There’s always one PPV between Wrestlemania and Summerslam that feels a bit…pointless, last year it was Extreme Rules and this year it’s Stomping Grounds. Almost every match on this show is either retreading old ground or clearly just a placeholder feud until we can get the big matches we all want at the biggest party of the summer.
Admittedly, compared to Super Showdown, this show will probably be amazing and just because we’ve seen a match before doesn’t mean it’ll be bad, but there isn’t a lot of intrigue to any of the matches and that often to leads to a whole bunch of ok, but not great, wrestling matches; or bullshit finishes.
It also seems to make the results pretty predictable, so let’s predict so that we can all point and laugh at me when I turn out to be hilariously wrong.
Tony Nese(c) vs Akira Tozowa vs Drew Gulak
(Cruiserweight Championship)
Well here’s an interesting one.
For the first time in a long time, I’m actually quite excited by the build for this match. Nese has been saying he wants to fight Tozowa for ages, and Tozowa has really been killing it week to week on 205 Live, meanwhile Drew has completely revamped his character, becoming a much more broken and vicious man, finally getting rid of all the goofy campaigning stuff.
I find Triple Threat Matches are more consistently entertaining than Fatal 4 Ways. I think the fact that there are fewer people means you can focus in more on each of the individuals and tell a more coherent story, while still keeping in the lightning pace and out of nowhere excitement aspects of multi-man matches.
When Tony Nese won the title, I thought we’d be in for quite a long reign, as that’s generally what the Cruiserweight Championship is good at, but I honestly think his reigns already coming to an end. It’s a shame because I think there was a lot more for him to do with the title, but going into this match it really feels like this might finally be Drew Gulak‘s time. This new character he’s brought has some real intrigue to it, and there are enough faces on 205 Live now to sustain another heel reign without it feeling repetitious.
Daniel Bryan & Rowan(c) vs Heavy Machinery
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
Hopefully, Daniel Bryan can make something good of this.
I’ve never been the biggest Heavy Machinery fan, even in NXT I really didn’t think there was much entertaining behind them, the characters are quirky but in just the wrong way that I find them annoying and a lot of their powerful and good looking offence is hidden behind hokey crap; which come to think of it, is exactly what Daniel Bryan was saying about them on Smackdown this week.
With all that said, if any wrestler can work a match so good with them that it turns my opinion around, it’s Daniel Bryan, so I’m going to be quietly optimistic that this A) Doesn’t get bumped to the pre-show and B) Is actually fairly entertaining. I don’t think this is too hard of a match to pick a winner in though, Daniel Bryan & Rowan shouldn’t lose those titles anytime soon and it still feels too early for Heavy Machinery, thought this will hopefully help elevate them significantly.
The New Day vs Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn
A lot of these matches seem pointless, but this is here as pure filler.
It seems to me like, Owens’ refusal to go to Saudi Arabia and subsequent Dolph Ziggler replacement has messed up the pacing of the Owens vs Kofi stuff a bit. For the past month, it’s felt a lot like WWE are trying to build to another Owens vs Kofi match, but they’ve still got the Dolph Ziggler feud to get out of the way first, so this match was brought in as a bit of a proxy for this month.
That said, just because it’s filler doesn’t mean it won’t be good. New Day are still one of the best tag teams out there right now and Owens & Zayn are great competitors, I think the only problem this match will have is garnering crowd interest because there really isn’t a lot interesting behind this match.
Picking a winner in a match like this always feels a bit arbitrary, because ultimately no-one’s going to remember come next month, but if my theory is true that they’re building to another Kofi vs Owens match, then Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn have got to pick up some sort of cheap win here.
Samoa Joe(c) vs Ricochet
(United States Championship)
As far as replacements for Rey Mysterio go, I’d say they hit the nail on the head.
