Tag: The Fiend

WWE Crown Jewel 2019: Predictions & Analysis

Here we go again…

I think the point has finally come where we’re out of new things to say about how crap these Saudi Arabia shows are inevitably going to be. I normally like to inject some optimism into what I right, especially when it comes to wrestling, but after Crown Jewel 2018 was a contender for worst PPV of the decade and Super Show-Down earlier this year bored me to tears, I just can’t bring myself to put a positive spin on these anymore.

Nevertheless, WWE has gone more in on promoting this show as a legitimate PPV than with previous shows, so there’s a chance that something that happens on this show will actually hold consequence the next night on Raw…a small chance admittedly, but that’s still a chance.

20-Man Battle Royal &
AJ Styles(c) vs Battle Royal Winner
(United States Championship)

This is actually quite a difficult one to pick, mostly because AJ Styles hasn’t been involved with anyone, in particular, this past month, the only person who’s shown the makings of a feud is Kevin Owens, but since Owens is one of the people who refuses to attend these Saudi Arabia shows, that’s definitely not happening.

Battle royals are always quite fun to watch, and 20 men is just about the right amount to give us a decent focus on a bunch of guys in the match and make it something that’s actually easy to follow, unlike the 50 man cluster from Super Show-Down earlier this year. As I’ve said, the winner could honestly be anyone from Raw, so I’m going to optimistically pick someone that I want to win and say it’ll be Buddy Murphey.

Then, there’s the title match with AJ Styles which, no matter who wins the battle royal, I think AJ is retaining. As I said, there’s been no kind of feud built around this title match and I don’t see what would be gained from a sudden upset win, especially after the competitor will have already fought a match.

Mansoor vs Cesaro

Ok, I get it, you want the Saudi crowd to have a hometown wrestler to cheer on, but why should any of us give a shit about Mansoor if the two Saudi Arabia shows every year are the only time we get to see him? He impressed in the battle royal earlier this year, but I’ve never seen him wrestle a full-length match, which is something he’s clearly not ready for, otherwise he would’ve been wrestling on NXT or 205 Live at some point during the last 6 months.

Luckily, Mansoor in extremely good hands when it comes to Cesaro, so if it turns out he’s as green in the ring as I suspect he is, then we should still get a decent match out of it. As for a winner, it seems pretty obvious Mansoor is going to come out with the win one way or another, probably through some flukey roll-up to make him seem like a plucky good guy in front of his hometown crowd and Cesaro can go back to being horrifically under-utilised on TV every week.

The OC vs The Revival vs Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins vs Lucha House Party vs Dolph Ziggler & Bobby Roode vs The Viking Raiders vs Heavy Machinery vs The B-Team vs The New Day
(Tag Team Turmoil)
(Tag Team World Cup)

Oh, who cares?

Much like the singles world cup from last year, I can’t see this mattering much past the event itself. This should be better than the singles world cup though, if only for the fact that a 50-year-old billionaire won’t randomly insert himself into the main event for no apparent reason and become the worst thing about WWE programming for the next year…hopefully.

As for a winner, it’s honestly anyone’s guess. WWE has proven time and time again that attempting to apply logic to the results of these Saudi Arabia shows is an entirely fruitless effort. My initial thought is that The New Day will start off the match and last in it for quite a long time, only to be struck down by The Revival who take advantage of New Day’s weakend state. As for the eventual winner, I’m going to go with The Viking Raiders, purely because they’re currently undefeated since coming to the main roster and have just won the Raw Tag Titles, so keeping them strong seems like a good idea.

Team Hogan (Roman Reigns, Rusev, Ricochet, Chad Gable & Ali) vs Team Flair (Randy Orton, King Corbin, Bobby Lashley, Shinsuke Nakamura & Drew Mcintyre)

ALL THE WRESTLERS! GET THEM ALL ONTO THE SHOW! MAKE ALL THE MONEY!

Congratulations to WWE for booking a 5 on 5 tag match, less than a month out from the PPV whose whole gimmick is 5 on 5 tag matches, stellar booking right there. If this match was being fought under elimination rules, then maybe it’d have a hope of being entertaining, but since it’s not then I think there’s going to be far too much going on for any of it to be worth watching.

The match will likely consist of very quick tags to make sure everyone gets their stuff in and the match will never get any time to build properly, leading to spots for the sake of spots and nothing interesting will come out it. There’s no way Team Hogan is losing though, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Hogan dropped a leg on Flair for good measure. Joy.

