Cain A. Knight is a hardcore number-cruncher who has analyzed and covered pro wrestling for Cageside Seats since 2014, and followed the sport as a fan going back to the 1980's.
Some places do power rankings. Here at Cageside, we do a stock report.
In this weekly series, we identify three Superstars (or groups of Superstars) who are on their way up, and three that are moving in the opposite direction. After a busy week that included Saturday Night’s Main Event, Sheamus confronting Rusev, and Cody Rhodes’ return to SmackDown, a lot of fortunes were changed.
With that in mind, let’s see whose stock decreased the most this week:
Stock Down #3: Rey Fenix
Fenix has now been on the losing side of the ledger on three consecutive episodes of SmackDown after his tag team partner Je’Von Evans was pinned last night against Los Garza. The week before that it was Jimmy Uso who let Rey down as his partner in a tag match. I wonder how many more random partners Rey will go through before he remembers that his brother Penta also wrestles for WWE.
Stock Down #2: Nia Jax
Nia Jax was pinned on SmackDown and failed to qualify for the women’s Money in the Bank ladder match. Considering that she just lost a women’s championship match against Tiffany Stratton a couple weeks ago, it seems that WWE is moving Jax out of the world title picture for the foreseeable future.
Stock Down #1: Street Profits, Motor City Machine Guns, Fraxiom, DIY
WWE decided that the best way to bring the Wyatt Sicks back into the fold was to have them destroy all of the top tag teams on SmackDown for (at least) two weeks in a row. That’s a solid restart for the Wyatts, but it makes all these other teams look like they don’t belong in the same ring with them. I guess Tommaso Ciampa really knew what he was talking about when he asked for a moment of silence for the SmackDown tag team division.
Now let’s see whose stock increased the most this week:
Stock Up #3: Kairi Sane
Kairi ended up getting pinned during her return match on the May 19 episode of Raw when an audible was called due to Zoey Stark’s terrible knee injury. WWE made it up to Kairi this week on Raw by giving her a win over former Women’s World Champion Liv Morgan. That’s not too shabby.
Stock Up #2: Bronson Reed
Bronson Reed returned to WWE at Saturday Night’s Main Event to squash CM Punk like a bug and join up with Seth Rollins and Bron Breakker. Paul Heyman then put Reed over on Raw as an unstoppable force that WWE management and top stars are afraid of because he’s too reckless and violent for this PG era. Bronson is immediately in a great spot now that he’s one of the Paul Heyman Guys; now WWE just needs to find a cool name for Two Bron Power Trip.
Stock Up #1: Naomi
Naomi was creepy as hell on SmackDown when she casually admitted that she invaded the home of Bianca Belair’s parents and looked through their photo albums like a psycho stalker. It was also disturbing how her demeanor changed as she went from crying to looking like she was ready to murder her former best friend. Naomi went on to qualify for the women’s Money in the Bank ladder match and threaten WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton backstage. I’d say this is easily the most interesting Naomi’s been in a very long time.
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