The WWE is in somewhat of a holding pattern at the moment, with Royal Rumble being a month away.
WWE books another classic Royal Rumble title match, in the vein of Angle vs Henry or Lesnar vs Hardcore Holly. I have zero interest in Lesnar vs Kane vs Strowman.
Jason Jordan has another good 15+ minute match. He is building quite the collection. He loses them all though. He even has another match on this show, teaming with Ambrose and Rollins against The Bar and Samoa Joe, and he loses that too.
Hideo Itami made his debut, helping out Finn Balor in his feud with Miztourage. It was a good way to debut Itami but there is no way that Balor should be as irrelevant as this.
Cedric Alexander and Drew Gulak have their number 1 contenders match ruined by Enzo's infuriating commentary.
Asuka beats Alicia Fox in a few minutes but wasn't as dominant as that would suggest.
Matt Hardy won a game of chess against a goldfish imbued with the spirit of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Revival are back, praise the wrestling gods. They beat Slater & Rhyno in short order. Top guys out.
There was a bit of a match between Absolution and a face team but it was really just a set up for the real story, the first ever women's Royal Rumble. This has been coming for a while, and with the level of talent on the roster now is the best time. I'm intrigued to see if they tinker with the setup as if you take out the 2 champions there are only 19 women on the main roster, so 11 spots would have to be filled by NXT wrestlers or surprise entrants. One of the surprise entrants is likely to be Ronda Rousey.
Daniel Bryan starts off by explaining why he fast counted Orton at Clash of Champions. He was saving Shane from himself. He doesn't want him to become his father. Shane says he doesn't need his protection but Bryan disagrees. Shane decides to leave Bryan in charge of the show, as he frequently does. I expected more of a confrontation.
Benjamin and Gable put in another good showing against the Usos. They beat the tag champs in a non title match which I assume means they will be next in line to challenge them.
Charlotte, Naomi and the Riott Squad continued the build to the first ever women's Rumble. It was a far better use of the division than the usual shouting matches.
Dolph Ziggler tries to be Tetsuya Naito but is nowhere near Tranquilo enough for it.
Owens and Zayn buy Bryan some champagne but he calls them delusional and tells them to get out of his face.
New Day and Rusev Day have a Christmas themed match. It was about as good as any holiday themed match.
The main event 6-man tag match was good fun but nothing more than that. All in all the show was easily skippable this week.
Brian Kendrick and Jack Gallagher beat the shit out of Gran Metalik and Kalisto, using the ring post and steps to injure them.
Hideo Itami murdered Colin Delaney. As he should.
Enzo continued to be incredibly annoying.
Cedric Alexander and Drew Gulak had a really good main event but were constantly fighting against the crowd's indifference.
If it seems like there wasn't much on this show, it's because there wasn't.
This week's NXT was a great show. It ran 75 minutes and it benefited from it.
The opening match saw Undisputed Era take the tag title from SAnitY in a good match that will probably have a better rematch at TakeOver: Philadelphia.
Sonya Deville says she is going to take the title from Ember Moon next week. Seems unlikely.
Lars Sullivan beat Roderick Strong for the last spot in the fatal 4-way number one contenders match. The match was much better than I thought it was going to be.
The main event between Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate was the best match to take place on WWE TV this year by a mile. It wasn't quite as good as their TakeOver match but the fact that it was even close is a minor miracle. You owe it to yourself to check this match out.
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