Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Randy Orton vs. Kofi Kingston vs. Jeff Hardy, WWE Elimination Chamber (2/17/2019)

This was an Elimination Chamber match for Bryan’s WWE World Heavyweight Title.

Before anything else, it’s such an impressive thing that this match achieves.

For those maybe less initiated, the 2014 Elimination Chamber was not only this blog’s pick for the best match of that year, but I think it’s the best match of its kind in the twenty plus year history of Elimination Chamber matches. The fact that a match like this, that’s at least a strong contender for second place on that best-Chamber-of-the-decade list, gets there by centering itself half around the same focal point shared by that match five years earlier cast in the complete opposite role, is the sort of thing that really really stands out.

That guy, of course, is Daniel Bryan.

Bryan starts the match against Samoa Joe and lasts all the way through until the end. He’s not as great here as he was then, he’s not as great as a WWE heel as he was as a WWE babyface, nor does he have the supporting cast he did then (Orton is also here, but worse now than then, and Cena/Christian/Cesaro/Sheamus beats out the 2019 combo of AJ/Joe/Kofi/Jeff Hardy), but things work out. The perfect chemistry with Joe remains even with them both cast as villains, he and AJ again rock together especially in more action-based section like they have here, and especially in the final run against Kofi Kingston, the heel act pulls itself together as well as it ever could through a combination of specifically off-putting movements in between all of the usually mean and precise offense. I don’t know if I’d call it one of the absolute best performances in his career, but (a) it would be in a lot of other careers, & (b) it’s still a remarkable thing, acting as the fulcrum upon which one of the best matches of the year turns.

It is also really really far from being some one man show too, to be fair.

Starting the match alongside the champion, Samoa Joe also has the chance to have one of the better opening stretches in the history of these matches while hunting down an evasive Bryan, along with great run against Styles and Kingston before he’s eliminated some fifteen minutes in. The same goes for AJ Styles, not in the central role he was in another great Chamber match, but contributing in a lot of the same way, through the strength of offense and being the guy here who best explores what the space can let him do on offense.

Hardy, Kingston, and Orton are not quite as instrumental to the match’s success on a mechanical level as the others, but the match’s other strength — beyond letting three of the best ever fairly loose in a big main event — is how well it sets them, and the match at large, up to succeed in ways it very easily could have avoided. All three wind up contributing a lot to the match because of how they’re used, and while Kingston is not the wrestler that Bryan or Joe is, it’s his ultra-likeable personality work along with what the match does with that that really brings it all home.

For Kofi Kingston, all he really has to do is be himself.

The booking of this match and his gauntlet success on television the previous week (given the Bryan-but-manufactured Gauntlet Match Iron Man rub) means a wave of something has started, this few month period where Kingston became an avatar for a million different things. I never got it on a talent level, the pure mechanics of him, but Kofi’s greatest strength is how likeable he is, and at all moments here, he retains that. His babyface comebacks are terrific, he hits most of his stuff clean, and in the most complimentary way possible, it’s the first time ever as a singles wrestler that Kofi manages to really rise up and meet the moment. With a guy like Bryan on the other end and this match getting as much of the core concept right as he does, it sometimes feels like all Kingston has to do is find the X’s on the stage in white tape and get there at the right times, but Kofi not only finds and steps on those bad boys, but he leaps down on them with real force and emphasis, becoming the second most important guy here in terms of why this match succeeds to the extent it does.

As for Randy Orton (still an all-timer, but starting to get a little Past It at this point) and Jeff Hardy, it means shorter runs here, basically giving the match all they have to contribute. In Hardy’s case, it means playing the hits and putting what’s left out there for a few cool spots, like the Poetry in Motion to the outside floor part of the Chamber, or his Swanton off the pod to AJ Styles’ back as he lies across the top rope, leading to his own elimination. For Orton, it’s less physical — although he also plays the hits and possesses the same snap as ever — and more so a lot of his utility here as a narrative piece. A little bit setting up a Mania match with AJ by sneaking up on him to eliminate him, a little bit showing the old history with Bryan as a way to kind of communicate that Bryan’s now become a better version of what he fought against, but mostly, his history with Kofi Kingston, existing not only as a former foe to topple, but a symbol of the idea that Kingston is finally getting past things he spent the last decade unable to, leading to the final showdown with Bryan.

For as much as the performances help a match like this, it’s the construction and, shockingly for WWE at this point, the bigger picture narrative work that ties this entire thing together.

