The unlikely pair of Orton and Nakamura gave Ownes and Zayn a taste of their own medicine. Photo by WWE.com
This is a weekly look at the action in the WWE:
Raw
Jason Jordan tried to convince his father, Kurt Angle, to give him a shot at Roman Reigns’ Intercontinental Championship. Reigns came to the ring to explain why he would not be giving him a shot, but Jordan persuaded him after surprising him with a suplex as Reigns was distracted with Samoa Joe, who stood outside the ring. Jordan put on a valiant effort, but it was not enough to defeat the champion. After the match, Joe tried to attack Reigns, but Jordan hit him with a suplex causing him to cower away. Reigns thanked Jordan for his help by hitting him with a Superman Punch.
Paige won her first match in over a year defeating Sasha Banks, thanks to a distraction from Absolution. They didn’t stop there, though, as they continued to attack Banks after the match. Backstage, Elias warned Kurt Angle about his bias towards his “bastard son,” Jason Jordan. Enzo Amore hyped up Tony Neese and Drew Gulak before they participated in the second Fatal Fairway against Cedric Alexander and Mustafa Ali. Just like last week, the Cruiserweight’s delivered an awesome match that Gulak stole out of the hands of Cedric Alexander.
Elias rocked the Los Angeles crowd with his now notorious concerts. Unfortunately for him, there was a bigger reaction from the crowd when his opponent for the night, Braun Strowman, came to the ring. Elias tried to pump fake Strowman and pretended to run away, but he ended up attacking him from behind. This, of course, was a mistake as Strowman ended up destroying Elias. Kane appeared over the jumbotron and issued a challenge to Strowman on next week’s edition of Raw. Asuka defeated Alicia Fox via her Asuka Lock. Much like they did last week, Absolution surrounded Asuka in the ring, but they ended up letting her walk away from the ring. They didn't do the same for Fox, though, as Rose and Deville attacked Paige’s former best friend. Finn Balor got back to his winning ways defeating Bo Dallas via the Coup De Grace. Matt Hardy explained how he has been “woken,” alluding to the debut of the Broken Matt Hardy character in the WWE. Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins challenged The Bar for the Tag Team Championships in the main event. Just when it looked like The Shield was going to get the upper hand, Sheamus got himself disqualified so that they could retain their championships. Kurt Angle came out and explained he was not going to allow the match to end that way, and he restarted the match as a No Disqualification match. Out of nowhere, Samoa Joe attacked Rollins and Ambrose prompting Reigns to come to the aide of his brothers. Sheamus used the distractions to hit Ambrose with a Brogue Kick allowing Cesaro to pin him for the win.
Highlight of the Night
He has AWOKEN! Matt Hardy had a career renascence in 2016. The “Broken” character he developed in his time in the independent circuit was, without a doubt, one of the biggest stories in wrestling last year. Since his return to the WWE, there was never any certainty we would be seeing this character. But an injury to Jeff and a feud with Bray Wyatt later, and here we are.
SmackDown Live
SmackDown Live opened with Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn celebrating how they out smarted Shane McMahon and Randy Orton the week before. Randy Orton crashed their party by hitting Kevin Owens with an RKO out of nowhere. McMahon joined in crashing the party explaining that the pair will take on Randy Orton and a partner of his choosing at Clash of Champions. Plus, Zayn will be taking on Randy Orton in this week’s main event. The New Day took on Rusev and Aiden English in the first match of the night. Rusev Day this week was a happy one as Rusev and English went on to defeat the former Tag Team Champions. Backstage, Mojo Rawley explained that he attacked Zack Ryder last week because he is “dead weight” and reminded fans that he won The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal without him. Because of their win over New Day, Rusev and Aiden English were added to the tag team match for the Tag Team Championships at Clash of Champions. It will now be a Fatal 4-Way featuring New Day, Shelton Benjamin and Chad Gable, Rusev and Aiden English, and the champs themselves, The Usos. Daniel Bryan announced that Natalya will be challenging Charlotte at Clash of Champions in a Lumberjack Match. The Bludgeon Brothers continued to display their dominance defeating an enhancement talent tag team in quick fashion.
Bobby Roode took on The United States Champion, Baron Corbin. The match wouldn’t get too far, though, as their opponent at Clash of Champions, Dolph Ziggler left the commentary table and hit both men with Zig Zags. The Woman’s Champion, Charlotte, defeated Tamina via her Figure Eight submission. After the match, The Riott Squad came out and instigated a brawl between the entire women’s division. Kevin Owens was handcuffed to the ring, so he wouldn’t get involved in the main event between Sami Zayn and Randy Orton. Of course, Owens and Zayn found a way to free him, but it was not enough to prevent Orton from winning the match. Before he could celebrate his victory, Owens and Zayn began attacking him. Shinsuke Nakamura raced down to save Orton, alluding to a possible team up between the two at Clash of Champions. Backstage, Shane McMahon revealed to Daniel Bryan that he will be the guest referee in Owens and Zayn’s match at Clash of Champions, and, if they lose to Orton and Nakamura, they will be fired from the WWE.
