Daniel Bryan vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE Bragging Rights (10/24/2010)

(As with every WWE review after a certain point, it goes without saying that it is in spite of all the other stuff around it. Quick cuts and some truly horrible commentary, featuring the all-time bad three man booth of Cole/Lawler/Striker, all of that. I cannot tell you how I became numb to it, it was probably spending a few years in between high school and college on those binge watching forum reviews as some form of immersion therapy to the point where it takes something on a NXT Mauro level to really wake me up and make mad, but I cannot in good conscience recommend that to anyone without all of the time in the world on their hands. So, again as always, I write what I write as someone who can mostly tune these sorts of things out, and if you can’t and a match has a ceiling for you because of the presentation, I totally get it.)

This is one of those matches.

Every so often in larger promotions, younger and/or lower-on-the-card wrestlers with real obvious futures higher up the card get a chance like this with fifteen or so minutes on pay-per-view and a green light to really go for it within reason, and there’s not a lot like it, especially when it works out. Few things are more impressive in wrestling to me than pure ambition, and that’s really the thing here, people who clearly give a shit about how well something works out doing everything in their power for one specific match to work out as well as possible. It especially stands out on the rare occasions like this when such talent also happen to line up with that ambition, practically guaranteeing its success.

Daniel Bryan and Dolph Ziggler had a lot of matches together over the next four and a half years, including some that are probably technically better or tighter than this that saw them meet at or near the peaks of their powers, but both because it was the longest match they ever had together (especially considering the commercial breaks every other match of theirs had to fight against) and because of the pure ambition on display here alongside all that talent, I don’t think they ever topped this.

That has to come first, I think.

You never want to ascribe intent exactly, but you watch enough of someone and you can figure things out, and Bryan and Ziggler — especially Ziggler — seem real excited to be having this match.

For Ziggler, it feels much more obvious. I think it’s maybe just as much getting to wrestle Daniel Bryan, long talked up as the best wrestler in the world and in his brief time in the WWE, an obvious great already, just as much as it is getting a big chance like this for the first time in a bit.

It would be a lie to say Ziggler showed nothing before this, but as opposed to him breaking out against Rey Mysterio the year prior, 2010 had been a relatively calm year in terms of things that really mattered. He practically leaps off the page here in terms of the amount of energy and effort put into everything, even in other good to great matches he’s had this year, which is maybe where the Bryan part of it comes in, the implicit pressure Bryan bring to a match through his mere presence raising the game of everybody else. The difference between his work on the neck in control in one of the 400 Kofi Kingston matches this year (as opposed to the 900 they had this decade) and Bryan here is night and day. Everything is so tight, he’s constantly grinding down, and it feels much more amateur inspired rather than WWE house style. Instead of rear chinlocks, he’s grabbing onto Bryan’s arm in these neck locks in interesting ways and always shifting around slightly.

Quietly, Ziggler was one of the better WWE guys this decade at projecting desperation in less obvious ways, and between the way he moves in control and something like his repeated attempts at quick cradles to stop Bryan comebacks, it feels like the first time that he really starts to embrace that.

Bryan’s ambition seems to come less from Ziggler, not being the celebrated quantity at this point that he would be even a year or two later, and more from the simple opportunity on pay-per-view again.

Truly, it is just kind of a classic Bryan effort at this point.

He puts everything into everything, sells his ass off, and whips ass on offense. What’s out of the ordinary here is that way either because he’s still adapting himself to become a WWE Babyface, like with the big corner dropkick not yet being the safer version of it, or because it’s their first time together and the timing isn’t totally perfect, such as Bryan’s big dropkick off the top catching Ziggler a step or two away from where someone would normally be to catch it and hitting him much lower in the chest in a real gross and memorable way. At the same time, man, it’s Bryan and no matter how impersonal by comparison some of the ambition and energy comes across, it is always a delight to see the best in the world get a relatively big stage, a good opponent, and a green light like this.

