Tag: Stomping Grounds

WWE Stomping Grounds 2019: Every Match Ranked

Well, that was yet another lesson in never getting my hopes up when WWE is involved.

So Stomping Grounds is in the bag and honestly, as a whole, it wasn’t too bad of a show, the first two hours were filled with ok-good matches and there weren’t any crappy finishes to drag things down. That said, once the third hour started the show just drove off of a cliff and never recovered because if it wasn’t for Super Showdown, it’d be the worst hour and a half of wrestling I’ve seen all year. It wasn’t all bad of course, but given that the major three matches failed to deliver, it’s not left the best of tastes in everyone’s mouths.

So, here’s every match from Stomping Grounds 2019 ranked.

9 – Seth Rollins(c) def. Baron Corbin
(Universal Championship)
(Special Guest Referee: Lacey Evans)

I’m of two minds when it comes to Lacey as the referee. On one hand, it’s a clever way for Corbin to get around the problem of Seth trying to murder all of his referees and is someone I genuinely wasn’t expecting to see. On the other hand, the moment it was revealed that it was Lacey, everyone knew how Seth was going to get out of the problem, the crowd were chanting for Becky before the match even started and commentary had been playing up the relationship between Becky & Seth for weeks.

That predictability also made for an extremely boring match leading up until that point and it didn’t help that WWE really overplayed their hand here. This whole thing did not need to be 18 minutes long, it could’ve been done in half of that and not lost anything. In a match like this where everyone knows how it’s going to end, you just need to hit the key points of Lacey screwing Seth over in a few ways and then hit the big finish, instead of doing what they did which was draw it out until we’d all had enough of it, and then draw it out some more.

Please, just no more Seth vs Corbin matches, and please be more creative about it than a mixed tag match too, this really doesn’t have the legs to go any further.

8 – Kofi Kingston(c) def. Dolph Ziggler
(WWE Championship)
(Steel Cage)

Well, that just proved my theory that the Steel Cage match between The Miz and Shane McMahon last month was the exception, not the rule.

When Kofi & Ziggler had an underwhelming match at Super Showdown, I gave them the benefit of the doubt because of the situation surrounding the Saudi Arabia shows, but somehow they managed to make this match worse. It started off ok, with a bunch of back and forth as each man would try to get a quick escape from a cage, but that didn’t seem to last very long, because about halfway through, the whole thing just because 10 minutes of rest holds.

Ziggler was “working Kofi’s leg” for so damn long that I totally switched off and started paying attention to other things, and when that spot finally ended, they had a very short sequence of fun moves and went right back to it. Following that, we got several minutes of the guys laying by the door knowing they clearly weren’t going to escape, before and admittedly brilliant finish, where Kofi just launched himself out of the cage.

I just don’t understand why anyone involved in this match thought this would be entertaining to watch. I can see how a more old-school fan might get something out of it, but even then it doesn’t really seem like anything great. You can’t just have the match stop for 10 minutes right before the finish and expect everyone to love it.

7 – Roman Reigns def. Drew Mcintyre

I mean, this wasn’t great, but at least there was something to it.

WWE really need to just let Drew be a monster because this slow, rest-hold style of matches really aren’t doing him any favours at all. Drew is brilliant when he destroys people with high impact offence and refuses to let up, the same with Roman, but for some reason he’s forced to work this boring as fuck style that simply serves as a set up to pop the crowd when his opponent makes a comeback, which isn’t any fun to watch.

Unfortunately, that’s what most of this match was. It had a few entertaining moments scattered throughout it though, like whenever Shane got involved, and towards the finish when Drew and Roman were trading big hits. There wasn’t enough to this match for me to really sink my teeth into it though, there were hints of the awesome Roman vs Drew match we all want in there, but it’s marred by a sea of rest holds and boring wrestling.

Hopefully, the handicap match on Raw is the end of it, because I really don’t want to sit through another month of this crap, just let Roman wrestle someone else for a change like…I dunno, The Shining Stars, it’ll probably be more entertaining than this.

6 – Becky Lynch(c) def. Lacey Evans
(Raw Women’s Championship)

Let’s play a fun game, it’s called: How many times does Lacey Evans have to show the world she’s absolutely not ready before WWE stop giving her big PPV matches?

This was very much a match of two halves, with the first being pretty bad and the second being pretty good. The first half of this match really couldn’t find it’s footing all that well, they were going back and forth kind fo awkwardly with wrestling that was fine, but didn’t really grab my attention in any major way, then a few minutes in Lacey made that very obvious botch where she failed to get into position for Becky’s backward kick off of the turnbuckle, forcing Becky to have to do it a second time. Once that happened, the crowd jumped on her with “Lacey sucks” and “You can’t wrestle” chants filling the arena, which seemed to throw her off her game for a little while.

She did eventually recover though and I quite enjoyed the second half of the match, even if it was a little bit hard to ignore Becky calling spots directly down the microphone. The action in the second half of the match picked up in a major way and I thought the two developed some pretty good chemistry as the finish rolled around, it’s time for Becky to move onto something else though because Lacey just isn’t ready to consistently be in this spot.

5 – Daniel Bryan & Rowan(c) def. Heavy Machinery
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

It certainly didn’t take a genius to guess whose home town we were in.

Honestly, though, I felt the crowd really added a lot to this match, I just wish they’d let the wrestlers play to it a bit more. The crowd here were treating Heavy Machinery how I personally treat all of Daniel Bryan’s opponents by desperately not wanting them to win at all and Bryan tried to play to it a bit, but still stuck to the heel tendencies.

