Opinion
Matt’s Weekly Brainbuster: Power Rankings 12/12/19
Matt brings us another installment of his ELO based Power Rankings!
Welcome to the tenth edition of the Weekly Brainbuster Power Rankings!
What an entertaining week we have, as we learned more about WWE’s TLC on Sunday, and two supercard shows by NXT and AEW next week! We are discussing the week of 12/6-12/12! We will be comparing WWE (RAW and SDL), NXT (205 Live, NXT, NXT UK), and AEW! Not much has changed in NJPW, so, the next NJPW update will be after WrestleKingdom in January.
These rankings are very much based on momentum as well as strength of opponent, weighing out “power rankings” based on head to head results. Each week, I will discuss five difference makers in wrestling and, using science, prove why they had the best week in wrestling! Greg DeMarco and I will compare our lists, giving you all two different types of power rankings!
1) Finn Balor +9 [214 Overall Score]
Finn Balor d. Keith Lee & Tommaso Ciampa [#1 contender], NXT
There was no doubt in my mind after watching that match that the winner of that match was my undisputed #1 spot this week, and that just so happened to be The Real Rock ‘N Rolla, Finn Balor! Balor cements his claim to the NXT Championship, and remains a force atop the NXT Men’s leaderboards. If Adam Cole can stand up to the challenge next week it will be a career defining win, but, Balor wants to become a two time champion and I think he will do just that.
2) NXT Cruiserweight Champion Angel Garza +21 [53 Overall Score]
Angel Garza d. NXT Cruiserweight Champion Lio Rush, NXT
What a shocking title change! There was no one who thought Lio Rush would lose the championship so quickly after winning it in October. What I loved the most about this change, especially the timing, was that it felt very old school. I do like to say that about certain angles and matches, but the shock title change made me feel like I was watching NWA Worldwide in the 1980s. The only thing that was missing was Commissioner Regal reversing the decision! That was an excellent match and a huge win for Garza in the WWE.
3) The Revival +15 [31 Overall Tag Score]
The Revival d. Ali/Gable, Heavy Machinery, Lucha House Party, WWE SmackDown
Okay, so, this was a rather boring pick as the team can not keep any momentum to save it’s life, but this is a list based on momentum gained week to week, and few gained more momentum than Fists Not Flips, as The Revival laid claim to another opportunity to challenge for the SmackDown Tag Team Championships. I wish the company would give these guys some more character though. Putting them in a ladder match for the titles, and having them be completely opposed because of their core beliefs about wrestling would be a fantastic promo. I’d love to see them rip apart “sports entertainment” and really define the old school mentality. Hell, I’ve said it for some time, I wish they’d get Cornette as their manager and use NWA rules during their matches. A team born from Dusty Rhodes’ vision and inspiration would only be fitting to do so! I know back to back NWA references, sorry!
4) The Young Bucks +17 [31 Overall Tag Score]
The Young Bucks d. Ortiz & Santana, AEW Dynamite
Well, here is proof that my rankings hold some credence in the grand scheme of things. The Young Bucks moved up to second overall in the AEW Tag Team rankings, ahead of their championship match next week! With Moxley “feuding” with Jericho, it definitely makes me happy to see that these rankings aren’t just statistical noise.
5-tie) Aleister Black +7 [129 Overall Score]
5-tie) Buddy Murphy +10 [161 Overall Score]
Speaking of these rankings leading to matches, we learned this week that these two will meet at TLC match after weeks of “whatever you can do I can do better” squash matches. Both of these men could be challenging Brock Lesnar at Royal Rumble for the WWE Championship. As good as Buddy Murphy is, I don’t think he will stand up to the challenge presented by Aleister Black, who has yet been beaten on the main roster since debuting in April. In eight matches, Black Mass has never been kicked out of. Whoever wins this clash will be regarded as one of the top names on Monday Night RAW!