Narratively, the match also has more to offer than I remembered.

As with most of the early Bryan work in the WWE, it’s a simple undersized underdog narrative at play, but because of what they choose to do in terms of offense and mechanics, there’s a little more to it than something like the pure catharsis of a Bryan/Miz the month before or one of the Bryan/Sheamus matches the next year. Ziggler’s desperation comes at being outgrappled for the first time as a main roster guy, and when he keeps going to roll up for distance to regain composure before a cut off, Bryan eventually figures it out to come back. Once they’re hucking bombs at each other, Ziggler tries his big stuff too soon, gets flustered easily, and eventually totally loses because of it. It’s not all that deep, some display of multi-layered storytelling that goes back months or years or even more than a week, but it’s done very very well, and it’s interesting to see what would become a career-long weakness for Ziggler really first start to rear its head.

Ziggler taunts a little too long after a sleeper and the Fameasser fall short, and between the repetition of his staples, his failure to hit his finish, and this, Bryan reads it as the clear cue it is. Dolph gets taken down into the LeBell Lock, and that is that.

It’s not the most complex match in the world, again, but I’m real interested and charmed by it. You see two great wrestlers in various stages of development (Bryan adapting to the environment slowly, Ziggler growing into himself period) go pretty wild in a simple setting, but with enough wrinkles in term of small narratives or minor touches to give it more than simply all the fireworks too. Overrated at the time by people who weren’t watching Smackdown or C-shows to see Ziggler having grown or who had only seen WWE Bryan up to this point, but in the years since, maybe now also underrated.

They probably always had a better one in them, but between it being the first time and between the ultra-endearing amount of effort and ambition on display, easily the best they ever did together.

***2/3

AJ Styles vs. John Cena vs. Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin, WWE Fastlane (3/11/2018)

This was for Styles’ WWE World Heavyweight Title.

Real sneakily, a pretty great match.

We’re not talking match of the year here or anything, it isn’t even the best match to happen on this day, but you have four and a half great wrestlers in a big main event fireworks show and allowed access to all (in 2018 anyways) of the benefits that go with that. It’s hard to go too wrong, and this is not a match that sets out to make waves.

In between all the cool things, laid out to get as much out of them as possible, you have your little narrative developments that help out. Kev and Sami trying to game the system but self destructing because only one guy can win, and also because Shane McMahon can’t stop interfering. AJ and Cena getting back into it a few weeks after their quietly great 2018 rematch, with Cena’s desperation to get into a big WrestleMania match again shining through, as well as the little nugget of Styles surviving something in an Attitude Adjustment through the announce table that he didn’t two weeks ago.

(There’s also whatever Ziggler and Barry Corbin are doing, I guess? Honestly don’t remember. You could edit them out of this match and lose very little and you could edit Corbin out and maybe even gain something.)

Mostly though, it is just a very simple roll out of a bunch of cool stuff. The easiest thing in the world, let talented people riff around for a while with every benefit you can offer them, and more often than not, yeah, it’s going to be a good time. Even the WWE, being the WWE, is not quite able to get in the way of this, even if it never becomes every single inch of what it could be.

Kev gets Cena with the Powerbomb, only for AJ to recover and hit the Phenomenal Forearm to keep the title, blatant striving opportunism once again being thwarted by the forces of relative good.

Genuinely fun piece of car crash bullshit.

three boy

AJ Styles vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin, WWE Smackdown Live (12/27/2016)

This was for Styles’ WWE World Heavyweight Title.

Yet another stellar AJ Styles three way.

I loved this one in the building live, but I’m not really going to go to bat for it like that. I’ll stand up on one leg way out on a limb if the mood strikes, you know that about me, but this is not really the occasion to do so. If you made a list of all of the three and four and five and six ways that AJ Styles has had in his career, I don’t know if this makes the top twenty. Or twenty five. You could crunch the numbers and tell me it’s not in the top fifty, and I wouldn’t really even deeply question it.

Still.

Great is great.

