Got it as completely right as the WWE could ever get something like this. The Roman Reigns stuff at this point is always going to be incredibly hamfisted and self defeating as a result, but otherwise, nailed it. They got the most out of some very very limited wrestlers and it’s a great example both of groups and matches being stronger than the sums of their parts if handled correctly.
This is not a match on the same level.
There’s a wonderful bit early on, when the crowd has been with them for everything through an opening brawl to exchanges in the ring, and then Triple H and Roman Reigns get in for a Big Staredown. JBL calls them the two studs of the teams, it’s supposed to feel huge, they try and milk the hell out of it…and it’s almost entirely silent. Few things in wrestling are as satisfying as the WWE trying to force a Big Staredown and absolutely nobody caring. On that scale, this is really only second to the famous Cena/Orton one in the 2010 Royal Rumble, or the Nia Jax/Tamina one at whichever Survivor Series. Magnificent stuff and a great description both of the match and all that follows it.
I think the matcch still works, largely through the force of effort of our young heroes, but it’s a much more reserved and drawn out thing. It’s less big, less bombastic, and leans more on Evolution than it probably should. It wants to be everything, trying to balance both the sort of classic Shield style match with also being a WWE Story. Roman gets abused a lot and comes back, big hero bullshit. They occasionally also try to tell a story about Roman being taken out and Seth and Dean overcoming that trope for once, only to then bail at the end and have Roman take two of the three eliminations. One idea is more interesting than the other, but the other isn’t inherently bad or anything either. I would just prefer they picked one or the other.
The match still succeeds despite that, and those sorts of things. Rollins and Ambrose more than do their parts as these twin balls of energy. Reigns’ hot tag work is still exceptional. While the middle dragged, the last quarter or so of this with Evolution being summarily executed one by one is classic Shield, now turned outward in a way that everyone can enjoy. It’s a great piece of booking to have them totally carve up Evolution. Even if two of them went to Roman instead of the ideal version of each man getting one of the falls with their big move, the message is about the same, and it’s a great one. Yesterday don’t mean shit. Triple H gets up and tries to stand on the hammer like he’s going out on his sword, and gets owned, never half as cool or effective as he thinks. It’s not the perfect ending that WrestleMania 30 is, but Hunter and Batista and even Orton could never have showed up again, and it would have felt like a fitting cap on the entire thing.
Of course, none of that happens. Batista has the dignity to leave for five years after this, but not forever. Randy Orton never needed to leave, but winds up drifting along for most of the last seven years since. Triple H not only doesn’t go out like this, but winds up basically just running this program again for years, as if he and his greatest creation weren’t essentially executed here.
Nothing gold ever stays, especially not when a company this stupid and self-sabotaging gets their paws all over it.
It’s the last real Shield match that isn’t embarrassing and desperate nostalgia. Definitely the last great Shield match, even if it’s more on the borderline than most of the great first run Shield matches.
All good things come to an end.
(a *** match)
The 2010s WWE golden age ended at WrestleMania XXX, with the high water mark of that era and the season finale of the company, but this is as clear a demarcation point as there is.
Some of that was unavoidable. Most of it wasn’t. Outside of Bryan’s injury, nobody had their hands forced here. Nobody put a gun to anyone’s head and killed off the Rhodes Brothers push. Nobody forced Cesaro back down the card after a picture perfect elevation. You can argue they needed a new top heel, but it’s not like Randy Orton’s push ever stopped. It’s not like they didn’t have a bunch of options that they simply decided against. A way out of a corner that they put themselves in, and that may not have actually existed to begin with. There was never any good reason to blow this all up. Not really.
It’s been seven years, and it’s never been that good again for such a prolonged period. Not really even close.
It’s a miracle that it ever was to begin with.
The WWE occasionally does a really great job of making stars, individual and collective. The last year and a half saw them do that with The Shield through a patience and attention to detail and an ability to resist an insane old man shouting to blow it up because in his head, nobody has friends and nobody can stand to be around each other for more than a year. This was a group that felt genuine, the sort of team of friends that’s incredibly easy to root for, that would be together for half a decade in another promotion run by people who understand that this stupid shit is supposed to be fun and that few things are as entertaining as friends having a blast together while doing violence. They pulled off the sort of natural heel to face transition that wrestling promotions dream about. The fact that they did it both as a group and that it was done this organically in the modern WWE environment is nothing short of a miracle. It’s incredible that it lasted as long as it did.
