By Jeff Knapp
The biggest news of the week was Friday when Vincent Kennedy McMahon officially retired from the WWE. Good or bad, Vince changed the wrestling business forever.
It was announced that Ric Flair’s last match on July 31 in Nashville, TN will be a tag team match and he will partner with his son in law Andrade El Idolo vs Jeff Jarrett & Jay Lethal
As it stands right now the card will be as follows (in no real order)
Impact World Championship Match: Josh Alexander vs. Jacob Fatu
Impact Knockouts Championship Match: Jordynne Grace vs. Deonna Purrazzo vs. Rachael Ellering
The Wolves vs. The Motor City Machine Guns
Killer Kross vs. Davey Boy Smith Jr.
Clark Connors vs. Ren Narita
Laredo Kid vs. Bandido vs. Taurus vs. Rey Fenix
The Von Erichs vs. The Briscoes
Bunkhouse Battle Royal
Ric Flair and Andrade El Idolo vs. Jay Lethal & Jeff Jarrett
NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship Match: Trevor Murdoch vs Tyrus (after Billy Corgan stripped Nick Aldis of his opportunity at the title live on Busted Open Radio
Bully Ray vs Mike Knox in tables match
NWA President Billy Corgan announced that at the NWA 74th Anniversary show, we will see the return of the NWA United States Tag Team Championships
WWE – RAW
This week we saw Carmella challenge and lose to Bianca Belair once again for the Raw Women’s Championship.
After Damien Priest defeated Rey Mysterio, he told Dominik to join the Judgment Day, or he would destroy his father. He agrees to join, but Priest told him that’s not how it works.
This was a hard show to get behind but did have its moment. KO-Bro? I’d take anything Owens is involved in, and the Riddle vs Rollins at SummerSlam? That will be another amazing match and could be match of the night.
The 24/7 champion was once again passed around like a collection plate at a church. It’s enjoyable for the entertainment value of a laugh
Finally, to end the night Ciampa tries to attack Logan Paul, but his attempt is thwarted and now The Miz has to accept Paul’s SummerSlam challenge. Logan really did impress me at Wrestlemania, just like Bad Bunny did and both men have earned my respect for all the time and effort that put into preparing for their respective matches.
One of my biggest gripes that Raw is a 3 hour show that has 7 matches, but only for a total of under an hour and they could have gotten at least 90 minutes of wrestling in there.
NXT
In an overall better wrestling product, NXT gave us 5 really good matches this week including the debut of Axiom, who is supposed to be a mathematical genius or something? I’m not positive about the gimmick, but I’m guessing he uses match to solve how to escape different holds? Either way, this was a fun match and hope to see more from him with higher profile opponents.
Now, in my opinion, Cameron Grimes vs JD McDonagh was the match of the night, but Roderick Strong put on another great showing against Damon Kemp, and it would be a shame to see him leave. Not sure what would happen to the Diamond Mine of he left. Speaking of the DM, the promo with the Creed Brothers had great passion and I hope they keep it up.
I am a fan of Joe Gacy and his odd peace / doomsday gimmick, but ENOUGH with the name changes. The Grizzled Young Veterans are now known as Joe Gacy’s Dyads. James Drake is now Jagger Reid and Zack Gibson is now Rip Fowler. Why? Just bring in some new performance talent that are ready to step up to the plate. They were a solid tag team and I’m sure could remain that, but this is just bad booking.
The night ended with the return of Zoe Starks. She had a lot of great tools and sadly she got hurt and was out for a while before she could get some real traction behind her. Of course, being that she is returning and in a battle royal, you have to win. Forget any ring rust or the momentum of any of the other wrestlers. I’m just glad it wasn’t Cora Jade, Lash Legend or Tiffany Stratton.
