X-Pac 1-2-360
Release Date: October 26, 2017
Recap by: Sean McGraw
Top Newsworthy Items:
- X-Pac has a feeling Vince told Cesaro not to fix his teeth yet.
- X-Pac would have been hot if he were involved in the #UnderSiege angle
- X-Pac doesn’t buy the rumors that The Rock advised Nia Jax to walk out
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Recap:
From last week X-Pac said that the guest was supposed to be Ted DiBiase. We didn’t get Ted this week and there was no explanation as to why. The roundtable discussion starts off by talking about Ralphie May and his memorial service they attended. They said Ralphie was a force of nature that unfortunately didn’t love himself as much as he loved everybody else. Anybody who talked to him felt like they were a close friend of his. He was a huge wrestling fan and historian. They compared him to the Dusty Rhodes of comedy.
News:
The Jeff Jarrett situation – The alleged situation with Jeff Jarrett and his being drunk at an indy show was brought up. X-Pac says it definitely seems like Jeff is going through some s**t right now. He has gone through a ton of heartache over the years with the loss of his wife, etc. X-Pac is worried, because Jeff has always held things together and been a professional. It’s brought up that a lot of times people only focus on the negative aspects of the story and don’t look at the man that’s behind the story.
Jeff grew up in the industry, has been the promoter that has had to deal with things like that. X-Pac makes a good point that people don’t show up intentionally trying to screw up your show. Someone brings up the things he’s putting on social media don’t match up to the character that these stories are portraying. X-Pac brings up another valid point about social media tending to be a filtered reality in which someone only putsout the good parts of their life. It’s almost like a fake life they are putting out there. People project the life they want to have. The Scott Hall situation where the promoter sent him out to the ring intoxicated and how similar it is to this situation was brought up. X-Pac says he understands the issues of being a promoter, but if somebody gets hurt out there – that’s on you.
Ric Flair 30 for 30 – Nature Boy premieres on ESPN on November 7th. They are all looking forward to it. X-Pac says this has been in the works for a while and there was some heat on Ric for what might be in it. X-Pac is pretty sure it’ll be amazing, just based on the trailer. The ESPN 30 for 30 production will elevate the style that WWE productions have (I think they mean that ESPN won’t censor content to give it a WWE bias/feel). They say that this will be the most successful 30 for 30 because of how integrated into pop culture Ric Flair is.
X-Pac gets surprised about coming back from the break ,which was kind of funny. Then they start their recap of TLC and any sort of major things that happened on Raw/Smackdown.
After the changes were made (due to illness) X-Pac expected the show to be really good. He dresses down the people complaining that WWE let Kurt Angle wrestle and won’t let Daniel Bryan wrestle. It’s a completely different situation due to extenuating circumstances and the whole concussion issue.
Asuka/Emma – Everyone agrees that it was a really good match. X-Pac says “Gimme a break” to people complaining that Asuka didn’t squash Emma. He praises Emma for doing really well in the match. This match made both wrestlers look good and rejuvenated Emma in the eyes of the fans. It was an NXT quality match that made both performers look great (I thought that this was a very interesting statement given that NXT is supposed to be a developmental brand. Personally I think that NXT is the best thing that WWE has going right now and it’s also kind of a shame that the main roster has a lower quality product that developmental given the talent and the stage. On another note – this was recorded before Emma was released so they make mention to being hopeful about Emma potentially being elevated to a new standing in the organization. I found it a shame that Emma was released as well. I was always a fan of her and believed her situation is a missed opportunity on the WWE’s part.)
Cruiserweight Tag Match – X-Pac says he has to be honest and didn’t watch this match. They say that this is the “go to your fridge and get some food match.” They are confused by the story 205 Live is telling. X-Pac jokes that everyone is being over-analytical which gets a chuckle.
Alexa Bliss/Mickie James – This was a killer match. Mickie shined despite the terrible storyline build-up. X-Pac agrees and brings up that he likes the post-match in-ring interviews. He says you get the best stuff out of the wrestlers right when they’re still in the moment like that. The people were with Mickie in this moment because it was real and that’s what you get in the post-match in-ring interview. The two performers complimented each other really well and X-Pac says it way out-performed expectations. He wasn’t doubting anyone’s ability; he was doubting whether the fans would embrace it.
Enzo/Kalisto – X-Pac is speculating that when Kalisto won the title on Raw he was a replacement. But you never beat your replacement so you had to put the belt on him that night. He agrees with what was mentioned earlier that he doesn’t like seeing the belt passed around like a hot potato. It’s not nearly as big a problem if it’s passed back and forth between the same two people, but it’s far from ideal. He thinks that Kalisto probably needed to win the belt to get that initial boost and then they need to get the belt off him and let him chase it for a while. 205 live is getting better despite what it has going against it. Enzo is good on 205 because he talks people into the building. His in-ring work is so crazy but for some reason it works.
