So, personally, I have a real fondness for this match.
When I moved to Michigan in late 2009, aside from the night I slept in a staircase with all my stuff, I moved into a small apartment that already had a lot of furnishings, which was nice. The problem was that most of them sucked shit. The least comfortable and ugliest orange striped couch in the world, with only three legs so the fourth was propped up with a brick. A real shitty little chair that was far too low to the ground for my taste, and the smallest linoleum desk to put my laptop on, only one opening window out of like nine in the place. There was no fridge or oven or stove, just a hot plate next to the sink. The crown jewel — the thing that was much harder to get rid of (or in the case of the lack of fridge and hot plate, fix and then also give away) than everything else — was this gigantic water bed, elevated on a platform with a wooden frame and large cabinets built in behind it for pillows to lean against.
The first week or so you sleep on a water bed, it’s fun enough.
Something different at least.
After about a week though, at least in my case, that goes away, and I spent the next seven or eight months hating it. To get rid of it involved a complex process, as this was a waterbed on the third floor of the building for some reason (or maybe not THAT complex, but more than I was willing to undertake on my own at age 20), on top of finding some place to put all the wood when I disassembled the bed. I had been ready to do this for months, had stored a mattress in the attic for whenever we were ready months back, regularly bugged my uncle/landlord about getting a day and time to help out with the whole thing, and finally on Thursday, August 26th (not any of the many times we agreed it could be), he came knocking and said it was time to take the thing down.
The process took much longer than I expected, between getting the hose right, draining the thing, taking it down into the driveway when it was finally light/easy enough to carry and then brute forcing the rest of the water out while rolling it up, and then also taking apart this gigantic wooden frame and hauling that into the bed of someone’s truck.
By the time it was finally done and I had dragged that mattress down from the attic and just thrown it in the corner of the room (would get a bed frame at some point in the next six months, idk) across from the box style CRT TV resting on a milk crate, I had never been more tired in my life up to that point. It’s still probably somewhere in the top ten.
I have a super vivid memory of that, and also then of remembering that this match had been taped and got rave reviews from people in the crowd, and excitedly turning on this episode of Superstars that started maybe half an hour at most after this process was finished and just completely zoning out, not moving from sitting on the floor in front of the TV for at least another half hour.
Anyways.
Does this rule?
Yes. Of course it does.
Regal and Goldust get under ten minutes on a WWE C-Show, but it’s perfect for them because it allows them to be William Regal and Goldust, rather than cramming it into two minutes and/or doing a costume comedy match instead (nothing wrong with this, but put two of the best ever against each other, and I want to see them be two of the best ever). Regal tortures Dustin on the mat, Dustin has his perfect trademarks like the missed crossbody hope spot cutoff, the beautiful right hand uppercuts, and they play all the hits. You also get a million great little things. Regal’s early failed arm work including hand manipulation and grinding his knee along Dustin’s bicep. Dustin’s revenge by stomping on the hand of Regal in the back half. The loudness of all the shots thrown here in general, and all the great little ways they get from point A to B in a much smoother way than you see from like 90% of other wrestlers under contract here.
The match maybe doesn’t live up to the dream of “the lost WCW TV Title epic we never got between the two (better than the January ’94 Clash match)”, but relative to what they are now and what’s possible here, a real joy.
Should you, The Reader, seek this out thinking you will enjoy it on the level that I did?
I have no idea.
To some extent, it is not possible to ever entirely separate special viewing circumstances from a match, especially if the match is also good to great. One of my favorite episodes of wrestling television ever holds that place at least 50% because of the personal experience of watching it where, when, and how I did. There’s a great match here no matter what though. I imagine if you’re reading this site, you are at least moderately interested by a Regal/Goldust C-Show match, and I don’t think this will disappoint. At the same time, it’s also not exactly Regal/Christian from ECW over the previous twelve month, nor is it on the level of the better Old Man Dustin work either.
William Regal and Dustin Rhodes have a match that excels not because of its ambition or what they’re allowed to do, but because of how great they are at utilizing the time afforded to them, either through beautiful shots, great little things, or simply the stunning level of efficiency that made them so great in the first place. It’s maybe not the best version of this that I had imagined, nor as great as I remembered, but still a real great match between two old pros.
However you find it, I love it, and I also completely acknowledge that you and I can never have the complete same experience with this match.
I cannot recommend or make you uninstall a waterbed and gigantic wooden frame and carry stuff down two flights of stairs for hours before watching this match. I cannot give you the experience of first watching this match that I had. I can, however, tell you that for whatever reason, this episode and many more early Superstars episodes are up in full on Youtube, and I can definitely recommend watching this if you think it sounds like the sort of thing you’d enjoy.
I said once that there were very few full shows that I would ever even consider writing about in full, and this is one of them. Possibly the one of them.
It isn’t that it’s such an overwhelmingly great show that I couldn’t not do it all at once. It’s moreso that the matches and narratives on this show all feel so connected to each other and to something bigger that it would feel incorrect on some level not to just write about the entire show. Especially if I was already going to write about most of it anyways, just split up into more traditional match reviews. It’s too good, too important, and too interesting of a show not to cover as one complete thing.
MATCH #0: THE USOS VS. THE REAL AMERICANS VS. RYBAXEL VS. LOS MATADORES
This was an elimination match for the Usos’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It’s fine pre-show work! Most of the quality in this match comes from The Usos and Cesaro, if we’re being wholly honest, but that’s a great tag team and one of the best wrestlers in the world. The fourth most important person in this is El Torito, and he manages at least one spectacular dive here to almost steal the show in a pre-show match. Cesaro and Swagger run through the two jobber teams before getting to the match that should have simply been here all along, and it’s wonderful. Cesaro against The Usos is wonderful, and they’re a fun enough babyface team to get the most out of Jack Swagger for the limited amount of time that this match asks him to do much of anything. A miscommunication between Cesaro and Swagger gives the Usos the win.
Nothing blowaway here, but a brisk, easy, and fun match. Usually not the case with WrestleMania pre-show work, and it’s almost entirely due to a tag team that deserves more than the pre-show and a wrestler who will finally (briefly) get his due later on.
three boy
Following the match, tensions finally come to a head, and Cesaro does the thing people have been begging for en masse for the last month since his breakout February, and dissolves the team. Cesaro does so with a crowd pleasing many rotation Giant Swing, which is about all that Jack Swagger, this act, and this unbelievably wasteful team ever really deserved.
