[WNS COLUMN] Nicholas Pruner's WWE Week in Review #3 (8/17 - 8/23)

Monday Night RAW:

- Oh god not the Authority opening RAW again. Anything but that! I'd rather gouge my eye out with a pitchfork!

- The Authority promo was boring as hell. They went over matches at Summerslam to plug it and the Network, which yet again has a free month for new subscribers.

- The tag team opening contest was good, but could have been much better because all four men in the match are awesome. More believable nearfalls, and the match would have been a little more exciting.

- The Luke Harper Vs. Roman Reigns match was pretty good. It dragged in the middle a little bit, but the ending was great. Harper is such an awesome worker who can move very well for his size.

- Tamina should be booked much better than she is. She's supposed to be this bodyguard for Naomi, but loses to Becky Lynch in four minutes. Saddening.

- RIP Mark Henry's career.

- Dolph Ziggler's return was awesome. The crowd popped big for him. Lana's kick to Summer Rae looked good. I wish the match at Summerslam was a mixed tag, but I'm sure that'll come later down the road.

- So Miz is in a title match this Sunday when he loses to the champion clean in two minutes? The booking here is off.

- We really don't need contract signings. Just name those segments "Confrontation" or "Face-to-Face" and it'd be fine. I'm sure I'm not the only one to go "ugh" when I hear about a Contract Signing on these shows. However, Cena was great here. Rollins was good too. Cena had great intensity, and built up the match this Sunday in a great way because he put a lot of pressure on Rollins to make sure HHH didn't make a mistake to name him the "future of the WWE". I like it.

- So now that the "Divas Revolution" is going on, the Tag Team division gets the short matches. An 8-man tag team match shouldn't be three minutes long. Give the teams some time to work!

- Nikki Bella has lost more matches as champion than anyone else in history it feels like. Seems as if WWE is keeping the title on her until she hits 296 days, so they don't ever have to mention AJ (since she's affiliated with CM Punk) ever again.

- The ending was great. The ovation for Lesnar in his hometown was awesome. The pop for when he returned in 2012 was louder, but this was one of the best he's ever gotten. The crowd was half-booing Taker, which is weird because he usually gets some of loudest pops ever as he's a bonafide legend.

Tough Enough:

- And Tanner is eliminated! By god, a Tanner Vs. Cesaro match would have been awesome!

- For people who don't know, the guys will face Cesaro and the girls will face Alicia Fox next week on TE.

- There's WWE kissing Ronda Rousey's ass again! That was so blatant having Sara Lee do her move. WWE, you can do better!

- I don't really know how much of a face-change you need for a crossbody. I thought Tanner looked fine.

- Josh goes to the coaches wanting to do a Powerbomb! Josh, step by step buddy, you'll get there sooner or later! I give him props for wanting to do that though. They give him a running powerslam to do instead, and he does it almost perfectly.

- Renee Young, you're good looking and all, but stop making us feel like idiots! If people don't know the rules of the show after nine weeks of watching this abomination, we got problems.

- Amanda stole the Stratusfaction/Bodog! I guess it makes sense because we'll probably never see the Stratusfaction again and Bo Dallas is a jobber so the same goes for him. However, Amanda looked really good in doing the move.

- ZZ shows up and wants to do a "Gator Grip". The coaches have him do a Flapjack before it. It looked pretty good, but Josh definitely outshined. I will give ZZ credit for naming his move, but Josh did that too.

- They had some "quick thinking" questions for the contestants. ZZ was very rattled during the whole thing, and gave a very horrible final plea.

- Josh actually had more votes (46%) than ZZ (34%), which will make the finale interesting. People are already saying ZZ will win, but how much of that 20% would go to Josh or ZZ? It's a good thing to ponder for this Tuesday.

Smackdown:

- Five matches this week, so I'll give it that. Even though it's only one more than the past two weeks, it makes a difference.

- The crowd and the announcers were dead for the Big Show Vs. Ryback match. Can't say I blame them. Even though Ryback has improved so much since teaming with Curtis Axel, this match was pretty boring.

- Even though they are the heels, the New Day was cheered so much after winning their match. Obviously, WWE put a soundboard over it. They like to do that. A heel can't be cheered. It can't happen, damnit! I wish they wouldn't put soundboards over it.

- Ziggler and Rusev gave a very forgetable promo about their match at Summerslam. Let's move on.

- It's so sad to see how much Bo Dallas has fallen in the past two years. Last year, he had an awesome ladder match with (Adrian) Neville for the NXT title. Now, he's losing to him in a few minutes. Saddening, damnit!

- I like the Stardust and Barrett promos. They're different, and Stardust is funny. He makes the goofy gimmick so believable. Barrett just looks so weird being with him.

- The Bellas gave a promo because they want the viewers to brutally hurt themselves. It was very forgetable, but it set up a Triple Threat Match.