While not the absolute best thing in the world, it is an AJ Styles three way and even with a dull WWE Project Guy in Corbin and someone who is weeks to days away from largely giving up and never trying all that hard again in his life in Ziggler, and so the fact that it is great AT ALL, even on a borderline level, feels like a victory.

The thing is simply as well put together as this could possibly be, especially given the aims of the thing itself. It’s something of a fools errand, especially in retrospect, trying to cater this match to making Corbin feel like a killer and having AJ win by taking advantage of his work, but it’s something that they completely 100% nail. A dictionary definition picture of committing fully to an idea, even if it’s not a a good idea at all. Beyond that, the other highlights help it shine. A few cool three man spots, huge bumps from the two smaller guys, another peak of that stellar Styles vs. Ziggler chemistry, and just enough real hot nearfalls to make the thing interesting.

Years later, it probably doesn’t deserve the reputation it had — and seeing out of the building now, it maybe never did — but still a hell of a god damned thing to behold. Not the crown jewel in AJ Styles’ 2016 exactly, but a nice minor little ruby or emerald in an already decked out piece of jewelry.

If a match that has lost significant esteem in the time since, still a phenomenal achievement given the other participants in the match.

***

Dolph Ziggler vs. The Miz, WWE Smackdown Live (11/15/2016)

This was for Ziggler’s WWE Intercontinental Title.

In classic WWE fashion, a feel good win gets walked back within a few weeks because, through and through, this is a heel territory. Great match though, once again. These two can’t miss together in 2016.

While it’s not quite what it was either time on pay-per-view, what it is is a really fun little television encounter between two guys with a lot of chemistry and one guy in Ziggler who has a long history of great and fun little television encounters.

The trick is the thing that, at his best (2009-2014) Ziggler did really well relative to a lot of his peers and also that Miz so often failed to do before this peak (“peak”) run in 2016-2017, which is abandoning the house style. No stalling in the first half and blatantly filling space until someone somewhere gives a signal and they begin busting their asses and trying a little more in the last third of a match. There’s a fraudulence there that always has a way of undercutting it even when that back half or back third is actually pretty cool, so much of our time as viewers being killed off with intentionally dull work. That’s not to say that diverting from that necessarily makes this airtight, there’s still a real frustrating bit at the end where Maryse reaching into help Miz reverse a cradle somehow results in Dolph flatbacking and not even trying to kick out despite otherwise being a ball of energy, as if he’s given up now that the match hit its planned finish. But for the most part, this succeeds because it’s a match that they seem to give a shit about for the entirety of the match and not just the final two or three minutes.

Also, there is just a tremendous chemistry here.

Dolph and Miz just kind of riff it out for ten minutes (really more like sixteen or seventeen, but you know, WWE forgot how to not greatly diminish matches with commercials some time in the early 2010s, outside of long and/or important TV matches where they remember specifically not to do it), and there’s a bunch of new little tricks and counters. My favorites are the attempts at move selling that don’t quite pay off in either direction, which is a great little thing that you almost never see. It’s a great way to tell the story not only of two longtime rivals and frequent opponents knowing each other, but a quieter little way to show that Miz, despite a renewed vigor and success, is still ultimately a fraud. Speaking of the match at large, even if it’s not all super clean, there’s an urgency and a snap to go along with all the new ideas and story bits that does a whole lot for Miz and Ziggler in this run together. In a match like this, that could probably go either way based on comparing their 2016, 2014, and 2012 work side by side, that attention and energy proves to be the difference. When you can clearly see people put care into their work like these two do in these 2016 matches, it’s a thousand times easier to reflect that back. Give a shit and I just might too.

It’s a lot of fun, even if it doesn’t reach the highs of their pay-per-view meetings. With the fast pace, cool new ideas, and a great heaping of classical heel bullshit in the back half, it’s the sort of hypercompetent last third of 2016 SDL wrestling television that I maybe don’t love with the entirety of my heart, but that I find it very hard to not speak of with at least a little fondness.

