Friday, March 9, 2018

Weekly Wrasslin’ Wrounup (Mar 5-7)

Theyre really making Asuka a star. 
It’s the go-home week for Fastlane, and Smackdown is once again two hours of mostly useless garbage with decent but meaningless wrestling. EVENTS OF SIGNIFICANCE:



ASUKA DEFEATS NIA JAX AGAIN

I’m not sure losing two straight to Asuka is good for Nia Jax, but man, was this match good for Asuka. She upgraded her rollup win from Elimination Chamber to a submission win after an amazing sequence that had her holding either an armbar or a guillotine through about four minutes of Jax picking her up and knocking her into things trying to dislodge her. I’m less happy with the backstage bit that followed, featuring Alexa Bliss negging Jax into tears. It’s clearly heel manipulation, but toes that mean Jax will ultimately end up in the Wrestlemania match as a Triple Threat after all? I don’t want a Triple Threat at Mania.

MATCHES ARE OFFICIAL

It’s Miz-Rollins-Balor for the IC Title at Mania, assuming more dudes don’t get added to the match between now and then. And the Angle-Rousey-Trips-Steph match is official too. The crowd was excited for it, so that’s good. Jinder Mahal didn’t get added to the Fastlane title match (yet). Charlotte-Riott at Fastlane was made last week I think. And while technically, Aleister Black vs. Almas for the NXT Title in New Orleans isn’t official yet, his clean, decisive win over Killian Dain this week makes it clear that’s where they’re going.

CRUISERWEIGHTS!

Ali defeats Buddy Murphy in a great match to advance. Gulak vs. Andrews wasn’t as good, but Gulak advanced, which is the right choice. His new agressive character bent is working well, and I wonder if it’ll be him and Alexander at Mania. It makes the most sense.

PAUL HEYMAN LAYS IT DOWN

Raw closed with an epic promo by Paul Heyman, gently steering toward the heel side for him and Lesnar while treating the Universal Title like it’s the Holy Grail. Lesnar will allegedly be there next week, but it’d be a super-heel move for him to blow it off.

BAR DEFEATS REVIVAL

And does so cleanly and fairly easily. Which is disappointing, since I do like me some Revival, but it does mean they’re going with the “We’ve beaten anyone there’s nobody left to beat” thing which means a possible surprise callup and opponents for Mania. If they go that way, my money’s on Authors of Pain.

ULTIMATE DELETION

WWE’s Woken Uiverse is to the Broken Hardy Universe as the DC movies are to the Marvel movies. The Broken Universe was built up gradually, over time. Its madness evolved somewhat organically. WWE is having Matt Hardy laugh for three months then jumping straight to their ripoff of Final Deletion, a fight with Bray Wyatt at the Hardy Compound, presumably at Mania. Or rather, presumably taped and edited and shown at Mania. Having failed miserably with both the Wyatt Family Compound match and the House of Horrors match, I expect no great things from this, but there was footage of (presumably) Vanguard One, the drone, on Raw this week, so that’s something.

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