Tag: WWE

WWE Clash of Champions 2019: Predictions & Analysis

Am I the only one that feels like Summerslam was just a week ago? I don’t know why, but it feels like this PPV cycle has gone past really quickly, a feeling that was probably aided by having three major non-WWE wrestling shows a couple of weekends ago, which means that a lot of people are going to be drawing comparisons.

As it stands, I think this looks like a really good card. There’s a couple of matches that I don’t think will do anything special, but I can honestly say I’m looking forward to seeing most of these matches, which shouldn’t be as hot a take as that’ll probably be.

Regardless, there must be winners and I shall attempt to predict them.

Roman Reigns vs Erick Rowan
(No Disqualification)

This whole story has felt like creative have no idea what to do with Roman Reigns until October.

Given that the original plan (as far as we’re told by the dirt sheets) was Roman vs Daniel Bryan at Summerslam, it definitely feels like creative have had to suddenly find ways to extend the story another two months and this is what we’ve ended up with. Almost every week something new and weird will happen that entirely feels like it was thought up the day before the show (or maybe later if Vince keeps rewriting shows like we’re told he does) and now we’re left with this match which feels largely pointless.

If this is a sincere attempt to try and put a bigger spotlight on Erick Rowan and make him a bigger star then I’m all for it, but I highly doubt that’s what this is. I know Rowan attacked Bryan and disavowed him on Smackdown, but this whole thing still feels like a master plan by Bryan to absolve himself of the crime and it’s only a matter of weeks until he’s revealed as the true culprit. I’d be happy to be proved wrong on that, but as it stands this match just feels like a stop-gap en route to the real money match in Roman vs Bryan.

I don’t think anyone would disagree with me when I say Roman Reigns is winning this. I can’t see what the plan is for Reigns past this feud with Bryan, but the upcoming draft could throw anything I say up in air regardless.

Drew Gulak(c) vs Humberto Carrillo vs Lince Dorado
(Cruiserweight Championship)

This entire year on 205 Live it’s seemed like just a matter of time until Humberto wins the Cruiserweight Championship and Gulak is the best person for him to win it from to complete the story, but I’m not sure tonight is the night.

As much as he’s spent most of this year being built up, Humberto hasn’t had any major wins against big stars of the division, especially not recently. His story lost a bit of steam going into the summer and now it’s being recovered out of nowhere and it doesn’t quite sit right with me. If this were still a one on one match then I would’ve been tempted to pick Humberto regardless, but then Lince Dorado was added and things became a lot clearer for me.

Like any Cruiserweight title match, especially multi-man ones, this is going to be great fun to watch, regardless of where it gets dropped on the card. Dorado and Carrillo are very exciting to watch and are great at the fast-paced action and as Gulak is perfect in the role of taking choice opportunities and occasionally slowing the match down for a greater impact, so I’m looking forward to seeing this one play out.

That said, I’m confident that Drew Gulak is going to retain the title here, probably by submitting Lince Dorado. As I’ve said, it’s only a matter of time until Humberto Carrillo wins the title from Gulak, but giving him a good looking defeat, where he doesn’t take the fall, might be a good way to get his story going again.

Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross vs Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)

The thing with this match is that I love all four of these wrestlers and it’ll probably be a fairly entertaining match, but I’m just not even slightly excited to see this match. That may in part be down to the fact that we’ve already seen it on Smackdown a couple of weeks ago, but I think the main reason is how crappy the women’s tag team titles have been treated since being taken off of Sasha & Bayley back in April. I know things are getting better but over 4 months of shoddy treatment isn’t going to be wiped away so quickly.

Plus, you could argue the shoddy treatment isn’t going to end anytime soon. Granted, any title that Alexa Bliss holds stands to get at least some level of credible treatment, but I honestly think that the only reason this match is even on the show is because of the “all titles will be defended” gimmick of this PPV.

As such, it makes this one quite easy to pick. Rose & Deville have already got a win over Bliss & Cross in a non-title match which means they haven’t got a chance of winning the titles here. Not to mention that a quick title change like this wouldn’t do any favours for titles that are looking to regain credibility. I’m an extremely big Sonya Deville fan so it pains me to say this, but Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross are walking out of this one with the titles.

Shinsuke Nakamura(c) vs The Miz
(Intercontinental Championship)

The Miz should always be a heel.

Don’t get me wrong, when he first turned against Shane McMahon it was great, he was getting consistent TV time and cutting fantastic promos while putting on great matches every week, but once he stopped feuding with Shane, all of that stopped. When Miz gets a chance to be on TV he tends to put on a great show, but those opportunities have been few and far between recently, it feels like creative don’t know how to book The Miz as a face and I can’t say I blame them, he’s a character that’s so perfect as a heel it’s hard to think of him any other way.

As long as this isn’t a squash match then I think it’ll be a fun watch. I’m not optimistic about the amount of time it’s going to get and it’ll almost certainly end in interference from Sami Zayn because Zayn & Nakamura is a pairing now which…ok I guess? But even if we don’t get a very long match, what little we get should be enjoyable.

I went back and forth on picking the winner for this one a little bit because, on one hand, there’s the fact that Miz is very close to topping Chris Jericho’s record with the Intercontinental Championship and given recent events, I’d imagine WWE would quite like to do just that. However, in the end, I’ve decided to go with Shinsuke Nakamura to retain instead because there’s absolutely nothing worthwhile in The Miz as Intercontinental Champion right now, I’d much rather it stay on Nakamura so this story with Sami Zayn has a chance of actually going somewhere.

AJ Styles(c) vs Cedric Alexander
(United States Championship)

Hm, well I guess there was always going to be one match that was made at the last possible minute.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this is will be a great match if it gets more than 5 minutes on the show (which based on the number of matches, seems unlikely) but I just don’t have the capacity to care about a match that started being built 4 days ago. With any luck, this will end up being a big chance of Cedric Alexander on a big stage so people can start to properly get behind him, like with Ricochet.

Unfortunately, there’s almost no chance he’s winning here. As I said, this match had its entire build on Monday and this is one of those matches that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the gimmick of this show being that every title would be defended. It’s possible that this title gets a shock change to balance out almost all of the other titles being retained, but Alexander wouldn’t hold the title for very long if that happened, so I’m playing it safe and sticking with AJ Styles to retain.

The New Day(c) vs The Revival
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

Well there you go, all it took for The Revival to be taken seriously is a tenuous link with Randy Orton that will be broken the moment Orton & Kofi’s story demands it.

As this story has been entirely intertwined with Kofi & Orton’s, it’s hard to say anything unique about it. It’s nice to see The Revival being treated as a threat but it’s going to end as soon as they lose here and Orton dumps them, then there’s The New Day who are great, but I honestly forgot they were tag champs until seeing the card for this show.

That said, when it comes to tag team wrestling, these are two of the best in the WWE, so this could be a killer match, even if it only does get ten minutes in the end. As I not so subtly hinted at above, I’m picking The New Day to retain. I just don’t see a reason to take the title off of The New Day so soon and ultimately I think the titles themselves will see a lot better treatment around their waists.

Seth Rollins & Braun Strowman(c) vs Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode
(Raw Tag Team Championships)

Nevermind going back in time and telling someone about this match, I’m still not entirely sure I believe it’s happening in the present. This has been a weird month.

So in the space of a month, not only have a random two competitors been put together as a tag team to win the titles, but another random two competitors have been put together in a tag team, beat EVERY OTHER tag team on Raw to get a title match. Then on top of that, you realise that the champions are fighting each other for a different title later on in the show and the whole title reign has essentially served that purpose and you realise how non-existant the tag team division in WWE is.

On paper, this match looks like it’d be great, but the fact of the matter is, this whole match is going to serve the Universal title match later on the show and nothing more. I know Braun keeps reaffirming how he’s determined to retain the tag titles, but that’s bullshit and I fully expect him to refuse to tag in for long portions of the match so Seth can get beaten up.

