Hey Wrestle Talk!
It’s SoCalVal here and as usual I’m here to spread the hot goss from the world of wrestling.
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of the day'.
So!
In the week after AEW sold out All Out in 15 minutes, WWE is holding Stomping Grounds,
a show that would likely not sell out even if buying a ticket would bring about world
peace.
Matches we’ve seen before, matches we’ve seen many times before, and matches we’ve
seen so many times we’re not sure if we’ve seen them before.
Actually, I’m not sure about anything anymore.
Is Baron Corbin actually a member of the lowest order of the British nobility, or is that
his first name?
What if everyone was named after the country of their ancestors like Samoa Joe?
Anyway, I’m Baroness United States of America Val and here are all the last minute Stomping
Grounds rumours you need to know!
Card shake-up They’re running out of time on this one,
but according to the very reliable twitter account WrestleVotes, WWE could be in the
process of shaking up the Stomping Grounds card in an effort to sell more tickets and
get more people to watch.
WrestleVotes Tweeted:
“WWE is aware of the poor ticket sales for Sunday’s PPV event in Washington state.
There has been talks of shaking up the card, nothing I can confidently report on tho yet.
What’s one thing you would change or add to Stomping Grounds to get you excited for
the show?”
From what has been reported by Dave Meltzer, it seems like the show won’t even come close
to selling out, and WWE is reportedly offering fans 2 for 1 tickets and other special deals,
something the company has pretty much never resorted to before.
In terms of what would get me excited for the show, perhaps a 50-man battle royal or
more matches with Shane McMahon in them.
Something original like that maybe.
2.
Becky Lynch to retain Rewind just a couple of months and Becky Lynch
was the hottest thing on WWE TV.
Her feud with Ronda Rousey was one the most exciting WWE has put together for years...and
then Ronda Rousey left and WWE once again lost interest in the women’s division.
They also moved Becky to Raw after Money in the Bank, which means she could no longer
feud with the tall blonde Charlotte Flair.
Thankfully, they had Charlotte cloned several years ago and the clone was named Lacey Evans.
Unfortunately something went wrong in the cloning process and Lacey is nowhere near
as talented in the ring or on the mic as Charlotte, so the entire feud has been worthless.
As a result, it seems a foregone conclusion that Becky will retain against Lacey at Stomping
Grounds and move onto her next tall Blonde challenger...is Hulk Hogan available?
Betting sites have Becky as a very strong favourite to win and hold onto her Raw women’s
title, and then she can have much more exciting feuds with Tamina and Natalya...note to self,
look up the definition of “exciting”.
3.
Brock Lesnar will attempt to cash in My my what a sweaty boulder you are Mr Lesnar.
Much like a boulder, Brock Lesnar spends the majority of his time on the beach and in Scandinavian
forests, which is probably why he’s so rarely on WWE TV.
Lesnar’s latest unwanted return came at Money in the Bank, where he interrupted the
match and took home the briefcase, despite not being in the match or even advertised
for the show.
I think maybe Brock took the script, dripped sweat on the part where the finish was written,
and then told everyone it originally said he was supposed to win the briefcase.
Since then we’ve had a number of failed cash in attempts from Lesnar, and Seth Rollins
has managed to escape as the Universal Champion, but for how much longer will this keep happening
before he actually cashes in?
Well, it would seem likely that WWE would want to delay a title change of this magnitude
until one of their big four shows, and as the next one is Summerslam in August, we’ve
still got plenty of time for failed cash ins.
The last failure was as a result of Paul Heyman falling over and distracting Lesnar, so could
Heyman once again cost Brock at Stomping Grounds and cause more issues between the beast and
his advocate.
Seth Rollins faces Baron Corbin on Sunday, the exact same match that we had at Super
ShowDown, so could we be having the exact same finish?
4.
Seth Rollins to retain Probably, yes.
Much like he was a firm favourite to defeat Baron Corbin at Super ShowDown, Seth Rollins
is also very much the favourite to defeat Baron Corbin at Stomping Grounds.
While his run as champion hasn’t been the most inspiring, he has still been pushed strong,
most recently defeating former WWE Champion Daniel Bryan on this week’s Raw.
