Here's your News for August 31th 2020 WWE Fans Did The Unthinkable During Payback! John Cena's Past Leaked By Heath Slater! Wrestling News 2 00:00:03,503 --> 00:00:05,605 And your headlines for today include
How WWE Did a GREAT JOB With PayBack PPV And Where They Badly Missed Out!
WWE Fans Did The Unthinkable Yet Again During The PPV; WWE In Serious Trouble!
Shocking Details About Paul Heyman Return Is Revealed!
Accusations On John Cena Are Indeed Real! Former WWE Wrestler Speaks Out!
Mike Tyson And Kurt Angle Share The Same Ring And More!
We’re kicking off today with Payback, as with just one week’s build, WWE tried to put together a stacked show.
Running just 2-hours-32-minutes, WWE packed plenty into a relatively short show, and today we’re looking
at what went right, wrong, and what left fans scratching their heads.
What went right: Though not everything was perfect from Payback, the show started off
strong, as the Bobby Lashley-Apollo Crews match excited fans and set the tone for the evening.
Both men delivered, and despite Lashley being the favourite going in, there were genuine moments where
it looked like Crews would retain, and a lengthy feud between the two, with Crews now chasing the gold and
eventually regaining it, could help elevate Crews even higher.
Lashley’s win also exemplifies good booking of a faction, as Payback showed just how good the Hurt
Business is. All three men looked like megastars, from being dressed in expensive
clothes during their pre-match interview, to their powerful promos, to their post-match celebration in the
the ring. One man who is also in a faction but going it alone right now is Big E,
who showed some serious spirit against Sheamus.
Showing fire in his victory over the Celtic Warrior, Big E showed he’s ready to take his singles run further,
and despite a botched Belly-To-Belly and Big Ending, he wasn’t the only one slipping up, and hopefully tonight
was a one-off. With that said, Big E’s fire was impossible to ignore, and the skies
the limit for Big E, if he continues to channel it.
Payback also saw a dynamic Pay Per View debut for Keith Lee, who clashed with Randy Orton’s
methodical, often boring pace with his own brand of strength and agility.
Orton certainly had his working-boots on, as he helped make Lee look like a star, even giving the Limitless
One the win in under 7-minutes, and the WWE must capitalise on the former NXT Champion whilst they can.
The last thing we need is for 50/50 booking to mean Lee jobs out too much, rendering this win pointless,
though the company also has to consider Orton’s own star-power, now that the Viper has dropped
two Pay Per View matches in two weeks. Of course, most of Payback’s results
fans saw coming, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The show, which didn’t feel like much of a Pay-Per-View, had some solid storytelling, from the ongoing rebirth
of the Riott Squad, to the ongoing collapse of the Golden Role Models, to Big E’s singles push,
to the emergence of stars like Matt Riddle and Keith Lee, to Roman Reigns cementing his heel turn
with his Universal title win. Simply put, WWE used Payback to further the storylines they’ve spent
time to invest in, and with effective storytelling, fans will tune in to see what happens next.
One person fans will tune in for is Alexa Bliss, who watched the Triple- Threat-Main-Event, and clearly has
some feelings for The Fiend, and will clearly align with him soon-enough. We’re not sure if WWE were right to
to keep her from the match, but we’re looking forward to see where her character goes from here,
and what the company has in store next for the demented romance between Bliss and the Fiend.
Shayna Baszler won big at Payback, capturing her first title on the main roster, but it’s how she won the
Women’s tag titles with Nia Jax that most-impressed fans. Locking both Bayley and Sasha
Banks in submissions to get the win, Baszler proved how talented she is, a welcome sign after a year where
her Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank victories were given to somebody else.
What went wrong: There’s a lot to praise Payback 2020 over, but a lot went wrong during
the show, starting with the kickoff match between the Riott Sqaud and the IIconics.
Whilst realigning the Riott Squad has given both women something to do, as well as add another team to the
women’s division, we couldn’t ignore Liv Morgan’s botches, blowing the simplest of spots in the match,
and hopefully Riott will be able to help her improve, something that she’ll need to do if they want to be
Women’s Tag Champions. That wasn’t the only issue before Payback though, as the company’s
pre-show panel just didn’t feel the same without Renee Young, who left WWE following Summerslam.
Her absence was sorely felt, leading to the panel having awkward moments, and it may take some time
for fans to get used to Renee being gone, but one thing we know now, is that Jerry Lawler and Peter
Rosenburg just aren’t cutting it without her. On the show, there were plenty
of tag teams that suffered losses, but no-one seemed more affected than Seth Rollins and Murphy.
Though there alignment this year has been one of WWE’s most interesting gimmicks, the team has
become the victims of WWE’s trope of bringing teams together, just to split them up and have them feud.
Once again, WWE has thrown away a potentially strong team, and its hard to imagine Murphy coming out
any better post his inevitable feud with the Monday Night Messiah than he was going into it.
Perhaps WWE could shock us all by having Murphy and Rollins work things out and remain a team, but for
now, expect the company to get rid of another tag team in a storytelling method we’ve seen countless times
before. And lastly we’re looking at the seven- day reign of Bray Wyatt, who lost his
Universal title just a week after winning at Summerslam. With that said, it’s obvious that the
chase Reigns for the Universal title, which Wyatt was never actually pinned for as Strowman was pinned
it’s another example of the WWE not quite knowing how to use the Fiend, and we can’t help but think that not
having Wyatt win the title at Summerslam would’ve been more beneficial for his character, and his
upcoming feud with the Big Dog. What left fans confused: There was nothing too confusing
about WWE Payback 2020, as the show was predictable to say the least, with no real stand-out
asides from the Mysterios Vs. Rollins and Murphy match, and Shayna Baszler’s double-submission finish.