Funnily enough, though, I’m honestly not sure who’s going to win, purely because there’s absolutely nothing to be gained from Dolph Ziggler & Bobby Roode as tag team champions for just so many reasons. So beyond all logic, I’m picking Seth Rollins & Braun Strowman to retain and probably take a leak on them next Monday before vacating them.

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

Oh look, I’ve picked every champion to retain so far, that’s interesting. So who’s up next? Charlotte Flair, you say? Oh dear.

If you had asked me to pick this one when it was first announced, I would’ve picked Charlotte without even needing to think about it, but a surprising amount has changed since then. Charlotte’s alignment is a bit up in the air, but she still seems to be showing heelish tendencies, the main issue is that Bayley is now a heel, which is something I really didn’t see coming but is probably a brilliant move.

I’m not the biggest fan of keeping Bayley joined at the hip to Sasha Banks, but in this particular instance, I think it could benefit here greatly since Bayley really hasn’t done anything interesting as Smackdown Women’s Champion outside of the moment she won it. It’s also created a very interesting scenario where all of the 4 horsewomen are fighting for titles, I’ve no idea if that’ll lead anywhere but it’s a very nice thing to think about.

Needless to say, this match will be great. Admittedly we don’t know how Bayley works as a heel but I can’t imagine it’ll be much different from how she normally wrestles. On top of that, Bayley & Charlotte have always had great in-ring chemistry and I’m really looking forward to watching this match play out. As for a winner, it’s a tough call because I’m fully expecting a dirt finish as I don’t see Charlotte losing clean here at all, but if this heel turn is going to be worthwhile, Bayley needs to make something of it, so she’s who I’m going with, likely with an assist from a steel chair.

Kofi Kingston(c) vs Randy Orton
(WWE Championship)

In my Summerslam predictions, I talked about the match between these two very excited and optimistically. This is not going to be like that entry.

To put it simply their match at Summerslam was awful and it’s completely killed any investment I had in this storyline. Not to mention, the storyline itself seems to have stagnated on Smackdown this past month, with things going no further than “they beat each other up every week” which can be very effective if done well, but this has been done in a way that just makes it seem lazy more than anything.

There’s a tiny part of me that is holding out hope that this match will be what I wanted from their Summerslam encounter, but that part grows smaller and smaller by the day. It’s entirely likely that this match will involve shenanigans from New Day and The Revival, partly because that’s what this whole story has focused on, but also because Hell in a Cell is next month and they need to justify it by saying it’ll keep out everyone else.

Since I don’t think this is the end of the story, Kofi should be an easy pick to retain, but I’ve picked every title to be retained so far and I could easily see Orton swiping the title, if only for a month before Kofi gets it back, especially with Smackdown moving to FOX just before Hell in a Cell next month. It’s a tough one, but the more I think about it, the more risky picking Orton seems, so yet again I’m going with Kofi Kingston to retain.

Becky Lynch(c) vs Sasha Banks
(Raw Women’s Championship)

Oh boy, I’m so ready.

I’m really excited for this match, Becky Lynch’s character has recovered from months upon months of Lacey Evans and she feels like a big deal again and Sasha is riding this big wave of momentum from her return which has hopefully revitalised her energy towards wrestling. The writing between these two has really been killing it, Sasha’s always felt more natural as a heel and the back and forth between the two of them has been really great stuff, and that’s not even counting the added twist of Bayley’s heel turn.

As we’ve seen in NXT, the in-ring chemistry between these two is as good as you’d expect it to be and this match should be a shoe-in for match of the night. There’s so much potential for where this story could go in the coming months and a really good match here will be the perfect launching platform for all of it.

That brings us to the matter of picking a winner and I’ve already said that I think this is the first in a long series, which would imply that the champion retains here but I think this case is different. Sasha Banks is riding such a huge wave of momentum and has got a brand new lease of life on her character, so I just can’t bet against her here and I think she’s going to pick up the title.

Seth Rollins(c) vs Braun Strowman
(Universal Championship)

So this is going to be what all of Seth’s feuds are from here on out aren’t they?

Much like with the build to Seth vs Brock at Summerslam, I’ve not enjoyed the week to week build for this match, but I remain hopeful that the match itself will be enjoyable. Carrying on from my earlier predictions, I think Seth will be coming into this match on the back foot after Strowman lets him take a beating in their tag match earlier in the night (it wouldn’t surprise me if they did them back to back) and the main story of the match is Strowman absolutely dominating Rollins and Rollins trying to create openings to sneak in offence and turn the tide, much like his match with Lesnar.

These two seem like they should have good in-ring chemistry, as Seth always has with guys twice his size. On top of that, you have to remember that, as much as he hasn’t done much exciting over the past year or so, Braun can be a really fun wrestler to watch under the right circumstances and with any luck, this match will serve to remind people of that fact and bolster his popularity once again.

Ultimately, when it comes down to it, I’m not struggling at all to pick the winner here, Seth Rollins is retaining his title. Bray Wyatt has already announced he’s fighting the winner of this match next month and as much as there is some good story potential in Bray vs Braun, the money match is definitely Seth vs Bray. Not to mention the fact that Seth’s only just got the title back and became the first person since Goldberg to hand Lesnar a clean loss in the process, so it wouldn’t be the best decision to have him lose the title again this soon.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, 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 early next week for my review of the show!

Every Wrestlemania of the 2010s Ranked

The end of the decade brings great opportunities to us all. It’s a time to reflect on who we used to be, and who we want to become, and to take a long hard look at how we’ve changed over the past ten years.

It’s a great opportunity for people to rank things that happened in that decade online.

Perhaps no other sports industry changes quicker or more often than the pro-wrestling industry. In 2010, there was no serious competition for WWE in sight, women’s wrestling was still considered a joke and WWE weren’t involved in shady political dealings with a problematic country.

Perhaps the best way to gauge the situation WWE was in during any given year is that year’s Wrestlemania. It’s the culmination of all the biggest and best storylines of the year that preceded it and for the most part, people’s opinion of a Wrestlemania is very similar to people’s opinion of WWE as a whole during that time frame. So with that in mind, I’ve gone back and rewatched every Wrestlemania from this decade (I know) and I’ve compiled them into these scientific rankings, let’s take a look at them, shall we?

10 – Wrestlemania 27 (2011)

Best Match: The Undertaker vs Triple H (No Holds Barred)
Worst Match: Michael Cole vs Jerry Lawler

While in 2019 the thought of The Miz as world champion and main eventing Wrestlemania might sound quite appealing to many people (myself included), in 2011 it was a very different story. Miz was yet to find a promo and in-ring style that really clicked with the audience as either a face or heel, and many people weren’t enthused by his WWE Championship run in the slightest, meaning his main event match with John Cena really felt underwhelming for the main event of the biggest show of the year.

People’s low expectations for the match would not only be met, but somehow underwhelmed when a bog-standard match between Cena and Miz ended in a Double Countout of all things. Oh, but we’re not done. The match was quickly restarted by that year’s host The Rock, so we could at least get a satisfying finish, but in the immortal words of that one Dean Ambrose gif: Nope. The match would have a dirty finish a second time when The Rock came down and hit the Rock Bottom on John Cena, allowing The Miz to retain and setting up the main event for next years Wrestlemania.

The undercard was also wildly crap for the most part with Nexus rejects The Corre being squashed in under two minutes and “Snooki”, whoever the fuck that is, going over Dolph Ziggler and LayCool. That wasn’t the worst of it though, because we had to sit through 20 pissing minutes of Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler rolling around in the ring. The match only lasted 13 minutes, but everything surrounding it made it so much worse. For one thing, it’s a match between a non-wrestler and a former wrestler who is FAR past his prime. Then add to that a number of minutes at the start being dedicated to trying to get Cole in the ring and a screwjob finish where The Anonymous Raw General Manager reversed the decision, giving Cole the win. No amount of Stunners from special guest referee Stone Cold could save this one.

Admittedly it wasn’t all bad, Edge vs Alberto Del Rio and Randy Orton vs CM Punk were fun matches to watch and Triple H vs The Undertaker was a balls to the walls epic clash between two men who wanted to destroy each other. It told a great story and had marvellous action, but it just isn’t enough to save this show from the absolute donkey turds that surround it. When you’re using the main event of your biggest show of the year simply as set up for next year’s show, you know you’ve done something horribly wrong.

