Sunday, November 21st, 2021
Barclays Center
Brooklyn, New York
Follow me on Twitter: @WorkTheNetwork2
Charlotte Flair vs. Becky Lynch
They start brawling right off the bat and after a lengthy hype video. Becky hits a nice spin kick to the head of Charlotte, who was on her knees. We get some more intense brawling, but things eventually slow down back in the ring. Charlotte hits a one armed powerbomb for a 2 count. Becky's ring gear tonight is...a questionable choice. Charlotte hits an exploder suplex towards the turnbuckle. Charlotte goes for a moonsault, Becky rolls away, Charlotte lands on her feet and hits her with the second moonsault. Becky fights back and hits a leg drop on the second rope. People, please stop with the "This is awesome" chants. I long for the day when people didn't overreact to every 2 count. Charlotte hits a big boot and gets a 2 count. Charlotte can't believe she didn't win with a move that she has never won with. Becky misses with a top rope leg drop, but hits the Manhandle Slam and Charlotte gets her leg up on the rope to break up the pin attempt. Becky gives us a "Wooo" and puts on the Figure Four, but Charlotte rolls it over. Charlotte "hits" a moonsault to the floor. Charlotte puts on the Disarm-her, but Becky is able to get to the bottom rope. Charlotte rolls up Becky, but is caught cheating grabbing the rope. Becky reverses it, grabs the ropes, doesn't get caught and gets the victory. The announcers tried to sell this as the best match in WWE history, but it just didn't click for me like I had hoped. Plus, that ending was terrible.
Match Rating: ***
Team Raw (Bobby Lashley, Austin Theory, Finn Balor, Kevin Owens & Seth Rollins) vs. Team SmackDown (King Woods, Jeff Hardy, Sheamus, Happy Corbin & Drew McIntyre)
Kevin Owens walks away from his team and is immediately counted out to start things off. Not a bad way to make a payday. SmackDown chops Theory, making his chest look like a tomato early on. Things start to break down and we get the spot where everyone runs in and hits a big move. Corbin hits his shoulder into the ring post and Balor hits Coup de Grace to eliminate Corbin. Team Raw singles out Hardy until he can make a hot tag to Woods. He goes up to the top rope, but Lashley crotches him behind the ref's back and he hits him with a Spear and then puts him in Hurt Lock to eliminate Woods. Lashley and McIntyre go at it and it spills to the outside. Both men get counted out to a lot of boos and I agree. They keep going after the match and then McIntyre knocks out Rollins before leaving the ring. Sheamus avoids a Coup de Grace and hits the Brogue Kick to eliminate Balor. Theory hits a dropkick on Sheamus and almost eliminates him. Sheamus gets hit by a superkick from Rollins, but he kicks out at 2. Theory rolls up Sheamus and he is eliminated. Sheamus attacks Theory and then laid out Hardy for not being in his corner on his way out. Rollins hits a Frog Splash on Hardy, but he is able to kick out. Hardy hits a Swanton on Theory and he is gone. It's pretty incredible how over Hardy is still despite them doing nothing with him since his return. Hardy counters the Stomp and hits a Twist Of Fate. He goes for the Swanton, but Rollins gets the knees up. He hits the Stomp and gets the victory for Team Raw. That was a long match that had some good moments, but not enough to make it really memorable. We got some more poor booking in here, but that seems to be expected in modern WWE.
Match Rating: ***
Roman Reigns walks into Vince's office and he's pretending to text with his red phone. Vince talks about his golden egg that Vince was given as a gift from The Rock. He says it's worth $100 million. Someone honestly thought this segment should have been on this show.
The Rock's 25th Anniversary 25 Man Battle Royal
Sami Zayn, AJ Styles, Omos, Ricochet and Street Profits all get televised entrances. The Street Profits get the honor of bringing the Pizza Hut Triple Treat Box to the ring. AJ Styles comes out of the ring and cheers on the competitors from on top of the announce table. Omos tosses out the jobbers to kick things off, while R-Truth sneaks a slice of pizza. Truth offers it to Omos and then to Otis, who takes it and eats it. Truth slaps him in the butt and Otis tosses him out. Omos then eliminates Otis in the battle of 4 letter names that start with the letter O. Cesaro is in this thing, as in the same guy who main evented pay-per-views earlier this year. Ricochet hits a nice dropkick to eliminate T-Bar or something. Omos eliminates Shanky in a duel that no one wanted to see. Dolph Ziggler tries to make nice with Omos after he eliminated Bobby Rood, but AJ comes out of nowhere and hits him with the Phenomenal Forearm before eliminating him. Zayn tries to rally Cesaro and Ricochet as the only SmackDown wrestlers left, but it doesn't work and it leads to the Street Profits eliminating him. This thing feels like it's been going on for 30 minutes already. After a tug of war, AJ is eliminated and now it's Cesaro, Street Profits, Omos and Ricochet left. Omos tosses all of them out except Ricochet, so we get a showdown. It doesn't last long and Omos tosses him out, eliminating 12 out of 24 competitors. This felt like it went on forever and Omos just is basically Giant Gonzales 2.0. AJ goes for the pizza, but the Street Profits intercept it and run around tossing out slices. What a time to be alive.
