WWE DOUBTS Bray Wyatt’s Fiend?! Sasha Banks WWE RETURN & Turns HEEL! | WrestleTalk News Aug 2019

Sasha Banks returns to WWE. Sasha Banks’ hair turns heel! And the King of the Ring tournament has been announced!

And are WWE already losing faith in Bray Wyatt’s Fiend character?

Click the timestamps in the video description below to go straight to any of those stories.

I’m Oli Davis – give us a subscribe, press the thumbs up button, and answer our question of the day in the comments: What do you think of Sasha Banks’ WWE return? Because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA NOWHERE! And click the ‘i’ above my head to give your rating of the show – where you can choose from: RawSome, Cor, AVRAWGE, Poor and RawFul – as I review the 12th August episode of Monday Night Raw!

 

Which is now actually called Monday Night Rollins again. Or, if Michael Cole has his way, Monday Night Becky Lynch’s Boyfriend. Seth thanked us all for believing in him, the WWE Universe, his bank account, to be interrupted by the brilliant heel faction The O.C. – which set up a match between AJ Styles and Seth for the main event.

The Street Profits then recapped what’s going on in WWE right now, for Sami Zayn to warn them about the perils of the main roster. He’s right Street Profits. Run! Run while you’re still over! But in so doing, Sami insulted Samoa Joe who, you guessed it, was standing right behind him. 

Joe then tapped out Zayn in seconds, which seemed to be continuing his babyface turn alluded to last week… until immediately after when he trashed the crowd, God dammit. 

Dolph Ziggler came out for his match against The Miz still selling his ribs – what a jabroni, hey Seth? – saying he can’t compete tonight, which was actually a rouse to blindside Miz. 

They actually had a pretty good TV match, with Dolph tapping to Miz’s Figure 4 – for Ziggler to do his same ‘tis but a flesh wound’ routine again. 

Ricochet interrupted Elias’ song, leading to a match between the two. Elias, remember, being a SmackDown star, wildcard. Ricochet rolled up Elias after dodging a guitar attack to win. 

Following Andrade’s back-to-back wins over Rey Mysterio in the last two weeks, the two had a 2-out-of-3 falls match here – where Zelina Vega helped Andrade get one pin right at the start, for Rey to obviously get the second fall to go to the tiebreak-INCORRECT! Andrade then just won the second fall too. A 2-out-of-3 falls match just went two falls. That’s 100% booking!

Interestingly, Rey told Charly Caruso backstage afterwards that he’s got no idea where his career his going, and then mumbled something about his family. Because eventually he will get his son Dominic pushed. 

Michael Cole then rather unprofessionally took a Skype call from Stone Cold Steve Austin mid-broadcast, which was a very transparent way of 1) endorsing Rollins to get him over after his recent social media gaffes, and b) Austin has a new TV show.

Drew McIntyre told Not Renee Young backstage that he’s going to boot Cedric Alexander’s skull in. And then proceeded to do just that, taking about 80% of a really decent TV match between the two, and somehow making Alexander look awesome too – including a bunch of close roll-ups from Cedric, a Spanish Fly off the top rope and a This Is Awesome chant from the crowd. T

Robert Roode quickly beat No Way Jose next – hopefully signalling an actual push for him – but in only the second biggest hair heel turn of the night… he did so with a full beard. Roode’s moustache, we hardly knew ye. In its beefy honour, here’s a Moustache Break-I can’t even say it, it hurts so bad.

Paul Heyman then complained backstage that WWE had decided Brock Lesnar wouldn’t be getting a rematch for the Universal Title. Paul, didn’t you hear, they’re antiquated. The most fun part here was everyone pretending that Brock was actually in his dressing room in the building, when he’s quite obviously not.

The Revival vs Lucha House Party was only ever a backdrop to 24/7 title shenanigans, where R-Truth and the usual undercard chase interrupted it, for the Revival to become the first ever 24/7 co-champions before Truth won it back. 

Elias then jumped Truth backstage with a guitar to leave the show as a three-time champion. I’m hoping this means a new direction for the belt, as the Truth schtick has run its course, but he’ll most likely have won it back in a WWE.com video by now.

We got the seventeenth replay of the Roman Reigns Mystery Attacker recap promo in the last two days.  

Natalya came down to the ring with her arm in a sling, selling her Disarmher-ed arm from the previous night – what a jabroni eh, Seth? – and then started to talk about it being almost a year since her dad died, for purple haired Sasha Banks to interrupt with her return. It’s a pretty heelish move, which Banks doubled down on by not only attacking Nattie, but also by having her hair turn heel, pulling off the purple wig to reveal the cool, cynical blue hair beneath.

In fact, the Toronto crowd were so into Natalya eulogising her dead father, they chanted ‘Thank You Sasha’. 

This brought Becky down for the save, as she now respects Nattie after their SummerSlam match, but Banks wailed on her with a chair. This was a great return, and sets up the first properly engaging Lynch feud since WrestleMania.

The Viking DON’T MENTION THE WAR EXPERIENCE Raiders squashed their latest enhancement team. You know the last month of their Raw matches, yeah. That. 

Hot off their rubbish SummerSlam match against the IIconics, Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross took on the Kabuki Warriors for the Women’s tag team titles, who looked so much better without the awkward visual of their ‘business manager’ Paige, who was off having neck surgery.

Despite Asuka and Kairi Sane being so much fun to watch in the ring, Alexa and Nikki managed to isolate Sane for a pretty quick win. It’s good the women’s tag titles are actually getting focused on – that’s two weeks in a row now! – there’s not enough talent in the division to set up any other feuds.