Not only the ideas already talked about, but how well the match sets up the final confrontation. Bryan as the predator who takes advantage all match — of Jeff Hardy for the elimination earlier, but constantly in smaller ways to get on offense — and tries to flee up the cage wall or on top of pods, setting up the final ten minutes when Kofi gets him one on one. Kofi Kingston enters the match third, and every part of the match from then on follows this pattern of keeping Bryan away from him, while one or the other either removes someone from the path (Kofi taking out Orton), or shows how devious one of the guys Kofi has to get through is (Orton taking out AJ to set up Kofi getting him next, Bryan taking advantage of Jeff Hardy’s big risk), making what he does that much more impressive.

It’s all that foundational work put in that makes the last third of the match, the Bryan vs. Kofi part, hit in the way it does.

Something like Bryan’s initial try at vulturing the match failing might not feel like a huge success had the match not used the prior eliminations to show how successful that strategy was against far more accomplished wrestlers than Kofi. Likewise, when Bryan kicks out of the same kind of sequence, a quick try at something cheap countered into the Trouble in Paradise, that eliminated Orton, it also transforms him into an even larger mountain for Kingston to climb, near the end of a match that finally showed that he might actually be able to make it to the top. The match also weaponizes some of the history of the match, setting up the big pod spot where Kofi is thrown HARD into the plexiglass in a way that’s stopped a few underdog wins before, only to then kick out of the follow up running knee back in the ring. These are small and basic things that maybe ought not to seem so novel or whose impact and importance ought to seem more obvious, but given how rarely they’re put to this great/effective of use, they have a way of standing out. Especially when they work out this well.

Kofi gets Bryan there at the end, but taking one risk too many, misses a splash off of the top of one of the chamber pods, allowing Bryan the room for a second running knee for the win. It feels a little strange, all the echo of Bryan’s own rise to the top, only for Kofi to lose the match clean in a way Bryan didn’t, but I think relative to the story — Kofi getting this all suddenly and having to fight back to the one on one title match at WrestleMania —  it works out really well.

I don’t love it in the same way or with the same intensity that I loved the version of this from five years earlier, but I love it for all the same reasons. It’s one of the rare times when a company this frustrating gets it entirely right, and you get a rare glimpse at what it looks like when this gigantic and expensive machine works the way it’s supposed to. All-timers given the platform to succeed, combined with putting those with less spectacular skillsets in position to make the most of what they can do, allowing the combination of careful handiwork and pure talent to combine to make something that not only whips ass, but succeeds in an even larger sense, perfectly creating demand for a title match on the biggest show of the year in a month and a half that didn’t exist at all a week earlier.

For just about every reason possible, one of the more impressive things achieved in wrestling all year.

***1/3

The Bar vs. The New Day (Big E/Kofi Kingston), WWE Smackdown Live (8/7/2018)

This was the finals of a tag team #1 Contender’s tournament.

It’s a long long awaited rematch to one of the best WWE tag team matches of the decade, and if not quite on that level, it is yet another great match between The Bar and a New Day team.

While this match does not quite have the narrative advantage over a match that blew off a sixteen month long title reign, nor an angle that had lasted even longer than that, it is still really great, and perhaps given the advantages it did not have compared to their more famous match, it’s a little more impressive that this wound up still being pretty great after all.

The match itself is classic tag formula, but the charm of it lies in that it is on WWE television and gets fifteen to twenty minutes to genuinely develop, resulting in a better match than The New Day has gotten to have since the end of the Usos feud ten months prior, and a better match than The Bar (a depressingly underachieving team given the talent between them) has gotten to have since the last time they fought The New Day.

You can put a lot of that down to also being a television main event, giving these guys the green light to go a little bigger than they have in a while, that’s not unfair. It is a match with some less than common offense from everyone involved, and the sorts of twists, turns, and payoffs you might not get otherwise from a WWE television tag (that doesn’t involve a long term effort to get over one or more golden boys, so you know, don’t count 2013-14 Shield stuff). Kofi in particular gets to go a lot wild here, not only with a rare dive, but some bigger bumps and offense on the outside, but given how restrained their work had been for the past nearly two years together, Cesaro and Sheamus finally taking the machine out of neutral and putting a heavy foot on the gas is super noticeable as well.

Really though, so much of it just comes down to them now having the time to not only have a match that’s paced a lot better than usual on free television, but also one where they can really get deep in the weeds and establish themes and patterns, so that it means so much more later in the match when those themes and patterns get paid off in little moments, creating small individual victories within the larger one.

Cesaro and Sheamus spent ninety five percent of the match stuffing The New Day. They do so in a bunch of different ways, so it never gets boring, but the only moments when they are not in control are either quickly snuffed out, or lead directly to their defeat at the end. It’s a multiple control segment match, but one where both feel different because of the different tact required to control Big E as opposed to Kingston. They repeatedly send Kofi away and out, or catch him out of the air, and whenever New Day tries something even a little complex like the Midnight Hour finish, Cesaro and Sheamus swarm and cut it off. This match has a real gift for pulling things seemingly out of thin air as counters, resulting in a few nearfalls far more dramatic than you would think.