AEW – DYNAMITE
Dynamite started out like a ball of fire with Darby vs Brody King. Darby put up one hell of a fight. It had its pros and cons. The pros were how hard hitting and entertaining the match was, but the cons were the near-death experiences I saw Darby either perform himself or that crazy piledriver type move Brody finished him off with. I hate having to close my eyes, yell of S**t more than once per match. I’ve always been a bit scared for the safety of the wrestlers, but after that horrible bump that broke Big Es neck a few months ago, I never want to see that happen to any wrestler again.
Moxley and Wheeler Yuta took on and defeated Best Friends in another great match that both these teams can have. Chuck Taylor is very underrated and gets a lot of slack for some of the artistic things he did while in PWG and other indy promotions, but I give him an A for inventiveness. He did the slow motion and pants grenade spots. I wouldn’t want to see that on TV, but as an overall performer along with Trent they are great together.
After some time off from the beatdown, Jungle Boy returns to AEW and just when Christian thought Luchasaurus was going to attack Jungle Boy, he stood beside him. Now, how will Cage get his revenge and who will stand beside him now?
Absolute Ricky Starks comes out to defend his FTW championship in an open challenge, which is answered by Cole Karter, who is the reincarnated Troy “Two Dimes” Donovan from NXT. Donovan doesn’t sound like a made guys last name, but it was a WWE idea. Although Starks retained the title, we got to see more of Karter than just some, well whatever it was the WWE had for him. Good for him.
After the match, Starks said he was ready to defend his FTW title again, and this brought out the very nice and very evil Danhausen. Starks looked shocked and said he didn’t mean right now but will face him next week. If Danhausen captures the title, the roof will come off the building since the AEW faithful absolutely adore him.
In tag team action we saw Athena & Willow Nightingale take on the TBS Champion Jade Cargill & one of her baddies Kiera Hogan. Although Jade got the pinfall over Willow, she is loved by that crowd and who can blame them. She has this energy and spirit that is contagious. She’s young and will learn and grow, but the fans are behind her 100% from what I can tell and I’m one of them.
In the main event it was “The Painmaker” Chris Jericho facing Eddie Kingston in a barbed wire anywhere match. I enjoyed this match, but my biggest gripe was the amount of time this match was given. I was hoping for at least another 10 minutes. The bookers could have cut out the entire Tony Nese gets knocked out by some rapper in the front row segment.
IMPACT
Women’s tag team VXT started things off against Jordynne Grace and Mia Yim, who will face each other at Emergence. Mia got double teamed and was pinned by Purrazzo. Both teams need time together to get some type of rhythm since it was ehh at best.
In what was the match of the night, X-Division champion Mike Bailey defended his title against VBD’s Deaner. Bailey’s been showcased quite well lately so I know what I’m getting, but this match really let us see how Deaner can go on his own and it was great to see.
The main event saw Alex Shelley defeat his MCMG partner Chris Sabin to become the #1 contender to the Impact World Championship and will now face Josh Alexander at Emergence.
After the match, VBD came down and attacked but they were saved by The Time Splitter, Kushida.
WWE – SMACKDOWN
Stephanie came out to start the show and announce her father’s retirement and led the crowd with a “Thank you Vince” chant
Ludwig Kaiser with the WWE Intercontinental champion Gunter at ringside defeated Shinsuke Nakamura with some assistance from Gunter. After the match Kaiser had his hand raised by the champ and then his chest was hit with those meat hooks again this week even though he won. Tough love I guess
Raquel Rodriguez had another strong outing, this time against Sonya Deville who keeps getting put in last minute matches by Adam Pierce because she can’t stop running her mouth and that gets her in trouble.
Leading up to the tag team championship at Summerslam, which might steal the show the Usos teamed up with Theory to face the Street Profits and Madcap Moss. Just when the Usos thought they were going to walk out on Theory, the tables get turned and Theory walks out on them, only to be super-kicked and thrown back into the ring and eventually defeated.
After the match Brock Lesnar came out and totally kicked the daylights out of Theory, giving him 2 F5s, one which was on the MITB briefcase. This was a great surprise, since it was all over the dirt sheets that Brock walked out of when he heard the news of Vince’s retirement.
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