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) Crown Jewel currently doesn’t have any of its normal major gimmicks yet (a la Greatest Royal Rumble, Biggest Battle Royal, World Cup, Tuwaiq Trophy, King of the Ring, Queen’s Crown, etc). Do you think this was intentional (as in, Triple H and company decided those gimmicks weren’t worth the effort) or just a happenstance that it didn’t get booked this time around?
I wouldn’t rule out the idea that they purposely said “no more gimmicks like that” and actively decided against booking it. There are only a limited amount of those ideas they can realistically do, and none of them have been particularly good. If they decided to just do another Biggest Battle Royal or an arbitrary tournament that wouldn’t be acknowledged anymore like the Tuwaiq thing, we’d all see right through it.
However, I think it didn’t happen this time around less so because of an active decision and more of a passive forgetfulness. I’d imagine someone asked if they’re going to do anything like that, someone else said “we’ll figure it out if we can think of something” and nobody pitched anything worthwhile, so they just decided it wasn’t necessary. Logan Paul is the real draw, along with Brock Lesnar appearing again. That’s “good enough” essentially.
2) Do you think any more matches will be added to the card for Crown Jewel? If so, what do you think will join the lineup?
I’m surprised Ronda Rousey isn’t appearing, but she doesn’t have any contenders lined up that would make sense to me, so there goes that idea, based on the SmackDown tapings.
Something involving Johnny Gargano could work. Maybe he and Dexter Lumis team up against The Miz and Baron Corbin? Or Mustafa Ali gets a shot at the United States Championship and fights Seth Rollins? Those are the only two I can think of that I could picture being added to the show on the next episode of Raw.
3) Emma is back in WWE. What are you interested to see coming from her in the future?
Emma’s not someone I had in my top 5 that I wanted to see return by any means, but I’m hopeful she’s improved enough that she has a much better run this time around. At the very least, I can hope she doesn’t have anything going on as terrible as the whole Emmalina gimmick. Yeesh.
If she stays a generic no-character type performer like we saw this week, there aren’t any feuds I’m clamoring to see. When she was more of a plucky babyface, it would have been interesting to see that character go up against Bayley to act like a mirror to what she used to be, but I don’t see that happening.
At this point, I’m on the more pessimistic side, thinking she’s going to be more of a “good hand” type role, rather than someone who will get much of an investment or do many noteworthy things. Hopefully, I’m proven wrong.
4) What do you think this Scrypts thing will turn out to be in NXT?
Off the top of my head, I have no real idea. That makes it infinitely more interesting to me. More often than not, something like the White Rabbit and the burning mask are so clearly Bray Wyatt and T-Bar that it’s more of waiting for confirmation than getting surprised. This one is a complete toss-up for me, kind of like when Ember Moon came back to NXT for a bit and I thought that was Bo Dallas.
My gut tells me the person doing this Riddler-esque character isn’t someone we already know coming back. I’m thinking it will be a new Superstar yet to debut. Anyone like Beau Morris or Caleb Balgaard. Pick a random name and it’s as good a guess as any.
But if it does end up being someone we already know, I think it’ll be someone returning from outside the company, rather than a repackaging of someone already on the roster. I can’t see Bobby Roode or Boa or Commander Azeez or someone being turned into this kind of gimmick. Maybe Noam Dar…maybe.
5) What was your biggest takeaway from AEW this week?
It was fairly uneventful, from my point of view. At least they didn’t have any major awful stories coming out about another backstage fight or something.
Overall, when it comes to the television product, the main thing I paid attention to was MJF’s promo, per usual. The follow-up with The Firm attacking him is playing well with this babyface turn tease and I think a lot of fans will start buying into that act, just to get swerved when he’s still a heel at Full Gear. I loved it.
Let us know your thoughts about these questions by answering them in the comments!
