This was a two out of three falls match for the Usos’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It’s a really great match and like the match the month before and the best of the Shield tags, it’s kind of this how to on what a workrate WWE formula tag can look like.
There are minor differences, beyond just the stipulation. The story the first match had of getting rid of Luke Harper so that Rowan had nobody directing him was a really cool idea. It was the sort of minor logical touch that you don’t get from a lot of WWE stuff at this point. However, beating Harper at the end this time is a much more emphatic close. If the goal of this all is to just get The Usos over (and clearly, it is, as the WWE whiffed on the best big man of a generation for a solid eight years), this is the most impressive ending. The order of things is different, employing Harper’s dive later in the match and going just a little bit bigger in the last third or so.
Otherwise, it works for all the same reasons. Harper’s the best wrestler in the company at this point, if not in overall talent (Cesaro or Zayn may still have him beat), then in terms of being allowed to deliver like this. All his stuff is perfect and the other three in the match once again manage to not let down all the work he’s doing. The first two falls get repeated and paid off with nearfalls, and the Usos have to do more than ever to chop down Harper at the end. He takes multiple superkicks, the double superkick, and then the ultra rare double flying splash (both at the same time) and it’s enough to end the match and the feud and, for the time being, this tag team.
There are minor differences, beyond just the stipulation. The story the first match had of getting rid of Luke Harper so that Rowan had nobody directing him was a really cool idea. It was the sort of minor logical touch that you don’t get from a lot of WWE stuff at this point. However, beating Harper at the end this time is a much more emphatic close. If the goal of this all is to just get The Usos over (and clearly, it is, as the WWE whiffed on the best big man of a generation for a solid eight years), this is the most impressive ending. The order of things is different, employing Harper’s dive later in the match and going just a little bit bigger in the last third or so.
Otherwise, it works for all the same reasons. Harper’s the best wrestler in the company at this point, if not in overall talent (Cesaro or Zayn may still have him beat), then in terms of being allowed to deliver like this. All his stuff is perfect and the other three in the match once again manage to not let down all the work he’s doing. The first two falls get repeated and paid off with nearfalls, and the Usos have to do more than ever to chop down Harper at the end. He takes multiple superkicks, the double superkick, and then the ultra rare double flying splash (both at the same time) and it’s enough to end the match and the feud and, for the time being, this tag team.
I used to have a very strong opinion that this wasn’t as good as the match three weeks before at the MITB pay per view. I’m not sure why I felt so strongly about that. It was a very weird hill to choose to die on (as opposed to a lovely hill you boys chose to die on), and I’m not sure why I did. Watching them more closely together, they’re a lot closer than I remember. They have all the same strengths, Luke Harper is still far and away the best wrestler in the match, and they finish in largely the same sort of a way.
It still is probably a hair behind.
The most significant difference is that there’s really no reason for this to be a three fall match. I don’t just mean in storyline, but in terms of the match itself. The first fall ends on this gorgeous boot from Harper and the second is an Uso roll up. They’re not horrible finishes. The match doesn’t have the problem some lucha matches do where I see a fall and think that, no, absolutely that is not a real finish. Within the confines of WWE and the way the WWE often treats the division, these falls make sense. The real issue is that this feels less like a three fall match than it does like a normal match shoved into a three fall format. The first fall is a transition, the second is a hope spot. A lot of lucha matches take this approach, but because of how much of lucha is done under three fall rules, it feels much more natural than this did. This is the sort of three fall match that feels like a movie that suffers from re-shoots, like someone decided to make this a three fall affair after it was done, so they went in and two of the nearfalls simply become three counts. They don’t take the chance provided by the match to go bigger or longer or anything like that. It’s this normal style great match that is then also this other thing, because the only changes that the WWE has any skill with employing are entirely surface level and purely cosmetic.
Stylistically, it’s not a three fall match so much as it is an already great match that was then retrofitted to also be a three fall match.
Bullshit aside, this rules. It’s among the best work of the year anywhere, it’s one of the best tag team matches of the decade, and even with the ceilings and walls put on them, an example of how great things can be when you cut even one (1) generationally great talent loose. There’s a director’s cut or a producer’s cut of this that’s even better, but even as a theatrical cut with a weird editing choice or two, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than this.
HANDWERK 