Finn Balor/A.J. Styles – Amazing match. It was about what was expected from the two of those guys. They liked the “Too Sweet” at the end. Nobody was looking forward to Bray/Finn. X-Pac joked that he thought it was going to be the Great Pumpkin vs. Big Foot which got a good laugh.
Jason Jordan/Elias – X-Pac didn’t bother watching. They were in a tough spot, he’s not even sure how it went, and they were purposely put there in what is called “the collapsible.” It goes back to the old PPV format in terms of timing of the show. Elias’ gimmick isn’t quite working for everyone, they say they think it’s a going nowhere gimmick. Jason Jordan is very skilled but he doesn’t have a lot to say yet. X-Pac says he’ll get there eventually. “Boy for a match nobody gave a s**t about, we sure are still talking about it.”
3 on 5 Main Event – X-Pac comments that he has a feeling that Vince told Cesaro not to get the teeth fixed yet. It’s the type of thing that Vince loves. X-Pac asks about the garbage truck spot. Everybody was waiting for Braun to bust back out of the truck. Some of the camera shots weren’t the greatest, like when Braun was choke slammed through the stage, the look of the chairs falling on Braun was good though. They love how Angle looked like a proud dad in the match. X-Pac jokingly asks if anybody has a greater neck in pro wrestling. It’s the greatest neck in pro wrestling. “It’s definitely not a stack of dimes there; it’s more like a stack of quarters.” They commented on liking hearing Angle come out to his own music mid-match, they wished Angle was wearing his singlet, and it was weird that Kane didn’t have any pyro.
Monday Night Raw – They thought that it was interesting in a not so good way how Kane went over on Finn Balor. They discussed #UnderSiege – they made some Steven Seagal jokes. X-Pac once met him and said he’s a douche. They brought up that it was weird that heels and faces from Smackdown were working together. Somebody brings up that Americans can have differences but if they are in the armed forces in battle they go as one unit despite their differences. X-Pac dismisses this argument calling it a reach. They discuss the ins and outs of who was there for Smackdown and who they went after from Raw. X-Pac brings up normally it’s just mid-carders, but here they put some top guys in. X-Pac would have been hot to be included in because it’s like “you’re getting j-broned out.”
He tells a story about one of the guys playing the P.A. backstage during the segment. He was in a six man tag match one time and they started going into a slow motion spot that he had never seen before and nobody had told him about it beforehand. X-Pac blew a gasket he was so mad. The next time he was in there he was doing the same thing as everyone else though, and then Tommy Dreamer pulled out a remote and hit a button and everything stopped. He said that he can’t remember being that uncomfortable about anything in a long time – maybe ever. They look forward to Survivor Series/how do you feel about the “fight for brand supremacy?” – It may be enjoyable for people because it’s not as predictable.
X-Pac goes back to Finn/Kane. He thinks its terrible booking. He gets feeding someone to Kane, but questions why it had to be Finn – especially since Finn just beat A.J. the night before. He then says sometimes they have a destination in mind that isn’t apparent on a small scale. They talk a little bit about the illnesses going around the locker room and X-Pac says that something like this could shut the company down if it travels throughout the roster.
X-Pac brings up the rumor that Nia Jax called The Rock for advice and that he told her to walk out. X-Pac does not buy that Dwayne Johnson gave her that advice. He doesn’t believe it for one second. A lot of the rumors paint Nia in a really bad light if that is the case as well. “I don’t believe for one second that he actually gave her that advice. I think there’s something, that somehow the story got, something got lost in translation I think here.” X-Pac joked that he enjoyed not having a guest on this week. They finish the conversation with all of their plugs.
Rating 7.5/10
I thought this was a nice episode. It wasn’t too drawn out with an extensive interview – it was a nice short little recap of the week’s events. I definitely would have liked an explanation as to why there was no guest but at the same time not having a guest allows for a more in-depth discussion of what happened during the week.
Overall, the episode was a little shorter than normal and I was happy that it wasn’t bogged down by too much over-analyzation of the matches. I would have liked them to maybe spend more time talking about the AJ/Finn match as it was easily the best match of the night. I think in a show formatted in a recap setting it would be beneficial to get X-Pac’s opinion on how the matches are structured and how they went down. After all, he is there because he is an expert on the subject and it would be interesting to get his perspective on how certain matches are structured and to go into a little detail on why he thinks certain things may or may not have worked. He wouldn’t have to do it for every match – but here and there would be just enough to kind of keep the conversation from getting into too much conjecture. Aside from that, it was a solid show.
Timestamps:
0:00 – 20:56 Intro and News
20:57 – 22:25 Ad Break
22:26 – 1:06:20 TLC/Raw/Smackdown Recap
1:06:21 – 1:10:02 Plugs and ending
For more, check out our archives of X-Pac 1,2,360.
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