The latest WWE and AEW News and Results
With Bryan Alvarez away on his 1,234rd vacation of the year, former WWE, ECW & WCW star Lance Storm steps in for a special Lance, Vinny & Craig Show!
The guys recap this past Saturday’s AEW Collision which saw CM Punk defeat Samoa Joe to advance to the finals of the Owen Hart Foundation tournament plus a great tag team match.
They also chat about, well, anything else that comes up.
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The first steps towards SummerSlam took shape on Friday’s WWE SmackDown.
On Sunday morning’s Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer and Garrett Gonzales ran down the show, including the opening segment that featured the trial of Roman Reigns. After a swerve, Reigns and Solo Sikoa attacked The Usos, sending Jimmy to the hospital. The end of the show saw Jey Uso issue the challenge to Reigns.
“I thought the best part was the end,” Gonzales said. “Jey had a ton of emotion in his face and his body after challenging Roman. It did feel long, I thought the first segment felt like it slightly overstayed its welcome. But at the same time, so many people are into that, I don’t know if they would have felt the same way I did.”
SummerSlam is shaping up to be a big card, both in terms of match quality and business.
“This is a pretty loaded SummerSlam lineup and they’re already at 42,000 tickets in,” Meltzer said.
Some of the matches being built to include Drew McIntyre vs. Gunther, Trish Stratus vs. Becky Lynch, Ronda Rousey vs. Shayna Baszler, and a three-way for the WWE Women’s Championship.
“They’re doing Asuka and Bianca to set up Asuka, Charlotte, and Bianca three-way for SummerSlam,” Meltzer added.
Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer discussed the final segments from Monday’s Raw.
Both Alvarez and Meltzer had high praise for the Women’s World Championship match between champion Rhea Ripley and Natalya, which saw Ripley retain the title.
“This match was really good,” Alvarez said.
Meltzer called it the best match on the show, though was disappointed it went through a commercial break.
“I know the crowd’s reacting because it’s really good stuff,” he said. “And there’s no sound. And they come back, and there’s a lot of sound, and this is a show where there’s not been a lot of sound during matches.”
The main event had Seth Rollins defeat Dominik Mysterio by disqualification after Damian Priest ran in and attacked Rollins in an attempt to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase.
“You couldn’t [have had] a more lame finish,” Alvarez said.
The end of the show saw Finn Balor interrupt Priest attempting to cash in the Money in the Bank briefcase by attacking Rollins himself. This got Priest mad and the show ended with the two arguing as Rollins escaped.
“So here’s the thing, they’re idiots. You know why?,” Meltzer said. “Because Finn beating on [Rollins] should have been a positive, not a negative…Finn Balor was just helping you.”
For the first time in over three years, Roman Reigns has been pinned.
The Usos bested Roman Reigns & Solo Sikoa at Money in the Bank, with Jey Uso pinning Reigns. Bryan Alvarez and Dave Metlzer shared their thoughts on the match on Sunday morning’s Wrestling Observer Radio.
“If you have time, watch the whole match,” Alvarez said. “If you do not have time, you can safely skip the first 20 minutes of this match.”
“You can watch the last five minutes and really see the match,” Meltzer added.
Both agreed, however, the last minutes of the match picked up significantly. At one point, Solo and Reigns hit a spike/spear combination on The Usos and stacked them together, something Heyman said would happen in the pre-show. The Usos still managed to kick out.
“When they did that, it meant more because Paul Heyman promised that’s how the finish was gonna be,” Meltzer said.
Despite the slow start, Bryan and Dave both praised the match and finish, though it wasn’t a match of the year contender.
“The first half of the match was just putting in time, but the second half of the match was absolutely incredible,” Alvarez said.
I thought the match was great, I mean like great, but it was really all about the finish,” Meltzer said. “The match itself to me was pretty much what you would expect.”