9 – Wrestlemania 32 (2016)

Best Match: Charlotte Flair vs Becky Lynch vs Sasha Banks (Women’s Championship)
Worst Match: Brock Lesnar vs Dean Ambrose (Street Fight)

Oh, Roman Reigns…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

By all rights, 32 should’ve been a lot better show than it ended up being, almost every match on the show had potential to be great and several of the undercard matches were very entertaining but unfortunately, the biggest matches really let this showdown.

First up we had a returning Shane McMahon facing The Undertaker inside Hell in a Cell, which is a sentence that still sounds mental even 3 years after the fact. The story going into it was also so weird, with Shane making a shock return to the company after a 6-year absence just to vaguely threaten his dad about a lockbox that we’ve never heard about again. Shane demanded control of Raw or else he would open said lockbox, so Vince responded by saying he could have it if he beat The Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell match at Wrestlemania… Now, admittedly I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’m pretty certain that’s not how being blackmailed works.

What Vince did is like if you had a gun to someone’s head demanding they pay you £100,000 and they responded by saying you could have the money, but only if you won the Grand National first. The match itself sucked outside of Shane jumping off of the Cell and even weirder, Vince came out the next night and handed Shane control of Raw despite the fact he lost, so it was all a pointless exercise.

Next up, there’s Dean Ambrose vs Brock Lesnar in a Street Fight, which sounds brilliant and in the build-up to the match, it absolutely was. Dean would get in Brock’s face and wouldn’t care that a muscle covered God was staring back at him and multiple hardcore legends like Mick Foley and Terry Funk showed up to give Dean their signature weapons to use the match. According to Dean himself, he has planned out tonnes of cool spots and loads of great ideas to make the match what all the fans were hoping for, but a lazy Brock Lesnar ended up shooting them all down, making for a match that was quite simply boring.

It wasn’t all bad though, the opening ladder match was a great iteration of the multi-man ladder match formula and had a genuinely surprising, yet heartwarming winner in Zack Ryder; Chris Jericho and AJ Styles put on a damn good match even if the wrong man won and Baron Corbin made his mark by winning the ARMBAR and has arguably done better for himself than any of the other winners have since winning their trophy.

Not to mention the women’s revolution in WWE made one of it’s biggest steps forward by abolishing the awful looking Divas Championship and replaced it with the much more dignified Women’s Championship which remains to this day. Flair, Banks and Lynch would continue to make their mark by putting on the best match of the show competing for the new title as well in what would just be a taste in all the fantastic women’s wrestling we would get to see in the coming years.

Finally, though, we come to the main event. I’ve been a defender of Roman Reigns for a long time, I think he’s a good wrestler who can put on exceptional matches when given the right story and opponent, but this was awful. We can debate whether or not Reigns or Ambrose should’ve been the one to face Triple H all day, but the fact of the matter is that the match we got was a half-hour long snoozefest that plodded to an inevitable and boring conclusion.

Much like 27, there were plenty of good to great matches that took place on this show, but unfortunately, it was the biggest matches that were the biggest failures, and that has a big impact on the show overall.

8 – Wrestlemania 29 (2013)

Best Match: The Undertaker vs CM Punk
Worst Match: Mark Henry vs Ryback

Luckily, 27 & 32 are the only two shows on this list that I can honestly say I hate, though don’t expect that to mean I’m done complaining.

Mania 29 holds a special place in my heart, as it was actually the first wrestling show I watched the whole way through, with The Undertaker vs CM Punk being the first match I ever saw (not counting video games), and while I probably do hold it in higher regard than many others for that reason, it’s by no means perfect.

This show contained several boring matches, with a world title match between Alberto Del Rio and Jack Swagger having all of its momentum killed by people who viewed the angle as racist not understanding how wrestling tells it’s stories. Pile on top of that a match between Mark Henry and Ryback that made me feel no emotions at all the whole way through until the ending which made Ryback look like a total chump. Then to top it all off you’ve got a rematch of last year’s main event in Rock vs Cena which was far inferior to their match the previous year thanks to The Rock getting injured part of the way through.

Thankfully, that’s all the negativity out of the way because I liked pretty much everything else on the show. The Shield’s Wrestlemania debut match was admittedly nothing special but it was a huge moment for the trio and began to properly establish them as the giant of a faction they would soon become. The tag team goodness would keep rolling thanks to Team Hell No defending their titles against Dolph Ziggler and Big E Langston in a fun match, and while I know it wouldn’t amount to anything, Fandango’s shocking win over Chris Jericho was an excellent move for the time.

You then had two big marque matches which for the most part delivered. Triple H vs Brock Lesnar is admittedly nowhere near the best match either man has had, but I thought it was a really fun one to watch, where the pace was slow enough to feel impactful, without being so slow as to be boring. Then you had The Undertaker vs CM Punk, which as I mentioned was the first match I ever saw, but even without that nostalgia, it’s still an absolutely brilliant contest that stands head and shoulders above any other match on the show.

Overall, Wrestlemania 29 has a lot of good, but given that there’s only really one match that I’d classify as truly great and a handful of matches that were downright crap, it falls a few more spots than my nostalgic heart would like it to.

7 – Wrestlemania 33 (2017)

Best Match: Seth Rollins vs Triple H (Unsanctioned)
Worst Match: Bray Wyatt vs Randy Orton (WWE Championship)

At the time, I thought I liked this show a lot more, but looking back on it now it had a fair whack of stuff that really doesn’t hold up.

Thankfully, there weren’t many matches at Mania 33 that were outright bad. The only two matches I’d really give that distinction to are the Smackdown Women’s Championship 6 Way, which was unfortunately given the pre-main event death slot and there was really nothing memorable about it. The biggest failure of the show, however, was in it’s WWE Championship match between Orton and Wyatt, where the hell and face roles were arguably the wrong way round, the only memorable thing that happened was Wyatt projecting images of bugs onto the canvas and arguably the wrong man won.

That said, there were also only a couple of matches I’d say were actually good. Lesnar vs Goldberg was an adrenaline-fueled car crash of a match that was far better than it had any right to be; Styles vs Shane McMahon was the most surprisingly good match I’ve seen in a long time with a lot of really fun action in it, and Rollins vs Triple H was pretty much everything I hoped for from that match and more.

The main problem of the show comes from all the other matches on the show, which were perfectly fine, but nothing all that special or memorable. The Tag Team Ladder Match had some memorable moments and the Hardy’s return was great, but I honestly can’t say the match as a whole was any good; similarly the Women’s 4 Way had some good stuff to it, but nothing worth howling about and the hottest match going into the show in Owens vs Jericho just didn’t come together in a satisfying way. Even the main event – though emotional the post-match stuff was – really wasn’t brilliant thanks to Undertaker’s age and Roman’s relative inexperience (only compared to Taker of course).

As a whole, 33 had a lot less stuff that was downright bad than 29, but still, when I think back to this show, all I really think of is a disappointment that some of the most anticipated matches left me with.

6 – Wrestlemania 28 (2012)

Best Match: The Undertaker vs Triple H (Hell in a Cell)
Worst Match: Kane vs Randy Orton

28 is one of those shows that’s generally only remembered for one match, but there’s actually a decent amount of stuff on this show to like.

You had Punk vs Jericho which is an underrated match if you ask me and really deserves more attention, these two clicked so well in the ring and it probably should’ve been the main event. Also, there was the actual main event of Rock vs Cena 1, which, although it wasn’t up to the standards of a truly great match, was certainly a lot better than I think most people remember it being, and far outshines the match they would have a year later.

Then, of course, you have The Undertaker vs Triple H in the “End of an Era” match. Even though the tagline ended up meaning nothing, it’s still one of the best in-ring stories I’ve ever seen told in WWE. All the moving parts of Taker’s streak, Shawn Michaels as the referee and Triple H’s desperation to prove he can beat The Undertaker came together so beautifully in this match to create some of the most memorable moments in Wrestlemania history and perhaps the most exciting kick out I’ve ever seen, when Taker kicked out of a combo Sweet Chin Music and Pedigree.

