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WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs: Predictions & Analysis

Wow, I’m glad Survivor Series had lots of longterm consequences that weren’t forgotten after a week of programming.

I don’t know if it’s just because it’s the end of the year and I’m tired, or if WWE programming has really just been this bad over the past month, but I’m not looking forward to TLC at all. Looking through the card, there are a few matches that I’m hopeful would be good, but when looking at the storylines building up to them, I can’t help but feel apathetic towards all of them, none of the stories have been interesting and I just don’t care about the outcome for most of these matches.

Still, that doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions on them, so let’s get predicting.

The Viking Raiders(c) vs TBD
(Raw Tag Team Championships)

So let me get this straight, WWE decided to do a segment on Raw where The Viking Raiders issued an open challenge…in order to build to segment on Sunday where The Viking Raiders issue an open challenge. *sigh* fine.

There’s a couple of possibilities here, firstly is that this lands on the pre-show, in which case it’ll probably The Street Profits again and they’ll lose again in a slightly more competitive match than we saw on Monday. If it’s not on the pre-show, then I think it’ll be one of two teams. Either it’ll be the boring option in The OC, since The OC beat The Viking Raiders at Crown Jewel, in a decision that has only become more baffling given how The Viking Raiders have been treated since then.

The much more exciting option is that we see a return for The Usos, which is something I’ve been wanting for a while now because they’re just what the Raw Tag Division needs to spice things up because Viking Raiders have been spinning their wheels for a while now. If it’s The OC, then I’m expecting The Viking Raiders to retain, however, my official prediction is that it will be The Usos to answer the call and they’ll win the titles to boot.

Aleister Black vs Buddy Murphey

So are they actually planning to do something with Aleister Black now? Or is this just like it was in June when he had a pointless match so we didn’t all forget he existed?

I love both of these competitors and Black especially, but given how much build Black has had behind him this year, I can’t help but feel like a match like this with no build behind it is an absolute waste. If you want people to react to the guy, then I’d say keeping him off of TV until there’s something meaningful for him to do is the best idea. The audience aren’t idiots, we’re not going to suddenly forget who he is, he had a Wrestlemania match this year for Christ’s sake. If he was just saved until they were ready to put him in a program with someone like Orton or Styles then the reaction to him finally showing up and kicking ass would be huge.

That aside, this match will be great. Both Black and Murphey can go a mile-a-minute when they want to and I’m sure that both of them will be eager to get a big reaction here. I’m pretty confident Aleister Black is going to get the win though, because quite frankly if he doesn’t, they may as well just release the guy now and stop wasting everyone’s time.

The New Day(c) vs The Revival
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
(Ladder)

I think it says a lot that this match, a match between two of the best tag teams in the world, is one that I just don’t care about.

Putting aside the fact that we’ve already seen it a bunch of times this quarter, this whole thing has had basically no build and The Revival, along with WWE’s Tag Division as a whole, has been treated like a joke and an afterthought for so long, that I just don’t have any reason to care. Even with The New Day, although I absolutely love them and think they’re amazing wrestlers, they’ve been the “default” setting for the Smackdown Tag Team Championships for so long now that I don’t think there’s anything more they can do in the division that isn’t retreading old ground. So I’m left in a situation where either The Revival win and the tag titles go back to being treated like they’re nothing, or The New Day win and the boring status quo remains.

Like I said, as far as tag team wrestlers go, there are few that can equal these two teams, so I’m sure the match will be a great watch provided they get enough time and who knows, maybe this will be where tag team wrestling in WWE starts to turn around and I’ll be proven wrong, I doubt it though.

Oh, and The New Day are going to win.

Rusev vs Bobby Lashley
(Tables)

Well…this storyline has been a bit all over the place.

First of all, this feels a lot like McMahon is trying his damndest to get revenge for 2015 when they originally tried to do a storyline where Rusev & Lana broke up, but they ruined it by having the audacity to get married in real life.

As a whole, this storyline hasn’t been great. There were a couple of weeks in the middle where things were ok, as the focal point was on the physicality between Rusev & Lashley, but pretty much any segment that relied on Lana’s talking ability was just plain awful and, for a married couple, she has surprisingly little acting chemistry with Rusev. In addition to this, Lashley has felt entirely unimportant to the story outside of giving Rusev someone to beat up, because he can’t beat up Lana.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this storyline is over just yet, Tables matches are prime contenders for screwy finishes and I’m fully expecting Lana to get involved and somehow contribute to sending Rusev through a table, handing Bobby Lashley the win and we can keep this whole stupid thing going into the Royal Rumble next month.

Roman Reigns vs King Corbin
(Tables, Ladders & Chairs)

So there have undoubtedly been a lot of bad storylines this month, but I’ve got to say that this is the worst of the lot.

For one thing, it involves a King gimmick, which have been done to death and quite frankly it’s just a half-assed excuse to give Corbin an extra shread of credibility. The thing with Corbin is that he’s been doing the same stuff for so long that I honestly just don’t care about anything he has to say or do, I don’t hate him, the stuff he says doesn’t generate any heat with me, it’s just pure apathy.

On top of this, Corbin’s style is one that Reigns doesn’t typically mesh well with as it generally makes for a pretty generic affair where Corbin “wears him down” with 10 solid minutes of rest-holds until Reigns suddenly comes flying out with a burst of exciting offence for a win. Unfortunately, this match was the one that got the TLC stipulation, so it’s going to be way too long, very slow and probably quite boring outside of one or two big spots.

If this were any other time of year, I’d be tempted to say that WWE were going to hand Corbin the win for shits and giggles, but we’re coming up to the Royal Rumble and in my mind, Roman Reigns is the main contender to win it right now, so he needs a solid and decisive win here.

Bray Wyatt vs The Miz

After Bryan lost clean to Wyatt at Survivor Series I was interested to see how they’d justify continuing the whole story, but I’ve got to say, this whole build has been great.

Removing Daniel Bryan in the way they did made the whole thing feel incredibly creepy and the way Miz has stepped in to stand up to Bray has finally helped legitimize The Miz as a face. I don’t think it’s any measure of a surprise when you consider how great these two guys are on the mic, but I’ve found each of their segments on Smackdown throughout this month to be really compelling, with the segment on last night’s episode, in particular, being fantastic.

I think having regular Bray Wyatt facing off against The Miz is an interesting twist and it opens up a world of possibilities for things that could happen, both in this match and with The Fiend in general going forward. I think it could be interesting if Daniel Bryan showed up in some capacity during this match, maybe The Fiend could appear on the screen, torturing Bryan backstage, causing The Miz to abandon the match and get beat-up.

I’m really interested to see what’s going to happen with this one, but I don’t have any doubt that Bray Wyatt is going to be the winner, he’s the Universal Champion after all, even if this isn’t a title match.

The Kabuki Warriors(c) vs Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)
(Tables, Ladders & Chairs)

Apparently, TLC is the one time of year when Asuka gets treated like a real wrestler.

This is one match that I have no doubt will be great to watch, as it’s essentially just the match we had between Becky, Charlotte & Asuka last year, only with Kairi Sane involved, thus making it ten times better. I’m sure the tag team format will allow for a huge variety of spots and action to take place and hopefully, there’ll be a nice bit of drama to spice things up too.

The interesting part comes from the fact that this whole thing feels like it’s leading to some sort of twist. I don’t know what that twist could possibly be, but I’ve just got this gut feeling that there’s no way this can just be a straight forward match for the titles. In terms of what I want it to be, I want it to be Shayna Baszler, although I’m not sure how likely that is given that her title match with Rhea Ripley is less than a week away. Maybe it will be as simple as Charlotte turning on Becky, hell, maybe Becky will turn on Charlotte, although that will probably lead to a repeat of Summerslam 2018.

Either way, I highly doubt Becky & Charlotte are walking away with the tag titles. Mostly because it would just make the titles worthless props in a more important singles feud, much like the Raw tag titles were with Seth & Braun earlier in the year. I don’t know what kind of shenanigans are going to happen in this match, but the result is going to be The Kabuki Warriors walking away with their championships in tow.

And those are my predictions! Thank you very much fort aking the time to read this post, let me know what you think is going to happen, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you check back here on Monday for my review of the show!

The Best of WWE in the 2010s

After getting sad about everything bad in WWE over the last decade, let’s pick oursleves up and talk about the best.

As we’ve covered, there’s been plenty to be upset about when it comes to WWE this past decade and given the IWC’s tendency to focus in on the negatives, it can be easy to trick yourself into thinking the 2010s were all bad for WWE, however, given that you’ve read the title of this article, I doubt it will surprise you when I say that this was not the case.

No matter how bad you think WWE has been over the past ten years (and for the record, I don’t think it’s been that bad) a broken clock is still right twice a day and some truly great things have come from Mr McMahon’s playhouse in the 2010s and here are what I think are some of the best.

