Friday, October 20, 2017

The Friday News Dump to End All Friday News Dumps: Angle Is Wrestling Again

Angle is back, it's true, it's damn true
Photo Credit: WWE.com
When Kurt Angle came back to WWE, the idea of him wrestling again was tantalizing, even though his myriad medical issues might have precluded that for awhile. The general vibe was that he'd be ready for action by WrestleMania, where he'd probably wrestle Triple H in a vanity match. Or, he'd end up replacing Roman Reigns in the main event of a RAW-branded B-pay-per-view because of an outbreak of viral meningitis in the WWE locker room. If you had that scenario as your entree for Angle back into a WWE ring, congratulations on hitting for a trillion dollars on your five dollar bet, because hoo boy, it's happening. WWE just dropped the news item as a news dump on WWE Dot Com two days before the scheduled event, TLC, was set to happen.

Reigns is only the latest victim of meningitis on the roster. Bray Wyatt, Bo Dallas, and Jojo have all been kept off the road because of the outbreak, which makes sense. Wyatt and Jojo have been romantically linked, and Wyatt and Dallas are brothers who probably travel on the road together. Reigns getting the bug points to an even wider outbreak than first thought, however. Of course, Wyatt was also supposed to wrestle on the show, in his Sister Abigail persona, against Finn Bálor's Daemon persona. He's definitely not doing that. In his stead, however, Smackdown superstar AJ Styles will fill in. Of course, Styles/Bálor may be the MORE intriguing match because one of them founded the Bullet Club and the other brought it mainstream, and oh yeah, WWE is in petty bickering bullshit mode with the remaining members of it.

Anyway, I almost thought Angle was going to insert himself in the match alongside The Shield Monday night the way he was jumping around. Perhaps he had an idea that he was next off the bench in case someone came down with the bug, and given that Reigns worked a full match vs. Braun Strowman in the main event of RAW, I'm guessing this development was pretty recent. Either way, while viral meningitis is perhaps the lesser of the meningitises, it's still not anything to fuck with. Hopefully, Angle isn't rusty and he's in good enough condition to compete. Either way, Sunday night is going to be pretty interesting.