The main problem that this show suffers from is being filled with a whole lot of mediocrity. Two great matches and one pretty good one aren’t going to save a card where the entire first hour is just plain boring, with an 18 second match that annoyed everyone, a 10 minute match that was even worse and then a whole bunch of short matches that ultimately meant nothing, and that includes the Intercontinental Championship match.

Pretty much the only reason it sits above 33, is because 28’s best matches were better than 33’s best matches, everything outside of that is just a sea of snoozefests on both shows.

5 – Wrestlemania 35 (2019)

Best Match: Daniel Bryan vs Kofi Kingston (WWE Championship)
Worst Match: Triple H vs Batista (No Holds Barred)

The most recent Wrestlemania on this list, 35 definitely gets some bonus points for how feel-good it was throughout the whole show.

I don’t know if someone slipped something into Vince’s drink or what, but this show was filled with loads of fun, crowd-pleasing moments from start to finish. We kicked off with Seth Rollins slaying Brock Lesnar in about 3 minutes in one hell of an exciting moment, then there was a really exciting 4 Way Tag title match won by The Usos in exciting fashion, followed quickly by The IIconics picking up the Women’s Tag Team titles in what was admittedly meant to be a heel win, but felt great thanks to their innate charm.

The good times kept on rolling, when Kofi Kingston overcame Daniel Bryan in the best match, and most emotional moment of the show, with a 20+ minute pure wrestling match between the best wrestler in the world and the biggest babyface in WWE that will most certainly be in the conversation when December rolls around and we discuss Match of the Year. There were then a couple of less high-key feel-good wins, like Roman Reigns winning his first singles PPV match since recovering from Leukaemia, and The Demon Balor winning back his IC title from Lashley.

Then, of course, there was the first-ever women’s match in the main event of Wrestlemania, with Ronda Rousey, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch showing their stuff in a match that admittedly, didn’t live up to expectations, but I still thought was great regardless; and of course Becky Lynch came away with the victory, ending the show holding both Women’s titles aloft.

My main problem with this show is everything that took place after the WWE Championship match (which was about halfway through the show) because every match that wasn’t the main event was either boring or crap. Joe vs Mysterio was a shocking moment, but I can’t help but feel it would’ve been more entertaining if they’d had a proper match; Reigns vs Drew – though the victory for Reigns was a nice moment – the match was so boring to watch, Drew just worked a slow pace where he “wore Reigns down” for like ten minutes before Roman mounted his comeback.

While I’ve defended the choice in Corbin beating Angle, and I maintain it was the right decision, the match was really nothing worth watching. Corbin can put on decent matches when he’s with a good opponent, but Angle’s age and wear and tear on his body meant he just wasn’t up to the task on this one. Then you have Triple H vs Batista which was so damn boring (and the longest match on the show) that I actually went and cleaned the hobs on my oven partway through.

Ultimately, Mania 35 will be remembered for its great emotional moments more than it will its boring ones, and perhaps if I did this list in another 10 years I’d rank it higher, but since it’s still so fresh in all of our minds, I can’t ignore the bad stuff.

4 – Wrestlemania 34 (2018)

Best Match: Kurt Angle & Ronda Rousey vs Triple H & Stephanie McMahon
Worst Match: Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns (Universal Championship)

Although immediately after the show I had a much more negative opinion of 34 than I did 35, with the power of hindsight, I’ve realised there was actually a lot to like on this show, even if some of the bigger moments were crap.

Throughout the show, there were plenty of great matches, the opening triple threat for the Intercontinental Championship was one of the best openers I’ve seen for a Wrestlemania with plenty of fast-paced action to get us all hyped up, then there was Charlotte vs Asuka, which had its faults, but despite it not getting enough time and arguably the wrong woman winning, it was still a great marquee singles match that helped grow the already very prestigious women’s division in WWE even more.

The good times didn’t stop there either, Ronda Rousey’s debut match absolutely blew everyone away with how great it was, with the pace keeping quick the whole time, some brief intergender spots, which we don’t see very often and Kurt Angle wrestled a match where his age wasn’t immediately obvious. One of the most unique storylines in recent memory concluded as The Undertaker finally appeared and dispatched John Cena in less than 3 minutes, a 10-Year-old won the Raw Tag Team Championships in a move that really divides opinion, but I thought it was great, the in-ring return of Daniel Bryan and Styles & Nakamura put on a fantastic match for the WWE Championship, even if it didn’t live up to the (arguably unreachable) expectations fans had for it.

That said, scattered throughout were some pretty big low-lights, which is probably what’s responsible for most fans looking back on this show negatively. The 4 way for the US title wasn’t a bad match by stretch, but it certainly wasn’t all that entertaining, especially not compared to the IC title match that preceded it, The Bludgeon Brothers, unfortunately, dragged down what could’ve been a really exciting match against The Usos and The New Day with their slow and hard-hitting offence that unfortunately rules most of this very short match.

Alexa Bliss vs Nia Jax wasn’t anything especially awful but it certainly failed to capture anyone’s attention for very long. Jax & Alexa both have great in-ring moments (Alexa especially), but I’ve never felt these two really clicked in the ring and it was painfully obvious in this match. Then there was the main event, which was just a prime snoozefest, the action was slow and boring, pretty much the opposite of their great match from three years earlier and things just never really picked up. The longer it went on, the more ridiculous it got, with Reigns kicking out of a stupid number of F5’s which was quite simply laughable in how over the top it was, and it ended with a giant middle finger in Brock retaining, presumably just so WWE could coax him into signing a new contract.

If you look at this Mania trying to find things to be upset about, you aren’t going to be short of things to find, but on balance, I think this show as a whole was actually a pretty enjoyable one.

3 – Wrestlemania 26 (2010)

Best Match: The Undertaker vs Shawn Michaels
Worst Match: Bret Hart vs Mr McMahon

Ther earliest Wrestlemania on this list, and looking at the card it really does feel worlds away from where we are now.

This is one of those Wrestlemanias that only has one or two really great matches on it, but it also only has one or two bad matches as well, so overall it gets a pretty good wrap and running through the card, I tend to agree with that sentiment.

The only matches I’d actually classify as bad are the 10 Diva tag team match that only went 3 minutes and was won by the heels, but sadly this kind of match just comes with the time period, and the way too long Street Fight between the then 62-year-old Vince Mcmahon and 50-year-old Bret Hart, who wasn’t allowed to take a bump. It was ten boring minutes of the various members of the Hart family beating up a 62-year-old bastard that served no purpose whatsoever other than to give the lamest of payoffs to the Montreal Screwjob, which over a decade ago by this point.

Everything else on the show, however, is ok-amazing, you’ve got the last Money in the Bank ladder match to take place at a Wrestlemania, and while this wasn’t the best incarnation of the match, a multi-man ladder match is never boring to watch. There was also the triple threat match between all three members of legacy, which Orton probably shouldn’t have won, but it told a good story and was a solid watch, then there was Triple H vs Sheamus which was way better than it had any right to be, with brutal-looking offence and what felt like genuine animosity between the two men.

Rey Mysterio vs CM Punk was as good a match as that sounds, with some great story stuff in there too, as Punk was still in his “straight edge saviour” phase during this show. Chris Jericho vs Edge was also as good as you’d think that match would be and was actually quite surprising with its result as Jericho retained his world title. John Cena vs Batista was a match that didn’t quite live up to the rest of this show’s great matches but was a decent enough match.

Then, of course, there’s the main event of The Undertaker vs Shawn Michaels, with Taker’s undefeated streak against HBK’s career in a perfect sequel to their match the year prior. I could gush for hours about this match because it was just brilliant, the back and forth action was superb, the high spots were memorable without being over the top and the character work was brilliant. Undertaker standing over Shawn, almost pleading with him to stay down, only for Shawn to slap Taker right across the face in defiance is a moment that still sends chills down my spine when I watch it. A perfect send-off for one of the greatest to ever step in the ring.