Braun Strowman vs Tyson Fury

I know virtually nothing about boxing and the only reason I know who Tyson Fury is, is because I live in the UK where he’s quite a big name.

It’s wholly impossible to speculate on how good of a wrestler Fury will be since we’ve had more or less no indication of if he’s going through any sort of training or history with the sport outside of a couple photos of him in the Performance Center. I imagine WWE will want him to wrestle a striking-based style which is probably what he’ll be best at, I’m just not sure how it will mesh against a guy like Strowman.

I also don’t think this is going to do Braun any favours whatsoever. Braun desperately needs to start fighting people he can get some good wins against otherwise he’s quickly going to flounder and he won’t be a credible threat to anyone anymore, it’s like they’ve done the same thing to Braun that they did with Big Show, except they skipped the part where Big Show tore through everyone and won some world titles. That rant may have made it obvious, but Tyson Fury is going to win., there’s no way WWE would bring in a legit boxer, pay him FIFTEEN FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS for a single match and have him lose.

Seth Rollins(c) vs “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt
(Universal Championship)
(Falls Count Anywhere)
(No stoppage for any reason)

Well WWE, you’ve backed yourself into an incredibly stupid corner here.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen here, because it’s honestly incomprehensible to me why WWE would do this to themselves. Unless they plan to put the Universal Championship on The Fiend here (which I seriously doubt) then this is a match that looks to do more harm than good. Putting what happened at Hell in a Cell aside, it looks to me like the only possible outcome here is Seth Rollins winning clean which would be catastrophic for The Fiend, not to mention it would turn the US crowds even more against Rollins.

Since Bray Wyatt has been drafted to Smackdown, The Fiend winning Raw’s world title is out of the question and outside of a Seth Rollins heel turn (which is also something I doubt will happen) there’s not a great deal that can be done here to stop the crowds outside of Saudi Arabia hating the outcome of this match. I’m hoping that the Falls Count Anywhere stipulation means that Rollins will at least have to do something HUGE in order to get the pin on The Fiend, but given what Rollins did at Hell in a Cell, only for The Fiend to still leap back up, it’s going to have to be pretty bloody massive.

Brock Lesnar(c) vs Cain Velasquez
(WWE Championship)

I’ve spent this whole month trying to work out how I feel about all this and I’m honestly still not sure.

It all started on Smackdown’s first episode on FOX when Brock Lesnar beat Kofi Kingston for the WWE Championship in 8 seconds. I don’t know whether it’s because I’d already spent 3 weeks anticipating that exactly that would happen, or because I’d been underwhelmed by Kofi’s title reign for the last few months, but this loss didn’t really bother me all that much. Then Cain Velasquez showed up scared off Lesnar. I didn’t know exactly who Velasquez was, but I recognised the name and the moment itself was quite exciting.

My initial expectations for this match was about as low as low can go, but when I discovered Velasquez’s previous matches in AAA and I was impressed with what I saw. The only problem is, with the way he’s currently being presented on TV, I’m not sure WWE is going to let him wrestle the luchador style that we saw in AAA outside of a couple of spots. Either way, I think this match would benefit from being a hard-hitting 10-12 minute bout that keeps the pace relatively fast the whole time. Will we actually get that? Well, when it comes to Brock Lesnar, it’s honestly impossible to tell.

This does fo course beg the question though, who’s going to win? Were this a situation like Tyson Fury’s where it was a side-project for the man, then it’d be obvious, but Velasquez has made a big deal of late about announcing his formal retirement from MMA and full-time dedication to wrestling. On top of that, when you consider that WWE recently made a big deal out of Rollins finally being the man to end Lesnar’s reign of tyranny in the WWE, I don’t see what there is to be gained from Lesnar holding onto the WWE Championship until Wrestlemania, especially considering the only person he’s likely to face is Roman Reigns which…come on. So with all that said, perhaps against my better judgement, I’m going with Cain Velasquez, purely because the only argument for Lesnar to retain is “cos he’s Brock Lesnar”, which is an argument that doesn’t hold as much stock as it used to.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what you think is going to happen either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back here on Friday for my review of the show!

WWE Hell in a Cell 2019: Every Match Ranked

Going into this show, I really wasn’t sure how I’d feel coming out of it Monday morning and now I’m sitting here beginning to type up this review, I honestly still don’t know how I feel. This show was filled with a lot of nothing, which I suppose is to be expected when you shovel 5 matches onto the show mere hours before it’s set to begin (and in one case, less than an hour).

