In this WrestleTalk News, Becky Lynch may be nearing a return, Karl Anderson is caught
in a scheduling conflict, Luke’s review of Raw and more!
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It has been two months since Becky Lynch challenged Bianca Belair for the Raw Women’s Championship
at SummerSlam.
A match that, while great, did have unfortunate repercussions for Big Time Becks.
Lynch separated her shoulder during the match, announcing that she would be forced to take
time off the next night on Raw.
Now we have a new update as to the status of Lynch’s WWE return.
Dave Meltzer reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Lynch was backstage at the
October 3rd Raw in Saint Paul, Minnesota and that there was talk that she could be returning
to the company quote endquote, “Soon”.
The recovery time for a separated shoulder is typically not as long as many other injuries,
so it may well be approaching the time for The Man to come back around.
Considering the influx of new stars in WWE’s women’s division ie Candice LeRae, Dakota
Kai, Iyo Sky and the returning Bayley, adding Becky Lynch back into the mix could only lead
to exciting possibilities.
Many fans, myself included, were shocked to see New Japan Pro Wrestling star and NEVER
Openweight Champion Karl Anderson return to Raw alongside Doctor Luke Gallows last week.
It hasn’t exactly been in WWE’s nature to play well with others and now there may
already be an issue with Anderson’s dual schedule.
The Machine Gun is currently scheduled to defend the NEVER Openweight title against
Guerrilla of Destiny Hikuleo at New Japan’s Battle Autumn event on November 5th, a date
he was scheduled for prior to his WWE return.
Said return, however, has placed that match in doubt.
As announced last night on Raw, Anderson is now also scheduled to team up with Gallows
and AJ Styles to face Judgment Day at Crown Jewel, also scheduled to take place November
5th.
PWInsider has correctly pointed out that Riyadh and Osaka are separated by a 16 hour flight,
and with Osaka being 6 hours ahead of Saudi Arabia it would be impossible for Anderson
to do both shows.
SmackDown has the whole world in its hands, well at least has a bigger share of the U.S.’s
eyeballs on its product as Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics has reported the viewership
figures for Friday’s episode that saw the return of Bray Wyatt.
The October 14th SmackDown drew 2.274 million viewers, a slight increase from the previous
week’s 2.243 million viewers, with the all-important chocolate covered prime demo standing pat,
remaining at a 0.54 rating, the same as it had been the prior week.
SmackDown featured the heavily advertised return of Bray Wyatt in the main event and
also saw Raw star Rey Mysterio return to SmackDown where he can escape the torment of his tall
son.
And now before our hot tag to Luke for Raw, here’s a hot tag
to Oli for this video’s sponsor!
And now it’s time for my review of Monday Night Raw - aka Brock Lesnar wore a Slayer
t-shirt so it’s show of the year edition of Monday Night Raw - in about 5 minutes…
The show opened rather chaotically, with Bobby Lashley halfway through a promo calling out
Brock Lesnar.
It properly made you sit up out your chair, making sure you’ve tuned into the right
show at the right time as it feels like you missed something - but in a good way.
Out came Brockles with his Slayer t-shirt - I bet him and Damien Priest had a great
chat about whether or not South of Heaven is the best Slayer album (it is) - and the
two had a brilliant brawl around ringside.
Initially it was Brock in control, but Lashley took over and Speared him through the barricade
and put him through the announcer’s table.
Hundreds of security and locker room geeks came out to break up the fight, and it was
later announced the two will face off at Crown Jewel.
It was an awesome way to start off Raw, giving it that ‘can’t miss’ TV vibe.
You can’t do this every week, but it’s awesome when they do it.
I’ll be honest, on paper Brock vs. Bobby has big shrug energy for me, but this angle
got me pumped for their match.
So, for me at least, this was an unmitigated success.
Speaking of successes, The Good Brothers - now back to being The OC - CALIFORRRRNIAAAAA - won
a simple and formulaic tag match against Alpha
Academy.
This was exactly what it needed to be.
It reintroduced The OC to the WWE audience, and it gave them a convincing win over an
established team in Alpha Academy.
I really, really like watching Gallows and Anderson wrestle, but obviously I hate them
because they stole our QuizzleMania tag team championships.
Oh yeah, everyone is banging on about the NEVER Openweight Championship - what about
our tag titles guys?!
What about us, what about QuizzleMania?!
The best act on Raw and yes I am being serious Judgement Day came out to cut a promo, and
a six-man tag was made for Crown Jewel, and AJ Styles vs. Subanic Mysterio was announced
for later tonight.
After a recap of him winning the title last week, Seth Rollins cut a usual Seth Rollins
promo and that isn’t a bad thing.
Although he had a match with Matt Riddle in the main event, Mustafa Ali came out to battle
words with Rollins.
This was an interesting little segment.
Ali’s match with Bobby a few weeks ago didn’t quite land as it should have done, and I think
some of that was reflected in this crowd reaction.
