WWE, London and Me – By Wrestle G

Hello one and all and welcome once again to NoDQ.com the site where wrestling column royalty reside. We are well on the road to WrestleMania and we have some AEW Dynasty action this weekend as well, honestly we need to appreciate how lucky we are as wrestling fans currently as it has not always been this good with the amount of choice and talent we get to watch week in week out.

I’m back to tell you about my live experience at WWE this past Monday evening. But first I’ll dig into some Wrestling Tapas with some small opinions about what’s going on in the wrestling world currently.

Wrestling Tapas

This past Wednesday on Dynamite we saw the continuation of the Swerve and Hangman saga where Swerve showed humility to Hangman by admitting he deserved what Hangman did to him when he burned down his childhood home. For me these two guys just have an awesome chemistry when they are on the screen together, their feud has endured over a long time now and every time they reconnect there’s a spark on the screen. I love the way that both of them elevate each other when they get put together and I think they can carry AEW for years to come. I’m pulling for Swerve to win the belt this weekend.

Bret Hart stirred up wrestling fandom this week with his comments on his opinion that too many wrestlers overact. I’m happy for people to disagree with Bret on this, but the number of people I saw claiming he had CTE and accusing him of being a WWE shill was rather disturbing. Bret has had hugely documented health issues with his brain suffering a career ending concussion and a stroke. To try and diagnose him with brain issues because you take Umbridge with his opinions is low. I also believe people thought he was talking down a lot of AEW wrestlers in general, whereas I believe his criticism was about the way some wrestlers carry themselves and that they act like they think wrestlers should act rather than carrying themselves as legitimate pro wrestlers. A lot of the chatter around Bret this week has made me feel like nuance is dead when talking about pro wrestling and that I find very sad.

Miro is WWE bound again according to reports. Personally, I am a huge mark for Miro, and I really hope that HHH can unlock the potential that is so obviously there. But there has to be a willingness from Miro himself to really want this. His attitude changes in AEW are to me a red flag and I worry that he doesn’t have that real desire to be at the top of pro wrestling even though he has all the tools in order to be in that conversation. This is last chance saloon and I’m rooting for him.

Ok let’s get into the meat and bones of today’s column….

Raw in good ol’ London Town

It’s really hard for me to express just how much I love going to see wrestling live. The sound of the crowd and the feel of just looking at the brightly lit ring just does something to me. Then when the competitors get in the ring the way you feel every bump when they hit the mat and the crowd’s reaction to everything it just makes me feel at home, it is escapism for me at it’s very best.

But before we get into the nuts and bolts of Raw itself, I thought I would touch upon some of the things around the event. Firstly Merchandise, and I have to say I found the Merch to be really disappointing for this event. The biggest merch store they had was found inside the O2 Arena, but it was a 50/50 split between UFC and WWE merch. Now I don’t think there’s a huge cross over between the two fan bases and the UFC merch was some of the most bland and boring merch I’ve seen. This amount of UFC merch meant some wrestlers didn’t have any shirts for sale on the night, there was not a single CM punk shirt available to buy which shocked me.

Of the WWE merch that was there a lot of it was London Centric and to be honest, I don’t think the WWE fan base care that the WWE is in London, it isn’t a lot of native Londoners that go, they come from all over the UK. They want to buy shirts of their favourite wrestlers. The selection there was ok, Jey Uso, Cody, Cena and Penta were the main shirts available with a sprinkling of Kevin Owens and the Rock. Title Belts seem to be the cash cow that the merchandise is banking on, while the Wyatt Sicks masks were also very popular. All in all, I would love to see more general and varied merchandise. Drop the UFC stuff and drop the location specific merch to only one or two designs. I did pick myself up a Cody and a Penta T-shirt though.

So, all merched up it was time to go into the Arena, I had awesome seats just slightly elevated above the floor seats so a perfect view of the ring and more importantly when your having wrestling beers a quick exit to the toilets…. First up was Main event tapings, one thing that struck me was I have no idea where Main Event is even shown these days? Is it on peacock? Is it still in some international markets? Anyway, the Main event show had Karrion Kross beat Tozawa and then we had Laya Valkyria against Zoe Starks. Both run of the mill matches to get the crowds warmed up, Kross and Valkyria took the wins.

Then Raw started and I finally got to take in the Cena heel heat. Him and Cody gave an amazing back and forth on the mic and it’s the first time I’ve been in a building where I really felt the mood of the crowd change based on the performer’s words alone. At one point it really felt like the crowd may turn on Cody when Cena was going hard on their history. But Cody rallied them round and his ‘you can’t wrestle’ line really cemented his support. I’m a little surprised Cena opted not to wrestle in London if this is to be his final time in the country performing. While I was there, I really did realise the different little things that set people like Cena and Cody apart from others, the delivery was genuine and felt like it came from the heart. There was a level of believability that not everyone can conjure. I know the aftermath of the heel turn hasn’t been everyone’s cup of tea, but I am really dialled in for Mania and at the moment I’m leaning towards thinking that Cena is going to win, by crook rather than hook.

Elsewhere across the night I was really impressed with Penta and his presentation. Lots of people seemed into him and the way they have set up his entrance it really feels like a spectacle. I quite like the tension between him and Bron and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Penta walk out of Mania with the IC strap. Bron seeing him up close has presence and the way he moves around the ring is rapid, he’s a future mania main eventer if he can find a connection with the audience with his words, his physical charisma is definitely there.

But speaking of words… the surprise of the night was experiencing the heat that Logan Paul received when he came down for his segment with AJ Styles. The heat in that building was massive, and it wasn’t go away heat, it was heel heat. Now I am no fan of Logan Paul as a person or any of his stuff outside wrestling. But this guy gets it in the ring and how to handle a crowd. AJ will help him during their match and having seen Logan up close I’m much more excited for this match. Honestly there is something there with Logan, and if he can keep improving in the ring and he wants to dedicate more time to the ring then I think the WWE have someone who can flirt with the main event as a Heel with the right opponents.

For the main event the crowd was really into it, I haven’t been a huge fan of how this feud has been built but all three women involved are top tier and to have women main eventing Raw and it just feeling normal is a good sign.

As Raw went off the air we were treated to Ludwig Kaiser taking on CM punk. Punk looked to be having the time of his life, and he got some huge reactions, him and Kaiser had a lot of fun with a lot of spots and Punk finished the match with a GTS. After the match Punk had everyone join him in a singalong to Fat Bottom Girls by Queen which he claimed was AJ Lee’s favourite song. It was a cool way to end the show and I’m glad I got to see Punk live in action again, I hadn’t got to see him since All in at Wembley on that infamous August day.

Travelling home I felt buzzing I’m already looking to go to Forbidden door and the Raw tapings coming up in the UK in August to get myself back in the arena. Like I said at the beginning of this column being around wrestling gives me an adrenaline rush that I just struggle to find with a lot of my other hobbies. It truly is unmatched for me, and I am glad I am lucky enough to go to it whenever I can.

That’s it for this week. Did anyone else come to the event in the O2 on Monday? What did you think? What other live events have you been to? What was your favourite? Let me know in the comments below or as always you can find me on X via: @Wrestle_G or TikTok via: @wrestleg

Thanks for reading,

Until next time,

Cheers,

G