- Brie Bella won because WWE just wants to piss all the fans off. At least the main event can make us happy.

- When you put eight of WWE's best performers in a match, you'll get a masterpiece.

- Cesaro, Randy Orton, Dean Ambrose, and Roman Reigns Vs. Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, Sheamus, and Kevin Owens.

- The last point is because the match sounds so awesome, it needed it's own bullet point.

- I like to have as many bullet points as possible.

- The faces won the match after Ambrose hit a Dirty Deeds on Harper. It was odd as those two men will face each other at Summerslam. Everyone else hit their finishers except for Cesaro to set up the finish.

Summerslam:

- I'll do this review here because this isn't posted until Monday.

- There should have been a special set for the event. The show just felt like an upgraded version of RAW with no special stage. That's sad considering that this is supposed to be the second biggest event of the year.

- The Kickoff had nothing interesting on it, at all.

- I thought that having Foley there was great. It was a positive way to start the show. Some complained that there was a promo to start the show. But they are the same people who loves the beginning of Wrestlemania 30 where Rock, Austin, and Hogan had a long promo. It was hypocrisy.

- I love Orton and Sheamus as performers, but I hope their fued is over now. They have built up Sheamus with him beating Orton, now he should move on.

- The PTPs had a very forgetable reign, but I'm glad that the New Day won the titles again. They are MUCH more interesting with the titles. I'm also happy that Los Matadores didn't win. They should go back to being Primo and Epico. They were much more interesting then. I hope New Day fued with the Usos when they come back. That'll be interesting.

- I had high hopes for the Rusev Vs. Ziggler match, but it felt very flat, especially the ending. Obviously, they are setting up the mixed tag at Night of Champions, but it could have been done in much better fashion than a double countout.

- I thought Stephen Amell did a good job. His selling was a little low, but it's not like he has a lot of experience. I thought his dive was good. The crowd popped big for Neville.

- Ryback was made to look weak that he capitalized on Show's move to win against someone like Miz. It'll set up a Show Vs. Ryback match at Night of Champions. At least I'll get a bathroom break for 10 minutes.

- No Heyman, Stewart is a much better host for this show than David Letterman could ever be for wrestling.

- I thought the tag team match would get double the time it actually got (11 minutes), but it was a good match to wake the crowd up after a mostly-terrible first half of the show.

- After the tag match, I walked to Cumberland Farms to get me a soda. I needed caffeine to keep me awake after a pretty boring first half of the show.

- I missed the first five minutes of Rollins Vs. Cena. I thought the Frog Splash by Rollins looked beautiful. The Attitude Adjustment by Rollins looked great as well. Cena sold all of the moves so well. Give him credit. He's had an awesome 2015 in terms of match quality.

- I don't know where WWE is going with Stewart helping Rollins. I feel as if it was a swerve for the sake of a swerve more than anything. I won't be surprised if this doesn't turn into a storyline.

- The match between Rollins and Cena was amazing, but Rollins desperately needed a clean win, and he didn't get it here.

- The Bellas worked over Paige way too long in the match, but the match came out good. I'm so happy that the divas got 16 minutes on Summerslam. Definitely an improvement from last year, or the past 10 years.

- I wished Cesaro and Owens got at least 5 more minutes. The match came out good, but was so short, at least it felt that way to me. Cesaro was throwing OWens around like he was El Torito, and it looked awesome. Owens got to showcase his power and agility. Either man could've used the win, but both men came off as strong after that amazing match.

- The Undertaker Vs. Lesnar match was good. They showed a lot of intensity and Undertaker proved that he could still go at 50-years-old. The finish was VERY poor. You could tell that a lot of the crowd was expecting an interference, as most looked at the stage at some points. The fans felt cheated with the finish. I did too. We wanted a decisive winner, and we didn't get one.

Final Score: I'll give this week a 6 out of 10.

RAW was decent enough to pass. There were a lot of promos on it because it was the go-home show for a Pay-Per-View. That's usually how it goes, and I don't mind it. Mark Henry should just retire. He's doing absolutely nothing anymore. Tough Enough was good. It's about damn time that we see them do this type of stuff! From last week's matches to this week's finisher class, Tough Enough has finally gotten a little better and not so much drama. Smackdown was a horrible show with a good Main Event. No wonder why no one really watches it anymore! Summerslam was good, but the booking was really off. I really hope that WWE follows through with Stewart helping Rollins. That should be the storyline going into the rematch at Night of Champions. The ending to Summerslam felt a little flat. I'm sure a lot of people were expecting Kane, but obviously that didn't happen. Still, it was a different kind of ending, but it felt stupid. The timekeeper should know when to ring the bell. He has to wait for the referee's call. I'm sure Dana White was watching and laughing because it was so stupid. Dana's usually wrong too.

Feel free to add me on Facebook (Follow me on there as well!) to ask me any questions on anything WWE. I'd love to hear from the WNS fanbase!