There’s not really a great deal of story to this match considering Ricochet only won the number 1 contendership on Monday, but this is the kind of match that doesn’t necessarily need a great deal of story to work. That said, I did find the fallout from what happened at Money in the Bank a bit weird. I get that Mysterio had to vacate the title due to injury, but I can’t remember a time when someone vacated a belt and just straight up handed it to somebody else, especially one of their rivals.
Either way, this match should be great. Joe’s great at working smaller guys and Ricochet seems to shine when wrestling the bigger guys too. As long as this match gets the time it deserves, I can see some great back and forth to this match, with both men trying to force the other to wrestle their pace to get the upper hand; I have high hopes for this one.
Interestingly, I could see this one going either way too. On the one hand it makes sense for Joe to retain, since this is a match with no build and he’s only just got the title back in the first place, but given that they had planned to take the title off of Joe at Money in the Bank and he only got it back into injury, maybe they’ll put it on Ricochet; like I said at the beginning, there really isn’t any better replacement for Mysterio. The main sticking point with me is that Joe is still the only heel singles champion in WWE right now, pair that with the fact that I think this card is going to have a lot of face wins in the big matches, I’m going to pick Samoa Joe here to even it out.
Roman Reigns vs Drew Mcintyre
I mentioned this in my review of Super Showdown, but the progression of this story makes no sense whatsoever.
Roman Reigns returned after his leukaemia scare, beat Drew Mcintyre & friends with The Shield, then beat Drew in a singles match at Wrestlemania. Roman then goes over to Smackdown – away from Drew – and ends up getting involved with Shane McMahon, and beats his toadie Elias, then thanks to the stupid Wild Card rule, Drew becomes another one of Shane’s toadies (which is also stupid, but if I picked apart every detail of this thing we’d be here all day), cost Roman his match against Shane, giving Shane McfuckingMahon a win over Roman Reigns and now in order to get revenge, Roman’s going to fight a guy he’s already beat.
It just doesn’t make any sense. For one thing, Drew shouldn’t be anyone’s toadie at this point, the dude’s got future world champion written all over him (it wouldn’t surprise me if this came before the end of the year) and this is honestly a waste of his time. Not to mention it’s a waste of time for Roman too and makes him look kinda weak since he’s not looking to get his win back from Shane.
If any match on this card is going to have some sort of non-finish it’ll be this one. Shane has been front and centre on both Raw and Smackdown for the past month and it wouldn’t surprise me if this match ended in a no contest so the segment can end with Shane standing tall, perhaps to set up a Roman vs Shane rematch. Failing that, Roman Reigns will hopefully win and both men can go away and do more interesting things.
Becky Lynch(c) vs Lacey Evans
(Raw Women’s Championship)
Kind of ironic that the background for these matches is a desolate wasteland.
I just don’t understand why, coming out of all the excitement that happened at Money in the Bank, THIS is the match they want to go with for Becky. I get there’s some justification for it since Lacey cost Becky the Smackdown title, but A) Shouldn’t Becky want the Smackdown title more than petty revenge, and B) Becky already beat Lacey clean as a whistle at Money in the Bank, Lacey shouldn’t have any ground when it comes to demanding a rematch.
Nevertheless here we are and I’m really not sure how good this one can be. Their match at Money in the Bank was fine, but Lacey’s lack of experience was on full display and I’m not sure if there’s any new direction this match could go in. As long as there are no shenanigans I’m sure it’ll be perfectly fine, and hopefully, these two have a bit better chemistry in the ring now, but I can’t see it being anything special.
I don’t think the result of this one is up for debate, Becky Lynch needs to retain so she can go and fulfil all of the other – more interesting – possibilities that were laid forth after Money in the Bank.
Bayley(c) vs Alexa Bliss
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)
All it has to be is better than their first feud, which is a low bar if I ever saw one.
I’m not entirely sure what possessed WWE creative to relive one of the worst feuds in recent memory, but the character dynamics have shifted a bit since then, so hopefully, this will be better this time around. That said, the week to week stuff hasn’t been all that amazing, Bayley’s got a new mean streak which is great for her character, but Alexa’s mostly still the same spoiled brat she always was, and as much as I like Alexa, it’s starting to get stale.