***

The Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE No Mercy (10/9/2016)

This was a Title vs. Career match for The Miz’s WWE Intercontinental Title.

In writing about their previous piece, I’d like to think we covered just about everything about this match up and rivalry in 2016 that works. It’s one of the great WWE booking victories of the entire decade, and another late example of the machine working like it’s supposed to. One of those WWE things that you look at and go “yes, this is correct”, no matter what other fair misgivings one might have about something like Ziggler being made out to be a failure despite every effort made to undercut him for the last three years until he stopped even trying to have great matches, as if this is a reward for finally becoming a boring Company Man, the quality of The Miz’s wrestling, things of that nature. On the whole though, it’s just so well done. The act of producing relative gold where none existed before, leveraging the sort of innate feelings most people have about these two wrestlers and have always had and building something that feels real around them, it’s what this ought to be.

The story itself is perfect on virtually every level.

An annoying success who isn’t quite lucky, but benefits from every horrible system that has also constantly undercut a more talented generational peer, and insists on rubbing it in his face. Beyond a situation that just about everyone can relate to on some level, it’s some perfect pro wrestling bullshit, coward heels and underachieving people’s champion babyfaces, interference and cheating, and a classic title chase taken to the perfect sort of a climax for such a thing.

The match itself is not quite so perfect, admittedly.

There are things about this in a structural sense that don’t feel QUITE correct, in really small ways. Wasting an exposed steel buckle spot setting up a mid match nearfall off of Miz’s slingshot Liger Bomb. Having Ziggler need a rope break to survive the Skull Crushing Finale after the hairspray spot that we saw in their last pay-per-view match, which is not really a thing that ought to be done for a coward heel’s finish, on top making the nearfall less impressive for Our Hero. The finish is also a little weird as the referee ejects Maryse and the Spirit Squad for interfering, leading to Miz turning into a superkick for the finish. It’s not a horrible finish, but like with the foot on the ropes, it strikes me as understanding the utility of the spot on a fundamental level. Instead of Our Hero fighting off these odds and overcoming, solving his own problems, it’s an obstacle someone else removes for him, along with a distraction that sets Miz up for the coup de grace.

(Although there is something there, once again accidentally, that kind of sums the entire thing up, the feud and the WWE and people like Ziggler in general. Good enough to do it all along, it only happens for him again once the representative of law and order — i.e. the corporation itself — finally steps in and allows him to do so. It’s not a great finish, but it’s one of those brief little moments where the curtain slips and there’s a real clear message about what all of this is.)

Because of all the obstacles set up, the story told both over the last six months of Miz’s reign and in this series especially, it still feels incredibly good. What they have to get right, they get RIGHT. But it’s hard not to look at this, arguably something this great otherwise is even more liable to be like this than lesser matches, and see all the ways they could have gotten it absolutely perfect.

Speaking of this match in a purely mechanical sense too, of course, it is not exactly perfect. Not that you should have expected precise brilliance from these two. Predictably, that comes almost entirely from one side of this. While it’s a surprisingly tight match and a Miz performance with both a lot of energy and without too many errors, there are still those moments. Sloppy attempts at bigger offense (you can tell me this is a heat getting measure, doing Bryan’s moves poorly, and I am willing to give you that, but it doesn’t apply to everything else), and the occasional moments where he tries to work angry and vicious that never quite seem genuine.

However, he’s better than he’s ever been. Moreso than any match of his to date save perhaps the famous Bryan title switch six years prior, this is the least that The Miz has felt like someone pretending to be a professional wrestler and the most like an actual wrestler. It’s still not a perfect fit, but it’s a better one than he’s ever proven capable of before this point. The work is tight for the most part, and there’s that pep in his step that he never really loses throughout this match. Usually, being a WWE product through and through, you can see gears turning and a switch flips in the back half when it’s Time To Try, all of that. In this match, that switch is on at the start.