Runners Up:
6) RAW Tag Team Champions The Viking Raiders +10 (164 Overall Score)
7) US Champion Rey Mysterio +15 (59 Overall Score)
STANDINGS
WWE Men
- Seth Rollins 188 (-)
- Roman Reigns 171 (+6)
- Buddy Murphy 161 (+10)
- WWE Champion Brock Lesnar 139 (-)
- Braun Strowman 129 (-)
- Aleister Black 129 (+7)
- Baron Corbin 85 (-)
- Ricochet 74 (-)
- Universal Champion The Fiend Bray Wyatt 62 (-)
- US Champion Rey Mysterio 59 (+15)
OUT: Bobby Lashley 56 (-)
WWE Women
- RAW Women’s Champion Becky Lynch 193 (+4)
- Smackdown Women’s Champion Bayley 170 (-)
- Charlotte 36 (-)
- Natalya 20 (-)
- Nikki Cross 0 (-)
- Sasha Banks -1 (-)
- Lacey Evans -16 (+2)
- +Alexa Bliss -40 (+16)
- Mandy Rose -66 (-16)
- Sonya Deville -72 (-)
OUT: Carmella
WWE Women Tag Team
- WWE Womens Tag Team Champions The Kabuki Warriors 92 (-4)
- Charlotte & Becky Lynch 41 (-)
- Charlotte & Natayla 34 (-)
- Carmella & Dana Brooke 12 (-)
- Boss & Smug Connection 4 (-)
- Bliss/Cross -5 (-)
- The IIconics -28 (-)
- Fire & Desire -110 (-)
WWE Tag Team
- RAW Tag Team Champions The Viking Raiders 164 (+10)
- +Authors of Pain 94 (-)
- Smackdown Tag Team Champions The New Day (Big E & Kofi Kingston) 42 (-)
- +Gran Metalik & Lince Dorado 33 (-15)
- The Revival 31 (+15)
- Heavy Machinery 17 (-15)
- The Street Profits 11 (-10)
- Cesaro & Nakamura 1 (-)
- Ryder & Hawkins -56 (-)
- The O.C. -104 (-)
OUT: Ziggler & Roode (Roode suspended)
NXT Men
- Finn Balor 205 (+9)
- NXT UK Champion WALTER 165 (-)
- Pete Dunne 138 (-23)
- Tommaso Ciampa 115 (-9)
- Matt Riddle 116 (-)
- NXT Champion Adam Cole 116 (-)
- Jordan Devlin 103 (+13)
- Joe Coffey 94 (-)
- Travis Banks 89 (-7)
- +KUSHIDA 86 (-)
OUT: Velveteen Dream (injured)
NXT Women
- NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler 287 (-)
- Toni Storm 135 (+5)
- NXT UK Women’s Champion Kay Lee Ray 124 (-)
- Rhea Ripley 120 (-)
- Io Shirai 83 (-)
- Piper Niven 80 (-)
- Jinny 54 (-)
- Bianca BelAir 37 (+14)
- Mia Yim 33 (-20)
- Tegan Nox 12 (-)
NXT Tag Team
- NXT Tag Team Champions The Undisputed Era 69 (-)
- Imperium 47 (-)
- NXT UK Tag Team Champions Gallus 37 (-)
- The Forgotten Sons 32 (-)
- Young Grizzled Veterans 28 (-)
- +Breezango 28 (+16)
- Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch 0 (-)
AEW Men
- Jon Moxley 95 (+8)
- AEW Champion Chris Jericho 80 (-)
- Kenny Omega 47 (+15)
- MJF 33 (-)
- PAC 32 (-)
- Fenix 31 (-)
- Adam Page 13 (-)
- Cody 30 (-)
- Luchasaurus 28 (+13)
- +Shawn Spears 6 (-)
OUT: Darby Allin (injured)
AEW Women
- AEW Women’s Champion Riho 77 (-)
- Kris Statlander 18 (-)
- Hikaru Shida 17 (-)
- Britt Baker 15 (-)
- Awesome Kong 14 (-)
- Nyla Rose 13 (-)
- Shanna -1 (-)
- Emi Sakura -16 (-18)
- Jamie Hayter -16 (-)
- +Big Swole -20 (+18)
OUT: Leva Bates
AEW Tag Team
- AEW Tag Team Champions SCU (Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky) 86 (-)
- The Young Bucks 31 (+13)
- Ortiz & Santana 17 (-13)
- Best Friends 17 (-)
- Private Party 15 (-)
- The Lucha Bros 15 (-)
- The Dark Order 14 (-)
- Luchasaurus & Marko Stunt 12 (+12)
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Opinion
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About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY – Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
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About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
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Opinion
AJ’s Top 3 Favorite SummerSlams
AJ is back with his annual opinion article, and this time the SummerSlam buzz got him wondering about his personal Top 3.
It’s been a while since I have done any form of writing and SummerSlam is this Saturday. Of all the SummerSlams I’ve seen over the years; which ones are my favorites? While it’s not a revolutionary idea, I figured everyone loves to debate favorites of well, anything. Don’t worry though because this isn’t just going to be pure recency bias. I’ve watched the majority of them so with the ones I put on the list, it hit me more in some way shape or form whether it was story, a really good match or it just felt like a solid event.
At least this proves WWE is trending in a good direction for me, when it gets the ol’ brain juices flowing just because a show is around the corner!
