This was a Best Two of Three Falls match for the New Day Classic’s WWE Tag Team Titles.
As usual, one of these matches in the WWE never quite gets the time it needs in order to stretch out and be all it can be. Fifteen minutes or less is not enough for three falls, and like so often is the case with matches like these in this company, it feels like a lie. A stipulation shoved into post production, with two nearfalls having a CGI three count added in. As always, it’s a classic example of the WWE insisting on only ever doing things one way, with the changes only ever being purely cosmetic. It’s a three fall match only in the sense that there are three falls, not in terms of tone or length or any noticeable difference to the match compared to past iterations.
As is often the case though, it doesn’t quite matter so much when motivated and talented wrestlers get a hold of fifteen minutes of pay per view time.
That goes doubly so for an all-time great like Cesaro.
Even if this doesn’t hold a candle to the Usos vs. Wyatt Family match from ten months earlier with most of the same issues — as Cesaro isn’t as great here as Harper was there, and for WWE project guys, 2014 Usos are better than 2015 New Day bell to bell — it works for the same admirable reasons. Talent being too good to deny and caring too much to have an average match, and succeeding where they can and while they can.
Again, that largely means this is the Cesaro show. Kofi and Big E are not natural babyfaces and so this first year of the New Day run where they work heel is far more lacking than the rest of their time together in the ring. Some people can reverse engineer it after so long on the other end and some people are just naturally one thing. Kofi Kingston and Big E are the latter, so it’s largely on Cesaro and Kidd to lay the foundation before the gifts of the champions can be best utilized in a second half sugar rush. However, short of the John Cena US Open, there is no better show on the main roster at this point and Cesaro lifts all the boats around him. Kidd has some bright ideas, and Cesaro can plug the power of Big E and Kofi as a generic flyer into just about a million different things, all different from the previous meetings. It’s all candy, but it’s good candy.
The brightest spot of this, of course, is a truly great finish.
It’s nothing NEW exactly. Kofi Kingston gets his ass kicked and saved, and when the ref is distracted, Xavier Woods switches places with him and he cradles Cesaro after a cheap shot to take the titles. The twin switch spot is an old one, and like any other old standard piece of pro wrestling nonsense, it’s not inherently good or bad. This is a fun one, firstly because it’s been long enough since it was last seen in the WWE that it provokes a real reaction.
Secondly it works because it allows everyone to go online and accuse the referee of being a racist in one of the few true wonderful bits to come out of the WWE in 2015. Perhaps second only to Rusev throwing a fish.
Unfortunately, this would be the last match of any real note for Tyson Kidd anywhere. Everyone knows the story, it’s one of the big unfortunate injuries of the last decade, especially as he had finally started to get what he had been due for a long time since mid-2014. We never get a real blow off here, we never even get it again. It’s unfair, and it’s a worse version of the usual. It’s not that it got interrupted now by nobody in a decision making capacity being able to pay attention or having horrible opinions. The conclusion failed to appear this time not because of incompetence, but because of cruel and random chance. Nobody is to blame, there’s nothing to really be said or done about it, and we at least got these two delightful pay-per-view encounters.
It’ll be another year and seven months before Cesaro gets to go back and finally give this the sequel that it deserves, and thankfully by then, The New Day will be far more up to the task and in roles more befitting their bell to bell talents.
HANDWERK 