That said, the matches that were noteworthy had quite a lot to them, which admittedly just be because we have the last-minute matches to compare them to but still. Then, of course, there’s how the show ended and the outrage it’s caused (don’t worry, I’ll get to it). I guess it’s time to take a dive in and rank every match from Hell in a Cell 2019.

9 – Natalya def. Lacey Evans
(Kickoff Show)

No points for guessing where this one would land…

I honestly don’t know what to tell you about this match, it’s my least favourite wrestler in WWE right now wrestling someone who doesn’t seem to be improving at all despite being given all the opportunities in the world. The match was slow, sloppy and boring, the commentators keep talking about how heated a rivalry this is, but I honestly couldn’t even tell you why it is they’re fighting and that’s after going back and looking for reasons from Raw.

Still, apparently, it’s heated enough to warrant a Last Woman Standing match tonight, can’t wait to see if Natalya can beat Lacey after watching Natalya beat Lacey

8 – The Viking Raiders & Braun Strowman def.     The OC via Disqualification

Someone did tell Vince McMahon this wasn’t an episode of Raw right?

As I sat down to write this article, I realised that not only had I forgot who won this match, but that it even happened full stop. For the most part, it was perfectly fine, but this is the exact kind of match we’ve come to expect from Raw main events that mean literally nothing, even while they’re happening. The match was at least fairly fun to watch and it probably would have landed a place or two higher if it wasn’t for the god-awful finish.

Not only was it a pointless DQ finish, but it was also the worst kind of DQ finish, where the ref just decided “No! You’re wrestling TOO MUCH!” and calls for the bell, it’s never made sense to me and it didn’t help anyone here. Utterly pointless.

7 – Chad Gable def. King Corbin

Do you get the joke? It’s because Chad Gable’s not as tall as Baron Corbin, which makes him somehow inferior. High-brow stuff I know, I didn’t get it until the 47th time they repeated it.

Extremely tired short jokes aside, this was an ok match. It got more time than I was expecting it to and both men put in a good effort to justify this spot, the only problem is I just don’t have the capacity to care because I’ve seen this match twice a week for the past three weeks now and if the backstage segment after the match is any indication, we’ll be seeing it again tonight.

It feels unfair because it’s not the fault of either man in the ring that no forethought went into any part of this show, but it’s the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.

6 – Randy Orton def. Ali

I’ve been pretty snarky about these last-minute matches so far, but this is the first one that I can honestly say I enjoyed.

I can’t say I was (or ever am) expecting much from the show’s Randy Orton match, but god-damn if Ali didn’t work his ass off trying to make it entertaining. Ali’s style of offence worked surprisingly well with Orton, who didn’t spend much of the match on offence in hindsight, Ali made sure to keep the pace fairly fast outside of one part where Orton decided to work a chin lock for about 3 minutes.

Then, there was one of the coolest looking RKO counters I’ve seen in a long time, with Ali going along with the move only to pull off a handstand at the last minute. However, it was all for nothing when Orton hit the RKO and won the match anyway, but it was a cool moment. Contrary to what I’ve been saying so far in this article, I wouldn’t mind seeing this one again with a longer runtime.

5 – Charlotte Flair def. Bayley(c)
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

This is one of those situations where I enjoyed this match, but at the same time I know these two can do better, so I’m a bit disappointed.

It might be due to the fact that this match got less time than both Orton/Ali & Gable/Corbin, but I couldn’t help coming away from this match a tad underwhelmed. There was still a fair amount to like though, including Bayley’s dominance for a large portion of the match, which is the first time she’s actually looked like a competent wrestler against Charlotte in ages, and to my surprise Charlotte did a pretty good job of wrestling as the face in this match, it’s become so easy to see her as a heel in every situation that I was honestly taken aback when I saw how she was wrestling.

I also don’t mind Charlotte winning, if the other women’s title match had gone the other way then I might’ve complained, but given where I think this storyline is going to go in the coming months (I’ll talk about that when I talk about Sasha vs Becky) I don’t have a problem with it for now. It’s just a bit of a shame that Bayley’s title reign was rather an unremarkable one outside of the moment she won it.

4 – The Kabuki Warriors def. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross(c)
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)

Say what you want about this show, Kairi Sane won her first championship on the main roster and I’m never going to be unhappy about that.

If it wasn’t for the finish, then this match probably would’ve been a few places lower, because while I enjoyed the action of the match, it wasn’t anything special for the most part. I liked Nikki’s seeming omnipresence in the match, as she seemed to be involved in just about everything that happened in the match, which could lead to a good storyline now her and Alexa have lost the titles.