It’s especially incredible given that what the WWE does with even more practice and precision is destroying stars.
The next night on Raw, The Shield will break up and of all people, Seth Rollins will be the one to turn heel.
Some people will tell you they ran out of things to do, or whatever else. These people are deranged and will spout whatever the party line is. They’re hot faces, the top face act in the company with Bryan out for a while. Throw heels at them. Make some new heels. They don’t even really need to team, but together, it’s still three pieces of something that works better than anything else in the company. They don’t need to always be in the same match to be together, that’s not how stables have to work. Imagine how much more of a gut punch Seth Rollins’ HEIST OF THE CENTURY could be if it happens at the same moment as his heel turn, if that’s his heel turn. Imagine this or that, it’s a fun exercise. It’s fun to think about because there was easily another eight or nine months of stuff The Shield could have done together. It’s interesting too because a group itself hadn’t ever really been in this position before, certainly not in their primes like these three. Relatively uncharted waters in a time and place when everything else is so mapped out.
It might not have been such a problem had they not blown everything after the turn, but they did and so it is. Within the next eight months, they’d taken this group, the hottest thing in the company and miscast the babyface firestarter Rollins as a cerebral heel Triple H imitation, beaten the fight and effort out of scrappy Ambrose, and permanently ruined the prospects of Reigns as an Ace level main event babyface, the entire point of the group’s last few months.
It was too soon. For a company that’s spent decades shouting at WCW for breaking up The Hollywood Blondes after only ten months, you’d think they’d have the wisdom to realize that, but of course not. Never. It’s not entirely that neither of them were ready. All three could have still been megastars if their singles pushes were given the respect, patience, and attention to detail that The Shield’s rise was given. That didn’t happen, because of course it didn’t happen. They fucked it up, because it’s what they do.
Roman Reigns wasn’t ready to be on his own, definitely not as a solo wrestler or a babyface promo. Seth Rollins was nowhere near ready to be on his own, especially not as a heel promo or wrestler. They mostly nailed the booking with him over the next nine to ten months, to be fair, but then blew that up too once he had his crowning moment, just like The Shield. Dean Ambrose could have turned out alright, but within a few months, both got pigeonholed into WHACKY COMEDY like running a hot dog stand and using condiments as weapons, on top of seeming to get that he was really only still pushed to heat up guys like a heel Rollins and Bray Wyatt, who weren’t able of getting it done on their own. The result is the same thing that a lot of people like him began to realize over the next few years, which is that hard work has no reward anymore, so there is no point to it.
In the short term, nobody benefited from this.
They blew it up and got next to nothing in return, outside of the things they were always going to get.
In the long term, Dean Ambrose never again really fit with the WWE, especially when you consider the immediate success he had when he left and began working under his real name again. Seth Rollins may have had his success and booked reasonably well, but he would never again even touch the level he regularly competed at during the duration of The Shield’s first run. As for the Big Dog, they botched it from the moment Rollins’ chair hit his back on June 2nd, 2014 up through his return in the fall of 2020. Left and right. Spent the last half of 2014 destroying all the good will and positive energy that The Shield had built up for the pet project before going ahead with everything anyways. He has the best in-ring career of any of them, but it’s stunningly inconsistent and based on what opponents he happens to have. Far more Batista or Randy Orton, pure system players, than the next John Cena that everyone hoped for and that they blew this up to force.
It’s also that on top of losing Bryan and doing next to nothing with all the other great wrestlers, the most consistent and regular great match act in the company now evaporates, and three different acts take its place, neither even coming close to being what The Shield was in that department.
They blew up the only thing that was still working, and wound up with three separate pieces that they never totally understood how to use (until very recently). At least not in ways that benefited any of them. It’s hard to say it ruined any careers, they all turned out about where they were always going to be (oft pushed failed main eventer, really great golden boy heel, incredible non-WWE wrestler), but because of the timing and mostly the mishandling of everything that came after, it took a lot longer for two of them than it should have. “Greater than the sum of its parts” is simply a concept too advanced for anyone in a decision making capacity to understand, especially when the (then) heir apparent once forced the detonation of his own beloved babyface group so he could turn heel, since he was the least over part of it.
Funny enough, he’s the only one who really benefits from this one too.
