In this WrestleTalk News, AEW in trouble, a new Tessa Blanchard accusation, my review
of last night’s Raw, and more. Subscribe and enable notifications to always
on for daily wrestling news videos, because my master Chopper Pete has said if we hit
815,000 subscribers by the end of this week… I will have to host an episode in The Miz’s
Aladdin Genie costume from last night’s Dancing with the Stars… not Blue Miz. Never
Blue Miz! CM Punk’s return to wrestling, the debuts
of Adam Cole, Bryan Danielson and Ruby Soho, Danielson vs Omega - no, not me hotshotting
a 2017 fantasy booking video. But Tony Khan hotshotting 2021 AEW.
The last two months have seen the promotion maintain its highest average ratings since
it launched, but it won’t get a chance to burnout viewers with too many big signings,
as TNT will be moving Dynamite from its usual Wednesday slot to Saturday nights for the
next two weeks. When this happened back in June, their viewership fell to its lowest
figures ever. Those ratings are expected to bounce back
once they return to Wednesday nights. But it’s a different story for their freshly
launched second show Rampage, which has seen a dramatic fall in viewership.
Rampage was always going to struggle in the Friday night slot from 10-11pm EST, airing
right after SmackDown. Knowing this, Khan booked several huge matches and events, like
Punk’s return, which got a massive 1.1 million viewers.
You can’t outrun the law of diminishing returns forever though, and viewership has
plummeted since then, pulling in just over half that amount for the big Grand Slam episode.
And last Friday’s Rampage, which even featured a CM Punk match, drew only 502,000 viewers.
It’s lost half a million viewers since Punk’s return in August.
And those numbers spell disaster for Tony Khan at Sacrifice - I mean this Friday - where
they’ll be going against a special Supersize SmackDown episode on FS1 that will run for
an extra thirty minutes, commercial free. This will be the first time ever AEW has gone
directly head to head with a WWE main roster show.
Additionally, Dave Meltzer is reporting there have been “very weak ticket sales” for
this Friday’s Rampage in Miami - which doesn’t have the usual Dynamite draw because of that
show’s move to Saturday. To help sell tickets, AEW have announced the episode as ‘Heritage
Night’, where if you bring your flag, you get in for just $10 and you get a photo with
Cody Rhodes. Despite this, Khan is still playing up the
WWE vs AEW feud in an interview with DAZN: “They say we’re not [competition], but
I’ve heard that AEW shows are on monitors in the Gorilla Position over there, so I take
that as a compliment if they’re watching us whilst trying to run their own show.”
What do you think about Rampage’s future? Let me know in the comments down below because
I’ll be replying to people for the first 30 minutes after this video goes live FROM
OUTTA NOWHERE! Following news Tessa Blanchard will be returning
to WOW: Women of Wrestling for its relaunch, another accusation has come out about her
attitude backstage. Speaking on her Green with Envy podcast, Chelsea Green spoke about
the pre-AEW show All In, which featured a Fatal 4-Way both her and Tessa, claiming that
Blanchard wanted to enter the match with her IMPACT Knockouts Title, which Green believed
was an attempt to “strong arm” higher-ups into ensuring she won the match.
While the spirit of the show was more of a celebration of wrestling, I personally don’t
think there’s anything wrong with wrestlers trying to protect the prestige of their promotion’s
titles. In fact, providing it’s not done nastily, I encourage it.
Like how Roman Reigns reportedly demands his title matches to either go on first or last
at pay-per-views. It does help elevate the championship.
He’ll be facing Brock Lesnar at Crown Jewel for the Universal title next Thursday, but
Ringside News is reporting this isn’t just a one-and-done-I’m-off-to-hunt-bears-in-the-woods
for Brock, as he’s set for “more than one match” with Reigns, with one of the
scheduled dates as Royal Rumble 2022. Now it’s time for my review of last night’s
Raw… in about 5 minutes. Drew McIntyre opened the show in the WWE cheer
leader role, promoting the stacked card for Crown Jewel which includes - King and Queen
of the Ring finals, Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns, Goldberg threatening to kill a man…
and Drew McIntyre vs Big E. This brought Big E out to cut a promo on his
own nipples, which was interrupted by the SmackDown tag team champions The Usos. They’re
here on Raw tonight, they explained, because they sit at the table, and Roman Reigns is
the head of that table. Wait… so Roman’s an authority figure now too?!
Big E and Drew agreed to team up to face the Usos in the main event. But how will they
coexist?! For Raw’s first King of the Ring contest,
Xavier Woods beat Ricochet in a flipping fun match. The stage was set for some New Day
on New Day action in the semi finals, the tournament structure providing a very rare
opportunity to have Woods and Kofi Kingston wrestle against each other without feuding.