The finish is where the main attraction of the match is though, with Asuka unloading a green mist in Nikki’s face to win the titles. With any luck, this means we get a more heelish Asuka, perhaps even pitting her at odds with Kairi, who didn’t seem aware of what Asuka did to win the titles. With any women’s tag title win though, I have to ponder whether any of this will matter when they inevitably don’t get featured on TV for a month.

3 – Seth Rollins(c) vs “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt ended in a No Contest
(Universal Championship)
(Hell in a Cell)

Ok…here goes.

Imagine, if you will, the most amazing gymnastics routine you could possibly think of, incredible flips and spins, the likes of which you never even thought were possible. Now imagine the gymnast landing sideways on their ankle, breaking their arms as they attempt to cushion their fall and cracking their skull open on the mat. That’s roughly the story of this main event.

I really struggled to find a place for this match and in the end, this felt right. Everyone’s going to focus on the finish – and I’ll talk about that in just a moment – but the thing is, everything leading up to it was BRILLIANT. Honestly, the only thing I’d change about that match is the referee throwing it out, I would absolutely keep everything else from before and after the match, exactly the same. The red lighting was a bit gaudy, but I think it worked in this instance, the atmosphere of the whole match was this tense and terrifying feeling that was absolutely fantastic, a feeling that was helped out by the slower pace.

Admittedly, making the Curb Stomp look like the most ineffective finisher in the world might’ve been a silly thing to do, but it made The Fiend look amazing when he kicked out at one after taking about 8 of them. Even the stuff after the match where he popped up to take out Rollins looked brilliant as all of the referees scattered from the ring. The Fiend is still something amazing and unique…but that finish WAS NOT the right way to handle this.

I think the level of outrage we’re currently seeing online over this is a bit much, especially considering this almost definitely is just the first chapter of the story, however, I sympathise with the frustration and I feel it myself. Two years in a row now, we’ve had a Hell in a Cell match end in a no contest, going completely against the whole point of the stipulation and it’s getting ridiculous, but it’s especially bad in this instance considering that after the referee threw the match out, it became clear that the sledgehammer to the head didn’t hurt The Fiend at all. I love the idea of telling the story that The Fiend is driving Rollins to an extremely dark place, but throwing out the match was a bad way to go about it.

Unlike most of Twitter though, I think this can still be saved and I’m confident that we’re nowhere near done with this story and I honestly think writing it off a disaster this soon does everyone involved a disservice.

2 – Roman Reigns & Daniel Bryan def. Erick Rowan & Luke Harper
(Tornado Tag Team Match)

In amongst all the terrible last-minute additions to this show, the stipulation of a tornado tag match here turned out to be a stroke of brilliance.

This match didn’t quite blow me away but I still had a lot of fun watching it. Roman Reigns is always at his best in matches where he can be the exclamation point, not being in action the whole time gives his high-impact offence a lot more weight and it great fun to watch. On top of that, it was refreshing to see Daniel Bryan wrestle a face style for the first time in quite a while. I particularly liked the sequence towards the middle of the match where he was alone again both Harper & Rowan, kicking wildly as they bore down on him trying to break free.

I also enjoyed the big spots of the match since none of them took ages to set up and the payoff is always great; sure, we could all see Roman’s Spear through the table coming a mile away, but it doesn’t make it look any less cool.

I’m not sure Roman & Bryan were the right choices to win, but ultimately I’m not all that fussed about it. Erick Rowan has shown he can stand on his own as a mid-card wrestler if you ask me and I don’t think any of us were ever in doubt of Harper’s abilities. I might’ve been good for Harper & Rowan if they’d won, but ultimately, if this is what it takes to end this feud, I’m not going to complain.

1 – Becky Lynch(c) def. Sasha Banks
(Raw Women’s Championship)
(Hell in a Cell)

Well, it’s nice to have something on the show that I don’t have to complain about.

I’m always trepidatious when Hell in a Cell rolls around, weapons-based wrestling is generally my least favourite form of the sport and I generally believe most competitors can put on higher quality matches without it, but I’m happy to say that this was really good, and I enjoyed it more than their encounter from Clash of Champions.

This match managed to avoid almost all of the pitfalls weapons matches can fall into, I though all of the spots looked impressive and impactful, while only one of them looked overly contrived – the chair on the kendo sticks – but I can forgive that because the result looked great and it was a rare example of a brand new spot in a Hell in a Cell match.

