Tag: Masdoor

Super Showdown is now in the books and well…yeah that was about what I was expecting it to be.

I normally like to put a positive spin on these intros, but I just can’t do it with this show. It started out decent enough but once it slowed down it just ground to a halt and caused a 7 car pile up. If I’m being honest I could just have the sentence “This was boring” for almost every entry and kick back with a job well done, but I’ll try to get more out of it than that.

Let’s rank ’em then, here’s what I thought of every match from WWE Super Showdown 2019.

10 – Randy Orton def. Triple H

Honestly, it’s impressive that this match – a match I had the lowest of expectations for – still managed to underwhelm me.

This was the longest match of the show at just over 25 minutes (more than 15 minutes longer than any other match on the show) and quite frankly it only needed to be about 5. All anyone wants to see from these big nostalgia matches is for the two guys to hit all their signature moves on one another, and one to get pinned, that’s literally all we care about. Instead, whoever’s producing these matches (probably Triple H himself) decides we need almost half an hour of two guys well past their prime doing basically nothing until right at the end they hit their big moves and one gets pinned.

I actually timed it, and from the moment the bell rings it takes a whole minute for them to even touch for the first time, then it’s another minute before anyone actually does a wrestling move, and that was pretty much the pattern for the whole match. Honestly, the moment the match was over, I could not tell you a single thing that happened during it other than the opening and the finish, which by the way was telegraphed so hard, I saw it coming about a minute before it actually happened.

It’s very rare that a wrestling match makes me this bored. Even during Triple H vs Batista this year (which I hated), I was never so bored that I actively wanted to stop paying attention and watch something else. I don’t want to sound like some whiney punk, but Triple H needs to get over himself and realise all we want to see him do is the cool signature moves…and I’ll admit I have a soft spot for the over the top entrances.

9 – Lars Sullivan def. The Lucha House Party via Disqualification
(3 on 1 Handicap)

Honestly, this match should thank every God anyone’s ever believed in its not last place.

Pretty much what makes me like this match more than HHH vs Orton is that A) It’s shorter and B) It didn’t move at the pace of a snail with arthritis. Once again, I went in with low expectations and was underwhelmed, the LHP guys put in the most meagre of offences against Lars, and quite honestly Lars barely did anything in return either other than standing there and looking cross.

While the finish made the whole thing seem like a huge waste of time, it was admittedly the smart thing for LHP to do, if they then didn’t undercut it by going back into the fray after making their quick exit. I hope this is the end of this (although I have a feeling it’s not) because both sides deserve something better.

8 – Braun Strowman def. Bobby Lashley

I’m not saying this match was predictable, but I was sitting there telling my friend what was going to happen before it happened.

A match like this between two big guys desperately needs to be more than stalemates and rest holds. It needs to be explosive, take Undertaker vs Batista from Wrestlemania 23 as an example, that’s what these guys need to do, just on a smaller scale. Instead, we got Strowman running around the ring like an idiot – because turning a 90-degree corner kills all your momentum, thus making you slower – and Lashley responded with offence that felt like it had no power behind it.

I really don’t have anything else to say here other than I never want to see this match again.

7 – Shane McMahon def. Roman Reigns

Oh for fu-

WWE, it’s ok, Shane Mcmahon can lose a match once in a while, just stop, please. I just don’t understand what kind of shit anyone was smoking when this match was booked because it doesn’t help anyone. If Reigns beats Drew, loses to Shane and then beats Drew in order to get revenge then all that does is make both Reigns and Drew look weak. Reigns looks weak because he couldn’t beat Shane and had to fight a guy he’s already beat instead, and Drew looks weak because Reigns beat him twice.

Outside of that, the match was boring too. Once again most of the spots were predictable and the ones that weren’t were mostly just rest holds. Like I said in my predictions, I had a secret thought that this match could rock, but that’ll teach me to have hope.

6 – The Undertaker def. Goldberg

Well, this was just depressing.

I’ll be honest, during the first half of this match, I was actually entertained. While the transitional stuff was pretty boring, I thought they were hitting all the right notes, just going for the big moves and hitting each other very hard in the middle, then the rest of it happened…

So first Undertaker hit a Tombstone and looked like he was about to drop Goldberg at any moment (luckily he didn’t), but things got worse from there as Goldberg got busted open from…something, and after a pretty good looking spear he went for a Jackhammer and oh boy. I don’t know if Undertaker was too heavy, or he hadn’t adjusted his weight right, but Goldberg couldn’t hold Taker up and almost dropped him directly on his head on the way down. Then it came to the finish, and the pair were going for the classic, “Tombstone gets countered into the other person’s Tombstone” spot and just as they were about to complete the rotation, Undertaker just drops Goldberg, Taker then didn’t even bother trying to do another one and instead just hit a crappy looking Chokeslam for the win.

I don’t blame them for the things went wrong in this match, and watching it makes me more worried for both of the guys in the ring than annoyed that the match was bad, but I’d be lying if I said it was any good.