In terms of in-ring quality, this could be one of the better matches of the night. Alexa is good enough to put on great matches with the right opponent, and hopefully, Bayley is more reinvigorated than ever when it comes to competing thanks to this new lease of life she’s been given. It could very well end up being boring, but I’m choosing to remain optimistic about this one because I don’t have much else on this show to be hopeful about.
Alexa’s one of those competitors that WWE might decide they want to put the title on at random a lot of the time, which makes me a little bit nervous about this one, but I think there are a couple of factors going against her. Firstly, there’s the fact that her medical condition is currently in a lot of question, it seems like she’s fine for the most part, but given she was pulled out of Money in the Bank last month, I’m not sure management would be comfortable with the title on someone who might have to drop out at any moment. The other is the fact that it’s Bayley’s first major title defence and a loss here would undo all of the goodwill that’s been built up around her, so I’m going with Bayley on this one.
Kofi Kingston(c) vs Dolph Ziggler
(WWE Championship)
(Steel Cage)
Why have Dolph Ziggler fight for the title if you’re going to make him seem like the world’s biggest afterthought?
Seriously, WWE are even treating Ziggler like he hasn’t even got a whelps chance in a supernova of winning this match on Sunday, they’re already looking past him to a rematch with Owens and outside of a couple of pointless wins over Xavier Woods and in tag team matches, it doesn’t seem like he’s got any sort of momentum whatsoever. As I imagined, all of the potentially interesting storyline scenarios I proposed coming out of Super Showdown didn’t come to pass, instead, they’ve just gone with the idea that Ziggler’s a sore loser, even though he totally is justified in feeling screwed.
I don’t know how good this match could be, their contest at Super Showdown wasn’t anything all that great, but the Saudi Arabia matches always tend to be worse, maybe because of jetlag, or maybe because of low morale so I think there’s still a chance this one could be good. I’m also not usually big on Steel Cage matches, but the one between Shane and Miz at Money in the Bank was surprisingly entertaining so I’m going to keep my hopes up for this one.
Like I said in my opening paragraph, there’s no way Ziggler’s winning this. I’m sure there will be some shenanigans on the outside of the cage between New Day and Zayn & Owens, but at the end of the day, Kofi Kingston is going to come away with the win on this one.
Seth Rollins(c) vs Baron Corbin
(Universal Championship)
(Special Guest Referee TBA)
We go from a heel who is completely justified in wanting a rematch, to one who really doesn’t deserve one in the slightest.
There’s no real way to slice it when you look at what happened, Corbin has no justification in getting this rematch, Rollins would’ve got that rollup if the ref had a go at him or not, he was still looking away from Seth, and we all know Corbin’s #1 weakness is rollups. Moreso than that, he’s been given the opportunity to pick his own referee, for some very vaguely defined reason, so we’ve got to deal with all this bullshit as well.
The match between these two at Super Showdown was certainly the best of the night, but that was mostly by default and while it was fun, it wasn’t on the level of what we’ve come to expect from Seth Rollins’ title matches in recent years. Not to mention, any hope I really had for this being a good match has been dashed with the promise of a special guest referee, which will no doubt lead to endless shenanigans and some sort of dirty finish. I’m really not sure who it’s going to be, but the current rumour is Brock Lesnar, which I guess would make sense and was subtly teased in the final moments of Tuesday’s Smackdown.
If that’s the case, and Lesnar is the referee, then I entirely expect this match to end in a No Contest, Brock will let them go until he gets bored, at which point he will lay both guys out and either leave or cash in his Money in the Bank contract to grab the title from Seth. That said, if it’s not Lesnar then Seth Rollins will win, probably because Corbin will end up arguing with whoever he picks and that will yet again cost him the match.
So that’s it! Those are my predictions for Stomping Grounds 2019, let me know what you think in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo, and check back here early next week for my review of the show!
The Strong Style Smark 