When Brock Lesnar debuted in 2002, he was quickly labelled as “the next big thing”
which for the most part was a pretty accurate nickname, given that he soon went on to win
the WWE Championship, becoming the youngest person to do so in history.
However, Brock is now 43, so it’s about time we found the next, next big thing, and
Paul Heyman reckons he’s found it.
Parker Boudreaux is currently an American Football player at the University of Central
Florida, but it seems that Heyman wants him to quit the gridiron and enter the ring.
Boudreaux tweeted to say 2021 is going to be something special, to which Heyman responded
“His tweet is not a prediction.
It’s a spoiler.
Save this #HustleTweet for future historical reference.”
Fans immediately spotted that Boudreaux looks exactly like Brock Lesnar, and it’s not
the first time someone in wrestling has tipped Parker to do big things in wrestling, with
AEW commentator Jim Ross tweeting in April 2020 that he hopes to see him in AEW one day.
This past week’s episode of AEW Dynamite was a tribute to the life of Brodie Lee, who
passed away last weekend at the age of just 41.
One of the most touching moments was the surprise appearance of Brodie’s former tag partner
Erick Rowan, who attacked Wardlow to help John Silver pick up the win for his team.
Rowan then came to the ring after the match and held up a sign which read “Goodbye for
now my brother, see you down the road.”
This was all incredibly touching, but one thing some people wondered once the tears
had been wiped away was whether or not Rowan’s surprise appearance was actually a sign that
he had signed a contract with AEW.
It seems for now at least that this appearance was a one off, as the latest Wrestling Observer
Newsletter is reporting that Rowan has not signed any kind of long-term contract with
AEW as of right now.
However, the Observer did not rule out the possibility of him signing something off the
back of his appearance given how much fans enjoyed seeing him for the first time since
he left WWE in April.
But speaking on fan enjoyment, it seems that WWE’s Executive Producer Bruce Prichard
knows exactly what you all want…
Bruce Prichard rejoined WWE in 2019, becoming the Executive Producer of SmackDown, and following
Paul Heyman being removed from his role as Executive Producer of Raw, Prichard also took
that role.
While SmackDown’s ratings have seen an unsurprising increase given its move to FOX, Raw’s viewership
has continued to decrease at an alarming rate.
But don’t worry everyone, Bruce knows exactly what you all want, and it’s the same thing
over and over again.
Appearing on Sam Robert’s WWE Network podcast, Bruce revealed he think fans hate change and
new things.
“People don’t like change.
They’ll focus on what they don’t understand so it’s ‘I don’t understand it, I don’t
like it;’ because it’s not comfortable.”
Yeah, because we all hated it when Roman Reigns turned heel and Drew McIntyre won the Royal
Rumble.
It’s pretty alarming to think that the person who is pretty much in charge of booking in
WWE thinks we don’t want to see new things.
It’s like the entire company is completely deaf to the criticism fans have thrown at
them for the last 20 years.
But now let’s talk about the show that’s normally booked well because it’s time for
a review of last night’s episode of SmackDown, in about 5 minutes.
Following on from SmackDown’s last week of success in the ratings, getting over 3
million viewers on the Christmas Day episode, the show started with the people that show
ended with: Roman Reigns, Jey Uso, Paul Heyman and Kevin Owens.
The Tribal Family came out and Roman admired how great each of them were: Paul Heyman,
the most honest and genuine man he’s ever had the pleasure of doing business with, who
he rescued from irrelevancy.
Jey Uso, Main Event Uso, who he helped throw the spotlight on.
And him, the Universal Champion and Head of the Table.
They were interrupted by KO though, but before he could get a word in, Roman ran him down,
saying nobody wants to hear from him anymore, they beat him at TLC and they beat him last
week in the cage match, he’s done.
And while I would normally agree that this feud is somewhat played out now, Owens made
the great point that him still standing there meant that Reigns and Jey had failed.
They promised to take his career and they didn’t.
But tonight he doesn’t want to face Roman, he’s here to fight Jey.
After a recap of Big E winning the Intercontinental Championship last week, Big E comes out for
a match against King Corbin with Sami Zayn on commentary, who in classic Sami fashion
thinks this whole thing is a conspiracy.
After Big E hits the Big Ending on Corbin after a short match, Sami causes the DQ and
the the Knights of the Lone Wolf beat him down, bringing out Apollo Crews for the save,
which gets made into a tag team match playas.
In a continuation of Sami having no friends, he mouths off to the Knights of the Lone Wolf,
and they and Corbin leave him alone in the ring, allowing Apollo to hit his sit-out powerbomb
for the win.
Backstage afterwards, Big E tells Kayla Braxton he’s going to do an open challenge next
week for the Intercontinental Championship, which Apollo immediately accepts on the spot.
I don’t know if that’s exactly how open challenges work, but nevertheless we’re
getting that match next week which should be fun.
The Riott Squad faced the team of Natalya and Tamina next, with Billie Kay looking like
she was supposed to tag with one of the latter team.
But staying at ringside, halfway through the match she began cheering for the Riott Squad
instead and then tried to celebrate with them when they eventually won.
What is this story?
After that came the women’s tag match of Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks vs Bayley and
Carmella, which has some genuine star power with four of the top women on SmackDown.
Unfortunately the person that got to shine in this match was Reginald, Carmella’s sommelier.