WWE WRESTLEMANIA XXX
APRIL 6TH, 2014
SUPERDOME
NEW ORLEANS, LOUSIANA
The show begins with one of the more fun pieces of WWE nostalgia bullshit ever. Usually, it’s the same three groups or same twenty people we always see, but with three of the WWE’s former Aces in the ring and three of the four or five top guys in company history, it’s just really cool. Also Hulk Hogan fucks up and says “Silverdome” instead of Superdome and that’s like a bit for a thousand years.
More than just being cool, it’s also done in a very cool way, as Stone Cold interrupts Hogan and clowns him, leading to a real fun little bit of tension and also Stone Cold getting a “WHAT” for simply listing the first ten WrestleManias off when describing Hogan’s run. The Rock then comes out to ease the tension, and all three do a spectacular job redirecting it to the current generation, likening Hogan to Cena and Austin to Daniel Bryan, before all three share some beers.
Genuinely cool!
The exact correct use of nostalgia.
Before the show actually starts, the best WWE hype video of the last decade airs –
DANIEL BRYAN VS. TRIPLE H
It’s the best build up and storyline in WWE history.
I am done coaching it in “perhaps” and “maybe” and even “of its time”. It’s better than Austin and McMahon in 1998-1999, and that’s not the fault of either Austin or McMahon. The fact that people had to force this and the rest of this show into being adds a sense of stakes and real struggle to it that Austin and McMahon simply can’t entirely match up with, because Austin was just so obviously the man. All of the little touches between SummerSlam and Elimination Chamber are basically perfect. The Shawn Michaels stuff, the title ceremony, the Wyatts/Bryan feud with the only reasoning being “the devil made me do it”, etc.
Once the match itself got made, just about every segment was a classic. If I was a maniac enough to rank the best segments of the year, I’m pretty sure all of them would come from this program. Hunter’s refusal was perfect, the veneer just barely still on. The invasion of the fans under an OCCUPY RAW banner to force the match, then following up with the fake police handcuffing beatdown, as seen in the video above. The comeback weeks later, Hunter’s shitheel video of all the other fan favorites he’s buried, even these promos on early WWE Network Raw post shows that were just pure shouting about the rights of workers against The Authority. It’s all perfect.
The presentation of this as well is stunning. Daniel Bryan makes a spirited but very normal entrance, eschewing any of the WrestleMania pomp and circumstance usually afforded to people as over as he is. In contrast, Triple H makes this all-time over the top entrance presented as like the version of himself he sees inside his own insane and diseased brain. This gold coated warrior god-king surrounded by his NXT golden girl valkyries. It’s truly truly deranged, and absolutely perfect.
The match itself is one of the best in WrestleMania and company history.
In this match, Daniel Bryan is nearly perfect.
The arm work isn’t entirely airtight, that’s really it. Otherwise, an incredible performance. The fire at the start, the wry sort of way he dominates Hunter initially, even something like changing up the knee off the apron into a tornado DDT off the apron. Read it as a bigger move for a bigger show, or changing up because Triple H is an obsessive tape watcher, it works just as well either way. Say the same for Bryan breaking out a repeated Tope Suicida spot for the first time in forever, so it feels like a huge deal. The selling itself is terrific. Only using the one arm, having problems with the Yes Lock and other holds, classic stuff. Beyond the mechanical, it’s an all time great WWE babyface performance. He’s sympathetic enough to work as a classical underdog babyface, but then fiery enough and whipping enough ass to work as a classical WWE top level babyface in the same match.
The best thing Bryan does here might not even be anything he overtly does from bell to bell. As you may have read on this blog, Bryan is the greatest wrestler of all time, and as much of that is about individual performance as it is about bringing the best out of other wrestlers. Sometimes it means him pushing someone to something or providing an example for someone like him. Other times, it’s a more nebulous thing, with the reputation that Daniel Bryan has forcing someone to bring their best to the table for fear of being to blame if a a match isn’t exceptional.
This match is the ultimate statement of that, because there has never ever been a better version of Triple H than the one we saw here, the King of Kings Road. He’s had matches as good as this, a few even better, but they’ve all had some shortcut attached to them, some gimmick to help him out. This is a boiler plate professional wrestling match, and he has never looked better in one or performed more intelligently in any single wrestling match.
Bryan comes in with his left arm and shoulder bandaged up from the months going into this of people targeting it, starting way back in December 2013. Bryan’s smart enough to keep Hunter away time and time again. There’s a great undercurrent to this that Hunter isn’t quite the technical wrestler he imagines himself to be, and it’s not until he can get into some Attitude Era bullshit with an announce table does his arm work actually pay any sort of dividend. That’s what works so well about this match for Hunter, is that Bryan seems to get the essence of the Triple H character its core and works to it. It’s not some genius god-king like Hunter thinks, but it’s this power wrestler who knows JUST enough to be dangerous and who has absolutely no moral limits. He can’t fight Bryan on the ground, not really and no matter how smart or well schooled he is, but when he can get a Divorce Court on the announce table, he can finally do something. Much like the rest of the feud, they’re also smart enough to weaponize Triple H’s past, as best expressed with his use of the repeated Crossface holds. It’s not a thing that can ever really be said, for totally fair and obvious reasons, but Triple H now using the Crossface is SUCH a god damned thing, and him doing it to Bryan is perfect. This symbol of another thing he snuffed out once upon a time, but also another example of Triple H not totally getting everything he’s doing. He’s smart enough to go to the hurt arm, he’s seen enough to know the right things to do, but he never totally gets how to make the most out of an arm based attack and has no real idea how to win with it.
Hunter goes back to his power game when it gets too hard, and it dooms him. Bryan’s tough enough to kick out of the Pedigree, but that’s all Hunter has. He gets mean and nasty, but at the other end of that is simply going for it again. Bryan escapes, outmaneuvers him, and wins clean as a fucking sheet off of the running knee.
A genuine epic level struggle, but one that manages that without going anywhere close to too far, and one that achieves that status while always being real and grounded. A masterpiece of a match that in retrospect, only Daniel Bryan could ever have gotten off of the ground, Not simply because he brought the best out of Triple H, but because only he could create a scenario wild enough for a match like this to happen, but also for a match like this to be able to be this restrained in the first place. The all time expression of the unstated and often unintentional politics of being the best wrestler of all time.
Bryan gets to the main event after all, and Triple H finally gets one of these “I did the right thing!” moments that he’s actually allowed to talk about, which you know he’s been mad about for the last seven years.
