Who Should Replace Mark Briscoe at Death Before Dishonor? (Monday Morning Q&A)

Welcome back to another Monday Morning Q&A where I toss out some questions to get a feel of how you guys and gals are feeling about certain topics.

So here are 5 questions I’d like to toss out for this week. I’ll give my answers, too, but the key here is that I want to know what YOU think! So make sure you chime in!

1) Who do you think will and/or should replace Mark Briscoe to face Claudio Castagnoli at Death Before Dishonor?

To be blunt and brutally honest, I don’t think it matters. The way AEW works—and ROH even more so—it really seems like anyone who gets announced for this spot will be met with the same enthusiasm. ROH is very much a show of “watch the match for the sake of watching matches” program. Anyone brought in will be treated like an OMG moment, they’ll have a 15+ minute match with Castagnoli, put on a good show, and he’ll retain (unless Tony Khan specifically wants to get people buzzed about a random title change). I don’t think it will matter. If Briscoe was meant to be the next champion, they’ll just stall until he can win it. Of course, if that wasn’t the plan, then they were just going to have a showcase match that would ultimately be fruitless anyway, so it’s a wash.

As far as predictions and all, though, I would say they could go with a member of The Elite to keep that running and have someone like Adam Page fill in that spot, but they’ll likely go with someone lower on the totem pole. My guess is they’ll just slot in a random person like Christopher Daniels or maybe a guy like Rush?

2) Does it mean anything to you at this point when WWE advertises that Roman Reigns will “return” to SmackDown?

For the most part, no. If him showing up meant a title match each time (or even once in a blue moon), then it would stand out to me. But when he pops up just to essentially fill 30 minutes of time with a promo that 9 times out of 10 is the same inner-Bloodline strife, I’ve tuned out.

Granted, I’ll admit that I’m likely part of the audience they aren’t tapping into. I’d be watching anyway and the more casual crowd almost assuredly does see Roman Reigns on their feed and thinks “This must be a big deal” along with being fooled into the “returns” terminology making them feel it is special because it is rarer than if he’s there every week. WWE must see some sort of results with this, or they wouldn’t do it as often as they do.

That’s part of the same psychological tricks rule book as how everything costs $4.99 instead of $5 just to trick people into thinking it is $4 instead. But the more you hyper-analyze stuff, the more resistance you get to those tactics.

To me, him showing up on SmackDown for a Rules of Engagement segment just means he and Jey Uso will trade the same verbal barbs for 10 minutes until they establish that it is a No Disqualification match (likely by some other gimmick name, like a Tribal Warfare Match or whatever) and that’s about it.

3) How do you see the United States Championship Invitational and the match afterward against Santos Escobar playing out?

The most interesting scenario in my mind would be Rey Mysterio winning the Fatal 4-Way, since having him against Escobar would pit teammates against each other. However, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

What’s odd to me is that if this is a vessel to put the title on LA Knight, it’s strange they’re having all babyfaces in the running. Mysterio, Sheamus, Cameron Grimes and Escobar are all definitive faces right now, with Knight as a heel the crowd has been treating as a face (aka, firmly in tweener territory). Why put Knight up against 3 babyfaces so there’s potential for him to be booed, then put him against ANOTHER babyface, to fight a heel, instead of having another heel in the Fatal 4-Way and then having a heel in Escobar’s place? For example, maybe instead of Sheamus, put in Baron Corbin, and instead of Escobar, have Knight go through Karrion Kross, since Grayson Waller was already part of the other invitational match.

That makes me think there’s at least a chance WWE’s intention is to have Escobar against Theory instead, and that Knight might be in the Fatal 4-Way just to get people’s hype up.

I’d still bank more on Knight winning this overall, but their booking strategy is against the norm, so that has me questioning if this is a deviation from the pattern or if something else is up.

4) Dominik Mysterio has been spending time in NXT recently. Do you think he should have gone through that system or was it a better idea for him to go straight to the main roster?

For most people, a stint in NXT is incredibly helpful. Even if they’re an established star elsewhere, they could use a few months to learn the WWE way of doing things and become better known to this particular audience who might not know them from the other companies they’ve worked.

However, not everyone has to follow the same path. AJ Styles, for instance, didn’t need that whatsoever. And even though Dominik was obviously not one iota as experienced as Styles, he was someone who was put in a storyline right out of the gate as a newcomer. He was allowed to learn on the job with the audience knowing that he isn’t a seasoned competitor. It was okay for him to make mistakes and progress over time.

If he had gone through NXT, there would have been more of a burden on him to progress quickly enough to be on par with the other rookies. Look at Ava Raine for an example. She’s been in the system for a few years and between her injury putting that on hold and her general lack of progress, she looks worse right now because she’s been at the Performance Center for such a long time and has nothing much to show for it.

I’m not opposed to Dominik having a run in NXT where he can be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, and even potentially have a title reign with the North American Championship, but now is not the time. That should happen if and when he breaks away from The Judgment Day and needs a reset. He might not even need that. For all we know, in a few months, he might be a prime candidate for the Intercontinental Championship all by himself.

5) Do you think WWE should sign Brian Pillman Jr?

Absolutely. Put him in NXT. Give him a chance to learn more under some different teachers and, ideally, potentially, become a much bigger star than what he was able to accomplish in AEW.

Pillman isn’t the type of talent I would say they should hot shot to the main roster and try to book like Samoa Joe or something, but rather, someone who I think can follow the regular NXT formula and slowly work his way up.

Part of that would be keeping him Brian Pillman Jr and not trying to give him a different name just so they can trademark it. Bron Breakker is still dumb. He should’ve been Rex Steiner, or at least Bronson Steiner or something like that. The Breakker name is awful. Brian Pillman Jr shouldn’t be Zack Cannon or something ridiculous that plays into the names but doesn’t 100% do it. Just let him be himself and teach him how to improve on turning up the volume.

Let us know your thoughts about these questions by answering them in the comments!

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