Undisputed NXT

It would be awesome if Triple H works to explore making each member of The Undisputed Era champions because the group is gaining an awful lot of transaction and influence in NXT. They have been a group for nearly 2 years now, and even Roderick Strong has been a member of the group for quite a while.

For this to happen:

  • Adam Cole would need to retain his NXT Championship against Johnny Gargano at Takeover: Toronto 2;
  • Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly would have to win the NXT Tag Team Championships from the Street Profits;
  • And, the previously mentioned Strong would have to win the North American Championship from Velveteen Dream and survive the experience (it’s also great to see Pete Dunne, who held the United Kingdom Championship for nearly 2 years, added to this match to make it a triple threat).

Jordan Myles is officially a name to watch for after advancing to the finals of the NXT Breakout Tournament. And, after seeing Shane Thorne come out and establish a presence for himself at the commentary table, he may be on to something and this may be the beginning of at least a small push for him. Johnny Gargano has legitimately done it all in NXT, appearing at more Takeovers than anyone. The street fight stipulation for his NXT Championship match with Adam Cole seems predictable, but it should still be an awesome match.

It’s quite clear that Bianca Belair is set to work her way back into the NXT Women’s Championship picture. She is simply too great of an athlete to not go to the main roster otherwise.

Damian Priest, formerly known as Punishment Martinez appears to have found a niche for himself in WWE and has now been established as a significant threat in NXT, unlearning the biggest victory of his WWE career to date against Keith Lee (who is bound to receive a push at some point in the future based on the reaction he gets from the crowd).

Categories NXT

Reigns Full – Time Again?

Everyone in the WWE universe has to be excited that Roman Reigns worked double duty this past week, having a match on Raw and SmackDown (this might due to the fact that his match on SmackDown was very short). This suggests Roman may be getting closer to returning to WWE on a full-time basis. He is the cornerstone of the company at the moment so that’s a huge development.

Another big WWE development was Kofi Kingston challenging Randy Orton to a WWE Championship match at SummerSlam. He referenced a match that took place nearly 10 years ago between Randy Orton and himself where he accused Orton of using his influence to hold Kingston back and prevent him from being established as a main eventer. Orton happily admitted to this and claimed that Kingston still isn’t ready to be WWE Champion. This is all storyline by the way and there is no real beef between Orton and King as far as I’m aware. Randy Orton may seem to have been around WWE for what seems an eternity. And he does have an awful lot of championships, but he is such a badass with the few words he does say. WWE may want to look into pushing Roman Reigns very similar to the way Orton is pushed if they plan on maintaining the same character for Roman. WWE did a great job of it this week on Monday Night Raw with the confrontation with Samoa Joe.

Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon should have a very entertaining match at SummerSlam. It was a good idea on WWE’s part to add the stipulation of Owens quitting if he were to lose because this will garner major interest. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. However, it will more than do its job to set up a first meeting since their Hell in a Cell match in October 2017 when Kevin Owens was saved by Sami Zayn.

Apollo Crews has to be feeling very encouraged by his match with the Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura. He was getting major pops from the crowd for all of his big moves (how could people not love his in-ring ability) and The New Day was freaking out. Speaking out that it was great to see The New Day for a little over half the show before they were replaced by Michael Cole and David Ottunga. Michael Cole is an expert by the way at the commentary table. He did a flawless job of switching roles to being more of a color guy and letting Tom Phillips handled the play-by-play stuff, which he has been doing for years on Monday Night Raw. He’s almost like a referee; no one noticed the change, so it’s not a big deal.

Side Note: Charlotte Flair and Ali seems to be in somewhat similar positions heading into SummerSlam. Flair is determined to ensure that she (as the greatest female superstar of all time which is very hard to argue) is a major part of the show. Ali, on the other hand, has a taller task ahead of him of rebooting his entire character. At this point he seems hard to envision as a heel, so WWE will probably elect to rebrand his face persona.

Raw Reunion

The one segment that stood out most to me from Monday Night Raw was the segment involving Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe, and Joe was the one who stood out. He pointed out that WWE fans allow themselves to indulge an awful lot in nostalgia, which is an irrefutable fact. But the only reason WWE obliges to this is because it proves to be a massive ratings draw and gets the crowd to pop, including me, every time they do it. Joe also looked good in what was a very high-profile match with Reigns. WWE may want to seriously look into orchestrating a meeting between Reigns and Joe at SummerSlam, because these two have obvious chemistry in the ring and they haven’t met in a one-on-one match in over a year (the last time they met was at Backlash in May 2018). This proposal is obviously made with the assumption that Roman Reigns is good-to-go for the match. The reason I say this is that, while it is great to see Roman back, he has still not been cleared to return to full-time action (this is the reason that he has been featured primarily in tag team matches; like Extreme Rules for example).

