R.I.P. Pat Patterson. There is absolutely no way WWE would be anywhere near as big a production as it is without you. This is one of the few men who is more fondly remembered – at least by me – for the work he did for the business after his in-ring career was finished (even though he was crowned the first Intercontinental Champion in 1979). Patterson was one of Vince McMahon’s lead writers during WWE’s most prosperous era – The Attitude Era in the late 1990s and early 2000’s. He was essentially Vince McMahon’s right-hand man for many years and most importantly, he developed a very meaningful relationship with countless WWE superstars across several different eras. He touched the hearts and lives of so many people, which I feel should be the goal of every human being throughout their lives.
Dolph Ziggler, Shinsuke Nakamura and Rey Mysterio didn’t provide a ton of storyline continuity in this match, but it didn’t matter much because the primary purpose of it was to pay tribute to Pat Patterson. With the other three superstars in the match, a case could be made for Daniel Bryan to challenge Sami Zayn at TLC, but he might be more effective challenging Jey Uso (the new main eventer has so much momentum right now that he needs a bigtime opponent at TLC, and Bryan fits perfectly because he is already so established in the company).
In the meantime, Big E can challenge Sami Zayn for the IC title at the Pay-Per-View – and most likely take the Intercontinental Championship for the second time in his main roster run. E will be able to provide a level of seriousness and legitimacy to the IC title picture that Zayn (who is established as a cowardly heel right now) simply cannot – Mr. McMahon even viewed him as a potential face of the company before deciding to go with Roman Reigns about six years ago.
Jey Uso is a new main eventer which WWE always needs because stars are not created every day that resonate with the WWE universe; Kayla Braxton is given a major opportunity; Otis shines in the main event, and Roman Reigns has created a very human character everyone can relate to
Roman Reigns is gradually introducing the WWE ThunderDome to one or two sects of this incarnation of his WWE character each week. The Head of The Table is also taking an adequate amount of time to get every nuance of his character over as much as he possibly can, so the WWE universe becomes familiar with the character and slowly resonates with it. Roman originally got the idea to portray this sort of character from the role Daniel Day Lewis portrayed in the 2002 film Gangs of New York.
Lewis’s character was so identified with his own delusions that he began to act as though his worldview was the ideal one to live by – even though he was committing what most other people would consider to be atrocities. In essence, this is all any of us are doing in this life – living by our own set of standards and we all have our own various justifications as to why our behavior is okay, when others might see it as awful. We are all human beings doing our best with the level of consciousness we are at, and constantly striving to evolve. Roman Reigns chose a very human character that everyone can somehow relate to.
The Tribal Chief has also turned his cousin Jey Uso into a top-level main event star. SmackDown has experienced its highest viewership totals of the entire calendar year 2020 in the past five weeks, in which Jey Uso has participated in the main event every one of those weeks (six including this past week). Make no mistake about it – this is the case because of Uso’s familial affiliation with Roman. Either way, Seth Rollins is not the only man in WWE who has been focused on putting over younger superstars as of late because his former Shield brother Roman Reigns has done the exact same thing over the past 2 ½ months by putting over his cousin Josh (one year younger) and making him a new main event star in WWE.
Paul Heyman graciously gave his Talking Smack co-host Kayla Braxton the opportunity to interview Roman Reigns. She did a good job overall (even though Roman and Paul didn’t think so but he apologized ) in the role Renée Young occupied for years. As a quick side note, there is also a very small wrinkle to the entrance track of Kevin Owens. Otis received the biggest spotlight he has ever received in WWE by getting the opportunity to participate in a tag team match with Kevin Owens against The Big Dog and his cousin Jey Uso – Otis also got his first opportunity in the company to interact with Roman Reigns – by taking a beating courtesy of the steel stairs.
Jey Uso’s brother Jimmy might be returning to action in WWE in about a month – this will be similar to the timing of Seth Rollins’ return from paternity leave; his wife Becky Lynch should be able to return to action not long after that – presumably to the SmackDown brand. She was a member of Monday Night Raw before her pregnancy, but Vince McMahon likes to keep couples on the same brand, so they have the opportunity to spend as much time together as possible.
Big things in store for Bianca Belair, and those big things start with knocking off Bayley
The spot WWE is intending to get to regarding the push of Bianca Belair is to position her as a top contender to the women’s title – she will most likely become champion within the next 6 – 12 months. The steppingstone WWE is positioning her to overcome before that is by defeating the woman who has been on top for most of the past two years – Bayley. The company is most likely headed towards booking a match between Bayley and Belair for TLC on December 20 – Belair should go over – at least I would expect.
Sasha Banks has to be appreciated for bringing up James Ellsworth this week. Despite that this was 3.5 – 4 years ago, there were still some fun moments to be appreciated and that’s what WWE is all about – creating moments that stick out in the memory banks of people
The rivalry between Murphy and King Corbin will likely come to an end at TLC since both men have scored one victory over the other, albeit each one was with help from the outside. Murphy was assisted by the Mysterio family last week, and this week Corbin brought out Wesley Blake (who ironically used to comprise a tag team alongside Murphy in NXT about five years ago (who can forget Alexa Bliss, so this fit perfectly into the framework of the story) and Steve Cutler to help him pick up the victory.
All the sudden the SmackDown tag team division is getting crowded. Robert Roode and Dolph Ziggler beat The Street Profits clean last week so they have definitely earned a title shot, not to mention they were also scheduled to challenge The Street Profits for the championships on Monday Night Raw before both teams were drafted to the blue brand. However, now another team is asserting that they should be in the title picture – Cesaro and Nakamura, who lost the titles in July. In my view, Cesaro absolutely needs to be WWE champion at least one time before he retires. His level of charisma is more than enough (the ripping apart of the beach ball at SummerSlam 2017 when he was part of The Bar with Sheamus.
On that night Cesaro was hyper-present, listened to what the audience was giving him and thought to himself “they’re all entertained by the ball more than me. I need to do something with the ball and be brave enough to just see if I get any reaction. He allowed the WWE universe to energetically put him on the wavelength he needed to be on.