Randy Orton vs. William Regal, WWE Raw (4/14/2008)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor Ri Ri. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication or other processes, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.

A few weeks ago (written 5/23/2024), I got the idea in my head to try to explore who the greatest television wrestlers of all time where. It was ultimately an abandoned idea, for a lot of reasons (one being that the behavior that lead to Chris Benoit’s staggeringly horrible brain also made him, at worst, one of the five most prolific television wrestlers of all time), and while it produced a lot of the results I expected — Rey, Bryan, Benoit, Christian, Arn, Dustin Rhodes, Regal, Cesaro, etc. — I was a little surprised at how well Randy Orton did.

Sneakily, although significantly by the result of being a featured act through twenty years of a promotion that puts a lot of wrestling on TV rather than a concentrated burst of greatness, Randy Orton is a greater long-term television wrestler — and wrestler at large — than a lot of people give him credit for.

This is what I mean.

At five minutes and forty five seconds, although OBVIOUSLY one wishes these two had ten more, in the middle of an episode of Raw, it would be an easy match for many to forget about. Even with the show in England and with William Regal’s home country crowd loud as hell urging him on, so man other wrestlers on both sides of the match would, I think, be totally okay with this simply being alright, and leaning upon the time allotted as an excuse.

However, the real greats can create something with anything, and make no mistake, Randy Orton and William Regal are two of the best wrestlers of all time.

The trick is that every part in this feels like it matters.

Every hold is treated like life or death, every piece of offense be it strike or move or throw is sold huge, and above all, William Regal once again (see: Austin 2000-2001, JBL 2006, etc) wrestles a top guy with a sense of desperation that makes everything not only better mechanically, but that allows everything to land with such a powerful emotional weight. On top of that, there is a fight to everything. The champion tries to contain Regal, who is insistent on exploding. He struggles to do so whenever possible, memorably fighting through an Orton chinlock (for the record if you ever complained about an Orton chinlock, when he puts more into it than most to ever come through the system, you do not know ball on a real level) to hit the Regal Plex, but also punishing Orton whenever possible with whatever he can, only for Orton’s natural gifts — in this case, simply having long limbs — to bail him out.

It’s a perfect illustration of an unfair advantage in a quietly cruel way, although so subtly drawn that a lot of very dumb people will not get it, and it hits perfectly.

Following the pause after one of these moments, Regal’s attack on a leg, Randy Orton reels off a flash RKO off of the very briefest break off of a five count in the ropes mandated by the referee, limping into the cover, and it has very rarely felt like every second of a wrestling match counts in the way that it does here, only amplified by just how let down everyone in the building feels.

It turns out the English are good for some things.

Do not quote me on that.

***

Triple H vs. Randy Orton vs. Batista vs. Chris Benoit vs. Edge vs. Chris Jericho, WWE New Year’s Revolution 2005 (1/9/2005)

Commissions return again, this one coming from Stuart. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was an Elimination Chamber match for the vacant World Heavyweight Title, with Shawn Michaels as a special guest referee.

I have gone on record, not only when talking about it originally but in year and decade wrap-up lists, saying that the 2014 Elimination Chamber (Cena vs. Bryan vs. Orton vs. Cesaro vs. Sheamus vs. Christian) is the best of its kind, but it is not the only really great one. I’m also a really big fan of the 2003 (the one where Goldberg nukes everyone) and 2009 (the one with the big Edge swerve, but also the insane Rey Mysterio performance) as all-time level Chambers.

Below that level, there’s the level this match is on, along with something like the 2011 (Punk/Cena final, a few months before that would have been huge), 2017 (the Bray Wyatt one), or the 2019 (Bryan/Kofi final) ones. Not the greatest, certainly ones that suffer from less than perfect line-ups despite the talent and strength of the booking, but that I simply cannot deny. Like those matches, while I have some issues with it, it just kind of works for me, one of those classic WWE productions that makes me go, “yes, this is how the system is supposed to work”.

(Less so in that it ought to be Triple H winning, but in terms of all it advances, what it does for Batista, the use it puts a still all-world Benoit to, etc.)

In short, the correct amount of bullshit.