****
Following the match, Triple H and his wife attack Bryan’s arm with a chair, to try and put the main event participation of Our Hero in doubt, despite not being able to actually stop him themselves. The working class hero did the work and got there fairly, only to be kneecapped anyways yet again because The Game has been rigged from the start. So it goes.
THE SHIELD VS. KANE & THE NEW AGE OUTLAWS
It’s two minutes.
It’s two minutes and it’s PERFECT.
The Shield completely runs through three old hacks. It’s exciting and incredibly fun and wholly dominant. They get maybe a punch or two in, but thankfully, this match totally abandons the pretense. These guys are old, they can’t hang, and The Shield completely runs through them. Roman spears all three, Dean and Seth dive on them repeatedly, and the match ends with the first ever Double Triple Powerbomb. Or the Triple-Double. It’s a waste of The Shield, they could have done more on this show, but at the same time, it’s such a wonderful show of force.
At the end, JBL delivers one of his better serious calls ever with, “there goes the Attitude Era”.
It’s obviously bullshit seven years later, but in the moment, following all the fun and positive things that happened so far, it really did feel that way at the time.
THE ANDRE THE GIANT MEMORIAL BATTLE ROYAL
The best WWE battle royal in a long time, close to a decade. There were several surprisingly good ones in the mid 2000s, and they succeeded for the same reason that this did, and it’s the overwhelming pool of talent in the ring and some creative composition. The dead weight gets out of the ring fast and for the most part, it’s all fun and creative. You get down to the meat of the thing, and it’s all great wrestlers. The Big Show, Sheamus, Del Rio, Mysterio, Ziggler, Cesaro, Goldust, and the like. Cool eliminations, fast pace, really gets rid of every issue with boring and routine WWE battle royals.
Somehow Cesaro makes it to the end against obvious winner The Big Show.
Except that Cesaro just explodes on him? He hits a flurry of uppercuts on the big fella, AND THEN SLAMS HIM OVER THE TOP AND OUT HOLY SHIT WHAT?
It’s another seemingly impossible feat on this show. A battle royal win that genuinely feels like a huge deal and a starmaker. Beyond that, a battle royal with real substance and that’s full of cool stuff, instead of just being the means to an end. Easily the best of all of these Andre battle royals, as the only one they took entirely seriously, and the best WWE battle royal in close to a decade in either direction.
***
Between the big turn earlier in the show and a win as powerful and definitive at that, it seems almost impossible to deny Cesaro going forward.
Before the next contest, WWE manages to accidentally touch on something real in the media world at the time when it’s happening. Another total stunner, I know. Bray Wyatt comes out to his swamp voodoo song in New Orleans with a live performance from the band in these elaborate and creepy little costumes, at the exact time that the first season of True Detective (the good one) was a big and major deal with a real similar overall vibe. We’re in Carcosa now. It’s the peak of Bray Wyatt’s career, this incredibly cool entrance while the entire act still feels like a huge huge deal.
JOHN CENA VS. BRAY WYATT
I’m not going to waste whatever credibility I may or may not have selling you on the idea that this is great.
It isn’t.
What it is though is a whole lot of fun.
The story itself is quite silly. Bray wants Cena to kill him and reveal that he’s a monster as part of some plan to show the world that Cena can be mean and violent too and that their hero is no better than him. It’s especially weird because like…yeah, no shit? If you have a working memory, you remember all these big violent things Cena’s done to end feuds. The part of it that does work though is Bray trying to bait Cena into a disqualification so he has a huge WrestleMania win, but as always, the story told bell to bell is rarely the same as the one told on commentary when it comes to these WWE concept matches.
If you can get past that though, this is a lot of fun. It’s Cena against a Monster of the Week, but Bray’s physical and over enough for it to be a fun application of formula. Cena breaks out a lot of the bigger stuff for a WrestleMania match, even if he’s in the middle of the card for the first time in a while. Wyatt matches him with a few bigger moves and more spectacular moments than usual. It’d be ideal, if not for the end, when that bullshit comes back around. Bray gives Cena a chair for some reason, like he’s going to hit him with it, but without being nearly annoying or mean enough to warrant that. Cena hits the Family outside with it instead, and counters Sister Abby into the FU to win. I’m good with the bullshit on some Buy The Ticket shit, especially with a match this fun otherwise, but yeah, real weird and a depressing harbinger of what’s to come, both for the feud and for the entire Wyatt character, who will not be covered very often on this site from now on.
Pure WWE bullshit, but wrapped up in a surprisingly fun match bell to bell.
an extremely borderline three boy
THE UNDERTAKER VS. BROCK LESNAR
We’re not here to talk about the match. You know that.
This one’s all about the finish, and saying that, this is probably better than its reputation but also nowhere near good enough to eclipse the moment itself. The entire deal is about Undertaker being so assured in his victory after the last five years he’s survived, but no longer really doing anything to guarantee that. The entire match he feels half a speed off, and leans entirely on what worked on the past. He tries the Hell’s Gate from his back that’s won a few in the past, but it totally fails. He never makes a real honest comeback until the last few minutes, and when he needs to do more, all he can break out is fucking Old School or a Kimura. He wrestles like someone assured that something will eventually break in his favor, because for 21 shows and 24 years, it has.
Except it doesn’t.
Brock just never allows him that break, and on the third F5, it finally happens.
I’m not going to eulogize the fucking Streak like it’s a person or something real, but it is a major moment.
Around the time this happened, I read a wonderful and insane piece of fanwank, the sort of theory that redefines fanwank and sticks with you. It stated that Heyman saw Undertaker up close the previous year at Wrestlemania in the Taker/Punk match and saw what was there, that The Undertaker largely won because Punk hurt himself on the big table spot and barely defeated someone like two-thirds his size. Heyman also had a history of paying off The Shield to help his clients, and conveniently, they targeted The Undertaker and hurt him. Brock Lesnar’s next match is then against CM Punk, where he finds himself just about equal and more physically dominant, before nuking another big guy, The Big Show, earlier in 2014 in his next match. Brock fails to make any mistakes here, learning something from almost losing to Punk , and specifically, he fails to make the mistakes others have made against Undertaker in the last few years, despite Taker having been shot since the dive in 2009. It all feels like a plan finally coming to fruition.
Or it’s all bullshit that just happens to conveniently fit together. It’s sort of the beauty of fanwank. Do it with enough art and skill and hey, why not? It’s the WWE, you never expect anything out of them, but it makes sense, so…fuck it. Why not?
