Whats going down...... 4 ROMAN REIGNS missed Night Of Champions on September 21 after he underwent hernia surgery the previous day. Reigns, WWE’s star babyface project, is expected to be sidelined until November or December. As inconvenient as this might seem for WWE when it has so few stars which matter, the timing could have been considerably worse: this will not derail Reigns’ planned mega-push in 2015. In Roman’s absence, Dean Ambrose has been inserted into the ultra-pushed up-and-coming babyface spot. Hopefully, Dean will make lasting gains between now and Reigns return at the end of the year . . . Results and commentary on Night Of Champions from Nashville, Tennessee: Goldust and Stardust defeated Jimmy Uso and Jey Uso to capture the WWE tag team title. The match was rough in the early going, but it picked up, as Usos’ collisions generally do, and had a sizzling conclusion. Sheamus pinned Cesaro in a tight, hard-hitting match-up, which served as further evidence (as if any freethinker needed it) that Cesaro should have turned babyface after WrestleMania XXX. Fans still want to embrace Cesaro. And, yet, WWE still refuses to yield and comply with the fantastically F’N obvious because the McMahons know best. The Miz regained the Intercontinental title from Dolph Ziggler in a frivolous TV-style match. The real purpose of the bout was to promote the new release from the band Florida Georgia Line (Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard), who sat in on commentary and even shoved down Miz’s “stunt man” Damien Mizdow at ringside during the bout. If you’re wondering why Sandow tolerates this, here’s the answer: it’s better than the alternative — a job with TNA . . . NOC continued: Seth Rollins accepted a win by forfeit over the injured Roman Reigns. Dean Ambrose then returned and fought around the arena with Rollins, until Ambrose was apprehended by security and tossed out of the building. Rusev surprisingly beat Mark Henry by tap out with the Accolade. Though the story line was steeped in jingoism, I thought Henry did the best work of his entire career in the run-up to the match, and felt the feud should have been extended until Hell In A Cell on October 26. Rusev had to do all the running around, since Henry can hardly move. Nevertheless, Henry’s selling was believable, and the match, finish aside, was decent. Randy Orton pinned Chris Jericho with a mid-air RKO in what I reckon was the finest match of Jericho’s 2014 comeback (perhaps it was a tie for quality with Jericho’s cage match against Bray Wyatt on September 8). Prior to the contest, we were shown the angle from the September 8 Raw in which Orton, with a cruel sneak attack, exacerbated the knee injury Jericho had supposedly suffered at the end of his cage match with Wyatt. However, Jericho neither sold the injury in the NOC match nor was it part of the match story. Jericho had ignored the story line knee injury in a tag team match on the September 12 SmackDown as well. What was the point of the injury angle when Jericho neglected to sell it — and it was omitted from the thread of these matches? Totally senseless. When no one sells (and the bookers dont pay attention to their own output), nothing matters . . . NOC concluded: A.J. Lee captured the Divas title in a Triple Threat match against champion Paige and Nikki Bella. It was a long match, by WWE women’s standards, and a fairly good one too, with something akin to a start, a middle and an end. Finally, John Cena beat Brock Lesnar by disqualification when Seth Rollins ran in and smashed Cena with the Money In The Bank briefcase as Cena was about to pin Lesnar in what could charitably be described as a feud-protracting finish. Lesnar worked over Cena’s arm repeatedly with the kimura. Though this was the same hold with which Lesnar broke Triple H’s arm (twice) and Shawn Michaels’ arm, Cena barely sold it. Lesnar reciprocated by barely selling Cena’s STF. Cena accidentally busted Lesnar’s nose with a clumsy elbow. That Cena visually had Lesnar beaten at the finish erased whatever the SummerSlam match was meant to achieve (assuming that hadn’t already been reduced to dust by Cena’s no-sell on the August 25 Raw). I found the Lesnar/Cena match pointless. WWE should have booked something else at NOC, and saved the Cena/Lesnar title rematch for HIAC. After this, the appeal of yet another bout between them has been greatly reduced. Paul Heyman was irrelevant at ringside. After Rollins had dived in, he proclaimed that he would cash in his MITB