Much like 34, there’s plenty there if you’re the type of person who goes into it looking for the negatives, but I think that this is a show where all of the good stuff far outweighs any of the bad, and most of the lasting images from this show, are positive moments.

2 – Wrestlemania 31 (2015)

Best Match: Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns (vs Seth Rollins) (WWE Championship)
Worst Match: The Bella Twins vs AJ Lee & Paige

31 is one of those rare gems of a show, where I can honestly say I have nothing to complain about. I’ve always thought of this show as one of my all-time favourites, every match has something to like about it, the main event far exceeded expectations and ended in what is genuinely my favourite moment to ever happen in pro-wrestling, and upon watching it back for the first time in a while, I stand by those thoughts.

The opener is a chaotic ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship and everyone got a chance to shine in this one, people were flying all over the place and the ladder spots all felt so brutal and weren’t overdone or too gimmicky like we can often see in matches like this. It also got the show off to a great foot as Daniel Bryan won the title, even if he got reinjured and had to vacate it soon after. Following that match, Rollins put proof to the statement that he can have a brilliant match with anybody, putting on a very entertaining bout with Randy Orton, featuring the single greatest RKO to ever happen in the history of the universe.

Triple H vs Sting came up next and this match didn’t make a lick of sense, but man was it fun to watch. Triple H hadn’t slowed down too much by this point and Sting was still as good as he always was, pour on top of that DX vs nWo shenanigans (even if it made no sense for the nWo to side with Sting) and you’ve got your self a nostalgia-fest that you just can’t look away from. You could argue all night and day whether or not Triple H should’ve won (he shouldn’t have) but what’s important is that the match was great. There was AJ Lee & Paige vs The Bella Twins after this, which wasn’t anything special, but also wasn’t anything bad, just a bit short and forgettable.

After this, we got to see Rusev peak in WWE as he rode into Wrestlemania on a freaking tank and then lost to John Cena in unsurprising fashion. The match, however, was great and was one of the earliest glimpses of Cena becoming the guy who just put on great matches with everybody, not mention this title win for Cena started off the “US Open Challenge” era of the title which is arguably the best in its history. After that, we had our “Waste time so the sun can set” portion of the night, which featured The Rock and a debuting Ronda Rousey taking out Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, in a really cool moment that only seems better now knowing what would become of Ronda in WWE.

The Undertaker was up next facing Bray Wyatt in Taker’s first match since The Streak was shattered. The match was ok but suffered a little from Bray reportedly getting a minor ankle injury in rehearsals earlier that day, but it was still fun to watch these two characters interact in the ring. Finally, we came to the main event where I think it’s fair to say that expectations were quite low. Roman was coming off of his disaster of a Royal Rumble win and fan disdain for him was at an all-time high, meanwhile, Lesnar was getting a lot of heat for being an absentee champion (if only they knew…) so people weren’t going to be happy with either result here.

Then the match got underway and surprised everyone by being really good. It had a real sense of brutality that was missing from a lot of their later encounters, and you really got the feeling that these two men were out to destroy each other. All this was great, but it didn’t take away from the fact that the fans were set to boo both men out of the building if they won. Enter Seth Rollins. In what I honestly consider to be the greatest wrestling moment ever, both Reigns and Lesner were down and seemingly out following an F-5, when Seth Rollins’ music hit and the Money in the Bank contract holder came sprinting down the ramp. Little more than a minute later, Rollins stomped Reigns’ head into the canvas and won his first World Championship in what has rightly been labelled as the heist of the century.

Mania 31 is a show that just fills me with joy whenever I take the time to go back and watch, and while it’s not quite the best Wrestlemania of this decade, I think it is most certainly is my personal favourite.

1 – Wrestlemania 30 (2014)

Best Match: Daniel Bryan vs Triple H
Worst Match: Vickie Guerrero Invitational (Divas Championship)

Mania 30 is one of the best examples of how great modern WWE can be when they really nail a storyline, even if it was mostly by accident. This show only had 7 matches on the main show – the lowest since Wrestlemania 12 (1996) only had 6 matches – it’s somewhat of an oddity when compared to the rest of the Wrestlemania’s from this decade, which are known for being far too long for their own good; however I think the lower number of matches helped the show in the long run.

The only match on this show that I’d say was totally bad is the 14 woman match for the Diva’s Championship, which got the single biggest death slot in wrestling history, since it had to follow the ending of The Undertaker’s Wrestlemania winning streak. I couldn’t tell you anything about the match since it only lasted 6 minutes, and everyone watching was a bit pre-occupied with being devastated at the time, I imagine Natalya put a Double Sharpshooter on a couple of ladies and Michael Cole lost his mind over it and AJ Lee probably won in some heelish way.

Now onto the good, because there’s a lot to cover on this show. Even though the wrong man won, Cena vs Wyatt was a great match and helped grow Wyatt’s star power even in defeat; although a loss in a Last Man Standing match two months later would kinda mess things up. The Shield showed up to spend 3 minutes murdering some old dudes in what I maintain is one of the coolest Shield moments ever and Cesaro blew us all away by picking up The Big Show like he was nothing and dumping him to the outside in what was a great moment for the guy, even if nothing came of it in the end.

Then there’s one of two moments on this show that will go down in history as Brock Lesnar ended the 23 years & 21 matches long Wrestlemania undefeated streak of The Undertaker. This, for my money, is the single most shocking moment in wrestling history, in a way that makes it one of the weirdest and one of the best. It was so weird because it was something we genuinely never thought would happen, I remember at the time it filled me with such a strange series of emotions and all you had to do was look at social media when it happened and you could see there were people all over the stages of grief. Nothing in wrestling has ever gotten that kind of reaction before or since, it didn’t matter that the match preceding it sucked, in 50 years time no-one’s going to remember that, but for one shining moment, wrestling honestly felt like it was real and I’m not sure that feeling could ever be replicated.

Finally, we had the brilliant and uplifting conclusion to the story of Daniel Bryan. After watching him suffer for over 6 months, and finding out that he wasn’t even planned to be in the Wrestlemania main event until the fans forced WWE’s hand, this was the perfect payoff to all of it. It started off at the opening of the show, with one of the finest pure wrestling matches I’ve ever seen with Daniel Bryan vs Triple H, only to take us all the way to the main event where Bryan would overcome Randy Orton and Batista in one hell of an exciting match to claim the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. It’s the other moment from this show that will go down in history but for vastly different reasons.

Even if it wasn’t WWE’s original intentions, all that mattered is what we got in the end, and what we got is a euphoric ending to cap off one of the best all-round Wrestlemanias of all time and most certainly the best to take place in the past decade.

That’s all folks! Thank you very much for taking the time to read, please let me know what you think in the comments below, or on Twitter @10ryawoo!
Importantly, make sure to come back on Monday, where I’ll be doing something special for my birthday!

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!

WWE Summerslam 2019: Predictions & Analysis

So, after a couple of months of spinning our wheels, this is the show we were spinning them for and well…I’m actually quite optimistic about this show. There are a couple of matches that I’m not particularly excited for, but for the most part, I think this is going to be an entertaining show.

Not only that, but I think the winner of a good number of these matches are up in the air a bit. Be it for good or bad reasons, WWE has managed to do a pretty good job of keeping us guessing when it comes to who’s going to be winning on Sunday. Still, let’s give it a go, here are my predictions for Summerslam 2019.

Drew Gulak(c) vs Oney Lorcan
(Cruiserweight Championship)

Match of the night incoming right here.

Drew has been absolutely fantastic as cruiserweight champion so far. Both of his PPV matches for the title this year so far have been show-stealers and his character work week to week is unparalleled. Then you’ve got a guy like Oney Lorcan, who is absolutely stellar in the ring but isn’t the most convincing of characters. He has an over the top-levels of intensity that I’ve never been able to buy from wrestlers, but like I said, he’s got a really great wrestling style that is also fairly unique compared to the rest of the cruiserweight division.