Dolph Ziggler is exceptional here, likewise delivering one of his more purely effort filled performances in the better part of two years. He’s such a likeable babyface at this point (a genuinely miserable heel from 2017 on, more of that classic good WWE booking outside of these accidental hot runs), and performs the role with such energy that between that and his opposition, it’s all just very easy. Beyond that, he’s asked to do some heavier leg selling in the back half and knocks it out of the park. There’s some vanity to it at times, never so much that it overpowers the story, only once again hitting that territory in which this match primarily resides, things mostly working out as well as they possibly can.

The match is not perfect, but something about just innately sort of works.

Mechanically, it is the best case scenario, as tight and coherent and great of a match as these two could ever have against each other. The story of it all just happens to be really mostly fucking great too, and ties that all together and elevates it just a whole lot higher.

When I write things about this match like that it was a classic display of age old pro wrestling ideas and the sort of storytelling that the biggest wrestling company in the world/of all time should be capable of, I don’t just mean all the payoffs they barrel over in the back half. Even at the start, when Miz almost immediately takes over because of Ziggler’s overzealousness, there’s something to it. Working smarter and definitely never harder, and wrestling his smartest match ever. When the second half hits and those payoffs start flying, they’re all great. The aforementioned skullduggery from Backlash that falls short now, all these little different fake outs and teases of things that work later on for both men, Ziggler using the Ruff Ryder in a moment of desperation, interference that doesn’t work and leads to a really exceptional second Skull Crushing Finale nearfall this time done correctly, and of course, the finish itself.

Flaws aside, it works for the reasons things like this will always work. Build up a loudmouth coward heel for six months with a title, have him constantly evade justice while talking more and more shit, make someone really chase him, and pull the trigger like they did here. It’s not to say these two didn’t do as great of a job as they could ever do given every possible limitation (it is still weighing on this, I think, that Ziggler genuinely did get beaten into the dirt from Jan. 2015 through August 2016), but it is to say that sometimes there really is a formula and that a well executed standard like this is a great reminder that wrestling is some combination of art and science, and there’s nothing wrong with that being closer to a 50/50 combination sometimes.

Ziggler gets his big win, and even though — like anything positive in the WWE, a heel territory through and through — it’s just for the moment, it is an exceptional little moment.

I don’t know if it’s the sort of a pleasure I ought to feel guilty about or not. I don’t really care. This match whips ass, it’s one of the all around highlights of 2016 even if it might not make a MOTY list cut. More importantly, perhaps the strongest statement yet of how these things, the old classics and standards can still work. While the year is riddled with these sorts of successes, perhaps none of them owes it success to these principals more than this match. A victory for the stuff in pro wrestling that’s always worked and will always work, moreso than almost anything main roster WWE’s done since.

***1/2

The Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE Backlash (9/11/2016)

This was for The Miz’s WWE Intercontinental Title.

Everyone always talks about the No Mercy match, the Title vs. Career one, and with good reason. It’s an incredible match and one of the great achievements for WWE all decade. I’m not going to say an ill word against it.

However, this one is right up there too.

It seems necessary with wrestlers like this, these WWE system story-first sorts of guys, the sorts of wrestlers who are really and obviously at their best with a story to sink their teeth into, to point out how great this simple little thing was.

At this point, whatever was working about The Miz in his 2016-2018 prime has been kicked into overdrive from the famous Talking Smack bit. He’s never going to be a superworker, he’s always a WWE house style guy, but with a fire absolutely lit under his ass, it makes a difference in a match like this. This is a match up that’s always worked to some extent, I’ve always been a big proponent of it in the past, but this 2016 stuff is as great as this could possibly be. Losing streak Ziggler against winning streak Miz, each belligerent and upset for different reasons. Ziggler finally at the end of his rope after the booking of the last two years, but primarily, it’s because of The Miz’s whole deal.