Although it’s not what I would’ve done, I don’t have a problem with Becky Lynch retaining, partly because I’ve loved Becky’s title reign and I’m happy to see it continue, but also because I have a hunch Sasha Banks is going to be making her way to Smackdown in this week’s draft after this loss and there’s some good story potential over there with Bayley. Although honestly, after all the mediocre-crap stuff on this show, I’m just happy there’s something I can say was genuinely very enjoyable.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this review, let me know what you thought of the show either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back this Saturday where I’ll be talking about Celeste!

WWE Hell in a Cell 2019: Predictions & Analysis

I think it’s safe to say that this has been the longest 3 weeks in wrestling history. Seriously, Clash of Champions feels like it was months ago by this point, with NXT’s move to the USA Network, Smackdown’s move to FOX and AEW Dynamite’s debut on TNT so much has happened in the world of wrestling in such a tiny space of time that this show seems like the biggest afterthought of the lot.

I mean seriously, we only have four matches announced for the show, meanwhile, WWE have decided to focus on booking matches for the inevitable trainwreck that will be Crown Jewel at the end of the month. What blow my mind is that the two biggest matches on this card seem like really big deals in the world of WWE and yet management are treating it like it barely matters.

Still, let’s go through what matches have been announced (as I expect a handful to be added last minute) and see if we can’t predict the winners.

Daniel Bryan & Roman Reigns vs Luke Harper & Erick Rowan

There were lots of potential outcomes when this weird story of Roman Reigns being attacked by a mystery assailant began a couple of months ago, but I don’t think any of us would’ve predicted that “a big push for Erick Rowan” would be what we ended up with, and I’m including WWE’s writers in that statement. As I mentioned in my Clash of Champions review, I’m happy to see Harper back on TV, but I hate that he’s been paired up with Rowan for the hundredth time and I can’t help but feel like this isn’t going to last very long at all.

That said, I actually think this match will be a fun one to watch. Roman Reigns carried a tag match featuring Shane McMahon and an ageing Undertaker to a good quality, so I can only imagine what we’ll get when Reigns is in there with the best wrestler in the world, the most underrated wrestler in WWE and Erick Rowan. This should be quite the chaotic match which, as I constantly say, is the perfect pace for a tag team match.

As for a winner, there are a lot of aspects at play here that make it quite difficult to pick with any sort of confidence. First off, you’ve got the fact that Luke Harper’s just returned, which typically means he needs a win here to look strong, but we know all too well that Vince despises him for basically no reason whatsoever, so that could very well be off the table. It would be nice to see Rowan carry on the momentum he got from beating Reigns but I just don’t think it’s going to happen, not to mention the fact that this feud had been going on for months with almost nothing in the way of face victories, so I’m going with Daniel Bryan & Roman Reigns.

Bayley(c) vs Charlotte Flair
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

I’m not entirely sure whether or not I’m happy about the way Bayley’s been handled in the past couple of months. She’s been getting storylines that are actually about her for once and her character’s been given a new lease of life with this heel turn, but at the same time, she seems to be unable to do anything without Sasha being around to lend a hand. She outfoxed Charlotte last month but that mostly felt like it was because we needed to stall for a month until Sasha got her hands on the title.

Hopefully this match will get more time than it did at Clash of Champions (it bloody well better given the lack of content for the show right now), I just hope creative can pull something cleverer than another dirty finish out of their back pocket because I don’t think I can be bothered with two in a row. Still, if it gets the time and a bit of freedom, I think this will be a fun one to watch.

I’ll be honest, I don’t have much of a rationale for picking Bayley to win here. It also certainly won’t be clean if she does, but I can’t see WWE letting Charlotte take a clean loss to this version of Bayley. I think having Bayley lose the title just as Sasha wins hers would sweep the rug out from under the both of them in a major way and could really stifle Bayley. Once we’ve had the draft and the brands become more sperate I think it will be ok but for now, I say Bayley needs to hold on to the gold.

Becky Lynch(c) vs Sasha Banks
(Raw Women’s Championship)
(Hell in a Cell)

I’ll be honest, I was very worried that this storyline would start to derail after the wonky finish last month but creative have done a great job of making sure that the heat to this feud only builds and I can safely say that I’m just as hyped for this rematch as I was for their first encounter last month.

I think the match will be just as good too, both of these women have put on high-quality weapons matches in the past – Sasha in the Cell against Charlotte and Becky in Last Woman Standing, also against Charlotte – so I’m not approaching this with my usual sense of dread, the pace should stay reasonably fast and the spots will be a spectacle to watch.

