THE WRESTLING REPORT

Money in the Bank is looking weak

Cory De La Guardia
May 15, 2019, 5:37 am
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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 and Wrestling. Check out the podcast replay of the FM radio shows www.nerdthugradio.com!

This week was another really awful week of WWE "entertainment." In what was supposed to be the "go home" week for Money in the Bank, where WWE typically tries to end on awesome high notes and get everyone pumped for the event. That didn't exactly happen this time around. WWE is on their European tour still and basically it felt like there's only four important matches at Money in the Bank. Becky Lynch's two matches and she did a double contract signing with Charlotte Flair and Lacey Evans and then it devolved into a fight but at least it had some great promos, and The Miz and Shane McMahon in the cage match and Roman Reigns fighting Elias. That's all that seems to matter for this event; Alexa Bliss didn't even fight in the Raw Women's promo match and Baron Corben and Drew Mcintyre helped get Braun Strowman out of the men's ladder match.

Smackdown again stayed focus on Shane McMahon and his two foes Roman Reigns and The Miz. They did do a fun thing where The Usos showed up to help and Rowan and Daniel Bryan being in the pocket of Shane is kind of an interesting thing. The idea of a new Authority or Corporation or whatever they want to be called would be cool. They could do a better job and all have their own angles but still helping McMahon. The Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville team is cruising for a clear rivalry match at some point in the very near future, which means to me that Mandy Rose is now one of my favorites for the money in the bank. She wins the contract and then Sonya chases her for it, boom entertainment! I don't really understand the excitement around Lars Sullivan, he cuts awful promos, he doesn't seem to be able to move and honestly he isn't that large of a guy in the scheme of WWE athletes. Somehow the Kevin Owens and Kofi Kingston match suddenly feels like a far less important match than Kofi has been in since winning the title, which is disappointing although they did manage to end Smackdown strongly which was a surprise considering how bad the week was overall.

Hopefully a balance will be found before the coming move to Fox or Smackdown will struggle to find the new audience it feels like WWE is searching for. All of these changes and scrambling feels like WWE is genuinely fearing the upcoming AEW events and inevitable premiere on television and is trying to make as many people happy as possible but all of this craziness is going the other way it feels like, possibly turning fans off instead of bringing new fans on, only time will tell.

Feel free to check out my digital short story The Wilson House or buy a shirt from Side Hustle Ts where some proceeds help fight cancer or listen to Nerd Thug Radio or support our Patreon Page. Thoughts, complaints, events and comments can be sent to corydlg@gmail.com.

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THE WRESTLING REPORT

Another Pay Per View is coming this weekend from WWE. Again

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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!

If it feels like we're sprinting into another pay per view almost on top of the last one, it's because we basically are. Extreme Rules is this coming Sunday only three weeks after Stomping Grounds. The seeming break neck speed of event after event after event is annoying and honestly seems to be designed to force people to pick up the WWE network. If they just bought the occasional pay per view there is no longer an incentive to spend the $40 bucks for one because well for $10 a month you get one a month and every few months there will be a second one snuck into the long months, so the value is in your favor. It's annoying for fans though because suddenly wrestlers are cutting promos from event to event and sometimes yelling at a guy about a fight in three weeks while they have a fight with someone else that weekend. Say what?

This past week Raw had a few interesting bits, perhaps most interesting was the behind the scenes moves of putting Paul Heyman mostly in charge of Raw and him upping the shock factor up a level or two. As that continued you saw the rise of The AJ Styles and his boys Gallows and Anderson, I'm not big fans of them but it's fun for those guys to get back together and a heel turn is in an interesting choice for AJ Styles, because I'm not sure it was needed. The other big thing is the Seth Rollins, Becky Lynch mixed tag match against Corbin and Evans for both their titles is a cool match idea and these two matches should be exciting at Extreme Rules.

Smackdown delivered what was a rather underwhelming go home show for Extreme Rules, although Otis of Heavy Machinery looked great in the three-way match, that guy is just incredibly impressive physically for such an oddly shaped athlete. The Kevin Owens face turn continues as he seemed to go "off script" but it was probably a bit and it's trying to set him up as an antihero, the problem with that is that his buddy Samy is in the middle of a great heel run. The Roman Reigns/Undertaker tag match has built up to exciting levels as Shane McMahon has continued his rise to top villain in the WWE and deserving of a beating from the Deadman and the Big Dog. He's assembling a nice collection of B players to help push his agenda as good muscle and as a result they're elevating themselves as well. This match may either save or finally end Undertaker's part time career and the Extreme Rules event overall.

Feel free to check out my digital short story The Wilson House or buy a shirt from Side Hustle Ts where some proceeds help fight cancer or listen to Nerd Thug Radio. Thoughts, complaints, events and comments can be sent to corydlg@gmail.com.

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