Whatever weaknesses there are mechanically — and there were and are MANY — are covered up now more than ever with the most interesting character turn of his entire life. A coward through and through, but upset at being called out for being wrestling’s version of a classic sports grifter and trying to prove it through more legitimate means before constantly giving up because it’s too hard. The Miz has always been easy to hate, but this stuff especially works even better than usual. You always hate a coward, but there’s something so much more despicable about a coward who claims he isn’t. Especially when Miz does things like briefly attacking the knee to set up a Figure Four or stealing Daniel Bryan’s offense and doing it worse, there’s a new element to it. It’s always been fun to watch The Miz lose and eat shit. He’s always been a coward and a cheater, but in 2016, he added an even more despicable element to his game when he learned to lie about it as well. Nobody likes a cheater, but the most despicable thing in the world is to be a liar on top of this, and in the last quarter of 2016, wrestling had no greater liar.

Relatively speaking, it is a sort of paint by numbers thing. A heel and a babyface, the villain cheating in a number of different ways, getting lucky when it matters most in the most infuriating ways, leaving enough on the table for a bigger rematch. There is some skill to this in terms of the construction and the layout, but mostly, it’s the sort of thing that can always work on some level.

It’s textbook stuff and I don’t mean that at all as an insult. It’s one of those perfect sort of visions of what wrestling can be. Smackdown in the last quarter or third of 2016 is the last really great WWE main roster booking run, and maybe at no point is that on better display than in this series, utilizing simple and classic wrestling storytelling to not only create this great memorable midcard title feud, but also to elevate a series that, under previous creative two years ago, did not exactly light the world on fire.

Matches like these live or die on the performances, and this is a match with two very very good performances.

Both Ziggler and The Miz are the sorts of wrestlers, again, who are a thousand times better when motivated, and this is a motivated ass performance. Ziggler’s knee selling is genuinely some of the best of his career. He’s got a lot of fire, and continuing on from the AJ Styles match that really lit a fire under him again, there’s so much more to his bumping and his selling and his comebacks than there’s been in so long. The Miz is a more curious case, as I still have a hard time looking at him and going “yes, this is great wrestling”, but he does so many smaller things right to elevate this performance above his usual. The way he grabs the edge of the ramp on the outside to stop Ziggler from lifting him off the ground to buy time, for example, but in general, also just the way he functions and carries himself throughout. A story guy through and through, the most interesting things he really has to offer are also some of the more interesting things this match has to offer, which are these moments in the back half where he knows enough to target Ziggler’s leg after he lucks out and harms it, but never quite enough to make the most of it. There’s something about both the look in his eyes and the way he moves around in control that says, to me, that he kind of knows he’s a fraud but he’s committed so much now that he has to see it through. I think that’s beautiful.

For whatever else this is lacking in other areas, it’s such a beautiful story and as a match that commits entirely to telling this section of that story, it’s a hard match not to have a lot of positive feeling towards.

Naturally, it’s through the telling of said story that this match really succeeds. Miz’s attempt at being a real wrestler falls short, and he has to once again resort to the real cheap shit. Maryse gets Ziggler from the outside with hair spray to the eyes, and Miz follows up with his move to steal it once again.

If not the absolute best or most famous match they’ll have together, still a testament to how well this combination worked together, and the roll that both the two of them and Smackdown Live as a whole was on at this point.

***1/4

AJ Styles vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE Smackdown Live (8/23/2016)

This was a #1 Contender’s Match.

As long time Readers will know, I was once upon a time a real big Dolph Ziggler fan. A near top ten Wrestler of the Year in 2014, and a mainstay around the first ten or fifteen entries in the list for most of the first half of the 2010s. It’s a real shame what happened to him after he was pretty much finally broken in early 2015 and finally realized the grand prize his efforts would get him (spoiler: the prize is nothing, so why try at all?), and while I’m not so sentimental as to claim he’s been Actually Good for the previous year and a half (save the Cena match) anyways or to claim that at any point after 2016 is over, one of the year’s biggest delights was the ever so brief late year re-emergence of Dolph Ziggler giving a shit about the quality of his work.