Hero’s pulled one of the biggest coups of this or any other year when Kazushi Sakuraba, the man who put Pride on the map, showed up doing an interview in the ring at its 5/3 show at the Tokyo National Gym, broadcast later that night in a two-hour prime time network special on Japan’s TBS.
After intermission, in a move that shocked virtually everyone as there were no hints of this ahead of time, Akira Maeda got in the ring and said he was going to introduce a newcomer to Hero’s. They showed a masked man and quickly went to a commercial break. They came back and Maeda was still building up and Sakuraba’s entrance music played and Maeda introduced the newcomer as Tiger Mask.
It’s somewhat well known that the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, was Sakuraba’s idol when he was in middle school. Everyone began chanting the name “Sakuraba,” immediately recognizing him from his blue jeans and yellow comedy T-shirt, plus, on the forehead of his Tiger Mask was a “KS.” When asked what his name was, he said, “Tiger Mask,” to laughs. Sakuraba said a few words, posed for photos. The TV announcers called him Tiger Mask, but said he looked like Sakuraba.
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Sting did another dangerous spot on Dynamite just days after a six-man tag at Forbidden Door went wrong.
On Wednesday’s show, Sting set up Sammy Guevara on the floor on top of some tables. He then proceeded to climb up the ladder and leap off, barely hitting half of his target. And not only did he barely get to first table, his face connected with Guevara’s knee on impact. Sting said after the show ended that he had a loose tooth and he’d likely need a lot of stitches.
Alvarez noted the idea was when Sting first came in, he’d only do cinematic-style matches.
“Well now this guy’s out there doing all this crazy stuff every single match,” he said.
Meltzer thought that so many moves like Sting’s are being done on such a frequent level, it’s no longer that surprising.
“Years ago something like this we’d talk about for a month. But the thing is it’s so overdone, it hurts, it’s dangerous, you forget about it. The next day they don’t even care,” he said.
Meltzer wondered why people like Sting and Jeff Hardy, both older wrestlers who are banged up, continue to do risky and dangerous moves despite them not really needing to do them at this stage of their career.
The following are spoilers for Saturday’s AEW Collision and future episodes of Ring of Honor — all of which was filmed Thursday at the FirstOntario Centre in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
These come courtesy of PWInsider and Wrestling Headlines.
AEW Collision:
ROH:
https://twitter.com/FUNGUY416/status/1674618723167092736
The following are spoilers for this Friday’s AEW Rampage, taped following Dynamite Wednesday in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Rampage spoilers courtesy of ITN WWE.
The pre-show featured a dark match between hometown favorite Ethan Page who picked up a win over Preston Vance.
AEW Rampage:
Notes:
Not the greatest momentum for Carmelo Hayes just one day prior to a big title match.
Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer discussed Hayes’ appearance on Raw while going over the latter half of the show on Wrestling Observer Radio. Hayes first appeared on the show in the crowd, helping Seth Rollins ward off Finn Balor who attempted to take out Rollins with a chair. This led to a match later that night where Hayes was defeated clean by Balor, despite being the NXT Champion and having a title defense the following night against Baron Corbin.
“I was stunned, but I wasn’t stunned,” Alvarez said. “Right out of the Vince playbook. It happens every time.”
Although Finn Balor is going for the World Heavyweight Championship on Saturday, Alvarez noted that literally anybody else on the roster could have been used for the spot Hayes was put in. Meltzer thought it established the NXT Championship as a lesser title.
“All it did was tell everybody that [the NXT Championship] is a secondary title,” Meltzer said. “Carmelo Hayes is so far down the list that he’s like Gargano/Ciampa level…he was a plucky midcard to lowcard babyface and the NXT Champion should be a champion close to competitive with that.”
Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer explained the two problems with the Forbidden Door main event.