I’d call it diminishing returns, but there was actually a match these teams had on Main Event on April 8th that wasn’t really even good at all. It’s a shame because it’s the only one of these four matches the good guys win and you’d think with the way The Shield’s operated this entire first run, there would be something cool in the match to explain what it is that worked suddenly, but there wasn’t really any reason why, outside of that someone wrote it on a sheet of paper somewhere. It’s one of the only Shield matches that I’ve ever thought was lazy and tired, some real house show level stuff on a wholly meaningless show. Respect to them and the Wyatts for not being brainwashed by the WWE briefly pretending to care about Main Event again for a few wees to try and drive up live watch numbers on the in-its-infancy Network, but it meant it wasn’t really even worth writing about.
This is though!
Repetition has robbed the match of its novelty, but all the parts still run really well. The paint isn’t as shiny, but the machine still works as good as anything else. The best big man of a generation, Ambrose revealing a gift for spirited babyface work so long as it’s something worth sinking his teeth into, and Rollins continues to somehow have VERY briefly found his calling as a hot tag babyface (a calling he’ll lose later on when they try to return to the formula, once injuries and bulking up to be a Top Guy have robbed him of his speed and athleticism). Reigns isn’t as good in the role yet, but he’s also doing totally different things, so it doesn’t matter. Bray and Rowan are then perfectly acceptable. They don’t fuck up the choreography, they’re perfectly fine at standing on the taped X on the stage and letting the show happen around them.
There’s nothing new to it, but there’s still enough right that with Bryan wrestling his last match in 2014 on this show, it’s the last thing in the company that still runs at the level that almost half the shows did from April 2013 to April 2014.
Evolution comes out at the end. Ambrose and Rollins manage to dive both onto them and the two heaters, but Roman is still simple enough to get caught by Bray, and the Wyatts win once again.
It’s pure formula, but we’re back to a WWE where execution of pure formula by great wrestlers (and also four others) is about all you’re ever liable to get from a random episode of television. As far as that goes, it’s great stuff. It’s a bummer that it’s gone from one of the most anticipated and exciting matches of the year to a borderline three boy television main event, but it’s the WWE. So little works that when they find something that works as well as this match has, this is what happens, an inevitability. Good things eventually get spoiled, because they come about entirely by accident, one of the many small and depressing things about the company no longer really kept at bay after a year of that. Which, of course, came about entirely by accident.
It isn’t what it was, but it’s still better than almost everything else on television that’s going to follow.
The second major surprise out of Triple H’s 2014, which is up there with 2000 and the like as a near career best year, simply for shooting a perfect 3/3.
It’s a hell of a story too. The Shield finally completed the full face turn the night after WrestleMania by genuinely coming through for justice and genuinely saving Daniel Bryan from a three on one in an attempt by Triple H to simply give himself the title, no longer trusting anyone around him. A story to keep an eye on there, perhaps. The result was the only time ever that the major forces that gave the WWE its unexpected 12-14 month golden age in 2013-2014 being all together at once on the same side at once. It’s an incredibly cool picture for all these reasons.
Following that, Hunter was finally able to get the band back together, and we have a meeting between the best WWE group in a decade and the last group that the WWE took seriously enough to let it succeed and become something real and important, likewise guided by constantly going against the best wrestler in the company at the time and handled so well entirely because they were made up of pet projects. It feel like a big deal, because that’s what happens when you protect acts and concepts and then, yet again, you hurl them at each other in a way that’s interesting and makes sense.
Like the match against the Wyatt Family, it’s a big Shield match that manages to succeed in large part because it genuinely feels important.
It works as this big WWE formula super match, but also as more than that too. From the start, Evolution is not the team that The Shield is. Batista can’t even wear the same color as the other two, they literally can’t even get their presentation together. They immediately lose control of the ring, and while they’re able to control two Shield members (fucking guess which two) for periods of time, it’s never because of teamwork, it’s always because Triple H is smart or Randy Orton is just simply so good. Occasionally, it’s Batista being strong, but if there’s a man on the outside on Evolution, it’s him. Randy and Hunter have a chemistry together that Batista has with neither, and it’s set up throughout the match leading to the finish.
