As seen on tonight’s episode of SmackDown Live, AJ Styles pinned Chris Jericho in a Fatal 3-Way for US Championship to capture the title. Kevin Owens announced after the match that he wants his rematch for the Title on next week’s show.
Also confirmed for next week’s show is John Cena facing Nakamura for a shot at the WWE Championship against Jinder Mahal at SummerSlam.
Ross says that while this past Sunday’s Battleground PPV has been widely criticized by fans and critics alike, he doesn’t believe any of that should be placed at the feet of the talent who he thought worked very hard on Sunday night. He believes we’re living in a society where the glass is always half empty, when in reality it could be half full as well.
He says that sometimes WWE has the tendency to book themselves into a corner, and that might have been the case this past Sunday. With a Flag Match and a Punjabi Prison match, WWE removed the drama of false finishes and this might have been a negative to the show’s overall presentation.
He thought Kevin Owens and A.J. Styles had a very good match, but there was an intangible missing and that prevented it from being great. He says that if he was booking a territory today two of the first individuals he’d want to sign are Owens and Styles. Ross also thought Cena & Rusev worked hard in their match despite the live crowd being somewhat uninterested.
Ross thought all the women worked hard in their match as well and while Natalya winning was a surprise, Ross thinks this was a great booking decision by WWE. Charlotte is obviously the alpha female in WWE right now but she needs opponents, so Ross thinks it’s only a matter of time before this Natalya win results in a positive situation for Charlotte.
As previously reported, Emma voiced her frustrations on Twitter over not being used on weekly WWE RAW programming. She wrote, “watching Alexa Vs Bayley… Then Sasha and Nia.. Love watching others get more opportunities that I never get! Cool..”
This week Emma got her wish and was booked in a one-sided match against Nia Jax on RAW. After her loss against Nia, Emma took to Twitter and comment about the loss and also attempted to take a dig at Alexa Bliss’ jacket:
Alexa caught wind of the dig and pointed out how Emma doesn’t even have any merchandise:
As seen on Monday’s episode of RAW, rapper Wale was ringside for the show in Washington, DC. Corey Graves mentioned a meeting with Wale “in Richmond” today, which is where tonight’s SmackDown & 205 Live tapings will take place from. It will be interesting to see if WWE does anything with him on tonight’s show.
Wale appeared on the July 4th episode of SmackDown Live as the host for the rap battle between The New Day and The Usos. You can check out footage from that appearance below:
As seen on Monday’s episode of RAW, Big Cass destroyed The Big Show after he came down to make the save for Enzo Amore.
Dave Meltzer mentioned on today’s installment of Wrestling Observer Radio that Big Cass vs. The Big Show at this year’s SummerSlam event is the direction WWE is going with this feud. Meltzer indicated previously that this match may be going down at SummerSlam, but after Monday’s attack on The Big Show it is much more clearer now that this match will take place at the Summer blockbuster event.
WWE officials are very high on Big Cass, mainly because of his look and his size. He is expected to receive a push coming out of his split from Enzo Amore.
Russo is joined on today’s show by Skull Von Crush (Big Vito), his old co-host from Vicious Vincent’s World of Wrestling in the early 90’s. They will discuss Sunday’s Battleground PPV.
Russo says that without entertaining characters and in depth storylines, these shows are just full ok fake fights. That’s not what made him a fan of wrestling many years ago, and he believes that’s a big reason why so many mainstream fans have left the product over the last several years.
He thought the opening match of the show between The Usos and The New Day was a very exciting match and all the guys worked hard, but they started the show at such a high octane pace, that it almost made it impossible to follow. He also says the one superkick that was delivered to Xavier Woods from across the ring looked incredible and it looked like it should have legitimately killed him. Having him kick out of a spot like that doesn’t do anything good for the business.
Vito says that he agrees entirely and he felt that this match negatively affected the matches that followed. He thought the match between A.J. Styles and Kevin Owens was the worst match he’s ever seen Styles work, and that should never be the case because Owens is a good worker as well. The finish of this match was so anti-climatic after all the false finishes we saw in the opening match of the show.
It is no secret that WWE Superstar Nia Jax and The Rock are cousins. The Rock has shown his support to his cousin a number of times before.
