UnWrest

While Raw may have won the Survivor Series event overall, it seems that WWE TV is going the way of SmackDown Live as far as show quality goes. Here are my thoughts on SmackDown Live's latest show as the show unfolded. SmackDown Thoughts (11/27/18) - Becky Lynch comes out to start the show with Paige in the ring. I instantly thought "Oh no. I don't like this." Becky says that she's back. I instantly thank the man upstairs. Lol. Charlotte is brought out, and Becky accuses her of imitating her to beat up Ronda. Charlotte says she's being her and is "genetically superior." Basically, it is announced that we are getting Lynch vs. Charlotte again at TLC, this time in a TLC match for the Women's Championship. I'm calling it now: Ronda Rousey is interfering and costing Becky Lynch the title. Then, we get the rest of the women's roster to complain about not getting a fair shot at Lynch. Therefore, she announces a BATTLE ROYAL to determine who...

I've had a day to basically collect my thoughts about what was a CHORE of a show to sit through last night. Now that I've had some time between that bad show and writing a review, here are the 3 major wrongs that the show had AND the 1 good decision I felt WWE made for the Raw Brand. The One Right - Alexa Bliss as a Women's Division GM- I know that the last thing that Raw needs is another heel authority figure. That seems to be such an overdone trope for WWE to use on its flagship show. But given the real-life concerns regarding Alexa Bliss's health with a string of concussions, this is the best role for her at this point. She can take an extended period of time outside of the ring and still contribute to the TV show for however long she needs to heal up. (Insert joke about the heel needing to "heal" up.)  Alexa is one of the top attractions for the women's division. So, keeping her on TV should be a priority. I'm not asking for 25 minute promo...

This is one of those bonus shows that WWE gives us that really means nothing, but it is always nice to get for the $9.99 that many of us pay a month. And further more, this is the 2nd Starrcade event that WWE put together. After not airing any of last year's event despite fan protests, WWE has decided to edit down their Starrcade show from Saturday to a 1-hour show for the WWE Network. Let's Do This! Elias is the first person we see on this show. He promises to play a little something, and he does. Who Wants to Walk with Elias? He introduces his special guest: Ric Flair! Flair puts over the fact that it was 35 years ago that he defeated Harley Race in the main event of the first Starrcade. They re interrupted by the women coming down for the first match. Nia Jax, Alicia Fox, Mickie James, and Tamina come out. They say they want to "Walk with Elias." Flair says they are all beautiful. They allow Elias and Ric to do a bit of their song, but then they wreck the song ...

This is a pre-Thanksgiving week episode of Ring of Honor that escaped me. So, I'm firing up Honor Club and finishing up the weekly edition of UnWrest by watching this big show. ROH World Tag Team Championships are supposed to be on the line in the main event. Plus we are getting Marty Scurll vs. Shane Helms in their fourth encounter. I'm providing full match coverage for each of these matches. Let's Do This! ROH Thoughts - Dalton Castle starts off the show with The Boys. Dalton goes over the last quarter of the year and his struggles to get back in the ring. His mission is clear: reclaim the ROH World Championship. Here comes Matt Taven to say that HE is the REAL ROH World Champion. So, if he wants to face the champion, Dalton needs to face HIM. The Kingdom beat down on Dalton and The Boys, and they hit a triple Con-Chair-To to Dalton Castle to end the segment. Again, this adds just that much more fuel to the fire between these two heading into Final Battle (which I...

Continuing to catch up on the Thanksgiving Week of wrestling, here are my thoughts and review of NXT's post-TakeOver episode. NXT Thoughts - NXT starts off with a great video package highlighting perhaps the best NXT TakeOver of the year in WarGames II. - Keith Lee starts off the show by taking on Fidel Bravo, an enhancement talent. Lee just absolutely destroys this guy as should be expected. He finishes him off with an AA/JackHammer combination (Imagine John Cena delivering an Attitude Adjustment while coming down for a splash to cover the guy). - Highlights are shown from the Baszler vs. Sane match. After the match, Baszler and the Horsewomen are interviewed.  Baszler considers herself and her stable unstoppable. - Matt Riddle vs. Kassius Ohno is shown in its short entirety on the show. After the match, Riddle is interviewed. He now has the quickest victory in NXT history. - Lars Sullivan is up next. He's wrestling Keito Murray... another enhancement talent. And Su...

Well, it's the first SmackDown after the humiliation that was their Survivor Series record. And you would hardly know that failure happened thanks to this show. I'm a bit late for getting to this thanks to Thanksgiving Week schedule conflicts. But instead of a full on review, here are my thoughts about what happened on this week's show. SmackDown Thoughts - Charlotte Flair- Charlotte came out and did not apologize for her actions against Ronda Rousey. Yet, she didn't come off as a heel either. She just is now going forward as a more tough, vicious face? I mean beating up The IIconics is not exactly a heelish thing to do when they are heels themselves.  A lot of mixed messages going on SmackDown at the moment. It wouldn't surprise me to see Charlotte become the new SmackDown Live Women's Champion soon if Becky can't return by TLC. That way, if Becky were able to return and win the Rumble, she'd be able to wrestle Rousey at WrestleMania for the ...

Thanksgiving. The one time a year Americans stuff their face with 1,000s of calories and show thankfulness for what they have in their life. I could make a bad joke about the true insidiousness of Thanksgiving historically, but I won't do that on here. Instead, here's a classic Survivor Series set of promos about what wrestlers were thankful for in 1989. So, what am I thankful for as a wrestling fan? A lot actually. But I am going to focus on a select few for today. 1) Multiple Companies Doing Well- The wrestling industry has never been better since the fall of WCW and ECW. The WWE is still (and will likely always be) the biggest wrestling/"sports entertainment" company in the world. But Ring of Honor, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and other wrestling promotions are finding a way to have their cake and eat it in this environment. Plus, with the recent news that The Elite are starting up their own wrestling promotion, we will have another great company to emerge ...

