Welcome back to another Monday Morning Q&A where I toss out some questions to get a feel of how you guys and gals are feeling about certain topics.
So here are 5 questions I’d like to toss out for this week. I’ll give my answers, too, but the key here is that I want to know what YOU think! So make sure you chime in!
1) Aleister Black popped up on AEW Dynamite and will now be known as Malakai Black. Who are you most excited to see him face in future matches?
The Cody Rhodes feud is already something I would have been interested in, as Rhodes is among my favorite performers in AEW. He’s pretty much always going to be on any lists like this for me.
The same goes for Kenny Omega. That’s a no-brainer.
Darby Allin, Lance Archer and Jon Moxley could work well with Black on the darker, more brutal side of match styles.
Orange Cassidy, without a doubt. He’s in my top 5 favorites in AEW and I’d love to see how his style could both clash and sync well with Black’s.
I’m curious to see what Black vs. Andrade could be like with the gloves off. They’ve had great matches before, so we know it’ll at least be good, but it may even be leaps and bounds above what they did together in WWE.
Jungle Boy’s a solid pick all the time. So are Pac and Chris Jericho.
While I’d normally have MJF and some others here, I don’t think they’ll work as well against Black in comparison to those 10 names, but I’ll surely check out those matches with anticipation just the same.
2) Which did you like better, NXT Great American Bash or AEW Road Rager?
Ultimately, I enjoy NXT’s product better than anything else in wrestling today. Each segment isn’t always better than anything else on another show, but it’s the most consistent with what I tend to like the best.
Road Rager had some great content for sure, but I’m going with Great American Bash by a smaller margin than I thought it would be. That street fight main event of Dynamite was a lot of fun, in particular. However, on points, NXT wins with things like a title change involving Tegan Nox finally returning, Adam Cole vs. Kyle O’Reilly and the opening tag team contest.
3) Will Johnny Gargano beat Karrion Kross for the NXT Championship on Tuesday night?
I’m flip-flopping every day on this. Sometimes, I’m dead set on the idea that he’s obviously winning it. Other times, I’m thinking to myself “That’s ridiculous. There’s no way Kross is dropping the title.”
It’s tough, cause I do think Kross is going up to the main roster in the next two months, but there’s a precedent for multiple ways to do that. He could drop the belt here in some sort of screwjob involving Samoa Joe, then fight Joe (if he’s cleared) as his send-off. Kross could retain, then vacate the belt after being drafted after SummerSlam. Or, this could all be a red herring and he’s still in NXT at this point next year, for all we know.
Currently, I’m leaning more toward the idea that Gargano won’t win the title and Kross will simply vacate it. However, if it does happen and Joe ends up screwing Kross either intentionally or unintentionally, I won’t be utterly shocked.
4) Before it begins, who do you think will win the NXT Breakout Tournament?
Josh Briggs is 100% my pick to win. They cleaned him up (for whatever reason), sat on debuting him for a long time and finally brought him in through this.
Last time around, Jordan Myles wasn’t given a ton of fanfare and it helped make him a surprise winner. This time, Briggs was just another one of the guys and has been featured only on 205 Live once. Meanwhile, someone like Ikemen Jiro has had about five or six matches and has built up enough steam that he could just keep climbing up the ladder without this victory.
Briggs is also one of the bigger guys. That alone could position him as a priority project.
5) Bayley’s out for Money in the Bank and replaced with Carmella as a random TV match. Shotzi and Nox are now on SmackDown, along with Toni Storm. Two more spots are empty in the ladder match. What’s going on and how do you feel about it?
Bayley’s injury sucks. It’s a shame she’s not going to be able to perform in front of a crowd since she missed WrestleMania and will likely miss next year’s, too.
WWE should have been better prepared and not needed to randomly bring 3 people up that are currently in other storylines in NXT. That just reeks of desperation and being caught without a plan.
Those three women are great, though. I’m excited to see what they can bring to the table on SmackDown and I’m hoping they get great opportunities, other than just being filler to fix an immediate problem for a few weeks.
The Carmella replacement is weak. That’s not a slight on her, but it’s just a matter of fact. There’s no heat there. They didn’t even bother to set it up in a better way than just Sonya Deville announcing it. Why couldn’t they have had a match between Carmella and Liv Morgan with the winner getting the title shot, Carmella cheats to win, Morgan calls b.s. on it and Sonya says “I’ll tell you what. Since Carmella won, she gets the title match, but you can take her spot in the ladder match.” That would have killed some more time on the air (which they need) and it would have worked better for all parties.
It’s a bad situation that proves once more that they need to plan ahead more, which they seem to absolutely refuse to do.
Let us know your thoughts about these questions by answering them in the comments!
