WWE Live: Manchester AO Arena, November 10th 2021

Well it's been a good long while since I touched this thing, but on a whim I decided to take my wife to see WWE's latest UK tour. Like many people, I have found myself to be pretty unenthused with many aspects of WWE's current show. I typically only watch the monthly PPV/Network special (unless it's in Saudi Arabia) & that gives me my fill. WWE returning to the UK less than 2 months after their last tour kind of reeked of desperation, but when they announced the card on Halloween weekend and I saw how reasonable the cheapest seats were (about £44 a head seemed fair value when prices for arena entertainment have sky-rocketed - heck, we've just spent £30 a ticket to see Warpaint at the Albert Hall) I thought it was worth a shot. Being dressed in my Orange Cassidy Halloween costume when the news broke probably boosted my enthusiasm for wrestling too. That costume was Orange Cassidy approved to boot:

You get it. https://t.co/dLKsi6yUjX

— Orange Cassidy (@orangecassidy) October 31, 2021

This was my first mainline WWE Live show since my first ever wrestling show in 2013 an my first WWE show of any kind since the UK Championship Tournament in 2017. That feels like a lifetime ago. My wife hadn't been to a show since she was a child! We were both pretty excited, so let's run through what they had to offer.

Match 1: Finn Balor & Cesaro beat Sheamus & Walter

Finn vs Sheamus & Cesaro vs Walter were originally advertised. Finn got injured late in the tour so merging the 2 into a tag match was to help him work less. I was talking ahead of the show about how I had hopes Walter & Cesaro were going to properly unload since it was the last night of the tour. Obviously that couldn't be the case but at least we still got to see Finn & his entrance.

Earlier that day, Sheamus cut a promo in the Man City changing room singing Liverpool’s praises & kept doing so on the mic in the arena.  Man City & England defender Kyle Walker has a video message that challenged him to wear a City shirt if he lost the match. Naturally, Sheamus lost the fall when Finn rolled him up. He still refused to wear the shirt so Cesaro had to come back out, give him the swing & force the shirt over his head.
Verdict: Pretty good opener that spread the workload relatively lightly for all, though Finn still got some trademarks in. Sheamus & Cesaro did most of the work, including a good hot tag by Cesaro. Walter mostly just brawled, crowd hung on the teases of his chops. Good mix of shenanigans & workrate.


Match 2: Natalya beat Shayna Baszler

Shayna jumped Nattie during her entrance but it still settled into a good technical match, sweet escapes from both wrestlers. Nattie got a German suplex into the match, which I don’t associate her with. Nattie rolled through the Kirafuda Clutch to pin Shayna’s shoulders ala Bret at Survivor Series 96 to get the win. 

Verdict: Nice match for the time given.


Match 3: Jeff Hardy beat Madcap Moss via DQ

Happy Corbin accompanied Moss & bemoaned Manchester for being miserable. Moss had a terrible joke about golfers having two pairs of socks in case they got a hole in one.
Jeff was super over. He played the hits & practically dominated the match. Corbin got thrown out at one point so the ref got to do a colossal "Yoooooouuuuu'rrrreeee OUTTA HERE!" spot. He came back though and  hung Jeff up on the top buckle before the Swanton could connect to cause the DQ. Drew McIntyre came out to even the odds & made a Spice Girls reference in his challenge for a tag match (playa) because Mel B was in the front row. He had to get the crowd to call Corbin a chicken to convince the heels to wrestle the match.


Match 4: Drew McIntyre & Jeff Hardy beat Happy Corbin & Madcap Moss

Drew was spritely, then Jeff wound up playing face in peril. Out of nowhere Moss - who did nothing more complicated than tease a neckbreaker in his match with Jeff earlier - busts out the sweetest move in the match with a good Gory Bomb. Drew got the hot tag & pinned Moss after a Claymore. 

Verdict: Simple enough match that meant Drew could work a lighter match while still giving the crowd enough to make them happy, and the Teddy Long impromptu tag booking saved Jeff from having to do a Swanton when no cameras were on. The faces probably glad handed with the crowd post match for longer than they wrestled. The heels offered little really.


Match 5: Tommaso Ciampa beat Sami Zayn & Bron Breakker to retain the NXT Championship

Sami cut a promo where he was actually very respectful about his opponents’ credentials but pointed out NXT would be nothing without him. Ciampa was pretty over. Lots of 2 men in/1 man out, Bron & Ciampa being the initial workhorses, then it switched to Bron/Sami. Bron ruled in this match - suplexes galore & a Frankensteiner. He’s got a bright future. Not much wrestling from Sami, who mostly played spoiler. He tried to pick up the scraps when Bron hit his Gorilla Front Power Slam & kept Bron out of the ring, but Ciampa recovered with a knee lift/ripcord DDT combo to win. 

Verdict: Very good match, the wrestling was the most authentic out of everything so far tonight in terms of matching what you’d expect of a televised match.


Match 6: Shinsuke Nakamura beat Jinder Mahal to retain the Intercontinental Championship

Rick Boogs played Shinsuke to the ring and was really over. This was the first time I’d properly seen his manage Shinsuke & I liked his quirks, like doing a biddley-diddley riff while Shinsuke did the Good Vibrations in the corner, then playing Shinsuke’s theme to help him rally out of a chinlock. I guess he is to Nakamura what the Urn is to The Undertaker. Boogs also broke up Jinder putting his feet on the ropes on a cover, so Jinder tried to convince the ref to tell Boogs "Youuuu'rrreee outta here" but the ref instead told him "Heeeee's STAYING" in a fun call back to earlier. Shinsuke basically played the hits. They teased lots of his kicks into the match rather well with Jinder having an initial block at several points. Shinsuke escaped the Khallas & hit the Kinshasa to win. 