In continuing to celebrate the Thanksgiving week festivities, I am continuing my coverage of wrestling bit by bit. To that effect, I've decided to go ahead and share my Raw thoughts in a separate post today. Raw Thoughts- 11/19/18 - The show opened up with Baron Corbin and Stephanie McMahon gloating over Raw's clean sweep of SmackDown Live at Survivor Series. Then both Corbin and Braun Strowman demanded that Stephanie honor her statements before Survivor Series. Thus, Strowman gets Baron Corbin at TLC. If Strowman wins, he gets his match against Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship at the Royal Rumble. If Corbin wins, he becomes the permanent General Manager of Raw. Braun gets to pick the stipulation, which he chooses to be a TLC match. The whole segment set up the upcoming PPV and addressed some stuff that came up in the previous two weeks. I'm glad they spent the time to do that. But what happens next is something I wasn't a fan of. The six man tag be...

With this week being a crazy Thanksgiving week, I've decided to just post whatever I have done throughout the week as soon as I have it done. This post was completed a few days ago, and I decided to go ahead and share it. And here's the video in case you want to watch it: MLW (11/16/18) - They recap the end of last week's show where Low Ki bludgeoned the ear of Daga in order to help retain his MLW World Championship.  Then we see Salina, Low Ki, and Ricky Martinez in the back run into Konnan. Low Ki tells Konnan he's loving adding all these trophies of Konnan's failures to his mantle. And that Konnan should face him 1 on 1 so he can collect his biggest prize. Konnan tells him that match would be 10 years too late, and he's not fighting him. After some jabbering back and forth, we get to our opening match. - Ricky Martinez wrestles in an exhibition match against someone who doesn't even get a proper introduction. Rex Bacchus (sp?) is the guy's...

What's Up Everyone? Since it is Thanksgiving here in the States, I am going to be a little off schedule and posting things differently. With things in flux, I will have limited time to do my posts as normal. But when I have time to post something, I will make posts ASAP. For example, I am posting an MLW standalone review this week (already done, great show BTW), and an ROH review later in the week. I may end up doing the same thing for Raw and SmackDown.  So, look for the following: Tuesday 11/20 - MLW Review - Raw Review Wednesday (11/21) - SmackDown Review - What I'm Thankful For as a Wrestling Fan (Special Op-Ed) Friday (11/23)- Saturday (11/24) - NXT Review - ROH Review Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. If you do not partake or celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you have a great week period. Until next time, take care of yourselves. Spread some awesomeness.

WWE Survivor Series 2018 11/18/18 Pre-Show Matches Backstage, the Raw Women's team is shown getting hyped up and prepared to get even with SmackDown over what happened on Monday. Ruby Riott asks if Natty superglued her daddy's glasses together. Natalya SPEARS her and starts throwing punches. There's a pull apart, and Raw Team Captain Alexa Bliss pulls them off the team!!!! Meanwhile, Team SmackDown announces that Mandy Rose is the fifth and final member of their team. Tag Team Survivor Series Match Team Raw (Bobby Roode and Chad Gable, The Revival, The Lucha House Party, The B-Team, and The Ascension) vs. Team SmackDown Live (The Usos, The New Day, Sanity, Gallows and Anderson, and The Colons) Kalisto and Dorado tag up on Primo early in the match. Kalisto gets worked on, and Epico gets tagged on. Scott Dawson gets tagged in. SHATTER MACHINE to Epico. The Colons are eliminated. Karl Anderson unloads with a bunch of spinebusters. Bo Dallas gets rolled up by Anderson...

As I'm writing this, NXT TakeOver WarGames II is about 12 hours old. And the doubt has been laid to rest: Triple H knows how to book a WarGames match. The past 2 WarGames matches have been incredible. But the question remains (even with the slightest bit of time to absorb the match): Was this the greatest WarGames match ever? Here's my review of the WarGames match from NXT TakeOver: WarGames II. (For the full review of this great event, click on  this link. )  After the review, I will render my evaluation and rank this WarGames against the dozen + WarGames matches I've reviewed recently. NXT TakeOver: WarGames II 11/17/2018 WARGAMES The Undisputed Era (Adam Cole, Kyle O'Reilly, Bobby Fish, and Roderick Strong) vs. Pete Dunne, Ricochet, and War Raiders. LET THE WARGAMES BEGIN! ADAM COLE (BAY BAY!) starts the match for the Undisputed Era. Ricochet starts the match for the other team. The bell rings. Both men tell the other to come into their ring. Ricochet d...

NXT continues to prove that sometimes less is more. We are only getting 4 matches tonight, and all four are capable of main eventing any other NXT TakeOver event. Let's Do This!!!! NXT TakeOver WarGames 11/17/18 BRO!!!!! HERE'S MATT RIDDLE! He gets on the mic and gets a great ovation from the crowd. He's not scheduled to have a match, but he's chilling in LA. He's calling out Kassius Ohno to have the match right now.  AND HERE'S OHNO!! 1) Kassius Ohno vs. Matt Riddle The bell rings. RIDDLE KNOCKS HIM OUT!!!!!!!!! 1-2-3!!!! THAT QUICK! A knee straight to the jaw as soon as that bell rang. Winner: Matt Riddle Match Rating: A+. Riddle is made in NXT after that. It just took him 3 seconds to knockout a knockout artist. Damn. Of course you can't weigh that against a regular match, but that was a great moment. 2) NXT Women's Championship 2 out of 3 Fall Match Shayna Baszler (c) vs. Kairi Sane The bell rings. Sane goes immediately on the attack o...