It’s time to Eat Ass and Take Names, no wait, that can’t be right. It’s time to
take ass and kick names! Damn it! Right, third time lucky… It’s time to kick ass and
take names, that’s right, this weekend it’s WWE Stomping Grounds and boy howdy, what an
unimportant show this is shaping up to be.
A good chunk of the card is rematches from the past few PPVs, with two being rematches
from Super Showdown, one being a rematch from Money in the Bank, and one being a rematch
from WrestleMania but don’t let WWE hear you say that, because automatic rematches
have been scrapped remember!
Despite all of this, there are still plenty of rumours to fill our pockets with, so join
me Chopper Pete Quinnell as we prepare to Name Ass and Take Kicks.
Before we get into it though, have yourself a superclick party by pressing the thumbs
up, subscribe and bell icons to enable notifications and leave us a comment answering the question
of the day which today is:
Which match are you most excited for at Stomping Grounds?
Here are all the rumours and reports that YOU need to know about WWE Stomping Grounds
(Time To Kick Ass And Take Names).
Brock Lesnar’s current Money in the Bank cash in completion rate is zero. He keeps
trying but that pesky Seth Rollins keeps wriggling his way out of all situations using his wet
hair and a steel chair.
While it now looks likely that Brock will wait to cash in at SummerSlam or another of
the big four PPVs, there’s still every chance that WWE could just jump the gun and have
him cash in much sooner.
With Vince doing everything he possibly can to pop a rating, why not tease once again
that Brock might cash in at Stomping Grounds? They could call it something awful like Beast
Grounds or “It’s time to Beast Ass and Take Names” to get the idea over!
Whether he actually manages to cash in is another question. The story they seem to be
telling is that Brock lays perfect plans and then something minor goes wrong to disrupt
him. The latest of which was Paul Heyman falling over, proving once again how imaginative WWE’s
writing department has become.
Maybe there’s still some of Brock’s sweat in the canvas from Super ShowDown that they
can use as a prop for him to slip in this time?
Again, it’s all about that cheap pop and some extra ratings points. Bray Wyatt’s
back must be more sore than ever after continuously carrying Raw since he debuted his Firefly
Funhouse segment, but it’ll be interesting to see how many more weeks the segment has
left.
You would assume that he will finally debut in the ring at a PPV show, but after Stomping
Grounds (Time To Kick Ass And Take Names) next weekend, there’s another month until
Extreme Rules, which would mean at least four more episodes of Firefly Funhouse.
While Stomping Grounds is a great place to Name Kicks and Take Ass, it would be a very
anti-climactic way of bringing Bray back...which is exactly why it’s probably what Vince
will do.
Bray is about as far removed from your classic Vince McMahon wrestler as you’re likely
to find, with his good promos and interesting character, and no it wouldn’t be at all
surprising if Vince simply says “this has run its course, let’s just have him feud
with Mojo Rawley, he has facepaint so they’re practically the same person.”
Since losing one of her two belts at Money in the Bank, Becky Lynch has been losing everything
that made her so great at the tail end of last year and the beginning on 2019. She now
has no serious threats to her championships, a feud that no-one cares about, and her time
on TV has seemingly been halved every week that goes by.
That being said, she is still very much the favourite to walk out of Stomping Grounds
(Time To Kick Ass And Take Names) as the Raw women’s champion, after she’s taken Lacey
Evans’ name and ass, no wait, this’ll start some weird fanfic thing. Basically,
Becky is a huge favourite to retain against Lacey Evans, which is good because we really
don’t need to see Lacey Evans, a woman whose finisher is a punch, as the top female star
in the company.
It really feels about time that the women’s belts were unified given the lack of serious
competition across the divisions, but for now at least, it looks like we’re trundling
on with Becky as the Raw Champion and…
Bayley as the SmackDown Live women’s champion too. This one is pretty obvious, given that
Alexa Bliss isn’t even a Smackdown superstar. Bayley is the huge favourite to retain over
Alexa, and will then hopefully move onto feuds with people on her own brand. Having said
that, immediately after the brand split when Becky Lynch was SmackDown women’s champion
and faced Alexa Bliss in a tables match and no one expected her to win, she did.
While it’s great to see Alexa fit and healthy and back in the ring, being shoved straight
back into the title picture has felt rather forced, particularly when there’s plenty
of talent on SmackDown that isn’t being used right now for anything.
Ember Moon, Asuka, Kairi Sane, Lana...maybe not Lana, all of these people are on SmackDown
Live and if you’d started watching the show a few weeks ago, you wouldn’t even know
they existed, because they’ve either not been on TV at all, or they’ve been in a
couple of awful backstage segments, screaming and throwing a bin around instead of getting
physical. Not naming names, Ember.