Really though, it’s one of the most significant things to happen in the WWE and pro wrestling all decade. A pro wrestling sort of 9/11 or JFK assassination, not in terms of actual importance (this is all nonsense fake fighting, none of it is actually important, we are all incredibly dumb for caring about it at all), but in the sense that most people I talk to seem to remember exact circumstances of their viewing experience or where they were or what they were doing when they found out. It’s not a unique thing, people tend to have those sorts of memories for the big things, but this is such a big thing that it seems almost a universal experience.
For me, I was in my sophomore year dorm room, leaning back in my shitty yet weirdly comfortable standard issue chair after digesting a Dominos pan pizza and bread bites, either drinking an Oberon or leftover Guinness from the holiday a few weeks prior. Headphones in to be nice to that fucking freak Kevin, the roommate who lived on Subway tuna melts and Pepsi Max, talking in a group chat. I was stunned. Genuinely stunned. It’s a result beyond even Oracle capabilities, I’m not sure that I closed my mouth for a whole minute. I’m not sure anyone in the chat wrote anything for a minute or two, which I’m not sure I’ve ever experiences in years of watching live pay per views in group chats.
I’ve never really experienced a feeling like it when watching wrestling otherwise, and the best thing I can say about it is that it’s the entire reason you manufacture streaks to begin with.
The only thing wrong here is that The Undertaker ever wrestled another match after this.
A stunning display of an entire company’s inability to look at a calendar.
THE VICKIE GUERRERO INVITATIONAL
I’ll give this as much respect as the company did. I think that’s fair. It wasn’t especially good, the only match on the show that’s obvious filler and that you could cut and lose absolutely nothing. That being said, after a thing like what came before it, you needed a little bit of a break. Feel sorry for all the women who got thrown to the wolves like this, but it was also easily the weakest match and weakest build on the entire show, so it’s not like it was the wrong choice of matches to sacrifice either.
RANDY ORTON VS. BATISTA VS. DANIEL BRYAN
This was for Orton’s WWE World Heavyweight Title.
Even if it’s not better than Bryan’s first match on the show, Hunter once again simply HAVING to outshine his proteges, it’s still a much better match than most people remember.
Obviously, this should have simply been Orton against Bryan. It’s been the central feud of the WWE over the last six plus months, really going back to their series in June and brief team against The Shield before that. It’s not the end of the world though. Batista is an addition that adds to the match in his own way, both as this obvious corporate avatar in contrast to Daniel Bryan, but also as the other representation of the last decade plus of WWE plans that Bryan’s upending.
The match itself is really great. A lot of complaints I’ve read and heard are about sections where Bryan is gone, like it’s WrestleMania XX or something and there’s a long stretch without him, but that genuinely is not the case here. The story is moreso that they try and do that, but never really can. It’s that all the bullshit in the world finally just can’t succeed anymore. The arm doesn’t stop him from getting there. The combined efforts of the two chosen ones aren’t enough, because he’s just better than them. Failing that, Triple H and Stephanie come to stop his win once, and they wave crooked referee Scott Armstrong back out after his absence for months after the plot in the fall of 2013. Bryan’s finally both done playing the game the right way, and also in a spot where he no longer has to, and kicks him in the head. A dive takes out The Authority, and when Hunter goes for his trusty sledgehammer, Bryan easily takes that and knocks him out with it too.
Subtlety may not or may not be for cowards, but there is a time and a place for it, and it sure isn’t now.
Big Dave and Randy manage their big spot to take Bryan out, but it simply doesn’t work. He refuses the stretcher and instead of some big sequence like I think people have turned it into in their heads, Randy simply brings him back into the ring. The big final ran is tremendous. Batista hits his marks as well as he ever had to. Randy’s tremendous. Bryan simply won’t ever go away. They tease a few different results as well as possible, making the most out of a real audience fear that they still won’t ACTUALLY do the right thing, before then actually delivering. Bryan wipes Big Dave out with the knee, and then goes into the Yes Lock. Good things can happen sometimes. Batista taps out, and it’s all finally over, and a year of faith is rewarded.
Daniel Bryan is the WWE World Heavyweight Champion.
It’s not the greatest match ever. It’s a WWE three way, and it has many of the problems of the WWE three way in terms of feeling somewhat aimless at times and three ways being less satisfying in major moments like this. However, they still packed so much into this in terms of the story elements, and with a performance as great and evocative as Bryan’s was, so much of those problems simply do not matter, outside of that I wish he simply just got Orton one on one at the end of all this. It’s a fortunate thing that this was a great match, another fortunate success for Daniel Bryan, but up to a certain point, this was entirely about the result and the match more than came through on that result.
***1/4
There are very few times in decades of watching wrestling that have felt as good as this.
Many are tainted, and the only one remotely on the same level is Money in the Bank 2011. It’s apples and oranges, to some extent. That was a short three week build, and this was something close to a year in the making. The qualities of the former allowed it to feel like a genuine revolution, a combination of a coup d’etat and a college football rivalry game. In contrast, this was the payoff to such a long and arduous struggle. They’re different situations and different feelings. The live element of MITB also can’t ever be separated. They also feel very connected in my head, one cannot exist without the other. Or rather, this cannot exist without that opening the door. All the same, this is the high point of that movement and feeling. It’s the high water mark of a wave of unrest that Punk began, and that Punk eventually sealed with his January 2014 walk out.
I reviewed this entire show at once not just because it’s such a well put together show, or because I like it so much, but because of what it felt like at the time and what it feels like now. It’s such a hopeful wrestling show, the likes of which you rarely get from the WWE, let alone from other pro wrestling. Virtually everything on this show is about the future, and closing the book on the past for good, save for Cena/Wyatt, which exists both as an outlier and as this reaffirmation of Cena as this new generation’s living legend. A new era’s been inching closer for a few years now, and this is the show where it feels like it’s finally upon us.
To put it in another way, if the WWE is a long running television show, this entire event feels like a series finale.
Perhaps not a willing one, but definitely a show with that sort of a tone to it. It’s not exactly “Made in America” or “Felina” or “Family Meeting” or the last episode of The Wire, or any of these finales that feel like they know they’re finales. But like a television show that knows it might be the end, and which seeks to wrap up every loose end just in case.
The Bryan thing obviously works to that.
