Some places do power rankings. Here at Cageside, we do a stock report.
In this weekly series, we identify three Superstars (or groups of Superstars) who are on their way up, and three that are moving in the opposite direction. After a busy week that included Rey Mysterio having a chat with Roman Reigns about Raw in Mexico City, Shinsuke Nakamura starting a war while teasing a new arrival, and Kevin Owens calling CM Punk a miserable piece of shit, a lot of fortunes were changed.
With that in mind, let’s
see whose stock decreased the most this week:
Stock Down #3: Je’Von Evans & Ethan Page
WWE Creative had nothing for these guys on either night of SummerSlam. They followed that up with Ethan doing the job for Je’Von on Raw, and then Je’Von losing whatever value that was worth by getting immediately destroyed by the returning Big Cass.
Stock Down #2: Trick Williams
Trick was beaten once again by the very mediocre Baron Corbin this week on SmackDown. Trick lost in a similar fashion to SummerSlam after a simple belt shot to the head. When we see top stars like Oba Femi survive three F5 finishers and a Tombstone from Brock Lesnar, while Cody Rhodes and CM Punk can also survive a bunch of finisher spam at SummerSlam, Trick comes off like a guy who isn’t really a top star when mediocre Corbin’s basic heel cheating keeps beating him.
Even if WWE’s idea was to get Trick’s US title rematch out of the way so he can move on from Corbin, the bottom line is that he just lost twice against a guy who most of the WWE audience knows is nothing special. And there are still two months to go before the Money in the Bank, so Williams will have these losses hanging over his head for a while until he has a chance to erase it with a big win on that PLE.
Stock Down #1: Dominik Mysterio & JD McDonagh
After the Judgment Day was humiliated for weeks by Danhausen, including getting their asses kicked by the New York Knicks at SNME and then losing a really dumb Object on a Pole match at SummerSlam, Dirty Dom and JD lost again on this week’s Raw, this time in a tag team match against Penta and Chad Gable. It doesn’t matter that Dominik Mysterio is the AAA Mega Champion. He’s an absolute chump right now, with both Raw in Mexico City and Triplemania 34 coming up soon.
Now let’s see whose stock increased the most this week:
Stock Up #3: Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss & Tatum Paxley
Alexa Bliss and Tatum Paxley both crashed the main event of this week’s SmackDown to take out The Baddies and help Charlotte Flair defeat Jade Cargill. Charlotte and Alexa’s partnership is now strengthened with Tatum’s debut, and all three of them should be in championship contention going forward.
Stock Up #2: LA Knight
LA Knight did what Oba Femi failed to do on this week’s Raw by confronting Roman Reigns for a world championship match. The megastar is at his best when he’s talking trash on the mic in an important story, and the fans gave him a big reaction for it.
Roman positioned Knight above the rest of the Bloodline henchmen by ordering them to leave him alone after they blew their chance to beat him. That almost certainly means Reigns versus Knight in a world title match will be happening sometime over the next couple of months. In other words, there should be plenty of time on Raw for LA to continue getting over with his gift of gab and outshine the OTC on the mic, even if it doesn’t seem like he has much of a chance to actually win the belt.
Stock Up #1: Becky Lynch & Stephanie Vaquer
Lynch and Vaquer shook up the women’s world championship scene on Raw by both returning in the same segment to go after Liv Morgan. Raw has been sorely lacking this kind of star power in the women’s division, which is related to why Morgan has barely defended her world championship. That should change now, with Lynch and Vaquer both vying over the top babyface face spot on the red brand.
There you have it, Cagesiders. Whose stock do you think changed the most this week?
