By Jeff Knapp
One of the biggest nights in all of wrestling happened on Saturday 6/26 when AEW and New Japan gave us Forbidden Door. This was a great show from start to finish. Chris Jericho’s team picked up the win and now gets the one-man advantage going into Wednesday’s Dynamite “Blood and Guts” cage match.
PAC became the inaugural AEW All Atlantic Champion when he defeated Clark Connors, Malakai Black and Miro.
FTR defeated Rapongi Vice and The United Empire’s Great-O-Khan & Jeff Cobb to retain their ROH Tag Team Championships BUT also became the NEW IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Champions.
Will Ospreay defeated Orange Cassidy and retained his IWGP US Championship
The Switchblade Jay White retained his IWGP World Heavyweight championship when he defeated Adam Cole, Okada and Adam Page.
Claudio Castagnoli (FKA Cesaro) is now All Elite
Jon Moxley defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to become the Interim AEW World Champion. Moxley will then face CM Punk at some point to unify the Title.
Logan Paul has signed what appears to be a multi-year contract with the WWE that should take him into possibly 2024
Bellator MMA women’s fighter, Valerie Loureda has signed with the WWE and should be heading to the performance center very soon
WWE – RAW
This week we saw the return of the Doctor of Thuganomics, Mr. Hustle, Loyalty and Respect, Big Match John…John Cena. There were videos from Triple H, Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Rock, JBL, Steph McMahon and AEW stars such as Bryan Danielson, Chris Jericho and Paul Wight. They mentioned his unrivaled devotion to Make a Wish and other charities and what type of person he is in and out of the ring.
There was a “last Chance” battle royal for the last MITB ladder match this Saturday that was won by Riddle.
On the women’s side there was a “last Chance” match for MITB which was won by Becky Lynch, who defeated Doudrop, Shayna Baszler,Xia Li, Tamina and Nikki A.S.H.
Carmella made her case for winning the Raw Women’s championship at MITB. Bianca has it all, but we can’t count out the tenacity of Carmella. This match could surprise us this Saturday.
In singles action, Montez Ford defeated Jey Uso leading into their tag team title match this Saturday.
NXT
To start things off, we got a NXT Women’s tag team #1 Contenders match. Roxanne Perez & Cora Jade defeated Kayden Carter & Katana Chance and will now face Toxic Attraction at the Great American Bash
We find out that at the GAB, the North American Champion Carmelo Hayes will face Grayson Waller when Carmelo unknowingly signed a contract to the match thinking he was signing an autograph for his fans in Australia (Waller is Australian)
After Roderick Strong gets the loss in his 6-man tag with the Creed Brothers to Joe Gacy and his minions, there is a NXT Tag Team Championship made at the GAB between the Creed Brothers and Roderick Strong & Damon Kemp.
In the Main Event, the returning Nikkita Lyons took on NXT Women’s Champion Mandy Rose. This match was doomed when Toxic Attraction attacked Lyons causing the DQ. Will Nikkta be the one to finally dethrone Mandy? If she isn’t then who is?
AEW – DYNAMITE
Off the heals of Forbidden Door, AEW gives us Blood and Guts that is main evented by the 10-man steel cage tornado match, basically it’s War Games in a nutshell.
Until then Orange Cassidy defeated “All Ego” Ethan Page when Dan Lambert got involved and cost Page the win.
Luchasaurus crushed Serpentico when he came out with Christian Cage. Cage is on a roll and his heel promos have been homeruns, but we wouldn’t have expected any less from him. We are still waiting to find out what Cage said to cause Luchasaurus to turn heel and come out with darker ring attire.
Is there tension brewing in the Gunn family? After Max Caster & The Gunn Club lost to Danhausen & FTR, an argument between The Acclaimed and the GC ensued, and it ended when Billy Gunn finally had enough and shoved his son Austin to the mat. After that, Austin and his brother Colten left the ring alone. Facing off with FTR is almost an automatic loss anyways since FTR is the greatest Tag Team on the planet.
Jay Lethal challenges ROH Television champion Samoa Joe to a match at the next ROH PPV, Death Before Dishonor. That will be worth the price of admission alone.
We are now ready for the main event, the dual ring inside a cage known as Blood and Guts. This match has The Blackpool Combat Combat Club & Friends (Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta, Jon Moxley, Eddie Kingston, Santana, Ortiz) vs. The Jericho Appreciation Society (Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, Jake Hager, Daniel Garcia, Matt Menard, Angelo Parker)
The JAS has the upper hand very quickly the blood starts to flow. At one point a few of the men escape and go to the top where Eddie Kingston tosses Sammy Guevara off the top of the cage onto the table below.
During the match Santana severely injures his knee, and as of this writing there is no word on his condition, so I wish him a very speedy recovery.