9 – The New Day: Afterthoughts to World Champions

Imagine telling someone in 2014 that Big E Langston, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods would turn a Gospel Church gimmick into one of the greatest factions in company history.

By all accounts, The New Day should never have worked, like so many other factions that were thrown together in WWE for seemingly no reason, they debuted on TV with all the momentum of a wet fart and precisely no-one cared. It seemed like a way for WWE to give three men they had nothing for, something to do (because let’s be honest that’s what it was). Little did anyone know, they’d secretly struck gold.

The New Day would come out at smiling babyfaces, spouting the virtues of “The Power of Positivity”, which naturally is something all wrestling fans have an aversion to, so it was quickly booed out of every arena. Instead of annoyingly pushing on as babyfaces despite the fact no-one cared, the decision was made to shift the characters. All of a sudden, The New Day would find every way possible to steal any and every win they could, culminating in them winning the Tag Tag Championships from Cesaro & Tyson Kidd in late spring 2014.

From there on, things completely took off for the New Day, their positivity was now an ironic sentiment that they used to hide the fact that they cheated all the time, then claiming they won because they believed in themselves and other nonsense. As the months went on it turned out that these three men had some of the best on-screen and creative chemistry of any wrestlers in decades and every night they’d come out and cut promos that were genuinely funny on a level that we hadn’t seen in WWE since The Rock.

They then experienced the best kind of face turn any wrestler or faction can receive, a face turn simply because the fans just couldn’t stop cheering them. Their accomplishments speak for themselves: Longest reigning Tag Team champions in WWE history, 5 Tag Title reigns over the past 4 years and plenty of great matches and memorable moments.

This brings us to Kofi Kingston, who had one of the most unexpected and brilliant rises in years. The way the fans got behind Kofi and forced WWE’s hand to no only put the WWE Championship on him, but give him a decent sized run with it is something that we very rarely see in wrestling today and it was what happened with The New Day this decade that made it possible and I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the other memebers of the group reached the same point some time in the coming years.

What’s most impressive about The New Day though, is it took 3 guys who were probably never going to get very far in WWE as singles competitors and turned them into megastars that will be remembered forever in WWE. Xavier Woods and Big E were not in good positions in the WWE heircachy before The New Day came along, but now they’re synonymous with the current product and I can confidently claim that if there was no New Day, Kofi Kingston would never have got the WWE Championship run he’d always deserved.

An act that never got stale, and plucked three men from footnotes in WWE history to staples of the company, The New Day will certainly go down as one of the greatest factions in wrestling history.

8 – The Summer of Punk

And the year or so that followed it, but that’s not as catchy of a header.

You can think whatever you like of CM Punk’s 2014 exit from WWE, that’s not what we’re here to discuss, we’re here to talk about his greatest moments. Before CM Punk came along, it seemed like the smaller, more indie-rific stars would never truly get a chance to shine in WWE, no matter how much we cheered for them and booed the alternatives, WWE would always be a place for the John Cenas and Triple Hs of the world. Enter CM Punk.

Punk captured fans hearts with his in your face, to the point style of promos, weather as a heel or a babyface, Punk could work any crowd to feel any emotion whenever he wanted, combine this with exceptional in-ring talent and you’ve got one hell of a powder keg waiting to blow.

If Punk had received any old push from WWE management, there’s a chance his star would’ve faded far too quickly and whatever heel character he had at the time wouldn’t have maintained at the top of the card for as long as it did. Then he announced his intentions for Money in the Bank 2011. One fateful night on WWE Raw, CM Punk announced that on July 17th 2011, the night of that year’s Money in the Bank Pay-Per-View, his WWE contract expired, and he intended to leave with the WWE Championship.

This story was already blending kayfabe and reality in a way we hadn’t seen in a long time, as Punk’s contract was legitimately coming to an end on that date and he legitimately hadn’t decided yet whether or not he was going to re-sign. This was all well and good, but then something historic happened, to end an episode of Raw the next week, Punk sat at the top of the ramp and aired all of his frustrations with WWE in a part-work, part-shoot promo. This move turned many heads in the fandom and many fans who had stopped watching WWE due to its staleness were pulled back into watching thanks to this promo.

Low and behold, come Money in the bank 2011, Punk defeated Cena after a fantastic match, blew a kiss to Vinnie Mac and left WWE with the Championship…for 8 days. It’s an unfortunate truth that the aftermath of this moment was booked anywhere near as well as it should’ve, but the fact remains that it made an enternal star out of CM Punk, so much so that after being removed from our screens for over 5 years, people are still clamoring for his return.

CM Punk provided us with some of the most entertaining WWE TV we’d seen in years at that point and his success opened the door for so many others (who we’re going to talk about in a bit) to reach even greater success than Punk did. No matter what your opinion of him today is, you can’t deny that what he did in 2011 was absolutely fantastic.

7 – Depth of Talent

WWE has more wrestlers under there employ currently than ever before, a number that has skyrocketed specifically in this decade and as much as it creates problems like wasted talent that I highlighted in my “worst” article, it can also be of great benefit to the company.

While things like character work and promo ability can be debated, when it comes to atheltic ability, the WWE roster has never been as talented as it is right now. If WWE got their shit together, using the talent they’ve built upon their roster over the past ten years, they could put on the single best wrestling show in history; and I genuinely believe that. I could sit here and list countless names like I did in the previous list and I’ll be talking about specific examples further on in the list, but I genuinely believe that this is the most talented roster WWE has ever had.

There’s such a huge variety of wrestlers that they have under their belt that there really is something for everyone. You want muscle-bound superheroes who fight for what’s right? Have Roman Reigns. You want guys who can do so many flips you can’t help but be impressed? Ricochet’s got you covered. You want monsters who will destroy anyone in their path? Braun Strowman will hit the spot. You want the best technical wrestlers the world has ever seen? AJ Styles, Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan, take your pick.

Almost every WWE PPV is a plethora of variety in wrestling, no matter what you like, there’s something for you. If you want to poke holes in the current WWE product, there are plenty of ways to do so, but one thing that you absolutely cannot fault is the wrestlers themselves.

6 – AJ Styles: Mr WWE

Speaking of that talent, let’s look over one of this decade’s biggest, and most unexpected success stories.

For so many years AJ Styles was the exact opposite of a WWE guy. He spent the largest chunk of his career making waves for TNA as the most talented person there, before eventually leaving the company and making his way over to New Japan Pro Wrestling, where he would instantly become a star. Styles led the Bullet Club and had 2 reigns with the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. So when it was announced in Janurary of 2016 that AJ Styles had signed a contract with WWE, meer hours after he had wrestled at NJPW’s Wrestle Kingdom 10 it absolutely blew everyone away.

I didn’t have much of an idea who Styles was at the time, but I quickly learnt how big of a deal this was and it’s safe to say that I was losing my shit just as hard as anyone else when he showed up in the 2016 Royal Rumble match. No-one was quite sure what kind of career Styles would have in WWE and if the man himself is to be believed, Vince only intended for him to be a mid-carder from the outset.

Ever one to push boundaries though, Styles forced those in charge to take notice of how unstoppably talented he was. A heel turn ended up being the best thing for him as it gave him all the momentum in the world going into one hell of a match with John Cena at Summerslam 2016, where he beat Cena clean as a whistle. Then it happened, against all of the odds, AJ Styles, Mr TNA, won the WWE Championship at Backlash 2016, in a move I don’t think many people expected, at least not so soon after his arrival.

Styles continued this run of success over the next few years winning the United States Championship before winning the WWE Championship a second time, holding it for over a year and being plasted on the front of posters, production trucks and video games in the process. AJ Styles is the story of exactly what can happen when WWE want to stick it to their compeitition in the best way possible. Sure, you could take Mr TNA and make him a joke on your product, or you could take Mr TNA and turn him into Mr WWE and that’s exactly what Styles is now, in the best way possible.

5 – John Cena: Jobber to the Future Stars

Another thing that I don’t think anyone could’ve seen coming at the start of this decade, is the fact that John Cena is now virtually non-existent in WWE. Having gone full Hollywood (and doing pretty well for himself in the process), over the past few years Cena has barely had a presence in WWE, not even having an official match at Wrestlemania 35.

The benefit of this transition, however, is that when Cena does show up to have a match, it’s a big deal and whoever he wrestles is bound to get a great rub, win or lose. Even more so than that, Cena’s in-ring style has changed so subtly over this decade, that it took us all a moment in 2015/2016 to realise that he’s putting on incredible matches all of a sudden. Kevin Owens, AJ Styles, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan . All of these matche he’s had with those guys over the past number of years have been absolute classics, especially his matches with Styles.

