Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena vs. AJ Styles, WWE Smackdown Live (2/14/2017)

This was for Wyatt’s WWE World Heavyweight Title.

Once again, something like this delivers above and beyond my expectations.

You might ask what exactly does “something like this” refer to. Do I mean an AJ Styles match? Do I mean a John Cena match? Do I mean a John Cena vs. AJ Styles match? Do I mean a WWE World Title triple threat match with AJ Styles, John Cena, and a third party? Hell, do I just mean AJ Styles three way matches in general, given that he’s been a common denominator in great three way matches in wrestling going back like fifteen years at this point?

Yes.

Sure.

Any or all of those.

There are a few new bits to be fair, and extensions of past matches that I really did appreciate. AJ Styles tries the table spots that won him his last three way for the title, only for Wyatt to look stronger for moving past and winning. Likewise, John Cena tries the sequence of Attitude Adjustments in a row that finally got him the win on Styles at the Royal Rumble, only for AJ to now counter the second one and look better and cooler for it.

Someone who cares more can probably string up and tape into place an argument for this as a masterpiece to put Wyatt over strong, but really, it’s just some great no brains style pro wrestling.

It is a delightful fireworks show assembled and performed by one of the great engineers of those matches in recent history, another of the best wrestlers of all time, and a motivated third party. Nothing is complex, the quality is as expected, and it’s a delight. This is a match that one hundred percent knows what you want, and is very happy to give it to you, empty calories and all. It works for every reason you’d imagine it works, and the result is one of the most fun WWE matches of the year.

***1/4

John Cena vs. AJ Styles vs. Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt vs. The Miz vs. Baron Corbin, WWE Elimination Chamber (2/12/2017)

This was for Cena’s WWE World Heavyweight Title.

First off, this is the official debut of what I’ve come to know as the Coward Elimination Chamber.

With the return of the Chamber comes higher ceilings and padding on the steel floors of the thing. That’s not to say those landings probably don’t still really hurt and that they don’t pack a bigger punch than landings inside the ring, It’s one of the great symbols ever of the WWE’s attitude in the 2010s towards matches like this, which is sanitizing everything to a disgusting degree, making everything safer and gaudier, while still just blatantly lying about what it is. The contrast is a maddening one, being told about how dangerous and brutal something is while clearly seeing that it’s safer than ever, and it’s one that arguably reaches its apex with the Elimination Chamber redesign.

In spite of that though, this is a really great match.

Partly, that’s because like the best matches of its kind — both Elimination Chambers and WWE multi-man matches — it gets the formula right. A lot of different kinds of wrestlers exist in one space here, from your brawlers to your power guys to your big flier in AJ Styles, and Dean Ambrose, who is a little bit of each of the above. Beyond the diversity of offense that it offers up, it’s another one of these matches that’s incredibly well booked and then constructed as well, for the most part. As more and more of the machine breaks down, matches like these are increasingly the only place on the main roster where you get it working like it’s supposed to (see: 2019’s Chamber), and this match shows that. The match is not always the greatest, having to focus on Barry Corbin and The Miz doing offense is hindrance to be sure, but it feels like the match gets as much as possible out of every element of the thing, while also shooting people off into these brand new directions for WrestleMania season. Corbin and Deano get redirected at each other after an Ambrose/Miz feud had led into this. Likewise, the Cena/AJ title issue gets turned into a Miz grudge on Cena, and the match always feel very measured in this aspect, getting a lot both in terms of match quality and match utility out of a line up that is not the best.

The other reason this is great is the most obvious one.

AJ Styles works one hundred percent of this match.

For something like eighty five or ninety percent of the match, AJ Styles and John Cena are both in the match as well, and having two all-time great wrestlers in a match turns out to have a positive effect. Cena isn’t the powerhouse here that AJ is, but he works here in classic Cena ways, both getting a lot of effort out of everyone, and making everything he does feel bigger. When he’s eliminated before the final two by Bray Wyatt, it really does feel like a big deal, in the same way that his shock first elimination in the 2009 Elimination Chamber did.