Hopefully these reports are true and Bayley can move on from Alexa and onto a feud with
someone on her own brand. But who cares about what brand anyone is on anymore, because WILDCARD.
That distinctly mediocre match they had at Super ShowDown clearly wasn’t enough for
Vince McMahon, because he wants to see Baron Corbin main event yet another PPV show. This
one’s for you, Oli.
Seth, much like his girlfriend Becky Lynch, has lost lots of his momentum since WrestleMania,
largely due to lacklustre feuds with a plethora of uninteresting opponents. Baron Corbin,
while a perfectly good heel when he’s not being over exposed, is the epitome of this
string of dull Seth Rollins feuds, but thankfully it does at least look like this one is coming
to an end with Seth on top.
Seth is heavy favourite with all betting sites to win the match, a fact that will allow many
wrestling fans to rest easy at night. The idea of Baron Corbin as Universal Champion
is the stuff of nightmares, but thankfully for the time being at least it looks like
that isn’t the plan.
Because we can never have enough of Shane McMahon. After all, he is the best in the
woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorld.
WrestleVotes are reporting that one of their sources has suggested that the end goal for
the current Shane storyline is for him to defeat Kofi Kingston and win the WWE Championship.
[retching sounds]
While this in itself is a revolting idea, it begs the question how we would even get
to a point where Shane is feuding with Kofi.
Well why not have him try and interfere in the cage match between Kofi and Dolph to build
tension between the two parties? Perhaps Shane could use his sweaty body to squeeze between
two cage panels and try and help Ziggler win?
It seems that WWE is keen on trying to get Shane involved in every segment on both Raw
and SmackDown anyway, so they may as well do the same on every PPV too. Fun fact, Stomping
Grounds (Time To Kick Ass And Take Names) is the only PPV show this year that Shane
McMahon is not scheduled to wrestle on. *sigh*
Despite all of the above speculation, it is still very much expected that Kofi will defeat
Ziggler inside the steel cage. You can expect there to be plenty of outside interference
from Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn and the aforementioned Shane McMahon, which will inevitably bring
down The New Day to even the odds.
The last person in the world that needs the WWE Championship is Dolph Ziggler, and the
bookies seem to agree, giving Kofi very good odds to retain. Fun fact, Dolph Ziggler vs
Kofi Kingston is the most wrestled TV singles match in WWE history, with this being the
28th encounter between the two.
I know what you’re thinking, surely we can get to 50 before this feud is over, but if
Kofi is going to retain, then you would assume it’s curtains for Dolph and perhaps he can
resume his “comedy” tour that he had to stop in order to return to WWE for this pointless
feud.
On this week’s episode of 205 Live, there was a number one contenders match for Tony
Nese’s cruiserweight championship, with Akira Tozawa, Drew Gulak, Oney Lorcan and
Humberto Carillo competing in a fatal-4-way.
In an interesting turn of events, both Akira Tozawa and Drew Gulak got a pinfall at exactly
the same time, which you would assume means that we’ll be having a triple threat match
at Stomping Grounds (Time To Kick Ass And Take Names) for the title. It was an excellent
match by the way, so do go and watch it if you have time to give those hard-working lads
on 205 Live a bit of air time.
Nese has held the belt since the WrestleMania when he defeated Buddy Murphy, and has since
defended against Ariya Daivari at Money in the Bank. Given that 205 Live has a roster
of 11 (or 12 if you count Chad Gable), more than a quarter of the entire roster is in
this match. That really tells you all you need to know about how much WWE values this
division…
As is often the case with a B-Show PPV, you’ll be lucky to get much more than a midcard title
change, and as neither of the Intercontinental or US Title is apparently going to be defended
on this show (watch them announce something 5 minutes after this goes live), you probably
won’t even get that on Stomping Grounds (Time To Kick Ass And Take Names)
Every champion in every currently announced match is the favourite to retain their belts,
which begs the question, what’s the point of this show? It’s less than a month to
Extreme Rules anyway, so why not use this time to build some characters and feuds for
a longer period of time, so that fans are invested.
As I said on the Wrestle Ramble earlier this week, there are lots of feuds on this card,
but there are no storylines. Everyone is fighting for the sake of fighting, and not because
they’re built up a rivalry or one has particularly wronged the other. Make me want to see one
person win. MAKE ME CARE, WWE. Make me want to see people kick ass and take names.
So those were some rumours about Stomping Grounds (Time To Kick Ass And Take Names),
if you want the cold hard facts, click the video to my right to be taken to the news
and more awesome WrestleTalk and ScreenStalker things! Have a superclick party by pressing
the thumbs up, subscribe and bell icons, and leave us a comment answering the question
of the day. I’ve been Chopper Pete Quinnell, and that, was wrestling.