Botched!: Blissful Alexa, More Fun For Balor, More

Hi, hello & welcome to the column that nobody in pro wrestling wants to be featured in, Botched! No special shows this week and I don’t think I’m allowed to describe Jason Jordan being Kurt Angle’s son as a botch yet because we’re supposed to let it play out and see how it goes. So let’s see what went wrong this week…

1. Michael Cole Is Thirsty

WWE’s longest tenured announcer had himself a pretty rough Monday night, with slips of the tongue in multiple matches. My theory is that Michael Cole didn’t get enough to drink during the day and he was famished during Raw. Listen to what he calls Alexa Bliss at 2:18 in the video below.

Cole obviously had Swiss Miss on the mind. Who doesn’t drink hot chocolate in July, right?

2. Alexa Shows Some Bliss While Losing

Speaking of Alexa, she had a pretty rough night on Raw when she lost a non-title match to Bayley. Two minutes into the below video you can see the pinfall, and Alexa looks really happy for somebody that just got Bayley to bellyed & defeated.

That sort of thing is a major pet peeve for wrestling people, but maybe Alexa was laughing to herself about how Bayley can only beat her in non-title matches.

3. Elias Needs To Learn From Honky Tonk Man

Elias Samson is finding some pretty good success so far on the Raw roster. Who would have thought he’d have a feud going with Finn Balor at this point? He still needs a little work though…specifically on how to hit somebody with a guitar without killing them.

1:20 into the video is when Samson takes Balor’s head off with the guitar. The aim’s a little bit off, and I’m going to guess this is the first time Balor’s taken a guitar shot in his life unless he wrestled Jeff Jarrett at some point. This is really the sort of thing people should be working on in NXT. Have the Honky Tonk Man come in for a week and teach people how to swing a guitar and how to take a guitar shot.

4. John Cena Should Be In The Punjabi Prison Match Because You Can’t See Him

One of the sentiments I heard from people supporting Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion when it happened was the idea that WWE would bring back the Punjabi Prison Match. I had no idea why these people considered it a good thing. There have been two: Undertaker vs Big Show at the 2006 Great American Bash, and Batista vs Great Khali at No Mercy 2007. I recall Batista actually doing some entertaining stuff during the second match, but neither of these titanic struggles made me want to see another one. We’re getting one, and the structure made its appearance on SmackDown Live this week.

One of the main problems with the structure is that even if you had two performers in there capable of putting on an entertaining match, the fans in attendance or at home wouldn’t know because nobody would be able to see it. The reason I’m listing this in the column is that WWE had ten years to think of a way to make the action more visible and they didn’t do anything. Maybe the Twitter response got to them and we’ll see something different on Sunday.

5. Botch or No Botch?: Kenny’s Reverse Rana

Sometimes something wrong happens and people get all worked up over whether the performer meant to mess up or not. Hey, not all wrestling moves are meant to be successful. It’s part of the game. This week, Kenny Omega took on Minoru Suzki as part of Night 2 of New Japan’s G1 Climax 27. Suzuki spent most of the match working over the right knee of Omega, which was sold off and on because it’s pro wrestling in 2017 and is what it is. Kenny attempted a reverse rana on Suzuki towards the end of the match, and you can see the result at 3:50 in the video below.

A big ol’ whiff. Two sides quickly formed in the debate over whether it was a botch or not. People waiting for Omega to make any kind of a mistake whatsoever were all about it being a flub. People who would drink Kenny’s bathwater if they could insisted that he was selling the knee and it obviously wasn’t a botch.

Me? I think he meant to hit the move. But when he didn’t, he was smart enough to grab his knee like that’s what kept him from hitting it. Omega’s no dummy. He’s no Hitler either, even if Jim Cornette thinks he is.

Thanks for reading! If you see (or hear) anything wrong in the world of wrestling, let me know via Twitter or e-mail at [email protected]. Have a good weekend!