When it comes time to make some hay out of all of these ideas, to pay them off for those miniature victories, it’s maybe the best thing this match does. Kofi constantly being cut off when Big E needs help by being dodged and thrown into things leads to Kofi finally reversing by leaping onto the railing and hitting Sheamus with a Tornado DDT on the floor to take him out. Kofi’s able to finally be there when he has to, and in a match all about (a) striking in quick moments so as to signal that they still have The New Day’s number like in 2015 & (b) separating the members of the opposing team, it just feels right that The New Day ultimately succeeds when they’re finally able to separate the Cesaro and Sheamus war machine, before then striking in the quickest possible fashion for one singular moment.

Big E powers out of the Crossface and up with Cesaro on his shoulder, and as soon as the shot is clear, Kofi flies in with the Midnight Hour for the win.

These teams, given the time and freedom, have an outstanding match yet again. The proof of the success of this match, and the things it does and stands for, comes in the fact that despite The Bar feeling like a super middle of the road act for most of the last year and the obvious nature of the New Day’s victory (WWE is not running a heel/heel match with no build, sorry, we all know this), within twenty minutes or less,

Among the year’s more underrated matches, given how much praise even passable WWE television matches tend to receive.

***1/5

The Usos vs. The New Day (Big E & Kofi Kingston), WWE Smackdown Live (9/12/2017)

This was a Sin City Street Fight for the Usos’ WWE Smackdown Tag Team Titles.

At only ten minutes and cut down by a commercial break, as is often the case for twenty first century television wrestling, this is not quite on the level of their pay-per-view matches. One could make an argument for the first match in June, which opted for a non-finish and was focused on establishing a foundation and baseline and that didn’t have a real and definite finish, but it is clearly and obviously not on the level of either the July or August matches.

Still, there is just something here.

First of all, it is again just super interesting to me on something akin to a real sports level, how they approach these New Day line ups. After losing with the Big E/Woods line up at SummerSlam, you can read the reversion as one of two things here. You can read it as that this Kofi/Big E team is what beat the Usos a lot in 2015 and 2016, and what has given them the most success historically as most of the near 18 month reign in 2015-2016 was through playing this line up. You can also go in a little deeper and note that this is the line up that the Usos ran away from in June, and maybe that Kofi’s veteran leadership helped Woods win in July without Big E, and without the player-coach on the floor at SummerSlam, they lost.

All of these concepts are more thought out and sensible than I would ever give the WWE full credit for. If such a thing was ever intended, you simply have to believe it came from the talent itself, but it is there, and it makes the matches more interesting.

What we have here, once the bell rings, is still a pretty great match.

Boiled down by the necessities of WWE TV and the formula it necessitates, is the best stuff. Big E’s hot tag, Kofi taking huge bumps, big chair and table and kendo stick spots, all of that. All of this works as well as it always has. Kofi doesn’t have the spirit or authenticity of an Xavier Woods, but he’ll take some real spectacular bumps and when needed, he’s there on offense. I don’t like him as much as the other two, but he is not a problem or anything.

On a longer term storytelling basis, it’s another fun development.

The Usos are not incredible, I never think they are the best tag team in the world, but they’re real solid at beating people up for like half a match. Great uppercut palms, they swing weapons with a lot of force and intensity, all of that. Big E is an unbelievable hot tag and/or comeback guy, and Kofi does exactly what a match requires and no more or less. While the match is not one that goes super far to earn its stipulation, between some real mean chair and kendo stick shots and a kind of psuedo Texas Tornado kind of composition, it at least goes farther than a lot of other WWE TV gimmick matches, and feels like it earns what it is, rather than solely being a match like this so as to enable some finish, or The Booking. It speaks to an overall strength of this pairing and this program, working hard enough and benefitting just enough from planning, so as to avoid pitfalls that just about everyone sees before them.

Kofi shoves one Uso off the top through a table outside, and immediately after, he and Big E once again hit the Midnight Hour to beat The Usos. The original line up really did maybe work the best, beating The Usos yet again, both through the strength of their connection, and maybe the inability of the Usos to entirely focus on both the strengths and weaknesses of this specific combination.

The forgotten match of the handful in 2017, but one still well worth your time.

***

 

 

The Usos vs. The New Day (Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods), WWE Battleground (7/23/2017)

This was for the Usos’s WWE Smackdown Tag Team Titles.

A month prior, these teams — albeit with the Big E & Kofi Kingston team, aka New Day Classic — first began to show what they had together, now finally given the full support of WWE booking and the room in which to work.

One month later, they top it, despite this pairing being a worse one.