5 – Mansoor wins the 50 Man Battle Royal

As much as it’s not what I would’ve done, I can’t really argue with this booking decision. For one thing, it popped the crowd something fierce, I wasn’t entirely sure if they’d know who he was but thankfully they definitely knew and he got the loudest reaction of the night when he won, but there’s just one thing that would ruin this win: If he wasn’t on TV regularly from now on. Raw, Smackdown, 205 Live or NXT, Mansoor needs to actually become a regular fixture of one of these shows now or this win will do nothing for him.

The rest of the battle royal was about as entertaining as you’d expect a pointless battle royal in an overcrowded ring to be. There were a couple of fun spots, and the action picked up a little once we got down to the last few men, but it was still nothing to write home about. At least someone will likely benefit from this, which is more than can be said about the ARMBAR.

4 – Kofi Kingston(c) def. Dolph Ziggler
(WWE Championship)

As much as I wasn’t too excited about this one in my predictions, I quietly hoped this one would be good, and it was, at least by this show’s standards.

This match wasn’t anything special, not by a long shot, and in fact, if it were on a regular episode of Smackdown it would probably still be characterised as mediocre, but thanks to the absolute sea of utter shite that came before it, I actually got a bit of enjoyment out of this one. Not much mind, but in the spots where the pace picked up I thought there was some good back and forth, unfortunately, there was a lot of Ziggler “wearing Kofi down” which is always extraordinarily dull.

The finish was also a tad confusing, I get Xavier was just getting revenge for what Ziggler did to him earlier on and I imagine that’s how they’ll justify it as a face move come Tuesday, but what really was the point in it? Was it just to set up Kofi vs Ziggler for Stomping Grounds? Because that seems hilariously redundant. What’s worse is a small thing like that opens up amazing opportunities for storylines between Xavier and Kofi, for example, Xavier could be so desperate to keep the train rolling that he’ll cheat in order to allow Kofi to retain, even against Kofi’s own wishes. WWE do this all the time, where they tease us with the possibility of something interesting, only to throw it away for something boring, so onto Stomping Grounds I guess.

3 – Finn Balor(c) def. Andrade
(Intercontinental Championship)

You know, if Triple H didn’t insist on needing 25 minutes for his matches, maybe this one could’ve been long enough to actually be awesome.

Of course, this match was at least somewhat enjoyable, these two could put on a good match in their sleep, but I really felt like this thing was hindered by a lack of time and a lack of urgency. The time thing is totally out of their hands of course, but a match like this really needed an extra 5 minutes or so of back and forth around the middle to really build to the kind of climax it was going for because the one we got fell flat a little.

I also didn’t help that the crowd seemed really uninterested in this one for some reason, despite it only being the 3rd match of the night, when Finn kicked out of Andrade’s finisher, I couldn’t believe how little reaction there was to it. It might be because this match was weirdly slow paced given the two guys involved, it just never really felt like it properly got going, even though most of the action was very solid. I guess maybe it’s the heat? Since commentary wouldn’t stop telling us how hot it was for some reason.

2 – The Usos def. The Revival
(Kickoff Show)

These kickoff show matches just keep getting better and better.

In an ironic twist, being on the kickoff show means that this match didn’t get saddled by being stupidly overbooked, and was allowed to just go out there and entertain the crowd with some simple wrestling; which on this show is a God-send. Unfortunately, it’s also the match I have the least to say about, because it was just a good wrestling match, plenty of back and forth action, a couple of exciting tags and reversals with a definitive finish, that’s really all there is to it.

1 – Seth Rollins(c) def. Baron Corbin
(Universal Championship)

And now, we pair something we always see (Seth Rollins in the best singles match of the night), with something I never thought we’d see (Baron Corbin in the best singles match of the night).

Admittedly, this is pretty much just the best match by default, but it’s still surprising to be talking about a Baron Corbin match in the number one slot. Maybe it’s because it was at the start of the show, but I really did find myself enjoying this one a decent amount. The pace was pretty quick and the tone seemed to be pretty light throughout and it told a decent, self-contained story in the match, that being the fact that Baron Corbin is too much of a prick for his own good.

Much like Corey said on commentary, Corbin has no-one to blame but himself for that loss, and it fits in so perfectly with his character that it was him trying to lord himself over officials and make himself seem more important than he is, is what caused him to lose that match; it allows him to whine and heelishly cry foul play without making Seth look weak.

Then there was the stuff that happened after the match (which doesn’t affect the rankings, but this is the only place I can talk about it) which wasn’t really what I was hoping for, but did wonders to keep Seth looking strong and keep the briefcase on Brock. I don’t know if this means we’re going to have a vengeful beast anytime soon, but it should make the eventual rematch between these two extremely heated.

So that’s it! That’s what I thought of every match from WWE Super Showdown and, in a sentence, it was crap, let’s hope Stomping Grounds can pick up where Money in the Bank left off later in the month. Until then let me know what you thought of the show on Twitter @10ryawoo and make sure you come back this time next week for my rankings of every episode in Doctor Who Series 2!