When The Authority formed after SummerSlam, there was kind of a wink and nod way they did it where it felt like the WWE admitting they didn’t want smaller workhorse types to actually be on top, with the entire “B+” and “good little wrestler” lines echoing so much, and justifying a lot of past actions with guys like Punk, Bret, Benoit, Eddie, Jericho, etc. They weren’t just heels, they were this entire system that a lot of fans hated, put on screen, the implicit made explicit. It was made even more real when Punk had enough and quit, so Bryan wasn’t just fighting some good heels with an uncomfortable truth to them, but he was fighting the WWE. This entire thing that didn’t want people like him to succeed, and actively wanted them to either die, give up, or leave. He was fighting the idea of the WWE, the kind of place that’s always told people what they want instead of really listening and valued a certain body type and image in the face of everything else, and it put Bryan over the top as a People’s Champion. So when Bryan wins here, it genuinely feels like he’s broken that. Like WWE finally stopped fighting it and accepted that Daniel Bryan is their top babyface and this needs to ride out, like Bret Hart in the mid 90s. You knew he would never get the full promotional machine, but it seemed like this would at least play out until Reigns and Rollins and Ambrose and etc. were ready, and Bryan would be that guy, in the moment and euphoric feeling that came out of this show.
On top of that, Bryan did it by going through Evolution. Triple H has long been WWE’s most enduring schemer and this was the night that all his schemes over the last ten to fifteen years completely failed in front of the world. Triple H finally gave the kind of performance that seemed to match how he’d always seen himself in his own mind, and it absolutely did not matter. His hubris got the best of him and his world collapsed and his philosophy was defeated on the biggest possible stage. He couldn’t beat Bryan and his greatest creations failed to do the same, so he had nothing but the job title. Triple H’s days on camera being done seemed like they were coming to an end in a 100% believable way befitting of that character at the end of the show. He’s COO now because he married well and because he has the mind for it, but in a Vic Mackey-ish way, where it’s all he has left and he hates it. He’s been so exposed that that’s all there is, and it’s the exact ending he deserves, an embarrassing striver exposed and beaten in front of the world, and resigned to something he hates doing.
Beyond that, The Streak ended. WWE’s longest running story came to a close and got blown off, and The Undertaker finally got beaten. Based on everything else, he should be gone. Done and retired. The Attitude Era was seemingly laid to rest by the new hot group. Cesaro became a star in an amazing moment. John Cena is the outlier, but he works with a hot new heel, leaves him something, and establishes himself as the living legend to a new generation in the way The Undertaker was ten years earlier.
I’ve never seen a WWE show that wraps up this many loose ends.
So naturally, because they put on this “episode” – one of the most satisfying episodes in the entire genre’s history – the show is renewed. Like any good show, they allowed themselves stories to continue and expand on. The Shield are now firmly babyfaces, but now are bound to run afoul of top heels now, with all new match ups there. Bryan as champion and the top babyface in the company, obviously. Cesaro’s babyface turn. Bray’s continued rise as a top level heel, and Cena’s “THE FUTURE GOES THROUGH ME” speech from a month ago as this challenge to all the young guys in the company, many of whom still have yet to test that. And of course, that clear return match between our two top heroes, with a new God level monster Brock Lesnar waiting in the wings.
There’s all this stuff to continue on with in as satisfying a manner as the last twelve months have shown them capable of proceeding. Except, they didn’t. But we can get to that later, say after a certain event on a certain Raw after a certain early June pay-per-view where WWE intentionally ruins their hottest act at a time when with a certain injury to a certain top guy, and the way they’d ruined a certain battle royal winner seemingly 100% on purpose, they needed them the most.
On this night though, everything works and leaves me and you and all good wrestling fans unable to remove the smiles from our faces. The future, if it exists, is the brightest it’s looked after a WrestleMania in 16 years, if not ever.
The WWE has reached something like a peak again near the end and everything that could be blown off has been blown off. A rocky ride, but one hell of a final season.
Not a perfect match or anything, as there’s this weird thing where these two great Cesaro match ups occasionally get interrupted by having to watch Jack Swagger wrestle. There’s also this other minor issue where at the end of the match, they go with the clear worst pairing of the four with Cody Rhodes and Jack Swagger. Not a bad run, it’s short and Cody again benefits from being in the role he’s best suited for, but it’s definitely nowhere near as good as the half of this match in which two of the all-time best tag team workers ever get to square off. Good ankle selling from Cody following Swagger’s hold, but Swagger is still too stupid to function sometimes and runs into the Cross Rhodes to end the match.
Another incredibly fun and impressive Cesaro performance in possibly his third or fourth career level year of the decade so far, and one more great Goldust performance for the record books before this team collapses into parody.
It sure isn’t what it was in 2013, but even reduced to a simple television showcase for Reigns and Rollins, there’s a lot to it.
As part of The Shield’s slow turn towards the light, they’ve come into conflict with Kane, who’s targeted them for recent weakness. It’s part of the overall story of The Authority cracking as Bryan gets closer and closer, with Kane focusing on punishing the former guard dogs that he long since slipped by. It’s a waste of The Shield for WrestleMania, but it’s a fun little story all told. Kane opts to toughen them up and also kind of punish them by throwing them back in there with Cody and Dustin, who they’ve yet to beat two on two in their previous three tries.
It’s a great set up for a better match than this. Unfortunately, it’s the WWE and part of buying the ticket and taking the ride is accepting that weird and wonderful miracles have to come to an end again some time. Goldust and Cody lost the titles to the fucking New Age Outlaws in January and have been relegated back to jobber to the stars status, putting over the Wyatts and The Shield in six mans to build up their clash, and now doing the same to give those big wins back now that they’ve fallen back out of favor. It is what it is. It’s upsetting, but beyond just the WWE being the WWE and forgetting about things or easily growing bored, they’re Rhodeses in the WWE and Dusty hasn’t had real political power in twenty years. It was an inevitability that’s been corrected, a return to nature in all the worst ways. Nothing ever turns good or bad overnight exactly, and this is the first step in the natural order (i.e. a bad wrestling product) returning.
The match is wonderful though! Goldust and Reigns are once again tremendous against each other. Goldust is the best babyface tag team worker of all time once again, and Cody Rhodes has never been in a more natural role than being a babyface hot tag at this point. The fireworks show is wonderful, even at a lower grade, and the Disaster Kick catch into Rollins’ turnbuckle powerbomb now actually goes somewhere when he follows with the fake curb stomp for the win. It feels less like a win over the team that dominated them previously than it does a showcase win over a mid level tag team, but that isn’t anyone’s fault in the ring. If nothing else, the ending itself shows the sort of progression this needed to deliver in a broader sense, and the small details in the body took care of the rest.