There are reasons one might reasonably expect one WWE version of a thing to be better than another. Sometimes, it is as simple as wrestlers trying a little harder when a match has a real finish, feeling that they can give it a full assed effort when the booking of a match allows them to do one complete thing, rather than using a match simply to build up another one. Sometimes, it comes down to time, greater matches often happen when the talent involved have more time with which to build something. Sometimes, it is pure energy. There are a million things. Professional wrestling, even in the WWE, is a whole lot like cooking, more art than any sort of truly specific science, and sometimes, things just turn out a certain way.

Here, we have a shorter match than the month before, counterbalanced by a real finish, and further counterbalanced by losing the best wrestler of the five in the program (Big E), and yet, it is clearly better than their prior effort.

Sometimes, the thing just works.

A part of that comes down to execution and pure spirit. Everyone puts a ton into this. Kofi Kingston takes these beautiful big bumps, despite being the least important guy in terms of the match’s story. The Usos are as precise as possible, here at the peaks of their powers. Xavier Woods, the focal point of the match, puts so much into everything he does. It’s easy to think about this as a “well, of course” in retrospect given what Woods has gone on to do and that the Woods/Big E New Day Power line up has largely been accepted (at least among a lot of the people I talk to) as the best of the three New day line ups, but in 2015, it is very much not something so obvious that Woods would do so well here, and he turns in maybe the best singular performance of his entire career to date here. Not only the great execution, but these big emotional dramatics, huge hot tags, and the feeling to his offense that every single thing mattered so much to him.

Part of it also comes down to the fact that, rather than the sampler that their match in June offered, this is a match that opts to really go somewhere.

Kofi Kingston is taken out off of his hot tag almost immediately, and the Usos cut the New Day back to their established weakest link in Woods. It’s an outstanding turn of events, not only in that it’s this new thing, but in that commentary does a genuinely tremendous job of setting up the Kofi/Woods team as a speedier line up to try and take the Usos by surprise. The way this stretch of the match unfolds is also exceptionally well done, as they don’t jump right into “Woods has been the weak link for two years, can he win?”, but instead tease out first that he has to try and hang on until Kofi recovers, before shifting more and more into that. It’s a small difference, but it’s through this small difference that they’re able to mine even more drama out of it, allowing Woods the transition from “can he hang on?” to “can he win?”, which is the underdog stuff of dreams, paying off when Woods reels off the rope walk flying elbow drop to win the New Day the titles.

They still don’t totally get into the biggest or wildest New Day vs. Usos match that there is, I don’t think. New Day Power is being saved for a reason. However, a real step forward, and an interesting match in a way that a lot of people, myself included, didn’t quite expect.

A phenomenal outing, and for the first time, one begins to imagine just what these teams might truly be capable of together.

***+

The Usos vs. The New Day Classic (Big E & Kofi Kingston), WWE Money in the Bank (6/18/2017)

This was for the Usos’ WWE Smackdown Tag Team Titles.

Over the next four months, these teams will go on to have a super prolific and creative rivalry that not only never fails to produce a great match given the stage for such a thing, but that in a lesser year for rivalries, would be the best rivalry of the year. That’s not even an insult to their work together in 2017, it’s just that this is a year with a ton of repeat pairings all over the world, even on the WWE main roster, and such a specific category is busier in 2017 than in maybe any other year this decade.

This is very much the first match in a series.

(I know it’s not the FIRST one. Do not ever at me about their late 2015 and early 2016 stuff. Given the change in the Usos since then, that is effectively non-canon, even if this match directly references the finish to one of the matches in that series. I know more than you, do not ever try and correct me.)

I don’t just mean that in the sort of New Japan sense where it’s held back and you kind of know they’re waiting on The Big One to totally unload. There’s some of that here, for sure, but it’s still a match with a lot of real high points that are hit and that avoids entirely feeling that way. Mostly, I mean that in the sense that this is a match about establishing a baseline and this is a match about ensuring future matches. Not a match that leaves room for something else, but with a bullshit finish (in a good way) that necessitates another match or, as it turns out, something like another forty six in the next half decade.

What works about this pairing in the future is already here though.

Firstly and maybe most obviously, this is an enormously creative pairing. Neither team is exactly super rote and boring at this point, but together, it is like they’ve found the opponents that they have been looking for all this time, or at least, they’ve finally found the opponents against which WWE will authorize a match like this on pay-per-view for long enough to really make an impression. There are so many cool little counters and ideas here, to the point that it feels like a match up that both teams are bursting at the seams with material for, which is such an exciting feeling. There are just matches and match ups sometimes that you, as a viewer, can feel the wrestlers’ excitement for in the match itself, and it is such a cool feeling.

