Week in Review for 08/26/18 (Pro Wrestling Post)

By
Mark Blake

Hello folks and thanks for taking the time to read this week’s Pro Wrestling Post Week In Review for 08/26/18. I hope you appreciate what I think has been major news this week. With that in mind, here’s my Week In Review!

Neville Released

In news that fills my heart with joy, it seems that Benjamin Satterley (aka Neville/PAC) is officially no longer an employee of the WWE, according to Ryan Satin at Pro Wrestling Sheet.  This makes it difficult to determine when he could potentially return to the ring.

Just one week ago WWE’s Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events and Creative, Paul Levesque (aka Triple H) himself said after NXT Takeover Brooklyn 4, that he was “not 100% positive” on Neville’s status

Neville left WWE in mid-October last year, supposedly in frustration with his status in the company. He was scheduled to lose to the then-WWE Cruiserweight Champion Enzo Amore. This was to take place on WWE Monday Night RAW in early October. He left before the show began.

Since quitting the company, Neville has been reportedly working hard to get his release from WWE. As he was under WWE contract his deal was frozen for the time he wasn’t working, which meant that he couldn’t wrestle anywhere else in the world. He moved back to the U.K. last March and has since kept a low profile, but it hadn’t stopped the stars of the wrestling world wondering where he was.

People have been wondering and hoping that the ‘Man that Gravity Forgot’ could make an appearance at ALL IN next weekend. This was further fueled by recent tweets from Cody and Matt Jackson.

Could an appearance at next week’s ALL IN event be on the cards?

And here’s something I desperately want to see…

https://twitter.com/WillOspreay/status/1033268894998437888?s=19

Could we be seeing this dream match, or even Neville/PAC back in the ring soon? I very much hope so!

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tournament

At last months G1 Special In San Francisco, Hiromu Takahashi was injured in a match against longtime rival Dragon Lee. A botched move resulted in a bad landing on Hiromu’s neck, but to his credit, he finished the match but collapsed backstage after the match. It is widely believed that Hiromu suffered a broken neck although no official word has been released yet. He is likely to recover but the expected timeframe for return is believed to be 9-12 months.

Due to the injury, Hiromu has vacated the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship back to NJPW officials who immediately announced a four-man tournament to crown a new champion as seen below in their tweet.

Kushida and Bushi will match up at the Destruction in Kobe event on September 23. While Will Ospreay and Marty Scrull will face-off at the Fighting Spirit Unleashed event on September 30 at Long Beach. The winners of those two matches will then contest for the title on October 8 at the King of Pro Wrestling event held in Ryogoku.

I hope so much that Hiromu comes back at better than full fitness, as the story he could tell in getting back “his” title could be pure brilliance.

The four men involved in the tournament are all worthy champions, but I have a sneaky suspicion, a gut feeling, that BUSHI will walk away as the new IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion.

Week in Review for 08/26/18

The Shield Reunites But Whose Who Going Forward

 Ok, who saw this coming then? C’mon honestly, who saw The Shield reuniting to help their fellow brethren Roman Reigns last Monday on Raw? I quite happily put my hands up and say “me me me”.

I had a Facebook and SEPW Academy friend out in Brooklyn for the entire week, who posted a video of Ambrose & Rollins coming out to the original Shield music while wearing their black attire, and that arena exploded! It was an amazing sight and sound, to be honest.

Now here comes the nitty-gritty… Whose who in this feud between The Shield and Braun Strowman? Whose babyface and whose heel?

Was Braun coming out unannounced during the Reigns/Balor match a heel move, especially as he walked out before the Lesnar/Reigns the night before and made his intentions known?

Was the reformation of The Shield and taking out Braun a heel move?

…… Seriously who frickin cares?!? Why can’t we fans/IWC members just sit back and enjoy the ride of where the story takes us. Not all stories have to have good guys and bad guys as protagonists. Plus it’s only been a week! Just relax, breathe, and watch how the story unfolds yeah?

Although I will eat my words if this degenerates into Katie Vick territory ie. The story makes no sense or is just so bad that it makes me want to wash my eyeballs in bleach.

Week in Review for 08/26/18

Johnny Gargano Injury Update

Wow! How worked were we?!?

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me refresh your memory…

Last Saturday’s NXT Takeover Brooklyn 4 main event pitted Johnny Gargano versus Tomasso Ciampa for the NXT Championship in a Last Man Standing match.

The match was quite brilliant (although not quite living up to the standard of their last two but that’s a story for another time) and the finish involved Johnny trying to decapitate Ciampa via running knee strike, but missing and “blew his knee out” by hitting a heavy crate behind Ciampa, and not making the ten count resulting in Tomasso retaining.

The story coming out of that match was that Johnny had legit dislocated his kneecap and the finish wasn’t the finish they wanted but had to adapt on the fly.

Triple H himself stated in his post-event media as such…

“Clearly I wasn’t planning on Gargano injuring himself in the last sequence of that match. Did it play into it? Yeah. Technically it was supposed to go slightly differently than it all did. We kinda had to make a call on the fly and change a few things in the actual moment. So it ends up being different because only the people putting it together know what they were doing and that’s the beauty of what we do and they get there.”

All caught up? Cool, let’s fast forward to a few days after Takeover, to Thursday of last week in actual fact, to the night of NXT TV tapings from Full Sail.

Gargano came out on a crutch for the August 29 episode and did an angle with Velveteen Dream and then went onto wrestle Dream for a match that’s due to air on September 5.

Like I said at the top, how worked were we?

Grand job guys ???

And that’s that dudes and dudettes! My time has come to source more headlines for your delectable reading pleasure of the Pro Wrestling Post Week in Review for 08/26/18 so I bid you all…

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

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