Welcome to the WrestleTalk News, I’m Sat E. Niangi and it is Sat-E-Day.
Another Sat-E-Day, another story of Vince getting way, way too close to WWE’s creative.
According to Fightful Select, McMahon was backstage at SmackDown last night and spent
the day in his usual office set up backstage, that is until Triple H and Nick Khan superkick
partied the door and they bit him and Larry was there… oh wait no sorry. Brawl Out flashbacks.
While there was no scrap, according to Fightful Select there were in fact rumors of Trips
and Khan undergoing some kind of “creative intervention” with Vince regarding his increasing
involvement with WWE creative, specifically those last minute script rewrites he loves
so much.
In the meeting Triple H and Khan were rumored to be asking Vince to step back from making
these late changes, with the initial plan reportedly to stage the meeting back at the
June 26 Raw, however, this did not happen.
“Longtime sources” of Fightful had heard of the meeting but confirmed that it had not
yet happened, with talent claiming a meeting of this form would usually occur during the
week.
According to Fightful despite the murmurings, no such meeting in fact occurred or is planned,
with a WWE higher-up dismissing it as silly. However, Fightful does also note that the
same WWE higher ups also denied that Vince would return to creative so…worth noting.
The report says that if this kind of intervention were to in fact happen, due to Vince’s position
of power, a meeting could only be a “recommendation” and they indeed cannot force Vince out of
anywhere.
He can essentially do as he pleases… yay.
But will McMahon too have his mitts on Summerslam? Which despite still just under a month away,
may already have its full card set in stone for August 5.
According again to Dave Meltzer in the WON, the following eight matches are all but guaranteed
for Detroit’s Ford Field:
Rhea Ripley vs. Raquel Rodriguez, Ricochet vs. Logan Paul, Ronda Rousey vs. Shayna Baszler,
GUNTHER vs. Drew McIntyre, Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso, Asuka vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Bianca
Belair, Cody Rhodes vs. Brock Lesnar, and Becky Lynch vs. Trish Stratus.
Now, unless WWE wants to adopt that Tony Khan philosophy and create another eight matches
for the card, there is a concern of many top names missing out.
Most glaringly absent are of course Seth Rollins, Judgment Day, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, Edge,
and LA KNIGHT. YEAHHH. The latter of which couldn’t even make it on Smackdown despite
being the company’s third highest merch seller of June behind only Roman Reigns and
Cody Rhodes. Fightful Select notes that Knight was in a dark segment for SmackDown where
he beat up Hit Row.
While one would expect many of them to find a way
of the card, Meltzer notes that Triple H does prefer to keep his PLE cards on the shorter
side, so there is currently a “lot of competition” to get on the card.
Meltzer also notes that, similarly to MITB that saw numerous top matches take place on
the night before’s Smackdown, a similar strategy could be employed again, potentially
moving matches “right before or right after '' August 5, potentially even at the “last
minute”.
What other matches would you book for Summerslam? Let us know in the comments below.
It’s time for my AEW Rampage 1 Minute 1 Take, where I will attempt to recount everything
that happened on last night’s episode of Rampage in 1 Minute and in 1 Take.
Start the timer! The Dark Order got a shock win over The Hung Bucks following interference
from Konosuke Takeshita and Claudio Castagnoli. The Hung Bucks were saved from a post-match
beatdown by Kenny Omega who ran down with a steel chair.
Harley Cameron still thinks she and Anthony Bowens would make a great couple - didn’t
you get the memo last time Harley, he’s gay, and Johnny TV said he didn’t like The
Acclaimed’s music. Boo etc. Sammy Guevara & Daniel Garcia proceeded in
the Blind Tag Tournament, and won with a blind tag, huh that’s nice actually, after Matt
Hardy refused to use Jeff’s guitar in the match. Jarrett et al jumped Hardy after the
match and Ethan Page made the save because he’s a babyface now.
Hikaru Shida beat Marina Shafir, Kris Statlander said some things backstage, and Brian Cage
and Big Bill beat Trent and Matt Sydal to advance in the Blind Tag Tournament with a
fun finish. And that was Rampage baby. And now it’s time, after what feels like
many, many months, it’s time for my review of SmackDown, in about 5 minutes. Short version:
Bloodline stuff good, everything else unimportant. Wow, things really haven’t changed have
they? The show started with The Tribal Court of
Roman Reigns, following The Usos pinning him at Money in the Bank. While this was advertised
as The Tribal Court, it didn’t really feel like it, there was no table and the ring wasn’t
set up differently, it superficially just looked like another in-ring segment. I get
why they didn’t use a table with what followed, but even so it did make this one feel slightly
inferior to the trial of Sami Zayn from the off.
Despite that though, this was a home-run segment. The Usos came out initially, but were interrupted
by Paul Heyman. The Usos told Paul to shut up, but Paul said there’s only one man in
WWE who can tell him to stop talking, before Solo Sikoa puts his hand over Heyman’s mic
and throws it away. I love the ways WWE are sowing the seeds between Roman and Solo through
visual storytelling. Plenty more of that to come shortly.
