Welcome to the WrestleTalk News, I’m Pete Quinnell.
Ever since NXT moved off Wednesday nights to Tuesdays, the week-to-week tribalism among
the wrestling community seems to have died down a bit, only flaring up when there’s
a WWE PLE going up against an episode of Collision or CM Punk is in the headlines.
But you can always rely on Michael Cole to bring it up again as he took a cheeky little
dig at AEW on Raw commentary last night, which took place from the Capital One Center in
Washington DC.
Cole, during Cody Rhodes’ entrance on the show, explained the significance of the arena
to Cody’s career, remarking that the building was the same one where Cody had his first
match back on SmackDown.
But that’s not all he’s done there, because according to Cole he also ‘did some other
stuff in this building as well’.
Which I’m sure is true, regardless of any other history.
But the ‘other stuff’ Cole is referring to here is most likely making history with
AEW as the arena hosted the very first episode of AEW Dynamite in 2019, where Cody Rhodes
faced Sammy Guevara.
But yes, ‘other stuff’ will suffice.
And on the subject of Sammy Guevara, it seems things that aren’t going too great with
his recovery, and he’s not part of the Callis Family lineup in the big Street Fight match
on Dynamite tomorrow night, instead being replaced by Brian Cage.
The match is currently listed as Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi, Chris Jericho and Paul Wight,
the Golden Lovers and Jeri-Show, what a weird timeline we’re in, vs The Don Callis Family
of Konosuke Takeshita, Kyle Fletcher and Powerhouse Hobbs, with their pal from the Mogul Embassy,
Brian Cage.
Fightful Select confirmed that this wasn’t in fact the original plan, and the Brian Cage
inclusion was done to cover up for Sammy’s absence.
Sammy has been suffering from a concussion since WrestleDream on October 1st, and it
seems he’s not quite ready yet to return to the ring.
WrestleTalk would like to wish him the best in his recovery.
And speaking of recoveries from injuries, it seems we might not be waiting much longer
to get Randy Orton back on our screens.
There are pretty big spoilers for upcoming WWE shows ahead, so skip ahead to Luke’s
Raw review if you don’t want to know.
So, here’s how it stands right now.
It had previously been reported that WWE would be making the men’s WarGames match a 5-on-5
match, and as the ending of last night’s Raw made pretty clear, Drew McIntyre is going
to be added to the Judgment Day team.
Meanwhile, the plan according to Fightful Select is for Randy Orton to be added to the
babyface team, which WWE are reportedly planning to announce ahead of the PLE to avoid CM Punk
speculation.
Which if I’m going to take an educated guess here, I’d think that would be on next week’s
episode of Raw, considering that’s the go-home show for Raw.
However, there had been a rumour floating around on social media lately courtesy of
some less than reputable news outlets that were suggesting that following Orton’s return,
he was being planned to win a major championship, however Fightful Select gave a resounding
nope to those rumours, saying that that topic hadn’t even been broached in WWE, so don’t
believe it.
However he is coming back for WarGames, and that makes me very happy.
Yay for us.
Now over
to Luke!
And now it’s time for my review of Monday Night Raw - aka the ‘week before the go
home week of Survivor Series week’ edition of Monday Night Raw… in about five minutes.
The show opened with a big promo segment featuring all 8 men - currently 8 men - who will be
in this year’s Men’s War Games match.
Cody Rhodes brought out his team, and Judgement Day came out to run them down.
They set up some tensions between Cody and Seth Rollins - teasing a future world title
shot - but the big moment of the segment was Damian Priest being goaded into shouting that
he was the real leader of Judgement Day.
Later in the show he apologised to his team for saying that, and offically brought JD
McDonaugh into the fold as if to appease his other teammates, but I get the feeling this
tension could lead to the split of the group ahead of WrestleMania.
It also set up a tag match with Seth and Sami Zayn taking on Dominik Mysterio and JD, which
ended in a lame brawl DQ when the rest of Judgement Day attacked.
Cody and Jey Uso both ran back down for some more brawling action, with the producers even
getting involved - which included a Petey Williams spotting, so this is a five out of
five show - and it was all done to give you the stips of tonight’s main event tag title
match: everyone currently involved in the War Games match who isn’t in the tag match
are barred from the building.
This also includes Rhea Ripley.
A very good bit of foreshadowing for the main event heel turn.
