Casual Friday, 5/13/2022

It's Friday the 13th! You know what that means.

It means we recap the week that was, and prepare for the week to come. It’s also a holiday around these parts, so Happy Friday the 13th for those who celebrate. Mrs. Pequeño and I will be double screening the day so we can enjoy the Jason marathon on AMC while continuing our quest to four-star every level of Overcooked: All You Can Eat. 

It also means we have settled on a name for the Friday review / recap / thing. Casual Friday it is!

This was a solid week for the big two letter companies. We saw the first round of the Owen Hart Foundation tournament kick off with a trio of good matches, albeit very different ones stylistically. Something for everybody, you might say. Wrestlemania Backlash was a surprisingly good show, and while most of the stories from there just kept chugging along on Raw, nothing was horribly offensive. (We save the horribly offensive storylines for NXT - ZING! I kid, I kid.)

So let’s get to the meat of this thing so we can all get back to watching Jason Voorhees. I mean, those camp counselors aren’t going to throw themselves into wood chippers. (That’s a Tucker and Dale vs Evil reference for the kids in the back.)

Some Things Worth Talking About for the week of May 7-13

The Owen Hart Foundation Tournament is off to a rousing start. I gotta tell ya, I was not expecting Jeff Hardy to move on in this one. Then again, after that match on Dynamite, I wasn’t exactly expecting either Jeff or Darby Allin to move in general, that was ROUGH. Just two daredevils doing their best to out-devil one another. I mentioned it in the recap, but I do see how it’s the right move from a booking standpoint. You keep Darby away from Cole, you have Jeff take the younger villain on. Jeff loses, maybe due to shenanigans, maybe the Hardys and Bucks are somehow involved? Next thing you know, the staredown from a week ago becomes the acorn and we’re already at a sapling come Double or Nothing time. 

I did a little looking after Dynamite, and it turns out the internet has been waiting for Jamie Hayter vs Toni Storm for some time now. I will readily admit that most of my wrestling opinions are based on what I see on the screen, rather than what I read on the interwebs. But that match was great, and I hope the folks who were waiting for it got what they wanted. I certainly enjoyed it. Storm is getting the respect she deserves, and I like Hayter as a foil for her. 

And then there’s Adam Cole and Dax Harwood. A tribute Shawn Michaels vs Bret Hart match from two guys whose careers were influenced by those legends, I thought they told a great story and actually went back and rewatched this one. I would have liked Dax to move on, but then we don’t have a solid heel on the way to the finals. Cole is so easy to hate, and so good at drawing it out and having good matches. I really think he wins the whole thing, although that Joker spot is always a wild card. I guess we’ll know more after Dynamite when both Jokers are revealed.

Backlash was a lot of fun and I’m happy with most of the results. With Hell in a Cell right around the corner, I imagine moving a lot of the Wrestlemania feuds into long term rivalries makes sense, even if only a couple of them will end in the actual Cell itself. But there’s no shortage of possibilities. 

The Usos and RK-Bro might use the cell for the tag team unification bout, since Orton said they’re going to Smackdown tonight to ask Roman if the Usos can have a match. That’s probably the favorite for at least one of the Hell in a Cell matches.

The Judgment Day, now featuring Rhea Ripley, seems ready to keep expanding. I think Edge and AJ Styles, or maybe a tag match with Damian Priest and Finn Balor in the mix, could also be on the show. I don’t see two Hell in a Cell tag matches happening on one show though. Maybe that’s when we add Ciampa to Judgment Day, as is the rumor. I like Edge being flanked by his Angels at the entrance, and there’s plenty of wrestlers who could use the TV time.

Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins seems like another rivalry that is going to end up in that monstrous cage, since losing twice hasn’t deterred Seth from going after Cody on Raw. The two matches they have had were both really good, and I can’t imagine Cody passing on the chance to fight in the Cell. Plus you know the guy loves a good crimson mask. If they get that far without Rhodes losing a match, I wonder if the usual 50/50 booking of WWE gets adhered to and Seth picks up the win, or if they just let Cody keep adding victories to his rebooted record on his way to winning Money in the Bank. 

Roman Reigns might be taking a lil’ break, and I think we can all agree that the man deserves one. I wrote a little bit on some ways WWE can work around his absence, if you’d like to check it out. 