Mostly, that starts here.

You can put a lot of that on AJ Styles, if you want.

It’s not unfair.

AJ once again turns in a stellar television match, as he’s been capable of since the summer of 2004. It’s not the most bombastic, but has the feeling of a B+ level G1 Climax effort out of AJ. If not the big matches, it’s something new and interesting, and he turns in a real sensational effort. Gigantic bumping performance, great offense, some real neat holds and transition spots. An especially great piece of work at the very end, when he pulls Ziggler’s superkick into the ropes and blocks it out in such a way that he very naturally shoves the referee out of position just enough to kick the rope up into Dolph’s groin to then set up the Styles Clash as the finish. It’s not the newest spot in the world (although always a welcome change from the norm), but it’s rarely done as well as it is here, largely as a result of the picture perfect and ultra natural way that it’s done.

Given that this is a match that’s happened a few times since with all the same allowances only to fail to even come close though, the effort on Ziggler’s part really does to a lot for this match. It’s the difference between yet another great AJ Styles performance that’s met by a middling performance on the other end and a sneaky great match like this. Ziggler moves with so much more urgency than he has in close to two years, and the difference between this match and their others together later on is that Ziggler acts like it’s a match he can win. There’s a frantic energy to him, beyond just executing things well enough, a suddenness and desperation to his movements.

Dolph Ziggler is not a smart or careful enough wrestler to display any real subtlety, and so while it’s a small distinction, it does really really matter and benefit this version of the match a whole lot.

Go long enough in a match like this with someone as great as AJ Styles, and ever so briefly, they’re able to create a real feeling that the upset might happen. The one nearfall off of an especially great Zig Zag set up (missed Stinger Splash into the ropes, leading to a perfectly done AJ slingshot backwards into the move) really really really genuinely works, creating that feeling just in time for it to get cut off in an especially rude manner. Classic pro wrestling ass pro wrestling right here.

I don’t know if anyone else likes this one as much as I do, but it’s a great little chunk of wrestling television and a real testament to what a little effort can do for something like this. It’s a lot easier for me to believe when you put in the effort and act like you believe as well.

One of the year’s more underrated matches, at least of its kind.

***1/4

Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn vs. The Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Stardust vs. Zack Ryder vs. Sin Cara II, WWE WrestleMania 32 (4/3/2016)

This was a ladder match for Big Kev’s WWE Intercontinental Title.

I’ve always had a weakness for a decent enough version of this match. Part of that is because it’s clearly WWE’s attempt at a make-good for all the wrestlers that they know are good or great enough to be on the biggest show of the year (and on the main card, not some battle royal or pre-show thing) but that they’re too lazy and/or inept to really come up for anything else for. There’s something especially depressing about the implied “hey sorry, maybe next time” that comes with a match like this that always makes me real sympathetic towards something like this on a WrestleMania.

Also I like cool spots and these matches are a parade of some very cool spots.

I could write a little bit here about the mix of styles and characters that makes matches like these work at a high-ish level when all goes right, and that’s not something that’s absent here. You have your coward type, your fighter who is pretending to be tough but is also kind of a coward in Big Kev, a few great likeable white meat babyfaces, a total weirdo, things like that.

Honestly though, the trick here is that for the first time in one of these, two of the wildest ladder match wrestlers of the last decade are unleashed in a match like this in the WWE, and Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn do a whole bunch of really remarkable and totally outrageous stuff, while also largely being the focus of the match as a story. Some of it is new, but mostly, they’re just bigger and more fantastic and impressive versions of the stuff from something like the Ladder War like eight and a half years earlier.

All match long, our favorite duo are constantly sniping at each other. Delightfully, even in moments when one is out of the frame, they just can never really help themselves. Owens constantly goes after Sami, like he’s trying to pre-empt the sort of thing he instinctually knows is going to happen. In doing so, he turns a paranoid feeling into an absolute guarantee, as wrestling’s greatest vicious cycle continues, with neither man knowing quite how to close it or possessing the desire to close it.