So Jinder Mahal beat Kofi clean to advance instead.
Which might actually be for the best, because it’s that time of the year again… the
seasonal breaking up of tag teams! Now we’ve gone through Vince’s odd couple tag team
phase, it’s long past the time to dismantle the division - where we’ve seen the following
acts broken up in the last few weeks: Tegan Nox and Shotzi Blackheart, Veer & Shanky,
Natalya and Tamina, Mace and T-Bar - and now, a team that was actually working terrifically
well, Mustafa Ali and Mansoor. They lost to Cedric Alexander and Shelton
Benjamin in about a minute, prompting Ali to turn on Mansoor backstage afterwards.
Riddle had booked himself in a match against Omos, knowing that his big brother Randy Orton
would have a plan to defeat him. Riddle’s stalling in the ring was pretty funny, but
AJ Styles’ get increasingly irate pointing that out was even funnier.
But it turns out Randy didn’t actually have a plan. Or at least one that saved Riddle.
Omos clobbered him down as AJ directed the offence from outside - including a ‘roundhouse
kick’. Which in case you didn’t see that it was actually a pretty normal kick, WWE
helpfully replayed it in slow motion several times.
The crowd were chanting for Randy to make the save, but he didn’t and Omos just pinned
him. So that’s when Orton appeared, hitting AJ with an RKO from outta being a bit of a
dick to his tag partner, actually. Here’s a recap from Goldberg’s promo from
last week in case you missed it: Bill really wants to kill a man.
Now Danielson has faced Kenny Omega, the new interpromotional dream match has become Bill
Goldberg vs Arn Anderson in a glock on a pole match.
The Almighty Bobby Lashley said it was actually really mean what Goldberg said about wanting
to kill him, so he’ll beat him at Crown Jewel.
NXT re-call up Austin Theory pinned Jeff Hardy with a fistfull of tights after jumping him
last week on his return. Sure he cheated to win, and yes, the 24/7 division pointlessly
ran through the match, but at least Theory got a win. Which is more than Karrion Kross
could say against Hardy. Fightful Select have reported there is “significant
frustration” backstage in WWE over the booking of the women’s division, specifically how
little time the Queen’s Crown tournament matches got on Friday’s SmackDown.
So Shayna Baszler beat Dana Brooke in 1 minute 24 seconds, and Doudrop got a lucky roll up
on Natalya in 3 minutes 2 here - bringing the total match time for the entire first
round of the Queen’s Crown tournament to 8 minutes 16 seconds, which is roughly the
same duration combined as the shortest individual match in the men’s version.
The forefront of change. I think the criticism of WWE’s midcard women’s
division is well founded, but you can’t deny the star power of the women’s main
event scene. As demonstrated by arguably this episode’s biggest match of Charlotte Flair
tagging with SmackDown Women’s Champion Becky Lynch against Bianca Belair and Sasha
Banks. Wait… so did Roman send all of them too?
But how will they coexist, you might ask? The answer, unsurprisingly, is no. No coexist.
They immediately started a fatal four way match.
Sonya Deville and Adam Pearce told them off, and it was restarted as the scheduled tag
match. It was tense from the start, with hard or blind tags and ignoring their partners.
The big brawl spot had already been spunked before the match began, though. They weren’t
building to anything new, so psychologically, the crowd weren’t that invested in the actual
tag action. We got yet another lame finish with the referee
calling a DQ when Belair attacked her own partner Banks - meaning WWE didn’t have
to beat anyone - everyone brawled, and Lynch stood tall with a Man Slam on Banks.
And the main event saw Drew and Big E tag against the Usos. But how will they coexist,
you might ask? The answer, again unsurprisingly, is no. No coexist. Even though they had done
the Mega Powers handshake backstage, and started off with the New Day’s Unicorn Stampede
spot, they internally combusted, started brawling and lost the match via countout.
Drew stood tall at the end not just with a Claymore, but also a massive bump and cut
on his head from the brawl which added several inches to his height.
What did you think of Raw? Let me know in the comments. 70% of you voted for CROWN KING
WOODS in our poll on a pole match on the community tab.
By Monday night standards, this was an alright episode. The Queen’s Crown matches got no
time, and it sucks that Ali and Mansoor are breaking up, but nothing else actively sucked.
And at least WWE is still putting on big, unique matches every week with the two main
events. This week’s Raw is 3 out of 5. Now go pay tribute to our wrestling saviour
Tony Khan for his birthday by clicking the next video!