemus, who is okay but not great, but you take the good with the bad.
Zayn vs. Strowman was interesting. Zayn is just really good at selling and played his role in this perfectly. He also really made this thing work in the interview during the pre-show. Good result considering I feared that they'd just bury Zayn to build up Strowman. On the other hand Jericho vs. Rollins was rather bland and boring and did nothing for anybody involved.
Cruiserweight triple-threat was fine, though I think that rope-break was a botch. More importantly though: Holy shit that Neville heel turn. I am not that familiar with Neville, mostly because for most of the time I've been watching he was either injured or simply kept of TV despite being picked rather high in the draft. I did watch a bit of his NXT run though, and particularly his championship match with Sami Zayn at NXT Takeover REvolution was really good. Him showing up out of nowhere and just going berserk makes the Cruiserweight division much more interesting now. The guy has the physique to be basically Cruiserweight Brock Lesnar and could be a dominant heel.
Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte Flair 30 Minute Iron Woman match. Amazing match just cementing this again as the feud of the year. I fully expected this to end in a 0-0 draw but a lot of very interesting falls were scored. Still a draw but continued into OT, Charlotte playing the heel perfectly throughout. Still think Sasha should have retained because Charlotte winning in PPV every time is just BS. Both are deserving of the title but this same-ish booking is just annoying. Match of the night though.
Main event of Owens vs. Reigns was also really great for the most part but I was really fucking angry when Reigns kicked out of the third frog splash in a row, two of them on the announce table. I understand that they have stuff planned for afterward but that should end it. Nobody should be able to kick out of that. The ending is still great with finally Jericho "turning" on Owens, attacking Owens and giving Owens the win by DQ, only for it to be revealed that they were playing us all and were still BFFs. It's a fantastic heel move. However, Owens deserved to win clean and WWE just refusing to let Reigns lose clean is really, really frustrating.
The aftermath of Rollins and Reigns putting both Jericho and Owens through announce tables was kind of satisfying consolation price though.
Smackdown Live: Wild Card Finals. Now this is an odd thing, the last episode of Smackdown Live in 2016 gets a special title and three title matches on the line.
The show opens with John Cena's return, who hasn't been in a WWE TV show since No Mercy. The Chicago crowd absolutely hates him but he takes it well. People expected The Undertaker also to show up but no dice. Cena announces that he challenges whoever is the WWE Champion at the end of the night for a match at the Royal Rumble.
(At this point I'd like to mention how stupid the "Remember The Rumble" tagline is, and yes I know it's a reference to "Remember the Alamo" and that makes it even worse)
Then we have a four corner elimination tag match for the championship. This came as a result of Zach Ryder suffering a knee injury in the match in which his team, the Hype Bros, won a title shot. The Match involved the current champs of the Wyatt Family (participating members Luke Harper and Randy Orton, so you could smell something was fishy), the Usos, Slater & Rhyno and American Alpha, with only the Wyatts getting their full entrance on TV.
American Alpha has had some great matches down in NXT but have been kind of held back mostly to let Slater get over. It was weird though that the Hype Bros become #1 contenders and not American Alpha. Slater & Rhyno were first eliminated and then the Usos and to my surprise American Alpha won this thing. Yes, American Alpha are new champions. This was also the result of Orton hitting Harper which could be counted as either a hint of dissension or a miscommunication. Also very surprising that it was Orton that ate the pin.
Next a women's title match between Becky Lynch and reigning champ Alexa Bliss. Lynch trolled Bliss last week by fighting her in disguise as "La Luchadora" in a terribly gaudy costume. The match had some really odd spots bordering on body horror where Lynch just wrenches on Bliss's arms, which ends in Bliss showing the ref an overbent elbow (which is apparently something she is capable of). Another female wrestler dressed as La Luchadora also shows up and interferes while the ref is dealing with Bliss's arm resulting in Bliss retaining the title. It is not revealed who is now wearing the awful costume.
And the main event a triple threat match between A.J. Styles, Dolph Ziggler and Baron Corbin for the WWE Championship. I really don't buy Corbin in the title picture. Not only did his moment at Survivor Series a month earlier make his character look bad, it also should in kayfabe hold him far away from a title opportunity and definitely not give him one immediately.
However, Ziggler and Styles made him look very threatening by being forced to work together to overcome him, including a spot where they did a double move to put Corbin through the announce table. Corbin is definitely still green and almost fucked things up by missing his queue to pull the ref out of the ring which forced Styles to kick out of Ziggler's cover post Superkick.
The match also contained a very sweet move where Corbin puts his finisher, the End of Days on Styles but Ziggler hits Corbin simultanously with his Zig-Zag finisher. Absolutely beautifully executed but Corbin kicks out. This leads to another End of Days on Ziggler, a Phenomenal Forearm by Styles on Corbin and Styles then covers Ziggler who is still out. Styles retains.
Basically SD Live has put on a PPV quality show on free TV with no filler, no authority involvement, surprises and very high quality wrestling. Why can't it always be this way?
So WrestleKingdom 11 happens on January 4th and basically I know nothing about japanese wrestling except for Kenny Omega and Los Ingobernobles de Japon (or basically what Daryl Surat puts on twitter). I watched parts of WK 9 and 10 but only stuff that was of interest due to WWE (Nakamura, Styles, the Club). I want to watch the whole thing this time but would need something good to catch me up on storylines or really meaning of the matches. Anybody got something like that?
