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Good Morning!
…and happy Friday! A bitterly cold weekend awaits us Coloradans, and I know a lot of the rest of the country has their own fun weather to deal with including floods, bomb cyclones, and other intimidating ways our planet has decided to use to mess with us. Fortunately, I’m sure if you’re reading this you’re probably tucked into your cozy home. Maybe your place is like mine, and your bathroom is conveniently located in the center of your home, making it the warmest room in the whole house! If that’s the case, well, I’ll try to make this a longer post so you have a chance to warm up while you’re in there.
It’s been a strange few weeks for me. Things have just felt a bit off without my little pug sidekick, and my first real experience with American health care over the last month has also thrown me off my normal game. Nothing is wrong, that I’m aware of…it’s just weird to have such a disconnect between several different doctors who are all, in theory, supposed to work together to make me less likely to die. But they got me a machine that makes me not swallow my uvula (the thing that hangs in the back of your throat) so that’s swell.
Anyway, enough about me. We got a lot of stuff to talk about, so let’s crack in!
“It’s A Soap Opera With More Suplexes and Less Violence”
…in which I discuss the storylines that keep us watching every week
The Road to WrestleMania is already full of twists, turns, and some great-looking potential matches. Punk versus McIntyre, Lynch versus Ripley, Bayley versus SKY, KO versus Waller…I think I could list about twenty singles bouts just off the top of my head! The thing is, we’ve also got around twelve weeks of WWE programming to fill, including my favorite Premium Live Event of the year (Royal Rumble) and an international show in Australia (Elimination Chamber). But with SmackDown’s addition of a Fatal Four Way match at the Rumble between Roman Reigns, Randy Orton, AJ Styles, and LA Knight – a match made because Roman couldn’t just let one of those other guys win the match clean – fantasy bookers have already started to wonder if Roman couldn’t just drop the title two months earlier than many of us originally thought.
I don’t buy that one. I’m sure Roman will hang on to the belts until ‘Mania, and I’m still one of the believers in Cody Rhodes “finishing the story” at the Granddaddy of them all, beating Reigns for the belts in the main event. Rock/Roman is a cool story, but I think nostalgia might be giving some folks rose-tinted glasses; after all, The Rock isn’t getting any younger, and while he looks great he’s also not been in a real singles match since 2013.
I would lean into the rumors of Rock vs Roman in Australia, personally. The Rock could even win! The Head of the Table isn’t a title that needs to be defended (not that we’ve seen a lot of Roman’s actual titles getting defended, either) and a Rock win would push a story of Reigns losing everything before he loses his titles. Rock could even make a WrestleMania appearance, calling off Roman’s family as the new leader of the Bloodline after Reigns summons them to attack Cody.
AEW’s hard reset continued, but it also felt like it was paused for the big homecoming show at Daily’s Place. The home of the promotion during the pandemic, Daily’s was also where Brody Lee made his debut, which is why we got a pair of eight-person tag matches in honor of the late, great big man. More importantly, new champ Samoa Joe met a trio of would-be challengers to his title as Swerve Strickland, “Hangman” Adam Page, and HOOK (all caps required by law) all met him in the ring to declare themselves contenders. I like the idea of Swerve and Hanger just maintaining their rivalry for the rest of time, picking it back up whenever they cross paths. HOOK looks to be the first up, with that match against Joe coming next week.
We also got the implication of who will be the opponent for Sting’s final match at Revolution – the returning Young Bucks! The Bucks, sporting some incredibly douchey looking mustaches, headed towards the ring after Sting and Darby won their match against Powerhouse Hobbs and my sweet Cinnabon son, Konosuke Takeshita. I would love for the Bucks to bully their way into championship gold before then, so Sting and Darby can win the title and allow Sting to retire as an AEW champion. I don’t think going out on your back is as big a deal as it was in the old days, and the Stinger has probably done more than any veteran (aside from maybe Dustin Rhodes) in putting over young talent. So let the guy, a hero to so many fans of both my generation and the current kids watching, ride off into the sunset with some gold.
And on NXT, we saw Oba Femi, a very large rookie, cash in his (not)Money in the Bank contract to win the North American title from Dragon Lee, immediately after Lee defended that title against Lexis King. The big guy has all the natural tools to be a great WWE Superstar, and I guess Shawn Michaels believes that too because the kid is already strapped up!
We Watched Some Wrestling!