briefcase on Lesnar but, before he could do so, Cena made a comeback and sent him fleeing from the ring with ease. In another add-on to compensate for the non-finish, Lesnar hit an F5 on Cena . . . Brock Lesnar was absent from Raw on Monday. He will make an appearance on Raw next month, and will defend the WWE World heavyweight title against Cena once more at Hell In A Cell on October 26 in Dallas, Texas. At Night Of Champions, the booking transmitted the message that Cena would have pinned Lesnar, had Rollins not hit the ring. Cena was robbed! Besides, there is no one else Lesnar-worthy: WWE hasn’t bothered preparing another wrestler for a main event match with the champ. Why would it? That would require something beyond the blinkered, tunnel-vision booking to which we have unfortunately grown accustomed, and which has created the dearth of genuine stars we have today . . . From one Fin to another: Fergal ‘Prince’ Devitt, welcome to the club. It was confirmed at the NXT television taping on September 25 that Devitt’s ring name in WWE/NXT will be Finn Bálor. With a (first) name like that, this man will go far. At the taping on Thursday, Bálor teamed with Hideo Itami to batter The Ascension for an episode of NXT which will be broadcast in early November. If you can’t wait for the TV transmission of Bálor’s debut and would like to watch it now, here’s some rough footage: youtube/watch?v=of8xmD8NQKs. . . Mickie James and Nick ‘Magnus’ Aldis became first-time parents this week. They had a boy, whom theyve named Donovan Patrick Aldis . . . Jim Ross claimed this week that Sting will wrestle only one match for WWE, and that will be at WrestleMania 31. Some have speculated that Sting will tangle with The Undertaker on the card. That is the match WWE should promote, for business purposes. ’Mania is a nostalgia purchase each year for many fans, and Sting vs. Undertaker has been a dream collision for more than 20 years. The drawback is that an Undertaker vs. Sting match could be mediocre in the ring. It’s debatable as to how much The Undertaker has left. Sting, meanwhile, has been only passable for years. Indeed, the quality of ‘The Stinger’s’ matches has hinged upon his opponents and/or the extras. The hype for ’Taker vs. Sting might be strained too because Sting has never been effective as a heel. Maybe the nostalgia buzz would be so strong for this dream showdown that a babyface vs. babyface scenario could work . . . NJPW’s Destruction events were held in the last week in Kobe and Okayama. On the Kobe event on September 21 before 8,000 fans, Ryusuke Taguchi captured the IWGP junior heavyweight title from KUSHIDA, and Shinsuke Nakamura regained the IWGP Intercontinental belt from Bad Luck Fale. On September 23 before a sell out crowd of 3,600, Kazuchika Okada retained his IWGP heavyweight title shot at the Tokyo Dome with a Rainmaker-fuelled win over Karl Anderson. NJPW’s next major event will be King Of Pro Wrestling on October 13 at Sumo Hall, Tokyo. Kazuchika Okada will defend his Tokyo Dome title shot against Tetsuya Naito, and A.J. Styles will put the IWGP crown on the line against Hiroshi Tanahashi . . . Hideo Itami beat Justin Gabriel in his in-ring NXT debut on the September 18 broadcast. Itami is using the double foot-stomp as his finisher. He looked superb, of course. Small, but superb. During the match, Renee Young attempted to put Itami over on commentary when she said: “I actually talked to Jason Albert, who had wrestled in Japan for over six-and-a-half years, and he said that Hideo is one of the biggest stars in Japan, and [was] actually trained by the great Kobashi, who gave him his stamp of approval.” (Two “actuallys” in the same sentence? Come on, Renee, expand your vocabulary.) Unfortunately, Renee’s praise was immediately harpooned by the repellent Alex Riley: “But I tell you what, guys: you can throw that all out the window right now because this place is the best in the world, NXT. It matters what you do here.” Some might say, in Riley’s defence, that he was just following orders. But he completely obliterated Renee’s praise for Itami, and the brouhaha surrounding his signing and introduction as an international superstar, not only in NXT, but on wwe and Raw. Even Michael Cole had heaped praise on KENTA/Itami on the September 8 Raw. What’s more, after Itami had beaten Gabriel on the September 18 show, Riley continued to belittle him and his pre-WWE achievements. When The Ascension ran in and pounded Itami, Riley said: “Welcome to the big time, kid.” Who