What’s even more amazing (and unbelievable to our 2010 viewer) is that he put all of those guys over. Admittedly he got his wins back from Owens in a major way, but that first match when Owens shockingly pinned Cena was all that was needed to launch him to the prominent status he holds today. This happened with all of the younger talent he’s wrestled since about 2015, Cena would put them over in a high profile match and it would raise that guy’s stock more than any world title win ever could and even when he did get his wins back, it didn’t matter in the long run because a star was already made.

If Cena’s going to be sticking to this one or two matches a year thing, I hope that when he does show up, this is the Cena we continue to see. Everytime he shows up it feels like a big moment and there are so many guys in WWE that could really use his magic touch.

4 – Daniel Bryan: The Best Wrestler in the World

I’ve made this claim many many times on this blog and it’s something I genuinely believe. You don’t even need to go as far back as the American Dragon, or his Ring of Honor days to see it (although they certainly help) you just need to go back to the summer of 2010 and watch from there.

Many people (myself included) claim that the WWE way of doing things can hamper performers in many ways, from a characte perspective and even in the ring there are so many times watching WWE’s product that I feel like things could be better for such-and-such person if they weren’t so constricted, just look at Jon Moxley for living proof of that. Daniel Bryan didn’t suffer from this though, well he did a bit at first, but Daniel Bryan did something which no-one else has really been able to do, at least not to his level, which is take the limitations of the WWE system and use them to his advantage.

“Limitation breeds creativity” is a phrase I’ve heard a number of times when it comes to creating art and that’s exactly what Daniel Bryan did with the limitations he was given. He moved and changed his character to fit the WWE way of doing things without compromising who he was as a wrestler, he was able to feel like a perfect fit for the WWE product, while still connected with the fans on an astronomical level, so much so that when he hit a brick wall that he couldn’t change enough to get through, the WWE fanbase shouted as loud as they could and changed WWE to make way for him.

I gave CM Punk a lot the credit earlier for the shift to the indie style of wrestling because he was the first to do it, but Daniel Bryan’s contributions to this cause cannot be understated either. Daniel Bryan smashed his way through the titanium wall WWE seemed to put in front of him and in doing so, cleared the way for the whole style of wrestling in WWE to fundamentally shift to what was seen in 2010 as a very “indie” style.

Two of my favourite moments involving the WWE Championship this past decade were thanks to Daniel Bryan, when he won the title at Wrestlemania 30 is was the most incredible feeling in the world, this amazing and lovable man has finally reached the highest point it’s possible for him to reach in his career. Then there was the sad affair of his forced retirement thanks to injuries, which was truly heartbreaking, but luckily it has a happy ending.

Daniel Bryan’s return speech is something that still makes me tear up and the line “If you fight hard enough for your dreams, eventually your dreams will fight for you” is the most motivational sentence I think I’ve ever heard. So imagine thinking that less than a year later he would be one of the most detestable heels in the entire industry. Daniel Bryan’s 2018 heel turn was an unexpected stroke of absolute genius, not did it let him work a more mat-based technical style that he’s absolutely exceptional at, but it provided us with what, to my mind at least, is the best world title reign we’ve seen since CM Punk’s 434-day reign in 2011/2012/2013.

Bryan has never remained static as a wrestler, his ability to constantly reinvent himself as a character while sticking true to his in-ring style and performing it all to absolute perfection is something that very few in the industry even come close to, let alone WWE. I could probably do a whole article about why I believe Daniel Bryan is the best wrestler in the world right now, but we don’t have that much time and this is only entry number 3. So to cut it short, he’s really freaking good and this decade has been all the example you need as to why.

3 – Brock Lesnar’s Return

When I was putting these two lists together, I couldn’t decide where to put Lesnar’s return because it had so many highs and lows to it, so in the end, I decided: why not both? In my “Worst of WWE” post, I talked about all of the crap that came from Lesnar’s return, but it’d be remiss of me to go without mentioning the many positives that came from it to.

Firstly and perhaps most importantly, is the fact that we got a lot of great matches from him. While it’s true that Lesnar’s put on no small amount of stinkers since his 2012 return there are an equal amount of fantastic bouts to go alongside them. His matches across the decade against guys like Cena, Punk, Bryan, Styles and so many others have all been barnburners that show just how valuable of an asset Lesnar is to WWE.

On top of that, there is the simple fact of “moments”. Lesnar is perhaps the best wrestlers for creating these moments because he has a feel to him that no other wrestler on the planet has. Wrestlemania 30, Summerslam 2014, Wrestlemania 31, Survivor Series 2016 and Wrestlemania 35, all of these are moments that have left a lasting impression on me and are some of the best/most shocking moments in wrestling from the past decade. You could argue that these moments are all down to the person that Lesnar was facing at the time, but that’s just not true, in fact, I’d argue the exact opposite: that these moments were only possible because it was Lesnar doing them.

Lesnar has been so consistently booked as an unstoppable monster that there came a point where, for a good 5-6 years, he felt truly undefeatable, which is a feeling that no other wrestler has had in decades. The fact of the matter is, when Lesnar loses, it’s a HUGE deal and whoever does it is instantly a star and there isn’t anyone else like that in WWE, not anymore.

Fans have spent this whole decade begging for WWE to be consistent in their booking, but the truth is there was a prime example of that staring them in the fact the whole time and his name is Brock Lesnar.

2 – NXT

I mean come on, there’s no way you can have a “best of WWE” list and not have NXT somewhere in the top 3.

At the start of the decade, NXT was nothing more than a bad reality TV show where some of the best independent wrestlers of the time (and David Otunga) were humiliated on a weekly basis and I think if you’d have told anyone that over the decade, NXT would become the most consistently brilliant wrestling promotion on the planet, they would’ve reported you to some sort of mental institution. At yet, here we are at the end of 2019, looking back at the best WWE matches of the decade and almost all of them come from the brand of yellow and black.

Despite switching from reality show to wrestling promotion in late 2012, most people didn’t take much notice until 2014, when the brand’s first special event “NXT Arrival” took place, featuring fantastic matches between the likes of Ardian Neville, Bo Dallas, Paige, Emma, Sami Zayn and Cesaro. That roll continued with what would become quarterly events known as NXT Takeover, where the best wrestlers NXT had to offer (which were more often than not, the best indie stars of the time that WWE had bothered to sign) had the best matches they possibly could and it was always pure gold.

Not only were the matches always top quality but the storylines usually matched that quality, with feuds like #DIY vs The Revival, Bayley vs Sasha Banks and Tommaso Ciampa vs Johnn Gargano that truely defined this decade in WWE. It’s clear that NXT is a creative environment, where both wrestlers and writers are allowed to work at their full potential to craft nuanced, long-term storylines that we haven’t had on Raw or Smackdown in ages.

While several NXT stars have failed to live up to their potential when called up to the main roster for one reason or another, NXT has provided us with main-stays of the current product, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Kevin Owens, Drew Mcintyre, Big E; just to name a few.

NXT has given us some of the best wrestling from this past decade, proving that the “WWE Style” doesn’t have to be seen as a bad thing, because as much as we all like to deny it, NXT is the WWE Style and the show has proven the all-time classic stories and matches that style can produce and will continue to produce for years to come.

1 – Women’s Wrestling

It could never be anything else, could it?

While it’s absolutely true that all of the major wrestling companies in the world could still be doing more to legitimise their women’s divisions, comparing how female wrestlers were treated in WWE at the start of the decade to now is the kind of improvement I’m not anyone ever thought we’d see from a Vince McMahon led company.

At the very first WWE Pay-Per-View of this decade, Royal Rumble 2010, there was only one women’s match broadcast on the show and it lasted 20 seconds of a three-hour show and this was by no means an outlier, it is an accurate presentation of how WWE treated the female wrestlers under its employ for well over a decade. WWE would hire models and teach them basic wrestling moves, while the legitimate athletes were barely allowed to show their skill and were treated pretty much as eye-candy.

By the time 2014 came around, the WWE audience were starting to get sick of it all, people were starting to demand that female athletes in WWE be taken seriously and it was (unsurprisingly) NXT that heeded that call and built a women’s division full of the greatest women’s wrestlers on the planet. Paige, Emma and the four horsewomen were among the first female wrestlers in over decade that were allowed by the company to prove to the world that they’re just as good, if not better than any male star in WWE. But it still wasn’t enough.

Despite getting glimmers of great matches on the main roster throughout 2014, it was clear the company still had no intentions to make any meaningful changes, so as WWE fans always do, they got louder. At the Fastlane 2015 Pay-Per-View between Nikki Bella and Paige, a match that had all the potential to be a show-stealer, got a mere 5 minutes worth of screen-time; this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Within 24 hours, the #givedivasachance movement had begun and the whole wrestling world puts its foot down and let the company know that this shit wasn’t going to fly anymore.