In the final minutes we see Kingston locks a submission on Jericho while Castagnoli secures one on Menard while all 4 men are on top of the cage. Menard is the 1st to tap out to Claudio and that gives the BCC the victory.
The crowd was on fire for the entire match.
IMPACT
This is the go home show of Impact leading into this Friday’s Against All Odds PPV (It does seem like they just had a PPV about 2 weeks ago)
In a #1 Contenders match for the X-Division Championship at Against All Odds, Trey Miguel def. Chris Bey, Steve Maclin and Laredo Kid and will now challenge X-Division Champion “Speedball” Mike Bailey.
Trey is an amazing talent and should be a corner piece to that division just like AJ Styles and others were at one point.
Most of the show consisted of them setting up the final card for AAO with with main events being Impact World Champion, Josh Alexander defending his title against Joe Doering and HNM will be in a 10 man tag match again, this time they face the Impact Tag Team Champions, The Good Brothers, AMW (for 1 night only) and…Heath
I have a funny feeling somebody may turn, but I will be honestly upset if Wildcat Chris Harris turns on them, since America’s Most Wanted was my favorite tag team in all of pro wrestling when they were at the height.
WWE – SMACKDOWN
The show starts off with the 6 men who have already qualified for the MITB match, which lead to many of the wrestlers from the back coming out saying why they need to be in that final 7th spot.
Adam Pierce comes out and makes a battle royal to release some of the hostility and anger that is in and around the ring. After a hard fought battle royal, Happy Corbin sneaks back into the ring and eliminates Drew and Sheamus at the same time to win the match.
We get a preview of the Smackdown women’s championship match between Ronda Rousey and Natalyia. I am very excited for this match and believe this will be one of the best matches for either competitor.
The New Day call out the Viking Raiders after getting attacked from behind last week only to be decimated again. I’m sure the announcers will be using the term “The new vicious viking raiders” for some time. I’m hoping they don’t add that to their logo too.
In a 6 woman “Raw vs Smackdown” tag team match, we saw Raw’s Alexa Bliss, Asuka, & Liv Morgan take on SmackDown’s Raquel Rodriguez, Lacey Evans, & Shotzi. It was great to see Shotzi and Liv get some great ring time and they are both deserving of the spotlight, but in the end Liv connects with oblivion for the 1-2-3 on Shotzi. Will she be miss MITB after this Saturday?
At MITB there is not enough hype around the Tag Team Championships after the great in-ring promo between the Usos and the Street Profits. They stole each other’s tag lines and it was something to hear. You could feel the emotions in the ring and the Usos bring it everytime.
Maximum Male Models finally debuts. I assumed it was going to possibly be 1 or 2 men from the NXT roster in order to give them a chance. Here comes Eli Drake…I mean LA Knight…I mean Max Dupree who introduces us to…Mace and Mansoor? I got a kick out of the change to the name pronunciations and I’m secure enough to admit that Ma’ce is a handsome dude but it sounded like the crowd wanted no part of this. I give Pat McAfee for doing what he does best and his excitement saved this segment.
In the main event, we had a fatal 4 way for the final MITB spot this Saturday. We saw Madcap Moss defeat Ezekiel, Happy Corbin and The Miz when he took advantage of Corbin hitting end of days on Zek when tossed him into the ring post to pick up the win.
AEW – RAMPAGE
Things get started off with a 2 ring 20 man battle royal where 10 men to a ring until the final 2 men are left. The winner will get a title shot at Jon Moxley for the interim AEW heavyweight Championship this coming Wednesday on Dynamite.
After choking out Darby Allin and hanging him from the outside the ring then dumping him to the floor, Brody King is declared the winner and has a date with Moxley this Wednesday.
AEW World Tag-Team Champions The Young Bucks faced Hiroki Goto & Yoshi-Hashi with the stipulation that if Goto and Hashi won, they would get a future shot at the tag team titles.
In the end The Young Bucks hit a BTE Trigger followed by the Meltzer Driver for the win.
Next week we will see ROH World Champion Jonathan Gresham in tag team action with Lee Moriarity vs 2 men from Tully Blanchard Enterprises. The world will witness one of the greatest technical wrestlers in the world.
The main event tonight we witnessed Toni Storm take on Nyla Rose. I along with the rest of the crowd was fully behind Toni Storm. Anybody who has her talent, but also has a tribute to Nikki Sixx of Motley Crew below her right eye gets my support.
In the end, Toni connects with a pendulum DDT on Rose for the victory.
After the match, Marina Shafir gets involved and attacks Toni until the AEW Women’s champion, Thunder Rosa hits the ring and helps clear the ring.
Next week, I’ll cover Impact’s Against All Odds and WWE’s MITB PPVs.
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