Styles though is on another level here, putting forth one of the best Chamber performances ever. If one of the last few of these wasn’t the 2014 title match Elimination Chamber, the best match of its kind ever, it’d be an easy thing to call this the best Chamber performance in a very long time. It’s up there with the great ones in this space from, well, everyone in the 2014 edition to Rey Mysterio in 2009 to Goldberg in 2003, and so forth. It’s maybe the greatest pure bump freak performance in Chamber history, aided I’m sure by the extra padding, but in a way that seems no less impressive despite that. He’s flying around from the start, and takes one real horrific bump off a pod into the ring, bumps on the floor, into the chain wall, all of it. Coupled with the usual AJ Styles stuff against Cena early and late, stellar chemistry with everyone involved, and it’s very clearly the performance that makes the match. If this match really is a machine, there is no question about who the motor of the gigantic beast is, and it is a mother fucker of a motor at that.

The AJ Styles vs. Bray Wyatt run at the end is also genuinely great and the best one on one work Wyatt’s been involved with since he faced the actual greatest wrestler of all time. It benefits from being a brand new match up, so everything they’re doing is fresh, as well as from the set up the match provides them (heel vs. heel is always interesting when the characters are this different, new champion guaranteed), but it also just rocks. Bray is FEELING IT in a way he clearly hasn’t in years, AJ Styles still hasn’t realized that he doesn’t always have to try super super super hard in the WWE, and it comes together as perfectly as it ever could for Wyatt’s big title win.

It’s not what it might have been had they taken the care with the character that they did initially. He’s still been booked into oblivion for most of the last three years, and it’s still just a set up for the Orton title win that seems like it exists largely as a make good for SummerSlam 2016, Wyatt winning the title almost entirely just because of who he was feuding with, rather than momentum or skill. However, as a result of the last four months of stuff and as a result of the match being as great as it was, Wyatt winning the title doesn’t feel like the complete and total miss that it would have had you told someone about it a year in advance, and that’s maybe the greatest victory of the match.

Real far from being the all-time greatest Elimination Chamber, as it was hailed as at the time from people who should know better, but certainly somewhere among the more impressive ones.

***1/4

American Alpha vs. Randy Orton/Bray Wyatt, WWE Smackdown Live (1/10/2017)

This was for Gable and Jordan’s Smackdown Tag Team Titles.

Following American Alpha’s title victory to end 2016 over the Orton/Harper team, Bray Wyatt subs himself back in. It’s a good little detail both in that this is what he imagines the A Team of the group to be, but also in that of their two encounters with the kids to date, it was this pairing that beat them at the end of November.

Everything I wrote about this pairing in those two pieces still holds true in this match.

Despite never getting to really have the match that this trilogy suggested that they could have had together, this match is the best example yet of the kind of classical tag team wrestling this series stood as an example of, and the best example of all of the ways in which this pairing simply worked. For Bray Wyatt, the tag team structure once again was where he did his best work (outside of a PPV length singles match against the greatest wrestler of all time, that’s cheating), allowing him to drift in and out with big high impact power spots and utilizing his strengths without asking him to do more than that. For Randy Orton, he gets to do simple classical wrestling against athletic and exciting young babyfaces, which has been his sweet spot all decade for the most part. For Gable and Jordan, it’s a classic formula tag that matters, getting the rare time on TV to deliver a match like this again and throwing themselves into everything this match asks of them with such great aplomb.

This match succeeds in all the ways you’d expect it to, only constantly changing around the order and the amount of steps required to get to the obvious places, in a way I really appreciate. There’s a skill to it, take too many steps to get somewhere and it can become a little much, as seen in some of the later Revival/Alpha tags, but you always want a little bit to both keep it interesting and also to show that these things do require some work and effort. Gable’s initial run of offense leading into the cut off here does an especially great job of implementing that, giving him three or four or five different evasions or counters of the thing everyone expects, making him seem faster and better than expected, before Wyatt has to break out his brick wall flying body block to finally do it. It’s a small thing, but it’s a show of the care and attention in this series that makes it so interesting, on top of everything else.

Every other part of this match succeeds for the same reasons, constantly changing things around in a way that’s so rewarding. Be it small little counters to pieces of offense from earlier in the match to things that have evolved from match to match here, like stuffing Jordan’s hot tag to make it a double heat segment match, it’s all really fun. A match succeeding on multiple levels, telling a simple story bell to bell as much as telling ones about an evolving series, and also Orton undermining Harper whenever possible but still being enough of a psycho that he won’t actually try and lose a title belt.

