WWE Tough Enough Episode #5 Review

Welcome one and all to the sinking ship that is somehow still above water, episode 5 of the TJRWrestling Tough Enough review. I’d like to say we’re close to the finish line, but I’d just be lying to you and to myself. This week we get visits from The Big Show and Natalya. I’ve got my fingers crossed that Ryback actually accepts The Big Show’s challenge from Raw last night for an IC Title Match. That’d be a total WWE move to have an impromptu title match to try and boost ratings.

After our opening video we go to Chris Jericho who once again cannot lay off the scarves and is back to his normal black one, and the lovely Renee Young who is in a summer mood with a lovely floral print sundress. I know you guys come for the hard hitting reporting like that. Renee brings up that Jericho is rocking the scarf. We go to our judges, Paige is back to a normal attire for her, decked out in all leather. Daniel Bryan is here to shamelessly shill his new book entitled YES! Everyone should buy that. I haven’t read it, but I’ll endorse it regardless. And Hogan is here as well.

Jericho goes right into introducing The Big Show who is here live. The Big Show comes out in wrestling attire, which means my hopes of a title match are still alive! He says he’s honored to be here and all three look far happier than they should, so they’re good company people. Renee asks what brings The Big Show here, and he says he’s here dressed for business, and he plans on having some fun tonight with the male competitors and showing them what it means to be in the ring with a giant.

We go to the barracks after last week’s elimination and everyone is eating at the table. Patrick goes right after Tanner and asks him what it’s like to be in the bottom three. Mada says that Patrick acts like he’s better than everyone. Later in the night, ZZ talks to Patrick about being too arrogant and confident. ZZ tries to make an analogy about how just a peanut butter sandwich sucks. You have to have some jelly to soften it up. Patrick looks at ZZ like he’s watching Cameron try to pin someone on their stomach.

It’s time for for the Rock On Adventures challenge this week. Booker T says tonight will test them to see who the best athlete is. Lita lays out the layout of the course, it’s a lot of different obstacles that you would typically see in an Army/Marine boot camp obstacle course, like rope climbs, balance beams, tires, etc. Billy Gunn brings out some people to help enforce the rules of the obstacle course, The Clermont Police and WWE Diva Natalya. I love Natalya. Natalya says there will be cops running the course first to up the ante on testing the competitors.

Natalya sends them all off at once and Tanner is out front early and ZZ is far behind. Sara Lee was first for the girls until it got to the rope climb. Tanner smokes everyone and wins the contest, but everyone else is stuck at the rope climb. Gigi wins yet again for the females. Patrick ends up finishing fourth, but FAR ahead of ZZ who is in last place by a country mile. Amanda and Chelsea are the last females stuck at the ropes too. Everyone tries to give them encouragement, and Chelsea makes it to the top, but when she drops, she apparently lands wrong on her ankle. The judges call the competition off.

We go live to Jericho and Renee, who send it to the judges. The judges discuss what they’ve seen, Hogan is mad at ZZ and Daniel is impressed Tanner smoked everyone. Jericho sends us to commercial.

We return to Renee showing us the rules of elimination. She then sends us back to Chelsea to see how she is. The coaches give praise to Tanner and Gigi as Chelsea is checked out. Lot of the competitors are bandaged up after the course. Natalya tells them to be humbled and be gracious about what they get. Lita reminds Patrick to be more humble, or else the doors opened for him will be shut in his face.

Chelsea goes to the doctor who tells her that her ankle is not broken, but it is sprained pretty well. He suggests that she stay off her foot for a month. Chelsea says there’s only 5 weeks left, so that’s not good for her. Hey, maybe we are closer to the end than I thought! Our first bit of good news tonight.

Amanda and Gigi are back in the barracks and are talking crap about Sara Lee and how she hasn’t tried to make a bond with the two of them. Maybe they’re confused about the new Divas storyline and feel they need three of them paired up together. Chelsea returns to the barracks and everyone realizes she’s injured.

