Bryan Danielson Announces Return To Action

https://itrwrestling.com/news/bryan-danielson-announces-return-to-action/

Claudio Castagnoli Crowned ROH World Champion

https://itrwrestling.com/news/claudio-castagnoli-crowned-roh-world-champ/

EX-WWE Star On Training Gable Steveson – “He’s Gonna Be Great”

https://itrwrestling.com/news/wwe-star-training-gable-steveson-gonna-great/

Nikki Bella Speaks On ‘Traumatising’ Breakup With John Cena

https://tjrwrestling.net/news/nikki-bella-traumatising-breakup-john-cena/

Royal Rumble 2022
Date: January 29, 2022
Location: The Dome At America’s Center, St. Louis, Missouri
Attendance: 44,390
Commentators: Jimmy Smith, Corey Graves, Byron Saxton, Michael Cole, Pat McAfee

We are officially kicking off the Road to WrestleMania XXXVIII and that means things should be starting big here. First up we have the Royal Rumbles themselves, plus what should be a pair of awesome World Title matches as Brock Lesnar defends against Bobby Lashley and Seth Rollins challenges Roman Reigns. Let’s get to it.

Right let’s carry on the death march to NXT.

Speaking of which I’m completely dead from my mate’s stag do so expect some quality typing. (edit: Ohhhh, I wondered why I started typing this up in January and didn’t come back to it until March. My mate was so blitzed I had to carry him around the club like Flair wrestling Kerry Von Erich for an hour. After physically shoving pizza into his mouth and holding him down in the taxi as he requested the driver play “that song from The Witcher”, I got him back safe and sound only for his fiance to ask why we bothered. It was a fun night.)

It’s been a while since I did one of these, due to the festive period and my complete lack of interest in the brand now there’s less than twenty shows left. It’s like getting attached to the villagers in Majora’s Mask.

Right now this show is colder than Labour’s approval levels so let’s recap the relevant news from Powerslam Magazine #184:

Ezekiel Jackson vs. Goldust

We’re at the University Of Kentucky but nothing’s happening on the show so we go straight to a match, oh goody.

Dramatic recap of Regal becoming ECW On Syfy GM and using his powers to immediately lose to Yoshi Tatsu. Regal starts the show, hopefully he stays there the whole episode. He makes himself the Number One Contender to the ECW Title which causes Ryder to complain (to no reaction). Christian brings out three guys who deserve to be Number One Contender more than Ryder & Regal: Angelo the janitor who replaced all the urinal cakes in the arena today, Yoshi Tatsu who pinned Regal last week and Tony Atlas who can do this:

Tiffany shockingly makes her return after a whole week away and makes some matches for tonight and even by the cold, cold standard of many an ECW on Syfy crowd, these fans were deathly silent so this is going to be a loooOOOOooong hour.

King Regal starts the show by informing us Tiffany has been involved in a car accident and he will be taking her place as ECW GM. YES YES YES THANK YOU USOS & WHITE CLAW. He immediately changes the main event of Christian vs. Zack Ryder to Christian vs. Zack Ryder & The Regal Roundtable in a four-on-one handicap match because he’s a genius.

And if that wasn’t enough excitement for you all, we start with The Abraham Washington Show!

Moved this to Monday as a Saturday PPV means “no-one’s reading this shit.” We start with The Abraham Washington show which I believe they call a very cold open.

But first let’s look at Breaking Point: the PPV so successful they never did it again!

The Hurricane vs. Paul Burchill

The Hurricane and his fantastically dramatic entrance start the show and for once Striker’s ridiculous calls (“let’s watch this Graphic Novel unfold”) sets the mood, at least until Sister Fucker shows up.

We’re in Cleveland, Ohio (Japanese crowd: “OHIOOOO!”) and the main event is…a replay of Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker?

It’s two days after Summerslam, we’re in Phoenix, AZ and I’ve had no sleep thanks to babies teething so I’m definitely reading for a ten year old C-Show episode.

Hurricane Helms vs. Paul Burchill

Hurricane now has an amazingly dramatic voiceover as part of his entrance to really hammer the ham home. This is his first televised match since December 2008 and I can’t believe he was employed all this time after the never-ending 140 year Cruiserweight Title reign in 2006. Oh wait he broke two vertebrae in his neck in 2007, fair enough.

We’re in Edmonton, Alberta Canada, we’re on the road to Summerslam and we have more Abraham Washington to look forward to tonight.

We’re in Long Island, NY and we’re starting off soft with The Abraham Washington Show. Thankfully they’ve figured out what was missing from the joke and added some 1993 WCW.

Night Of Champions 2009

Tommy Dreamer vs. Christian (ECW World Title)

This is following the debut of JeriShow and a hot CM Punk promo so no pressure lads.

We’re five days away from Night Of Champions but never mind that, Yoshi’s opening the show so here’s the obligatory:

As Cameron Archer pointed out last week, Sci-Fi had re-branded to Syfy earlier in 2009 but AFAIK no-one ever called it ECW on Syfy and I’m not prepared to be the first.

edit: a quick google reveals a lot of people called it that so HEY let’s re-brand.

Nikki Bella vs. Katie Lea Burchill

Always good to start off strong.