Thursday, October 13, 2016

Fave Five 10/3/16-10/9/16

1) Sasha Banks: Sorry for the delay on posting this. It was a busy start to the week with No Mercy and King of Pro Wrestling. It was hard to choose between Sasha Banks and Dolph Ziggler. Both had monumental title wins but I'm going with Sasha for one reason. Whether it felt like a warranted main event or not, Sasha Banks and Charlotte closed out Monday Night Raw, joining Lita, Trish Stratus and Stephanie McMahon (though her match involved The Rock) as the only women to do so. While this match wasn't as good as their previous Raw outing, they more than delivered in a big main event. Sasha won her second Women's Championship and as long as injuries stay away, she can get a nice long reign with the title.

2) Dolph Ziggler: It was the biggest angle of his career and one of the best matches of his career as well. In a match that should have absolutely main evented the Pay-Per-View, Dolph Ziggler captured his fifth Intercontinental Championship by defeating the Miz at No Mercy. He put his career on the line and things felt important. In what was arguably the match of the night, Ziggler overcame everything Miz threw at him, including Maryse's spray and the Spirit Squad, to win. It felt like a big deal and was a feel good moment. The only real question is what happens next. Do we get the same tired Ziggler IC Title reign that we've seen before or is this one finally going to mean something. Hopefully, it's the latter

3) AJ Styles: If Miz vs. Ziggler wasn't the best match of the week, then AJ Styles vs. John Cena vs. Dean Ambrose was. They opened No Mercy and had one of the better triple threat matches in recent memory. They didn't do the tired "two men wrestle and one rests outside" stuff. All three guys were heavily involved and all did their part. AJ Styles tapped out to Cena and Dean, but since you can't lose a match like this in that manner, things continued and Styles used a chair to get his third pinfall win over Cena. That makes AJ 3-1 against him and the one loss came in a six man tag. It was the second successful title defense for Styles.

4) Eddie Edwards: I'd say Eddie Edwards has made a career out of winning titles when he wasn't expected to. I remember thinking that Davey Richards was in line to be ROH Champion but Edwards swooped in and won the title before him. Now, it looked like EC3 would have won the TNA Title at Bound for Glory. Instead, he lost and Lashley's next challenger was Edwards. The same Edwards who lost at Bound for Glory to Aaron Rex in what I heard was a pretty shitty match. However, on Impact this week, Edwards dethroned Lashley, who has been one of the most dominant champions in all of wrestling this year. It was arguably the biggest win of Edward's career to this point, though the ROH Title win is right up there.

5) Matanza Cueto: Successfully defended the Lucha Underground Title against company ace Prince Puma.