Josh says that he’s feeling down after finishing third today, so he Facetime’s his daughter. Sara Lee then goes to check on Chelsea, who tells her that she has to be off her foot for a month. Chelsea says she’s going to do whatever she can to get in the ring tomorrow. Now all the guys are talking to ZZ, who is sulking by himself. He says he’s just thinking and doesn’t need to talk when he can think. Patrick asks ZZ if he wants to be here. Patrick says that ZZ is bullshit right now. Patrick goes off on ZZ about how this is about physicality and ZZ can’t hang and acts like he doesn’t care. If ZZ wants to be entertaining, go join a comedy club. Patrick says it’d be a kick in the balls if he loses to ZZ.

We return to the judges and Daniel says that Patrick has an ego, but he understands the frustration cause ZZ hasn’t shown anything physically in five weeks. Paige doesn’t seem to get how Patrick can develop an ego after five weeks. We go to commercial as the judges continue to debate.

Renee brings us back to the show where Chris Jericho is Periscoping live. Big Show is doing kung fu moves. Don’t ask. Back to the barracks and the girls are showing their battle scars to each other. Sara Lee ends up selling out Chelsea and tells the other two girls that she’s not supposed to be on her foot for a month. The competitors show up at practice and Gigi immediately goes full on bitch move and sells out Chelsea’s diagnosis before Chelsea can even tell the coaches about her foot when asked. She even gives a faux concerned statement saying, “she doesn’t want to jeopardize her safety in the ring with Chelsea”. Chelsea says she wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize anyone’s safety, she’s just pissed off. Billy asks her why she’s pissed off and Gigi again fakes emotion and says she feels bad for Chelsea and says it’s not fair. Wow, what a performance.

Billy says it really sucks for her, but asks Chelsea if she’s going to sit this week, and she says yes. Billy sends everyone to the ring and they’re going to do combinations today with everything they’ve learned so far, shoulder tackles, bodyslams, etc. Billy ups the stakes on the challenge and says everyone is going to be paired up. There will be a winner and a loser in each pair. The winner gets to make the loser do 50 squats, while talking trash to the loser. Mada and Patrick go first, and Mada actually beats Patrick. Billy makes Patrick say “I’m bowing down to my king” after each squat.

The three females go against each other, and although Sara has improved from last week, she’s the loser and has to do the squats. Josh, Tanner, & ZZ go next and ZZ loses, so he does the squats while he calls the other two his daddies. Now that everyone has gone, Booker says that Mada is the most improved for the guys this week and Lita says Gigi once again is the most improved for the women. We go to commercial.

We come back to the ways to vote and then go back to the barracks where Sara Lee goes after Gigi and wants to know why she got thrown under the bus. Amanda joins with Gigi and gangs up on Sara. Sara stands up for herself while the guys eat popcorn watching everything. I actually laughed at that. Sara puts the other two girls in their place, so she’s finally listening to Paige it looks like.

Back to Jericho who is measuring his hands with The Big Show. Big Show is sweating profusely. Seriously?? Did I miss the title match? Jericho asks Big Show what he has planned for the guys tonight and Show says that everyone in WWE has a signature move, and so tonight the guys are going to experience his frying pan chops. OUCH. The guys all take off their shirts while I pray for them. Big Show really lays into Patrick who is brought to his knees. Big show hits ZZ so hard, his man boobs jiggle like jello and he too gets brought to his knees. I think ZZ just got a reality check of what can happen in the ring. This is BY FAR the most entertaining segment of the season. Can we do this every week? Can we just bring in some of the best choppers in the business and keep this going? Flair needs a paycheck, he’ll be here in a heartbeat I bet. Big Show to his credit is really enjoying it and giving each guy a little tidbit of advice before or after the chop and shakes their hands as we go to break.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS352h8Uab0

It’s now time for the judges to call out some competitors. Daniel goes first and gives all the guys kudos for standing up to the chops. Daniels asks Chelsea if she’s been medically cleared, and she says yes. Uh… what? How do you go from a month to six days? Hogan asks if she’s been working out and she says yes. Does she have Cena’s super healing powers? Daniel asks if ZZ has been working out and I guess he says yes, he doesn’t have his mic on him anymore. Paige asks if that’s true and Tanner backs him up. Daniel asks Patrick if he considers ZZ lazy. Patrick says yes at first, but he’s stepped it up recently, doing ab work even at midnight. Paige mocks ZZ for now getting that way after five weeks. Hogan praises Mada for being on fire recently, and Paige praises Sara Lee for stepping up finally. Daniel praises Tanner for his work in the course. Hogan asks Amanda if she finished the course and she says no, because Booker told her that the way she looked on the ropes, she was probably going to get hurt.