The match itself was a fun watch, but it did show off everything I hate about Heavy Machinery, like when Bryan was doing the Yes! Kicks and Otis was thrusting his hips and having a spasm on his feet, it’s not the 80’s anymore, that stuff just looks stupid now. That said, this match did a lot to make Heavy Machinery look good in defeat since realistically you could argue that they only lost thanks to Bryan’s experience and veteran instincts, having the wear with all to make the small package.

If anything is going to revive the tag division in WWE, it’s Bryan & Rowan going on an absolute tear with these titles, having great matches with every tag team on Smackdown and this was certainly a good start.

4 – Bayley(c) def. Alexa Bliss
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

This match was one that very much had the potential to go either way and thankfully it landed on the side of good. There aren’t many complaints I have about this match, I think for the most part the wrestling was very solid, and these two clearly work well together in the ring. I didn’t really reach that upper level of being a great match, but it was certainly more than I was expecting going in.

Alexa seemed to wrestle a lot less heelish in this match, there was still an element of her “full of herself” persona, but there was a lot less taunting, outside of screaming at the ref whenever he tried to remind her of the rules, but for the most part, she wrestled clean. Bayley’s always been great as the beaten down babyface, and it’s always so much fun to watch her rally and make the comeback and this match was no exception.

I’m a little confused about the finish though, commentary tried to claim that Alexa pulled Nikki in the way of Bayley’s dive but to me, it looked more like Nikki didn’t move and pushed Alexa out of the way. I’m even more confused by what happened next because Nikki got in the ring like she was about to attack Bayley because she’s so crazy and just couldn’t control herself, but then 30 seconds later when Bayley’s about to win the match, Nikki suddenly can control herself?

I guess I’m just being a bit overly nitpicky about it, but it struck me as odd when it went down, I also thought Bayley shoving Nikki after the match was a nice touch and I love where Bayley’s character is going. That said, I don’t really want to see this match again, not because it was bad, but because there’s just so much talent in the Smackdown Women’s division right now, that I want to see what Bayley can do with all of them as champion.

3 – Ricochet def. Samoa Joe(c)
(United States Championship)

And here we have a match that’s thankfully what we all hoped it would be.

I said in my predictions that I thought this match would focus on both men trying to force the other to wrestle their style and that’s more or less what we got. The opening sequence was full of Ricochet wrestling circles around Joe before Joe finally caught him and was able to slow him down. Once Joe was on top the pace of the match changed drastically to be a lot more methodical, with Joe trying to wear down Ricochet for a portion of the match.

It threatened to go on for too long and become a bit boring, but these two men were able to pace it very nicely so that the comebacks and high spots were in the right places to frame the slower moments nicely. I particularly liked when Joe denied Ricochet’s kick, Ricochet did a standing backflip in order to sell it and the crowd just didn’t give a shit. The final few minutes of the match focused around Ricochet trying to pull off the 630 Splash, rolling through on it once before getting Joe down long enough to land the second and become the new United States champion.

I wasn’t expecting this, but I’m most certainly in on it, and if his first feud is going to be AJ Styles, then I’m in all the way. Hopefully, Joe can move up the card a bit off of the back of this, maybe going after Strowman after that was teased during the Superstar shakeup and never followed up on.

2 – Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn def. The New Day

Clearly, no-one told these guys this was an inconsequential tag match.

This match was very entertaining from start to finish. It opened up with something we don’t see very often, where Owens immediately took Big E out of the equation while he and Zayn frequently tagged in and out hitting their big moves in order to try and put Xavier away quickly but he was able to stay alive throughout.

The match then transitioned into Zayn and Owens putting a beating on Xavier Woods and Woods desperately trying to make the tag. Once again, this was paced really well, the beatdown on Xavier didn’t last so long as to be boring, but lasted long enough to really get the crowd invested in the hot tag when it eventually came. Big E was like a house on fire in this match, and clearly didn’t miss a step during the couple of months he was away.

Once the hot tag was made and the match devolved a bit, the chaos was so much fun to watch. The near falls and false finishes were done to great effect and I really felt like it could’ve gone either way when it came down to the final moments. Eventually, Owens would hit a stunner on Woods (which Woods would sell the shit out of) for the win in a very satisfying and fun match.

1 – Drew Gulak def. Tony Nese(c) & Akira Tozowa
(Cruiserweight Championship)
(Kickoff Show)

Well, this was bound to happen one day. If you keep putting the cruiserweights on the pre-show, expect them to show up and blow everything else out of the water because this match was fantastic.

I’ve loved watching Tozowa & Gulak on 205 Live in recent months, and Tony Nese is no slouch either, so putting the three of them together in this match was always going to make for something great. Interestingly, unlike a lot of other triple threat matches, there weren’t any extended periods of time where one person was selling outside the ring while the other two fought. The action and interruptions of the action were constant the whole way through and it made for such an unpredictable bout, where you never knew what was coming next.

Some of my personal favourite spots were Tozowa dropping out of the sky onto Nese, who was trapped in Gulak’s submission hold, and Nese swooping in as Tozowa was trying to take Drew out and throwing Tozowa at Gulak. There were some great near falls too (admittedly only because Drew missed his cue) and as we got into the final two minutes, there were points where I honestly believed each man had it in the bag.

Eventually, Drew Gulak came out on top in what I think is the right move for 205 Live. Nese was a great champion, but I feel he was much better in the chase than once he actually won the title, and Drew has been putting on great matches with the whole 205 Live and NXT rosters for well over a year now, so I’m very much looking forward to what’s to come.

That’s all folks! There’s what I thought of every match that took place at Stomping Grounds 2019! Thank you very much for reading, a share on social media would be very much appreciated, and make sure to let me know what you thought of the show, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Make sure you come back this weekend, where we go back to the land of video games, for something a little different.

WWE Stomping Grounds 2019 Predictions & Analysis

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!