It’s week 33 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week!
WWE RAW (6th February)
Edge and Beth Phoenix came out to open the show and address their business with the Judgment Day. Whilst Beth stood in the background looking jacked, Edge took the lead on the mic and put his opponents over by taking the tack that he did his job too well – he’d founded the Judgment Day to elevate the talent he’d hand-picked for it, and they were now all in a better place for it. (Mami got a particularly good pop when he mentioned her Royal Rumble win.)
As Edge came to a boil, Beth challenged Finn and Rhea Ripley to come out – but instead Finn came out flanked by Priest and Dominik, with Mami nowhere to be seen. Dominik got incredible heel heat with his fake tough guy act, and perhaps that was the point of holding Rhea back – people love Mami too much, so if the Day need to be booed in a segment you hold her back and you send out prison badass Dom.
All of this was in service of setting up Finn and Rhea vs. Edge and Beth at Elimination Chamber, a match which clearly Rhea isn’t going to take the pin in because she needs to be kept strong for Wrestlemania – but since Finn could get pinned without making Rhea look bad the match can go either way, so that’s intriguing.
The segment ended with the Judgment Day planning to beat down Edge and Beth so that they didn’t even make it to Elimination Chamber. The Street Profits ran in to make the save, leading in to the singles match of Priest vs. Dawkins with a spot in the Elimination Chamber match for the US title on the line. Priest won, leaving Dawkins’ fellow Street Profit to face Montez Ford to face Elias for the last spot in the Chamber.
Ford was more successful (nobody would believe Elias could win the US championship from his current spot on the card), so that’s your men’s Chamber rounded out. Austin Theory was at ringside to do commentary during the Ford vs. Elias match, and then got obliterated by an ambush from Seth Rollins, just to remind us that there’s only two or three people who play major roles in the US championship scene these days and those are Theory, Rollins, and Bobby Lashley (though Bobby now seems to be pivoting away from it).
As for the women’s Chamber match – the prize being a shot at Bianca Belair’s RAW Women’s Championship – we had a four-way contest for a spot between Candice LeRae, Michin, Carmella, and Piper Niven. Prior to the match, we had an odd segment with LeRae, Gargano, and Dexter Lumis, in which Dexter revealed that Nikki Cross has been spying on Mr. and Mrs. Wrestling for some reason. Michin and LeRae had some moments of co-operation within a match which was in principle all against all, though at least in context it somewhat made sense (they were specifically collaborating to take down Piper Niven, and commentary put over the idea that if you don’t put Niven down, you can’t get the pin on anyone else). Eventually it would be Carmella who got the win, in a result nobody watching other than Corey Graves seemed enthusiastic for.
The mid-show slump came early this time, with the second match on the card being Baron Corbin vs. Dexter Lumis. I think Lumis won – I took the time to take the recycling out so I didn’t watch. Later on, we had a spot where JBL declared he was done trying to “polish a turd” and washed his hands of Corbin, so I guess he’s going to get yet another repackaging. I’d say I hope this time’s the charm, but he’s had so many chances I don’t see how it can be.
Things perked up with Brock Lesnar coming out, mulling over his Royal Rumble elimination at the hands of Bobby Lashley, and to offer a contract for Lesnar vs. Lashley at Elimination Chamber. That brought out Lashley to recap their history, take the contract, but not sign it immediately – he’s going to “take it under consideration”. This naturally led to Brock losing his temper and giving Bobby an F5 or two for his troubles, to the delight of the crowd, so that’s a hoss fight we’re likely to get down the line. (I would not be shocked if it ended up being delayed to Wrestlemania, that said.) In potentially related events, Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin faced off against Alpha Academy, with MVP showing up in Alexander and Benjamin’s corner – so the teased Hurt Business reunion may be officially on.
Chelsea Green came back at the Royal Rumble, but since then has just appeared in backstage segments harassing Adam Pearce and being a “Karen”. She got a match tonight, though, after berating Pearce for one, so he sicced Asuka on her, who got the win in part due to outclassing Green, in part because Green got distracted by Asuka’s various Elimination Chamber opponents appearing at ringside to taunt Green, and then get a promo cut on them by Bianca Belair.
Naturally, we had a bit of Cody Rhodes business to continue his build to his match with Roman Reigns bit. This time he came out, started in on a promo along the lines of last week’s, and then Paul Heyman came out. They had a bit of a moment in the ring, Paul congratulated Cody on his Royal Rumble win, and Cody offered an account of his personal interactions with Heyman, including an anecdote about how Heyman offering Dusty Rhodes a stint on ECW helped rebuild Dusty’s confidence in a dark time in his career and for his family, and Heyman sold being emotionally moved by all that before bringing the subject back to his boss – the Tribal Chief, Roman Reigns.
Heyman then built up some steam talking about how Dusty Rhodes trained and prepped a swathe of new talent at NXT – including, most particularly, Roman Reigns himself, and highlighted how Cody didn’t go through the NXT system and so wasn’t trained and prepared for the spotlight by Dusty. This culminated with him telling Cody that he was Dusty’s favourite son… but Roman Reigns was the son he always wanted. Cody moved in to get in Paul’s face, and warned Paul that he hadn’t wanted to make this personal… but now Paul had, but Paul wasn’t going to pay for it – Roman would. Great interaction all round, and whilst it did have that somewhat over-polished, over-calculated air of a lot of Cody’s stuff, Heyman did a lot to make it seem if not natural, then at least narratively satisfying.
