My Week In Wrestling (ending December 23rd)

@RoxBlackburn

It’s been quite the week in WWE. Firstly we had Tables, Ladders and Chairs (TLC) PPV. Myself and @DriftAway93 wrote the review. I think we did a pretty stellar job of it.

I absolutely loved the womens triple threat TLC match. Charlotte, Becky and Asuka did a cracking job, took some crazy bumps and told us a great story. I wasn’t even upset that Ronda Rousey came out and tipped the ladder over as I think it enhanced the feud that I hope will build further in the coming months.

Seth Rollins v Dean Ambrose seem to fall flat and even now, I can’t put my finger on why. I thought it was suposed to be a ladder match. Why wasn’t it a ladder match?

AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan put in an absolute clinic, delivering one of my favourite matches in the last month.

Raw saw the McMahon’s shaking things up. I think it’s really clever how making Baron Corbin tbe scapegoat has somehow managed to take the heat off the management. They were seen as the heroes of the day.

What will change? I’m not sure but the new match ups we saw were good. I especially loved seeing The Revival properly booked on Raw, Mustafa Ali pinning Daniel Bryan on Smackdown and look foward to the coming NXT call ups, particularly EC3 and Nikki Cross.

All in all a pretty positive week in WWE land. I look forward to what the future holds and for the first time in months, I’m not dreading Raw this coming week.

I’d love to see Rusev get a proper push on Smackdown, The Revival go at it for the Raw tag team titles and based on their Smackdown performances this week, either Mustafa Ali or Andrade Cien Almas be given a WWE title shot.

#TheRoxSays Happy Holidays everyone. Here’s to a bright 2019

@twf87
There hasn’t been too much time to watch wrestling in the run up to Christmas, but I did manage to catch up on the Road to Tokyo Dome shows from New Japan. The shows were decent, with a particular highlight in the main event of the third and final show of Hiroshi Tanahashi and Will Ospreay against The Golden Lovers. The Tanahashi vs Omega match at the Dome feels like it has less heat than some of the other matches, but they did a better job of developing the rivalry between the two men in this match. I’m sure that Omega and Tanahashi will put on a technically proficient bout, but I’m not that emotionally invested in it. Ibushi and Ospreay looked great in the match though, and the NEVER Openweight title match that opens Wrestle Kingdom has the potential to steal the show. Naito and Jericho continued the build to their match with a good face off at the press conference, and then a Jericho sneak attack on the last Road To show. Jericho hasn’t really been my favourite in NJPW this year, but he’s played his part in the build up to this match very well. White vs Okada has some good heat behind it going into WK, and the Okada vs Gedo match on the Road To show was quite amusing, if only for the sight of Gedo pepper spraying Okada. 

The old argument over whether NJPW should have a women’s division or not also reared it’s head on Twitter this week. This generally seems to be an argument made by people who know very little about the actual state of women’s wrestling in Japan – you never hear the joshi pro wrestlers saying they want to work for New Japan – and ignores the history of women’s promotions and wrestlers. Joshi pro wrestlers have blazed trails in Japanese wrestling for decades. There are numerous women owned and run promotions in Japan that are doing very well – Oz Academy outdrew NOAH and AJPW earlier this year at their Korakuen Hall show headlined by Aja Kong and Hikaru Shida. Rather than demanding NJPW add another division to their already bloated roster, and decimate the women’s scene in Japan while they do it, I’d rather see people give joshi promotions the coverage and support that they deserve (shameless plug for my recent year end review of Stardom). Honestly I hope this argument just dies a death, but if it helps get more eyes on Stardom, Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling, Sendai Girls, Marvelous, Oz Academy, Ice Ribbon, ActwresGirlz, Pure-J, WAVE, and the other joshi promotions then at least something good will have come from it.