The madness never ends, as we head into yet another busy week in the world of wrestling to kick off the month of May. With the Greatest Royal Rumble and IMPACT Redemption behind us, we look ahead towards WWE Backlash and two major New Japan events, as well as a full week of can’t-miss television.

This Week in WWE Television

The first WWE pay-per-view after WrestleMania is usually full of repeat performances from the grandest stage of them all, especially in years with Drafts or Superstars Shakeups, as there’s not a whole lot of time to put together new rivalries before rushing head-first into the next big event. This year, so far, we’re only looking at two direct rematches, with Alexa Bliss getting her rematch for the RAW Women’s Championship and Part III of the AJ Styles/Shinsuke Nakamura rivalry.

For the most part the company has done a great job pushing out fresh programs in a very short period of time, with the likes of Carmella, Big Cass and Samoa Joe all shotgunned into relevant programs. Expect at least three more matches announced this week, as we’ve still got five titles unaccounted for. Jeff Hardy vs. Randy Orton seems to be the direction they’re headed on Smackdown for the U.S. title, although they may hold off on that to build it out more, or potentially add Shelton Benjamin to the mix. The Universal title is not expected to be on the line. Whether or not she’s expected to be there, we still haven’t heard anything about a potential Ronda Rousey match-up, although they seem to be teasing something between her and Mickie James.

Other than that, it’ll be an interesting week for WWE television as the Greatest Royal Rumble has thrown things out of wack in a few small ways. Cedric Alexander defended the Cruiserweight Championship in Saudi Arabia and recent episode of 205 Live have all been based around building to that show, so with less than a week ’till Backlash the show kind of feels directionless. But most of the WWE product right now, while consistently better than usual, almost feels like it’s currently in flux. It doesn’t help that there are still multiple inter-brand matches on this weekend’s pay-per-view.

Make sure you join us for live coverage of WWE RAW, Smackdown Live, 205 Live, NXT, IMPACT Wrestling, NJPW Dontaku nights one and two AND WWE Backlash this week. Wow… Good luck, me.

NJPW Wrestling Dontaku

We’ll have a much more in-depth breakdown of these shows out later in the week, but I do want to remind everyone that NJPW has two big Wrestling Dontaku shows coming up this Thursday and Friday live on NJPW World. We’ve already seen Tetsuya Naito recapture the IWGP Intercontinental Championship from Minoru Suzuki and multiple other title defenses on the Road to Dontaku shows over the past two weeks. It seems like they’re really trying to split the big matches over as many shows as humanly possible this year; I guess if you can pack a dozen minor events, it’s better financially than two major, stacked events, but the viability of that is questionable long term.

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The entire Dontaku tour is building towards the highly anticipated return to the single greatest heavyweight rivalry in New Japan history, when the record-breaker Kazuchika Okada puts the IWGP Heavyweight Championship on the line against the former paradigm Hiroshi Tanahashi. Expectations are high on this one. Okada may have defeated Tanahashi at the Tokyo Dome years ago to claim the throne and pass the torch, but since the historic title reign began 679 days ago the two have barely touched. In fact, with Naito, Omega, Shibata, Suzuki and virtually every other top heavyweight star falling to The Rainmaker, the beaten down Ace may be the last relevant name who hasn’t stepped up to the plate. That all changes this Friday.

Will Ospreay also defends the IWGP Junior Heavyweight title against the juniors ace KUSHIDA, and the entire Los Ingobernables de Japon faction will take on five members of Suzuki-Gun in a gigantic 10-man tag team match that should be all kinds of insane.

Another major aspect of this tour is the implosion happening right now in Bullet Club. On Thursday we will see brothers take on brothers when Marty Scurll and the Young Bucks take on Bad Luck Fale and the Guerrillas of Destiny for the NEVER 6-Man titles, plus Cody Rhodes getting his rematch against Kota Ibushi and Kenny Omega headlining against Hangman Page. On Friday, things will get very serious in another massive 10-man tag match, but this time it will be Kenny Omega’s Bullet Club challenging Cody’s Bullet Club – winner take all.

Last Week’s ResultsIMPACT Redemption Results (4/22)WWE RAW (4/23)WWE Smackdown Live (4/24)WWE 205 Live (4/24)WWE NXT (4/25)IMPACT Wrestling (4/26)WWE Greatest Royal Rumble (4/27)

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Upcoming Schedule

Have an event you’d like us to add to our weekly schedule? Email [email protected] 

Monday, April 30th

NJPW Road to Dontaku | NJPW World | 5AM ETWWE RAW | USA Network | 8PM ET

Tuesday, May 1st

NJPW Road to Dontaku | NJPW World | 5:30AM ETWWE Smackdown Live | USA Network | 8PM ETWWE 205 Live | WWE Network | 10PM ET

Wednesday, May 2nd

WWE NXT | WWE Network | 8PM ET

Thursday, May 3rd

NJPW Wrestling Dontaku | NJPW World | 4AM ETIMPACT Wrestling | Pop TV |8PM ET

Friday, May 4th

NJPW Wrestling Dontaku | NJPW World | 4AM ET

Sunday, May 6th

WWE Backlash Kickoff Show | WWE Network | 7PM ETWWE Backlash | WWE Network | 8PM ET

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