To be expected, the match doesn’t quite get to reach the climax it feels like it’s working towards. All the same, it’s another real fun finish out of this feud, and befitting with the rest of the match, a slight modification to an old classic that makes it just a little bit more interesting. Gable gets his hot tag after a smaller control segment on Jordan, and he and Orton have maybe the best run of the match against each other. Orton specifically swings Gable over the middle rope for the draping DDT on the side Luke Harper is on to distract the referee, so that Gable hits him there. Harp gets back on the apron, now allowing Gable to roll up Randy to win. It’s not the super strong win that their title victory was two weeks prior, but it’s a finish in the same vein, and one that at least lets the champions retain some dignity.

Clearly, this is not a match about American Alpha, but relative to just about everything else they do on the main roster outside of this rivalry, there’s at least a respect there in a match like this. As much a show of what this four or five month Peak SDL run offered up as any of the AJ Styles and John Cena stuff the run is primarily known for.

A stellar conclusion to one of the period’s forgotten great series.

***

Randy Orton/Bray Wyatt vs. American Alpha, WWE Smackdown Live (11/29/2016)

This was a #1 Contender’s Match.

It genuinely two thousand percent absolutely rocks.

Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton both find themselves in a more interesting spot than they’ve been in years and seemingly far more motivated by it than either man has been since mid 2014.

For Bray, it’s largely just a matter of having something interesting to do again and having momentum with the Randy Orton story. He’s not a superworker, he’s a character guy, and it’s the most alive that character has felt since the John Cena feud ended. Mechanically speaking, he’s back in his element, the role that’s resulted in ninety something percent of his great matches historically, in a tag team match against a great babyface team and with an all-time great as his partner. Bray works in spurts, especially when there’s a real urgency and energy to his movements again, the power offense is as good as always under those conditions, but he’s not asked to do anymore than he’s capable of. It seems obvious, but given that it’s the first time in years he’s been in that situation and given how short of a run this great little tag run actually got to have, it’s anything bit.

In the case of Randy Orton, it is so obvious.

Randy and American Alpha were born to wrestle each other.

They should have had one hundred more matches, with Randy and a bunch of other partners, and in these roles specifically. Gable and Jordan are the ideal sort of white meat suplexes and dropkicks throwback babyfaces, and Randy Orton is in his element against people with these sensibilities in the same way that he always was with Shelton Benjamin early in his career. Randy’s a rotten mother fucker, and a match up like this not only allows his worse qualities to shine through when he’s controlling and abusing these kids, but it brings something out of him in a mechanical sense that hasn’t been there in a while.

It’s pure formula through and through, but these guys are so good at utilizing that formula.

While we sadly don’t get to go back to this well for years and years, we do at least get a little series here in late 2016 and early 2017. As such, this is only the first, and its very much the first in a series, and it’s not concerned with delivering the BEST possible match here, so much as simply delivering a great one while accomplishing those goals. Establishing themes, propping up the barriers for Our Heroes to try and topple and get past in the future, and in general, setting the table.

They’re not allowed to set it for an especially robust meal, but all the same, it is as well done an example of that as you’ll find.

Classic chunk of wrestling TV right here.

***

Seth Rollins vs. THE FIEND, WWE Hell in a Cell (10/6/2019)

More of those Black Friday Sale commissions. This one comes courtesy of AndoCommando, whose greatest wish is to see me in pain. You too can pay me to watch and write about wrestling matches or other things, over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. Ideally you have higher ambitions than to just make me watch bad stuff, but hey, dealers choice. That’s $5 per match and more if you’d like to discuss that in the DMs. 

This was a Hell in a Cell match for Rollins’ WWE Universal Title.

During this whole process, I’ve realized that I have a sort of set idea about what someone gets if they pay me. I want to hit over 500 words at least, and really expand upon everything I mean. Sometimes those words don’t always come, but if they start to flow, I just sort of see where they wander off towards. Even if it’s something I hate like this and that leaves me feeling insulted by the end, I always keep in mind that someone paid for this, and generally speaking, people deserve what they pay for. It’s not like either of these two abused a teenager or anything, you know?

Before I write about this “match”, I want to talk about the WWE and the way I consume it, and my reaction to this in the moment.