The change was perhaps a bit slower than we would’ve liked, but sure enough, it happened. While the initial clusterfuck of Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks all getting called up at once causing a 3 on 3 on 3 feuds was, well…awful. Soon after that, the company started to focus on these competitors as singles stars and from that point onwards, there was no stopping them.

Every woman who came through WWE from then on made sure they made as much noise as possible, putting on fantastic matches and making sure they could not be ignored. Soon female wrestlers were main-eventing Pay-Per-Views, getting their own Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank matches and just generally having their feuds and storylines treated exactly the same as any other in the company.

In 2018 we had the first-ever all-women Pay-Per-View in Evolution, which was an absolute hit and a fantastic show, Becky Lynch became the single most popular star in the whole industry and the most prestigious spot in the WWE calendar, the main event of Wrestlemania featured a women’s match for the first time ever.

Like I said at the start, the war is not won yet, but this decade proved that major change can happen in wrestling if we just stop the big companies from getting away with their bullshit for long enough. Genuine, massive and long-lasting change has been established in the way WWE treats its female athletes, which is something that cannot be understated and it is undeniable that it’s the best thing to have happened in WWE this past decade.

And there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what you thought of WWE this past decade either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back on Saturday for my predictions for WWE TLC!

The Worst of WWE in the 2010s

In wrestling, a decade is an extremely long time. Given how ever-changing the landscape of the business is, when you look back 10 years at any given moment, you’ll find that the world that greets you is almost unrecognisable to what it is today. Wrestlers, writers and backstage figures come and go seemingly month to month in WWE, with the only constant seemingly being Vince McMahon and his merry band of mad old men, it means that a lot of change can occur in no time flat.

However, every now and then it’s nice to look back at what was, and see what some of the highlights and lowlights were from years past. With 2020 being just weeks away, now seems like as good a time as any to look back on both the best and the worst of WWE from the past decade, and we’ll be starting off today, with the worst.

8 – Roman Reigns’ booking

Now, I’ve been a staunch defender of Roman Reigns for many years now, I think he’s got a great look, and when he’s given good material and the right opponent, he can tell amazing stories and put on amazing matches. That said, creative really did him no favours at all.

After The Shield broke up one fateful night in May 2014, it was clear that all three guys were destined for big things, but none bigger than Roman Reigns. Being labelled “The Big Dog” playing off of The Shield’s moniker of “The Hounds of Justice”, it was obvious that Roman Reigns was going to become the next John Cena, there was just one problem.

As much as Roman Reigns shone in The Shield, as a singles competitor, he still had a long way to come, compare that to Rollins and Ambrose, who were already total packages and the fans rejected Reigns outright. In an era were the wrestling landscape was shifting to favour, smaller and more athletic styles of wrestlers, Roman seemed like the personification of the old way of doing things, the John Cena way, which everyone was well and truely tired of by 2014.

Every year, in the build to Wrestlemania, WWE creative would try to make Roman the top guy, and have the fans shout it down every single time. He won the 2015 Royal Rumble in a finish so bad that even The Rock couldn’t get him cheered because everyone wanted a returning Daniel Bryan to win instead. In 2016, Roman was getting cheered for the first time thanks to Sheamus being WWE Champion, but it was soon squandered when he became Triple H’s opponent for Wrestlemania when the fans were desperate for it to be Dean Ambrose’s time instead. In 2017, he was pit against The Undertaker in the main event of Wrestlemania, beating him and doing, what we thought at the time was retiring him, which went over about as well as you’d imagine, and in 2018, he main evented against Brock Lesnar in a match the fans didn’t even give a chance before booing it out of the building.

All they had to do, during any of these attempts was to turn the guy heel. When Roman stops talking and starts destroying fools is when he’s at his best, and we never got to see that Roman during any of these main events. The fans seemed to have cooled on Roman for now, but if they ever try the same thing again, there’s no way that it’s going to go down well. However, Reigns is perhaps just one example in a much bigger problem for WWE this past decade…

7 – Lack of Likable Babyfaces

As we’ll cover in “best” list, this decade has had a handful of mega-faces come through WWE. The kind of wrestlers that the fans love no matter what they do and will cheer relentlessly until they succeed, the problem here is that in most of those cases, it didn’t happen by design. CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Kofi Kingston, all of those guys became these “mega-faces” on their own and, for the most part, WWE was actively trying to push against their rises until it was deniable.

This highlights a key problem that WWE has had for a long time now, which is that the people behind the scenes cannot book a likeable babyface to save their lives.

Ever since John Cena got as big as he did, WWE seems to have this idea that if they book EVERY face like John Cena, everyone will get as big as John Cena, but trying to make lightning strike twice is a stupid idea and it’s lead to every single babyface from this decade feeling like they’re exactly the same character. They walk around the place all-smiles, telling the fans how happy they are to be here and just trying to do the right thing and while that is a character that can work for some, for most it leads to the crowd getting bored of them.

I’ve covered Roman Reigns’ abysmal time as a babyface, but his Shield brethren have both suffered from similar problems during this decade. When Dean Ambrose first broke out as a face from The Shield in 2014, WWE seemed determined to shy away from the unhinged violent character that wanted to rip his opponents in half and instead had him doling out “whacky-lines”, squirting ketchup & mustard in people’s faces and beating up dummies with Seth Rollins’ wigs. Speaking of Seth Rollins, he was no different, he spent all of 2018 working his ass off, putting on some of the best matches of the year to the point where the fans got behind him full force, until suddenly he became Universal Champion and started getting booked like every other good-guy on the face of the planet, being drowned out by story and not letting his amazing in-ring ability (which is what got him over) speak for itself, to the point where just a month ago they were forced to turn him heel because the fans wouldn’t stop booing him.

As much as this is a problem at the top of the card, where it really hurts people is in the mid-card, there have been plenty of guys like Cesaro, Ricochet or Cody Rhodes who spent years trying to get over in the mid-card, with the fans loving their wrestling ability, but not caring about their characters because there was nothing making it stand out from the rest of the pack. I know a problem like that can’t be put entirely on the writing staff and you could argue that a truly great performer would “make it work” but honestly, the only person I can think of since the turn of the millennium who’s had the pure mic skill to make the goofy stuff work for them is John Cena and when you look at how someone like Cody has done since leaving WWE, it’s hard to deny that there’s got to be some sort of problem with the way WWE does things.

6 – Wasted Talent

In amongst WWE trying to push “their guy” to the moon, you have countless examples this decade of guys with all the potential in the world being totally wasted. This is nothing new of course, but thanks to the sheer volume of talent that was in WWE this past decade, it seems more egregious than ever before.

Guys like CM Punk and Daniel Bryan almost had their big runs squandered, but thankfully the fans pulled through and forced WWE’s hand both times. Then you’ve got guys like Dean Ambrose who, despite winning the WWE title, it never really felt like the company was actually getting behind them as top stars. I could carry on listing people all day that should be in the top spots right now but aren’t due to WWE’s lack of foresight.

Samoa Joe, Rusev, Cody Rhodes, Sami Zayn, Cesaro; Need I go on? Chad Gable, The Revival, Bobby Roode, EC3, Damien Sandow, Wade Barret, Emma, Asuka, Neville; I’m gonna keep going. Luke Harper, Apollo Crews, Mojo Rawley, Curtis Axel, Tyler Breeze, Andrade; Seriously, I could do this all day. Hideo Itami, Zack Ryder, Fandango, Sasha Banks, Braun Strowman, Gallows & Anderson and the entire Cruiserweight Division; and that’s just off of the top of my head.

I get not everyone can be a top star and if you push everyone then you end up pushing no-one, but when you’ve got 5 hours of TV a week (9 on weeks with PPVs), you seriously can’t find time for some of your most talented stars? If Triple H does truely believe that WWE is a play and everyone has their role, then how come so many wrestlers are left without a part to play?

5 – Overreliance on Legends

Everyone loves a nostalgia act, I know I do, I still get excited whenever The Undertaker or The Rock shows up on WWE TV and I wasn’t even watching during those guy’s heydays.

However, along the way, WWE seems to have forgotten exactly what the purpose of bringing in the stars from yesteryear is supposed to achieve. With the arguable exception of The Undertaker, the point of bringing in these legends is to help boost the stock of the current stars with cross-generational dream matches. Even if the matches themselves aren’t that great, the fact that they happened is what mattered, so that the current stars can have that notch in their cap of beating one of the all-time greats.

Unfortunately, over this decade, WWE seems to have shied away from that idea and instead things that the best thing to do with these legends is to try and make them their top stars again, giving them main event spots against each other like it was the nineties and drowning out the newer talent. Don’t get me wrong, I have the greatest love and respect for what these guys did for the business, but Goldberg and The Rock did not need to be world champions in 2017 and 2013 respectively. The real problem here is that in both of those cases, the legends winning the world title ended up doing major damage to a current star. Goldberg beating Kevin Owens in 2017 relegated Owens’ main-event worthy feud with Jericho to the match on Wrestlemania 33 that no-one remembers, while The Rock beating Punk in 2013 killed Punk’s 434-day title reign and robbed him of his Wrestlemania main event, which likely played a big part in him leaving the company the next year.