Bryan Danielson defeated Kazuchika Okada in the main event of Forbidden Door on Sunday. Alvarez on Wrestling Observer Radio Monday morning said that the match was great, but not as great as he thought it would be. Both he and Meltzer agreed that one of the reasons was the crowd not being into the match due to Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay’s match, which they thought was a match of the year contender.
“If we had known what we knew, Osprey and Omega should have gone last,” Meltzer said.
Meltzer also brought up the other reason the match didn’t meet expectations: Danielson said at the post-show media scrum that he and the AEW medical team believe he fractured his right forearm near the end of the match.
“They changed the last several minutes of the match because they had to,” Meltzer said.
In the scrum, Danielson also admitted he suffered a torn labrum in the match against MJF back at AEW Revolution in March. Meltzer noted that it was concerning that Danielson has only wrestled twice since Revolution, but has injured himself both times.
“This one was more of a fluke. The Max match was just so brutal. You start piling up injuries like that and it’s not a good thing either,” he said.
The following are spoilers from Saturday’s Ring of Honor on HonorClub TV tapings from Toronto, Canada, as part of AEW Collision.
These come courtesy of PWInsider:
Notes:
Forbidden Door’s card looks mostly complete following Wednesday’s Dynamite.
Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer discussed the show-closing angle on Dynamite, where Eddie Kingston announced Tomohiro Ishii as the fifth member of his team, which also includes The Young Bucks & Hangman Page as they look to take on Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, Claudio Castagnoli, Shota Umino, and Konosuke Takeshita.
The segment saw a brawl break out once Ishii entered the ring, with Bryan Danielson threatening to stomp Ishii if Okada didn’t come out. Okada obliged, making the save and sending Danielson reeling to close the show. Alvarez thought the ending was good, though a lot was going on.
“It was good. They could of had a lot more time, but it was good,” he said.
“At least they did something with Danielson,” Meltzer said. “They also said on multiple occasions that’s the main event of the show.”
After running down the card (minus one match that was made on Friday’s Rampage) Alvarez stated that Forbidden Door looked like “a hell of a show.”
Former WWE, ECW and WCW star and current Impact Wrestling producer Lance Storm returns with another solo edition where he answers your questions and talks about stories from his long career.
This is a follow-up to last week’s show which is also available for subscribers.
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Logan Paul is back in WWE, and he’s going for the Money in the Bank briefcase.
Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer discussed that segment and more on Tuesday’s Wrestling Observer Radio. Alvarez was confused by Logan Paul’s promo, where he was trying to be both a face and a heel while announcing he was part of the Money in the Bank ladder match. This brought out the participants from both brands, the latest example of the brand split not meaning anything.
“So the brand thing is over,” Meltzer said. “Not even an explanation.”
With Paul’s entry into the match, he becomes the immediate favorite.
“I think Logan Paul should win the match. I don’t know that he’ll win, but I think he should,” Meltzer said. “He’ll get a lot of publicity if he won and the other thing about that is I think the briefcase is so annoying when it’s there week after week, but if it’s there every now and then, I think that’s pretty cool.”
Meltzer even suggested that Paul could win the title, saying he’s no David Arquette, who won the WCW Championship back in 2000 while looking completely incompetent in the ring.
“This guy’s great. He can talk, he looks good, he can work, he’s great. He’s a bigger celebrity than anyone they got in the entire company, so why not?” he said.
Here are spoilers for this coming Friday’s AEW Rampage, taped following Wednesday’s AEW taping in Chicago. Results courtesy of ITN WWE:
AEW kicks off their Canadian tour starting Saturday with Collision and Sunday with Forbidden Door in Toronto. Announced for Collision is CM Punk, FTR, and Ricky Starks vs. Jay White, Juice Robinson, and The Gunns, Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Swerve Strickland, Willow Nightingale vs. Nyla Rose in a Owen Hart Foundation tournament match, Brody King vs. Andrade el Idolo, Sting & Darby Allin will reveal their partner for Forbidden Door, and Christian Cage will address the TNT Championship.
