This was for Deano’s WWE Intercontinental Title, with the stipulation that if he got disqualified, he would forfeit the title to The Miz.
It’s a lovely little piece of nonsense on a show literally named after the exact sort of lawlessness that a stipulation like this seeks to counterbalance. One might complain about a match like this being on a show like EXTREME RULES, but one might then the target audience for a ruse like this, given that such a thing is exactly the point.
That’s kind of the thing with this match, and I love that.
Does Dean Ambrose vs. The Miz deliver a fine professional wrestling contest?
Sure. They’re fine wrestlers, and have another good match together, but that’s not entirely the point, and this is why this match in particular is easily the best of what feels like the few dozen that they had together in 2017.
It’s another one of those great total packages that occasionally breaks loose out of the WWE, rarer even than just the company getting out of the way and let the best wrestlers in the world cook. It’s something more impressive than that, the sort of thing I feel like I praise TNA/Impact for a lot this decade on the occasions in which I do praise them, helping a decent pairing of two decent wrestlers get over the top as a result of everything outside the purely mechanical. It’s the elevation of good to borderline great wrestling into something more than that through a nice and easy story not only with a coward and a dirtbag but the DQ rule constantly being bandied about in a few different fun ways, great construction, and above all, some real high level nonsense and cheating at the end with manager interference, the tease of a nonsense DQ title switch, only for Miz to steal the title in a wholly different sort of way than one might have expected going in.
Miz gets the title back on the absolute biggest bunch of bullshit he possibly could, and that is absolutely for the best.
People complain about things like this, finishes like this, and matches based around bullshit, but I think sometimes, bullshit gets a bad rap. Bullshit in professional wrestling is never bad, in and of itself.
Wrestling, fundamentally, is bullshit.
The problem is that, so often, you get incredibly lazy or poorly executed bullshit. The same tropes done over and over so they lose all value or impact. Those same tropes either plotted out by people who either never learned how to do them correctly or who no longer care/have forgotten entirely or carried out by people who can’t get the most out of them, usually both at the same time. Bullshit that isn’t good or that doesn’t make any god damned sense.
When executed right though — when done in interesting or less common ways, when you get a lot of different moving pieces and layers to the bullshit, when executed by a genuinely lithesome villain and purpetrated against someone genuinely and innately likeable — it is a beautiful thing, as seen with Eddie against JBL, a million different Raven matches, Jimmy Rave’s entire peak, things of that nature. When wielded responsibly and with the right people in the right positions when executing things like this, there is absolutely a time and a place for some good old fashioned bullshit.
This match is exactly such a time and a place, and I really loved it.
HANDWERK 