Even when they’re not wrestling, WWE have used legends to try and pop the TV ratings and the problem with doing that (aside from the law of diminishing returns) is that they never provide any long-term rating increases. The best example as to why is Smackdown’s debut episode on FOX in October 2019, all of these legends showed up to the show and did their bits, leading to a massive debut rating for Smackdown, however this was at the cost of giving the current stars their time to shine, so the roughly 1 million new viewers who were watching WWE for the first time in a long time had no reason to tune in the next week because they still had no idea who the stars that would be wrestling every week were and sure enough, about half of those new viewers didn’t come back for week 2.

It’s the epitome of getting short-term gain for long-term loss, which is a huge problem for WWE and if it carries on into the next decade then it’s going to cause even bigger problems.

4 – No Face of the Company

This is a problem that’s the culmination of everything I’ve covered so far because the fact of the matter is that right now, WWE does not have a “face of the company” and that is a big problem.

For decades, WWE has always had some kind of household name, a guy like Hulk Hogan or Stone Cold or John Cena, the kind of guy that even people who’ve never watched wrestling know the name of and that is something WWE is sorely lacking right now. Admittedly they tried with Roman Reigns, but we’ve already covered how and why that failed, but ever since it doesn’t seem like WWE has ever even tried to get behind someone in order to elevate them to that “mega-star” level that even Vince McMahon himself has said they’re lacking.

Ok, so WWE doesn’t have a “face of the company” why does that matter? Us fans have never cared about that anyway.

That is true, but a guy like Austin or Cena is the key to bringing new viewers to the product, which if the ratings for the past few years have been any indication, WWE is utterly failing at doing right now. If someone knew about John Cena and heard about some cool-sounding story he was currently in, then there’s a chance that person might tune in specifically to see what John Cena’s doing. Then, while they’re tuned in they’ll get a chance to see all of the other stars that they’ve never heard of wrestle, they might even find they like some of those guys and become interested in what they’re doing and just like that you’ve got a new regular viewer.

WWE needs that “household name” in order to draw new people in because currently there’s no-one that your average Monday night TV viewer cares about enough to change the channel to watch. Having a “face of the company” isn’t there for the benefit of the fans, it’s there for the benefit of current fans to slowly bring them into the fold.

WWE is currently having a huge problem bringing in new fans and fixing this problem in the coming decade could be the biggest fix they could make.

3 – Brock Lesnar’s Return

When people talk about everything they hate about WWE these days, the one man who stands as the prime example of all that, is Brock Lesnar.

Don’t get me wrong, Lesnar’s return has had some major upsides (and trust me, I’ll be talking about those very soon) but the fact remains that Lesnar’s presence has been a major detriment to the quality WWE’s product at several points during this decade.

Lesnar’s return didn’t get off to the best of starts, the night he returned was awesome, however he was immediately fed a loss at the hand of John Cena, which pissed everyone off, then he entered a feud with Triple H, where despite the fact he got two wins against The Game, the only match anyone remembers is the Wrestlemania match where he lost. Come summer 2013, he finally notched a memorable and meaningful win, however, it was against CM Punk, so everyone was annoyed about Punk being “jobbed out” to Lesnar. Then Wrestlemania 30 happened. Lesnar ending The Undertaker’s legendary undefeated streak is a decision that remains extremely controversial to this day, but there are two things we can all agree on. One, the match suuuucked and two, it set everything that happened in the main event scene for the rest of the decade in motion.

At Summerslam 2014, Lesnar picked up the WWE title for the first time since his 2012 return and proceeded to never defend it until 2015, where the combination of Lesnar’s lack of appearances and Reigns’ overabundance of appearances led to a Wrestlemania main event where the crowd didn’t want either man to win…twice. This cycle continued for the whole decade, where Lesnar would win a world title, disappear for months on end, defend it in a sub-ten-minutes, boring-ass match then go away for another 3-4 months.

Even when Lesnar finally loses whichever world title he’s currently holding hostage, it never lasts. Once he loses a title, he goes away for another 3-4 months, until he suddenly comes back and instantly wins the world title again, it’s laughable how predictable and boring it is. Despite having two world titles in WWE since 2016, it’s constantly felt like there’s only been one because over half the time, Lesnar’s sitting out on his ranch “looking at his land” (his words) not giving a damn about anything other than the 7 figure paychecks he picks up for 10 minutes worth of work every few months.

Brock Lesnar has been one of the most consistently boring wrestlers in all of WWE this past decade, which is not helped by the fact that he’s always in the main event and if the past couple of months are any indication, that isn’t ending anytime soon.

2 – The Saudi Arabia Deal

Perhaps the single most controversial thing WWE has ever done, the 10 year deal WWE signed with the country of Saudia Arabia in 2018 is something that has done nothing but bring negative press to the WWE and honestly, the only reason I didn’t rank this as number 1, is because I didn’t want to end the list on such a politically charged note.

If you’re unaware, the Saudia Arabia government is one that has had no shortage of shady dealings in recent years. It’s a country where women are still treated as the lower class, not being legally allowed to drive along with so many other restrictions that I don’t want to speak of. Naturally, the Saudi Arabian government has been looking to push the international perception of their country away from those kinds of dealings and arguably the biggest of those pushes has been through its sporting board. Enter WWE.

When WWE announced their first show “Greatest Royal Rumble” for April 2018 for Saudi Arabia, people saw it as a bit odd and many weren’t happy with the deal, but there wasn’t any kind of uproar or major pushback. The show happened and it was fine, nothing spectacular, but it also didn’t tear the house down and we were all happy to forget about it. Until reports surfaced after the show that government officials of Saudi Arabia were allegedly “furious” that a woman had been broadcast in one of the adverts for Backlash, which was scheduled to take place the following Sunday.

Things got worse for WWE later that year as in October of 2018, less than a month before the first “Crown Jewel” event was set to take place, a US-based Saudi journalist was murdered in EXTREMELY suspicious circumstances that I won’t go into here. Then, as recently as two months ago, there was a massive problem about almost the entire roster being stuck in the country after the second “Crown Jewel” event was finished.

Even if we put all of the politics and bad business aside, the shows weren’t even worth watching. Through a combination of heat, jetlag and generally low-morale, the matches on the shows are almost always sub-par in quality, a feeling which is only amplified when you put 50+-year-old guys like Undertaker and Goldberg in the main event spot.

It’s a deal that, only two years in, has given WWE more bad-press than it’s received since the 90’s steroid trial and produced four shows that are mediocre at best and downright awful at worst, with virtually no good coming from it.

1 – The Death of Tag Team Wrestling

The simple, cold, hard fact of the matter is that in WWE right now, Tag-Team wrestling simply does not matter.

That’s not to say there haven’t been some fantastic Tag Team matches in WWE in the past ten years, of course, there has, but the fact remains that for almost the entire decade (and especially in the current day) the Tag Team Championships in WWE have been treated as afterthoughts. Almost every tag team that has won the titles in recent memory are simply two random singles stars who got thrown together because management didn’t have anything better for them to do.

For the most part, dedicated tag team wrestlers are barely featured and often buried in the wake of the thrown together random-teams that get given the titles instead. In the past decade, the only two teams who did anything meaningful with the Raw or Smackdown Tag team titles were The New Day and The Usos, but two credible teams does not make a division and the longer the years have gone on with WWE refusing to get behind Tag teams that stay together for longer than 6 months the longer it has become painfully obvious that the titles are entirely worthless.

Even though, as I write, The Viking Raiders are the Raw Tag Team Champions – a team who is absolutely fantastic in every way – I have no faith that they will be able to restore the belts to any kind of prestige, because it’s likely that in a month or so they’ll get pinned by the brand new team of Bobby Lashley and Curtis Axel for no real reason and we’ll be back to square one.

Things looked to maybe be picking up earlier this year with the introduction of the women’s tag team championships, but withing two months of their introduction they were gone from TV, being defended a whopping three times over a period of 4 months and at least one of those matches ended in a non-finish.

Meanwhile, literally, every other promotion on the planet (even NXT) is proving that tag team wrestling can be just as good, if not better than singles wrestling to the point where it was one of AEW’s main points when they were beginning to push what they would do better than WWE.

WWE has no shortage of flaws in its week-to-week product, but dedicating time to rebuilding the tag team division to the status it had in the late ’90s would fill such a huge gap in programming right now and remove a whole bunch of matches that feel inconsequential to the fans.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, let me know your thoughts either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo and finally, make sure to come back this time tomorrow for my run down of the BEST of WWE this decade!