Ever since 2017 or so — save a six or seven month run in 2018 when 205 Live was often something worth watching live — I’ve consumed the WWE just like I would New Japan or Takeshita-era DDT or something like that. A company with a lot of talent, but whose booking frustrates me and whose lesser shows are rarely worth a start-to-finish watch. Cherry pick what looks decent or what’s received acclaim from people you trust, but it’s really about the monthly big shows. I’ve only ever watched WWE pay-per-views live, and I’ve typically gone over to my cousin’s to do so. We have some beers and a pizza, it’s a fun time. He’s a bigger WWE fan than I can ever be and pays for the stream, so it’s also just a little bit anthropological on top of allowing me to watch with slightly less guilt (I mean, I still have a Peacock sub that I regularly forget to cancel, but that’s mostly for sitcoms. I tell myself this to make it okay).

Unless a show is entirely useless, I go over there for just about every pay-per-view and it’s a good time.

This was a real bad one.

Bad enough that even my cousin hated it, and bad enough that I walked the few blocks home, got online, and set about making every one of the people I regularly interact with online watch this match. Called it THE ENCOUNTER, described it in detail, and just hounded people until they also experienced it. Typically, a burden shared is also a burden lessened, but that’s not the case here. The load never felt any lighter, it didn’t un-watch the match. Really, I thought it was just phenomenally terrible and I wanted other people to suffer too. That saying about a burden is about real labor with an aim to accomplish something. As it pertains to parasocial relationships, if I suffer through a great ordeal, I kind of want everyone else to suffer through the same thing.

Here and now, I’ve joined a select and probably damned group of people to have watched this match twice.

I would appreciate it if everyone reading this joined the same club.

It’s still one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. None of it’s any better. It hasn’t been rendered quaint by worse things to follow in the way that some NXT matches have. Everything that sucked about this initially and immediately will always suck about it. The action is pedestrian, the booking is atrocious, and the acting is embarrassing.

However, one thing I’m always fearful of being in this space is unoriginal and this match has been discussed to death.

So, actually, fuck this.

I don’t know that you need me to break it down for you when everyone knew from the moment it started to go downhill how bad this is. Better writers than me have detailed it with gifs and videos to break it down like it’s the Zapruder film (do I think the CIA did this? hard to say), and there are countless articles elsewhere on the internet about the myriad of ways in which it’s bad, stupid, and a total failure. All of the no-selling is bad, the attempt at a horror movie finish after the match  complete with blood packet like THE FIEND ripped Seth’s jaw off or something, and especially the maudlin display where the ref pleads with Seth not to use the sledgehammer as well on top of all the other steel objects to the head (gotta pay the fiddler, nobody dances for free) before a fucking Hell in a Cell match is stopped. It’s all bad, and it’s all bad in the ways you’ve always known it was bad.

Nothing that I have to say about this match is new, and I doubt very little than any of it is interesting.

What I’m left thinking about is how this whole exercise had a way of revealing people and what it is that they really wanted.

Some of you could have and did spend money on good matches. Matches that, I imagine, you wanted to know what I thought of and wanted to see me go into detail on. I appreciate that. Not only the money, but the implicit show of respect that comes with it. Times are not especially easy, although there are many far worse off than I am, and I could use it, but I’m far more comfortable doing something to earn it. This is one of the things that I’m best at and so this is my solution. I think it’s a fair trade, and it’s allowed me to mostly not pay for Christmas presents for the people in my life that I love and appreciate while also doing something I greatly enjoy.

Some of you had some weird requests though, and didn’t leave this process looking all that good. The sort of commissions that either greatly upset me or deeply confused me, that caused me to immediately raise my eyebrows, deaden my eyes, and sigh deeply. This is right near the top of that list.

Really though, I don’t know what the point of me writing about this is.

Whether intended or not, it feels a lot like being asked to dance for my money, doing something I really don’t want to do. “You want money to write? Here, write about some terrible matches!” Ask for video of me running into a wall or falling down the stairs instead maybe. It’s a much quicker thing, and fundamentally, a more honest version of what’s really going on. I know there’s an audience out there just for negative reviews, but it’s not really the sort of thing I enjoy doing when it comes to something THIS bad. I try my best to synthesize between the heart and the head, and sometimes that turns out angry and negative. I would much rather write 2500 words about something I loved, or loved most of, than write 1000 words about something like this. (the ideal, of course, is sub-500 words about something i sort of hated but that a lot of people really loved.)

