WWE Week in Review: Dean Ambrose Injury, Royal Rumble Talk

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Fred Richani and guest host Julian Cannon of Wrestling Courts recap the final WWE week of 2017: the Christmas night edition of Raw, SmackDown’s new U.S. title tournament, Dean Ambrose’s triceps injury and early thoughts on the first women’s Royal Rumble.

Episode Recap

Summarized from the episode and edited for clarity and brevity. Listen above for the full discussion.

Neither host was sold on the Christmas night Raw. Cannon questions why John Cena needed a 15-minute-plus match with Elias, and Fred says Cena, now practically a full-time actor, looked gassed after barely wrestling since No Mercy. Elias, Cannon says, is great until the bell rings.

The bigger loss is Dean Ambrose, reportedly out up to nine months with a triceps injury. Fred calls Ambrose Mr. Reliable, a babyface who never misses a show, and says losing him puts The Shield reunion on ice and makes it even harder to keep Roman Reigns cheered. Fred still thinks Reigns should turn heel, though he credits Reigns for rarely having a bad match.

They also discuss Hideo Itami getting no reaction on the main roster and his stiff match with Brian Kendrick, which reportedly left Kendrick with a broken orbital bone, and why WWE fans have been trained to see cruiserweights as second-class citizens. Fred compares Finn Balor squashing Curt Hawkins to Bret Hart in 1995: one of the best workers in the company, stuck feuding with nobodies instead of chasing a title.

On the women’s Royal Rumble, Cannon worries Nikki Bella or Ronda Rousey will win. Fred says a Rumble is hard to idiot-proof for someone with no experience, so if Rousey is involved, she should be paired with Natalya or put in a multi-person match with her Four Horsewomen teammate Shayna Baszler.

Raw ended with Seth Rollins and Jason Jordan winning the tag team titles from Cesaro and Sheamus. Fred likes Jordan as a wrestler but thinks Balor would have been better in that spot and that the Kurt Angle’s son storyline has miscast him. His fix: reveal that Jordan lied about being Angle’s son, or that Triple H faked the paperwork.

SmackDown was more entertaining, and an hour shorter. Neither host loves the U.S. title tournament after Dolph Ziggler vacated the title, but Shelton Benjamin and Chad Gable’s win over The New Day and Rusev and Aiden English was an old-school pay-per-view quality match, and Rusev Day is getting over. Fred is tired of Kevin Owens vs. AJ Styles after a down year for Owens and would rather see Sami Zayn, who built a mobile medical clinic in Syria, become the No. 1 contender. Overall: a middling holiday week, though nowhere near as bad as the year Alberto Del Rio attacked Santa Claus.