Now it’s time to see who the bottom three are. Daniel goes first and mentions that he’s four for four on eliminations, and although he likes ZZ, he doesn’t see any improvements so he’s going to pick him. Paige says that Patrick needs to learn humility and since he asked Tanner what it felt like to be in the bottom three, Patrick is now going to experience it first hand. Ok, again I preface this by saying I love Paige, but give me a f’n break. You’re really going to throw in your best male competitor and let him potentially get eliminated just to make a point? That’s ridiculous. Hogan goes last, and he says he was gonna pick Patrick if Paige didn’t. Hogan says that Chelsea is safe because she is working out again, and so he’s sending Josh to the bottom three since he’s running middle of the pack and he wants to see how Josh will react if he makes it past this week. What an utterly ridiculous bottom three. It’s clearly rigged that they didn’t want to lose a female this week, because it goes without saying that Amanda should be in the bottom three instead of either Patrick or Josh.

My Take on Who Goes Home: I’ll make this quick, as really there’s a 67% chance of someone going home that shouldn’t. ZZ was my sentimental favorite at the beginning just because of how damn unique he was, but it’s clear that some people are meant to be in the ring and he is not one of them. He’s just not made to be a wrestler. He’s too focused on the entertainment side, which I get, but like I said after he got that chop, I think reality finally sunk it. So I would send ZZ home, but he’s proven how popular he is in the votes, so I bet Josh goes home unfortunately.

We come back for the end of the show and ZZ and Josh are clearly showing the signs of Big Show’s handprint. This week the bottom three get only 15 seconds to talk instead of 30. Josh goes first and says he’s learned a lot from the coaches and he has a lot to offer. ZZ says that he’s not here for himself, he’s here for the families that love wrestling and want to laugh, and he wants to bring it together. Patrick says he’s not an angry person & doesn’t start fights, he’s just passionate and wants this competition. Jericho asks the coaches if they want to make a save, and both Daniel and Paige say they actually want to make two saves, which means they can’t decide on one so no saves. That obviously means that they both don’t want Josh in the bottom three.

The results are in and this week and unbelievable…. Patrick has come in last with 25% of the vote. Josh got 39% and ZZ got 36%. Way to go Paige, you’ve completely ruined the show. The only person who from day one knew about WWE and wanted this more than anyone, got eliminated because you wanted to go up on your throne and make a point. Wow. That sums up the show better than anything else during these five weeks.

Patrick is legit shocked and the crowd is too. Renee interviews him and he says he’s shocked but he knows God is just testing him, and he knows he wants this and he will be back. He’s asked about his humility and he’s learned from it. He wants ZZ to win genuinely. Jericho sends us home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udnoidn2Upg

Final Thoughts: I really shouldn’t get mad at such a hot mess of a show, but come on now. Patrick was 4 for 4 in challenge wins, yet because Paige let HER ego get in the way of a good decision, he’s eliminated just like that. ZZ is clearly too popular to be eliminated, and surprisingly Josh came out ahead of Patrick. Obviously the fans spoke here, but Patrick shouldn’t have been in the position in the first place. This show took a major hit, where it didn’t really have room to take one. The format of the show once again comes back to prove it sucks. Do you think Booker/Lita/Billy would’ve even considered Patrick for the bottom? Not a chance.

Just to give you an idea of other people’s frustration with this show, here’s what WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley wrote on Facebook:

He also fired off some tweets about the show.

At this point, it becomes a popularity contest – which isn't how you find a star of the future. #ToughEnough

— Mick Foley (@foleyispod) July 22, 2015

.@ToughPatrickC – you made the mistake of thinking #ToughEnough was a wrestling show. Sorry to see you go.

— Mick Foley (@foleyispod) July 22, 2015

Well said Mick. It just shows that if you can upset a WWE Hall of Famer that loves the business so much that he won’t watch the anymore then there’s clearly long with how the show is run.

I’ll be back next week to see what transpires next. Until next time, nice scarf Jericho.