The Post’s Joseph Staszewski brings you around the world of professional wrestling every Tuesday in his weekly column, the Post Match Angle.
WWE finished up the latest edition of its draft, and here are five takeaways with nearly all the moves made a few free agents remaining.
One of the strangest moves of the draft was switching Raw women’s champion Bianca Belair to SmackDown and SmackDown women’s champion Rhea Ripley over to Raw. One, we just saw this two years ago with Flair and Becky Lynch and you kind of negate Belair’s nearly 400-day reign as champion. I guess a testy belt exchange could help the Belair-Ripley feud down the road. Moving a Charlotte Flair over to Raw made more sense.
When all the drafting was done, Ripley was left with far more interesting challengers than Belair. Right now she just has Charlotte Flair and Iyo Sky, whom she will face at Backlash on Saturday. Unless their is a surprise coming, SmackDown has less established stars and ones Belair has already beaten in Michin, Lacey Evans, Zelina Vega, Asuka, Shotzi, Bayley, Dakota Kai and Tamina. Over on Raw, Ripley has major fresh contenders in Becky Lynch, Liv Morgan, Raquel Rodriguez, Ronda Rousey, Trish Stratus and Shayna Baszler. Belair might not lose until WrestleMania 40 now unless it’s to Flair.
With Roman Reigns staying on SmackDown and Cody Rhodes sticking with Raw, WWE then nicely shook up the top of the card around them. There is a great batch of potential World Heavyweight championship contenders on Raw with Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Gunther, Shinsuke Nakamura, Drew McIntyre, The Miz and Finn Balor and even Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn.
While I would have liked to keep Edge in that group, I wouldn’t mind seeing him and Reigns again or have him in a real feud and Austin Theory. A.J. Styles and the The OC going over to SmackDown gives Reigns and The Bloodline a new faction to feud with, too. Bobby Lashley could also be an immediate challenger for the Tribal Chief.
Moving both the women’s tag team champions in Isla Dawn and Alba Frye (SmackDown) and their title contenders Tuesday in Katana Chance and Kayden Carter (Raw) felt strange, along with current women’s champion Indi Hartwell (Raw). Hartwell’s injury status could have played into her jump.
The NXT callups will mostly have a positive effect on the tag divisions with the two women’s teams and Pretty Deadly (SmackDown) and the mid-cards with Cameron Grimes (SmackDown), JD McDonagh (Raw), Zoey Stark (Raw) and Odyssey Jones (Raw). All solid, but not flashy additions — except for Grayson Waller getting moved to SmackDown when Raw went off the air. Maybe it happens to put a chip on the character’s shoulder, but it felt wasted there as he is maybe the most high-profile call-up.
Adam Pierce should have just let Brock Lesnar interrupting the draft be the end of the draw on Raw, because for three hours we watched the majority of the wrestlers stay on their respective brands. The first four picks were all pretty much determined by selections made on SmackDown and there were zero major moves or returns like we got on Day 1. Lesnar got to “cut a deal” to be free agent and appear on both brands — when free agent isn’t even the right word while you are still employed. Just a really lackluster night. No team’s were broken up; even The Usos’ fate was determined mid-show.
The biggest takeaway really should be that WWE needs to look long and hard at how it does its draft. If you aren’t going to have separate GMs, maybe appoint a legend be the person running a specific brand’s draft rooms so wrestlers can lobby them for a week or two. Try having matches where superstars — one male and one female — can earn the right to pick what brand they want to be on or give NXT two or three picks so there is a threat of someone going down. Anything has to be more interesting than the hallow pageantry we got this year.
A strange ending can often spoil a good thing and that’s exactly what we saw in Jade Cargill’s TBS championship defense against Taya Valkyrie where the challenger could not use her Road to Valhalla finisher. The match itself was one of the better ones of Cargill’s reign with a super-plex and Canadian Destroyer before the finish happened.
Valkyrie, a decorated veteran and past world champion in other promotions, got so flustered by ref Aubrey Edwards telling her for a second time she could attempt her finisher or risk disqualification that she completely paused and looked confused. It allowed Cargill to roll her up, with a pull of the tights, to get the win. Then Valkyrie, the babyface, got so mad she attempted to give Edwards her finisher. I know AEW needs to get this to a match where Valkyrie can use her finish, which is the same as Cargill’s, but this way felt uncreative and made her look silly in the process.
It would have felt weird for Cody Rhodes and Brock Lesnar not to touch before their match at Backlash. Rhodes surprising The Beast and landing that one good punch really was enough to set the stage.
Booking Carmelo Hayes in a championship rematch with Bron Breakker at NXT Battleground makes it pretty clear they want to make Hayes a babyface champion. Breakker’s spear to Trick Williams should be on every one of his highlight reels from here on out.
At least AEW gave us some tension — between Jungle Boy and Darby Allin, along with Sammy Guevara realizing MJF is not his friend when he shut him out of a limo ride — to keep things a little interesting in the world title picture. Tay Melo killed her promo trying to talk sense into Guevara on Rampage.
Thought WWE did a superb job with Seth Rollins on Raw as they are finally playing up the fact that Roman Reigns hasn’t beaten him during his title run. If a a potential Rollins reign as World Heavyweight champion is going to mean anything, his segment with Paul Heyman is a good start.
Roderick Strong will play better in AEW than he would in NXT or WWE right now, so this is the right move for him, and Kyle O’Reilly’s eventual return will form another very formidable trio. But it’s hard to not feel some Black and Gold AEW vibes right now.
“AEW All Access” has been mostly disappointing. What I hoped we were getting was more about the wrestlers as people – Ruby Soho talking about her lack of confidence growing up as an example this week. Instead, we have gotten some silly wrestling-based drama that’s months old around stuff that’s already scripted in a show that feels geared to people who are already fans of the product.
Trinity Fatu (Naomi) debuted for Impact Wrestling at its Spring Slugfest show on Friday night. It’s a great spot for her to jump-start a singles career, a ton of fresh matches, and a good opportunity to become a world champion. She was immediately put in a segment with Knockouts champion Deonna Purrazzo.
The OC, in AJ Styles’ return from injury, just punking out the Viking Raiders felt weird but I understand wanting to establish them on a new brand.
The six-man tag at Backlash is pretty much a must-win for The Usos after losing on SmackDown and again on Raw. Jimmy and Jey certainly are smart enough to see the games Paul Heyman is playing with them and Solo Sikoa, aren’t they?
CM Punk feels like he is on a goodwill tour, recently stopping by WWE Raw and Impact in Chicago. What I think it shows is how much Punk truly misses wrestling and hopefully he makes an AEW return with a clear head.
Cody Rhodes vs. Brock Lesnar, Backlash (Saturday, 8 p.m., Peacock)
We are about to learn just how bad Rhodes’ post-WrestleMania adversity will be in this first-ever singles match. This could be a Lesnar squash if WWE wants to stretch this to SummerSlam. Either way, it’s supper important to Rhodes’ story moving forward.
Honorable mention: The Firm Deletion (Rampage, 10 p.m. Friday, TNT)
Alex Kane, MLW
MLW is fully behind Kane after a star-making performance to win the Battle Riot as its first entrant to earn a world title shot at any time. Kane, 29, even got to dominate the match for a portion just choking out opponents.