There’s a lot of wrestling on Wednesday nights.
Every week, @JoeySplashwater will attempt to watch as much of the wrestling programs on Wednesday night as he can. There will be a short recap of each program followed by the pick for Match of the Night, Performer of the Night and who won the Wednesday Night Wars?
NXT
NXT was the perfect example of what their television program is this week. The open was great with Kevin Owens, Hideo Itami, Finn Balor and Rhyno all having fun moments. The main event of Balor vs. Rhyno was solid with great commentary by Owens. There was also a spectacular promo video of Finn playing Legos with Sami Zayn.
Unfortunately, the rest of the show sucked. Nothing else and no one else on this show felt important or noteworthy and it just seemed like filler in between the opening segment and main event. I can’t even remember who the participants were.
The good was outstanding, the bad was pointless. I enjoyed the Owens vs. Finn story enough to say I liked NXT this week.
Grade: C+
ROH
This week aired the final episode of the ROH/NJPW joint shows from Toronto. It was by far the best episode of ROH TV since their debut on Destination America a month ago. The episode was highlighted by two main event matches – Roderick Strong vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and The Bullet Club vs. CHAOS.
Strong-Nakamura wasn’t as great as I expected considering they are two of the best wrestlers in the world right now. Still, it was a pretty good TV match and at worst, the third best match on Wednesday.
AJ Styles and the Young Bucks vs. Baretta, Rocky Romero and Okada was a tremendous match and one of the best ever on ROH television. The back and forth was what you’d expect from these talents and it completely delivered. ROH TV is usually hit or miss depending on what talent are on each episode as they alternate due to the TV taping schedule but this week was a home run.
Grade: A
Lucha Underground
The strong point of Lucha Underground is that every character on the program is significant with the exception of two people. Those two appeared this week – Super Fly and Marty the Moth.
Super Fly vs. Sexy Star was terrible. Super Fly may be the lamest wrestler on TV right now. The 4 way match and the main event of Drago vs. Mil Muertes were quite good but neither were remarkable or delivered a show of what Lucha Underground has made us expect.
This was one of the weaker episodes of Lucha Underground in a few weeks or maybe even months. One key to LU’s success is they never had to build for PPVs like other wrestling shows so the TV show was a spectacle every week. With extra emphasis on building the season finale aka Ultimo Lucha in August, hopefully this is not what’s in store for the next month.
Grade: C-
TNA Impact
I’ll be honest here when I say don’t expect TNA to be a weekly part of this feature. The other shows already take up three hours not factoring in time that will be spent writing this feature. I can’t possibly add another 2 hours, especially if it’s something I don’t care about.
However, I did watch TNA’s television show on replay this week. I was out on Wednesday and when I came home, there were lots of tweets about TNA so I figure I should check it out on the midnight replay.
I don’t know if this was a good or bad show but it was an eventful one. Jeff Jarrett returning was a big surprise. Hernandez, Matt Morgan and Vader making appearances was quite weird. I didn’t pay full attention to the night but the two matches I did look for were good stuff.
Tigre Uno winning the X Division title from Grado and Low Ki (I think?) was a fun little match. The American Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels (what a terrible name btw) was a pretty good match. Lots of hard hitting, back and forth action and it showed the teams bring a high level of talent. On almost any other week, it would have been the best match of the night.
Grade: C (At least of what I saw or paid attention to)
Match of the Night
The Young Bucks and AJ Styles vs. Kazuchika Okada, Rocky Romero and Trent Baretta (ROH TV)
Just a spectacle of a match that is borderline must see for any wrestling fan this year.
Performer of the Night
Kevin Owens (NXT)
Between his opening promo and work on commentary, Owens showed why he was called up to the main roster so quickly and is regarded as one of the most compelling wrestlers.
Owens also referenced Independence Day starring Will Smith when on commentary. No one was topping that this week. If you take away his segments from this week’s episode of NXT, it may have been an F.
Who won the Wednesday Night Wars this week?
ROH
I considered TNA based on people actually talking about their TV show for the first time in a while but a lot of the chatter was based on how ridiculous it was. ROH had two rare attraction quality matches on TV that gave them their best TV show outing maybe all year and was definitely the best this week.
Hopefully I have the energy to write these every week! It’s fun.