What's Going Down on TUA!

Unfortunately, I was not able to post an article on Monday on last week's wrestling in my column over at ProWrestlingPonderings.Com. Life has been hectic these days with college and various assignments that I have been obligated to put ahead of everything else, not to mention Class Rep Training and helping out with the organisation and mobilisation in IADT of the National Student March on November 3, so I can only apologise wholeheartedly to Jerome Cusson of PWP and all of our readers. I will certainly do my best in future to be as reliable as possble. 
 

In order to make up for my apparent absenteeism on PWP, I will do a quick round up of WWE on television from last week (Oct. 11-17) right here and now! There wasn't a whole lot to talk about, but we'll see how it contributes to the lead-in to Bragging Rights.

The #1 Contender, Cena, The Miz and Team Raw Captaincy

Last week's Raw opened up John Cena on the mic. He was talking about being in Nexus and the difficult position that puts him in in relation to his fans. At this point in time, The Miz interrupts and mocks Cena. He says that as Team Captain for Raw, he won't choose his team members based on their personality, so he is willing tolet Cena join the side. Cena replies that he should be captain instead. Another interruption happens at this point in the shape of Wade Barrett, who tells Cena he will be in his corner for the BR main event against Randy Orton instead. We are then greeted to the sound of the Anonymous General Manager's email tone coming from Michael Cole's laptop. He shoots down Barrett and books Cena in a match with Miz for the team's captaincy as part of a series of matches to determine what superstars it will comprise of.

The contest, which was later made a No DQ match for the main event, was a relatively good bout won by The Miz after interruption from Husky Harris and Michael McGillicutty. This should be a huge ego boost for The Miz after what happened at Summerslam, and it should be played as such on-screen. It could even be used by Creative as a reason for Team Raw's loss at the PPV, assuming they do lose, of course (although I think it'd be fair to say that Team Smackdown are the likely winners at this point).

The best bit of this match, the night and this angle so far had to be the segment between Cena and Barrett after the encounter. Harris and Barrett teamed up on Cena, before Barrett jumped in, who was nearly hit by his latest recruit. The Englishman proceeded to cut his best promo ever and villified Cena and made him look weak and cowardly. It was fantastic. Barrett ended the segment with, "until next week... you can't see me!" This guy is the real deal.

 Team Raw

As mentioned, a series of matches to determine Team Raw took place during last week's episode. The team is as follows: R-Truth, CM Punk, Santino Marella, John Morrison, Sheamus and The Miz (c). That leaves room for one more competitor -- Triple H mayhaps? Probably not, but hopefully the seventh member will bring more to the table that Santino. . .

 Team Smackdown

The team is as follows: Big Show (c), Rey Mysterio, Alberto Del Rio, Kofi Kingston, Jack Swagger, Edge and Tyler Reks. The last name on that list made his debut on SD last week with a win against Kaval. They really don't know what to do with the winner of NXT Season 2.

 The Family Of Destruction

So, the feud between Kane and The Undertaker, which has been on-off for over 13 years, is still going strong. Well, erm, not sure about 'strong', but it's still going nonetheless. The rivalry continued with another spooky, slightly over-the-top promo from Kane, reflecting the over-the-top of all these characters, including Paul Bearer.

Long story short, Kane and his father challenged Taker to a Buried Alive match at Bragging Rights, which would be for the title yet again, of course. Undi' came out and demonstrated that his powers had seemingly returned to him! He went after Kane and Bearer, who ran off before being frightened by a bolt of lightning that had been summoned by the Phenom. Mildly interesting.

That brings my review of the week to a close and I hope you enjoyed it, even though not a whole happened. Don't forget to check out my column over at PWP, where normal business shall resume next week :)

Dying A Slow Death

I will give you three guesses as to what this entry is dedicated to. . .

Ever since Season 3 of NXT began, I have been considering just not writing about it anymore in my weekly column over at ProWrestlingPonderings.com. The all-female roster is dreadful. The challenges and obstacle courses make for terrible television. The actual wrestling is no better and the promos are painfully cringe worthy. Worst of all (depending on your point of view I suppose), this ridiculous excuse for a show won't even be on the air shortly. With Smackdown moving back to Syfy at the beginning of October, the network has decided there is no need to keep both shows on board, thus it is dumping NXT in favour of WWE's B-show. You couldn't make up a worst array of reasons not to write about, let alone watch, this crap.

And yet, when I finally forced myself to watch an entire episode of NXT this week, I realised how fascinating it actually is when you break it down. I found there was too much to talk about for my relatively small PWP article. As I said, the show is being pulled from tv and is believed to be moving to an Internet-only format before long. That means only four weeks of a twelve-week season will actually be aired on television, which has essentially lead to near-to-nobody caring about it, including the commentators.

This week's episode began with a recap of the previous week's show, which ended with Michael Cole walking out and just leaving the commentary team, primarily because it was a "joke." From this point on, they were openly admitting that NXT was pure muck. Josh Matthews was alone on the announce desk before he was joined by none other than CM Punk in a tweed jacket, who almost immediately described the show as a "car crash." Pure muck was somehow turned into pure gold momentarily:

The whole thing was incredibly surreal. For the majority of that hour, I couldn't believe I was watching a wrestling show. Yet, for all its craptacular insufferability, it made for great television. I gained far more enjoyment from watching this God awful laughing stock than I ever did watching the usual boring stuff they generally stick on NXT. It would appear that terrible beats mediocre anyday.

Read My New Column at ProWrestlingPonderings.Com!

That's right -- it's finally here!

Head over to ProWrestlingPonderings.Com and find my new weekly column, What's Going Down, there each and every Monday morning.

In my brand spanking new column, I'll be giving you the lowdown on the week in WWE on television. I will be covering all three shows -- Raw, Smackdown and NXT -- and giving you my view on where the E are going right and wrong these days.

 Click here to read my first article for the website! 

And don't forget to check out Ryan Rozanski's review of TNA No Surrender as well.