Truly, I have absolutely nothing to add to the conversation about this match that hasn’t already been said over and over and over and over and over again. No turn of phrase, no secret meaning to unlock, there’s nothing here for me to latch onto in a way that I find interesting or valuable. Nothing I have to say about it is new or offers any unique insight. There is nothing of value here. No good deed is commemorated here, etc. I had just opened this blog when the match happened, and there’s a reason I didn’t write about it at the time.

It stinks, it’s rotten, and everything bad that’s happened to the WWE and the world at large sort of feels like reaping what was sown by allowing something like this. There. It’s the concept of entropy as a professional wrestling match.

This is a terrible match, but you all already knew that.

Outside of being paid to discuss a sexual abuser who is still active in wrestling, this is the most offended I’ve been at one of these yet.

 

 

The Wyatt Family vs. The Dudley Boyz/Rhino/Tommy Dreamer, WWE Raw (12/14/2015)

This was an Extreme Rules match.

It’s one of the surprises of the year out of WWE, as they get the full clearance to do everything WWE ever lets people do anymore, and it’s honestly kind of a hoot.vAfter a disappointing tables match (as most tables matches are) the night before, this is way more like it, and the match they needed to have for this to work, and to give the Wyatts not only a solid win, but a solid win in a match that’s even halfway memorable.

This being the best possible match for them isn’t just about the stipulation or it now being on TV, but the way that it’s allowed to break down and get chaotic. Spreading the thing out is as crucial as anything out. With the match spreading to all corners of the environment, the camera is able to jump over to whichever section is interesting at the moment, removing any real dead space or footage of people lying around for too long or clearly half assing it and waiting for a spot. This is also the only match on the show that gets to be as out of control and use the shortcuts that this match does, so they have full clearance to get as wild as possible, without the audience reaction being dulled by already having seen chairs and tables used already on the show. They get all of it. Moves off the stage through tables, the Braun Strowman barricade spot, chairs and trash cans whipped around at each other, all of it. It’s wild enough to just get past that overly sanitized feeling that’s permeated so much of WWE television while also carefully put and held together by a talent like Harper and experienced guys in a match like this like the old men, and allows the match to stand out.

Beyond just being fun as hell, it’s also put together in a way that makes as much sense as possible. The ECW guys (EV2.0 if this was TNA) eventually get picked off one by one, because they can’t really hang anymore. Strowman stampedes through Dreamer and the railing. The Dudleys get separated and fairly easily shut down. The one left who still has something is Rhino, and he delivers a charming little offensive attempt before getting surrounded and stopped.

After the Sister Abby, the focus goes instead to Rowan surprisingly. He splashes Rhino off the top through a table to win, which I guess is an attempt to try and build him back up for The Rock’s retirement match.

Genuinely really really fun, one of the major miracles of the year.

***

Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt, WWE Hell in a Cell (10/25/2015)

This was a Hell in a Cell match.

Not a great match, but far from a bad one (so long as you can make your brain stop shouting “IMAGINE ROMAN VS. HARPER IN THE CELL INSTEAD”, which can be hard).

Fun and occasionally inventive WWE prop work inside the cell. The downfall of the match isn’t performance or the story told, but instead that it’s a fifteen minute heavyweight bombfest needlessly stretched out to twenty three. Roman excels in the bigger moments, but the stretch to twenty plus minutes hurts Wyatt. Even with all the props they have to work with, he just doesn’t have the material to go this long without a genuine super worker in the ring with him, and that’s just not Roman (yet).

A few tremendous table bumps, kendo stick shots, and cool move ideas save the match from being anything less than very good. The finish itself is especially great, as they lodge a kendo stick in the corner facing out, avoid it all match, and then have Wyatt thrown face or throat first into the end of the stick. It’s obviously bullshit, but filmed in the exact right way to still look impressive, perfectly setting up Roman’s spear to finally finally finally finally end this feud.

One of many 2010s WWE gimmick match badly in need of a theatrical cut release instead of the director’s cut we have.