Performance wise, I think it’s also the best that The Usos have ever looked up to this point. Their offense is sharp and all of that, but it is so much more about the little things. Great little cut offs in unusual ways, such as blocking a sunset flip through the other Uso dragging Kofi out by the braids under the bottom rope. Unusual but still brutal offense like a double suplex outside, right after the above, into the LED ringpost. What works for them in the past still works here, those big dramatic moments, the bargain Young Bucks stuff, but it’s a much tighter performance than they’ve put forward yet.

The match’s back third or so is also a real beautiful thing, largely in terms of construction, but with some really stellar ideas too. While it’s not as clean as at the 2016 Royal Rumble, Big E again catches an Uso Splash off the top into the Big Ending, only this time The Usos are able to break up the cover. It’s a simple thing, and WWE commentary being what it is, it’s never mentioned, but it’s hard to see that and not come to the obvious conclusion that it’s a show of the Usos’ evolution. Likewise, New Day are able to avoid a few different traps the Usos have used against less experienced teams on Smackdown, and there’s a similar sort of feeling, although a different one, that they are against a different caliber of opponent now.

Come the end of the match, there’s this perfect feeling for a feud like this, where The Usos are much better than they were the last time they met the New Day, but The New Day have improved as well, and The Usos still might not have what it takes. There’s enough to drive a few rematches on that alone, a new thing established, leading towards, once again on WWE pay-per-view this month, the sort of bullshit ending that helps so much more than it hurts.

Big E uses his power more effectively, Kofi flies around with more purpose, and New Day yet again have the Usos beaten off of the Midnight Hour, only for the other Uso to pull his brother out and take the count out loss instead to keep the titles.

It’s a great match for certain, but this one’s more about laying a foundation for the future than anything else, and they laid a pretty perfect one.

***

Daniel Bryan vs. Kofi Kingston, WWE WrestleMania 35 (4/7/2019)

Another commission, this time coming from Oregano Jackson, who simply needed me to review a late 2010s Daniel Bryan match, I suppose. You too can be like Oregano and pay me to watch and review any sort of wrestling (or other media in theory, i guess) you would like. Head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon if you have such an inclination in your head. The going price is currently $5 per match, with a $3 cruelty tax if you’re honest enough to admit that you want me to suffer for my dollar. If you have an idea larger than just counting up a number of matches and doing some simple multiplication, hit the DMs, and we can talk that one out. 

This was for Bryan’s WWE World Heavyweight Title.

It’s a match that I don’t love quite as much as I did the first time, and even then, I was a little lower on it than a lot of others. I don’t know if I quite agree that the Elimination Chamber is better, but I also know that it wasn’t totally for me, and not just because I’ve never liked Kofi all that much and because I’m a big time Bryan fan. It’s a match that means a whole lot to a whole lot of people, and while I’m never going to have that reaction to it exactly and truly can’t speak to that on any real level, it’s still undeniable in its own way. Not so much as a bell-to-bell wrestling match, but as the culmination of a really wonderful story.

Off of a freak injury to Mustafa Ali (God, imagine), Kofi Kingston gets thrown into some things, and catches fire. I’m not really sure how it happened or why it happened. Kofi Kingston didn’t magically become more than a mid-level talent (not that this is a meritocracy, given the amount of sheer mediocrities that have gotten this far in so much less time), but because of years of a hot New Day act and an absence of other hot babyfaces on the brand, the WWE for once decided to just play the hot hand while they had it.

The other side of the coin is, of course, where it gets real beautiful.

Kofi Kingston suddenly getting a hot streak and riding it to a main event chance that he honestly ought to have at least been given a try at like nine years earlier is cool enough, but I don’t think this works anywhere near as well against any other wrestler in the company. We’ll talk a little later about why that is in a mechanical sense (take just the wildest god damned guess you can come up with as to why a match involving the greatest wrestler of all time is better than against someone else), but I primarily mean in a character sense. Because five years ago, it was Daniel Bryan. Getting hot off a tag team run, stampeding his way through gauntlets, being robbed in the Elimination Chamber, and denied by authority figures, before managing to be the rare one to really break on through and become this multiple time World Champion. Five years later, he’s now the one trying to put his thumb down on others, and even cozying up to a McMahon or two and using that same language (“B+ player”) that was employed against him at one point. In short, Daniel Bryan is the rare one who managed to overcome and break through to a position on top, and now when that position is threatened by someone like Kofi Kingston, he suddenly mends fences with old enemies, and despite Bryan’s wildly different politics that led to him rightfully taking Vince McMahon to task only months earlier, everyone gets along for the first time ever in order to try and keep Kofi Kingston out of the club.

It is not subtle.

However, subtlety is for cowards, and to its benefit, this is one of the least narratively cowardly matches in recent WWE history.

It’s that narrative that carries it forward, just as much as the bell-to-bell action, if not more so.

