Wrestle Review: Old Faces and New Places Submitted by Andy Sullivan on 08/01/2020 at 11:16 AM
I'm glad Matt Cardona, the Good Brothers and Heath have found landing spots after getting fired by the almighty WWE. Alas. I fear Matt might go no further than he went in WWE. I know that's an unpopular opinion. For reference. look at Shawn Spears. People were so excited when he went to AEW. "He wasn't used by WWE. Cody will know what to do with him". Oh, like sitting in the crowd during the matches? That is, if he's even there at all. How about competing on their equivalent to Main Event every other week? Maybe that's what they meant. I'll take a wait and see approach on Matt and I hope I'm wrong.
Sticking with AEW, Darby vs Mox for the title Wednesday is just begging for interference by Cage and Starks. Mox will obviously retain, as he will be challenged at All Out by MJF. MJF's promo Wednesday. btw, was fire! It did remind me of EC3's championship campaign in Impact Wrestling a few years ago. I say Starks and Cage likely interfere in that match. Maybe we'll get Starks vs Darby at All Out, although I thought the feud was Cage vs Darby.
Rusev announced on Instagram that he's leaving wrestling to become a Twitch gamer. It saddens me that his passion for wrestling is gone. Some will say WWE killed his passion for wrestling because "that's what they do". Whatever the case may be, I'm sad he'll no longer be wrestling. Of course, he could be taking a cue from Matt C and doing the classic social media misdirect. Remember the week of Slammiversary when Matt posted a pic of himself and the date of Slammiversary on IG? That didn't turn out to be true, did it? We'll see. I hope we haven't seen the last of Rusev.
Adam Cole might get a SummerSlam match this year against....Pat McAfee? Cole was on Pat's radio show and took the bait after some prodding by Pat. Now the choice: does this lead to a Takeover XXX match or SummerSlam? I say Takeover. NXT is clearly the hotter show.
Last night on Smackdown, two things stood out to me. It appears the Alexa Bliss-Nikki Cross pairing might be done. After Nikki lost her title match with Bayley, she got mad, shoved Bliss to the mat and left. Enter The Fiend. "It's happening"! Alexa played the part of damsel in distress perfectly, looking up with fright just before taking the mandible claw. It's obviously a ploy for The Fiend to get a Universal Championship match against Braun at SummerSlam. That match will obviously happen. Then will Alexa turn on Braun during the match and cost him the title? That's my guess.
That's where we are in AEW and WWE. I didn't even discuss Impact and Wrestle House this week. Also looks like Eddie Edwards has joined the "defend my championship every week" club, which I love. Who doesn't love a title match ever week? It's great to see The Good Brothers actually wrestling again. Is Impact going to do a Social Outcast thing with Heath like WWE did? Or an Outsiders type thing? I'm intrigued to see where that goes.
To sum up. it looks like there are alot of options for good wrestling programming. Don't just limit yourself to one. It's more fun when you get into all of it.
