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UnWrest #4- Raw is Garbage, NXT Saves The Week... Again, and More!!!

Welcome to the 4th edition of UnWrest, where I cover the TV shows of WWE, NXT, and ROH, provide you the podcast you should hear this week for sure, and give you a classic match to "REWIND" back to. Let's do this!

WWE

Raw Thoughts

- Roman Reigns starts the show with another talking promo calling Bob "the worst tag team partner ever." Hmmm.... Did this guy ever watch Steve Austin as a tag team partner? He stunnered all of them eventually. Lol. Ziggler and Drew come out and beat up Roman. Rollins returns the favor from last week and saves Roman from the beatdown. Roman is going to be now wrestling twice tonight after demanding Angle put him and Rollins against Drew and Ziggler tonight. Just great. More Roman in our lives. Just what this show needed. I get it though. They probably think if they keep showing Roman over and over again, the fans in the audience will eventually wear out from booing him. This will allow the people that cheer him to get the audible cheers in.

- McIntyre/Ziggler vs. Roman and Rollins was a fun match. Drew McIntyre... making Dolph Ziggler relevant one week at a time. I saw nothing in McIntyre during his first run in the company. But THIS Drew McIntyre is friggin awesome. You can tell he wants it so much more than he did the first time around, which enhances everything that he's doing.

Seth Rollins has had an amazing 2018 so far. When he got in the match, the crowd reaction just went up a few levels. If Strowman isn't getting the belt soon, Rollins absolutely should.

Back from break
High Pitched Voices: WE WANT ROMAN!
Deep Pitched Voices: NO WE DON'T!!!

The crowd was intense with Rollins crawling to get the tag, but The Revival come out to gang up on Roman! Ziggler and McIntyre team up on Rollins. Roman and Rollins are down, and they are done. HOT tag match while it lasted.

- Nia Jax beat Mickie James in a more competitive match than I expected. Mickie is such a good wrestler in the division that she can lose continously but when given the time make her and her opponent look better in the end.

- The end of Raw was garbage. I've never understood the need for poop humor in wrestling. This just didn't need to happen period.

Overall, this was only a marginally ok Raw. I'm giving it points for the Mickie James-Nia Jax match and the Rollins/Reigns vs. Ziggler/McIntyre match. I'm also being generous since I expected a 10-15 minute in-ring segment for the counseling between Bayley and Sasha. But dear God, the rest of this show was boring to bad.
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SmackDown Thoughts

- Team Hell No starts the show with a promo with Renee Young. I'm glad Daniel Bryan brought up the plot hole in Team Hell No getting back together. They started arguing back and forth in classic Team Hell No fashion. Daniel actually does something smart by WWE standards: he brings up the past. "Hey, remember when you tried to end my career and abducted my wife? Yeah. You REALLY had my back then, didn't you?" It was nice to see that little bit of context brought back into the show. Another great exchange later was
Kane: "Daniel, you are like a brother to me."
Daniel: "You set your brother on fire."
Kane: "Well, actually... Look..."

- The Miz and Jeff Hardy got a few segments to have a pretty good TV match that went long. It looked like both guys were selling knee injuries during the match. Later, it was announced that Jeff would face Shinsuke Nakamura in Pittsburgh at Extreme Rules. Hopefully this isn't a Kennel from Hell match. 

- THANK GOD for Sanity interfering in the stupid pancake skit. So, it takes a Canadian, an Irishman, and a German to save America from stereotypical pancake humor. Thank you Sanity for helping me maintain mine.

-  AJ vs. Rusev continues to plod along. They did the job of having Rusev attack AJ after the match with Aiden English. This feels like a Ric Flair title defense against a guy you knew he wasn't dropping the belt to. There's nothing wrong with that as plently of guys can be elevated even if they don't win the championship against strong champions.

- The Usos faced Team Hell No. And I wish I cared. The Usos weren't beating Team Hell No a week after they just got back together. So, my interest in the main event was lacking.

Look folks, this show just couldn't be the worst show on WWE this week.  They simply have too much talent not to have a good TV show week in and week out. I am just thankful Sanity came in to end that pancake segment.
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NXT Thoughts

- Dakota Kai starts off the show against Santana Garrett. Based on her screaming, I'm guessing Garrett was trained to wrestle by either Serena or Venus Williams. I enjoyed the match once Kai started getting in her comeback offense. But overall, this was just decent.

- Explain WWE Extreme Rules in 30 seconds? I can do it in 5. Another Roman Reigns main event.

- Next, we get NXT Women's Champion Shayna Baszler for an in-ring promo. She says she's the most dominant women's champion ever, which draws an audible ASUKA chant from the crowd. Typical heel champion promo putting herself over the others in her division.

- We get a backstage promo between The Undisputed Era and Danny Burch. In it, we get the fact that next week, The Undisputed Era is getting their Tag Team Championship rematch against Mustache Mountain. And in addition, it'll be Burch vs. Adam Cole BAY BAY!

After the commercial break, we get the news that in 3 Weeks, we are getting the NXT Championship Match between Tomasso Ciampa and champion Aleister Black.

- Then we get The Mighty vs. Heavy Machinery's Otis Dozovic in a 2-1 Handicap Match. His partner, Tucker Knight, was injured in a pre-taped segment from the Performance Center gym "earlier today." I really enjoyed this match. They made Dozovic look good even in defeat to The Mighty, and The Mighty got a win by hook or crook over the big guy. This will probably make it on my list of matches for the week.

- Another match set up for next week as Vanessa will face Kairi Sane vs. Vanessa Borne. Plus Regal confirms Burch vs. Cole. Damn, this brand does a great job setting up the next week.