is Alex Riley to talk down to Kenta Kobayashi? He’s a month younger than Kobayashi as well . . . Harking back to Jason Albert: he has now retired from wrestling, following his disastrous run as Tensai in WWE. Albert (Matt Bloom) is presently working full-time at WWE’s Performance Center . . . Dave Bautista has a major role in the big-budget thriller Bus 657 (or Bus 757) which begins filming next month. It was inevitable that Bautista would be offered roles after the success of Guardians Of The Galaxy. I haven’t seen Guardians, but I’m told Bautista is very good in his role as Drax. As I wrote in WGD on August 8, who can blame Bautista for accepting these movie gigs — and postponing or even scrapping his return to wrestling — after the reception he received from WWE fans at the start of the year? . . . The U.S. version of the new Sting Blu-ray/DVD has a photo of a Sting impostor (Jeff Farmer) applying a nerve-hold on Masa Saito. This is what happens when you train your staff to care only about WWE: they do not have the knowledge to detect things like this . . . Following the abandonment of Mojo Rawley’s push, Baron Corbin is the new super-pushed project in NXT. Corbin has far more skill and polish than Rawley at this point . . . Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch have formed a partnership in NXT. Lynch turned heel on Bayley at the NXT tapings this week. This sets up a Banks and Lynch vs. Bayley and Charlotte programme . . . Before the first match of Night Of Champions, someone in the crowd held up a sign which read: “Cena looks like a flaming-hot Cheeto” . . . Cesaro won a Battle Royal to become the number one contender to the Intercontinental title and then lost to champ Dolph Ziggler on SmackDown last night (Ziggler regained the IC title from The Miz on the September 22 Raw). A self-contained start/stop push — in the course of a single programme. Dear, WWE: this booking gets no one over ever . . . On the subject of start/stop, Jack Swagger defeated Bo Dallas on Raw. What I cannot understand is why WWE has not yet grasped that this approach does not work. They’ve been doing it for years, and the yield has been zero . . . The post-Night Of Champions Raw drew a 2.69 rating, the programme’s lowest number of the year. The September 15 Raw had pulled a 2.79. Maybe Triple H will be instructed to don the tights again to fill the void at the top of the card. Few stars usually equals quick-fix veteran comeback. Impact Wrestling on September 24 attracted a 0.81 rating, a drop from the previous week’s 0.88 for the heavily-hyped No Surrender episode. These numbers do not bode well for TNA. I realise Im stating the obvious . . . TNA recorded future installments of Impact Wrestling from September 16-19 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The four tapings drew a combined total of approximately 1,500 fans to the Sands Casino Resort. I hope no one influential at Spike TV witnessed these miserable attendance figures which reaffirm how few people are willing to pay to watch TNA. I won’t spoil the upcoming television shows by listing the results here (full results are on scores of other sites, should you wish to peruse them). Here, simply, are some notable developments from the tapings: Team 3D wrestled — meaning Bully Ray and TNA have come to a new agreement. As he had predicted, Davey Richards sufficiently recovered from his leg injury to wrestle at the tapings. Brodus Clay made his TNA debut. Clay is using the name Tyrus. And Kurt Angle was there. He served as the special referee of a World title match between Lashley and Bobby Roode, which will be broadcast at the end of October. WWE has made it abundantly clear that it will not rehire Angle. Where else except TNA is Angle going to work, if he wishes to continue wrestling? . . . Though Robbie E. and Brooke Adams are currently part of CBS’ The Amazing Race show in the States, Rob is frequently working as a jobber on Xplosion and Brooke is nowhere to be seen in TNA. Why has TNA not capitalised on their network TV publicity? The pair should be in meaningful positions in the TNA framework . . . TNA has announced the following matches for Bound For Glory on October 12 in Tokyo: Samoa Joe vs. Low Ki vs. Kaz Hayashi, and The Great Muta and TAJIRI vs. James Storm and The Great Sanada. Since TNA has already recorded episodes of Impact which will air after the October 12 PPV, thus telegraphing many of the results at BFG, this could be the least-purchased PPV in TNA history . . . I was in attendance at