Roman Reigns/Dean Ambrose/Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt/Luke Harper/Sheamus, WWE Raw (8/3/2015)

More of that easy good shit.

To the surprise of pretty much nobody, six of the all stars of WWE’s 2013-2014 peak run manage to excel when they’re put back into a six man tag team match. It’s almost as if this is a very easy way to fill time on a professional wrestling show and that when it all runs right, it’s a way to deliver an exciting match that manages to both further your stories and also save just enough to keep them interesting.

This is absolutely a match that runs right, an incredibly low stakes example of how even on accident, the machine can still run like it used to. Clearly, somebody bumped into it on accident before this episode of Raw, between this and Neville/Rollins, and eventually shut it off after the show when they realized what happened.

Still, what happened happened, and somehow this weird little thing motivates all six to deliver some of their best performances in some time.

It’s hard to call it his best performance since then when something like WrestleMania 31 exists, but Roman Reigns is especially great in this match. The majority of the match runs through him, and he’s more excited than he’s been in a while. It’s a brief respite from the dour WWE top babyface push and more of a return to those old Shield babyface days, when it was fun to watch guys clearly having the times of their lives. Beyond that change, he also gets to spend most of this trading shots with Sheamus and Harper. The former is a great combination that isn’t new exactly (as Sheamus was one of the great Shield opponents) but that feels new with the switch in alignments. The latter is one of the quiet great pairings of the era, and delivers once again. As expected, Harper is the anchor on the other side and once again turns in a flawless big man performance. Every bump feels earned, and every morsel of offense looks and sounds both beautiful and horrifying. Sheamus is just as great against Reigns, but it’s against the other two that Harper shines even more than that.

Beyond the two anchors and Sheamus, this also gets the best out of everyone else. Ambrose, Wyatt, and Orton have all suffered from low energy levels at times in the last year, understandably so, but in a match like this, they’re perfect. It allows them to get in and out, hitting their bigger stuff, and relying on the anchors of the teams to provide most everything else. It helps too that Ambrose seems genuinely fired up again for the first time in a while, and as a hot tag and face in peril guy in the middle, his enthusiasm means that nothing’s lost in the bridge from the early Roman brawling sections with the big guys to the fireworks show at the end.

The last third of this is also crazy and unbelievably well assembled in a way that hasn’t been seen since The Shield broke up. A thousand things in a row, all unique, all perfectly placed, and all flawlessly executed. You get some pay offs here and there, like Ambrose’s struggle to hit his dive all through the last third and Bray finally being unable to avoid Reigns anymore, but it’s primarily just this perfect section of chaos. Things finally turn right for the babyfaces. Dean can hit his dive to remove Harper, and then nobody can bail out Wyatt and Sheamus. Bray eats the RKO when trying to avoid Reigns again, and Sheamus runs into the Spear to end the match.

Naturally nothing was learned from how well this worked and things returned to a more boring standard the following week, but a wonderful brief return to form all the same.

***1/4

The Undertaker vs. Bray Wyatt, WWE WrestleMania 31 (3/29/2015)

The match isn’t especially good.

It’s bad.

This is bad pro wrestling.

Without any momentum, buzz, or help from booking, Wyatt is revealed entirely as what he is, which is an above average wrestler who needs all of the things he was robbed of in the spring of 2014 and won’t ever get back again in the same way. The Undertaker is even worse, the worst wrestler on this show. Barely mobile, almost looking depressed to even be here. The ultimate sign of how important The Streak was is this match, in which without it, we also have to look at him entirely as he is, and it’s a pitiful sight. Outworked and then some by Bray Wyatt of all people.

It’s all best expressed here.

A spot laid out and sold on commentary as incredibly brutal, but both performed and filmed with a total lack of skill to the point that your eyes immediately tell you that this is total bullshit. And within moments, none of it matters whatsoever.

The Undertaker eventually wins with the second Tombstone, Bray Wyatt the latest rube to be taken in by the “but you get to kick out of ONE finisher!” appeasement strategy that only works on the true marks.