The key thing here is not to do another wonky finish and definitely don’t have Bayley help Sasha win. This whole feud has made Sasha look like an ass-kicker, but I’m worried that Bayley’s going to sneak her way into the Cell somehow in order to give Sasha the win, but I think that would hinder Sasha in the long run. Regardless, I think Sasha Banks is coming out with the win and hopefully, it will be clean. It’s unclear what format Survivor Series is going to take this year, but I could see them using it as a stop-gap before having a finale match to close out the year.

Seth Rollins(c) vs “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt
(Universal Championship)
(Hell in a Cell)

I’m really not sure what to make of this one.

On the one hand, Bray Wyatt is without a doubt the most popular thing in WWE right now, it’s a cool and original concept the likes of which we haven’t seen arguably since The Undertaker debuted so capitalising on it with a world title victory – especially as WWE positions themselves to move into a new era – seems like a great way to go about things. On the other hand, it seems way too soon for any of this to actually happen.

I’m optimistic for the match quality here, The Fiend has already shown that the style in which they wrestle is different and oddly compelling to watch and the addition of Hell in a Cell and all of the weapons there-in looks to only benefit the performance. I just really don’t know if I can see them winning the Universal Title this soon.

Seth Rollins still isn’t that far out from slaying the Beast and winning back the Universal Championship, while The Fiend has only had one televised match before this one. On top of that, I’m not entirely sure how The Fiend as Universal Champion would even work on week-to-week TV. Bray can, of course, do all his talking through the Firefly Funhouse but the fact is we only see The Fiend once per show when he cuts the lights and attacks, someone. It’d create this spectre of an immortal monster residing over RAW and the more I think about it the more I want to see it.

After thinking it through, I’m picking “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt to win the match, because now Finn Balor’s announced a return to NXT, I can’t see any way they could book themselves out of this where Seth keeps the title, but doesn’t actually beat The Fiend, thus, The Fiend has to win.

And that’s it! Sorry for this post being shorter than usual, but there’s not a lot I can do with only four matches to talk about. Still, thank you very much for taking the time to read this, let me know what you think is going to happen in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back on Monday for my review of the show!

WWE Summerslam 2019: Every Match Ranked

Summerslam is now in the books and as always it ended up being a surprisingly good show. Admittedly I don’t think this year was quite as good as it has been for the past couple, but I still think there was plenty to enjoy for your average wrestling fan on this show and there’s really only one match from last night that I would consider bad.

Let’s not waste any time and get right into it, as I rank every match from Summerslam 2019.

12 – Kofi Kingston(c) vs Randy Orton ended in a Double Count Out
(WWE Championship)

Going into this show, this was arguably the match I was the most excited for, so I’m not happy at all about how this one turned out.

I’ve never been a fan of Orton’s style of wrestling, in small doses I think it can work but that’s never what happens, instead, we always get a match like this. I don’t care how much you like the slower-paced matches, you cannot tell me 10 straight minutes of Orton standing around and occasionally hitting his opponent is fun to watch. Kofi got in a scatter of offence, and the last five minutes or so started to pick things up a bit, but it wasn’t nearly enough to drag it out of the boring ditch everything up until that point had got it into.

Then, just as it felt like things were starting to get exciting, the referee makes the fastest 10 counts I’ve ever seen in WWE and calls for the bell. Last year the WWE Championship match had a similar finish when Styles got himself DQ’ed against Samoa Joe, but the thing about that finish is it helped enhance the story of the feud, this didn’t enhance anything. Kofi “snapping” doesn’t feel like it means anything because Kofi’s frustrations had been a part of the match up until that point, so it seemed like it came out of nowhere with no real explanation.

Even if the match preceding the finish was good, I’m never going to be happy about using the WWE Championship match on the second biggest show of the year to set up another WWE Championship match between the same two guys a month later.

11 – Drew Gulak(c) def. Oney Lorcan
(Cruiserweight Championship)
(Kickoff Show)

I’ve got to say this was definitely up there on the disappointment factor.

The cruiserweights have been killing it on PPV’s this past year, even if they’re mostly confined to the pre-show and I really thought this match was going to be another example of just how brilliant they can be, unfortunately, that’s not really what we got.

Don’t get me wrong, the match certainly wasn’t bad, it just never felt like it got going at all. There were some nice little sequences where the two were exchanging strikes, but it lacked any kind of drama. I remember when Drew locked in the GuLock for the first time and thinking that there was no weight or meaning behind any of what was going on.

Like I said, it wasn’t a bad match, but it also wasn’t anything worth getting excited about.