While Baron Corbin is probably one of the better heels on WWE TV at the moment, there’s
no question that him becoming champion would kill ratings even further, so even WWE would
hopefully think of that before making him their number one champion.
As this is such an unimportant show, WWE would generally not change their top champion, especially
when the alternative is a bald guy in a waistcoat.
5.
Bray Wyatt to debut?
What a spooky man Bray Wyatt is.
He’s also the best thing on WWE TV at the moment, with increasingly brilliant Firefly
Funhouse segments on Raw each week building him into a character that WWE desperately
needs, and one they desperately need to get right.
This past week’s episode was episode 9 of the advertised 8...wait a second...no wait,
in WWE math that makes sense.
This really felt like it could be the final episode, as he seemed to be doing a round-up
of everything he had done so far, which makes me think that it could all come to a close
either on next week’s Raw, but more likely at Stomping Grounds.
If the show is struggling to sell tickets, then WWE will want it to be a good show so
that it can say “hey look, you didn’t come to our show but it was really good”,
and there are few more memorable things they could do right now than have Bray debut his
new gimmick by destroying someone.
It looks like Seth is caught up in a Brock and Baron feud for a while, so maybe have
Bray attack Samoa Joe for a meaty mountain of a feud.
Giviving Bray a title to challenge for straight away legitimises his character as someone
to pay attention to, and if the company continues to give him creative control - wishful thinking
I know - then this could be one of the best singles runs in the company’s recent history.
Or they could just have him hide under the ring with Titus O’Neil and trade stories
about being a father.
6.
Kofi Kingston to retain Given that Dolph Ziggler is only in the WWE
Championship feud because he was happy to go to Saudi Arabia for a big paycheque, it’s
very unlikely that he’s going to win the belt.
Betting sites agree with this as they have Kingston as a very strong favourite to hold
onto the belt for a good while longer.
Ziggler doesn’t need to win, and we don’t need to see him win.
There are way too many blondes going for main titles anyway, with Alexa, Dolph, and Lacey
Evans all challenging for a championship this weekend.
Give other hair colours a chance, like my 100% natural red.
COMPLETELY NATURAL.
It will be a great match without doubt, particularly as it takes place in a steel cage, but it’s
likely that Dolph will take another pin and then fade away and return to the *cough* comedy
*cough* tour that he was on when he was pulled back in for the Super ShowDown match.
With horrifying reports suggesting that Shane McMahon could be the next WWE Champion, it
would make sense for a Babyface to be the one to lose the belt, and as Ziggler is very
much a heel, that just wouldn’t make sense.
7.
Bayley to retain Are you starting to notice a pattern here?
If all the betting sites are to be believed, none of the top four singles championships
will be changing hands at Stomping Grounds, particularly not the SmackDown Women’ Championship
currently held by the most huggable of WWE Superstars, Vince Mc...oh no it’s Bayley.
Even if you manage to ignore the fact that she’s facing Alexa Bliss, a Raw star, for
the belt, the whole storyline has been about how Bliss and how she and her latest best
buddy in da whole wide world Nikki Cross keep costing each other matches.
This will likely go one of two ways.
Either Nikki will cost Alexa and Alexa will turn on Nikki, or Nikki will cost Alexa and
then Alexa will get angry which will cause Nikki to turn on her.
Friendships are just so hard to maintain, particularly when one of you is a scottish
lunatic and one of you a former cheerleader...OMG I have just had the best idea for a sitcom!
8.
No titles will change hands Like, none.
As we’ve said before, none of the top four titles will be dropped, but it doesn’t stop
there.
We’ve got the United States Championship match between Samoa Joe and Ricochet, but
given that Ricochet has had about 30 seconds of build as the number one contender, it’s
unlikely that he will win and send Joe into the Abyss.
We may get announcements for other title matches later in the week, specifically the Cruiserweight
Championship and SmackDown tag team, with Tony Nese likely defending against either
Akira Tozawa or Drew Gulak, and Daniel Bryan and Rowan defending against Heavy Machinery.
It doesn’t look like Finn Balor will defend, and the women’s tag belts might as well
not exist anymore, so that leaves us with no title changes at all, and the whole show
may as well never have happened...which I believe is WWE’s new slogan.
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Until next time, I'm SoCalVal for Wrestletalk!