Match Rating: 3/4*
Usos vs. RK-Bro
Riddle starts the match out hot and reminds you that despite whatever you might think of him, he is a really good worker. The Usos quickly go to work on him after hitting a suicide dive. Orton finally gets tagged in and hits his snap body slam. Orton hits two suplexes into the announce table and then a draping DDT in the ring. Riddle tags himself in and hits a series of kicks. The Usos fight back and hit a pop up Samoan Drop on Riddle. Usos hit the double superkick, but Riddle kicks out and the announcers just can't believe it. Jimmy Uso goes for a top rope splash, but Orton comes out of nowhere and hits the RKO in a nifty end of the match for RK-Bro. This felt TV match-ish, but the ending was well executed.
Match Rating: **3/4
Sonya Deville and Adam Pearce are with Vince and he realizes that someone stole the egg. Vince says he'll get to the bottom of it tomorrow on Raw. Vince doesn't need to be on TV any more.
Team Raw (Carmella, Queen Zelina, Liv Morgan, Rhea Ripley & Bianca Belair vs. Team SmackDown (Toni Storm, Sasha Banks, Shayna Baszler, Natalya & Shotzi)
Storm rolls up Carmella fairly quickly and Carmella throws a fit. We get your pretty standard Survivor Series match up next. A lot of these matches just kind of feel like they are going through the motions. The crowd agrees and get the wave being started. After a bunch of meaningless stuff, we finally get Sasha and Bianca. They have a nice sequence that leads to a DDT and Ripley breaking up the attempt. Zelina comes in and Bianca tosses her at Sasha for a 2 count. Storm is in and eliminates Zelina. She really didn't get much of a shot in this match. Morgan comes in and we're getting a bit of a flurry of eliminations here with her eliminating Storm. Sasha eliminates Liv and it's 4-2 now. Ripley gets eliminated by Baszler. This match hasn't been bad, it just hasn't been interesting. SmackDown starts fighting amongst each other and as a result Sasha has been eliminated, which makes the crowd very unhappy. Natalya hits a spinning clothesline and slaps on the Sharpshooter. She gets out of it and rolls up Natalya to eliminate her. Bianca fairly quickly eliminates Baszler and now it's only Shotzi and Belair. Shotzi hits a top rope crossbody, but Bianca rolls through. Shotzi gets out of that and gets in a little bit of offense. It's short lived and Bianca hits the KOD for the victory. This was very dull, which is a shame.
Match Rating: **
Paul Heyman makes fun of the Brooklyn fans backstage.
Big E vs. Roman Reigns
Things start off slowly, as we have come to expect with modern era Roman Reigns. Big E drapes Reigns on the apron, but Reigns moves out of the way and Big E is injured. Then we go back stalling. Eventually, Big E fights back and throws Roman into the steps. Big E hits a couple of belly-to-belly suplexes and a splash. Big E tries to keep the momentum going, but Roman catches him with a Samoan Drop. Roman hits a really nice one-armed sit down powerbomb for a 2 count. Roman hits a Rock Bottom and gets another 2. Roman then hits 3 Superman Punches, but Big E is back on his feet. Big E hits the Spear through the ropes and it looked like he almost had a nasty fall. He throws Roman back in the ring and he hits Big E with a Spear for a close call. Big E hits the Big Ending, but Reigns grabs the bottom rope. Reigns throws Big E into the steps and hits another Superman Punch. He throws him back in the ring and Big E goes for the Big Ending. Roman counters, hits the Spear and that is all. Really? That was about as dull of a finish that I could think of. The match wasn't very exciting either.
Match Rating: **
Well, this show was about as unmemorable of a show that wasn't terrible that I can think of. I already can't remember which wrestlers were on which brands at this point. WWE so desperately needs a shot in the arm and unfortunately I don't see it coming anytime soon. I'm still hopeful that something will hook me back in, but until then I will stick to watching the older stuff.
Overall Rating: 48%
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