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It was a busy night. WWE has a lot of programming to offer every single week and it can be quite a bit. Sometimes it is hard to remember everything that is going on, which is not often the best way to go. There is not much of another way around it though, as there are so many wrestlers that sometimes WWE needs to use that much time. This week, they needed even more time than usual.
According to Wrestling Inc., there were three non-televised dark matches during this week’s WWE SmackDown taping. Prior to the show, there were two NXT matches, as Johnny Gargano defeated Kyle O’Reilly and Amari Miller defeated Dakota Kai. After the show went off the air, Drew McIntyre and the Viking Raiders defeated the Bloodline. Of the six SmackDown wrestlers, only Jey Uso and Roman Reigns of the Bloodline did not wrestle twice on the night.
Amari Miller defeated Dakota Kai before smackdown! #Smackdown pic.twitter.com/2ut84gfMJr
— Tiff ? (@Kwadey06gmailc1) November 5, 2021
Viking Warriors and Drew McI..

Two of the big ones. We are just over two weeks away from one of the biggest events of the year, with Survivor Series coming up soon. Over the last few years, the show has been built around the idea of Monday Night Raw vs. SmackDown in a battle for brand supremacy. This has usually been done via traditional Survivor Series matches and that will be the case again this year. Now we know some important details.
WWE has announced the lineups for the men’s and women’s Survivor Series matches. Both Monday Night Raw and SmackDown will have a five member team for each elimination match. There were no qualifying matches this year and the teams were announced with nothing mentioned about them on television. No captains were announced for any of the four teams. Here are the lineups:
Monday Night Raw Men
Seth Rollins
Finn Balor
Kevin Owens
Rey Mysterio
Dominik Mysterio
SmackDown Men
Drew McIntyre
Jeff Hardy
King Woods
Sami Zayn
Happy Corbin
Monday Night Raw Women
Bianca Belair
Rhea Ripley
Liv ..

Welcome to KB’s Old School (and New School) Reviews. I’ve been reviewing wrestling shows for over twelve years now and have reviewed over 6,000 shows. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I’ll be posting a new review here on Wrestlingrumors.net. It could be anything from modern WWE to old school to indies to anything in between. Note that I rate using letters instead of stars and I don’t rate matches under three minutes as really, how good or bad can something that short be?
Bound For Glory 2020
Date: October 24, 2020
Location: Skyway Studios, Nashville, Tennessee
Commentators: Don Callis, Josh Matthews
It’s the biggest night of the year, or at least it is on paper. Bound For Glory has long since been the top show in the company, though Slammiversary tends to be more fun. Maybe they can change things around a bit this year, though the card isn’t giving me the best vibes. Let’s get to it.
Pre-Show: Deaners vs. Rascalz
Dez and Wentz for the Rascalz. The Deaners start with the double t..

There’s your shot across the bow. AEW and WWE are the two biggest and most powerful wrestling companies in the United States, if not the world. They have been competing against each other for the last few years now, occasionally with one company taking a not so veiled shot at the other from time to time. That was the case again this week, and it was a rather fast turnaround.
Earlier this week, WWE released 18 wrestlers from the company in its latest round of roster cuts. This week on AEW Rampage, Max Caster rapped his way to the ring, including a line saying that Bryan Danielson’s father in law ended several careers. Danielson’s father in law is John Laurinaitis, the WWE Head of Talent Relations, who sent out the email announcing that the wrestlers had been released.
That was a bit harsh. Check out the full rap, with several more lines, plus some more of Danielson in AEW:
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Rampage
Date: November 5, 2021
Location: Chafetz Arena, St. Louis, Missouri
Commentators: Ricky Starks, Taz, Excalibur
It’s another live show this week and that could be a good thing. The big story this week is a face to face showdown between CM Punk and Eddie Kingston, meaning it’s time to get the popcorn ready. The talking alone should be great to hear and you can all but write in the Full Gear match from here. Let’s get to it.
Opening sequence.
Bryan Danielson vs. Anthony Bowens Max Caster is here with Bowens and raps about how Danielson loves cucumbers, is famous for his wife’s reality show, has skinny legs and a father in law who kills wrestlers’ careers (Johnny Ace). Danielson goes after the arm to start but Bowens runs him over with a shoulder. Some kicks to the face don’t do much to Danielson, who is back with a kick to the chest. They fight to the floor though and Danielson is sent into the barricade. Caster gets in a shot of his own and we take a break. Back with Danielson..