Benoit and Jericho begin the match before Triple H is third (doesn’t fit in anywhere else here, but great political maneuvering to have HHH last longer than actual babyface challenger Orton and survive more, while also having Benoit and Jericho before him to mask it a little bit), and to the credit of both men, they are once again has never been on behavior as good as he is on when Chris Benoit is in a match. As early WAR or WCW Benoit/Jericho stuff showed, that was never exactly a guarantee, but at this point, it at least guarantees a half-decent effort. Like Triple H often did against Benoit, as also seen in this match, or later like Hunter and Orton against Bryan, there is an implicit pressure that comes from being an established Great Wrestler in the WWE, and again, Jericho is on best behavior, being more aggressive and harder hitting than usual.

After that, as everyone pours in, it is the ideal mix of things.

There is only one GREAT wrestler here, but everyone else is on their very best behavior.

Batista is obviously very good as your psuedo-hot tag power babyface, but Randy Orton in this is much better than I remembered as a mechanical babyface. The microphone work still might not be him at his most comfortable, but in terms of throwing hands and showing some energy, he is genuinely really really good in this, already being the second smoothest/most natural feeling wrestler in the match behind Benoit. Edge, Jericho, and Hunter are all limited, but primarily do things they’re best at. For Edge, that means basically nothing until the special referee gets him out first. For Jericho, it mean mostly being beaten into greater effort than usual. For Hunter, it means power moves against great bumpers and benefitting from the bells and whistles of a more violent environment, just like in his prime. Nobody is asked to do more than they can, at least not obviously so, and as a result, the match benefits in the way big gimmick matches with limited wrestlers ought to, both because of the visual bells and whistles, but also because of a larger vision that brings it all together into a larger package.

Really, what stands out the most about this match, so many years later, is how much it benefits from some blood spilled.

Everyone but Edge (coward, not in this too long) and Batista (correct call not to bleed, time isn’t right yet as a character) gets to run the blade at least a little here, and the two real pros at it in Benoit and Hunter get some real beautiful color. The match benefits from this in all of the ways wrestling often does. With blood on on the canvas, and the wounds of war on nearly everyone in the ring for large chunks of this thing, the match gains a certain feeling. We’re not talking Joe and Necro here, it is probably not a top 25 bloodletting of 2005, but on top of the selling and the certain auditory quality of almost everyone banging off the steel floor, the simple visuals make this feel like a genuine ordeal, and so later attempts at exhaustion selling and announce hyperbole from JR (another great performance in this, walking every imaginable tightrope with zero wavering) feel less like bullshit, a little more warranted, and the entire production goes down so much smoother when you have these clear visible signals that this has been a fight with actual consequences.

The other benefit is the layout and the effective narrative work.

Just about everyone reading this knows that this is all build to Hunter vs. Batista at WrestleMania, and it is incredibly effective at that. Benoit, Jericho, and Orton all absolutely die for Big Dave, with him getting rid of those first two on his own, and theoretical babyface Orton also having to cheat to get rid of him. Triple H, despite the maneuvering of suffering more and lasting longer than Orton, comes out feeling more lucky than like any kind of real winner, being beaten up by everyone but Batista, avoiding saving him from elimination, and then taking advantage of all he does.

Something feels a little strange to me about really liking a match that is, essentially, a great larger product ass WWE production than a display of any one great performance or thing to really point to, but when it comes together right, it comes together right. The match is the beneficiary of a few really good smaller performances, and although not as much of a rarity at the time as I think Ruthless Aggression WWE still had something of the magic touch when they really wanted it, also the beneficiary of exactly the right amount of larger picture work and narrative movement.

Great pro wrestling nonsense.

It doesn’t seem all that exceptional, but truly, a stellar of just how easy this all really can be when kept simple, and when given the best crutch a wrestling match can have (two-thirds of the match bleeding a lot).

***1/2

 

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

Randy Orton vs. Jeff Hardy, WWE Hell in a Cell (9/16/2018)

This was a Hell in a Cell match.

I get it.

I am not going to sell you on this. Especially because, in my memory, I probably overrated at the time on the strength of a handful of real cool spots and the surprise it gave me to see them pull that out, here in the fall of what had been a down year for a largely unmotivated Orton, and a Hardy who has been past his prime now for closer to a decade than anything less. I might have been able to make a pitch at the time that worked on you (the imaginary Reader I always find myself writing to after you argue a point with me at some point during the writing process), it is always far more mentally convenient to go back for a thing that just happened rather than one that happened a half decade ago, and that also was only so great.