Also, I think we’ve got enough producers in this segment that they could be Team Pearce
at Survivor Series.
Who do I need to speak to to make this official?
Ripley stayed in the ring to have a pop at Pearce, which brought out Zoey Stark to cut
a stilted promo about beating Rhea at Survivor Series.
I don’t fancy your chances, mate.
Shinsuke Nakamura cut a promo looking for his next target - CM Punk is the devil, confirmed
- and then he beat Otis of Alpha Academy in a great little match.
It put over Otis strong, and made Nakamura look great in the process for chopping down
this big tree.
Nakamura attacked Chad Gable up afterwards to set up a match for next week.
Seth shook hands with Drew McIntyre backstage, who said he would work his arse off to get
back into the title picture - more on that later - and Tegan Nox beat Piper Niven in
a very heatless match.
The Miz did some bad comedy backstage, and this was used as a background to set up a
future Meaty Match feud between Ivar and Bronson Reed.
Speaking of heatless, Tomasso Ciampa and Ludvig Kaiser did their best to get the crowd into
their match and - for the most part - succeeded.
Triple H is playing a long game here, wisely I would argue.
DIY, Nox, Niven, Kaiser - and later Xia Li and Indi Hartwell - are not over right now.
But when WWE comes back into Washington, they will be that little bit more over because
they’ll be featured on TV regularly.
And so the time they come back after that time, they - in theory - will be over.
It’s a far cry from the days of Vince McMahon’s three-week push.
Despite being ejected from ringside, Giovanni Vinci came back out to attack Johnny Gargano
to giver Kaiser a roll-up win.
Another lame finish, and it led to a segment later in the show where Gunther congratulated
Vinci, not Kaiser, for getting the win.
STOP TRYING TO BREAK THIS TEAM UP.
Kaiser then teased something with Jinder’s lot.
Wait… we’re not setting Jinder up for Gunther next… are we?
Xia Li knocked out Indi Hartwell in a not-all-that great match, using a different kick.
I like that they’re trying to get over that she can knock you out with different moves,
and Becky Lynch announced that they’re going to have a match next week.
This doesn’t really feel like a big elevation for Li, and more like wasting Lynch’s time.
All The Raw Women Stood in a Row, and this setup Nia Jax vs. Raquel Rodriguez for next
week.
Miz beat Ivar with his feet on the ropes after several distractions from Bronson Reed, who
attacked Ivar after the match.
This did give Miz a good win - and cheating to win will set up some interesting stakes
for the Gunther match - but I think Miz should be the focus of these segments as he’s going
after the IC title at the PPV.
That said, I am well into the idea of an Ivar vs. Reed match.
Creed Brothers tried to recruit Alpha Academy into their fold, and set their sights on the
tag titles, which summoned The New Day to say they also wanted that gold.
It also set up Ivy Nile and Maxxine Dupre as future challengers for the women’s tag
titles, and Akira Tozawa did his little dance.
I…
I am nearly 40 years old.
Look, I’m not saying we’re better than Alpha Academy at doing TikTok trends, but
we clearly are.
I’ll admit we’re not as good as the TNA Knockouts - shoutout to them - but we’re
definitely better than Chad and co!
Check this video out in full on our Instagram and TikTok.
Bloody hell, we’re cool.
And the main event saw Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso unsuccessfully challenge for the tag titles
against Judgement Day in a very heated and action-packed match.
Everyone’s chemistry is great - and it should be, I’ve seen them wrestle 100 times on
Raw alone - and the Co-1D nearfall was great.
But it was Drew McIntyre who was the difference maker.
He’s not part of the War Games match, so he wasn’t barred from the building, and
he laid out Jey with the Claymore to allow Judgement Day to retain.
Rhea Ripley then shook his hand on the ramp, seemingly adding him to their ranks for War
Games.
The heel turn, is complete.
In a post-match promo, Cody and Jey said they have a friend who can be their back-up.
CM Punk return, confirmed.
That was this week’s show and it was… well, it was the penultimate show before the
actual penultimate show before Survivor Series.
Good action, not so many great finishes, and some good drama added to the War Games match.
It’s still better than the Vince era, and this week’s Raw is 3 out of 5.
Do you like explosive revelations?!
Well, we’re counting down the seven biggest explosive revelations from our latest book
XXX, which you can check out by clicking the video on screen right now.