PWI Weekly for October 21, 2024
PWI Weekly for October 21, 2024
Pivoting: Meaner Mox, Edgier 'E, & Masha Slamovich's "Kill Wall"
“Pivot!”
That interjection can be a helpful one if you want to maneuver a couch up a particularly difficult set of stairs. In wrestling, though, a pivot often signifies a sea change from what a person or promotion has been doing or … is expected to do.
Change can often be scary, but it can be refreshing, too. With that in mind, this edition of the PWI Weekly looks at some individuals and collectives who have taken a different course as of late.
WRESTLER OF THE WEEK
Jon Moxley has always marched to the beat of his own drum. As a member of The Shield in WWE, it always felt like Mox (then Dean Ambrose) was the most likely to go rogue. And while he didn’t do so on screen, he certainly did away from it. When his WWE contract came to an end in 2019, the Cincinnati native swaggered into AEW and became a top star straight away. It’s a status he has held ever since.
Never one to remain static for long, Moxley has recently moved away from the AEW character we have come to know him as. In doing so, he has shifted to a much darker and more serious persona. With an increasingly vicious Blackpool Combat Club behind him, Mox has been wreaking havoc across AEW. This culminated in him dethroning Bryan Danielson for the AEW World championship at WrestleDream.
While his actions have been highly questionable, there is no denying that Moxley’s pivot has been a successful one.
A QUICK WORD ABOUT …
Just like Dr. Marten boots, the mullet, or even that gum you like, most everything eventually comes back into style.
Like fashion, wrestling is a cyclical business, where, sooner or later, expired trends come back into vogue. Take WWE, for example. Recently, the promotion has allowed the reintroduction of blood during matches and slightly loosened things up in the swear-word department. (Unless you’re The Rock during the build to WrestleMania; in which case, it was more than slight.)
While anyone who follows non-WWE fare knows that blood and cussing have been prevalent in other promotions, it has been quite a surprise to see this recent pivot by the industry leader.
After working under a PG rating for so long, WWE performers have been allowed to add some extra color (pun intended) to their creative pallets. The whole affair is a massive shift from where the organization was just a year or two ago. But it’s one that we have to say that we support.
Televised wrestling can sometimes seem like a paint-by-numbers production that, in time, can leave a product feeling a little stale. It behooves all wrestling promotions to freshen up their products every so often.
SPOTLIGHT MATCH
At Bound For Glory 2022, Jordynne Grace defeated Masha Slamovich in an extremely hard-fought match that saw Grace retain her Knockouts championship and Slamovich’s TNA undefeated streak come to an end. Since then, fans have been clamoring for a pay-per-view rematch between the two. And this Saturday night, those fans will finally get what they’ve been asking for.
The road to Bound For Glory 2024 has, until recently, been a divergent one for these two women. Between forays into NXT and issuing open challenges, Grace has been busy solidifying her status as one of the most dominant champions in wrestling. For Slamovich, the year began in tag team action alongside Killer Kelly and, later, Alisha Edwards. But with the arrival of autumn, Grace and Slamovich increasingly found themselves on one another’s radars. That was when “The Russian Dynamite” revealed the return of her “kill wall” and signified Grace would be the next to join it.
Grace’s ring game has been practically perfect in 2024. Still, don’t be shocked if the hyper-focused Slamovich can stop the “Juggernaut” in her tracks—avenging her loss from two years ago.
FROM THE VAULT
Charlotte Flair celebrates her win in the 2020 Women’s Royal Rumble match. With most analysts expecting Flair to challenge for either the Raw or Smackdown Women’s championship, she instead pivoted, calling her shot against Rhea Ripley for that year’s WrestleMania. As luck would have it, the match took place inside an almost-empty WWE Performance Center, under strict COVID protocols due to the onset of the global pandemic. Flair defeated Ripley, reclaiming the NXT Women’s championship she had held previously.