This match rocks though.

Randy and Jeff are slower than they were when they frequently wrestled from 2006 to 2008 in Jeff’s prime, and in Jeff’s case also far less physically capable of moving around the way he used to, resulting in a few drier patches in the middle here than I had initially remembered, but the allowances that this match gives them more than make up for everything they can’t do anymore.

Allowances like hurling each other real hard into the cell wall, a Gourdbuster through the bars of an upside down open ladder (resulting in an accidental Jeff Hardy face bump on the ground too), Jeff swinging and falling from the ceiling of the sell through a table, and especially, Orton prying Jeff’s earring out and using a screwdriver to get in the opening and twist his earlobe to a truly disgusting degree. The latter is, five years later, not only still an uncommonly gross spot for the WWE, but uncommonly gross for wrestling in general, and the sort of spot that still drifts in and out of my mind from time to time.

They both add in enough small little things, everything else is done correctly and the match is laid out perfectly well and I have no real problems with it. They have a real sense, in particular, of where to put all of the bigger moments of the match so that I never quite give up on it and stick around until the end.

Really though, yeah, this is the earlobe screwdriver match to me.

However, if you’re going to have a match highlighted by one (or a few) gross things, there are thousands of matches to do it worse than this. The reason this is just barely great in spite of any flaws and the reason so many other matches I can describe in similar terms are not comes down to the matter of commitment.

If you are going to do something gross, do something really gross.

Likewise, if you’re going to do a few brutal and dangerous things, do really brutal and really dangerous things.

Commit, do so with your entire heart and mind and body, or do not bother.

For everything it lacks, this is a match that understands the most important things.

Too long to be a hoot and not great enough to be anything more, but relative to the way far more boring WWE matches tend to be wildly overpraised, one of the most underrated things to come out of the company in 2018.

***

Evolution vs. Chris Benoit/Shawn Michaels/Mick Foley/Shelton Benjamin, WWE Raw (4/12/2004)

Commissions continue, again from Shock, as the snake reverses. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too. 

This is much more like it.

Something you should know is that, at least as it pertains to the upper section of the card, I love 2004-5 Raw.

Call it a guilty pleasure if you would like. You could also call it the tail end of childhood nostalgia, as 2004 was the last year I was really like a WWE Fan proper, before the combination of TNA on free television and starting to regularly download matches from ROH and other indies at the end of the year got rid of that pesky little habit. But all of the different combinations of Evolution tags and matches against a tremendously skilled upper to midcard babyface core (Benoit, Shelton, Jericho and Edge when they were capable of being in good matches, Tajiri) do a lot for me. They’re not always perfect, old man Flair is not the most physically gifted and not every babyface there is great on their own, Shawn Michaels and/or Triple H is often also involved, etc., but any combo of Orton, Batista, and Benoit in a tag in 2004 is a slam dunk, and the brand has an astonishing success rate when attacking the rim here, so to speak.

(does 2004 Raw follow the theme of the year and Go To Work? Some would say yes. There is a man called Big (first name), an undersized all-world talent running the point, part of the team is now a coach for one of the most loathsome outfits in the sport, someone constantly getting in foul trouble, etc. If a basketball cannot hold a grudge, it also probably does not lie.)

I would love to write a bunch of words about the better Evolution tags of 2004, and their many virtues. The way they feel like updated versions of old Horsemen TV tags, the old style structure wholly unique in a WWE environment, the emphasis on hard hitting and violence, the manic finishing runs, all of that. Outside of Bryan vs. The Shield, it’s the best continuous series of matches involving a singular faction in WWE history, and I have a whole lot of time for these matches, and for writing about these matches.

This, however, is not one of the better ones.

Part of that comes down to the line up, as the very best ones tended to have a Benoit/Edge/Jericho babyface core, or the one-off Benoit/Orton/Shelton combo that came after Orton’s turn at the end of the summer. Despite the all-star line up, this makes a few choices that separates it in a more negative way from the better Evolution tags and six-mans that mostly followed.