With that in mind, fans who came to see titles change hands got what they wanted, as we saw all-three titles on
the line change hands, a large amount of title changes we’re not used to seeing, not even at Summerslam.
The main event certainly felt like the rightful main event, and though there was plenty of good and bad
from Payback 2020, we’re confident that WWE should never do a Pay Per View just one week after a major one
as it’ll always impossible to live up to the hype. Thankfully, WWE’s next outing on
Pay Per View will come on September 27th at Clash of Champions, and we’ll have to see if WWE uses the net four
weeks to learn from the mistakes they made at Payback. But what did you think of Payback?
Do you think the show happened too soon, and what was your match of the night? Leave your ratings for
Payback 2020 in the comments below. Now that we’ve discussed Payback, lets take a look out our daily dose of
Wrestling News. We’re entering the Thunderdome first, as a fan has once again used their
seat to show something WWE doesn’t want fans to see. During the Randy Orton-Keith Lee
match at Payback, one fan held a Being the Elite foam finger whilst Orton posed to the crowd, despite
WWE not wanting any AEW imagery or merchandise being shown. The Thunderdome has admittedly
seen much worse appear, including a fan wearing kay kay kay probes, and Chris Benoit, and AEW Tag Champion
Kenny Omega recently confirmed that he was in the crowd. After months of no fan presence, the
Thunderdome was meant to allow some sense of normalcy to WWE TV, but if fans keep breaking WWE’s rules,
we wouldn’t be too surprised if the company went back to shows without actual fans.
One person who wasn’t in the Thunderdome for Payback is Drew McIntyre, though fans got an update
on the WWE Champion following the brutal attack by Randy Orton on RAW. During the Payback kickoff show,
Charly Caruso said medical staff were fearful that McIntyre’s skull had been fractured from Orton’s punt, and there
was potential bleeding of the brain also,with these injuries described as career-threatening.
Of course, this is a kayfabe injury to temporarily write McIntyre out of storylines, and following Orton’s loss
to Keith Lee at Payback, we’ll have to see what the future holds for Orton, Lee, and the WWE Champion.
Over to SmackDown next, as Roman Reigns shockingly aligned with Paul Heyman on last Friday’s show, a plan
that Heyman’s own people didn’t know about. In a blog on the Heyman Hustle website,
it was stated that the staff of Heyman’s own company didn’t have a clue that he was returning, which backs up reports
that the plan for his return was between an incredibly select group of people. With Heyman being fired as RAW’s
Executive Director in June, a decision that made fans and investors sweat, it’s unclear how much creative input
he will have, but with Roman Reigns as SmackDown’s top heel, and the latest Paul Heyman guy, this
will be a very interesting time in WWE, albeit one only a select few will know about before it happens.
At Payback, Reigns captured the Universal title after entering the match late, flanked by Heyman and now we
have a greater idea of why the two were put together. During Wrestling Observer Radio,
Dave Meltzer noted that WWE wanted Heyman back on TV to justify his deal, saying:
“They feel the need for Roman’s turn to be complete, the other end of it is that Heyman has got such a big
contract and it’s kind of like I think that they want to justify the fact that he’s got such a big contract and
he’s not doing anything.” As one of WWE’s best promos, Heyman back on TV is something
many fans can get behind, especially if he’s going to be one full-time, rather than only showing up
with Brock Lesnar is around. It’s also been noted that there are big plans for a heel-Reigns,
and with the Big Dog regaining the title he never lost, with Heyman by his side things are only going to get
more interesting from here. From one WWE Champion to another, as John Cena did a lot in WWE,
but one thing he ddn’t do is lose to the Nexus at Sumemrslam 2010.
In the years since, fans have argued that the NXT rookies never had the same heat after their Summerslam
loss to Team Cena, and one person who remembers that time well is Nexus-alum Heath Slater.
Speaking to Pro-Wrestling Junkies, Slater spoke about the situation, saying:
I’ll tell you this much, I’ve had so many people ask me that over the years. Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s
100% fact, but I could comfortably say it’s a 95% fact. The whole time we were there, we were going over.
We were playing to win. Edge and Jericho basically came up with that whole match. They planned it
all out and had where it was, how it should be, where I think the last one left was Wade. And then the
next thing you know, 4 hours later, it was just not happening that way.”
“Looking back at it now, if we would have took over SummerSlam and ran it to ‘Mania, and had some super
group come and let them destroy us – they should have put it in jeopardy and really made people believe that
we were a threat, and want to see some group come in and beat us. They just cut it off when we were
almost to the peak of the mountain.” Who knows what could’ve happened if one of WWE’s biggest stars ever
put over the Nexus a decade ago, though nothing can be done about it now, even if it’s widely regarded to
be one of the company’s biggest booking mistakes.
And finally today we’re ending with news from Kurt Angle, as the retired wrestler has shown he can still go
in the ring. Recently, former UFC fighter Henry Cejudo uploaded a few short videos
of himself and Angle training last Saturday, and they were joined by boxing legend Mike Tyson at Tyson
Ranch At 51-years-old, the video showed that Angle can still go in the ring,
despite some of his final WWE matches not living up to the standard that many fans have of the wrestling
machine. As for Tyson, his fight with Roy Jones Jr has been postponed, giving him
more time to train, and with both Tyson and Cejudo having teased AEW matches in the past,
we’ll have to see what the future holds for Angle, and whether he could soon be All Elite too,
when the time is right.