The great matches in this style work on both levels though. A reasonable foundation and then a great fireworks show. Like the Wyatt match, they do a great job of building the fireworks show up, even if most of it comes from one team this time instead of two. Rollins has to work for the big dives, Reigns’ big power spots get cut off initially, and Ambrose’s loveable overzealousness always gets him into trouble. When the cracks in Evolution show, all three Shield members’ attributes begin to show, and they have a real hard time with it for a while. It’s all manic and fun, and produces a few really exciting and fun moments, beyond just the famous Rollins concourse dive. They go a little overboard with the Batista and Roman stuff in the ring, both in them lying around just a little long while other stuff happens, and then having Roman survive both the RKO and Pedigree. It’d be less transparent if they had spread the love around a little on that, but at least one of those comes via a save. Being capable of doing something worse doesn’t make something inherently better, it’s still transparent, but it doesn’t actually matter because it winds up having an opposite kind of effect, as the section focusing entirely on how tough and strong Roman is winds up overshadowed by one of his partners being way cooler and the other getting the big setpiece.
Following the big Seth Rollins dive off the concourse entrance (very well timed and filmed, you never see it coming, genuine great production here), Roman suddenly rallies inside, and hits his punch and the Spear for the win.
It’s a curious finish for a match based around one team being a TEAM and one not to have it come down just to that, but this hasn’t been a subtle push for a long time, and it simply is what it is.
Relative to what comes after this for most of the next few years, this is at least competently done.
The whole thing is, really. An exciting match that feels important and that’s executed nearly perfectly.
One of the last great successes of the Star Making Machine, as everything and everyone else after this mostly happens because of undeniable skill, sheer willpower (from the wrestlers or fans), or both. For one of the last times in this run, it’s another example of just what it looks like and what the company can do when everything works like it should.
I said once that there were very few full shows that I would ever even consider writing about in full, and this is one of them. Possibly the one of them.
It isn’t that it’s such an overwhelmingly great show that I couldn’t not do it all at once. It’s moreso that the matches and narratives on this show all feel so connected to each other and to something bigger that it would feel incorrect on some level not to just write about the entire show. Especially if I was already going to write about most of it anyways, just split up into more traditional match reviews. It’s too good, too important, and too interesting of a show not to cover as one complete thing.
MATCH #0: THE USOS VS. THE REAL AMERICANS VS. RYBAXEL VS. LOS MATADORES
This was an elimination match for the Usos’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It’s fine pre-show work! Most of the quality in this match comes from The Usos and Cesaro, if we’re being wholly honest, but that’s a great tag team and one of the best wrestlers in the world. The fourth most important person in this is El Torito, and he manages at least one spectacular dive here to almost steal the show in a pre-show match. Cesaro and Swagger run through the two jobber teams before getting to the match that should have simply been here all along, and it’s wonderful. Cesaro against The Usos is wonderful, and they’re a fun enough babyface team to get the most out of Jack Swagger for the limited amount of time that this match asks him to do much of anything. A miscommunication between Cesaro and Swagger gives the Usos the win.
Nothing blowaway here, but a brisk, easy, and fun match. Usually not the case with WrestleMania pre-show work, and it’s almost entirely due to a tag team that deserves more than the pre-show and a wrestler who will finally (briefly) get his due later on.
three boy
Following the match, tensions finally come to a head, and Cesaro does the thing people have been begging for en masse for the last month since his breakout February, and dissolves the team. Cesaro does so with a crowd pleasing many rotation Giant Swing, which is about all that Jack Swagger, this act, and this unbelievably wasteful team ever really deserved.
WWE WRESTLEMANIA XXX
APRIL 6TH, 2014
SUPERDOME
NEW ORLEANS, LOUSIANA
The show begins with one of the more fun pieces of WWE nostalgia bullshit ever. Usually, it’s the same three groups or same twenty people we always see, but with three of the WWE’s former Aces in the ring and three of the four or five top guys in company history, it’s just really cool. Also Hulk Hogan fucks up and says “Silverdome” instead of Superdome and that’s like a bit for a thousand years.
More than just being cool, it’s also done in a very cool way, as Stone Cold interrupts Hogan and clowns him, leading to a real fun little bit of tension and also Stone Cold getting a “WHAT” for simply listing the first ten WrestleManias off when describing Hogan’s run. The Rock then comes out to ease the tension, and all three do a spectacular job redirecting it to the current generation, likening Hogan to Cena and Austin to Daniel Bryan, before all three share some beers.
Genuinely cool!
The exact correct use of nostalgia.
Before the show actually starts, the best WWE hype video of the last decade airs –
DANIEL BRYAN VS. TRIPLE H
It’s the best build up and storyline in WWE history.
