I haven’t watched Ultima Lucha yet so I’ll probably write another blog about the first part before Wednesday.
RAW
Well, this week’s RAW was certainly different to last weeks because this might have been the worst RAW of the year so far. Maybe, it’s because I’m an English fan but I thought this whole show had way too much of the independence day stuff going on. Now, I totally understand that this is a big American holiday and it should definitely be included in WWE’s TV especially when RAW airs on July 4th. However, to centre a 16 man tag match around independence day when heels and faces are mixed seems totally ludicrous to me.
If I had one word to say about this show it would be boring, the food fight at the start of the show was really cringe-worthy and subsequent tag team match as the main event was really dull. Not to mention putting 16 guys in the same match that are having feuds means that none of their stories were forwarded this week because of this stupid idea. What seemed even funnier to me is that most of the people who get major pops in that match were on the Non-Americans team which seemed to confuse the crowd. Last but not least, this show ended with Zack Ryder and Big Show standing in the ring celebrating so if this doesn’t tell you how stupid this whole idea was then I don’t know what will. Usually I’d make the complaint that Ryder and Big Show’s win won’t go anywhere but I’m glad because Big Show needs to stop being on TV as much as possible at this point.
So, we’re not trying to be too negative about WWE on this blog though and they did have a couple of good segments that got me further interested for the upcoming Battleground event. First, was The Club’s segment with John Cena. I think AJ’s promo quality gets better every week as he gets more comfortable and this is the same with Gallows and Anderson how they bounce off of each other. As expected, Cena always cuts good promos and this was no different. I really like the idea that The Club just wants to beat up John Cena because they’re bad guys and have a point to prove. And with that, came the addition of Enzo and Cass to the feud as they ran in to help Cena getting beat down. This is particularly interesting because it means that they’re putting off the second Cena/AJ match which means that it’ll probably be for the Smackdown title and because AJ won the first one, Cena will win the second and be the face of Smackdown, that’s expected though.
Lastly, another thing to note was the direction of the Wyatt and New Day feud. It seems as if Xavier is scared of the Wyatts which is a direction they haven’t took with any other team yet and anything different in WWE at the minute is a good thing. Perhaps in good old Wyatt fashion, they did leave us with something pretty vague, it seemed as if Bray invited New Day to fight them at their home, literally. Have WWE been paying attention to TNA’s Final Deletion? You can decide that, I’m still yet to see it.
Brock Lesnar - UFC 200 & Summerslam.
I’m not going to be giving any solid MMA analysis because although I’d consider myself a fan, I’m a casual one with that so I thought I’d talk more about what I think Brock’s result means for wrestling and for MMA.
So Brock beat Mark Hunt as I’m sure everyone is aware. Hunt is no slouch, this guy knocks dudes out for fun so it’s not surprise that Brock was respectful of his stand up game. For 2 of the 3 rounds Brock took Hunt down early and and ground ’n’ pounded him when he could. It was quite impressive, Hunt is a top 10 heavyweight in the world and Brock proved he could do more than hang as he pretty much dominated Hunt all the way through. That would be impressive in itself but after 5 years as well? Very impressive.
So, what does this mean for Brock and his wrestling career? The news was announced last week that we’re getting Orton and Brock at Summerslam which I have to admit, I’m excited for. When they use Orton properly he’s brilliant. It’s just when they put him in bit-part feuds and underuse him he gets stale pretty quickly. It’s pretty clear that Brock will be getting the W but that doesn’t mean that it’s any less interesting. Orton is one of the only top guys Brock hasn’t faced since returning to WWE.
However, I don’t think UFC 200 is going to be Brock’s last fight in UFC. Just off what I know about him, he’s a winner, and with that he’ll want to fight again and try and get that belt which means he could be splitting WWE and UFC for the considerable future. What could be the most interesting part of this is if a fighter from UFC crosses over to WWE. Could this have started a future relationship of cross-promotion? Unlikely, but not impossible.
I’ve seen quite a few people saying that Brock winning at UFC means that WWE will never put him over but I actually think it’ll be the opposite. If WWE puts someone over him it’ll make the other guy look like a monster, I definitely don’t think this should be Orton though.
NXT 6/7/16
This week NXT was pretty sweet. Alexa Bliss continues to be the most underrated woman in WWE with a great match against Bayley. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up challenging for the NXT Women’s Championship soon, after Bayley and Nia Jax gets promoted to the main roster during the draft.
This weeks main surprise was the return of Rhyno who looks to be having a programme with Buddy Murphy as he Gored Wesley Blake and both of the Hype Bros leaving Murphy backing away. Rhyno has always been pretty entertaining and he gives credibility to the guys he puts over. i do think though that it’s a bit of a waste putting him against Buddy Murphy but I feel like WWE might like him.
As expected, the 2 out of 3 falls tag match was brilliant. I think it’s becoming very clear that Chad Gable is one of the best wrestlers in NXT at the minute which is pretty huge considering he hasn’t been wrestling professionally for a long time but you can tell he just gets it. I also loved that he’s started to do Kurt Angle spot on the ring apron of teasing the german suplex. Both American Alpha and The Revival seem to gel so well together as well and they didn’t do the typical early first fall which WWE seems to like doing. I feel like an early first fall really just ruins the match for the most part because it makes no sense in story when the teams have had matches that have went 20 minutes before. Jason Jordan’s hot tags are always so exciting as well, I think both him and Gable will be big single stars in the future. I feel like I could genuinely watch these two wrestle tag matches every week forever because each match is different and they have such range in what they can do.
However, this isn’t to discount the ability of Dash and Dawson. The Revival are good tag champions I think, they work well together their shtick is something that’s missing from the whole of WWE, just a team that beats people up. I can see them being called up within the next 3 or 4 months too. I really enjoy their promo work as well, they aren’t the most charismatic duo in WWE but they know their characters and they’re believable and that’s half of the battle. Both of these teams had the whole audience in the palm of their hand in this match. I was actually surprised that The Revival went over clean, I figured they’d go a fall each but then have the Authors of Pain interrupt the match. But, yet again, another quality hour of NXT and it’s only going to get better with Nakamura and Balor next week.
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