But there’s more than enough talent in WWE’s midcard for a multi-week spanning tournament, which is exactly what was announced next – with the fantastic news that King of the Ring (one Michael Cole called ‘the most prestigious tournament in sports entertainment’) will be starting next week. Yeah… I can’t think of any other wrestling tournaments that are so prestigious that have had some of the best wrestling of all time recently…

Hopefully a Universal Championship shot is on the line for the winner to give it a big, red, juicy stake.

The main event saw Seth have his torso taped up again, selling his rib injuries from Brock Lesnar the previous night – what a jabroni eh, Seth? Wait a seco-which gave AJ a big advantage early on. 

But because they were heels, they wanted even more – with The O.C. eventually running in and beating up Seth for the DQ loss. This brought out Ricochet, who also got beaten up – so Braun Strowman cleared house for the big monster babyface spot – potentially setting up Braun as Seth’s first title challenger. Which is probably a better use of him than Maria Kanellis and the 24/7 title.

This was a really solid episode, with steady progression of feuds and characters, the very welcome announcement return of King of the Ring, and a fantastic angle with Sasha Banks’ heel comeback. Crucially, there was no Fiend. Which is frustrating because I want to see him so bad, but in the long run, is very smart, because it just makes me want to see him more.

This week’s Raw is Cor.

Speaking of The Fiend, here’s Chopper Pete with the news…

Great review Oli! IT’S BOSS TIME. SASHA BANKS IS BACK. But still though, Sasha Banks to AEW confirmed.

With AEW’s All Out drawing closer, it doesn’t seem like they’re stopping in signing more and more talent, and the latest to sign on the dotted line is Jim Cornette’s favourite wrestler, Orange Cassidy.

 

The signing was announced on the latest episode of Being the Elite, and features him blending his contract in with some orange juice. As you do.

 

Cassidy was received very well in his appearances for AEW so far, so this seems like a very good signing for the company. Can’t wait to Vitamin C him in action…

 

But now we go from one end of the spectrum to the other as we switch from Orange Cassidy to Goldberg. Now that’s a match I want to see.

 

At SummerSlam, Goldberg repeatedly destroyed Dolph Ziggler in a very entertaining segment, with Ziggler continually calling out Goldberg, with him answering with spear after spear after spear.

 

Not everyone was a fan of this segment it seems though, as the latest Twitter feud has sparked between Goldberg and former WWE star Jack Swagger, now going by real name Jake Hager in his MMA career, or by Jake Strong in Lucha Underground.

 

Clearly Swagger wasn’t thrilled with Goldberg’s match, as he tweeted:

 

“Maybe if u have a match on #summerfest, u should be able to work a match. @Goldberg . I’m tired of this shit…”

 

To which Goldberg tactfully responded:

 

“Easy kid”

 

Swagger would then do his final reply, saying:

 

“Ok. But can u at least kick out on 2?”

 

This is in reference to Goldberg kicking out of two Dolph Ziggler superkicks at 1, which seems to have riled up Swagger. I personally, think it was fine, though maybe the second superkick should have gone to a two count.

 

Swagger is just the latest star to have some sort of beef with Goldberg, following in Matt Riddle’s footsteps, but perhaps he could get a face-to-face meeting with him if he gets an invite to the new super duper SmackDown show that Goldberg will be appearing at! Somehow I don’t think he will.

 

WWE announced yesterday that they’ll be hosting a SmackDown 20th anniversary show, which just so happens to be their debut show on new network Fox. What a happy coincidence that is. Despite the first show airing in April 1999.

 

This looks like it will be a Raw Reunion-type show, with legends such as Kurt Angle, Booker T, Hulk Hogan and well-known SmackDown stars Goldberg and Sting. I’m sure they’ll share all their memories of being on the brand.

 

In what is pretty clearly an attempt at a ratings bump for their first show on a new network, it’ll be interesting to see if it has the same effect as the Raw Reunion, which bumped Raw’s rating up significantly, or whether this will have some sort of diminishing returns effect, as this is the fourth time doing this kind of show, after Raw 25, SmackDown 1000, and the aforementioned Raw Reunion, in two years, and the second in three months.

 

Well hopefully after The Fiend’s incredible debut at SummerSlam, he can just come out and destroy every single legend, and that would be awesome. However, there might be a worrying sign for fans of The Fiend.

 

In a rare move, WWE uploaded The Fiend’s full entrance from SummerSlam to their YouTube channel, which was over three minutes long. Now, however, they have edited the video down to just 55 seconds.

 

The reason for this is as of yet unclear, but an interesting thing to note is it seems to cut out parts with the severed head lantern on show, so perhaps the severed Bray Wyatt head lantern was considered a step too far. Could this mean the lantern will be scrapped on future entrances?

 

It could also just be an error on their part, and they weren’t supposed to upload the full entrance, but that doesn’t seem as likely as it took them a long time to respond to it and chop it down.

 

The entrance from SummerSlam was considered by many to be the talking point of the night, with some calling it one of the most important things to happen in WWE in recent memory. The last thing fans would want is to have Bray Wyatt’s creative vision stifled, because that glimpse into The Fiend we got was perfection.

 

Fingers crossed Wyatt can continue being Wyatt and bring his own severed head to the ring as a lantern. I can’t believe that’s a sentence that makes sense.

 

It’s been teased that there’s a shocking movie coming in Phase 5 of the MCU! Check out ScreenStalker today with Luke and Housemate Simon to find out all the details by pressing the video on screen now! Press the thumbs up, subscribe and bell icon before you go though, and leave us a comment letting us know what you thought of Raw! A special thank you to our pledgehammers on Patreon, some of whom you can see scrolling below me right now! I’ve been Chopper Pete Quinnell, and that, was wrestling.

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