Yeah, great, just what we wanted.
After Bianca was worked over, Sasha came in for the hot tag, and ran wild for a while
before Reginald the sommelier dragged Carmella out of the ring, breaking up the Bank Statement,
which is absolutely a DQ.
Why wasn’t he DQ’d?
Reginald then gets in the ring, and acrobaticses his way out of it, before backflipping off
the apron.
Is he a sommelier, or a gymnast?
Reginald gets up on the apron again, but gets slapped off by Banks, who eats a sitout facebuster
from Carmella and is pinned.
I’m never a fan of the champion losing, and if Carmella is going to be Banks’ challenger
at Royal Rumble, I think there’s a bunch of ways you could have made that happen without
Banks eating a pin here.
I get you don’t really want to pin Belair either, which to means, you shouldn’t have
booked the match.
Make a number one contendership match triple threat with Bayley Carmella and Belair, and
have Belair look like she’s going to win against Bayley before Carmella steals the
pin, if you must.
I know it’s another Bayley loss, but it protects your champion and the one rising
star you’re trying to protect, which are higher priority right now.
Also once again, Reginald should have been DQ’d.
He just should have.
Then came the most shocking moment of the night.
Backstage, walking in with absolutely no fanfare, seen for the first time since SummerSlam,
is Sonya Deville.
God I’ve missed her, and she injects another dose of awesome into the SmackDown Women’s
Division.
She walks backstage, and Michael Cole then tells us she’s been reinstated by WWE.
That’s it.
That’s her whole return.
...what the f*** was that?
Sonya was one of the people carrying SmackDown in the Performance Center days, her feud with
Mandy Rose was one of the top feuds of 2020.
For them to simply say she’s reinstated with no explanation completely undermines
what that story was trying to tell, and the fact she didn’t even get to come out and
insert herself into the women’s championship picture, or do anything of note at all is
such a massive waste.
I’ve said this before, but Sonya Deville is an absolute star in the making, and her
return, especially after the events that transpired, should have been an amazing kickstart to 2021.
But as it is, it’s a footnote on a mediocre episode of SmackDown.
WWE knows how impactful big returns can be, just look at Edge or Roman Reigns in 2020
alone.
Why not have Sonya come back at the Rumble?
Or come back and attack someone?
Do...something at least.
After that we got the Street Profits doing a 2020 celebration and 2021 predictions ceremony
in the ring, and after he compares Ziggler to Shawn Michaels, again, Ziggler and Roode
come out and beat them both up with a chair.
And backstage their new tag team name is revealed.
They are now - not Ziggler and Roode.
Not Roodolph the red nosed tag team.
They are: The Dirty Dogs.
Or sorry, the Dirty Dawgs...That’s bad.
That’s real bad.
The Muddy Monkeys.
The Filthy Frogs.
The Earthly Earthworms.
Maybe not that last one.
Regardless, this name is pretty bad.
It’s no Slapjack, but it’s still not great.
Up next was a Royal Rumble showcase match with Daniel Bryan teaming with Otis to take
on Cesaro and Nakamura, and the few seconds we got of Bryan and Cesaro was magical.
Again, just give me proper Cesaro singles feuds with time on PPV and I’ll be a happy
man.
Bryan managed to clean this up mostly by himself, hitting a running knee on Cesaro and locking
in the Yes Lock on Nakamura for the win.
And the main event was Jey Uso vs Kevin Owens.
These two are great in the ring, and they had a bunch of fire coming out of the gate,
just brawling and wailing away on each other.
That’s a great start, I’m into this.
An ad break?
Okay fine, can’t wait to see the rest when we come back though.
After the ad break, Jey Uso goes for a Splash immediately, lands awkwardly on his knee,
KO hits a Stunner, and the match is over.
...what the f*** was that?
Why did all of the match happen in the ad break?
Regardless, after the match ends, Owens tries to bait Reigns to come out, handcuffing Jey
to the ropes and beating him down.
After Reigns still doesn’t come out, he unlocks the cuffs and says fine, I’ll come
to you.
On the way it looks like Owens is going to senton off the ThunderDome screens through
Jey through a table, but he’s stopped by Reigns coming out of nowhere, and he and Jey
beat the ever loving piss out of Owens with chairs and their fists.
They climb up to the third or fourth row of ThunderDome screens and then chuck Owens off
the edge, through the table.
This was a really cool beatdown, and I hope this results in a little time off for Owens,
even for just a week, and Reigns gets to settle himself at the head of the table again.
So that was the show, let me know what you thought in the comments because I’ll be
replying to people FROM OUTTA NOWHERE!
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter to vote in our poll on a pole match - where
52.4% of you voted the show as Good, while 21.9% went one higher with Excellent.
There was a lot of frustrating things on this episode - Sasha being pinned, Sonya’s wasted
return, and the lack of a proper main event match, but the show long story of Roman, as
it has for the past few months, carried the rest of the show.
There’s some solid stuff brewing in the mid-card, and a half-decent build to the Rumble,
which makes this overall a Good show.
What are wrestling’s best body transformations of 2020?
Press the video to the right to find out more, and what are 10 AEW rumours that may come
true in 2021?
Press the video below that to find out.
Don’t forget to subscribe for daily wrestling news videos and reviews, I’ve been Corporate
Chopper, Jam That Jam.