The Phantom Rant: The weak King & Queen of the Rings

Greetings conversationalists all across the world wide web. It is I, the one and only “Phantom Lord” Joseph Davis and this is The Phantom Rant. As always I’m coming to you from New York City and The Knicks just lost game three. But they are still up Two games to One. So things are looking up for the city. Hopefully whatever juice Danhausen has won’t run out for game four and five. Though he said on Twitter that the game three loss wasn’t his fault. In any event the Danhausen curse stuff has been fun for the mainstream side of wrestling. I don’t want to bash AEW here, but Tony Khan had this guy and did nothing with him. How is that possible?

In other news, I have not liked the King of the Ring tournament for the WWE so far. At first I was excited, if not perplexed by the opening matches. I thought it was old school with one on one matches. Turns out I looked at the graphics wrong and they are 4 way matches. So far Oba Femi and Dominik Mysterio and Je’Von Evans have advanced to the semi finals.

Oba vs. Dominik will be a weird match. It can only go one of two ways. Oba destroys Dom in record time or Dom uses every trick in the book to steal a win…which I’m sure would annoy people more than Oba losing to Brock at Clash in Italy. So they have kinda backed themselves into a corner with this semi-final match. Je’Von Evans just won his 4 way match against Seth Rollins, Talia Tonga & Ricky Saints. Rolls was set to win and perhaps win the whole tournament, but The Vision got involved with this match so I guess the Rollins vs. Breakker feud will continue. The final match is the only unpredictable match that I can’t predict a winner with the 4 way with Jey Uso vs. LA Knight vs. Royce Keys vs. Finn Balor. LA Knight needs a huge win here, but I don’t see that happening. I can see Finn Balor winning giving us a Finn vs. Je’Von semi-final. This whole tournament is a mess. I haven’t even got to the Queen of the Ring brackets.

Liv Morgan is inexplicably in the tournament. Rumor has it the WWE just doesn’t know what to do with her while Stephanie Vaquer is out with injury. I don’t know…me personally, I’d just find someone else for her to feud with. They seem to be putting more effort into the Women’s Intercontinental Championship (not by much though) than the Women’s World Championship. As I write this, it’s been 51 days since Liv won the title much less defended it. It’s not like they don’t have worthy challengers for her. They are just being lazy to be honest. I mean hell, I could have whipped up a gauntlet match or something for a challenger for her. But alas I’m not booking this stuff.

The Queen of the Ring is a bit more predictable at this moment with Liv winning her match and last week we saw Iyo Sky and Raquel Rodriguez qualify for the semi finals. I don’t know who will in the final quarterfinal match on Smackdown this week, but it’s clear to me they are setting up a Iyo Sky vs. Liv Morgan final. The funny thing is unless Charlotte or Jade Cargil win this final match, Smackdown will be shutout of the tournament. Same thing goes for the men’s side. If RAW does a clean sweep, in the immortal words of Jerry Reed “Well, she got the goldmine (She got the goldmine) I got the shaft (I got the shaft)” Smackdown will really be up a certain creek once again. It’s funny how Smackdown, despite having the better matches always ends up on the losing end of these sorts of things.

Now, I remember a time when the King of the Ring was prestigious damn it. You used to have three matches in one night for the winner. Now the tournament aspect is an afterthought. I like the winners getting a title shot at Summerslam, but it’s just it should be bigger. Not so rushed like it is now. So yeah I’m not excited about the prospects of either of this years tournaments. I mean for the men, unless something of monumental stupidity happens…it’s clear Oba Femi is winning the King of the Ring. We might get a Oba/Finn final (that’s my best guess for a best outcome), but this is Oba Femi’s tournament to lose at this point.

As for the Women in the Queen of the Ring tournament, as I said it’s pretty clear they will do a Liv vs. Iyo final. I would imagine Iyo would win in that case to give us Iyo vs. Rhea at Summerslam. Honestly for both of these tournaments they should have had it split down the middle. One side is RAW and one side is Smackdown. You could have still done the stupid four way matches, but at least here everything would have been even for both sides.

Smackdown really is the middle child of the WWE. Raw gets all the glory. NXT gets all the praise. Smackdown gets the leftovers and is expected to deliver. I like Smackdown (even if a three hour show can be a chore to watch). But they need more than just RAW’s leftovers to succeed. Right now like I said it looks all but certain to be a clean sweep for RAW in the King and Queen of the Ring tournaments. That’s a shame for Smackdown because they do deserve so much better than they get.

There was an interesting article on the main page of NODQ about the Road Dogg Brian James and how the WWE has become more about the money in the wrong way. Road Dogg was working on Smackdown and people would give him grief for how things were going. But honestly it wasn’t his fault. The WWE has a corporate monster above them nit picking every decision that is made. Oh sure, the WWE is making money, but at what cost? We have too many commercials during the shows. Merchandise is over priced and don’t get me started on ticket prices

The King and Queen of the Ring is just an example of the lazy booking that is plaguing the WWE. But TKO doesn’t care so long as they get that money. Hey, I’m a capitalist. So I’m all about making money. But I’d rather it would be enjoyable to watch if I’m giving my money for it.

I guess on that note I am done for this week. As always thanks for reading and if you want you can leave me some feedback down below, on Twitter or email me at phantomlordnyc@gmail.com