- VELVETEEN DREAM IS NEXT!  And he's facing Chris Dijak, ROH's former Donovan Dijak. Dijak looked good in his last outing. So, this should be interesting to see how he does in likely a losing effort. Dijak and Dream trying to one-up each other in the mind games. Dijak is looking very good here, and the commentary team is building him up well. It's obvious they have plans eventually for Dijak down the road. It's just not his time yet. Dream trips up Dijak's leg on the apron, and Dijak's head goes face first into the steps! Dream nails a Sister Abigail into a DDT for the win. Very good TV match here. Dream continues to shine, but Dijak is again being built up as impressive. 

- Dream is still in the ring when EC3 makes his entrance. The commentary team brings up how Dream walked out on EC3 during the tag match in the UK last week. During the commercial, we get Mustache Mountain saying they will beat The Undisputed Era again next week. And we get ANOTHER announcement for next week: Aleister Black will be on next week's show.

This all transitions to EC3 vs. Johnny Gargano, the main event for the evening. Johnny Gargano is attacking EC3 immediately after the match starts. EC3 looks like The Incredible Hulk next to Gargano, but the dude is already built compared to other wrestlers on the roster. Solid wrestling to start the match with EC3 focusing on the neck while Gargano is fighting with pure emotion after what he's been through the last few months. EC3 does a running jumping elbow. What EC3 lacks in wrestling skills, he makes up for in charisma. Gargano hits the shoulder tackle through the ropes and a dive through the ropes onto EC3 on the outside. EC3 later powers out of the Gargano Escape and powerbombs him for a 2. Gargano has snapped! Story at the end was that Gargano just goes psycho on EC3: locking in the Gargano Escape to near 5 counts, hits a bare running knee to EC3's head, and finishes him off with a DDT off the middle rope (ala how Ciampa beat Gargano at Takeover: Chicago). The announcers put over that Gargano has basically become the very thing that he hates: Tomasso Ciampa. Very good main event here with some good storytelling beats going on.

Overall, NXT was EASILY the best hour of regularly scheduled wrestling for the week. They cram SO MUCH in this 1 hour show that it feels longer in a good way. I actually don't want to see this show get another hour in the future. Keep it to one hour, please! They manage to deliver great matches while hyping up things that will happen in the future.
_ _ _  _ _ _

ROH TV (6/29/18; Watched 7/3/18 on Honor Club)

- Jonathan Gresham vs. Kenny King- K-I-N-G KING!!!!! Gresham doing a great job selling the back during the match. About halfway through the match, I already decided this was better than almost every match I watched last night. Poor Jonathan Gresham is still denied his big victory. But this was a good solid match to start off the show.

An ad for the first ever six-man tag team gauntlet match for the ROH Six Man Tag Team Championships. Interesting.

- Josh Woods vs. Facade was an okay match. High spot was Facade's dive onto Woods but even that wasn't too much to remember the next day. Woods wins and challenges Shane Taylor to a rematch. Taylor tells him to get ROH to write up the contract, and he'll do it.

- ROH's Matt Taven vs. CMLL's Ultimo Guerrero was a very good main event for the show. I've only seen Guerrero work a few matches for ROH (War of the Worlds UK tour from last year). There were several cool spots in the match, and the ending helped everyone save face in the end as the #'s game of The Kingdom was simply too much for Guerrero to overcome.

Overall, this was a fun throwaway show for ROH. If you missed it, you won't be missing much. But if you watched it, I think you'll be content that you did.
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Overall TV Thoughts

I. Best Matches of the Week on TV
1) Jeff Hardy vs. The Miz- SmackDown Live
2) Rollins/Reigns vs. Ziggler/McIntyre- Raw
3) EC3 vs. Johnny Gargano- NXT
4) Matt Taven vs. Ultimo Guerrero- ROH
5) Velveteen Dream vs. Chris Dijak- NXT

II. Best TV Show
1) NXT (Best 1 hour of wrestling period)
2) Smackdown
3) ROH
4) Raw- #4 by a wide margin.
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Podcast of the Week: What Happened When

A fun NSFW podcast, as usual, from Tony and Conrad as they provide live commentary (in their usual Mystery Science Theater 3000 style) to the episode of WCW Monday Nitro where Goldberg defeated Hollywood Hogan to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It's a fun trip down memory lane and includes some hilarious tales from 1998 and 2018 involving many different wrestlers. They even work in a couple audio clips. I recommend watching the WCW Nitro along with their podcast, but I think you'll enjoy it even without watching the episode itself. Again, this is NSFW (NOT SAFE FOR WORK... and probably not safe to play around children either).
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<< Rewind Match of the Week <<

ECW Living Dangerously 1999
ECW World Television Champion
Rob Van Dam (c) (w/ Bill Alfonso) vs. Jerry Lynn

You forget how great these two were in the ring against one another until you go back and watch their work. Van Dam and Lynn both did insane moves in this match, including Lynn doing a dive into the audience at RVD and later Lynn dropkicking RVD off the top rope into the guard rail on the outside. Some real innovative offense by both guys in this match that I could spend run-on sentences trying to describe. I'm still amazed by their ability to be able to do great counter-wrestling while working in an extreme style at the same time. Cool end too where the time limit elapses and the referee was going to give the title to Lynn. But Lynn asks for 5 more minutes to pin RVD. RVD agrees, and Van Dam ends up retaining his championship in the overtime. Great match. Go check it out.

Next Week: Ring of Honor: A Lethal End of a Title Run...  Bay Bay.
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That's it for this week's UnWrest. Next week will be a shorter version of the post with some very quick thoughts on what I've watched. And after that week, the blog will be inactive for a week as I will be away. Thank you all again for reading this. Share it. Comment on it with suggestions, feedback, praise, or constructive criticism.

Until next time, take care of yourselves and spread some awesomeness.

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