Fyah
Still looking good, Ember Moon returned to polish off Mickie James this week. I don’t have any issues with her performance, and the bonus sell of the eclipse by Mickie made her look a tad bit more of a force. I’m also digging the more vocal Nia Jax who sat on commentary during the match; she’s serving more than just being a dominant champ.
This version of Bobby Lashley is a far cry from what you may have seen in the past few months on Impact. It’s just funny that this is a different promotion but the same name and completely different look at the guy. He was teamed with some the most over faces on the Raw roster to face some of the most over heels in the WWE. If that doesn’t let you know what they have in mind for him, nothing will.
In an attempt to chop down Luke Harper, Jey Uso stepped up to the plate. This week was more the same with the Bludgeon Brothers dominating the Usos. The sweet secret sauce to this rivalry is that Naomi has been inserted to keep her active since she doesn’t have much going on in the women’s division.
The televised debut (which is on NXT that airs on the WWE Network same as TakeOver so not really a “debut”) of Ricochet occurred this week. It was more the same from TakeOver minus the ladders and Velveteen Dream spots.
It’s highly unlikely that I’ll complain about a Kiera Hogan appearance in the near future. She had two matches air during Impact this week. The intergender tag match where she teamed with Fallah Bahh seemed rather odd, yet she executed her aerial offensive style landing flying crossbodies and hurricanranas. It was more the same in her Redemption match versus Taya Valkyrie. Both matches ended with her taking the pin, and both saw her still hitting some spots with a bit of hesitation. Either way, Hogan is looking a lot better and can only improve with more work. She’s being used as a filler opponent to develop another feud’s story currently.
Meh
Hey everyone, there was a Sasha Banks sighting during the roster shake up. Of course she’s staying on Raw, but we’re still somewhere in the midst of prepping her feud with Bayley. This week they had the honor of setting up the introduction of the Riott Squad.
There was more of the same from the Authors of Pain as they squashed Slater and Rhyno (my how Rhyno has fallen). We’ll see where they fall now that this roster is set. There are a lot of young teams carrying the Raw brand.
I don’t know which member of Titus Worldwide caught it worse when they were surprise attacked by Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler. I take that back. Apollo did the best sell job of the zig zag/claymore combo. That is an important job considering it was our first look at it.
The Gold Standard is now an individual performer. Shelton Benjamin made it perfectly clear that he’s happy to shed his tag team partner and how he’s looking forward to competing for accolades as a singles competitor. We were teased into thinking we were about to get a face off with Randy Orton. Ultimately, Shelton got to dance with Jeff Hardy, the US Champ, Looking back on the match, it was great but not enough to steal the show. SmackDown’s roster is stacked pretty heavy and easy for Benjamin to get lost in the midcard shuffle.
There was no action from the New Day, but they were involved in a backstage segment that led me to believe that R Truth has joined Team Blue.
I’m hoping the check cleared for Dezmond Xavier because buddy seems to only get a call for Impact events. He hasn’t had anything written for him since I started writing this series. He drew the straw to take Brian Cage’s drill claw in the six-man lucha tag match. It was nothing more than a bunch of high spots until Cage cleared the crowd.
Whatever paint Kongo Kong is using needs to be passed around to everyone. Kong had a rather physical contest with Johnny Impact and still had damn near a full face of paint afterwards. They are fast forwarding the build of Kong as a silent monster heel to destroy the main event baby faces. And destroy he did to Impact when he rammed him face first into the ring steps.
Boo
Why the hell was Moose in this match with oVe? He took one bump that I can recall; in all fairness, he didn’t issue out too many bumps, but why though?