Part of that is that, honestly, this revolves around a wrestler of mid-level talent. Kofi is not awful, but he has never truly been great. Obviously, given some of WWE’s talent choices in the last nine years, that’s not WHY it took so long, but it’s not as if Kofi’s performance suddenly jumped up a level. Kofi Kingston has the weaknesses that he’s always had, as well as the strengths (pure likeability) he’s always had. Compared to a killer like Bryan, his offense is not all that tough. Moments where he’s meant to be kicking ass (outside of the late-match head stomps, which are appropriately violent and angry) don’t have the impact that they maybe ought to. His selling of Bryan’s work on the body is far from bad, it’s pretty good, but we’re talking about functional more than we’re talking about great. For Kofi’s entire performance here, we’re talking about functional more than we’re talking about great.

However, Bryan is so great here and the story is so exceptional that all Kofi Kingston truly has to do is that, to simply not let every other element of the production down.

Daniel Bryan, once again, is incredible.

If not for one of the great babyface performances in wrestling history coming five years earlier, it would easily be his greatest WrestleMania performance ever, and it may be his finest heel performance in his entire WWE run. The work on the body is brutal, his striking is incredibly nasty, all of the obvious things that everybody always talks about are one-hundred percent true. It’s especially impressive that Bryan’s never really put a lot of body work into practice before, but gives it a shot on the biggest show of the year, and is astonishingly great at it. The real thing that stands out to me here, is the transition that Bryan goes through over the course of the match. Assured at the start, given clear reason to be like that as he’s presented as clearly the better wrestler, only to gradually lose that. There’s no mistake he makes, no reason for that to slip, but it’s presented in the perfect way, as just one of those situations where one side of a match up has simply put it into their heads that they are not losing.

Bryan takes a different approach than you usually see in matches like this, where a WWE heel often begins in a panic or portraying some lack of confidence. That sort of thing can still be really great, but what Bryan does in showing the transition from arrogant to terrified is also showing Kofi Kingston’s transition in living up to the moment. It’s a beautiful thing he does, not only because it’s an interesting approach that the greatest of all time 100% nails, but also because of how much it helps the wrestler who this match is really about, and how much more satisfying it makes his triumph.

It is a remarkably satisfying triumph.

As the match slips away, Bryan goes bigger and bigger, and eats more and more shit each time. His security blanket in Rowan is taken out by Big E and Xavier Woods, leading to a failed dive attempt. His knee isn’t enough, and Kingston survives the LeBell Lock. He fights out of the choke, complete with a much larger and therefore more thrilling struggle over the punching escape than ever, before giving Bryan a receipt finally. Kofi unloads what feels like a decade’s worth of frustration when he uses the classic Bryan stomps to the head, again removing any hint of subtlety from the equation. Literally fighting up from being held down on the ground, and not only beating ass, but beating ass using Bryan’s own patented technique. A full circle and so much more.

Kofi follows with the Trouble in Paradise, and as simple as simply coming back and kicking ass (or perhaps — and I prefer this — because he finally simply just fought up and kicked ass), Kofi Kingston becomes the WWE Champion.

A perfect end to one of the best WWE stories in recent memory. Forget everything that comes after, don’t allow a company this bad to occupy space in your brain like that. It’s about moments and nothing else, it has been for over a decade at this point, and they don’t make a lot of better ones than this.

If not the full-fledged Match of the Year, it is, undeniably, one of the best overall chunks of wrestling of the year, and out of the WWE in recent memory. I might not be in the right place to fully and totally love this thing, appreciating it more on an intellectual level than an emotional one, but there’s something undeniably special about this, I think, no matter what angle you wind up looking at it from.

***1/2

The New Day vs. Roman Reigns/The Usos, WWE Raw (9/20/2021)

In the panic over AEW doing actual numbers at the start of a great last third of the year, WWE did something almost unbelievable. I don’t mean putting the title on Big E, because that always seemed like an escape valve they could pull to make people shut up for a few months while ultimately doing nothing, outside of getting to call him a former WWE Champion for years to come (see: Kofi Kingston). I mean something far more drastic, the likes of which haven’t come out of this company with any regularity since 2017 at the very latest.

They put together a genuinely great episode of wrestling television.

WWE being WWE, it’s not perfect and I’m sure there are flaws to be had, but in terms of actual wrestling, it’s the best main roster television in years and years and years, as they remembered that they have a really good roster and that you can just run good looking wrestling matches for much of a three hour show.

As a result, this is the first of four (4) great matches from the same episode of Raw in the year 2021.