The main event was the much-delayed cage match between Bayley and Becky Lynch. Time was when this would have been a major PPV draw, but neither of the Horsewomen have a clear trajectory for Elimination Chamber – or, for that matter, Wrestlemania, and a definitive finish here would seem to draw a line under their feud. As it turned out, Damage CTRL attempted to intervene to help Becky, which led Lita to emerge to stop them – so whilst Becky won, I’m sure Bayley will find a way to turn Lita’s presence into cause for a rematch. Will we see more of Lita? Maybe, maybe not; though it would be weird to pull her out like this and then not do anything with it, this was originally planned for the nostalgia episode for RAW‘s 30th anniversary so it’s possible this was the originally planned finish of the match.
AEW Dynamite: Championship Fight Night (8th February)
This is one of those special-branding episodes of Dynamite AEW like to do – this time the schtick is that most of the matches have significant championship implications. First up was an “eliminator” match between Takeshita and MJF – if Takeshita won, he’d get a crack at MJF’s world championship, if he lost he goes to the back of the queue. Obviously, MJF vs. Bryan Danielson is the money match for the next PPV, so Takeshita clearly isn’t going to get the title – but the possibility he might get a title shot spiced up this match (because he could win this and then lose his shot). The purpose of this match seemed to be to give MJF a bit of a chance to get practice in before his PPV match with Bryan, which people will have high technical expectations of; on the strength of some of the reversals MJF pulled off, I’d say he’s ready.
Naturally, MJF won in a heelish manner, and bashed his head open for good measure, which prompted Bryan Danielson to come out to make the save. Danielson had his own match this episode against Rush – which, if he won, would secure his championship match with MJF at the PPV in a one-hour Iron Man match. Before Danielson came out to face Rush, however, MJF came out selling a limp to treat us to another promo (having already given a backstage response to his win over Takeshita), in which he claimed that Bryan Danielson wasn’t going to come out so demanded that Aubrey ring the bell and do a ten-count so that Bryan could be counted out and Rush get the win.
It turned out that his goons had trapped Danielson in the trainers’ room – forcing him to bust his way out (aggravating his banged-up shoulder in the process) and then sprint to the ring to beat the count. We then had the treat of the Rush vs. Danielson match with MJF losing his temper on commentary, lashing out at Aubrey Edwards for not counting fast enough and griping with the regular commentary team. When Danielson pulled out the win after a gruelling match, MJF came down to the ring to crack him on the head with the Dynamite Diamond Ring and split him open like he did Takeshita for good measure. Security came out to try and make the save when MJF put Danielson in the Salt of the Earth armlock and things went to break. All of this should set up a killer match at Revolution, and with several weeks of build before then we should have a fun ride to get there.
The Bunny got an eliminator match of her own against Jamie Hayter, hoping to secure a win and get a shot at Hayter’s Women’s World Championship, which she lost because the feud between Saraya and Toni Storm and Hayter and the other homegrown AEW talent is the story here. This was advanced by a backstage segment where Saraya and Toni spraypainted Leva Bates with an L for loser, NWO style.
We got some non-championship action in the form of the gauntlet match of Ricky Starks against three members of the JAS in sequence – with a match against Chris Jericho as the prize if he got through the gauntlet. Cool Hand Angelo was first; next up was Daddy Magic. The third was going to be either Sammy Guevara or Daniel Garcia – not sure why they wouldn’t just have him face both, but there you go. When I first heard the match announced last week, I didn’t realise the “Gauntlet” was an actual gauntlet match – I thought it was going to be successive matches on different weeks, so either they didn’t communicate that well or plans changed.
Either way, Cool Hand was dealt with fairly quickly, then Daddy Magic got dispensed of even faster. Garcia came out to his music, only for Sammy Guevara’s music to play when Danny was halfway down the ramp. Garcia showed every sign of being annoyed by this, but rolled with it, and soon the plot became apparent – they were going to keep it ambiguous which of them was actually entering the match right to the end, with Sammy’s fakeout giving Garcia a chance to ambush Starks and get an upper hand. Eventually, a “masked fan” at ringside – who turned out to be a disguised Jericho – got a crack in at Starks, giving Garcia the win. Not sure where this feud goes from here, it feels like it’s losing momentum when it should be gaining it.
The Elite defended their trios world championship against Top Flight and A.R. Fox, which the Elite won, so I guess… that’s it? It feels like Top Flight are constantly on the verge of getting some sort of significant push or breakthrough but whenever it’s about to happen they suddenly lose all momentum, and I don’t get why that is.
Main event was The Acclaimed defending their tag team championship the Gunn Club, with Daddy Ass swearing to stay out of it so the Acclaimed can deal with his dipshit sons without his intervention. This led up to a spot towards the end where the Gunns had the Acclaimed on the back foot and the referee down, and were about to indulge in some cheating, and Billy came out to remonstrate with them in the sort of spot which teased a potential Billy Gunn betrayal of the Acclaimed, but in which he turned out to be acting in their interests all along, and ended up getting smashed hard over the head by the championship belts. More shenanigans ensued, with the Gunns exploiting the groggy, concussed state of the referee to get a cheaty win and win the belts.
This felt terrible. There were lots of shots of aghast fans, and certainly I guess that’s the reaction they want as heels, but AEW was meant to be the home of high-quality tag team action in reaction to WWE treating their tag division as an afterthought and a joke, and now a very WWE-style tag team are champs and they seem to be cold as hell – the fans don’t like them, but they don’t enjoy booing them either it seems.
Nothin' Means Nothin'! 