I am done coaching it in “perhaps” and “maybe” and even “of its time”. It’s better than Austin and McMahon in 1998-1999, and that’s not the fault of either Austin or McMahon. The fact that people had to force this and the rest of this show into being adds a sense of stakes and real struggle to it that Austin and McMahon simply can’t entirely match up with, because Austin was just so obviously the man. All of the little touches between SummerSlam and Elimination Chamber are basically perfect. The Shawn Michaels stuff, the title ceremony, the Wyatts/Bryan feud with the only reasoning being “the devil made me do it”, etc.
Once the match itself got made, just about every segment was a classic. If I was a maniac enough to rank the best segments of the year, I’m pretty sure all of them would come from this program. Hunter’s refusal was perfect, the veneer just barely still on. The invasion of the fans under an OCCUPY RAW banner to force the match, then following up with the fake police handcuffing beatdown, as seen in the video above. The comeback weeks later, Hunter’s shitheel video of all the other fan favorites he’s buried, even these promos on early WWE Network Raw post shows that were just pure shouting about the rights of workers against The Authority. It’s all perfect.
The presentation of this as well is stunning. Daniel Bryan makes a spirited but very normal entrance, eschewing any of the WrestleMania pomp and circumstance usually afforded to people as over as he is. In contrast, Triple H makes this all-time over the top entrance presented as like the version of himself he sees inside his own insane and diseased brain. This gold coated warrior god-king surrounded by his NXT golden girl valkyries. It’s truly truly deranged, and absolutely perfect.
The match itself is one of the best in WrestleMania and company history.
In this match, Daniel Bryan is nearly perfect.
The arm work isn’t entirely airtight, that’s really it. Otherwise, an incredible performance. The fire at the start, the wry sort of way he dominates Hunter initially, even something like changing up the knee off the apron into a tornado DDT off the apron. Read it as a bigger move for a bigger show, or changing up because Triple H is an obsessive tape watcher, it works just as well either way. Say the same for Bryan breaking out a repeated Tope Suicida spot for the first time in forever, so it feels like a huge deal. The selling itself is terrific. Only using the one arm, having problems with the Yes Lock and other holds, classic stuff. Beyond the mechanical, it’s an all time great WWE babyface performance. He’s sympathetic enough to work as a classical underdog babyface, but then fiery enough and whipping enough ass to work as a classical WWE top level babyface in the same match.
The best thing Bryan does here might not even be anything he overtly does from bell to bell. As you may have read on this blog, Bryan is the greatest wrestler of all time, and as much of that is about individual performance as it is about bringing the best out of other wrestlers. Sometimes it means him pushing someone to something or providing an example for someone like him. Other times, it’s a more nebulous thing, with the reputation that Daniel Bryan has forcing someone to bring their best to the table for fear of being to blame if a a match isn’t exceptional.
This match is the ultimate statement of that, because there has never ever been a better version of Triple H than the one we saw here, the King of Kings Road. He’s had matches as good as this, a few even better, but they’ve all had some shortcut attached to them, some gimmick to help him out. This is a boiler plate professional wrestling match, and he has never looked better in one or performed more intelligently in any single wrestling match.
Bryan comes in with his left arm and shoulder bandaged up from the months going into this of people targeting it, starting way back in December 2013. Bryan’s smart enough to keep Hunter away time and time again. There’s a great undercurrent to this that Hunter isn’t quite the technical wrestler he imagines himself to be, and it’s not until he can get into some Attitude Era bullshit with an announce table does his arm work actually pay any sort of dividend. That’s what works so well about this match for Hunter, is that Bryan seems to get the essence of the Triple H character its core and works to it. It’s not some genius god-king like Hunter thinks, but it’s this power wrestler who knows JUST enough to be dangerous and who has absolutely no moral limits. He can’t fight Bryan on the ground, not really and no matter how smart or well schooled he is, but when he can get a Divorce Court on the announce table, he can finally do something. Much like the rest of the feud, they’re also smart enough to weaponize Triple H’s past, as best expressed with his use of the repeated Crossface holds. It’s not a thing that can ever really be said, for totally fair and obvious reasons, but Triple H now using the Crossface is SUCH a god damned thing, and him doing it to Bryan is perfect. This symbol of another thing he snuffed out once upon a time, but also another example of Triple H not totally getting everything he’s doing. He’s smart enough to go to the hurt arm, he’s seen enough to know the right things to do, but he never totally gets how to make the most out of an arm based attack and has no real idea how to win with it.
Hunter goes back to his power game when it gets too hard, and it dooms him. Bryan’s tough enough to kick out of the Pedigree, but that’s all Hunter has. He gets mean and nasty, but at the other end of that is simply going for it again. Bryan escapes, outmaneuvers him, and wins clean as a fucking sheet off of the running knee.