It’s the least of them, probably, being something of a solved equation at this point. New Day vs. Usos isn’t new, but it’s still really good. Adding in the Roman Reigns heel act and a red hot Big E, in the one week here where he really felt like he might be an actual Top Guy, is just enough to get them over the top. It’s also the sort of match that shows how important a crowd is, as there’s an energy to it that a dystopian hellscape of 1000 computer screens looking at the ring SOMEHOW can’t quite simulate. Reactions to a hot tag, the way Big E vs. Roman Reigns feels bigger when it’s been built up all match and people can go a little crazy for it, the energy when Lashley comes out at the end and tries to wreck everybody, even Woods lasting just a little bit longer at the end against Roman than anyone might have guessed. It’s all better with organic reactions, even if they can’t quite give up crowd_cheer_3.wav.

The real goal is to build up a Big E vs. Roman Reigns vs. Bob Lashley main event, and in another mystifying piece of work out of the worst company in the world, they genuinely manage it.

Not surprisingly, it isn’t just that Lashley running out at the end and running through people on the floor is a blast, but also that the chunk of Big E vs. Roman we get before that is all spectacular.

In a just world, this wouldn’t get blown on the same episode of TV or in your classic lifeless BRAND SUPREMACY Survivor Series main event, but be the actual end of Roman’s long reign. Big E’s it, the perfect powerhouse WWE style babyface, the guy who this should all be for, and it feels clear as day here when he gets to fight the top heel as something approaching an equal. It’s not only exciting and great, but above all, it feels correct.

Everything in its right place, a machine running as it is supposed to, even on accident.

Not the greatest thing in the world, nor the sort of memorable year-end-list sort of a thing that everyone needs to see, but being a great match that not only delivers quality but also makes one want to see the match it builds up is a rare enough thing in the WWE that this match — much like most of this episode — feels like something of an mirage.

three boy

The New Day vs. The Usos vs. The Lucha Dragons, WWE TLC (12/13/2015)

This was a ladder match for the New Day’s WWE World Tag Team Titles.

It’s a big dumb stunt show and I absolutely love it.

The trick is both a total honesty about that and also the ability to fill the match with big spot ideas that are both incredibly cool and fairly novel. This match also makes clear distinctions between the teams and wrestlers in the match in interesting ways (Big E is strong, Kalisto is the littlest but has the craziest brain, The Usos need to work in tandem to succeed), and it allows for some tension and struggle at all times. Everyone tries to take Big E out, and it always allows the space for Kofi Kingston to sneak around and so some stuff, and it’s how New Day hangs on despite this match being wildly out of the element of half the line up that they went with in this match. It’s a nice touch, and the sort of thought a match like this needs put into it to exist on a level beyond just shouting “COOL!” over and over for fifteen minutes and to stay in my mind for years like this has.

The one major spot also helps out, and if you’ve seen the match, I don’t even have to say more than that.

For the children though:

It’s the high point of the match, but not the end.

With Kalisto and That Uso being taken out, the other tries to handle Big E for good with an equally God damning splash off the top to Big E under a ladder lying on the floor. It’s the same sort of a move that removes someone at the price of also removing yourself, and shows the value Big E brings even when he can’t climb. The pro wrestling version of the gravity that a great shooter in basketball or a great receiver in football gives you. Kalisto manages to get up, as Sin Cara II has just somehow vanished, but Woods gets on the apron and delightfully hurls the trombone at his back. He’s distracted, and Kofi hurls him flipping off the ladder in another wholly unnecessary and wonderful bump, before Kofi pulls down the weird thing the belts are on in WWE and nowhere else.

A great match, but historically, largely a framework for one of the greatest spots of all time.

It’s a god damner of a thing, the sort of spot that belongs in highlight reels for years and years and years (obviously you feature and retain the sort of talent who can do this…). Like the match itself, if the WWE had any idea of how to canonize their history, or if they cared to, this would have a far greater reputation than it does. Better matches than this have suffered from the same problem, but it’s always a little bit of a bummer when you finish a great WWE pay per view match and come to that same realization.

If nothing else, the one spot at least seems to have had some staying power, which is more than you can usually say for a match like this.

***1/4

The New Day (Big E/Kofi Kingston) vs. Cesaro/Tyson Kidd, WWE Payback (5/17/2015)

This was a Best Two of Three Falls match for the New Day Classic’s WWE Tag Team Titles.

As usual, one of these matches in the WWE never quite gets the time it needs in order to stretch out and be all it can be. Fifteen minutes or less is not enough for three falls, and like so often is the case with matches like these in this company, it feels like a lie. A stipulation shoved into post production, with two nearfalls having a CGI three count added in. As always, it’s a classic example of the WWE insisting on only ever doing things one way, with the changes only ever being purely cosmetic. It’s a three fall match only in the sense that there are three falls, not in terms of tone or length or any noticeable difference to the match compared to past iterations.