Highlight of the Night
The 12 days of Rusev song was pure gold. Aiden English and Rusev have made the absolute best with their time together. The Rusev Day gimmick has, quickly, become a fan favorite, and English made it just that much better this week.
How do they compare?
It was a big week for both shows. Per usual, Los Angeles got a good episode of Raw. The three hours flew by, and the main event delivered. SmackDown is quickly putting together a card for Clash of Champions on December 17th. This week’s episode was a vacuum. Many matches for the event just felt like they were quickly put together. Raw gets the edge this week, but I have faith the blue team will put together two good episodes before Clash of Champions.
With overnight temperatures dipping into the 20s this week in Houston, it seems good timing to have the warm thoughts of baseball being back, at least spring training games. The Astros have more shakiness about their squad than they have had in nearly a decade, but the Astros still have a nucleus of an American League West contender. With the exits of Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman, it’s just a notably different nucleus than in recent years.
Jose Altuve is the last remaining mainstay of the greatest era in Astros’ history, and he is one of the biggest stories of their preseason as he for the time being at least is left fielder Jose Altuve. By every indication he is embracing the challenge with class and energy. The obvious impetus for test driving the move is the soon-to-be 35 years old Altuve’s defensive deterioration. It can be tough for the player himself to notice that his range has declined. The voiding of defensive shifts after the 2022 season shined a brighter light on Altuve’s D decline. Still, last season Altuve made his ninth All-Star team and despite also displaying some offensive decline remained the clearly best offensive second baseman in the American League. It’s part of the tradeoff of reducing the defensive workload on Yordan Alvarez, and hoping to upgrade defensively at second with some combo of Mauricio Dubon, Brendan Rodgers, or other.
The natural comparison in Astros’ history of a franchise icon losing his defensive spot and making a late-career position change is to Craig Biggio. Biggio’s All-Star days were behind him when the Astros moved him from second base to center field for the 2003 season because of the signing of free agent Jeff Kent. It spoke to the athlete Biggio was that at 37 years old he could make the move at all. After not quite a season and a half in center, Biggio moved to left when the Astros traded for young stud center fielder Carlos Beltran. Both Kent and Beltran left in free agency after the 2004 season, and Biggio moved back to second for the final three seasons of his career.
Second basemen are often second basemen and not shortstops in part because of their throwing arms. Altuve’s throwing arm will be an issue in left field. Even though Daikin Park has the smallest square footage of fair territory in Major League Baseball because of its left to left-center field dimensions, Altuve’s arm will be a liability. In understandably wanting to put an optimistic spin on things, manager Joe Espada and general manager Dana Brown have talked of how Altuve will be able to get momentum behind throws more so than when playing second. That’s true when camping under a fly ball in the outfield. That is not true when Altuve will have to cut off balls hit toward the left field line, or cutting across into the left-center field gap. There will be balls that would be singles when hit to other left fielders that will become doubles when Altuve has to play them, and baserunners will go from first to third and second to home much more readily. As an infielder Altuve has always been outstanding at running down pop-ups, so there is reason to believe he’ll be solid tracking fly balls in the outfield. However, the reality of a guy who is five feet six inches tall (in spikes) is that there will be the occasional fly ball or line drive that is beyond his grasp that more “normal” sized outfielders would grab. Try to name a good outfielder who stood shorter than five-foot-nine...
Here’s one: Hall of Famer Tim Raines (also originally a second baseman) was (and presumably still is!) five-foot-eight.
Here's another: Hall of Famer Hack Wilson was five-six. Four times he led the National League in home runs topped by a whopping 56 in 1930 when he set the still standing record of 191 runs batted in for a single season.
And another: Hall of Famer five-foot-four “Wee” Willie Keeler. Who last played in 1910.
Just a bit outside
Another element new to the Grapefruit League in Florida (and Cactus League in Arizona) this year is the limited use of what Major League Baseball is calling the Automated Ball Strike System. The ABS is likely coming to regular season games next year. This spring will be our first look at its use in big league games. Home plate umpires making ball and strike calls will not be going the way of the dinosaur. Challenges can be made until a team is wrong twice. Significantly, only the batter, pitcher, or catcher can challenge and must do so within two seconds of the pitch being caught. No dugout input allowed. No time to watch a replay.
The Astros’ spring park in West Palm Beach is not among the 13 facilities set up with ABS cameras. That seems silly given that the Astros share the place with the Washington Nationals. More use would be gotten from, and more data collected there than will be from a park with half the spring games played in it.
The countdown to Opening Day is on. Join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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