Verdict: An alright match, nothing special. Could have done without the idiots in our section chanting irrelevant stuff that didn’t match the flow of the match at all. More on that later.


Main Event: Charlotte Flair beat Sasha Banks to retain the Smackdown Women’s Championship

Both wrestlers were really over, Charlotte was the heel but was still well supported. These two could wrestle each other in their sleep. Great counters & call backs. Similar in vein to the NXT match - it seemed like both women took great pride in the standard of the match & their responsibility as headliners to make a memorable match. Great energy with Sasha having lots of success with meteora variants, Charlotte doing well with counters to counters like her tilt-a-whirl backbreaker & moonsault into a standing moonsault. Charlotte won with the Natural Selection. She shook hands with Sasha post match but it was a ploy to attack her with the belt. Sasha countered & sent her packing with a backstabber. 

Verdict: A terrific match, filled with top class exchanges. Match of the night easily. 

OTHER THOUGHTS

• Merch stand was dominated by people not even on the show including The Bloodline/Roman Reigns, Becky Lynch, New Day and Kevin Owens. There was also a “Manchester 3:16” shirt, dunno what Stone Cold has to do with anything. But the top seller was probably John Cena’s latest green shirt. Crowd was full of kids wearing that.
• Arena was probably 2/3s full in terms of seats available. The floor was pretty full and the cheap seats relatively popular but the side of the arena where the “hard camera” traditionally goes was much more empty. The top deck wasn’t rented out at all & curtained off.
• Trent Seven was front row ringside for Shayna’s match & Hardy’s match. He left when the latter morphed into the tag match with Drew & greeted a bunch of people as he did so. He hot-dogged and grand-standed for all he was worth while he was out there, even Ric Flair at Halloween Havoc 95 would be jealous. “STAND TALL!” That was basically the only NXT UK involvement on the show, besides the BT Sports advert being played before the show.

SPECIAL REVIEW - THE DICKHEAD FANS IN OUR BLOCK

• Jesus wept these guys were the most obnoxious fans I think I’ve ever had to be around. I don’t know where they came from but they just magically appeared in time for the first match to put a downer on everyone’s night.
• At least two of them were United fans & did not like Sheamus’ footy gimmick at all. They chanted “You Scouse bastard” at him until their vaguely sensible friend pointed out how many kids were around. Then they chanted a bunch of United stuff when Walker laid out his challenge, as if they didn’t lose at home to City at the weekend.
• They spent most of Nattie’s match trying to start chants for other wrestlers, apart from one point where one guy started talking about her possibly having a boob job? A couple sat next to us checked out & switched sections before that match even began, a few people with kids appeared to do the same.
• They were really aggressively into Sami Zayn during the NXT Title match. There were long spells of them chanting “Let’s Go Sami” when he wasn’t even in the ring or doing anything. If you want to show your support lads, cheering for him when he’s actually doing stuff in the match would be a great start. They were also perfectly okay with having a loud conversation to themselves while he cut his promo, which is not exactly a good way of showing your support for someone either.
• They totally ruined the Shinsuke/Jinder match. This was the point in the night where they really just disappeared up their own arses and into a world of their own. Just incessant chanting & yelling that did not match the flow of the match & when the rest of the audience were getting into things. Two of them did a duelling “Nakamura/Jinder sucks” chant by themselves for TWO STRAIGHT MINUTES. They were also obsessed with Jinder being Canadian & chanted about that & how he can stick his maple syrup up his arse. I was in my Shinsuke shirt & very excited to see him but this actively took away from my engagement in the match. I was planning to show my support more actively, but I’d heard enough Nakamura chants for a lifetime before the match even really took off.
• The flashes of misogyny in their treatment of Nattie’s match sadly reached another level during the main event. Pretty sure I overheard them debate which of the wrestlers they’d rather have sex with & one of them tried to do a “Charlotte, show us your WOO” chant going before he was shut down by the least obnoxious one in the group. They also chanted “If Sasha wins, we’re on the piss” but it sounded like they were on the piss already.
• When the show was over it was really funny looking at them all. Everyone else was leaving the arena & were pretty chatty, but those lads just stayed sat in their chairs, totally silent & looking off to the middle distance like someone took their batteries out. Oh, so now they're quiet!

Final Verdict

This was a fun show overall. There were 3 matches where a sentimental favourite of mine (Jeff, Drew, Shinsuke) was lumbered with someone I did not care for at all (Moss, Corbin & Jinder). Two of those got merged together & while it took a bunch of time, it was good to see Drew have fun with it, while the Intercontinental Title match had some entertaining quirks that would have been more enjoyable without the dicks in the crowd. I was pleased with all the other matches on the show, with Charlotte vs Sasha being a class above everything else & the NXT Title match also proving really good - Bron's got a lot of star potential and didn't look out of place in there with the two veterans. I was happy we went.

I hope you've enjoyed this post. If you did, be sure to check out my podcast Then, Now, Whatever. We're currently in the middle of our Tape Trader Diaries series looking at the wrestling shows we shared with each other growing up. You'll find the latest episode embedded below.

TNWPodcast · TNW42: WWF Royal Rumble 2001 (The Tape Trader Diaries)