As is often the case though, it doesn’t quite matter so much when motivated and talented wrestlers get a hold of fifteen minutes of pay per view time.

That goes doubly so for an all-time great like Cesaro.

Even if this doesn’t hold a candle to the Usos vs. Wyatt Family match from ten months earlier with most of the same issues — as Cesaro isn’t as great here as Harper was there, and for WWE project guys, 2014 Usos are better than 2015 New Day bell to bell — it works for the same admirable reasons. Talent being too good to deny and caring too much to have an average match, and succeeding where they can and while they can.

Again, that largely means this is the Cesaro show. Kofi and Big E are not natural babyfaces and so this first year of the New Day run where they work heel is far more lacking than the rest of their time together in the ring. Some people can reverse engineer it after so long on the other end and some people are just naturally one thing. Kofi Kingston and Big E are the latter, so it’s largely on Cesaro and Kidd to lay the foundation before the gifts of the champions can be best utilized in a second half sugar rush. However, short of the John Cena US Open, there is no better show on the main roster at this point and Cesaro lifts all the boats around him. Kidd has some bright ideas, and Cesaro can plug the power of Big E and Kofi as a generic flyer into just about a million different things, all different from the previous meetings. It’s all candy, but it’s good candy.

The brightest spot of this, of course, is a truly great finish.

It’s nothing NEW exactly. Kofi Kingston gets his ass kicked and saved, and when the ref is distracted, Xavier Woods switches places with him and he cradles Cesaro after a cheap shot to take the titles. The twin switch spot is an old one, and like any other old standard piece of pro wrestling nonsense, it’s not inherently good or bad. This is a fun one, firstly because it’s been long enough since it was last seen in the WWE that it provokes a real reaction.

Secondly it works because it allows everyone to go online and accuse the referee of being a racist in one of the few true wonderful bits to come out of the WWE in 2015. Perhaps second only to Rusev throwing a fish.

Unfortunately, this would be the last match of any real note for Tyson Kidd anywhere. Everyone knows the story, it’s one of the big unfortunate injuries of the last decade, especially as he had finally started to get what he had been due for a long time since mid-2014. We never get a real blow off here, we never even get it again. It’s unfair, and it’s a worse version of the usual. It’s not that it got interrupted now by nobody in a decision making capacity being able to pay attention or having horrible opinions. The conclusion failed to appear this time not because of incompetence, but because of cruel and random chance. Nobody is to blame, there’s nothing to really be said or done about it, and we at least got these two delightful pay-per-view encounters.

It’ll be another year and seven months before Cesaro gets to go back and finally give this the sequel that it deserves, and thankfully by then, The New Day will be far more up to the task and in roles more befitting their bell to bell talents.

***1/4

Cesaro/Tyson Kidd vs. The New Day (Big E/Kofi Kingston), WWE Extreme Rules (4/26/2015)

This was for Cesaro and Kidd’s WWE Tag Team Titles.

It’s yet another WWE midcard pay per view match that succeeds as a direct result of a lack of complexity and of anyone getting in the way of the exceedingly obvious.

The New Day are new to being heels, and if we’re being super honest, never quite become great in-ring heels like they become great in-ring babyfaces a year or more later. That’s largely on Kofi, as Big E has impactful enough offense to make it work, but the solution is one they go to here. It’s just a fireworks show. They control a little bit, but mostly they’re using trickery and then letting the other team go wild.

Now obviously, there’s a reason this pairing works a hundred times better with that approach than with New Day vs. The Prime Time Players or New Day vs. The League of Nations (they call themselves The Lads) or whatever other WWE mediocrities come to mind.

Cesaro is the best.

He gets something of a greenlight here finally as a babyface, and it’s incredible. There’s a stench of failure on him that’s hard to write off after most of 2014, especially the last few months, but even then, it takes him all of thirty seconds of sustained offense to feel like a real ass Superstar. Tyson Kidd is also in this match and he’s great in this match, Big E is awesome in what he gets to do, but this match is Cesaro’s match. He has the most energy, he hits the hardest, he does the coolest stuff, he’s crisper than everyone, and just hoists the entire thing up upon his shoulder every time he gets to do a single thing. He takes the entire thing over, and the entire thing is so much better for it. He and Big E work especially well together, but he also returns a little to 2013 and still has a way of getting more out of Kofi at this point than anyone else can. A masterful performance as a hot tag and then in general from one of the all-time tag team greats.

Naturally, after a hot run of offense and a hotter run of nearfalls, Kofi schoolboys Cesaro with a handful of trunks to take the titles for the first time.

It’s not the most inspiring ending, but given that this feud will have one of the better finishes in WWE all decade and given that the match was still a blast, you really have to just take what you can get when a company that otherwise spends so much time being bad and stupid accidentally lets something loose like this.

***