My 10 Favourite Generation 8 Pokemon

It’s been just over two weeks now since Pokemon Sword & Shield were released to the world and to put it simply, I had a lot of fun with these games. I want to give it a bit more time before I make any judgement calls on how it fits into my ranking of the generations, but having played through the game twice now I can confidently say that these games were what I wanted them to be and I really like them.

Naturally, when it comes to a new generation of Pokemon, one of the biggest factors that contribute to how much I get out of the game, is the Pokemon themselves. Not counting regional variants, Generation 8 has (so far) given us 81 new Pokemon and there’s a huge variety in all of these new creatures. Naturally, there are going to be a handful of Pokemon that rise to the top and stand out to me as the best of what this generation has to offer, and that’s what I’m discussing today.

SPOILER WARNING

This list will contain story spoilers for Pokemon Sword & Shield and also contains Pokemon that have not been officially revealed or referenced anywhere outside of the games themselves, so if you wish to remain unspoiled then maybe give this one a miss for the time being.

10 – Orbeetle

Maybe it’s because of the altered visual style, but almost every Pokemon Galar has to offer feels very different from that of the previous seven generations. That’s something which isn’t always for the better (see the abominations that are the fossil Pokemon) but Orbeetle is a case where it works to its benefit.

For the longest time, the regional bugs have been lame. Don’t get me wrong, I like Butterfree & Vivilon as much as the next guy, but when it comes to viable team members for the whole game they don’t ever make the cut. Vikavolt from Alola had the chance to turn that around, but it was unfortunately hampered by the fact that it couldn’t evolve until one of the final areas of the game. Orbeetle is a Pokemon that takes the usefulness, strength and cool design of Vikavolt and removes the stupid restriction on its evolution.

The first thing that struck me about Orbeetle is how sleek it looks. Psychic typing isn’t what I would’ve initially guessed for this one, but I think it works with the design. It’s a Pokemon that feels a little off in its design, but kind of in a good way, the fullness of the red is very striking and draws your eyes away from its body, which makes for quite the surprise when you notice it. I personally would’ve liked its body to be a little fuller, but the sharpness of its limbs and intimidation factor on its face is brilliant.

When I first caught Blipbug on Route 2, I wasn’t expecting it to remain in my team for very long, but sure enough, it proved me wrong and Orbeetle stood proudly alongside me when I entered the Hall of Fame.

9 – Runerigious

Sword & Shield played around with the idea of adding evolutions to already existing Pokemon and I love the stuff that came out. Instead of doing what Generation 4 did and adding unnecessary third stages onto Pokemon like Rhydon, it combined the concept of regional variants and new evolutions in fun way that I thought added a new layer to how the world of Pokemon works.

Unlike all of the other Pokemon on this list, I’m yet to have a chance to use Runerigious in any capacity, I just think it’s a really cool looking Pokemon. The way it’s body looks like a series of puzzle pieces is such a cool concept and the simplistic art on its body adds loads to that effect. Something about the red, white & black colour scheme really brings the whole design together to create a creepy feeling Pokemon, which is exactly what you’d expect from any evolution of Yamask.

8 – Dragapult

I mean come on, it fires it’s pre-evolution out of cannons it’s head, how can you not love this thing.

Whenever a new generation of Pokemon comes about, I always worry that the region’s pseudo-legendary is going to be ridiculously over-designed. Hydreigon and Kommo-o are examples of Pokemon that, while cool looking, are a bit much in terms of the elements in their design, so I was very pleased to see that Galar’s pseudo-legendary took a much more minimalist design.

I love the concept of a lizard-like Pokemon with something extra to it and the choice to make it a ghost type and have it hover was probably the best decision the design team could’ve made. Its body seems like that of a normal lizard Pokemon but then you get to the head and realise that it looks more like a glider than a creature, which I know sounds stupid, but it’s something that absolutely works for this design.

The colour choice is perfect too, there aren’t many Pokemon that have a gradient running through its body and there are even fewer that pull it off well, but Dragpult manages it, the darkness of it’s upper-body and head give these creeping feeling of danger and add that important intimidation factor, while the slow lightening of the tone down its tail creates this ghostly presence that makes it an all-round very threatening Pokemon.

7 – Eternatus

When I saw how similar Zacian & Zamazenta were in regards to the basic elements of their design, I was very interested to see what kind of Pokemon would round out the trio, because surely it had to be something wildly different right? Well, I was right, but I didn’t realise just how different it would end up being.

I liked how it kept the red & blue colour scheme of the main duo, but instead cranked the saturation all the way up on the colours, as it’s colour scheme feels very fully. I also really like the very jagged design, the way it looks almost like a skeleton or fossil goes along with its theme of being a creature that’s lived on the earth for 10’s of thousands of years and potentially even longer out in space.

It has this incredible sense of presence about it, despite not actually being all that big and even though it is a little on-the-nose, I enjoy the concept of it being the mighty dragon for the sword and shield to slay. It’s not the perfect legendary by any means, but I think it works as the third member of this trio.

6 – Boltund

Look at that face, that is the face of a good boy.

When Yamper was first revealed, I liked it, but I had no intention to ever put it on my team and for my first playthrough, I didn’t, but when I realised it had an evolution, and that’s evolution look like THIS, I knew I had to have it with me for my second go-round and sure enough, Boltund is best boy.

Yellow and Dark Green aren’t colours that I would’ve thought could work well together, but the placement of them on Boltund’s body makes the yellow more of a framing device for the green that covers the majority of its body, so I think it works.

The design of its face is the exact traditional representation of dogs when it comes to animation and the wideness of its eyes makes it seem like such a happy Pokemon all the time. I can imagine it running around happily, doing all the things you’d expect any other dog to do, only with lightning powers, which is an instant improvement.

5 – Zacian

Ok, I know that screenshot doesn’t have it’s “crowned” stuff, but that’s Pokemon Camp for you.

Even though I’ve ragged on Zacian & Zamazenta for being very similar before, when it came to putting this list together, I realised there were a whole bunch fo key reasons I preferred Zacian over its counterpart.

Firstly, I’m a sucker for swords, especially ones that look like ancient artefacts like the one Zacian holds in its mouth during battle, then you look at the other crowned features like that around its head, and the “wings” sticking out of it’s back and it creates an extremely regal-looking Pokemon, aided by its general expression & posture. On top of that, I think Zacian’s body as a whole looks nice and sleek compared to its counterpart, the ribbons and tail add a nice sense of flow to the design, and the light blue & light red pairs up better than the fuller blue & red on Zamazenta.

As a whole, I would say Zacian fits in more with a trio like the legendary beasts than as a cover legendary, but that doesn’t stop it from being a design that I love the look of.

4 – Thievul

Wow, the Route 1 Pokemon really were something else in this generation.

Before anyone says it, I’m well aware that one of the reasons I probably like this Pokemon so much is how it’s design elements resemble that of Absol’s, but let’s put that to one side. When I found out that this generation was going to be based on the UK, I was sure there would be some sort of urban fox design for a Pokemon, but I didn’t know they’d do this great of a job with it.

What I love most about this design is the colours, the shade of orangy brown is just right to keep the feeling of a fox, without having to go with a brighter orange while the white of it’s chest makes everything around it stand out, all framed nicely by the sparing use of black. I also love the idea of it being a thief, since urban foxes in the UK are known to go rummaging through bins and steal just about anything left out on the streets at night. The “mask” around its eyes is a great indication of this. I would argue the little “cartoon thief” moustache was a bit much, but I still find it cute in a way.

3 – Grookey

One of the things that I was most disappointed about in this generation was the evolutions of the starter Pokemon. I like all three of the basic forms, but when it comes to the 1st and 2nd stages, I can only honestly say that I like one of them and even that one I’m not a massive fan of. I get what they were going for, but I think keeping the final evolutions restricted to a single type was a bad call and put unnecessary restrictions on their designs.

That said, I love Grookey.

It’s just an adorable little monkey that likes to hit things with sticks and in a way, deep down, I think we can all relate to that. Its body is just the right shade of green to give the impression of a cheerful Pokemon, while the brown and yellow are there to break up what is a fairly basic colour scheme and highlight aspects like the tail and ears.

I don’t really have much more to articulate as to why I love this Pokemon, I just think it’s adorable, I can imagine sitting around, playing with it as it cheerfully jumps about the place.

2 – Corviknight

If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written on Pokemon then you’ll know I love the regional birds of each generation (except Pidove, which knows what it did) and I generally hold these Pokemon up to a pretty high standard. So, when this generation’s regional bird was revealed to be a jet-black armoured raven of death with glowing red eyes, it’s safe to say I was pretty satisfied.

