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) If Seth Rollins is forced to vacate the World Heavyweight Championship, what do you think WWE should do with the title situation, and if you think they’ll do something different, what do you think they will do?
Obviously, this depends on the extent of his injury. If he’s able to sit out of action for a few weeks, rest and rehab it through non-surgical means (or through a surgery that puts him in a quick recovery) and still wrestle at WrestleMania, then I think the best course of action is to have him keep the belt and just not wrestle in the meantime. Then, he can drop it at Mania and take time off to get fully healed.
If he does need to miss out on WrestleMania, then I could see one of these avenues being the best to explore (in no particular order):
- Seth vacates the title. Royal Rumble is now for the championship. CM Punk wins. We have to establish a new No. 1 contender to fill in for the Royal Rumble challenge idea. That takes place at Elimination Chamber for the men’s match. Likely challengers are either Drew McIntyre or Sami Zayn, I guess. Unless, of course, they can convince someone like Stone Cold to come back to fight Punk.
- Seth vacates the title. An impromptu new champion crowning Fatal 4-Way type match or whatever takes place on Raw. Either a new champion is crowned with them, or Damian Priest cashes in. Punk wins Royal Rumble and challenges this new champion.
- Priest cashes in. Wins the title and goes into Royal Rumble as champion. CM Punk wins the Royal Rumble. Priest has to defend the title in the Elimination Chamber. Drops it there due to some miscommunication problem with Finn Balor. That leads to them going into WrestleMania with problems defending the tag titles, while Punk fights whoever wins the title at Elimination Chamber.
What I hope will happen is that Rollins is fine enough to keep the title and the match against Punk goes off like planned.
My prediction, though, is that Rollins is dropping the title, a new champion is crowned on Raw and is likely Drew McIntyre, and then Punk is just set to fight him instead.
2) The AEW Rankings system is going to return. Are you for/against/indifferent to this?
To be honest, I never liked the rankings. It didn’t matter to me if Matt Sydal had a 10-2 record if the only people he beat were Ryzin and VSK and such on AEW Dark. The same goes now for matches against nobodies on Rampage or whatever. The quality of the wins means more to me than the quantity.
AEW tends to be booked in more of a sports-oriented numbers game than I’m a fan of. I agree with Bully Ray’s comments from the past about Tony Khan being more of a match maker than a booker, in that he pairs names off that he thinks would have a good match and that’s what he wants to see. It works for some people. Not for me the same as being more invested in the storylines. So when the rankings are a thing, it becomes even easier to avoid storylines and tell the “story” of “Guy X has # of wins, which allows him to challenge Champion X.” and that’s it.
If the rankings can be tweaked to matter more beyond the pure numbers, and that it will influence stories beyond just “you’re ahead of me in the rankings, so I want to win more matches to overtake your spot”, then it can be a good thing. I have zero faith that will be the case. It’s just going to be a simpler method to book challengers for champions by looking at their win-loss records.
3) Nic Nemeth (Dolph Ziggler) and Ash by Elegance (Dana Brooke) in TNA, Black Taurus in AEW/ROH, Jack Perry in New Japan…who excites you the most?
I don’t watch TNA or New Japan, so overall, those appearances won’t matter as much to me. Unfortunately, Black Taurus is probably going to be more on ROH than AEW, and I don’t watch that, either!
But in general, Taurus strikes me as someone who will be a good hand, but not necessarily a game-changer. Perry could have some interesting matches in New Japan, and he’s always been a good in-ring performer, so I bet that will be fun to watch, overall. Ash by Elegance doesn’t strike me as a character I’d get invested in, but I’m glad Dana Brooke is getting a chance to show more character than she ever really got in WWE.
The one I think will make the biggest impact, no pun intended, is Nemeth. I fully expect him to win the TNA Championship soon enough and be a primary focal point for that company for quite a while. It should rejuvenate him in a way he’s not been feeling in the past few years in WWE.
4) If you had to venture a guess, where do you think Kazuchika Okada will go next after leaving NJPW?
It’s going to be AEW. Look at the track record. All these people who do guest spots on Dynamite, Collision, Rampage and pay-per-views for AEW over the years NEVER end up going to WWE when they become free agents.
Sure, WWE may enter contract negotiations with them. But we don’t even know if that’s entirely true, or how far along they get. It always just seems like there’s a few weeks of “they could go either way” reports, and then, they pop up on AEW television to say they never thought about going elsewhere.
Will Ospreay. Jay White. What’s the likelihood Okada will want to go to WWE where he doesn’t know how anything works there in comparison to AEW, which he’s more familiar with and would likely pay just as much, if not more, for a lesser working schedule?
The only way I see Okada coming to WWE is if they appeal to him with the idea of WrestleMania and his overall legacy in pro wrestling mattering more than if he just went to AEW and was “another one of the top guys” there not holding the title. They’d probably have to guarantee him a world title reign within a year in WWE, and a big match at Mania against a prominent person (like AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Cody Rhodes, etc)
5) Butch has returned to using the name Pete Dunne. Are there any other Superstars you think should follow suit to revert to previous names/gimmicks?
If it counts, I think it’s stupid whenever they shorten Angel Garza and Humberto Carrillo to just “Angel and Humberto” on their official roster pages. It just shows how little they value them overall that they even think their last names are investing too much time in putting them over. It can’t be a matter of shortening it makes them think fans will connect with them more. If that were the case, why isn’t Solo Sikoa just “Sikoa” and why isn’t Randy Orton just “RKO”?
For that matter, give Shotzi the Blackheart surname back.
Katana Chance is a ridiculous name. Kacy Catanzaro has no reason not to use her real name. I doubt owning the trademark is ever going to make a difference for her or WWE.
Let us know your thoughts about these questions by answering them in the comments!
