Born with a comic book in one hand and a remote control in the other, Cory DLG is the talent of Conroe's very own Nerd Thug Radio, Sports. Check out the podcast replay of the FM radio shows www.nerdthugradio.com!
All Elite Wrestling debuted last Wednesday and we are now in a new era. The Cody Rhodes led new wrestling promotion kicked off with a barn burner of a match between Cody Rhodes and Sammy Guevara. Seeing the return of wrestling to TNT has a lot of meaning to it, as WCW ended it's run Ted Turner had allegedly said there would never be wrestling on TNT again. Fast forward eighteen years later and Cody Rhodes has brought wrestling back to the Turner channel. A young roster filled with potential and great Indy wrestlers who are media savvy and willing to try big moves and land huge spots, AEW is going to push WWE in many ways.
WWE responded with an extended version of NXT, now two hours to rival AEW, kicking off with a match between Adam Cole and Matt Riddle for the title. It's an interesting move to see Finn Balor come on to NXT, this might be the way to fairly distribute the roster between USA and Fox but the most important take away from NXT is after comparing it to AEW it's just not as technically impressive. Overall as a show it isn't enough to directly compete against what AEW did the same night, although I did like the bit with running over their time like in the old days.
Smackdown kicked off well with The Rock and The Man embarrassing a King. The Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon ladder match being on Smackdown is a great decision with a pay per view event coming up the weekend after this show, hopefully it isn't one they regret. The match was obviously great, and Kevin winning was the obvious outcome but it was fantastic and what a great moment from Kevin Owens firing and stunning Shane. A squash match between Brock Lesnar and Kofi Kingston is so disrespectful and wrong to do to Kofi, who has been a great champ for WWE over the last year. It looks like the Fox era has begun.
Coming out of a disastrous Hell in a Cell where Seth cheated to end a match against The Fiend, resulting in the audience audibly chanting AEW at the end of the event. It's important for WWE to find some footing coming through the draft starting this Friday or AEW is going to keep chopping away at them and leading off with a cheating wife is so 1990s and not the right move at all. Natalya and Lacey Evans put some great work into the first match of the night to help recover some of the damage done by the opening. Overall it was a flat episode coming out of a rough pay per view and those aren't the things you want if you're looking over your shoulder at the new guy.
Feel free to check out my brand-new comic book Another Day at the Office or buy a shirt from Side Hustle Ts where some proceeds help people struggling with cancer or listen to Nerd Thug Radio. Thoughts, complaints, events and comments can be sent to corydlg@gmail.com.