I’m struggling to pick a winner with this one though. I’ve felt for a long time now that Lorcan was going to end up with the Cruiserweight Championship at some point this year but I didn’t expect him to be in this position quite so soon. More importantly, Drew’s only just sunk his teeth into this title reign and it also feels like his story is something a bit more long term, so it doesn’t make a great deal of sense for him to lose the title just yet.

Ultimately guys like Mustafa Ali have proved that you can be a big star in the Cruiserweight division without ever winning the title and I could potentially see Oney Lorcan becoming one of those guys, so I’m going with Drew Gulak to retain here.

Goldberg vs Dolph Ziggler

Oh…Dolph didn’t go away after losing to Kofi? Alright then. Oh…he’s entering another feud with The Miz? Alright then. Oh…he’s actually facing Goldberg instead? Alright then.

I don’t really think there’s much to say about this match, losing out on Miz vs Ziggler isn’t much of a loss and it’ll hopefully be nice to see Goldberg looking a lot better than he did in June. Of course, like any Goldberg match, it needs to be short and sweet, with Ziggler bumping his ass off like he always does and Goldberg is most definitely going to win.

Finn Balor vs “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt

I could sit here and complain about how shitty Balor’s been treated since Wrerstelmania, but instead, let’s talk about how awesome Bray Wyatt’s return has been so far.

The Firefly Funhouse stuff was a stroke of absolute genius. It let Wyatt really flex those creative muscles we all knew he had and it got the fans invested in a major way. Then since showing up in person, it’s been really well done, the way the lights and music came down before Wyatt attacked Balor made for a great atmosphere and the way the lights flicked around The Fiend’s face as he appeared was over the top and cheesy in just the right way. On top of that, the promo’s Bray’s been cutting from the funhouse talking about The Feind has made it so much more creepy and creates such an interesting dynamics between the two sides of Wyatt’s personality.

Personally, I’d like to see The Demon, although I doubt we will just yet as I think they might be saving it for the eventual rematch, but either way I think the match is going to be something special to watch and it’s such a great feeling to be excited about Bray Wyatt again for the first time in a long time.

Of course, Bray Wyatt is definitely winning this; I’d call it an absolute lock. Not only is this Wyatt’s much-hyped return match, but all of the rumours are pointing to Balor taking a couple of months off following Summerslam, so there’d be nothing to gain and everything to lose by Balor picking up a shock win.

Kevin Owens vs Shane McMahon
(If Shane wins, Owens will quit WWE)

You know, Shane McMahon became a fulltime wrestler so gradually I didn’t even notice.

Honestly, this really feels like what Shane’s heel turn has been leading to ever since his original feud with Owens in 2017. We all shouted and bitched back then about how Shane was being a totally unreasonable arsehole despite being a face and we were expected to boo Owens. Now we’re two years down the line and the face/heel roles are finally the right way around. So far, Owens’ face turn has been pretty well this time around, but it’s important that they keep their foot on the accelerator over the next few months, otherwise, it will pretty quickly peter out.

I’m really not sure what this match will be like since Shane McMahon’s matches this over the past couple of years have been quite hit and miss, although this year specifically it’s been mostly hit. There’s a lot of heat behind this one too, given how everyone’s sick and tired of Shane eating up so much TV time and Owens has been a house on fire, but I could just as easily see it being a shocking squash.

Either way, I think it’s a given that Kevin Owens is going to win. If the quitting stipulation wasn’t there then I think it’d be a bit more up in the air, but when you consider that there’s no way Owens is leaving or taking time off for the foreseeable future AND he’s just starting this role as a face, it would be an incredibly stupid decision for Shane to beat him now.

Trish Stratus vs Charlotte Flair

Well, this was a nice surprise.

I know there’s a bit of trepidation towards this match and I can understand the argument that Charlotte doesn’t really have a lot to gain from beating Trish considering everything she’s already done. However, we’ve seen in recent years that Trish can still go so the match will most likely be a fun watch and considering the alternative was likely Charlotte inserting herself into ANOTHER big 4 title match, I’m quite happy with having this match instead.

As I touched on above, I think this will be a great match to watch. Trish’s small appearances in the women’s Royal Rumble have shown she’s still got the athleticism to do everything she used to and her match at Evolution showed that as long as she’s got the right opponent to help her out, then she can carry a longer match and Charlotte is absolutely the right opponent.

Of course, with any legend vs current star match, the result is pretty easy to pick, especially when the current star in question is one of the most heavily pushed women in WWE history. Charlotte Flair will come out on top in this one and we’ll likely get a sweet hug and show of respect after the match to top it all off nicely.

AJ Styles(c) vs Ricochet
(United States Championship)

I don’t think anyone’s going to complain about seeing these two wrestle again. Admittedly they’ve had quite a few matches together in recent months, but there are some combinations of wrestlers that you can just never get tired of, like Ricochet & Will Ospreay, or Ricochet & Adam Cole, or Ricochet & AJ Sty-you know I think there might be a common thread here.

Hopefully, this will pay off the wonky finish we got at Extreme Rules, although even if it doesn’t I’m sure this match will still be great as long as we don’t get the same finish again. I’ve sung the praises of Styles as a heel for a while now, but I’m not entirely convinced this run has brought anything new to the table yet. I suppose it’s a bit too early to judge, but I’m not sure a lengthy US Title reign is something that he’d benefit from, at least not as much as Ricochet.

As it stands, I’m struggling to pick a winner. Ricochet only lost his title thanks to heel shenanigans and it wouldn’t be a good look for him to be shut out of the scene after such a short reign. Then again, Styles is still fairly fresh off of a heel turn and a second clean loss to Ricochet might not be the best move. Ultimately, I think both men stand to suffer fairly equally from a loss so I’m going to look at the other side of the coin and judge who I think would benefit more from the win, which I think is Ricochet.

Bayley(c) vs Ember Moon
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

While I’m glad it’s not Charlotte Flair, what exactly has Ember Moon done (in kayfabe) to earn this title shot? She lost in pretty quick fashion to Sonya Deville not a month ago and yet she gets the title shot because Bayley said she fancied a fight with her? Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy we get to see this match, but it’s a little confusing.

The main problem I’ve had with Bayley’s title reign so far is that, apart from when she won it, she’s been a background character in all of her stories as champion so far. When she was fighting Alexa & Nikki the focus was almost entirely on those two and their friendship and aside from one promo the week of Stomping Grounds, it could’ve been anyone in the champion role and the story would’ve been exactly the same. This story with Ember so far is going a little way to resolving that problem, but I still don’t feel like Bayley as a character is getting a chance to shine through. I’m not sure who’s feet the blame should lay at for this (probably a little of all parties) but the fact still remains that Bayley just doesn’t feel like anyone special on TV right now.

With any luck, this match will have some good character moments in it (as well as having brilliant action) which will help out both women immensely but as much as I’d like to say otherwise, I can’t see Ember walking out of this one with the title. For one thing, creative has not invested nearly enough time or energy into her as a character or a wrestler to warrant a title win. On top of that, another Charlotte Flair title challenge seems just around the corner with a win over Trish Stratus coming like a freight train and at the end of the day, Bayley can recover from a loss to Charlotte a lot better than Ember ever could.

Becky Lynch(c) vs Natalya
(Raw Women’s Championship)
(Submission)

I’ll level with y’all, I really can’t stand Natalya as a wrestler.

All of her movements in the ring seem so clunky & unnatural and the way she talks makes her sound like a robot with the most threadbare understand of emotions and voice patterns. Then you consider the fact that the only reason she’s even got this title match in the first place is the fact that the show’s taking place in Canada AND pile on a stipulation that forces the match to focus heavily on smooth technical movements and you can imagine how unhappy I am about this.

I’m not going to instantly right it off though, Becky was able to get some half-decent matches out of the green as goose shit Lacey Evans after all, so she could do wonders with someone more experienced like Natalya, I’m just not optimistic about it is all.

Oh and Becky Lynch is going to win or I’m going to tear my hair out.

Kofi Kingston(c) vs Randy Orton
(WWE Championship)

Well, it’s 10 years later than we all wanted to see this, but it’s finally here.