Comments
While the Rumble is my favorite of all PPVs, I've already been to 3 of them, and never have been to a Wrestlemania. My only concern is that I've already also seen John Cena win 2 of his 15 World Titles live in person, and I have a feeling that I'll be seeing him tie Flair live too. Either way, the Mania spectacle will be a fun time, and a bucket list item.
That's the best-looking belt they've had in over a decade.
Pre-show match between Big Cas and Rusev was just complete BS. Hopefully they will bury this storyline.
The Tag-Team match to open the show was good. I don't quite like the ending but it was different and particularly I love Cesaro now holding a championship which he definitely deserves. He is in my book the 5th best wrestler in WWE right now (behind Styles, Nakamura, Zayn, Owens). The New Day also should move on and be given something new to do. It is kind of unfortunate that the title is now split with Shaemus, who is okay but not great, but you take the good with the bad.
Zayn vs. Strowman was interesting. Zayn is just really good at selling and played his role in this perfectly. He also really made this thing work in the interview during the pre-show. Good result considering I feared that they'd just bury Zayn to build up Strowman. On the other hand Jericho vs. Rollins was rather bland and boring and did nothing for anybody involved.
Cruiserweight triple-threat was fine, though I think that rope-break was a botch. More importantly though: Holy shit that Neville heel turn. I am not that familiar with Neville, mostly because for most of the time I've been watching he was either injured or simply kept of TV despite being picked rather high in the draft. I did watch a bit of his NXT run though, and particularly his championship match with Sami Zayn at NXT Takeover REvolution was really good. Him showing up out of nowhere and just going berserk makes the Cruiserweight division much more interesting now. The guy has the physique to be basically Cruiserweight Brock Lesnar and could be a dominant heel.
Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte Flair 30 Minute Iron Woman match. Amazing match just cementing this again as the feud of the year. I fully expected this to end in a 0-0 draw but a lot of very interesting falls were scored. Still a draw but continued into OT, Charlotte playing the heel perfectly throughout. Still think Sasha should have retained because Charlotte winning in PPV every time is just BS. Both are deserving of the title but this same-ish booking is just annoying. Match of the night though.
Main event of Owens vs. Reigns was also really great for the most part but I was really fucking angry when Reigns kicked out of the third frog splash in a row, two of them on the announce table. I understand that they have stuff planned for afterward but that should end it. Nobody should be able to kick out of that. The ending is still great with finally Jericho "turning" on Owens, attacking Owens and giving Owens the win by DQ, only for it to be revealed that they were playing us all and were still BFFs. It's a fantastic heel move. However, Owens deserved to win clean and WWE just refusing to let Reigns lose clean is really, really frustrating.
The aftermath of Rollins and Reigns putting both Jericho and Owens through announce tables was kind of satisfying consolation price though.
Still a decent show.
The show opens with John Cena's return, who hasn't been in a WWE TV show since No Mercy. The Chicago crowd absolutely hates him but he takes it well. People expected The Undertaker also to show up but no dice. Cena announces that he challenges whoever is the WWE Champion at the end of the night for a match at the Royal Rumble.
(At this point I'd like to mention how stupid the "Remember The Rumble" tagline is, and yes I know it's a reference to "Remember the Alamo" and that makes it even worse)
Then we have a four corner elimination tag match for the championship. This came as a result of Zach Ryder suffering a knee injury in the match in which his team, the Hype Bros, won a title shot. The Match involved the current champs of the Wyatt Family (participating members Luke Harper and Randy Orton, so you could smell something was fishy), the Usos, Slater & Rhyno and American Alpha, with only the Wyatts getting their full entrance on TV.
American Alpha has had some great matches down in NXT but have been kind of held back mostly to let Slater get over. It was weird though that the Hype Bros become #1 contenders and not American Alpha. Slater & Rhyno were first eliminated and then the Usos and to my surprise American Alpha won this thing. Yes, American Alpha are new champions. This was also the result of Orton hitting Harper which could be counted as either a hint of dissension or a miscommunication. Also very surprising that it was Orton that ate the pin.
Next a women's title match between Becky Lynch and reigning champ Alexa Bliss. Lynch trolled Bliss last week by fighting her in disguise as "La Luchadora" in a terribly gaudy costume. The match had some really odd spots bordering on body horror where Lynch just wrenches on Bliss's arms, which ends in Bliss showing the ref an overbent elbow (which is apparently something she is capable of). Another female wrestler dressed as La Luchadora also shows up and interferes while the ref is dealing with Bliss's arm resulting in Bliss retaining the title. It is not revealed who is now wearing the awful costume.
And the main event a triple threat match between A.J. Styles, Dolph Ziggler and Baron Corbin for the WWE Championship. I really don't buy Corbin in the title picture. Not only did his moment at Survivor Series a month earlier make his character look bad, it also should in kayfabe hold him far away from a title opportunity and definitely not give him one immediately.
However, Ziggler and Styles made him look very threatening by being forced to work together to overcome him, including a spot where they did a double move to put Corbin through the announce table. Corbin is definitely still green and almost fucked things up by missing his queue to pull the ref out of the ring which forced Styles to kick out of Ziggler's cover post Superkick.
The match also contained a very sweet move where Corbin puts his finisher, the End of Days on Styles but Ziggler hits Corbin simultanously with his Zig-Zag finisher. Absolutely beautifully executed but Corbin kicks out. This leads to another End of Days on Ziggler, a Phenomenal Forearm by Styles on Corbin and Styles then covers Ziggler who is still out. Styles retains.
Basically SD Live has put on a PPV quality show on free TV with no filler, no authority involvement, surprises and very high quality wrestling. Why can't it always be this way?