Casual Wednesday (?!), 8/10/2022

 Remember when I used to write on a consistent schedule, putting out like four blogs a week, all over 2000 words? Yeah, me too. Sorry about that. Life, as Jeff Goldblum taught us, tends to find a way. In this case it finds a way to derail my plans on writing about every show I watch and instead turns the blog into a scattershot series of Casual (insert day here).

On the plus side, we got a paid gig as a features writer for an actual website to be named later! And the basement’s nearly finished! And we’ve got two interviews this week for mechanic-adjacent positions with a forklift and a golf cart company. So everything’s coming up Oso, as we say.

But enough about me, let’s talk about what happened over the past week! Triple H has unquestionably changed The Game (I’m so sorry) as far as Raw, SmackDown, and even SummerSlam. Bringing Dakota Kai, Scarlett, Carrion Cross, and IYO SKY onto the main roster showed Trips’ dedication to “his guys” and a willingness to rectify what he saw as mistakes in personnel management. I think it’s pretty great - let the guy use people he really sees something in and hopefully they can work in their first or second chances on the main roster. 

There was a lot more wrestling on our WWE wrestling programming as well! The women especially got a lot of time, even though the crowd wasn’t exactly great for Monday’s IYO SKY debut. Once the more casual Raw viewers get exposed to SKY’s abilities I’m sure they’ll be for her to do her thing. Also that’s gonna be really annoying to type every time, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I mean, I did it for WALTER, right?

SmackDown brought the return of Carrion Cross and Scarlett, interrupting Drew McIntyre’s promo at the end of the show. An exciting return, as Triple H booked Carrion as an unstoppable monster before he was moved to Raw and, well, the less said about that the better.

Monday brought some welcome changes as well, with KO reverting to full on bad guy status, Bayley establishing her faction as a powerful force on Raw, and some creative camera work to boot! The crashed car in the background of the shot of Owens’ interview wasn't even referenced at the time, and was actually used later to set up (possibly) the ousting of Nikki Cross and Doudrop from the Women’s Tag Team tournament. Later, a nice panning shot from an interaction between Alexa Bliss, Asuka, and Bayley and pals seamlessly segued us into the main event, as we caught up with AJ Styles walking past the ladies on his way to the ring. A nice touch that really adds production value, and shows the audience that the backstage area as a living space for everyone instead of a series of staged vignettes.

Holy crap we also got a Women’s Tag Team Tournament! The Championships, dormant since Sasha Banks and Naomi left them on John Laurinitus’s desk and walked out of the company, are on the line over the next few weeks. We already had IYO SKY and Dakota Kai qualify, and I strongly feel like some shenanigans are afoot that may change other teams’ inclusion in the brackets. 

And what about AEW? Well, since we last chatted, we’ve had a fantastic week that started with last week’s Rampage featuring Jon Moxley defending his interim championship against Mance Warner, who was featured during Ric Flair’s Last Match show. A solid brawl between two solid brawlers, I thought it was a fun match, even if it wasn’t as violent as I would have expected between these two. Madison Rayne’s debut match was solid, if a little short and cut off by the lengthy picture-in-picture pseudo break. Takeshita had a nice squash of Ryan Nemeth to set up his match with Claudio Castignoli at Battle of the Belts, and the main event street fight saw Swerve in our Glory defeat Tony Nese and Josh Grey in a very fun TV match.

Battle of the Belts was Saturday, and I regret to inform you I missed that because Saturday was also my eleventh anniversary with my delightful partner, Mo Good. I plan on checking that out while I continue my flooring project after this blog posts, before tonight’s Dynamite kicks off. I have, of course, heard great things about the main event, so I’m looking forward to checking that out.

And I think that’s it for now! I’ll, of course, update you via Twitter and Facebook once I know when my first Features article posts.  I’m hoping to get a little more consistent here, but we all know what happens when I say that aloud.Still, I’ll do my damnedest to be back for Casual Friday to talk Dynamite, All Out, Battle of the Belts, and maybe expand on my hopes for the Triple H era.  Also, follow my Twitter for updates as I continue my quest to watch #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days!