Evoque nightclub in Preston, Lancashire last night (September 26) for Preston City Wrestling’s Just Get In The Bloody Ring event. The show was very well-attended; there must have been 1,000 fans there. There was plenty of comedy on the under card, some of which was provided by the wrestlers, some by the responsive crowd. During the match between Sha Samuels and Danny Hope, fans chanted at Samuels: “Cockney w—ker!” And: “Piss off back to London!” That was followed by: “F—k off back to London!” “Nice braces!” And, best of all, “Fat Cantona, you are!” [Correction: As @janlbuxton has pointed out to me, the Cantona-related chant directed at Samuels was: Ooh, aah, fat Cantona!] Samuels won by submission. The announcement by General Manager Lionheart that Brodus Clay will appear over Supershow Of Honor weekend was not well-received. Clay will battle Michael Elgin on November 28. Team 3D’s appearance went down fabulously. They beat Team Single on a lame belt shot DQ. After the match, Team 3D posed for photos with fans in the ring. Each photo cost £20. I thought that was a bit steep, but many members of the public gladly paid it. Scores of people had their photo taken with Bully Ray and Devon. From where I was standing, I thought Paul London had defeated Noam Dar — but it was actually Dar who scored the pin when he cradled London after London had executed a middle-rope shooting star press. This was an exciting match in which they fought around the nightclub. For the benefit of those who haven’t seen PCW at Evoque, the PCW ring base is lowered because the ceiling is so low (top rope moves in matches are rare because the ceiling is only about seven feet higher than the top rope). What this means is that from the back of the crowd, you have to watch the action on the big screens in order to see the mat-level combat: I was looking at the ring when the finish of London vs. Dar occurred and couldn’t see what had happened due to the wall of bodies in front of me. In the main event, Bubblegum defeated Brian Kendrick. PCW’s next show is Fright Night III on October 31 at Evoque in Preston city centre . . . Let me get this straight: Bray Wyatt won his feud-ending cage match with Chris Jericho on the September 8 Raw, but it was Jericho who wrestled on the Night Of Champions pay-per-view, and Wyatt, erm, didn’t? Oh, yes. Of course: Jericho’s a veteran part-timer, so he receives preferential treatment whenever he decides to drop in. Youngsters like Wyatt will just have to wait their turn . . . Full credit to WWE for its video tribute to Joan Rivers on the September 8 Raw. I never saw that coming . . . As I wrote on Twitter, it was the main-eventers who saved the day at NXT TakeOver: Fatal 4 Way on September 11. I didn’t think any of the under card bouts were particularly memorable. Charlotte vs. Bayley was a total anticlimax (the ring positioning on Charlotte’s moonsault was lousy), and the post-match angle in which Charlotte rescued Bayley from an attack by Sasha Banks was flatter than an ironing board. Charlotte is a dud as a personality. Happily, the titular Adrian Neville vs. Sami Zayn vs. Tyler Breeze vs. Tyson Kidd four way was a slow-building thriller, which tore the house down towards its conclusion. Neville teased a heel turn when he yanked the referee out of the ring as he was counting Zayn’s cover on Kidd. Neville then scored the pin on Kidd to retain his NXT title. The quality of this match was in stark contrast to the tag match teaser on the September 8 Raw (Neville and Zayn beat Breeze and Kidd). What a counterproductive rush-job that was. The least WWE could have done was provide all four with some mic time beforehand to allow the talent to properly introduce themselves to the Raw audience and viewers at home . . . Booker T will do an autograph signing at Preston City Wrestling’s Supershow Of Honor night two on November 29 . . . WWE has done nothing to promote the U.K. launch of the WWE Network, which is supposed to happen on October 1. The company hasn’t even announced the price for U.K. consumers. Hopefully, WWE will provide some details on Raw this Monday. I was expecting WWE to send a wrestler or wrestlers to the U.K. to publicise the Network via a series of interviews. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? WWE has sunk so much money into this thing that it should be seeking as much free publicity for the Network as it can. By Fin Martin
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 16:36:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015