Roman then enters and The Usos say they’re not going to be manipulated by Roman this
time and present a video package highlighting Roman’s manipulation and abuse of everyone
in the Bloodline over its entire tenure - including Jey, Jimmy, Solo and even Heyman. We revisited
such classics as ‘isn’t that right, Jimmy?’ ‘I’m Jey’ ‘Does it really matter?’
which is still one of my favourite lines in the entire Bloodline saga.
Roman’s acting after this point was absolutely sublime. He looked like he couldn’t accept
the evidence in front of him, shaking his head and saying ‘that’s not me’, which
was enhanced massively by the crowd chanting ‘bulls***’ back at him, which he responded
to saying that this isn’t him, this is what he was forced to be, do you think he wanted
to do this, do you think he wanted to accept all this extra responsibility, he’s got
five kids at home, do you really think he wanted to add everyone else’s kids too?
He did this for Jey, he did this for Jimmy, he did this for Solo, he doesn’t need money
anymore, he doesn’t need power, he was a main eventer before The Bloodline, he doesn’t
need The Bloodline, The Bloodline needs him. He then looks defeated, and says he doesn’t
need this anymore. He’s done. He throws his title to the side, he takes off his lei,
and places it over Jey before kneeling in front of him, tears streaming down his face,
which got a well-deserved holy s*** chant from the crowd.
But of course, it’s Roman, so he low-blowed Jey, leading to an extended brawl between
basically everyone. But there were some crucial parts to this. Solo picked up the lei that
had now fallen off Jey and contemplated it, but before he could hand it back to Roman,
Jey attacked them both again. Roman and Solo made Jey watch as they brutalized Jimmy, attacking
him with the title belt, steel steps and Solo splashing him through the announcers table,
the spot he missed at Money in the Bank. Jimmy was then stretchered out with Jey joining
him in the ambulance and that was The Tribal Court. Do I think it was as good as the trial
of Sami Zayn? No, not really, the brawl was a little bit overlong and dragged slightly
as well, but when the bar is as high as it is for Bloodline segments, it’s ok to just
have a four-and-a-half star segment instead of a five-star one. This was still excellent,
and set up Jey vs Roman at SummerSlam nicely. And that’s the last we’ll see of the Bloodline
on this show. So what else was on this episode? Ah not much
that was important. Austin Theory beat Sheamus to retain his United
States title in a decent match following some Pretty Deadly interference.
Edge was a guest on the Grayson Waller Effect, where Grayson Waller said that Edge was retiring,
and Edge said lol, no I’m not, and then said he’s having a match with him tonight.
AJ Styles beat Karrion Kross in about a minute before we got the infamous SWITCHING GEARS
line from Michael Cole. And this is where I think it became apparent that some segments,
not naming names, Bloodline, overran slightly. The Kross/Styles match was genuinely about
a minute long, and then next we got a recap of Asuka’s feud with Charlotte and Bianca,
and Iyo Sky winning the Money in the Bank briefcase, and then Asuka came out, said no
one was ready for Asuka, then Bianca came out, they brawled, then out came Charlotte
and they brawled, and then out came Iyo Sky and Bayley and they all brawled, and then
they teased a cash-in which didn’t happen and that was that. That all took genuinely
about a minute, it was insanely fast-paced, and not in a good way, it all felt very, very
rushed. We then got a recap of the men’s Money in
the Bank match and then it was time for Edge vs Grayson Waller, which started off quite
boring, got okay by the end, and Edge won after countering Grayson’s rolling stunner
into a Spear. Michael Cole also namedropped Christian, which was weird.
This match was clearly trying to get Waller over in defeat, and I don’t think he looked
bad necessarily, but Grayson throught the whole match was yelling at Edge about sink
or swim, and after Edge won, he said to Grayson that he swam, which he kind of did, but also
not really? It felt a little disingenuous and forced.
And that was the show- wait, no, sorry…Paul Heyman is backstage and informs Roman that
Jey is back in the building and he’s looking for him, and Reigns says he’ll be in the
ring for him. And then Roman asks the crowd to acknowledge him again after doing it earlier?
And then Jey comes out through the crowd, he brawls with them, attacks Solo with a chair
and calls out Roman for a 1-on-1 match. The segment wasn’t bad, it was good actually,
but I’m not sure why this needed to happen this week, this very much felt like next week’s
segment done 1 week early. Which could be a good thing if they’ve already got stuff
lined up for all the weeks between now and SummerSlam, I just worry that they’re blowing
their load early and then we’re going to have filler weeks between now and the PLE.
This was a weirdly paced show, and as usual, Bloodline stuff was great, everything else
felt meaningless. Anything that wasn’t Bloodline felt very rushed, and it makes it look so
much worse by comparison. This was a low ⅘ show, because despite everything The Tribal
Court segment was still amazing. Now go and check out the latest episode of
Survival Series, where we’ve got special guest Sean Ross Sapp, and we have to try and
name every United States Champion in reverse chronological order.