The WWE Women’s division is all over the place right now. I’m a big supporter of women’s wrestling, so I’m happy that more than just the Horsewomen are being featured on Raw and SmackDown. But I don’t know what they plan on doing with what they have. Ronda Rousey beat Charlotte Flair for the SmackDown Women’s Championship on Sunday, taking Flair out of competition for a while in the process. That’s for the best - Flair tends to get overused whenever WWE seems to lack any other direction, and this will force their hand. Perhaps tonight we’ll see who Ronda will take on next, or whether there will be a SmackDown championship match at Hell in a Cell at all. 

In the meantime, Raw seems flush with returning talent to challenge Bianca Belair for her championship. We had Asuka return a few weeks ago, and she had the standard WWE “challenger fights champion for the opportunity to fight champion for the championship” match on Monday, although Becky Lynch saw to it that the match ended in a DQ. Sonya Deville is back to active competition, as it looks like her days as co-GM are at an end. Alexa Bliss also came back, and absolutely destroyed Deville in her return match. 

I’m interested to see what kind of character Bliss will play this time around. She had her old music back on Raw, rather than the “I wanna play” Fiend-adjacent version she had before her hiatus. Her gear looks like a blend of the old Bliss and the scary one, and she does still have Lily despite the therapy sessions. I guess we’ll learn more in the weeks to come. I’ve learned that it’s best to just let these things play out before making wild guesses and getting one’s hopes up.

This happened…

And I couldn’t be happier. I reflexively was mad at first - why squash Danhausen in his first in-ring action in AEW? But after talking with a friend, I calmed down and will trust in the booking. HOOK as the cold hearted handsome anti-bully? That’s a nice thing to have around. He’s the cool older kid from The Monster Squad or My Bodyguard.

If you get those references, congratulations, you too may have been raised in a video store.

A lot of people hate this partnership - hell, just look in the background during the scene above and watch grown ass men lose their minds. I personally love some entertainment in my sports entertainment, and Danhausen brings it in blimploads. We haven’t heard much from HOOK, maybe his mic skills aren’t what they want yet. He’s already captured the hearts of most of AEW though, so there’s no reason not to let him work on acting off TV while just being the imposing silent menace when he’s featured. I’m looking forward to seeing where this partnership goes.

We’ll close out the week with some matches I highlighted throughout the shows, in case you didn’t get a chance to watch the stuff I did. If you have any that I missed, or any that you’d like the Pequeño-verse to know about, please pop them in the comments!

Matches of the Week!

AEW Dynamite: Toni Storm vs Jamie Hayter was great, a brutal matchup between great competitors. Loved the match, and love when AEW does right by their women's division.

Monday Night Raw: Alexa Bliss vs Sonya Deville was a squash, but we got Bliss back, dammit. That’s enough to justify the two minutes of your time!

AEW Rampage: Jay Lethal (with Sonjay Dutt and Satnam Singh)  vs Konosuke Takeshita was violent, introducing us to a great new talent in Takeshita. Lethal is a great veteran and guided the match, but the brutality of Konosuke’s moveset was what stood out here.

AEW Dynamite: Adam Cole vs Dax Harwood and Darby Allin vs Jeff Hardy were amazing in VERY different ways. I’ll combine them here, but I’d say watch them both unless one of those styles isn’t your particular brand of whisky.

Wrestlemania Backlash: Cody Rhodes vs Seth Rollins II was definitely the highlight of the show, and my MATCH OF THE WEEK. Rhodes and Rollins took what they did at Wrestlemania and shifted the storyline. It wasn’t about Rhodes’s grand return to WWE this time, it was about Seth being a savvy competitor who can counter anything when he knows what he’s up against. Practically every Cody maneuver had a response from Rollins. Seth was on the defensive for the match, but not in a way that made him look weak or outmatched. If anything, it made Cody look better for having to dig deep for a way to go up 2-0 on the veteran villain. Cody won by out-cheating a cheater, which was one counter Rollins hadn’t foreseen. This rivalry could have ended here and I think it would have been great. They’ll have their work cut out for them at Hell in a Cell if they decide to do Rhodes Rollins 3.

I appreciate you stopping by, and would love it if you drop your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also follow me on Twitter @ElOsoPequeno, where I try to remember to post whenever I update the blog. 

And that’s it! That’s the week. We have an early Rampage this afternoon because of the NHL playoffs. Joe Bob and Darcy return for another Last Drive In on Shudder later, so Mrs. Pequeño and I will be staying up late. Four game 7s in the NHL tomorrow. No pay per premium live events, but I’ll definitely post a Rampage recap tomorrow and maybe something on Sunday as well. 

Don’t forget that the comments are down there if you have anything to say, even if you just wanna say hi. I don’t think we’re to the point where anybody is reading this yet, but if you discovered it I’m glad you’re here. Have a great week, friends!