| Jumpin said: Just a few things from the past couple of shows (I haven't watched No Mercy or RAW yet). As a note, Andrade and Carmello Hayes rule the Midgard (that's an auto-correct from "midcard", I'm amused enough to leave it), they can take a dead crowd and get them in a roar by the end of the match everywhere in the world. And they do it with the simplest storyline "You beat me last time, now I will beat you!" I'd have liked to see Fyre and Dawn retain as I'm less a fan of the singles wrestler combo tag teams, although I understand this is mostly so we can have Jade Cargill as a star before she's ready to be an actual singles competitor. Bianca deserves a lot of credit for taking care of this - because it's important. With Jade, because of her star power, NXT wasn't an option for WWE - despite probably what she needed (a good 2-4 years). It seems (to some extent) that WWE learned some lessons with Ronda, who they basically destroyed by exposing her areas of inexperience while shoving her to the front with only a few months. Punk vs McIntyre wasn't particularly something I thought I wanted to see. I want Punk in the bloodline feud, not dicking around with Rollins and McIntyre post-Summerslam, but DAMN that was a fun match. Loved the sharpshooter, given Bret was a wrestling god among German fans back in the 1990s, I wonder how many in attendance remember that era? My favourite match of the show was probably Priest and Rhea vs Liv Morgan and Dirty Dom. Liv Morgan has had a ridiculously big hill from her time in NXT, to the Riott Squad (which I was a big fan of) to her current place. Her longtime feud with Rhea (going back, what 2-3 years now?) is on the level of E&C vs the Hardy Boyz (and later including the Dudleyz) back in the day. That's how to do it, that's how to keep a feud fresh. Orton had a ridiculous 18 minute entrance, they replayed the song like 6 times :D |
I don't love what they're doing with Jade. I get why they're doing it, but it's just that there are so few spots on the PLEs since they are doing smaller cards. And there are so many talented people not on the show. I would have put the tag title match on Smackdown and given some more experienced people a shot here. I was very impressed with Alba Fyre and Alba Dawn though. I think the title is technically unified with the NXT women's tag title, so they should do some stuff in NXT with it. Just not a ton of women's teams on the main roster.
I thought Cody vs Owens was the best match of the night which surprised me. I think the build was a little weird, but the crowd treated this like Rock Hogan, and it made a huge difference. Drew vs Seth was also very good I thought, better than their Summer Slam encounter.
HHH's style seems to be really building feuds to the big four PPVs. The ones in between are a bit fillery. Dependably fun shows, but with relatively little intrigue. It helps that they're doing those shows outside of the US, because the crowds have really helped elevate the events. We'll see how the strategy works out in the long run.