Here’s a relatively older video of The Rock putting over Nia Jax:
The Rock has stated that Jax has the potential to be the most dominant female athlete in the history of the WWE. Here’s something The Rock wrote along with the video given above in an Instagram post from December last year:
“She ain’t like most girls. Me and my cuz @niajaxwwe (Lina) layin’ down our post workout ?. Really proud of the hard work she’s putting in 24/7 to become a real asset and draw for the WWE and their Women’s Division which has some of the best female athletes on the planet. Luv spending hours with her chopping it up because she’s so coachable & enthusiastic to learn the wrestling business inside and out from me. But what I’m most proud of about Lina’s journey is she represents millions of young girls around the world who don’t fit the “traditional mould” of what girls in the entertainment industry look like. She’s an inspiring example that regardless of your look, height, weight, race, the most powerful thing you can always be is yourself. Because you’re perfect. Just keep putting in that hard work and being humble and hungry. We’re all rooting for ya. #IronParadise #NiaJax#FutureWWEWomensChamp #WhyBeLikeMostGirls #WhenYouCanBeYourself ??”
Once again, the Great One has taken to Twitter to praise his cousin and her progress in the company.
Jax posted this tweet after last night’s episode of Monday Night RAW:
To this, The Rock replied:
What do you think about this great altercation? Sound off below in the comments!
As seen at Sunday’s WWE Battleground event, The Great Khali returned to the company and helped assist Jinder Mahal retain his WWE Championship Title against Randy Orton in a Punjabi Prison match.
Bryan Alvarez mentioned on today’s installment of Wrestling Observer Live that the company could be moving towards a tag match between The Great Khali and Randy Orton at this year’s SummerSlam. It was noted earlier today that Khali was brought back to the company to help get Jinder over. If a tag match at SummerSlam is the plan, that would mean that Jinder would be teaming with Khali at the event. This would also mean that the WWE Championship title will not be defended on the card.
We should have a clearer understand after Tuesday’s episode of SmackDown Live in the direction the company is going. The original plan was for Mahal to defend the WWE Championship against John Cena but those plans could now be off the table.
Kurt Angle announced in the opening segment of tonight’s RAW that Brock Lesnar would be defending his WWE Universal Championship title in a Fatal 4-Way at SummerSlam against Roman Reigns, Samoa Joe and Braun Strowman. Here is the updated card:
WWE Universal Championship
Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman vs. Samoa Joe vs. Roman Reigns
SmackDown Women’s Championship
Naomi vs. Natalya
WWE SummerSlam will take place on August 20, 2017, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. As always, we will have live coverage of the event.
X-Pac opens today’s show speaking about Shane McMahon’s forced helicopter landing from last week. He says that it didn’t surprise him for a second that Shane came out of that incident uninjured, and it was amazing to see how calm Shane was when he was being interviewed after the fact.
Speaking about last Monday night’s revelation that Jason Jordan is Kurt Angle’s son, X-Pac says for a minute he thought the whole thing might have been a shoot. He says that Angle is known to have had relationships with African American women in the past, and the age gap definitely works out.
X-Pac welcomes Kevin Kiley Jr. (Alex Riley) to the show.
Riley says that he was always a big fan of X-Pac from his time in WWE during the attitude era, and X-Pac always came off as a very real character who had a natural confidence in himself. X-Pac thanks him and says that he was never one to cut a masterful promo, but he was able to make his character work in different ways.
Riley informs that after he parted ways with WWE he immediately wanted to pursue acting. He says that his short stint at broadcasting in NXT was fun, but at the end of the day he wanted to venture out on his own. He was lucky to garner some interest in Hollywood right away and he soon landed a role in the Netflix series GLOW.
Bayley defeated Sasha Banks to earn a shot at the RAW Women’s Championship against Alexa Bliss at the upcoming WWE SummerSlam event.Here is the updated card:
WWE Universal Championship
Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman vs. Samoa Joe vs. Roman Reigns
RAW Women’s Championship
Alexa Bliss vs. Bayley
SmackDown Women’s Championship
Naomi vs. Natalya
WWE SummerSlam will take place on August 20, 2017, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. As always, we will have live coverage of the event.
Steve is the Founder of RingsideNews, AllWrestlingNews, and Wrestling dot News. He has been writing about professional wrestling since 1996. He first got into website development at the time and has been focusing on bringing his readers the best professional wrestling news at it’s highest quality.