Day 278: Top 5 Dumbest Things That WWE Has Done This Week [Wrasslin’ For Lunch]

I started watching WCW the other day. I decided to start at the inception of the NWO and just start grinding my way through it. I feel like WCW in it’s heyday is the one major gap in my casual mark’s knowledge. And while I would agree that they put on a much superior product in 1996, a lot of it was still eye-rollingly hokey. And that’s the essence of pro wrestling, one that still rings true today. Since Smackdown went on the air, the WWE has given us a lot of good stuff in the 10 hours of programming. They even conned me into watching Raw again! But for every good match we get, they have every right to throw a VK Wallstreet or Lilly at us. It’s only fair, as it seems to be part of the unspoken contract between fans and bookers. Here’s the 5 biggest turds they threw at us in the last 5 days:

5) Nikki Cross turning into a butterfly superhero person

I’ve previously bemoaned how Nikki Cross is being treated as a joke and they’ve seemingly taken the joke to the next level. As soon as they showed her up-close face with paint and a mask on, I knew we were in for trouble as soon as the camera panned out. We were right.

She came out to the ring, skipping jubilantly and tagged with Alexa Bliss, who defeated everyone via hypnotism. The second Rachel saw her attire, she said “I’m going to go pluck my leg hairs, because that seems less painful”. While the whole thing reeks of jobberistic desperation, there’s a reason why it’s not #1 on the list. Apparently, this persona is 100% Nikki’s own creation. So frankly, we might as well ride it out and see where it goes.

4) Giving us too many Hell In A Cell matches

Too much of a good thing is usually not good when it comes to wrestling. That’s why we don’t see street fights and title changes every week (anymore). So whenever the Hell In A Cell PPV rolls around, we get too much of the same thing. To make up for pandemic ratings, they decided to give Fox a HIAC match on Smackdown. You know, as a treat. But then USA got jealous, so they also threw one together for Raw. That’s 4 Cell Matches in 4 days. Nope. Sorry. That’s way too much Cell, especially when some didn’t have much Hell.

3) Screwing Over Catering

Raw became Swerve City with the Money In The Bank qualifying matches. In each one of them, the underdog won. So now we have Morrison, Riddle and fucking Ricochet in the MitB match. That’ll put butts in the seats. Then after the matches, GM Adam Pearce was accosted by a gang of angry jobbers. They also wanted qualifying matches, to which he just shrugged. Minutes later, they announced the the losers of the qualifying matches would have a triple threat match to get into Money In The Bank. What was the point of even showing the Catering Crew when they were just going to get shat on later on? Why wouldn’t they just lump all the losers and jobbers together in one big Money In The Bank match to get the last spot in Money In The Bank? Clearly, they have no problem running gimmicks into the ground. Having an extra MitB match wouldn’t hurt. I mean, it would, but you know.

2) Doudrop

Piper Niven made her Raw debut last week as Eva Marie’s protege or cronie or whatever. Even though she was already established talent on NXT UK, everybody claimed to have no idea who she was. In fact, she didn’t even have a name until Monday Night. But they didn’t keep Piper Niven, that would have made too much sense. Instead, they named her…Doudrop.

I don’t know what a Doudrop is, but she sure as fuck isn’t it. That’s not even the name of a person. It’s the name of a shitty middling finisher. I can’t. I just can’t. I wish I had something funny to say about it, but it’s just so irreparably fucked. Just…just why?!?

1) Giving the biggest PPV matches non-finishes

I was pleasantly impressed with the Rhea Ripley – Charlotte Flair championship match. It told a good story, they both kept an even hand and then it all completely fell apart. Outside the ring, Rhea lightly tossed the top of the announce table and got disqualified. What the hell does that even mean? You’ve got the clear face in the match retaining the title via DQ. That’s some textbook heel shit. Not only is it confusing to the fans, it just completely ruined what was otherwise a decent match.

Right after that was McIntyre and Lashley in the Cell. They spent a half hour beating the living shit out of each other. It was slow, methodical and brutal. It definitely wasn’t for everyone, but I was having a good time. This was one of those matches that usually ends in the winner having to do his finisher multiple tones, just to ensure that the other is dead. That didn’t happen. Instead, Lashley retained with a surprise roll-up.

That’s almost a whole hour of content made completely null and void by a bullshit finish. You can put the Raw Wrestlers on a PPV, but you can’t take the Raw Finishes out of their matches. At least they’re consistent in pissing me off.

That said, WWE seems to be trending in the right direction, despite the previous 900 words. It’s just a lot more fun to point out the crappy aspects of it than gushing over somebody’s vascularity. We all watch wrestling for different reasons. Some do it for sport, some do it for beef, some do it for nostalgia and some people just love complaining. I fall into most of those categories.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Nitro to catch up on.

– TeeCoZee