The Vision were once again on Friday Night SmackDown this week, back to talk War Games and the big showdown at Survivor Series. Paul Heyman made threats of Bron Breakker taking bites out of asses and Bronson Reed spamming his Tsunami.
When Logan Paul got the chance to talk, he went to consult a list of five talking points he seems to have quite literally had written on his hand. Thankfully, he was interrupted by The Usos, who thought they had a running buddy in WWE Champion Cody Rhodes.
Reader, they
did not.
Instead, Drew McIntyre was shown exiting the champ’s bus while Rhodes was laid out flat and Jimmy & Jey took off at a dead sprint trying to get to him. Rhodes was left a bloody mess while McIntyre sped off.
A hell of an angle to start the show.
Later, GM Nick Aldis had no update on Cody’s condition. Instead, he made clear he’s good and fed up with the heel side and how they operate. If nothing else, this team based warfare stretching across brands has done well to better establish The Vision sans Seth Rollins as a nuisance of a group.
It also put over Bronson Reed as a threat just before he went out and battled Carmelo Hayes in their Last Time is Now Tournament match. Said match had an actually surprising result too — Rhodes ran in through the crowd and put Reed down outside the ring. Wouldn’t you know it, the referee counted to 10 to give Hayes a thrilling count out win.
How about that?
Cody proceeded to cut one hell of a promo, one of his best in a long time, absolutely shitting on the entirety of the heel squad at War Games. All the heavy hitters are doing a fantastic job of making this feel like a big deal despite the fact that it isn’t built on all that much.
There’s a lot of backstory everywhere, sure, but they didn’t start from much in terms of how it all came together. They’ve done well to make it coherent enough that I hardly care. I just want to see the fight now.
I love that in my pro wrestling.
We were promised big updates on the women’s War Games match on this show, and we got just that. Alexa Bliss managed to get Charlotte Flair into a room with Rhea Ripley & Iyo Sky in an attempt to figure out if Charlotte could square things away with Rhea.
You know, for the betterment of the team and the babyface squad coming out ahead.
They did a cinematic style sit-down between the two that aired later in the evening. Ripley wanted it clear that she was willing to put aside their history for the sake of a cohesive unit. More than that, being honest, Flair is someone she would want to go to war with.
They agreed to trust each other, shook hands, and that gave us a fourth member once more. I still don’t know that they needed to do all this but I do appreciate that they bothered with the backstory here.
They furthered the story in a much bigger way by giving the women the main event slot on this show. Ripley, Sky, Bliss, and Flair hit the ring to cut a promo as a full team, more or less making public the fact that they now trust each other.
But that’s only four and they need one more.
Introducing AJ Lee.
Before she could even make her entrance, the heel team attacked from behind. When Lee tried to rush the ring to help, none other than Becky Lynch popped in to tackle her. After, she shook hands with Asuka and made clear that the women’s War Games match is now official.
It should be a damn good one.
All the rest
- JD McDonagh was the latest to step up to Ilja Dragunov in the United States championship open challenge, and yet again we got a fun match that saw the champ retain with the H-Bomb. That may very well be the best finish in wrestling right now, and I’ll stand on that. Meanwhile, Tama Tonga is STILL teasing coming after the title and that jackass Tommaso Ciampa is STILL trying to get his shot. Fun.
- Sami Zayn and his team did a traditional Survivor Series promo, and I legitimately became a bigger fan of every guy there simply for how it was put together. I miss when guys screamed through their entire promo. Hell, one of my favorite events of all time, Survivor Series 1990, featured Rowdy Piper screaming his way through commentary for the entire show. It was incredible. Later in this show, Sikoa and his crew got to do a promo of their own and it was just the usual from the MFTs. Blah.
- DIY defeated Fraxiom thanks to Candice LeRae unmasking Axiom. That they did this for a regular episode of television kinda baffles me, but the match was fun enough. Corey Graves immediately shouting “oh my god, he’s hideous” was hilarious.
- There has been recent talk that Finn Balor could be in for a renewed singles push soon enough but he was felled by Penta via pinfall in a clean victory in the Last Time is Now Tournament. Everything here was relatively straightforward, and that works well enough for what it’s supposed to be.
- For that matter, they finally revealed a bracket for the tournament. We will be getting a new mystery opponent against LA Knight due to Sheamus suffering an injury but the bracket clearly shows us GUNTHER is going to win the whole thing as has been rumored.
An enjoyable evening.
Grade: B+
Your turn.