#3: 2022 (Ol’ Brock Lesnar Has A Farm)
Starting off the show, we get Bianca looking for a rematch against Becky from last years SummerSlam and it was better than the 21 second affair that everyone claims was a squash. This time Bianca holds her own and beats the Man in a fairly decent match, good way to get the event started. Next up is the heat seeking missile, Logan Paul against the former heat seeking missile because, well he wasn’t cut out for it and wasn’t a guy in everyone’s eyes, The Miz. After they had their blow off at Mania with Logan coming out on top which… isn’t awful, I just don’t like Logan Paul because he has that dude bro aura and swagger to make him more hateable than any other person on the card. Which I suppose is his gimmick…so…kudos?
First Championship match is for the US Championship and it’s as expected that in Theory, he should never beat someone to the caliber of Bobby Lashley which is no surprise. Dominik and Rey still back when Dom wanted the good fight against the Judgement Day before joining them later. The former Colts players, which they hammered it dahn in this match up showed that the canal swimming, trash talkin’, podcastin’, current RAW Color Commentatin’ goofball we all love, Pat McAfee came out on top again Bum Ass Corbin.
Usos putting the Street Profits on lockdown in the penitentiary since I believe this was peak Bloodline with the belt collecting and running all of WWE. Liv beat Ronda Rousey which isn’t astonishing but it’s not something people had on their bingo cards for anything with WWE so it was a nice little shock factor. The most memorable part of the night is obviously the Main Event, Lesnar brings the tractor, Roman catching the Microphone and Brock stands on top of the vehicle. Damn good match that showed off what they do in the ring since Roman caught his stride as the main bad guy and Brock… liked people after all of this? That is still a weird statement in my head. Brock being a good guy people person. If Liv wasn’t on bingo cards for wrestling, that is not on bingo cards in any aspect of life really.
That is more of the event that had solid matches and story going for it. No weird double count out, multiple people involved, 5 tag matches on the card. Things made sense and weren’t convoluted, had shocking moments that were great to see like Liv actually getting a title defense and there were the results we all expected at the time like Theory losing in 4 minutes to Bobby Lashley.
#2: 2009 (Are You Ready for The Return?)
This event wasn’t that strong. It was strong with the star power involved in 2009 with guys like Rey Mysterio as Intercontinental Champion, Orton and Cena for the WWE Championship as it was becoming as stale as month old chips and CM Punk was facing Jeff Hardy before he ultimately returned to TNA at the beginning of 2010 after this PPV. For me, it’s not so much of the show itself, it was more of the memories because the Balai as our friends Chris Platt and Rey Cash like to call my brother and I, we were just coming back into wrestling and we were TNA Fans. We didn’t watch WWE that much really, it was just what came on after another channel had old ROH shows before they moved to three hours and swallowed the 8pm Eastern Slot. No, the reason why this has so many memories for me is three main reasons. First, Orton and Cena. They have had their rivalry since the beginning it seems, being each others foils like Hogan and Piper before them and there had to be a stipulation where if Randy was Counted Out or DQ’d, he’d lose the championship regardless. This was prime Viper Randy and the obvious joke we had of Super Cena where he very rarely lost, unless it was SummerSlam surprisingly enough.
Number two reason was CM Punk and Jeff Hardy. Hardys known for the Ladder and TLC matches in the past and this being the penultimate match for this feud and it was a banger of a match. If you didn’t know Punk before, it was a great introduction to his wrestling. I used to like Punk a lot because of this match because he could talk, wrestle… and not insanely personal with things in wrestling. In all seriousness, this was a great match. Ultimate risks, high reward for Punk grabbing the World Heavyweight Championship and he was given his next feud because of the final boss of SmackDown at that time. Thanks, Teddy Long.
The main and final reason though why this match gave me the memories flowing back is more of the fact that one of my closest and longest termed friends of 23 years, also loves wrestling. Back when we were younger, he’d do MoCap videos on YouTube with his figures. We’d have friends come over for parties at his house and we’d do the one thing WWE always told us not to do and that was try it at home. He was always stronger than me, I was always more charismatic. He had the power aspect and did things with brute force, I could talk my way out of trouble with parents if we did something wrong. There was always one thing that our respective mother’s always called us though… it’s on the tip of my tongue… oh right, ‘Degenerates’.
As soon as we were called that, we kind of parodied the DX line. I was limber enough to do the HBK pose and do a Superkick before it became the new DDT and he would just Spinebuster people and knew how to do the water spit. So what do you think was the main reason we even ordered this PPV for his 13th Birthday? I think the two guys we were pretending to be were set to return on a tank and toss out some glow sticks. The return of DX, Shawn Michaels coming back after Mania with Triple H to deal with the Legacy problem was an amazing return for them and made everything so much fun.
