Sometimes, when a particularly poorly received segment happens, rumors and innuendo appear that seem to imply the segment was a way to see if the performer was able to manage the segment, the fallout from the segment and make something out of both before advancing up the card. If that’s in any way true, Sami Zayn‘s work over the last two weeks has put him in contention for Universal title. Ignoring entirely the absolutely incredible and giving person he seems to be outside of the ring, his charisma alone makes him one of the more natural babyfaces in the industry, and to see him channel that into such a way as to make Bobby Las…. gvcfiwjfvt … oh, sorry, I fell asleep midway through thinking about how to spell his name.
https://twitter.com/totaldivaseps/status/1001284685782188033
WOAH, BOBBY, chillbrah, I WAS KIDDING. No, but seriously, this segment highlight the serious deficiency with Lashley: Dude can’t talk to a crowd. He seems like a nice, pretty smart guy who you could totally sit down and have a normal if somewhat distant conversation. But using him as a way to hype a match seems like it’s a bit of a up-hill climb that’s completely unnecessary at this point. While some of the odds and ends worked in this segment. In no small part thanks to Sami, he comes across as a very affable man who also is willing to stand up for himself whilst also looking like a fucking Terminator while breaking Sami’s will (and possibly a few of his metacarpals) with that handshake.
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Although I love both Drew McIntyre and Chad Gable a great deal, this entire program feels like it’s not going to work out great for anyone involved. McIntyre will likely find himself coming into direct contact with Jason Jordan’s likely mega-puush when he returns, which may negatively affect the trajectories of both their careers or Chad Gable will be made out to be such a hapless person that it’ll turn him so quickly into Marty Jannetty that he’ll be picking barbershop window out of his hair before Night of Champions gets here.
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While I could mostly do without Ax-Man’s insistence on doing the Peter Griffin (congratulations, by the way, if you had the 25% over on “the words that will be pop culture references” for this week’s column) “eh?” four times at the end of every sentence, the B-Team‘s BBQ was the third separate non-Elias talk-y seg that worked on some level. Which is no easy task. Must be the new guy on the writing staff.
Shockingly, this turned into a food fight. Rhyno as the Gary Gerry Terry Garry Gergich of the tag division works both narratively and aesthetically. Speaking of which, Total Divas Episodes really out did themselves tonight with the quality GIF work:
https://twitter.com/totaldivaseps/status/1001291044514918401