I’m normally very much anti-Randy Orton, I think he’s quite a boring wrestlers and an even more boring champion, but in this instance, I’m totally down for this match. The story wrote itself and creatively executed it as well as we wanted them to, it’s been common knowledge for years that Orton killed Kofi’s initial push in 2009 so this match essentially brings Kofi’s entire WWE career up until this point full circle.

I’m not entirely sure about how good the match is actually going to be though, all of Kofi’s title defences have been ok, but not great and most of them were against opponents I enjoy watching, which as I mentioned before, Orton isn’t. That said, this match has the right kind of heat behind it and when Orton’s into a story he tends to put on some pretty good performances (just look at his match with AJ from Wrestlemania this year) so there is some hope.

Last month I said that Samoa Joe was the first opponent where it actually felt like Kofi might lose the title, but in hindsight that was a stupid thing to say and this is where Kofi’s title reign could realistically end. Orton’s always been a guy who could win the WWE Championship at any moment and with Smackdown’s move to FOX just around the corner WWE might want someone more widely recognised like Orton as champion. That said, this whole story has been about Orton holding Kofi down and saying he’s not ready, so I feel like WWE would be shooting themselves in the foot a bit if Orton wins. It’s a risky move, but I’m going to pick Kofi Kingston to retain this time.

Brock Lesnar(c) vs Seth Rollins
(Universal Championship)

Talk about missing an open goal.

This seemed like such an easy story for WWE to write. NO-ONE wants Lesnar to be champion anymore and Seth Rollins is one of the best wrestlers in all of WWE right now, so surely it would be so easy to get the fans behind Seth right? Well apparently not, because damn near everyone is hoping he’ll lose on Sunday, despite the alternative being Brock Lesnar disappearing with the title for another 6 months.

I get what they were trying to do on Monday with having being beaten down again and cutting that downbeat promo, but it was far too late and all you have to do is listen to the crowd’s reaction to see how flat it fell. All that said, hopefully, this match will be really good. Lesnar’s matches with the smaller guys are always brilliant and Seth Rollins is able to work a David & Goliath story with the best of them. The main reservation I have that’s stopping me getting too excited for it is Seth’s kayfabe injury, it makes me wonder if they’re going to lean too heavily on it for the story of the match because 15 minutes of Seth selling his ribs before a sudden comeback will be really boring.

If you’d have asked me who was going to win this match the night after Extreme Rules I would’ve said Seth without even thinking about it. Since his 2 minute win over Lesnar at Wrestlemania, I was confident this was where we were headed and I’d always known Seth was going to win, but now it’s really hard to judge. WWE is “desperately” trying to make Rollins cool and that says to me that they’re going to continue to push him as the face of the company, which would imply he wins here, but it’s hard to bet against Brock Lesnar retaining.

I’m sticking to my guns and picking Seth Rollins to win here and hopefully going into the autumn Rollins can have a whole bunch of great matches like his match against Styles earlier in the year to remind us exactly why we all got behind him in the first place.

So there are my predictions! Thank you very much for reading, let me know what you think is going to happen on Sunday either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Make sure you check back here over the weekend as I’ll be posting my reviews of both Summerslam and NXT Takeover!

 

 

10 Biggest Title Changes In Summerslam History

While no show WWE produces will ever reach the of spectacle or importance of Wrestlemania, the one show that comes the closest is Summerslam. It’s position at the opposite end of the year from the grandaddy of them all means it’s a good mid-way point for the wrestling calendar, generally Summerslam is when we get an idea of what the stories are going to be for the rest of the year and there are even cases where WWE start to lay the ground work for Wrestlemania season.

A huge part of those storylines are the championships. It’s what everyone in the company is supposed to be fighting for after all and whoever is holding a title can be a big influence on what path the storylines go down. As such a big show like Summerslam is a great place to do some big title changes that can act as shifts in attitude for what the company will be doing in the months to come. Whether it’s the ending of a long-lasting storyline or the start of a new one, Summerslam has been home to some of the biggest and most fondly remembered title changes in WWE history, so I thought it would be nice if we looked over some of the biggest.

10 – Charlotte Flair def. Carmella(c) & Becky Lynch
(Smackdown Women’s Championship) – 2018

This title change isn’t big because of who won the title, who lost the title or even the story going into it, it’s what it started that makes this title change so important.

Support for Becky Lynch was big going into Summerslam 2018, people were sick of Carmella’s boring reign as Smackdown Women’s Champion and Becky had been underappreciated and underused ever since she lost the title at the tail end of 2016; so when a singles match between Carmella and Becky was booked for Summerslam people were excited. It seemed like it would finally be Becky’s time to shine…enter Charlotte Flair.

Charlotte had been away for a few months due to needing minor surgery and upon her return she was immediately inserted into the title match at Summerslam, making it a Triple Threat, people were not happy about this, to say the least. While Charlotte was a face at the time, people were getting increasingly tired of her dominance at the top of the women’s division (this being just off the back of her ending Asuka’s undefeated streak at Wrestlemania 34) and her insertion in this match that was supposed to be Becky’s coronation seemed like a slap in the face.

So imagine everyone’s displeasure when Charlotte won the title. No-one was happy about this, least of all Becky Lynch because after the match the two locked eyes only for Becky to unleash a vicious attack on Charlotte. This was intended by WWE to be a heel turn on Becky Lynch’s part (no matter what Road Dogg says on Twitter) but it ended up having the exact opposite effect as the crowd in the Barclay’s Center exploded with cheers and Becky unleashed on Flair. This is what ultimately led to Becky becoming “The Man” in WWE becoming the most popular wrestler in the whole company.

Ironically, as much as we all hated this title change at the time, without it we may never have gotten the perfect storm that was required for the first-ever women’s Wrestlemania main event this year, which ended in Becky’s true coronation as The Man.

9 – Stone Cold Steve Austin def. Owen Hart(c)
(Intercontinental Championship) – 1997

The Stone Cold character wasn’t quite in full swing yet, but when you talk about moments in Austin’s early WWF career, it’s hard to ignore this moment for both good and bad reasons.

Come 1997, Austin’s 3:16 persona was in full swing and although he hadn’t reached the height of his popularity yet, it’s clear he was only months away from permanent main eventer status. However, this was during a time in the WWF where in order to get to the main event, more often than not you would have to go through the Intercontinental Championship.

When Austin won the belt, it was officially his first singles championship in the WWF and was a clear omen of things to come for the superstar, although not quite as soon as we’d all hoped. As has been well documented by this point, a sit-out piledriver from Owen Hart to Austin in the match caused a severe neck injury that required Austin to undergo surgery and although Austin would return by that October, it would ultimately see him end his career so much earlier than we’d all have hoped in 2003.

That said, this title change was still a fantastic moment for Austin’s career and the injury meant that he was hotter than ever when he returned that autumn to take the title from Hart a second time.

8 – Ronda Rousey def. Alexa Bliss(c)
(Raw Women’s Championship) -2018

We’ve already talked about one half of the Wrestlemania 35 main event, now let’s talk about the other.

There are plenty of mixed opinions out there on how good of a wrestler Ronda Rousey is (I personally think she’s great), so naturally there was plenty of mixed opinion going around when Rousey won the Raw Women’s Championship from Bliss in extremely dominant fashion, just 8 months after debuting in WWE.

Love it or hate it, it’s impossible to deny that Rousey’s mainstream appeal and raw star power elevated the title to a level that it hadn’t been seen at in quite some time and given that Ronda would actually defend the title on a monthly basis, it gave us some great matches against the likes of Nia Jax and Sasha Banks along the way. Of course, it would be remiss of me to go without mentioning the part Ronda had to play in the Wrestlemania 35 main event this past year.

While Becky Lynch’s newfound persona was what got the fans so invested in the hype surrounding the match that would become the main event of Wrestlemania 35, I’d argue the match never would’ve been given that spot if it wasn’t for the star power and marketability of Ronda Rousey. Becky was what got the fans involved, but Ronda Rousey is what got the sponsors, the press and the mainstream public involved in that match becoming the monumental milestone for women’s wrestling that it was, and that makes this title change a massive one.