Ali didn’t get much of a pop when he came out, he was given WHAT chants during his promo
when he wasn’t being met with abject silence, but by the end of the segment the crowd were
pretty into him.
Even though the crowd cheered and sang Rollins song when he laid Ali out, his recovery and
battle back got a decent reaction.
And by the end of the show, when Ali attacked Rollins again, the crowd were super into him.
This is the strength of Rollins being US Champion, and how great both are as workers.
This short segment did more for Ali than the match the other week, and I’m so pleased
about that.
Bianca Belair teamed with Candice LaRea to take on Damage CTRL, and lost when Belair
distracted herself by brawling with Bayley on commentary.
They announced they will have a match on Raw next week.
Cora Jade asked Rhea Ripley to be her poison for tonight’s NXT - I love the interconnectivity
NXT now has with Raw and SmackDown thank you Triple H - but then we got a big Raw return.
You see, on SmackDown it was revealed that Rey had transferred to the blue brand because
the sight of his son being metaphorically pegged by Rhea Ripley was distressing, so
he tucked his tail between his mask and set sail for the land of blue.
Which means that we got a trade.
So I’ve lost a wrestler in Rey Mysterio that I really like watching wrestle, who did
we get to replace him?
Was it Drew McIntyre?
Was it Gunther?
Was it LA Knight?
Was it Ricochet?
No it was…
Baron Corbin.
Dagnabbit Baron Corbin may have got his first name back,
but he’s still Happy Corbin with his terrible graphics, stupid hat and crap gear.
But he does have a JBL now, so at least he can do the promos for him - even though Corbin
was a very effective midcard heel promo.
The pairing is pretty good, and JBL’s new gimmick of ‘you wouldn’t have made the
cut in the Attitude Era’ could lead to some fun feuds.
He called Baron Corbin the modern day wrestling god, and called out Dolph Ziggler so the pair
could have a match.
Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin feels very…
2017.
And we all remember 2017.
Shudder [Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion side screen].
But despite my pessimism, which was running high on a Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin match,
this was actually pretty darn good - and the crowd really got into the nearfalls by the
end.
The match was given time which helped, and Dolph did his best to make Corbin look as
big and powerful as possible.
The interplay with JBL and Corey Graves on commentary was also fun as they yuk-yuk heeled
it up, and Corbin won with the End of Days.
Corbin is a very effective Midcard heel, so as long as they keep him in that ballpark
and if they don’t push him beyond his means - like they did in 2019 - this should be a
decent little act.
And then we got AJ Styles vs. Dominick Mysterio, which was also pretty good, and Dom got the
shock win here following some distraction and interference from Rhea Ripley.
The commentary did a good job of putting over what an upset this is for Styles, and nicely
built this feud.
But speaking of feuds that aren’t really going anywhere; Dexter Lumis and The Miz’s
match didn’t happen when Miz attacked Lumis before the match and it was called off.
This was lame.
It feels like more WWE dragging their feet because they don’t really know where this
story is going, but there was a tease that Johnny Gargano knows something as he threatened
to blow the whistle on the truth between Miz and Lumis if Miz doesn’t admit it first.
It’s the first big tease of this story which has been stalling for the last couple of months,
and hopefully next week sees a good pay off for this.
And by good pay off, I want Dexter Lumis to be revealed as Miz’s brother and they call
him Dexter LuMIZ.
Shoutout to Charles Berg from the WrestleTalk Podcast viewership for that little gem.
Hey, Elias is back.
And Ezekiel is for sure never coming back as Elias basically said in his promo, ‘I’m
now back as Elias and we’re not doing that silly Vince story anymore’.
He tried to play a song but was interrupted by Matt Riddle who asked if Elias wanted a
hit of his bong - his bongos, that is [Matt Riddle bongos side screen], and Elias promised
him a duet at some point down the line, but was then interrupted again by Seth Rollins
for the main event.
And Rollins and RIddle had a damn fine main event, which ramped up to fifth gear immedatly
and never let up.
They played off the Fight Pit finish a lot, with Rollins constantly trying to avoid the
Triangle Choke, but some scuffles with Elias led to Rollins hitting Riddle with the Stomp
for the win.
It was a neat finish as it adds Elias into the US title picture along with Riddle, and
Ali makes 4 when he came down to send Rollins running to close the show.
All of a sudden the US Championship has a storyline, something it’s been missing in
the Trips era, and something Raw really needed when they don’t have a world championship.
And not only does it have a storyline, it has fracturing storylines with Rollins and
Ali, and Riddle and Elias as commentary made it clear that Elias cost Riddle the US title
due to his hot headedness.
To be honest, the majority of this show was broadly fine and mostly good, but the opening
and closing was so good that even this quite missable episode felt like ‘must watch’
TV.
So that’s a massive thumbs up from me.
This week’s Raw is 4 out of 5.