While the match never hits the highs of their series in the last quarter of 2013, it is at least a different sort of a match, as something closer to a pure face/face battle. Roman and Seth are aggressive and booked strongly, but there’s not a lot of cheating or shit talk anymore. It’s the sort of slight turn that began after the Royal Rumble and that’s worked out wonderfully, as such a thing always does. The key to a great slow face turn like this is slowly turning into a different direction with enough grace that it feels gradual and realistic, but also enough subtlety that you can get there without always telegraphing it. It means the eventual turn can still feel huge and exciting, but also like the most natural thing in the world.
A borderline great match wrapped up inside of some great booking.
Again, it’s how this is supposed to work. Hand in glove. Everything helps everything else. The frustrating element aside, it’s another outstanding piece of wrestling television, as this comes only a few segments before one of the most memorable segments of the last ten years, with Bryan’s plant fan assisted protest. Everything’s working together suddenly. Great matches, good booking, interesting character, and incredible angles. It’s another look at the dying days of what mainstream wrestling television can be when everything functions this smoothly.
The closer we get to the WWE’s series finale, the more there seems to be behind everything. It’s always lovely to see a show that keeps a foot on the gas headed towards the finish line, even if the last few seasons weren’t up to those old standards. Nobody sane would ever accuse the WWE of having an imperial phase outside of 1998-2001, but this 2013-2014 run is the closest they’ve been in some time, and a run of television like they’ve had in February and March 2014 really really drives that home.
More incredibly high floor television formula work.
This is a match that, if nothing else, gives you a lot of Rey Mysterio vs. Luke Harper. It’s still not a singles match, there’s nothing that an change them never getting the opportunity to really riff it out for ten minutes or more, but what’s here is great. Goldust and Cody take more of a backseat, but once again, everything Dustin touches is wonderful.
It also features the smoothest ever version of the Sister Abigail, as Bray catches Mysterio running perfectly into it and snaps it off without a seam evident. It might be the best that the move’s ever looked from anyone that’s ever done it.
It’s perfect. A perfect spot and a delightful finish, as Rey once again does a masterful job in helping build up the Wyatts/Shield match as the anchor of these teams putting over each unit.
Another match that you ABSOLUTELY never need to watch, but that’s just a ton of fun while it lasts.
The Rhodes Brothers vs. The Shield is played out, but it’s still a ton of fun. Cody contributes in a few great spots, Goldust is the best babyface tag team worker of all time, and The Shield all deliver. This has less Ambrose and Rollins and more Reigns, but when so much of this is Goldust in the ring, it just means we get just a little more of the most underrated pairing of the era. Big E is a new addition to the formula and a powerful babyface on the other side is a new enough idea to keep this all fresh. Big E vs. Roman is especially great. Insane, seven plus years later that it still isn’t a pairing that’s seen a lot of time in the spotlight. He has a wonderful hot tag, he’s stiff, full of energy, really all the attributes you already know about but that the narrative says he lacked before the New Day. You then get your big run at the end. The Shield picks them off one by one, because this is not a practiced trio against them.
Adding Big E to the Rhodes Brothers vs. Shield match up resulted in a fun change, but most of you know why we’re here.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Seth Rollins defeats Big E using the curb stomp.
Even at the end of a great match like this, you can’t escape a reminder of what this is. The matches are great now, but please do not ever lose sight. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
This was for the Rhode Brothers’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
A big bonus of this is the format in which I watched it, which is not one I would have explored a week or two ago (post written on 3/29/2021) before the WWE Network went down.
I watched this through other means, with a legal avenue removed from me. As such, the format in which I saw it was not only the international cut of this episode of Smackdown, with no commercials on it, but also with the commentary only on one channel of the audio. The result is that with only one headphone in, I could both watch an uninterrupted WWE television match, but I could watch it without any WWE commentary.
It’s the dream.
As is this match!
It’s pure formula, but they do SO MUCH with the formula to keep it fresh and interesting. Goldust is the best babyface tag team worker of all time and this match lets him riff and riff and riff. It’s only twelve or thirteen minutes, but that’s all he needs.
This isn’t quite in the universe as the best Shield match, but this does have what The Shield didn’t, which is the best big man of his generation in Luke Harper. As good as Roman was, he’s not Harper. Everything he does is perfect. Nasty power moves, an uppercut that puts doubt for once into the idea of Goldust having the best punch in a given match. Over twenty years (admittedly off and on) of being a great wrestler on television at this point, and I’ve almost never wondered if Dustin was the best puncher in a given match. It’s not THE ultimate testament to Harper/Brodie, but it’s a hell of a thing.
They also do a lot to play around with the format, with the goal of making Harper and Rowan look incredible, despite them not winning the titles. Cody gets finally isolated halfway through, after the champions kept outmaneuvering them and taking advantage of Rowan’s lack of experience. Harper does it, but it’s not just him doing it through muscle. By presenting the champions as relatively dominant early on in a few different ways (both faster and smarter), Harper comes out better when he finally figures out how to shut that down. Control on Cody is exceptional. Rowan is basic, but during this 2014 run especially, he got a lot out of a little. Harper’s tremendous at plugging him in at just the right times, but Rowan has a real mastery of the character. A big farm guy who just learned to wrestle would only logically know the basics, and he does the basics in a mean and intimidating sort of way. With Harper there to do the heavy lifting, it’s fine!
The real magic here is in the way they handle the end. Specifically, in the way that a hot tag never happens. They cut Cody off every time, and we see Cody having to break out big offense to stay alive, instead of just getting space. When you always do something one way, differences like this stand out a lot. A difference in this way, with the story of this match, makes the Wyatts look especially good.
The finish itself is a work of art, as Goldust manipulates a perfect scenario against the weaker link on the other side, to immediately snatch the win from nowhere.
It’s yet another display of classic Rhodes Brothers tag team formula, paired with the best big man worker of a generation, and a super unique finish. I can’t recomend this enough.
Daniel Bryan vs. The Shield is all but over now, save a match or a few in early 2014. The time now is for Bryan to try and do the same for The Wyatt Family that he did for The Shield, and specifically, to legitimize Bray Wyatt to get him ready for John Cena at WrestleMania.
It sucks, it’s a waste of Bryan, but again…given that it all turns out fine in the end, it’s hard to be all that mad. It is what it is.