7 – Randy Orton def. Chris Benoit(c)
(World Heavyweight Championship) – 2004

You can’t argue with the making of a future HOFer.

Now, I’m well aware that this decision was only made in-part so Brock Lesnar would no longer be “the youngest world champion ever” after he left the WWE earlier that year, but it’s undeniable that this title win confirmed the fact that Orton would be a mainstay of the main event scene in WWE in the years to come. Benoit’s title reign was pretty disappointing as a whole, as it’s clear since the only things notable about it, is who he won it from and who he lost it to, but being tied in with Evolution the whole way did at least make this title win make a decent amount of storyline sense.

The thing that doesn’t make this title reign nearly as big as it could’ve been is what happened in the month after it. The next night on Raw, Evolution turned on Orton and Triple H demanded Orton hand the title over. This created a fantastically done face turn where Orton spat in Triple H’s face and laid him out. Orton quickly became the biggest babyface in the company (because anyone who faced Triple H in the early 2000s was the biggest Babyface in the company) however as many of these stories from this time period would end, Triple H beat Orton the next month at Unforgiven clean as a whistle and that was that.

As much as Orton would quickly have the rug swept from under him, this title win was a clear indication that the company had faith in him to carry a world title, and he would go on to carry many more before the present day.

6 – Brock Lesnar def. John Cena(c)
(WWE World Heavyweight Championship) – 2014

Brock Lesnar’s WWE return had been pretty lacklustre before 2014 rolled around. He lost to John Cena, lost to Triple H and beat CM Punk in matches that were all very good, but were completely inconsequential. Then 2014 happened.

Brock Lesnar would be responsible for the most shocking moment in WWE history at Wrestlemania 30 when he ended the undefeated streak of The Undertaker, this turned Lesnar into the most unstoppable force in all of WWE and he was going to eviscerate the next person he came up against. Conversely, the WWE title scene in the summer of 2014 was a little bit of a mess, Daniel Bryan was forced to vacate the title after facing a neck injury so the title was quickly placed back around Cena’s waist until they could work out what to do.

When it was announced Lesnar was going to be fighting Cena, there was alot of trepidation about how things were going to go down. Many thought Cena would do what Cena does and win even when he really shouldn’t and others thought Lesnar’s win over The Undertaker guaranteed a win here, but I think it’s safe to say no-one was expecting what actually happened.

In completely shocking fashion, Lesnar absolutely destroyed Cena. In this 15 minute match, Cena only got in about a single minute of offence and the rest was Lesnar throwing Cena all around the ring. By the time Lesnar pinned Cena to win the title it was clear we were going to see a title reign like never before, which is exactly what we got…over and over again for the next 5 years with various titles Lesnar would hold. So yes, this title reign may have lead us to years of Lesnar being an absentee champion for months at a time, but you can’t say that this moment in 2014 wasn’t a huge deal.

5 – The Ultimate Warrior def. The Honky Tonk Man(c)
(Intercontinental Championship) – 1988

Ok, so there’s not much to this one, but you can’t deny that it’s a moment that has endured stronger than most others over the years.

Although he was by no means the first, Honky Tonk Man is arguably the man who made the idea of a modern heel champion so popular, to the point where on the current WWE roster, there’s almost always at least one champion that follows this archetype. Getting counted out, disqualified and cheating to his hearts content, there’s nothing that The Honky Tonk Man wouldn’t do to ensure he held onto the Intercontinental Championship as long as he possibly could and for 454 days, it worked and when a champion uses heel tactics to hold onto a title for that long, when they eventually lose it, it’s huge.

Summerslam 1988 was the night in question for that huge moment to happen. After Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake – who was originally set to challenge for the title – was laid out and unable to compete, everyone was in the dark as to who The Honky Tonk Man would defend his title against that night. Until to everyone’s delight, The Ultimate Warrior came sprinting down to the ring and 30 seconds later he was the new Intercontinental Champion.

Warrior’s title reign didn’t end up being all that notable in the long run, but that didn’t matter, as the manner in which he won it would go down in the highlight reels for decades.

4 – Daniel Bryan def. John Cena(c) &
Randy Orton def. Daniel Bryan(c)
(WWE Championship) – 2013

We got ourselves a twofer because Summerslam 2013 was the night that set up one of the biggest moments of the decade.

John Cena vs Daniel Bryan was an excellent match and one in which the fanbase at large was completely and totally behind Daniel Bryan and no-one was really sure if WWE would actually let a guy like Bryan beat a guy like Cena. To our amazement, after a great match, Bryan pinned Cena clean as a whistle with the Knee Plus to win his very first WWE Championship and it was a brilliant moment. The biggest indie darling ever had finally reached the pinnacle of WWE and it seemed clear that times were changing in the WWE landscape. It wasn’t to last though.

As the confetti fell, the music of Mr Money in the Bank Randy Orton hit and the two men stared each other down. Orton then looked to back away, until special guest referee Triple H hit Bryan with the pedigree, allowing Orton to become WWE Champion. This set off the Daniel Bryan vs The Authority storyline that would be the A story for most of the way from that show until Wrestlemania 30 the next year.

If it wasn’t for these title changes here (and a little bit of pushing from the fans) it’s entirely possible that the wonderful moment of Wrestlemania 30 ending with Daniel Bryan holding both the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships aloft might never have happened.

3 – Brock Lesnar def. The Rock(c)
(WWE Undisputed Championship) – 2002

Say what you like about his push nowadays, but no-one before or since has seen a meteoric rise like that of Brock Lesnar in 2002.

The moment he showed up on WWE TV it was clear that Lesnar was ear marked to be the next major star for the company, quite literally being labelled as “The Next Big Thing” as an onscreen nickname. Debuting in March of 2002, it took a mere 5 months for Lesnar to be defeating The Rock for the WWE Championship. Lesnar made very short work of opponents like The Hardys and RVD and when he won King of the Ring, a title victory seemed inevitable.

Although Lesnar would sour WWE’s investment in him a couple of years later when he left the company, Lesnar left a lasting impression on the WWE and by the time he returned to the company in 2012 his star power had grown tenfold, as seen by the fact that since 2014 he’s almost always been holding championship gold. Lesnar probably would’ve reached this level of star power anyway, but WWE certainly did him all the favours in the world by building so quickly to this moment.

2 – CM Punk def. John Cena
(WWE Championship) – 2011

When CM Punk won the WWE Championship at Money in the Bank 2011, it was a huge moment. Not only was this the first time an “indie darling” had won the WWE Championship, but the storyline in play meant that Punk was now leaving the WWE for an extended period of time. Of course, that ended up not being the case, since 8 whole days later Cena had won the new WWE Championship and Punk reappeared to face off with him.

Eventually, a match was put in place for Summerslam to crown an undisputed WWE Champion, since both men claimed their title was the legitimate one. The matched carried on the threads from their match the previous month to create a pretty great match and ultimately Punk’s win here solidified him as more than just a flash in the pan champion. It would take a little longer for him to have his 434-day title reign thanks to a sudden Kevin Nash and Alberto Del Rio appearance after this match, but this certainly put everything in place.

1 – The British Bulldog def. Bret Hart(c)
(Intercontinental Championship) – 1992

I mean come on, what else could it be?

We’ve all seen the clip a hundred times by now because it really was that huge a moment. Wembley Stadium, London, England in 1992, the first (and to date, only) time a big 4 WWE PPV has been held in the UK, so what other match could you possible have outside of British Bulldog and Bret Hart, two of the best wrestlers of the time going at it for the Intercontinental Championship.

Obviously, I don’t have the same kind of emotional connection as many people as my birth was still 7 years away when this match took place (sorry if that made you feel old), but all you have to do is listen to the reaction of the crowd when Bulldog pinned Hart to see just how magical a moment it was for everyone in attendance at the time. It would ultimately be a short title reign for the Bulldog, but it didn’t matter in the end because, in a single moment, he had secured his legacy forever.

And that’s this list! Thank you very much for taking the time to read, let me know what you think of it in either the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Make sure to come back here next week as the Summerslam festivities continue with my predictions for next Sunday’s show!|