Welcome back to another round of Quick Takes—a post that indulges in the topics that aren’t worth dedicating a full article to, but are still on my mind.
Each week, I try to cram in as many smaller talking points as I can via a speedier process, and I invite you to chime in with your own thoughts about these topics and anything else by keeping the discussion going in the comments below! Drop some more talking points in there for everyone to chat it up about, too!
Without further ado, let’s get into this week’s topics.
Keith Lee Relinquishes North American Championship
There’s been a running theme of late in professional wrestling of double champions. It’s pretty strange how often this has happened in the past few years and Keith Lee is the most recent example.
But true to WWE form, while they feel they can put the tag titles and more on Bayley and Sasha Banks as a means to stall with that feud and stretch that out, putting in as little effort as possible to give Bayley a legitimate challenger, WWE’s thrown in the towel for Keith Lee already.
He vacated the North American Championship with the excuse that he doesn’t want to take any opportunities away from others as he focuses on the NXT Championship—something that reiterates how that title’s more important, but hey, we all knew that anyway. That’s no surprise, nor was this a bad call.
There will be a series of Triple Threat matches to determine the five competitors who will face off in a ladder match at the upcoming TakeOver XXX event the day before SummerSlam.
So far, we know Bronson Reed has qualified after getting an upset over Roderick Strong and Johnny Gargano. That was incredibly, incredibly shocking to me.
Next week, Finn Balor, Dexter Lumis and Timothy Thatcher will fight for the second spot. Beyond that point, the other candidates are completely unknown.
This got me thinking about who might be in the other Triple Threat matches, who could wind up in the ladder match and who the next champion may be.
At a quick glance at the roster, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of options for filling in the remaining nine spots. There are more than nine superstars on the brand, but could you really see a need in putting Chase Parker and Matt Martel or Denzel Dejournette in contention, for instance?
I’m assuming some of the guarantees will be Cameron Grimes, Damian Priest and Bobby Fish.
Maybe Tony Nese will get inserted into a Triple Threat, or Jake Atlas, or Killian Dain.
I’d love to see Dominik Dijakovic not only make it into the ladder match, but possibly even become the new champion. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though.
Quick Take on the winner prediction? Well, until he’s taken out of the competition, I’m firmly banking on Balor becoming the next champion, no matter who else gets in the ladder match.
Of course, if he loses to Thatcher or Lumis next week, that will make me have to think otherwise. However, that doesn’t mean he’d be out of the running quite yet.
WWE could very easily have one more Triple Threat (maybe Grimes/Priest/Fish) and then have the two losers of the three matches compete in two more Last Chance Triple Threat matches. For example, Gargano vs Strong vs Balor and Thatcher/Lumis vs the two who would lose between Grimes/Priest/Fish. That’s a way to maximize only nine people for 15 spots.
But hey, maybe we’ll get something else as shocking as Reed qualifying. Maybe this is going to be where Kushida shines or Babatunde comes into the mix or whatever.
In any fashion, I’m glad we’ll get a new North American champion, as I had zero faith WWE could pull off properly booking Lee as a double champ. I’m excited to see how this series of qualifiers plays out and I think the ladder match at TakeOver has a ton of potential to be great.
AEW Women’s Tag Team Tournament
It was announced on Dynamite this week that there will be an 8-team tournament focusing on the AEW women’s division.
Somehow, they think they have 16 women available who could form interesting enough tag teams to justify having this, despite how there’s like 6 currently active women on the roster and the rest will have to be filled in by people who only ever really show up on Dark.
You have to count a few names out like Awesome Kong (injured), Bea Priestley (travel restriction), Britt Baker (injured), Emi Sakura (travel restriction), Yuka Sakazaki (travel restriction), Kris Statlander (injured).
We haven’t seen Sadie Gibbs, Shanna, Mel, or Riho in a while, too. Is this really just going to be revolving around Dark competitors like Skyler Moore and KiLynn King? That’s not thrilling as few of them are established at all and since they aren’t signed to the promotion, they won’t seem like threats.
I’m curious why they’re giving it this extra tagline of The Deadly Draw, too. Is that another aspect of AEW’s obsession with poker/gambling connections? Is it supposed to be a gimmick where people have to draw names at random, which will explain why there’s no cohesion between the pairs?
If that’s the case, why are The Nightmare Sisters allowed to be on the same team instead of being in the hat with everyone else’s names?
But if that’s not the case, how does AEW seriously plan on pairing people up in a way that makes sense and doesn’t come off like it’s just a waste of time until the inevitable Brandi and Allie moments?
Looking at all the names available who have competed in AEW since the 21-woman casino battle royale last year, I’m struggling to think of some proper connections.
Leva Bates isn’t teaming with Penelope Ford, for example. Who is Abadon going to stand next to without looking weird? You can’t just stick her next to Big Swole and call it a day.
Maybe there are some weird plans for this. Maybe Nyla Rose and Vickie Guerrero will be a team where Rose will be the only one who steps in the ropes. Perhaps the same will happen with Britt Baker and Rebel, wherein Rebel will get all the action, lose and suffer a verbal thrashing from Baker as a result.
But even if you pair up Rache Chanel with Red Velvett or you put Diamante and Ivelisse together or something, I’m not feeling this concept until they prove there are actually 16 women with name recognition who are able to compete over the coming weeks.
NXT UK Heritage Cup
WWE has filed a trademark for “NXT UK Heritage Cup” and I’m very curious what that’s all about.
We haven’t seen any new content for NXT UK in months, as they were unable to run more tapings once COVID kicked in and everything started shutting down. Instead, NXT UK has been a series of clip shows that arguably shouldn’t even exist, as they’re probably not worth the time they’re paying the editors to create them. I doubt anyone’s really watching.
But WWE went ahead and trademarked this, which would seem to point to a tournament of sorts. I can’t imagine it’ll be something as awful as a tournament that takes place over Zoom or a crappy video chat based WWE Network program or anything of that sort. It pretty much has to be an actual tournament, right?
NXT UK TakeOver: Dublin was pushed to October, so perhaps WWE is hoping NXT UK can start recording episodes soon enough and they can run a tournament that will conclude at that show?
That would at least give fans some reason to watch. TakeOver could consist of WALTER against Ilja Dragunov, Piper Niven against Kay Lee Ray, Gallus defending the tag titles, possibly a cruiserweight title match if Jordan Devlin is around and they’ve settled that (although I’m assuming they’ll just keep it on Santos Escobar) and the finals of the tournament. That’s a good lineup, in theory.
What are your takes on these topics? Keep the discussion going in the comments below!