A bad match, but a perfect summary of the WWE at this point and into the next six years and beyond

A year ago, Bray Wyatt was white hot, but in classic WWE fashion, they ran a heel too long against Cena and he left the feud far far far worse off than he came in. He was put into middling feuds and had his cool stable destroyed. Then at some point in the fall, the brain trust decided to run this match and they then began destroying the momentum of babyfaces to try and suddenly heat Wyatt up for this feud It was too little and too late and more than a little too transparent to ever work. So instead, it just hurt everyone Bray beat because you can’t just cheat and get him back there in three months, and it’s not even FOR anything because he in turn just gets fed to The Undertaker without so much as even a special entrance, the sign of who actually matters in the company in a given moment.

This fat shitty old man who can’t move without looking like he’s dying all over again, who should have retired a year ago, he’s the one to ultimately benefit in the end, and even he doesn’t benefit after a performance that leaves everyone going “yeah, shouldn’t have come back” following the most perfect retirement scenario everyone could have ever written. With that erased, he’s now not only a fat old decrepit shit, but one who will spend the next half decade in search of a proper ending after passing up the one chance he had to get it a thousand percent right.

Everyone looks worse.

Nobody gains anything.

A wonderful story and a true summation of the post-canon phase of WWE booking.

Many people were very mad about this at the time. I recognize the silliness of making fun of anyone for caring about this after being very Mad Online after watching Triple H vs. Sting again, but ultimately, anyone with high hopes for this match probably deserved to be disappointed in the first place. We are not the same. You have bought magic beans at least twice in your life.

Real wheat from the chaff shit in terms of what you got angriest about on this show.

Bray Wyatt vs. Dean Ambrose, WWE Smackdown (6/13/2014)

The winner of this would go into the Money in the Bank match

It’s the one time this match ever delivered, and you guessed it, it’s because it’s a largely meaningless match on a less important episode of TV. Instead of Dean Ambrose blowing his own face up because he’s WHACKY or a ghost hologram or whatever, this gets to simply be a match. In the shocker of shockers, professional wrestlers are much more at home in a short and compact and violent little piece of professional wrestling then they are when starring in some failed writer’s TELLIN’ STORIES script.

I’m not about to try and hard sell that this is as good as the famous Bryan match. However, it’s still the sort of performance and more importantly, the sort of overall output that he’s rarely been able to achieve outside of this 2013-2014 push and then a brief period in 2016 and early 2017 with many of the same attributes. The main part of that, once again, is not Bray Wyatt. To his credit, he’s fine here. He lays his shit in, leans into Ambrose’s, and does a better job than he’ll do for like 90% of the rest of his career still to come. It also succeeds because it takes a page out of the Bryan match, with Bray filling space with vague shoulder and neck work.

The match is great largely because of Dean Ambrose here, and particularly the sort of effort he puts into it. Within the next three or four months, you’d never get an effort like this out of Ambrose again, especially not on a show like Smackdown that barely matters. He’ll have great matches again for a few years when in the right spots, largely on pay per view, but never again the sort of wild effort he puts forth in a setting like this. More on the reasons for all of that in time, but it’s a decision that’s hard to fault him for.

His offense rules here, but what stands out is the arm selling. Ambrose’s selling isn’t quite as believable and robust as that of the greatest wrestler of all time in a similar spot against Wyatt, but he brings SOMETHING to it. An undeniable flair and the sort of realistic stuff you’d expect from a guy like this when confronted with the weakness of the human body at the most inopportune times.

God bless him.

Seth Rollins finds his way down to steal the win from Ambrose with a distraction following his finish, leading to the Sister Abby for the win.

Listen, nobody has to rush out to see this. It’s Smackdown, it’s a ten minute match with a bullshit finish, performed by two wrestlers who never lit the world on fire when they had bigger matches and who aren’t exactly known for great solo work in the WWE. I think it’s a great little television match, but you’re not exactly missing out on some all time hidden gem if you forget about this in five minutes and never bother watching it. I imagine that’s the general response, and it’s totally and completely fair. There are other matches to watch, many of them could be better than this.

All the same, it’s a real interesting match. It fascinates me to have an example like this out there of the sort of (mostly) sensible and straightforward match that even these two are capable when nobody gets in the way and when they still believe that there’s some point in putting forth the effort. With both removed, there were few more eyeroll worthy and monotonous pairings in the WWE for the next few years, featuring ten (10) different televised singles matches that absolutely nobody in their right mind has a positive word to say about. It’s cool to have an example of least one time they got it right.

***