SmackDown has been interesting. RAW has been a solid show so far.
RAW had Orton invade to RKO Brock Lesnar, and then Brock came to SmackDown to beat up on Orton. Yay. I really can’t get into this angle at all.
Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler, wow. They are taking the opportunities given and knocking it out of the park. On RAW there was no way this could have been a main event, but on SD Live, this is perfect. Ziggler and Ambrose are cutting great promos. I am a little disappointed to see Cena and Styles do this again, but there really wasn’t anything else for Cena to do right now.
On RAW, Roman Reigns seems to be taking the Cena route, staying away from the main event but still in considerable high-profile feuds to stay on TV as often as possible. I can’t believe he is still in the doghouse since he’s put in a United States Championship chase, so it is possible WWE is keeping him in the mid-card to regain himself before going back to main eventing.
I like where WWE is going right now. Instead of one or two mega-stars, they are building a fleet of top-tier talent who we want to see. Rather than making John Cena and Randy Orton the two highlighters, we get a compliment of really awesome wrestlers to watch. Kevin Owens any day is a must-watch. Sami Zayn against a door mat would be awesome. Finn Balor and Seth Rollins are main eventing SummerSlam. Did you ever think that would happen?
NXT and the CWC were very good this week. First off, NXT featured the return of Hideo Itami and the NXT debut of Bobby Roode. Whoever came up with the idea for his entrance theme needs an award. I of course, downloaded it and now plays in my car. It sounds like a Corporate Motivational mantra featured at one of those expensive corporate getaway team-building exercises in Hawaii or Malibu. Roode is a natural heel, and it seems will be playing some sort of corporate/business/one-percenter sort of role. I dig it. On the CWC, we had some incredible matches with Jack Gallagher and Fabian Aichner. I’ll admit, I initially was behind Aichner, he’s a big guy with a polished style in the ring, but once Gallagher got into some insane tricks, he had me hooked. The final match of round one, Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa… wow. Just… Unbelievable. I was a little unhappy they made a small angle out of it, as I thought the Criuserweight Classics was storyline and drama-free. It really shouldn’t affect what they do in NXT, I hope. They are just too good together. It did serve to play up Gargano’s “never say die” attitude, but I did not like how it made Ciampa look apologetic for nearly driving a bare knee, and chose not to do the move.
I have to say, I am really enjoying WWE. I’ve always enjoyed most of the programming, and yes, there were times in the past year or so where I was ready to just change the channel because the writing and wrestling were horrible. But something clicked, changed, and suddenly we are getting good wrestling and not bricks of you-know-what shoved into our faces.
As always, I remain optimistic the trend will continue past SummerSlam.
Just stop having R-Truth play Pokemon Go during matches. We know it is a ridiculous game, but come on.