10 – Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross(c) def. The IIconics
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)
(Kickoff Show)

Again, what really is there to say?

This is another kickoff show match that was perfectly fine and nothing more. While I’m a bit upset that The IIconics lost the titles on Monday, at least around Alexa Bliss’ waist they stand a chance of actually appearing on TV more than once a month and I certainly can’t complain about the titles getting defended, even if it is on the pre-show.

The match itself was your classic heel vs face tag team formula. The IIconics did everything in their power to wear Nikki Cross down and stop her making the tag until eventually, Alexa got the hot tag that was that. I’m interested to see what angle they take with Alexa as a character now, because her and Nikki were clearly positioned as the faces in this match, but Alexa didn’t change her demeanour very much at all; she didn’t do any of her normal gloatings, but she also wasn’t in the match for very long, so this will be an interesting one to watch develop.

9 – Buddy Murphey def. Apollo Crews via Disqualification
(Kickoff Show)

Woah! Buddy Murphey! I remember you.

After disappearing off the face of the Earth in April it’s nice to see Murphey getting to wrestle some matches for a change, even if this was mostly just a plot device for the Roman Reigns story.

Before the DQ we got a nice little match between these two guys where Murphey got a chance to get pretty much all of his major moves in, it worked as a showcase for the guy and hopefully means that we’ll be seeing more of him week-to-week on Smackdown going forward. Ultimately, I’m ok with this match ending in a DQ because it’s not like we really needed a clean finish between these guys and it likely means we’ll get to see a rematch on Tuesday, which I’m happy with.

It’s also quite strange that, outside of a video package, this is the only time the Roman Reigns storyline featured on the show, in fact, we didn’t see Roman Reigns in person at any point last night. It makes me wonder if anyone in creative actually has any idea what the plan is for this story, or if Vince keeps changing it every day.

8 – Bayley(c) def. Ember Moon
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

A good match that didn’t get anywhere near the time it needed.

For what it was, I enjoyed this match and I hope it’s not the last encounter between these two (although I think it probably will be). This was a match that was filled with plenty of simple, solid wrestling which was quite enjoyable to watch, but it didn’t have a chance to get into any sort of a higher gear thanks to only getting 10 minutes.

I’m happy that this at least gave Ember a featured role on a PPV and got Bayley a title defence where it actually felt like she mattered to the match. It’s also nice to see that they’re protecting the Eclipse as a finisher, although it’s not going to seem all that great if she never gets to pull it off in a big match. I also liked the Bayley-to-Belly from the top rope and it looked like Ember hit quite hard and that made for a nice finish. Unfortunately, I can’t put it any higher because it didn’t have a chance to really wow me.

7 – Charlotte Flair def. Trish Stratus

Time for some controversy.

From the general reactions I’ve got from social media, it seemed like a lot of people really liked this match, but in all honesty, I wasn’t all that into it. Trish could still go, of course, which meant that there was still a baseline of quality that this match hit, but I didn’t really get on board with the pacing.

I felt that too much of the match was spent with Charlotte heeling it up and tossing Trish around. For the first half/two-thirds of the match, Trish got in very little offence and it dragged the match down into a bit of bore to watch for a good 5-8 minutes in the middle. Once Trish started to get more offence in and the match became more back-and-forth I started to get back into it and by the time the finish rolled around I was enjoying myself, but a solid final act does not a good match make.

There was a bunch of stuff to like from this match, but for me, that good was just about outweighed by what the main bulk of the match was.

6 – Kevin Owens def. Shane Mcmahon
(If Owens lost, he would have to quit WWE)

I don’t think this story’s over just yet, I’m sad to say.

My views on this match are much the opposite of Trish vs Charlotte, in that there was a bunch of stuff in here that you could rightly call out for being crap and boring, but I think in this case the good outweighed it instead.

First of all, Shane’s a total idiot. If his plan was to rig the deck, instead of having Elias be “special guest enforcer”, have Elias simply come down to the ring, slap Shane right across the face and that’s it; Shane wins by DQ and Owens is forced to quit. That aside, the early stages of this match didn’t make Owens look particularly smart either since he kept getting distracted and tripped up (both literally and figuratively) by Elias on the outside.

However, once we moved past the early stages of the match, I really got into the action that played out. Elias being at ringside ended up taking a lot of the pressure off of Shane to carry the bulk of the match, which is definitely a good thing and the focus of the match seemed to be more on Owens than it was on Shane. Ultimately you could see the finish coming a mile away but the action that led up to it was good enough to ensure that I was enjoying myself while watching it.