So we have the solid card and this one has a personal story… what’s my number one SummerSlam? Is it personal? Well yes but not going into that. Is it a good card? To me, it was a phenomenal card! Is it memorable? Seeing how wrestling fans still mention at least three matches to this day.
#1: 2005 (Octopus in the Washer, Lover’s Quarrel and Where the F%#$ is Vickie?)
Quite possibly some of the best matches I’ve seen and one that was just the most hilarious moments of overselling in wrestling history, I know why I love this SummerSlam but it’s also a really good card at the same time. Redacted beats Orlando Jordan in 25 seconds for the US Title and they made jokes about it like, he can make a coffee faster than he beat Orlando and stuff like that, it’s pretty funny. Angle getting sick of Eugene’s antics for his Gold Medal was also a great bit they had play up, the Year long feud of Randy Orton and Undertaker was still going on where Orton comes out on top this time around to get the win back from Mania, Jericho returning for the match with Cena in a whole promotional thing for each other’s groups, Fozzy for Jericho and the Chain Gang doing Bad, Bad Man for Cena leading up to a match for the WWE Championship. JBL won a 20 man battle royal on SmackDown to win the Championship…… Opportunity to face the newest member of SmackDown, Batista but the three main matches that a lot of people talk about to this day; Edge vs Matt Hardy, Rey vs Eddie for Dominik and Hogan vs HBK in the Main Event.
I have reasons to enjoy the Hardy/Edge match but it looked like a real fight, it really made us believe that Matt Hardy was going to kill Edge because real names were dropped during this tirade from Hardy. It wasn’t Edge and Lita, it was Adam and Amy. Matt was so dead set on beating the hell out of Edge that they made a situation into gold and it was a great moment for this match to happen, I believe it was also an Unsanctioned Match too which added the intensity until matt got concussed and knocked senseless that it looked like he couldn’t fight for anything but the build up was what made it seem like a marque match. It made it feel real, it made it feel awesome and it made it feel personal.
Eddie kept tormenting Rey Mysterio about Dominik not being Rey’s but Eddie’s for the summer. That’s all you heard from Eddie being the weasel he was is hanging out with Dominik, making the world believe it’s his son and what not (Let’s not do a fast forward to today where he has the mullet, mustache and everything like Eddie) but they settle this in a Ladder Match where the top of it is a document for the custody of Dominik and my god, this match is better than it should have been. I expect nothing else from Eddie because the man hated having a bad match, Dom got involved and stopped Eddie, Vickie was late and stopped Eddie. The whole match was good it was just very weird with the premise but was a great match. I wonder if Rey regrets his decision to win the match now…
Octopus in a Washing Machine… those five words have resonated with Shawn Michaels’ performance in this match, forever. It was supposed to be an amazing match up between Hogan and Michaels, Icon vs Icon it said and suddenly Hogan’s back gives out, can’t do a trilogy of matches so we can only do the one and then pull out of everything after. This match was set up to be a classic and instead turned into the most unbelievable sell fest ever. A Hogan big boot caused Shawn to tumble 3 or 4 times, getting crotched on the ropes had HBK bouncing higher than he should have, being tossed out of the ring made it look like Shawn never broke his back in 1998 from how much he flopped and flipped around like crazy. It’s bad… or maybe even good that a lot of current wrestlers watched this match that went, “I can sell like that, I want to be a wrestler” and did. So good or bad, I don’t know but for some reason this PPV has always had a place in my heart for how memorable it was.
Those are my top three SummerSlams so far but who knows, 2024 has potential to maybe bump something or at least get me to consider a shift. Should be fun to see how the show plays out! What are some of your favorite SummerSlams?
About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
TUESDAY - Musical Chairs (music) / Hockey Talk (NHL)
WEDNESDAY - The Greg DeMarco Show (wrestling)
THURSDAY - Keeping the news ridiculous... The Oddity / Chairshot NFL (NFL)
FRIDAY - DWI Podcast (Drunk Wrestling Intellect)
SATURDAY - The Mindless Wrestling Podcast
SUNDAY - The Front and Center Sports Podcast
CHAIRSHOT RADIO NETWORK PODCAST SPECIALS
Attitude Of Aggression Podcast & The Big Five Project (chronologically exploring WWE's PPV/PLE history)
TheChairshot.com PRESENTS...IMMEDIATE POST WWE PLE REACTIONS w/ DJ(Mindless), Tunney(DWI) & Friends
Patrick O'Dowd's 5X5
Classic POD is WAR
Chairshot Radio Network Your home for the hardest hitting podcasts... Sports, Entertainment and Sports Entertainment!
Powered by RedCircle
Let us know what you think on social media @ChairshotMedia and always remember to use the hashtag #UseYourHead!