THE WRESTLING REPORT

With Fastlane out of the way, it's full steam ahead to Wrestlemania

Cory De La Guardia
Mar 13, 2019, 5:24 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.facebook.com/nerdthugradio!

From the wreckage of Fastlane emerges the first week towards Wrestlemania, let the set up commence.

Rocking from the controversy of Fastlane, Raw kicked off with Seth Rollins and Paul Heyman making the case for either side winning the upcoming main event of Wrestlemania, Seth Rollins vs Brock Lesnar. Aleister Black and Ricochet continue their tag team exhibition tour, in yet another tag match. Overall there wasn't a ton of new ground covered on Raw although Triple H and Bautista confirmed the long overdue Wrestlemania match that was originally planned for a few years back but then Daniel Bryan happened. Kurt Angle also confirmed suspicions that at Wrestlemania he would be wrestling his farewell match, now who to fight, hmmm? The Shield basically carried the night through with Roman Reigns having a match scheduled against Baron Corbin but instead Drew Mcintyre ambushed him and Dean Ambrose took up the call to avenge the insult with a no DQ, falls count anywhere match where both Dean and Drew took some amazing bumps, finishing with a gnarly Claymore kick that literally knocked a hand rail for some stairs loose, that's pretty good.

Smackdown felt like the show most affected by Fastlane, aside from Ronda Rousey completing her heel turn on Raw, as nearly all of Smackdown was focused on the fallout from the pay per view. As everything from the Shane McMahon/Miz break up, to Kofi Kingston and his friends in The New Day getting their revenge on The Bar and Rusev and Nakamura, AJ Styles and Randy Orton started their feud right on schedule with some decent smack talk. Daniel Bryan and Rowan restomped Kevin Owens and Mustafa Ali, in a continuation of their losing ways. The biggest change coming out of Fastlane was the new intercontinental champion, Samoa Joe. Coming out of a fatal fourway featyring R Truth, Almas and Rey Mysterio Jr the title changed yet again, the intercontinental championship has really struggled to find a home this year floating from superstar to superstar with little story or reason to it. The finale was interesting set up, giving Kofi Kingston an "impossible task" is an interesting twist to this storyline, the super heel role that Vince has taken as of late opens more doors for him to continue playing a "hand of God" type role adding people to matches and swapping out stars at will, continuing the longstanding air of "who knows what can happen".

Coming out of an underwhelming Fastlane, the road to Wrestlemania is clear and they can finish setting the stage for all the matches.

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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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