5 – Goldberg def. Dolph Ziggler

So I normally put squash matches like this very low on the list unless they do something special and while the match itself didn’t do anything unique, the aftermath was entertaining enough to pull it up this high.

I think we all knew Dolph Ziggler would be the best at selling a Goldberg spear, but man did he go above and beyond what I was expecting from him, the dude got some serious air time, it looked fantastic, I considered putting this match at number 1 just for that in all honesty. Well, that and Ziggler calling Goldberg a “dipshit”. Other than that, this was exactly what you’re picturing in your head, but it was enjoyable to watch all the same.

4 – Becky Lynch(c)  def. Natalya
(Raw Women’s Championship)
(Submission)

Well, shut my mouth, if that wasn’t the best Natalya match I’ve ever seen.

I still had my gripes with it, such as Becky somehow being even worse at the Sharpshooter than Natalya; the fact that there’s no rope break in a submissions match now, even though that seems like the opposite of what the match should be about and of course the fact that the Sharpshooter HURTS THE BACK, not the legs which is something that everyone involved in this match seemed to totally forget.

In the grand scheme of things though, those are fairly minor complaints because there was plenty to enjoy when it came to this match. Sometimes two people just click in the ring and it really felt like Becky and Natalya had brilliant chemistry during this match. Natalya’s movements were smoother than ever, they got a good back and forth going with some quite nice looking mat wrestling spots to boot.

I know when to hold my hands up and say I was wrong, and this is definitely one of those times, I honestly hope we see more matches like this from Becky Lynch going forward.

3 – AJ Styles(c) def. Ricochet
(United States Championship)

This was always going to score highly now, wasn’t it?

The thing about this match is that there’s nothing new to say about it that hasn’t already been said about all of the other matches between these two because this was ultimately just more of the same. Luckily “the same” in question is great action between two great wrestlers so it’s hard to complain really.

My only worry about Ricochet losing is I’m not sure where he goes from here. I suppose they could drag this out another month but Ricochet’s likely to lose that match two and it’s got to the point where OC involvement is becoming a weak excuse for a loss. That said, I’m not sure who else there is that he could feud with right now that would both give him a featured spot on a PPV and a solid win to bolster him back up after these losses to Styles.

It’s Ricochet, so it’ll be great whatever he does, I’m just worried about whether or not it’s going to be on TV.

2 – “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt def. Finn Balor

Holy shit.

If we’re going purely on moments then The Fiend was far and away my favourite thing on the whole show. It’s been so long since we’ve seen something that feels this fresh and exciting in WWE and it’s really cool to see. There are so many little details in every facet of this performance that I could gush about for ages like the head-lamp, the lighting, the amazing remixed theme song and of course the nuances that Wyatt has brought to the character in the ring.

When The Fiend made its entrance and the lights came back up it felt like there was genuine tension and fear in the air, both from the audience and from Balor. Even the style of wrestling is something I can’t recall seeing before, the way he moves like both a man and an animal at once is so compelling to watch, not to mention the viciousness is something I’ve never seen before.

This is lightning in a bottle and if treated correctly, could become the biggest thing in all of wrestling, they really need to treat this properly.

1 – Seth Rollins def. Brock Lesnar(c)
(Universal Championship)

Oh, thank fuck for that.

I’ve been confident since Wrestlemania that this is where we were going to be come Summerslam and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t doubt that at several points over the last couple of months, but I’m very glad this turned out good. A 3 month long Baron Corbin feud dragged people’s opinion on Seth Rollins through the mud and given the injury angle going into this match I was very worried we were going to get a snoozefest here.

Thankful that’s not what we got, as instead, we got the best kind of Lesnar match, one where he’s actually vulnerable against a guy he should be able to swallow whole. This match echoed what made Lesnar’s matches against Styles and Bryan in recent years so brilliant and I’ll be damned if Seth Rollins didn’t win over nearly everyone in that arena during the course of the match. Seriously just listen to the chorus of boos when Seth makes his entrance, compared to the sea of cheers when Seth was holding the title high at the end of the match.

Hopefully, this is just the start in revitalising Seth Rollins, more matches like this against more great opponents and you’ve got a winning formula for the face of the company. For once I sit here at the end of a WWE PPV optimistic about how the coming weeks are going to play out, which is just one part of what made Summerslam such a great show.

So there are my thoughts! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this review, feel free to let me know what you thought of Summerslam either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Join me later this week as we go back to the gaming sphere for the return of Triple Threat Reviews!