This is more perfect TV formula tag work. Bryan, Goldust, and Cody is maybe the best babyface trio to ever regularly work on WWE television. Their only competition comes from a Benoit/Jericho/Edge pairing that we saw a lot in 2004, likewise suffering from some weak links, but Bryan and Goldust together is once again undeniable. The greatest babyface tag team wrestler of all time and then the greatest wrestler of all time, full stop. Both men get to work long FIP sections in this match, and it’s great. You run into the issue then of Cody working the final hot tag run, but he’s good enough at it at this point that it’s not the end of the world. The crowd never comes alive enough for Cody at this point in the way they do for either all-timer on his team, but by this point, he has a good routine. The WWE’s invested in many worse in-ring babyfaces than Cody Rhodes comes off as in this 2013-2014 tag team run, you know?
On the other side…well, god damn, Luke Harper was great. It’s the sort of clarity you get only after someone is gone, but he’s the best big man of an entire generation. He works more against Goldust here than against Bryan (as Bryan is tasked with making Rowan less bad in the same way that he did for Reigns eight months earlier), but it’s hard to complain when that’s such a great pairing. The build for Bryan/Wyatt is also exceptional here, with Bray trying to avoid him until Bryan forces the issue and begins beating the shit out of him, only for Harper and Rowan to save his ass.
In the end, the Wyatts catch Cody with a blind tag off the numbers game, and Wyatt hits the Sister Abby for the win.
Nothing that’s going to blow anyone away, but yet another match in which Bryan looks like the very best wrestler alive, and in which Goldust doesn’t look all that far off. Instructive for the sorts of lists I’m going to be obsessing over for the next week.
Usually, I would break these up, but this is one of the most perfect hours of WWE television they’ve put together in nearly sixty years of existence and it flows together so perfectly that it all belongs in one post together.
It’s a nice Friday after Thanksgiving on Smackdown. It doesn’t matter. You’re at home, after fighting your way through a Best Buy to get a deal on a PS3, perhaps buying what you don’t know is the last ever edition of NCAA Football that will ever be released, along with GTA5. Perhaps you’ve come back to your dorm room early, and are lounging at your desk and watching this on the television for which you rigged up a cable hook up across the ceiling to the cable hook up on your roommate’s side of the room. He’s not back yet from whatever weird stuff he and his pervert family get up to. You crank it up, crack a beer. Make a leftover sandwich.
It’s a breezy show, even if it doesn’t matter. Some stuff’s happened for sure. Titus O’Neil has thrown up on JBL. Classic pro wrestling. For some reason, the scheduled main event opens the second hour. Some bullshit might happen. Ah well.
We begin with a simple tag, the third iteration of one of the great tag team rivalries of the year.
CODY RHODES/GOLDUST VS. THE SHIELD (ROMAN REIGNS & SETH ROLLINS)
This was for the Rhodes Brothers’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It doesn’t quite live up to the title change from October 14th, but it’s just about as good as the more famous Battleground match. Now, OBVIOUSLY it doesn’t have the big emotional payoff. But for the same sort of pure formula match, this gets more time to breathe and develop itself, and I think they do a better job with it overall. The big title change has the fireworks show at the end with all these great payoffs, but in terms of just a pure execution and refinement of the formula, this is it. With close to twenty minutes to work with, they’re allowed to stretch out a little more and create a real lived in sort of a match on their third two on two shot at it. There’s some restraint for reasons tht become apparent at the end, but it doesn’t really hurt this much at all. The environment helps them out too, because if Smackdown is a house show (and it is), it means they’re a little freer here to riff it out and see what happens.
What happens mainly is that Goldust, once again, is on fire.
Goldust and Roman once again are dynamite together. Roman gets a little cut under his eye, so you know this one’s not bullshit. The usual great hot tag work after yet another quality piece of Shield control on Cody, with an all-time little hoot and holler and applaud in your private domicile moment when he actually manages to hit the big Crossbody off the ropes. The transition comes in another way, and it’s so good. To have him succeed where he usually fails makes it seem like the end is coming up, only to get cut off once again, leading into an even better piece of Shield control. The comeback there is also a delight. The more I watch of this run, the more I start to lose grip on the “maybe” part of the “Goldust is maybe best tag worker of all time” statement I’m always throwing out here. If nothing else, I’m pretty sure he’s the best pure babyface tag team worker that there’s ever been.
Cody’s hot tag isn’t all that bad either!
If not for his partner being Dustin Rhodes, I’d be over the moon about it. Even still, it’s another entry here for the best and most consistent period of Cody’s entire career. He and Rollins have surprisingly great chemistry, and manage to do that classic Shield thing where there’s always just some slight difference. Counters to things from the previous match they had on Raw four days earlier, counters to stuff from earlier in this rivalry. Cody manages a new way into the Cross Rhodes after breaking out a super rare La Escalera to take Roman out, and they’ve finally got The Shield dead to rights.
Until they don’t, because Ambrose hits the ring for the save.
A really great match, even before any of the nonsense, and there’s still a solid forty minutes of show time left!
***1/4
The Shield sticks with the gang attack, only for CM Punk to then come out to make things fair. This all winds up leading to one of the five or six different authority figures Vickie Guerrero making and impromptu six man, because Teddy Long’s DNA is woven into the material of Smackdown still all these years later.
CM PUNK/CODY RHODES/GOLDUST VS. THE SHIELD
It’s the one of the three that isn’t quite great.
This is the bridge match.
Not as airtight and fleshed out as the Tag Title match and not as out of control, frenetic, and wild as the one to follow. But a way to get from Point A to Point B in a neat and tidy fashion. Keep the engine running.
Still, a lot of fun to be had, because there’s very few people who I’d trust as much to keep the engine running as these guys (and also Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes). As the fresh guys, this leans on CM Punk and Dean Ambrose a little more than the other four. The reason it isn’t quite great isn’t because of Punk though, because he’s pretty good here. We’re never getting 1000% effort bump freak CM Punk ever again, but he does a lot of little things that brought a lot to this. He was clearly directing traffic for the team, in a way that helped the match, and explained why they wound up controlling Rollins for longer than The Shield controlled any of them in this segment. Again, Smackdown is a house show and someone as experienced and jaded as Punk is at this point knows that, but he still brings a certain presence and lightness to everything that helps a lot, like the other half of what a house show can be. There’s a certain joy in watching people have fun while they’re doing what they’re doing.