Specifically, because this is essentially the root of every choice made, there is too much focus here on wrestlers who either totally mail it in or are not very good, and sometimes the two overlap. Almost every other great Evolution tag does not involve Triple H, who is simply not an especially good wrestler on a week to week level. The best Evolution tag work sees Orton and Batista in there for long stretches against Benoit, as he basically spends the year molding them into great wrestlers in a way you may have seen a decade later in the Bryan/Shield series (these have basically the same idea, glue your golden boys to the best wrestler in the company for 6-12 months and force them to get great as quickly as possible). Likewise, there’s a lot too much here of Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley compared to the other two babyfaces, with one (Foley) who would have been out of his element in a match like this even as an active wrestler in his prime and who now is semi-retired and clearly saving himself for the weekend’s pay-per-view, and another (Michaels) who has none of those excuses, but simply turns in an uninspired house show ass performance.

The latter is the one that really hurts, as while Foley is minimized and Hunter only in for bursts, Shawn Michaels is the one who gets the majority of the match’s big moments like the dive into break, the hot tag, and the majority of the finishing run. It’s not surprising, of course it is all about Shawn even when he is like the sixth best wrestler out of eight in the match and the third best on his team, but it’s especially grating when he turns in a dull and passionless performance off the tag and two wildly energetic and/or psychotically intense wrestlers wilt on the apron.

Generally speaking, the match simply lacks the energy of the best Evolution tag work, especially down the stretch, where a lot of things do not go right, and the usually more intricately put together Benoit-led finishing run is instead taken over by a half-speed and quarter-assed Michaels style one instead.

It is not without its virtues though!

The first half in particular is especially good. This is mostly Flair playing the hits against Shawn and then trading leather and some heavy hands (again, Flair never quite gets credit for those great corner punches) with ex-Horseman Benoit. Shelton gets in on the act and the big fella Big Dave has a few really impressive moments. Up until the commercial break, it is a genuinely super fun match. The control work on Benoit and then Shelton is also very good, largely led by Batista and Orton against both guys. The weak spots are there sprinkled in, but most of this is really really good. It’s just that it falls apart in the key moments, and for all of these foundational strengths and great flourishes throughout, it lacks the quality moments in the most memorable parts of the match, and suffers for it in ways other Evolution tags simply do not.

Shawn pins Orton with the kick, whatever.

Real far from the best version of this thing, but a fun enough house show version that just so happened to make it onto television.

three boy

AJ Styles vs. Randy Orton, WWE Smackdown Live (3/7/2017)

This was the third of three #1 Contender’s matches over the last three weeks, being the final one after Styles already beat Harper the previous week to win it, but also after Randy Orton unfortunately turned babyface again by Ortonposing in front of a house on fire, which was objectively sick as hell.

Way more importantly, it is the first AJ Styles vs. Randy Orton match

I’m not going to tell lies and say this is right up there with AJ/Cena as a long awaited dream match, or with something like AJ/Reigns as a big modern one, but it a match between two guys who’ve been entities in pro wrestling for nearly fifteen years without ever touching, and it is a cool thing to see. Even without fifteen years behind each of them, more or less, it is always just a cool thing to see a first time ever match up with different kinds of great wrestlers from different kinds of places, and we sure have some wildly varying poles that these two come from. So it is a very interesting and a very cool match to see, if nothing else.

Part of not telling lies also means saying that this very clearly is not the best they can do against each other.

Very clearly, this is a match up that is saving something like eighty to ninety percent of its best wares, its biggest counters, its largest runs of offense, and its most important moves save the unavoidable finishes. It’s unfortunate as they didn’t exactly kill it when they did get the chance on PPV (I like that WrestleMania match, but that is a classic three boy), and while I’m probably the biggest fan of their 2021 television work as there is, it’s hard not to think this is a match up that never totally lived up to its full potential (although one could argue that “selling based TV hit” is where like 95% of Orton match ups might wind up topping out), at least in terms of the resumes of both men and what they’ve done against similar wrestlers.

However, much like Styles and Harper still finding a way to produce the previous week, “not the best that AJ Styles and Randy Orton can do” still turns out to be a real fun little television outing.

It’s a great match in all the ways this both always was going to be, and a few fun ones that show a little effort and care too.

First, it is two hyperathletic and super natural guys having a delightfully smooth and crisp outing in their first go at it. Beyond the first-time benefit of everything they do in this match being brand new, they have some pretty cool stuff to break out against each other. Sick AJ bumps for everything, beautiful offense, that classic Randy Orton gift for getting into place for something without the seams on the thing ever showing, all of it. Few other wrestlers could have a match that is very clearly held back in the way that this is and still have it wind up being this great, and so much of that is down to how great both men simply at doing everything, whether that’s this beautiful or snappy (or, on occasion, both beautiful and snappy) offense or all of the quieter moments in between those major notes.