Another high-profile segment from Raw was Seth Rollins’ promo of his SummerSlam match against Brock Lesnar in which he will be challenging for the Universal Championship. Speaking of that, it was on Miz TV, and this reminds me that a match at SummerSlam between Dolph Ziggler and The Miz that I talked about last week is reported not to be in the cards. WWE does in fact have about five storylines repeating themselves currently because the landscape of WWE looked eerily similar about two years ago).

Seth makes it seem surprisingly believable that he may be able to pull off the seemingly impossible yet again and take the Universal Championship out of the bearpaws of Brock Lesnar. The reason as to why he was able to make this seem like such a believable scenario is because he pointed out the fact that Lesnar was simply a man like everyone else and that he could be beaten on any given day. By doing this, Seth made The Beast seem relatable.

One other notable thing that happened was Bray Wyatt attacking Mick Foley. WWE needed to give him something to do while Finn Balor took the night off. While Balor is in the midst of preparing to take time away from WWE, Wyatt is preparing for what seems like it may be a significant singles push. I figured that he might attack Stone Cold Steve Austin after a very heartfelt promo in which he referred to everyone affiliated with WWE (including the WWE universe) truly being a part of the WWE family. In order to advance the storyline and help cement Wyatt as a main event superstar (my original thought was that Austin might bring Kevin Owens out and give him a few pointers on how to improve his Stunner).

Becky Lynch and Natalya had another heated exchange which got physical and the spotlight was presently taken off Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross. The potential “inevitable” (Express) return of Ronda Rousey was also hinted at, with a few references of her being sprinkled in.

Sami Zayn also seems to be somewhat lost in the shuffle of Monday Night Raw as he took yet another loss to Ray Mysterio this past week and seems to be lacking direction at the moment. That’s okay, however, these things will happen. It’s all part of the grind and he has surely learned to accept and love the ups and downs he will experience in his WWE tenure.

Side Note:As always, it is incredibly exciting to see John Cena; The Club is officially being re-named the OC; The Usos will get one more Raw Tag Team Championship match with The Revival at SummerSlam, which is very smart considering how much Prestige they have in WWE. The Viking Raiders should be next in line to challenge for the titles; Eric Bischoff made a small appearance to let the on-screen audience know he is now running SmackDown Live; lastly, the events surrounding the 24/7 Championship turned out to be very entertaining, and the right guy walked away with the title at the end of the night – R-Truth.

Categories RAW

Balor Time Off & Reigns’ Ring Attire

Another noteworthy thing that will be happening in WWE most likely after SummerSlam is that Finn Balor will be taking a couple months away from the company to “recharge.” He will obviously be around until that point and go ahead with his match with Bray Wyatt. It is fully understandable then why he dropped the Intercontinental Championship to Shinsuke Nakamura.

Roman Reigns is quite clearly not as over as he was a few months ago after WrestleMania, but I have a theory on this and fortunately it’s very fixable. It all comes down to his ring attire. That is the first thing people see when he walks out, and it’s somewhat unappealing to see him dressed in that raggedy sweatshirt-looking thing.

Now Roman Reigns is a better-than-average looking man so he can pull off something like that, but it’s less than appealing to the eye. I would never proclaim to be a fashion critic, but this may have something to do with Reigns appeal with the WWE universe taking a small dip in recent months since he began wearing the new attire. No need to worry at all, however, because his attire will change soon as it rotates every few months.

Audibling

One thing that is refreshing to see in WWE is the fact that superstars have a greater amount of freedom when cutting promos on the mic. This started probably right after WrestleMania this year, so the credit for this cannot be taken by Paul Heyman.

As an example, Dolph Ziggler made a subtle remark about the performance of Goldberg during MizTV on the July 15 episode of Raw. This is very encouraging to see. Thankfully we are out of the era of totally scripted promos that feel completely forced and inauthentic (remember the 2015 Roman Reigns train wreck of a promo where he made a reference to Jack and the Beanstalk).

WWE is instead allowing superstars to call audibles in the middle of promos, much like Peyton Manning or Tom Brady at the line of scrimmage.

Apology

I have to sincerely apologize for my references to NXT Takeover and SummerSlam emanating from Brooklyn because that is absolutely wrong. Both events will be airing on the WWE Network on August 11 (2019) from Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Brooklyn has been conditioned into me for the past four years, so my apologies.