Kevin Owens nearly makes it to the end, only for Zayn to reappear, and take him entirely out of the match with another one of their classic ladder spots.

This match isn’t JUST about Kev and Sami, there’s some other fun stuff. The polka dot ladder, a great Ziggler run in the middle, one big and sensational dive out of Sin Cara II. Everyone gets the chance to do something, and outside of the awful Stardust gimmick, there’s not really a truly weak link here.

The Miz is just about to sneak away with it, but gets exactly cocky enough without anyone to watch his back for Zack Ryder to take him out and get the title.

It’s a nice little result. A feel good victory, and like a lot of the match itself, a kind of make-good to the company a solid four years late after how horribly they fucked him once upon a time. Given how well things turned out for the guy after his WWE tenure eventually ended, it doesn’t feel QUITE as good as it’s no longer like this one bright little moment, but it’s still nice. More importantly, it’s a nice moment that comes largely from out of nowhere, this one little glimmer on an otherwise deeply depressing event that shows that somewhere deep down there, there’s some knowledge of how this thing is supposed to work, or at least how it can work.

Unfortunately this Kev/Sami ladder match with a feel good result doesn’t result in Super Dragon’s return, but given how much this match got right, you can only ever expect so much from this company.

The match of the night, for whatever that matters on a show like this.

***

Triple H vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE Raw (3/14/2016)

This was for nothing, but functionally and in my memory and yours, it was somehow a title match.

An easy joke to make here is that it’s a cosplay version of Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels. As someone who was once paid to watch all of their matches against each other early on in this blog’s life, before I really figured out what this was, that’s not entirely unfair.

It’s a version of Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels in which Shawn is in his physical prime as a bump freak but also in which he can make more spirited and exciting comebacks. It’s a version of that match where the guy throwing a superkick and bumping around all match also has a better handle on longer term selling with regards to the focus of Hunter’s control segment. It’s also a version where Triple H seems to know his limits a little more and also works a little more viciously when in control, not embarrassing himself so much trying to do Flair bumps while he’s way too heavy and slow. Additionally, it is only fifteen minutes instead of half an hour or forty seven minutes, and nobody embarrasses themselves by using a blood packet.

So, you know, a better match than most of them.

***

Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Alberto Del Rio, WWE Raw (10/26/2015)

This was a #1 Contender’s Match.

It’s a classic sort of WWE thing. Fill space with qualifying matches, let four guys go wild for fifteen minutes as a shortcut to get someone a title match. It’s another way out of finding an interesting way into something and how to fill a lot of TV time, and fairly predictable with a heel champion and when the other babyface in the match is a guy who’s been de-emphasized for ten months (until they suddenly now need him more lately, and he’s rushed back into prominent positions, causing severe whiplash). Still, a fun fireworks show and a great match where you don’t always get to see a great match.

The formula is fairly simple, you just change up the pairings all the time. I don’t love the WWE multi man formula in pay-per-view main events, but when it’s kept as short and snappy as this is, it’s a real hard thing to hate. The stuff that’s always worked (Ziggler/Del Rio) still works, and there’s a great new pairing in Reigns vs. Ziggler that they can spend a big chunk of the match working with. You’d never accuse a match like this of having a plot of planning to it, character wise, but they do a pretty cool thing too by keeping Owens and Reigns apart all match, before throwing them at each other for the first time at the end. The match is fresh enough and Owens still treated importantly enough by booking that it feels at the end like a match up that really matters and has a future to it. In retrospect, it’s laughable, but they earned it here.

Reigns counters the pop up into a superman punch, and wins with the Spear.

The obvious ending comes to pass, but by taking a more interesting and more scenic route there, it’s better than expected. Time killing WWE bullshit, to be sure, but when executed with this much energy by people who actually care about having a good match, it’s real easy to forget that and just get lost in the bright lights.

One of the better displays of WWE television all year.

***