Questioning Recent Booking Decisions

With so many major events over the past couple weeks from WWE, NXT, ROH and NJPW, I’ve been questioning the booking across all the companies. It has been two weeks since the Royal Rumble, and I’m still wondering why certain things were done the way they were. Please indulge me in sharing my thoughts. I’ll also mention that I haven’t caught up on all the action that was Ring of Honor Tag Wars as this was written.

WWE

I don’t completely understand why WWE feels the need to run a competition that nobody asked for in Mixed Match Challenge, but at least it made things interesting by offering the winners the #30 position in their respective rumble matches. My issue with it all was when Carmella and R-Truth won the finals of the tournament at TLC in December, not much storyline or hype was done for them leading into the January pay-per-view. R-Truth didn’t even make it to the match because he was attacked by Nia Jax (more on that in a minute) and Carmella entered to not much fanfare and lasted maybe 10 minutes overall, only to lose.

The women’s match was won by Becky Lynch, who earlier in the night lost her Women’s Championship match to Asuka. Why did Becky have to wrestle that match to start with and still win the Rumble? Maybe another idea for a storyline could be that when Carmella wins that #30 spot, she instead decides to forgo the rumble and challenge Asuka for the title. “Give me a shot at the Smackdown Women’s Title and give someone else the #30 position.” You can build the match based off Carmella beating Asuka twice last year in title matches, so she has the confidence to win again. Of course, she doesn’t have to win, but then Becky doesn’t have to wrestle twice. Maybe then, do a Charlotte screw job on Becky in the women’s rumble, similar to Austin screwing Bret Hart in the 1997 Royal Rumble. Ultimately, Charlotte wins the rumble.

Hell, for a comedy bit and storyline set up with how delusional R-Truth is, have him enter the women’s rumble at #30. He can run in and get immediately eliminated by Nia, Alexa Bliss, Charlotte, whoever.

Maybe now with an opening in the men’s rumble at the #30 spot and Becky getting screwed at the end of women’s rumble, have Becky be a surprise entrant into the men’s match because she’s “THE MAN.” Yes, I know that makes things a little more literal, but again, it gains buzz around the company. Now with Becky and Charlotte winning both rumbles and wanting to face a champion of their choosing for WrestleMania, have Charlotte play her card early and announce her intentions for Ronda Rousey and the Raw Women’s Title. Let Becky play with the fans for a bit and then by Fastlane in March, make the announcement of challenging Ronda, too, and now you have your triple threat match for the Raw Women’s Title at WrestleMania.

NXT

I have a lot more faith in HHH running NXT properly than I do anymore with Vince and the main roster. With the pending arrival of KUSHIDA to NXT, he will be used properly and maybe a little similar in a meteoric push to the NXT title much like Shinsuke Nakamura. My biggest fear is that they keep him in his junior-heavyweight status once his NXT run is done, benching him to 205 Live. WWE has killed amazing talent on that roster like Hideo Itami, Mike Kanellis and Neville (PAC). I will credit the men on 205 Live because they are making the most of the opportunity presented to them, making 205 Live a notable brand in the process. However, they will never again be viewed on the same level as the Raw and Smackdown talent and will forever be stuck in the position of the PPV pre-show starters.

NJPW

I love the direction of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship with Tanahashi getting ready for revenge and a title defense against “Switchblade” Jay White. But I do question if now is the time to do that match rather than build to it towards maybe Dominion. Why not have Tanahashi defend the title against someone else during A New Beginning Tour and then against Okada at G1 SuperCard at MSG (like rumored) and then get taken out by Jay White at the end of G1, setting the challenge in motion for Dominion in June? Outside of Okada, Naito and Minoru, Tanahashi doesn’t have many challengers set for the coming months’ worth of title defenses.

Plus, we have seen all of these matches repeatedly. While they all continue to steal the show, how many times do we want to see Tana vs. Okada, Tana vs. Naito and Tana vs. Suzuki on the major shows? The only name I have read rumored was Chris Jericho, but the language of his AEW contract and whether he can strike a deal with NJPW could prevent that. Let’s build up a little bit more of Juice Robinson, Sanada and Tama Tonga for those title shots in between the major shows.

IMPACT WRESTLING

While I haven’t watched a full episode of Impact Wrestling since the TNA Universe was BROKEN by the one called Hardy, I have been keeping up enough to see what has been happening with a young talent in Scarlett Bordeaux. When she debuted for Impact, she said “I’m here to make wrestling sexy again.” And she has done exactly that. I saw on social media this week her “training video” for her in-ring debut. The end of the video was her talking about proper diet and hydration, which apparently includes her deep throating a banana. This action had many past and present wrestlers give their two cents on the matter.

I believe in what she is doing and if it fits her character, then great, go for it. I hope that Impact Wrestling sees the line in the sand about where not to cross between wrestling and sexy. The past few years we have seen women’s wrestling go on the completely opposite end of the spectrum compared to 2002, where every week there was a bra and panties match or some kind of bikini contest. While I believe that companies should have a little bit of each between wrestling and sexy, we don’t want to regress back on what the women’s revolution has become.

RING OF HONOR

It appears that a turf war has begun between two groups: Life Blood (comprised of Juice Robinson, David Finlay, Bandido, Tenille Dashwood, Tracy Williams and Mark Haskins) and the alliance of Bully Ray, The Briscoe Brothers, Shane Taylor and Silas Young. The war began during the recent live events known as Tag Wars 2019. While this appears to be the direction of ROH in 2019, it still shows that there is a major hole in storylines as well as the roster after the departures of The Elite and SoCal Uncensored to All Elite Wrestling. With a wide range of talent involved and some of the nastiest heels in any organization today on one side, it seems that ROH may be getting ready to bring back a match that it hasn’t had on its TV since 2013: Steel Cage Warfare. It’s a version of War Games and its last iteration was when Kevin Steen (Owens) joined Team ROH to finally vanquish Steve Corino and SCUM. Could Life Blood be heading into a Steel Cage War with the top ROH heels in 2019?

Let’s talk about the final result of Tag Wars. With a victory over Juice Robinson and David Finlay, PCO and Brody King of Villain Enterprises have secured their spots in the upcoming Crockett Cup as well as a World Tag Team Title shot against The Briscoes during the anniversary show in Las Vegas in late March. To go back onto my previous thought, wouldn’t it make more sense to have Fin-Juice win Tag Wars to establish them as major players in the tag team division with Life Blood? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the war with the heel group crossover with gold on the line on PPV?

I’ve quickly become a huge fan of both Brody and PCO, but with limited time left on the contract of Marty Scurll (we all know he is going to leave for AEW), ROH should have Villain Enterprises chasing after The Kingdom for the Six-Man Tag Team Titles. Yes, I am aware of the recent announcement of that exact match for Bound by Honor weekend in February, but there could be more build towards that in prep for the anniversary show.

Besides if Marty’s contract is indeed up around WrestleMania weekend, when is he getting his Survival of the Fittest title shot? With Marty, it has to be on PPV and not a throw-away live event like they did with Dalton Castle. With Chris Sabin and Flip Gordon both getting injured, Cody and Dalton already losing in their title shots, only Scurll and Matt Taven have actual talk at this point to say that they deserve title shots at Jay Lethal. One match will be at the anniversary show and I think honestly Taven gets left for G1 SuperCard. The build for Lethal and Taven has been there since June in Fairfax, Virginia, the night Lethal won the World Title. Villain Enterprises needs to be running for the Six-Man Tag Titles and Scurll needs to be in Lethal’s face about world title shots, like he did at Final Battle. Life Blood should be then challenging for the ROH Tag Team Titles.