Those quieter moments and the next level stuff is, once again with these two, what really does so much for me in this match.

Randy and AJ really clearly do give a shit about this being good, and it shows. Not just relative to other Orton matches, as he makes it almost comically easy to figure out when he cares and when he doesn’t, but in general, Orton goes a little deeper here than usual even in matches recently where he’s put forth a great effort. AJ goes to the leg about midway through in the classic double-edged attack to both set up his leg and stall someone out, and Orton’s selling is fantastic. Not just in terms of the mechanics of the act, but in the desperate ways he tries to stop AJ from doing that. There’s this little patch in the middle when AJ tries to get a takedown and Orton stuffs him and then avoids him in ways that feel artfully uncooperative, before AJ has to get more aggressive and faster in his attacks, and it’s not flashy or anything, but it is such a cool little chunk of wrestling.

Even beyond the pristine mechanics of the thing, there’s also this lovely little run of counters near the very end. Anyone who’s ever thought about this match from like 2004 on has imagined the RKO counter to AJ’s Phenomenal Forearm, long before it had a name like that. It is the most obvious thing to come out of this match, and they clearly know it and play with that not once but twice in a great little bit of self consciousness, showing that such a thing isn’t always so bad. The first springboard gets cut off, but Orton goes to the DDT instead, before a regular RKO gets cut off. The second sees AJ completely fake Orton out and make him leap for the RKO only for AJ to not actually get onto the top rope, making Randy take a real hard back bump. AJ then is too proud of himself, misses the springboard 450, and runs into the pop up RKO to end the match.

It’s a sublime little touch that, in part, makes the match the sort of thing I’ve always remembered despite what feels like an objective underachievement. Not only the awareness to mess with the clear audience expectation, but incorporating it perfectly into the match, using it as this perfect shorthand to show Styles being equal parts canny and arrogant. Celebrating his brilliance in one moment, and immediately paying for celebrating just a second too long.

That’s just a great little thirty second chunk of pro wrestling.

A forgotten match for fair reasons, but a lovely little first try at the thing. It’s a match sure to delight anyone who ever wanted to see a lower key version of this, even if we’re still waiting on that higher key one.

***

Randy Orton vs. Luke Harper, WWE Elimination Chamber (2/12/2017)

Luke Harper never got what he deserved in the WWE.

This is not an opinion so much as it is a statement of fact. You know this if you’re reading this blog, I imagine. Now, that’s not to say he didn’t get to do a lot. Even beyond just being a great heavy for a character like Bray Wyatt, there’s a fairly strong resume that he left. The initial Wyatt Family run resulted in some of the best wrestling anywhere in the world all decade, he was the motor of one of the WWE’s better tag team rivalries all decade against The Usos in 2014, and his Intercontinental Title stuff with Dolph Ziggler in 2014 was especially great. Mostly though, it’s a generational level talent, the greatest big man of his generation period, being wasted on stuff beneath him.

For a period in late 2016 and 2017 though, it looked like that might change as Luke Harper wound up accidentally starting to break out as a result of the Randy Orton/Bray Wyatt feud, his performance overall, and especially the acting he put forth as the only one who seemed to know what devious old Randy was actually up to. For a minute there, while it was essentially fantasy and large scale wishcasting, it wasn’t the most insane thing in the world to imagine a world title match at WrestleMania that included Luke Harper. This match is specifically designed to snuff that out and loudly tell the audience “No.” in response to those reactions, a sign of a company that learned all the most upsetting lessons from 2013-2015, but it’s still a really cool thing that happens before that statement.

Luke Harper gets his one and only shot on pay-per-view even close to a proper main event picture against a proper main eventer, and it ought to come as no surprise that it is GREAT.

On his end, Luke Harper is phenomenal in this match.

While it doesn’t seem quite right to call anyone who’s been as great as Harper’s been for as long as he’s been great a “revelation” exactly, he is in a fairly new role here working from underneath, and it is exciting in the way all rare things are. It reminds me kind of the way older school long time heels like an Arn Anderson seemed as if they reverse engineered how to work as a the protagonist from all that time on the other side of things. It’s not a natural ability, but talent is talent, and it has a way of overcoming. He’s a surprisingly sympathetic bumper, his comebacks are SO energetic, and all of the offense is both as sharp and as cool as ever. Beyond that — and especially when cast against a favored son both in and out of story like Randy Orton — it’s a very easy story to get behind with Harper, and the match rightly works with that, rather than trying to swim against the current.

