Botched!: Matt’s Fist Drop, Seth Rollins’ Attacker, More

Hi, hello & welcome to Botched! Hopefully you’ve been enjoying the holiday food and all the great wrestling going on lately. WWE, AEW, Impact, ROH, fill in your favorite fed here, there’s just lots of good stuff going on and it’s fun to watch it.

So in this column we talk about the stuff that isn’t quite so great!

1. Possibly the most spirited Botch or No Botch debate of all time

I finished the last edition of this column not long before the November 12 edition of AEW Rampage. Then I saw the lumberjack match with Orange Cassidy & Matt Hardy, and was kinda peeved I wasn’t able to include it based off of the finish, which you can see between 3:40 & 3:50 of the video below.

So the Blade knocks Orange out with an international object, then Matt Hardy lands an elbow drop a couple of feet away from Orange’s head before getting the three count. From the vantage point of an unbiased, impartial observer, it looked pretty bad. AEW fans were quick to tell us that Matt was obviously paying homage to Eddie Guerrero, who would take random bumps to fool referees. Not like Bryce Remsburg needs much fooling. He’s a good egg from all accounts, but we gotta be honest here, in AEW he’s been the easiest referee to fool, which is saying something.

The thing is, this was a Lumberjack Match, and I can’t remember the last time somebody was disqualified in one of those. Rules are generally thrown out the window. I think Matt should have hit a fist drop on the back of Orange’s head even after that shot from the Blade and called it a day instead of trying to be cute. Eddie got a few tributes that weekend, I think he was ok.

2. The issue with wearing masks at wrestling events

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for masks. Especially at large public events because there’s a lot of people that you can’t trust to not cough all over you. You just have to remember you have it on when you’re trying to consume a beverage.

Shout out to the guy at @IMPACTWRESTLING #TurningPoint who forgot he was wearing a mask when he tried to take a drink. pic.twitter.com/YR1qQT2Szm

— TuЯning Heel (@Turning_Heel) November 22, 2021

Oh, you hate to see it happen. Hopefully Impact’s concession prices are fair.

3. No more promo classes at the PC

Aliyah is one of SmackDown’s newest talents looking to make her mark on Friday nights. She’s spent the last six years learning her craft at the Performance Center & wrestling on NXT shows, so she’s had a lot of time to figure things out. Technically, nothing in the promo below was “botched”. All of the words were said properly.

Me presenting my project in class pic.twitter.com/0FLy5qXKWW

— chanel. (@ceceInterIude) November 16, 2021

It’s just the delivery that gets it in the column.

4. The wind knocks Natalya off the apron

There was some weird stuff going on in the Women’s Survivor Series Elimination Match. The elimination of Sasha Banks seems to have been wiped from existence, for good reason since that was the worst countout I’ve ever seen. In lieu of that, here’s Natalya taking a bump off the apron after Bianca Belair hit the ropes.

https://twitter.com/KnowTheX/status/1462626064551727105

God bless Nattie for being willing to do business, but that was a little excessive.

5. This one’s on the arena workers

I’ve heard Jim Cornette talk about being attacked by fans back in the day and assuming that fans these days wouldn’t do such things because nobody has any heat. Apparently Seth Rollins does! And apparently security can’t be bothered to protect Seth from such things!

https://twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet/status/1462977442197377025

Like, how does that happen on a show produced by a billion dollar company? Can’t they provide security that could protect their workers from being attacked? Apparently Barclays Center learned nothing from the Hall of Fame show where somebody attacked Bret Hart. Yall gotta get your shit together and stop botching.

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]. See you next time!