That’s certainly different. There are all kinds of wrestlers in the industry today and several of them have unique characters. That is one of the hardest things to pull off in wrestling as almost everyone is doing something similar to someone else. Occasionally you find something unique, but now it seems like one of the most unique things in wrestling will be going away.
Shotzi returned on SmackDown in the WWE Draft and made her singles debut on the October 29 edition of the show. During the event, she turned heel and attacked Sasha Banks while blaming her for everything going wrong. This week on SmackDown, Shotzi appeared more somber and mentioned that she did not need her tank anymore, while talking about how she had lost everything. This appears to be a new character for Shotzi after her heel turn the previous week.
That is rather different. Check out Blackheart’s promo, plus some more of her usual self:
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That’s another thing. This week saw nearly twenty wrestlers leaving WWE in the span of one day, as the company released several wrestlers at once. The wrestlers released were from all different levels of the company, including younger and less established wrestlers and bigger stars. However, it seems that some of them had something in common as one of WWE’s newer rules may have been in play.
According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, age may have played a factor in some of the WWE’s releases. The company is looking to bring in physically larger and younger wrestlers with a more legitimate athletic background. WWE wants to have more wrestlers in their twenties on its television shows, especially women. As a result, a new hiring directive suggests that any new women hired be twenty five years old or younger.
There were some very good wrestlers on the list of releases. Check out some of them in action, regardless of age:
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On the mend. There are all kinds of ways a wrestler can be injured, both in and out of the ring. Sometimes it is something that takes place over time and sometimes it is one big moment. What matters even more though is how long someone is going to be out of action after getting hurt. Another wrestler has a pretty bad injury, and now it is time to get things fixed up.
According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, NXT’s Zoey Stark suffered a knee injury during the ladder match on the October 26 show. As a result, she is scheduled to undergo knee surgery soon and her attack at the hands of Toxic Attraction earlier this week was designed to write her off of television. There is no word on what happened to Starks’ knee or how long she will be out of action.
Stark is rather talented in the ring. Check out what she can do when healthy:
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Opinion: That’s never ..

Smackdown
Date: November 5, 2021
Location: Ford Center, Evansville, Indiana
Commentators: Michael Cole, Pat McAfee
We’re just over two weeks away from Survivor Series and it might be time to start talking about the show. Since it absolutely has to be Raw vs. Smackdown, it shouldn’t be that hard to get things going. The show almost has to be better than last week’s so at least they have a clear bar to clear. Let’s get to it.
Here is the Bloodline to get things going. Roman Reigns talks about taking last week off after smashing Brock Lesnar, but now he’s back so this tiny little no name town can acknowledge him. He was on a private island running around naked last week (his wife loved it), but not everyone had a good time. Brock Lesnar got fined a million bucks, but there was one more thing.
Reigns asks Paul Heyman what happened to the Usos, with Heyman talking about how it was a non-title match. When flat out asked though, Heyman has to admit that the New Day won the match. Reigns li..

I guess he wasn’t happy. Sometimes you will see a wrestler make some kind of a change, many of which can be better than others. Occasionally those changes make things better, but other times you see things go downhill as a result. That can be a problem when a wrestler is still finding their footing, and now a recently released star is letting us know what he thought of a last minute change.
Earlier this week, WWE releases several wrestlers from the company, including Karrion Kross, who had only been called up to the main roster earlier this year. Soon after his debut, Kross began wearing a helmet to the ring for his matches. A fan asked if he could have the fan now that Kross is gone, to which Kross replied “nobody wants that piece of s***”. There is no word on where Kross is expected to go next.
Wonder if Kross would give me the helmet
— ?Video editing skeleton? (@IQWrestler) November 5, 2021
Nobody wants that piece of shit brother. ?
— ? KROSS (@WWEKarrionKross) November 5, 2021..

Keep piling them on. We are just over a week away from AEW’s next pay per view offering with Full Gear, meaning the company shouldn’t have much left to do to get the show ready. AEW has a rather strong history on pay per view and it is nice to see how well they can do when they get the chance. That will be the case again now as more matches have been added to the show.
Two more matches were added to Full Gear during this week’s AEW Rampage. First up, Eddie Kingston and CM Punk had a face to face confrontation, with both insulting the other. Kingston eventually challenged Punk to a match, with Punk accepting to set up the match. Later, Christian Cage and Jurassic Express challenged the Superkliq to a falls count anywhere match at Full Gear. The match was confirmed later in the night. Full Gear is set for November 13 in Minneapolis.
It was a pretty big showdown. Check out how we got to these matches:
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They’re not done yet. There have been a lot of departures from WWE over the last two years and the trend continued this week with several more wrestlers being let go. These are the kind of moves that can change the way the company works, but they are not alone. In addition to letting wrestlers go, there are other people who now no longer work for WWE after this week.
Five more backstage employees have departed WWE this week. WWE has announced that Chief Financial Officer Kristina Salen has left WWE, with Frank A. Riddick being announced as her replacement. According to Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics, Salen was not liked in WWE and she was a reason why several finance department employees also left. Salen had been with the company since August 2020.
In addition, according to Fightful Select, the following employees have also left WWE:
Lauren Petrucelli (Vice President of Branding)
John Stamatis (Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Sales Strategy)
Laura Todd (Vice Preside..