In the middle of what’s otherwise a fairly large lull in the back half of the 2010s, Randy Orton once again works to the level of his opponent and relatively (as in, he’s not killing himself for a non-main event on PPV when he has a Mania payday to save his body for, come on) puts forth a lot more here than he has in a singles match in some time. In large part, this works for the same reason those American Alpha tags do, because he is a thousand times more natural working on top and getting to be a real rotten boy. That thing about not fighting upstream has just as much to do with Orton here, allowing him to simply just do the thing he does the best.

Mechanically speaking, it is as great as it was always going to be in the back half. Two wrestlers with offense that is both cool and snappy trading it back and forth, escalating right, and always keeping the match interesting. Two guys who are great at laying out bombfests like this hucking the heavy artillery at each other in ways both expected and surprising.

Randy gets the win he was always going to, off of a perfectly timed RKO to intercept Harp’s rolling lariat, in the exact sort of spectacular finish you’d expect out of these two. It’s a cool enough finish and just a great enough match to almost take the sting out of the result itself, and to at least make a bitter pill go down a little smoother.

Is this the best they can do?

Probably not.

I don’t know. It’s hard to say when it’s the only one we really got like this, but it’s not the biggest or most grandiose match they could have had together. Hypothetically there’s probably a sick match they could have in like 2011 when Randy was on a hot run as a TV workrate babyface, but Harper wasn’t in the system yet. Hypothetically, if this was run by a good company and not one of a million good things WWE briefly lucked into and then put a quick stop to, this is a whole two or three pay-per-view program with a gimmick match and some more TV work. Shit, hypothetically, the Orton turn isn’t fake at all, the Orton/Bray team lasts for another year, and we get a full ass Luke Harper babyface run instead of just this weird little peak into what exactly that might look like.

The world we live in isn’t one that saw any of that come to fruition, and those will always remain hypotheticals, sadly. But we did have this one neat little match, a cool peak into a universe that may or may not be better, but one that’s just different enough from our own to be pretty interesting.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Randy Orton/Luke Harper vs. American Alpha vs. The Usos vs. Heath Slater/Rhino, WWE Smackdown Live (12/27/2016)

This was an elimination match for the WWE Smackdown Tag Team Titles.

On paper, this is a four way.

Certainly, the sections with three and four teams contribute in some regard. Heath Slater cleans house in an entertaining fashion before he’s eliminated. The brief Usos vs. American Alpha segment is once again delightful, showing how they should have been capable of so so so so so much more together, delivering on a natural chemistry and continuing their story without giving too much away yet. It’s the sort of thing we’d call masterful booking if that booking ever led anywhere further than a borderline great ten minute television match or two in the first quarter of 2017.

So the first half of this match is not without its charms.

However, really, this is the second part of the Wyatts vs. American Alpha series, and more than a fitting follow up to their previous meeting a month prior.

The major shift this time is simply trading out a wrestler who possesses the ability to be good in the right settings in Bray Wyatt with a generationally gifted powerhouse in Luke Harper. Predictably, the match is a little better, if only for those more vague Force Of Talent kinds of reasons. Fill up more of the match with all-time level talents, and the match winds up being better as a result. The shit is not rocket science, you know?

What remains from the first match — Randy Orton vs. Jordan and Gable — works as well as it did then, only with an even greater ease that comes with practice. Classic pro wrestling once more, big bumping heels and energetic babyfaces, overcoming not only size and experience advantages but taking out Crustpunk Bray Wyatt on the outside too, en route to overcoming what was established in the previous meeting. Once more, great basic storytelling, following up a first meeting that was all about setting the table as to whom everyone was by now having Our Heroes find a way past when the tenuous swamp zombie alliance first begins to break down, winning the titles in the process.

A tremendous middle part in the trilogy.

***+

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

This was a #1 Contender’s Match.

It genuinely two thousand percent absolutely rocks.

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

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

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

Randy and American Alpha were born to wrestle each other.

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

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

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

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

Classic chunk of wrestling TV right here.

***