…in which I recommend some of the best stuff I saw last week
Dynamite gave us Sting and Darby Allin versus Hobbs and Takeshita, and that was a blast. Sting – a 67-year old man – performed a Scorpion Death Drop off of Daley Center’s unique architecture, Darby jumped off a thing, and Darby himself was yeeted across the ring by his two massive opponents. It was really fun. The opening contest between Hangman Page and Claudio Castignoli was a hard hitting blast, as well! And going back to Saturday, Collision’s highlights included a great tag match between FTR and the House of Black, and a good, violent slugfest between Trent Baretta and Eddie Kingston.
RAW’s main event between Cody Rhodes and Shinsuke Nakamura was fine, but if you’re only looking to watch one good WWE match this week, go back to last Friday (I know, it’s already Friday again!) and check out that Triple Threat between AJ Styles, LA Knight, and Randy Orton from SmackDown! It was a great time, even if you know the outcome. Raw did feature some strong promo work from CM Punk and Drew McIntyre and well as Becky Lynch.
Let’s Remember A Guy
…in which we reminisce about a lesser-known wrestler or gimmick from the past
It’s crazy how often a guy saddled with a weird gimmick will get stuck with a few more. It makes sense – a promoter might see that there’s a talented worker under that sparkly Stormtrooper mask or Christmas tree getup, and just keeps throwing ideas at them until something sticks. Today’s Guy is one such performer, a guy named Barry Darsow. While he worked as a few characters, my personal favorite of his was Repo Man.
Repo Man was fantastic, full stop. An over-the-top wrestling Hamburglar with gear that implied he’d been run over by a car, Repo Man’s whole thing was repossessing your stuff. Whether you were late on payments for your car or your hat (yes, he once repossessed Macho Man Randy Savage’s hat) Repo was always there to take what was no longer legally yours. And he didn’t wait, either – he’d frequently tell lovable interviewer “Mean” Gene Okerlund that some kids were mere minutes late on their ten-speeds’ payments, which he’d ride to the ring. “
From his debut in November of 1991, Repo Man was consistently portrayed as a heel, feuding with Virgil on behalf of the Million Dollar Man for the first year of his WWF run. He’d go on to have rivalries with Big Boss Man, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and the British Bulldog. All the while, he’d have some great promos where he was reminiscent of The Riddler in the Adam West Batman series. He always had his handy tow hook and rope, and wore a Zorro-style mask and a trench coat outfitted with shoulder and elbow pads made from old car tires, and license plates (or tire treads) fitted to the back spelled out REPO.
It was a great, goofy character, but Darsow wanted more from it. He said he loved doing Make-A-Wish stuff for kids, but it didn’t really work for a bad guy. He asked Vince McMahon to let him finish his WWF run as a face, giving kids bikes instead of repossessing theirs. Unfortunately, McMahon declined, and the Repo Man ended his WWF TV career in a tag match with Damien DeMento against the Bushwhackers on March 22, 1993. He signed with WCW shortly afterward, but aside from a few appearances in matches like the WrestleMania X7 gimmick battle royale, the Repo Man was finished.
Why hasn't WWE done another one of those gimmick battle royales? It feels like we’re due!
The Mailbox
…in which I answer your questions
No mail this week...hopefully I find a question for next time! I love digging for answers to your questions, wrestling related or otherwise.
Closing Up Shop
…in which I say goodbye for now
And that’s it! Thanks for coming with me on that journey. No pay-per-views or premium live events this weekend, so it’s “just” the five hours of WWE SmackDown, AEW Rampage, and AEW Collision to keep up with.
For real though, I really want to put the effort into adding more than one post a week. I think it’s weird to try and cover a week’s worth of shows on Friday, especially when three of the 12+ hours of regular TV I keep up with takes place on Friday, with another two on Saturday – and that’s not even counting the four hours of additional stuff we get on pay-per-view/premium live event weekends. So I’m working on kind of a template – not repeating the Casual Friday thing, but maybe a shorter recap paired with a list of some kind – like the stuff I used to write over at Wrestling, Inc.
We’ll see you next week for the usual Casual Friday blog. If you have questions, concerns, or comments, drop 'em in the comments section below! And follow us on Twitter (X), Facebook, BlueSky and/or Instagram using the links on the right.
Thank you so much for reading. If you liked what you saw, consider telling your friends, mentioning Let’s Watch Some Wrestling on social media, or even buying me a hot cup of coffee using the Ko-Fi button. Have a great week, and we’ll see you back here next Friday. Until then, Let’s Watch Some Wrestling!
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