This thing looks like an absolute killer and I love it. The armour covers most of the body, but it’s still applied in a way that makes sense, still allowing it’s limbs to be shown, revealing they’re the exact same colour as the armour itself. It was a tad worrying when these games were initially revealed as it seemed like the entire region was going to be based very heavily on Arthurian legend, however it turned out that this was pretty much the only Pokemon that conforms to it, which makes it awesome; even if I did nickname mine “Gisborne” which is the wrong English myth entirely.

1 – Nickit

Take everything I’ve said I love about Thievul and turn the cuteness up to eleven.

When I encountered Nickit on Route 1 during the first few moments of proper gameplay, my heart melted at the sight of this thing and I knew it was staying with me until the end. Everything from its expression to its shape, to its colours, is brilliant and it makes this Pokemon a real work of art as far as I’m concerned.

The more I look at this more detail I notice, like the little tear marks around its eyes and an adorable timid smile that it likely uses to trick the victims of its theft. Then there’s the way that the black highlights on its feet look like little boots to make sure its prints can’t be tracked, alongside the smokelike imprint on the base of its tail from where it’s been dragging it along the ground; not to mention that the tail itself looks like a lovely little pillow.

It’s a Pokemon that ticks pretty much all my boxes of what I love from a Pokemon design: Quadruped; Mostly dark colours with light contrasts; Perfectly fits its theme and just the right mixture of cute and cool, this Pokemon was always going to end up topping this list.

So there you have it! Those are my favourite Pokemon from Generation 8 so far. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this list, please let me know what your favourite new Pokemon are, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back next week as we’re going to be looking back at the best and worst parts of WWE from the past decade!

WWE Survivor Series 2019: Every Match Ranked

I’ve mentioned before how I think that Survivor Series has been the most consistently great Pay-Per-View of the last few years and that streak certainly continued tonights. I have my gripes, as I always do, but looking through the whole show I can honestly say there wasn’t a single match I didn’t like. I was worried that having WarGames so close would potentially hamper the NXT contingent of this show, but the whole thing seemingly went off without a hitch, which is a very pleasant surprise indeed.

Still, we’ve got 10 matches to get through here and I’ve got a lot to say about some of them, so let’s get on with it.

10 – Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler won the Tag Team Battle Royal
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

Like a lot of the battle royals we’ve seen this year (because come to think of it, we’ve seen A LOT of battle royals this year) this one had no faults, but there’s also nothing in particular worth praising about it. It was a pretty standard formula, the eliminations came thick and fast in the early stages before things slowed down a bit and there was more wrestling when there we just a few teams left.

I would’ve preferred if someone other than Ziggler & Roode won, but given that this was just here as a way to pad-out the scorecard for Smackdown, then I can’t really find it in me to condemn it for being a bad decision, it’s not like anyone’s going to remember this match come Friday.

9 – Brock Lesnar(c) def. Rey Mysterio
(WWE Championship)
(No Holds Barred)

I do love a good family outing.

The layout of this match and the general pacing of it felt incredibly similar to Lesnar vs Bryan from last year’s show and, to a certain extent, it gave me the same sort of feelings, however, this was all crammed into 7 minutes instead of being given 20.

The opening 4-5 minutes were what you’d expect from a Brock Lesnar match, he was throwing Rey around and generally looking like a monster, however, that all turned around and the match got exciting once Rey’s son Dominic – of all people – showed up and turned the tides. It may have been a tad cheesy, but I enjoyed Dominic’s involvement in the match, everyone seems to be fully aware of Lesnar’s glowing weak spot that is his balls at this point and they make no bones about exploiting it. Then there was the double 619 which, once again, cheesy but fun.

I wish the match had gone a bit longer and Rey’s comeback had been given a little more time to breathe, but I still came away from this match feeling satisfied with what I watched and looking forward to this potentially going somewhere new in the near future.

8 – Team Smackdown def. Team Raw & Team NXT
(5 on 5 on 5 Men’s Elimination Tag)

The two elimination tag matches of the show are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what can be done with these kinds of matches and unfortunately, this was towards the low end. It had some redeeming features, which I’ll get to in a moment but it most certainly had its problems too.

First off, there were WAY too many quick eliminations, nevermind whether or not it’s someone I like, you had Riddle, Preist, WALTER, Orton, Gable and Owens all eliminated within 5 minutes of each other, which is ridiculous. I get that you’ve gotta have 14 pinfalls in a match, but there was a much better way to pace them than this, which the other elimination tag match on the show proved. My biggest gripe was the straight-up inconsistency in the rules, because in this match there were no countouts…except for when Braun Strowman got eliminated by countout; after that elimination, Ciampa, Rollins & Reigns all spent a lot of time outside of the ring while still being the legal man towards the end of the match and suddenly there was no count, which really irked me.

However, I still came away from this match feeling like I enjoyed the experience and that is because the closing 10 minutes of the match were great. When it was down to Rollins, Reigns, Ciampa & Lee the match really picked up in quality, the focus went away from spamming finishers and quick pins, to proper, fast-paced wrestling and it was very enjoyable. Not to mention that we got to see a star-making performance from Keith Lee, the final few minutes with him and Reigns going back and forth were something else and I’d very much like to see a full match of that in the future. Even though Lee didn’t win, he came out of this match with his stock undeniably raised which is brilliant.

As much as I loved that final segment, it was only about a third of the match and the preceding two-thirds weren’t great and, on a show with so many good-to-great matches, that unfortunately lands it down in 8th place.

7 – Lio Rush(c) def. Kalisto & Akira Tozowa
(Cruiserweight Championship)
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

I think from now on, the Cruiserweight Championship should be exclusively defended in Triple Threat matches because these are always great.

Lio Rush is such a human highlight reel at this point, the stuff he is able to do when he’s let off the leash is so much fun to watch. When the pace of the match looked to be slowing slightly, Rush was ready to jump right back in and accelerate it all back up to fever pitch and keep it there pretty much the whole way.

Tozowa & Kalisto put in great performances to and I’m very pleased because it’s been so long since I’ve been able to say that about Kalisto. Kalisto specifically seemed to have really good chemistry with Rush, then I noticed that he was able to keep pace with Rush slightly better than Tozowa was and watching the pair of them go back and forth was an absolute joy.

Now 205 Live is moving to Full Sail, I’m most certainly going to get back into watching it because if we’re going to be getting stuff like this every week, it’s going to be the most must-watch show in the business.

6 – Shayna Baszler def. Becky Lynch & Bayley
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

This was inarguably a good match, but I can’t help but feel a tad disappointed.

The pace for this one was slightly slower and I thought that was mostly to its benefit. Every move felt very deliberate and it gave the impression that each woman had really done their homework on their opponents. It was also a pace that let Baszler absolutely shine, she was effortlessly taking control of the match the whole way through and it made things all the more exciting when Becky or Bayley suddenly got a burst of offence.

The disappointment I was referring to comes from the finish because I feel like the match ended a few minutes too soon. When Shayna locked in that Kirifuda Clutch on Bayley it felt to me like the final act of the match was just getting going, I didn’t think that the fairly naff looking table spot would’ve been enough to keep Becky down and we’d get a final burst of back and forth between the three women before the match ended. Instead, Bayley just tapped out and that was that. Then there was what happened after the bell where Becky put Shayna through a table, which achieved nothing. It didn’t send the crowd home happy because the Chicago crowd were VERY happy about Baszler’s win, it didn’t help Becky because she just looked like a sore loser and it definitely didn’t help Shayna because she got her victory undercut and that was how the show ended, it was a tad deflating.

However, I’m not going to let a relatively minor complaint takeaway too much from the fact that this was a really good match overall. The pacing was spot on, every woman got a chance to shine and ultimately, I’d say the right woman came out the victor.

5 – Roderick Strong(c) def. Shinsuke Nakamura & AJ Styles
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

This is the point in the list where we get to the matches that I have little-to-none in terms of complaints and how I rank them comes down purely to personal preference.

I don’t think there was any ever doubt about how good this match was going to be, you’ve got three pure wrestlers who are very good at what they do and they used the triple threat formula to great advantage in this instance. To say that everyone got a chance to shine is somewhat of an understatement, whether it was intentional or not, all three of these men looked like staunch equals the whole way through the match and a lot of that was thanks to the balance that was struck between each of their times on offence.

All three men had great chemistry when the match broke down into one on one fights and it made the occasional periods where all three of them were in the ring at once feel all the more hectic and fun. I wasn’t expecting Roddy to win at all but I thought how this went down worked for both Strong’s character and the running theme throughout the night of NXT winning their matches by being intelligent and tactical.

Nothing more to say really, this was just a really great triple threat match.

4 – The Fiend Bray Wyatt(c) def. Daniel Bryan
(WWE Championship)

Ok, the red lighting worked for Hell in a Cell, but it’s gotten pretty old now.