Ambrose doesn’t quite have that going for him, but he’s the bump freak in this match up, and takes a bunch of great stuff. He gets another great little run against Cody in this, before Punk gets back in and some bullshit happens.
There’s a Wyatt flash, and the Wyatt Family shows up to attack Our Heroes in response to Cody & Goldust beating them the previous week to keep the titles and to CM Punk and Daniel Bryan’s victory over them at the Survivor Series.
Rey Mysterio and The Usos come to save and to make it even once again, and we have our second impromptu continuation, now in a twelve man tag team main event.
CM PUNK/REY MYSTERIO/CODY RHODES/GOLDUST/THE USOS VS. THE SHIELD/THE WYATT FAMILY
This one’s short too, but real breezy, and it’s when you get the payoffs and the big fireworks show. Like the last match leaned on the newer entrants into this big wonderful mess, this one leans on the Wyatts, Rey, and The Usos a lot. And for a moment, do you know what that means?
LUKE HARPER VS. REY MYSTERIO.
Not for nearly long enough, but given that it happens a few more times in more cut down tag matches in early 2014, it’s hard to be too bummed about it. Granted, we never got that slam dunk obvious singles match between the best pure little man underdog babyface in wrestling history and the best big man of a generation, but we get a taste here, and it is exceptional. That’s not all though, because Rey does his best to try and match Goldust’s in-peril work earlier in the hour by getting career work to this point out of Erick Rowan too! He’s great against Ambrose and Bray when called for too, just a wonderful performance. There’s also yet another nice little Shield/Wyatts touch, as they get along better now after having previously tagged up, but still have these little moments of discontent.
Punker gets the hot tag to send it home. Not the best choice, but being the biggest star in the ring and probably like the #3 or 4 guy in the company at this point, hey, it is what it is. It’s not offensive. He’s helped out by the others for your big fireworks show. The discord between the two bad guy factions rears its head at the end in a cute little way. The Wyatts all clearly hold back at the end and let The Shield eat all the big bullets like the Usos dive, most of Punk’s hot tag, etc., before trying to vulture the match. It doesn’t work though, because Rey bails Punk out and keeps it even. Rowan eats the 619 to feed him into the Go To Sleep, and we’re all sent home full and happy to end the show.
It’s a shorter final match, but it’s fun enough and good enough to coast on the goodwill from the preceding fifty minutes and stick the landing.
three boy
Things like this don’t ever really happen and it’s why I still remember it so fondly seven years and change later.
One of the most exceedingly and enduringly fun episodes of WWE television in some time, as a result of one of the more memorable little ideas in recent memory. Not each of the three matches is great, the first is the best of them, but it’s something so unique and so fun and so just entirely unimpeded by any sort of WWE Bullshit at all. It’s pure pro wrestling, the sort of stuff designed to put a smile on your face. It’s a very Heyman-ish booking idea, flowing all these matches into each other, but doing it doing all the same guys and the match just gradually building up and up is so cool and different. It stands out for WWE but it stands out for just regular wrestling too. It’s a genuinely novel idea, executed with the sort of energy and joy needed to stick the landing as perfectly as they did.
“Smackdown is a house show” is usually a license for people to not care about matches being good or for writers to not put anything into it, but for once, it meant that the WWE got to loosen the reigns and let people get loose and relaxed and a little goofy. This, for once, manages to capture the fun of a good house show on live television, a thing that very few other matches ever have been able to do. One of the all time WWE 2013-2014 examples of how good and enjoyable this dumb shit can be when you just let people breathe and work some stuff out and get out of the way. It’s genuinely one of my favorite things in wrestling history, one of my favorite non-major viewing experiences in wrestling history, and if you wind up checking this out, I’m really happy that you do and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did at the time and again here.
An all-time greater than the sum of its parts total package, creating one of the great episodes of wrestling television this decade.
A delightful return to form for The Shield after the night before, re-embracing a sense of equity after a bizarre focus on one member at the expense of the other two and one man at the expense of the other nine in that match.
It’s pure television formula, and it’s a blast.
The big factor here, once again, is introducing a new element. Like Bryan vs. The Shield, Rhodes Brothers vs. The Shield is at that point where it’s no longer all that exciting, despite still being a great match up. Rey Mysterio though, aside from the night before, hasn’t encountered The Shield at all in an actual match yet, so everything that happens when he’s in the ring is fresh and new and exciting. He’s come back with the sort of spark he was missing over the last year or two due to injuries, and looks every bit as good as the Mysterio who was one of the best in the world in his last extended run from 2008-2011. The Roman stuff is a little bit awkward, but he’s magic against Seth and Dean.
Beyond that, the usual stuff all works. Roman Reigns vs. Goldust is up there as one of the best pairings in the entire company at this point, and probably deserves more credit than it gets for helping Roman improve, since we tend to give so much of it to Daniel Bryan. Cody and Rey both have great hot tags after the usual Dustin in peril section, and Cody gets the last one. In another wonderful little bit of show-to-show storytelling, the match ends up with Cody and Ambrose, following up on Cody’s super quick elimination of Ambrose the night before.
Roman gets to look Strong again, mowing down both Goldust and Rey with Spears in quick succession, but it’s done SO much better here. Having him go on a quick run there near the end is a lot better than spreading it out, since they’re both straightforward spots. It also isn’t so unbearable, because Cody cuts him off, before then having to deal with the other two by himself. Roman looks a little stronger than he’s been looking, but it’s part of this system, and it’s not him who wins. You can’t unring the bell they rang at Survivor Series, but had that not happened, this would have been the exact right thing to do to slowly slide up that power level in a believable way. Slow and steady improvement feels natural. The sudden jump didn’t, and won’t when they try it again. Cody manages to stop him, but when he pulls of his typical counter on Rollins into the Cross Rhodes, Ambrose is now waiting and drags him off into the headlock driver for the win.
Another classic sort of Shield win, a crushing and demoralizing grab from out of nowhere, right when it looks like they’re done for, and playing off a few different things from recent history.
It’s the WWE, you should never expect things like this, but it’s one more instance of being able to see them very clearly and deliberately giving a damn about things like this. It doesn’t make the match great, but it is the sort of little touch that opens the heart up just a little more and that makes the difference between good formula and great formula.
Once again, it’s the WWE just getting out of the way and letting good things happen.
The miracle continues, or in the case of Shield stuff, resumes after one bad night on pay-per-view.
HANDWERK 