This match wasn’t the wrestling clinic that we got between these two in 2014, but that’s because it’s not what this match was meant to be. The more I think about it, the weirder it would be for The Fiend to put on a tense, back and forth 20 minute clinic, instead The Fiend just needs to go in and execute his unique style and it’s how the opponent responds and adapts to it that makes for both an interesting match and an interesting story. Enter Daniel Bryan.

I know the story beats in the lead up to this match were minimal at best, but Bryan did everything in his power to make them feel like a big deal in this match and at least somewhat succeeded. Bryan did a fantastic job of selling the beating he was taking from The Fiend and things got even better when he started to mount his comeback, seeing Bryan go back to wrestling a full face style after so long was a joy to watch, including the biggest Yes! chant we’ve seen since Bryan’s return last year.

It would’ve been nice if this match had got a bit more time, but I’m not entirely sure it needed it. I think it got in, told its story very efficiently and hit all the right beats to be exciting and got out before it started to drag on.

3 – Team NXT def. Team Raw & Team Smackdown
(5 on 5 on 5 Women’s Elimination Tag)

This match was the polar opposite of the men’s elimination tag match. While the men’s match had way too many quick eliminations and basically no wrestling until the final segment, this match paced all of its eliminations really well, leveraging the story points it had to great effect, and built to a great climax.

What I loved about this match is that, even though there were 15 competitors, everyone got a chance to look good and have some sort of spot in the match. Be it, Sarah Logan, looking like a legit beast for the first time ever, Io Shirai & Kairi Sane having a face-off that makes me to incredibly sad we never got that match in NXT like we were supposed to, or even Carmella leaping around trying to get attention; everyone got a chance to stand out.

The eliminations felt earned instead of being quick and cheap, it avoided annoying everyone because they weren’t “out of nowhere”. It also meant that a match-long story was able to build itself up, with NXT going two down early on and being forced to pick their spots until by the end they had the numbers advantage. I liked Asuka’s role in the match, going absolutely ape-shit after Kairi got eliminated, culminating in causing Charlotte to get eliminated with the mist.

If we’re talking about individual performances though, we’ve got to talk about Rhea Ripley. If we look at Smackdown on Friday, WarGames on Saturday and now the match last night, Ripley has gone from “sort of popular babyface, but it’s probably just a flash in the pan” to “This woman is a made star”. The pop when she first got tagged into the match and eventually won was huge and when it comes to having their stock elevated, no-one has done better for themselves this weekend than Rhea Ripley, I cannot wait to see her and Baszler go at it for the title.

2 – The Viking Raiders def. The New Day & The Undisputed Era
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

To sum up my thoughts on this match in a single character: !

Viking Raiders & Undisputed Era have always had great chemistry from their time together in NXT, so this match takes those two teams and throw in The New Day a team who can have a top-quality tag team match with damn-near anyone, this thing was an absolute blast from start to finish.

The Viking Raiders were seemingly always in the mix during the match and quite frankly this match has done more favour for them than all of their previous RAW matches combined. Watching Erik(or Ivar, I honestly have no idea) facing down Big E was an absolute joy, only heightened with how sneaky and opportunistic Undisputed Era played it. The psychology was there too, with UE spending the whole match targeting all their opponent’s leg.

A little upset that Kofi Kingston has gone from 180 days as WWE Champion to the least important man in this 6 man tag on the pre-show, but that fact doesn’t take away from how great this thing was.

The pacing was spot-on the whole way through this thing too, it started off quite fast and tense, before slowing it down around the middle with UE and Viking Raiders having an extended sequence together, it lengthened out the build to the inevitable breakdown towards the end, making it all the most exciting when it finally hit. The whole finishing sequence was great fun, I loved UE going hell-for-leather taking out The New Day only to have to suddenly stop in order to not get flatted by The Viking Raiders, even if they ended up being unsuccessful.

This is how good tag team wrestling can be in WWE, I would very much like more of it.

1 – Adam Cole(c) def. Pete Dunne
(NXT Championship)

No points for guessing this match would top the list.

Despite both of these men (especially Cole) going through long and gruelling matches last night, this match didn’t feel like it suffered from that one bit. Cole has undeniably been the MVP of this whole “NXT Invasion” angle and this match only solidified that statement as, not only did he make sure that WarGames the previous night didn’t drag him down, he worked it to his advantage and made it add something to the match.

These two guys were always going to have fantastic chemistry in this match and they did not disappoint in the slightest, both men made sure to show the effects the WarGames match had on their bodies and it made for a match where every move felt very hard-hitting and the way both would sell every little injury like a big deal did so much to elevate this match to the fantastic bout it was.

It wasn’t fast and furious because it didn’t need to be, instead it focused on moves that gave the highest impact possible, including a God-damned Panama Sunrise on the God-damned ring apron, that looked brutal. The whole finishing sequence damn near blew my mind with how it turned out, I’ve watched it over ten times now and I still can’t work out how the two of them managed to pull off the Bitter End into Panama Sunrise spot, it was certainly something too behold and was a fantastically exciting way to end the match.

So there you have it! Those are my thoughts on Survivor Series! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this review, please let me know what you thought of the show, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back on Saturday where I’ll be running down my favourite new Pokemon from Sword & Shield!

The Viking Raiders(c) vs TBD (Raw Tag Team Championships)

Aleister Black vs Buddy Murphey

The New Day(c) vs The Revival (Smackdown Tag Team Championships) (Ladder)

Rusev vs Bobby Lashley (Tables)

Roman Reigns vs King Corbin (Tables, Ladders & Chairs)

Bray Wyatt vs The Miz

The Kabuki Warriors(c) vs Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair (Women’s Tag Team Championships) (Tables, Ladders & Chairs)

9 – The New Day: Afterthoughts to World Champions

8 – The Summer of Punk

7 – Depth of Talent

6 – AJ Styles: Mr WWE

5 – John Cena: Jobber to the Future Stars

4 – Daniel Bryan: The Best Wrestler in the World

3 – Brock Lesnar’s Return

2 – NXT

1 – Women’s Wrestling

8 – Roman Reigns’ booking

7 – Lack of Likable Babyfaces

6 – Wasted Talent

5 – Overreliance on Legends

4 – No Face of the Company

3 – Brock Lesnar’s Return

2 – The Saudi Arabia Deal

1 – The Death of Tag Team Wrestling

SPOILER WARNING

10 – Orbeetle

9 – Runerigious

8 – Dragapult

7 – Eternatus

6 – Boltund

5 – Zacian

4 – Thievul

3 – Grookey

2 – Corviknight

1 – Nickit

10 – Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler won the Tag Team Battle Royal (Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT) (Kickoff Show)

9 – Brock Lesnar(c) def. Rey Mysterio (WWE Championship) (No Holds Barred)

8 – Team Smackdown def. Team Raw & Team NXT (5 on 5 on 5 Men’s Elimination Tag)

7 – Lio Rush(c) def. Kalisto & Akira Tozowa (Cruiserweight Championship) (Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT) (Kickoff Show)

6 – Shayna Baszler def. Becky Lynch & Bayley (Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

5 – Roderick Strong(c) def. Shinsuke Nakamura & AJ Styles (Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

4 – The Fiend Bray Wyatt(c) def. Daniel Bryan (WWE Championship)

3 – Team NXT def. Team Raw & Team Smackdown (5 on 5 on 5 Women’s Elimination Tag)

2 – The Viking Raiders def. The New Day & The Undisputed Era (Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT) (Kickoff Show)

1 – Adam Cole(c) def. Pete Dunne (NXT Championship)

The Viking Raiders(c) vs TBD
(Raw Tag Team Championships)

The New Day(c) vs The Revival
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
(Ladder)

Rusev vs Bobby Lashley
(Tables)

Roman Reigns vs King Corbin
(Tables, Ladders & Chairs)

The Kabuki Warriors(c) vs Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)
(Tables, Ladders & Chairs)

10 – Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler won the Tag Team Battle Royal
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

9 – Brock Lesnar(c) def. Rey Mysterio
(WWE Championship)
(No Holds Barred)

8 – Team Smackdown def. Team Raw & Team NXT
(5 on 5 on 5 Men’s Elimination Tag)

7 – Lio Rush(c) def. Kalisto & Akira Tozowa
(Cruiserweight Championship)
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

6 – Shayna Baszler def. Becky Lynch & Bayley
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

5 – Roderick Strong(c) def. Shinsuke Nakamura & AJ Styles
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

4 – The Fiend Bray Wyatt(c) def. Daniel Bryan
(WWE Championship)

3 – Team NXT def. Team Raw & Team Smackdown
(5 on 5 on 5 Women’s Elimination Tag)

2 – The Viking Raiders def. The New Day & The Undisputed Era
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

1 – Adam Cole(c) def. Pete Dunne
(NXT Championship)