A genuine epic level struggle, but one that manages that without going anywhere close to too far, and one that achieves that status while always being real and grounded. A masterpiece of a match that in retrospect, only Daniel Bryan could ever have gotten off of the ground, Not simply because he brought the best out of Triple H, but because only he could create a scenario wild enough for a match like this to happen, but also for a match like this to be able to be this restrained in the first place. The all time expression of the unstated and often unintentional politics of being the best wrestler of all time.
Bryan gets to the main event after all, and Triple H finally gets one of these “I did the right thing!” moments that he’s actually allowed to talk about, which you know he’s been mad about for the last seven years.
****
Following the match, Triple H and his wife attack Bryan’s arm with a chair, to try and put the main event participation of Our Hero in doubt, despite not being able to actually stop him themselves. The working class hero did the work and got there fairly, only to be kneecapped anyways yet again because The Game has been rigged from the start. So it goes.
THE SHIELD VS. KANE & THE NEW AGE OUTLAWS
It’s two minutes.
It’s two minutes and it’s PERFECT.
The Shield completely runs through three old hacks. It’s exciting and incredibly fun and wholly dominant. They get maybe a punch or two in, but thankfully, this match totally abandons the pretense. These guys are old, they can’t hang, and The Shield completely runs through them. Roman spears all three, Dean and Seth dive on them repeatedly, and the match ends with the first ever Double Triple Powerbomb. Or the Triple-Double. It’s a waste of The Shield, they could have done more on this show, but at the same time, it’s such a wonderful show of force.
At the end, JBL delivers one of his better serious calls ever with, “there goes the Attitude Era”.
It’s obviously bullshit seven years later, but in the moment, following all the fun and positive things that happened so far, it really did feel that way at the time.
THE ANDRE THE GIANT MEMORIAL BATTLE ROYAL
The best WWE battle royal in a long time, close to a decade. There were several surprisingly good ones in the mid 2000s, and they succeeded for the same reason that this did, and it’s the overwhelming pool of talent in the ring and some creative composition. The dead weight gets out of the ring fast and for the most part, it’s all fun and creative. You get down to the meat of the thing, and it’s all great wrestlers. The Big Show, Sheamus, Del Rio, Mysterio, Ziggler, Cesaro, Goldust, and the like. Cool eliminations, fast pace, really gets rid of every issue with boring and routine WWE battle royals.
Somehow Cesaro makes it to the end against obvious winner The Big Show.
Except that Cesaro just explodes on him? He hits a flurry of uppercuts on the big fella, AND THEN SLAMS HIM OVER THE TOP AND OUT HOLY SHIT WHAT?
It’s another seemingly impossible feat on this show. A battle royal win that genuinely feels like a huge deal and a starmaker. Beyond that, a battle royal with real substance and that’s full of cool stuff, instead of just being the means to an end. Easily the best of all of these Andre battle royals, as the only one they took entirely seriously, and the best WWE battle royal in close to a decade in either direction.
***
Between the big turn earlier in the show and a win as powerful and definitive at that, it seems almost impossible to deny Cesaro going forward.
Before the next contest, WWE manages to accidentally touch on something real in the media world at the time when it’s happening. Another total stunner, I know. Bray Wyatt comes out to his swamp voodoo song in New Orleans with a live performance from the band in these elaborate and creepy little costumes, at the exact time that the first season of True Detective (the good one) was a big and major deal with a real similar overall vibe. We’re in Carcosa now. It’s the peak of Bray Wyatt’s career, this incredibly cool entrance while the entire act still feels like a huge huge deal.
JOHN CENA VS. BRAY WYATT
I’m not going to waste whatever credibility I may or may not have selling you on the idea that this is great.
It isn’t.
What it is though is a whole lot of fun.
The story itself is quite silly. Bray wants Cena to kill him and reveal that he’s a monster as part of some plan to show the world that Cena can be mean and violent too and that their hero is no better than him. It’s especially weird because like…yeah, no shit? If you have a working memory, you remember all these big violent things Cena’s done to end feuds. The part of it that does work though is Bray trying to bait Cena into a disqualification so he has a huge WrestleMania win, but as always, the story told bell to bell is rarely the same as the one told on commentary when it comes to these WWE concept matches.
If you can get past that though, this is a lot of fun. It’s Cena against a Monster of the Week, but Bray’s physical and over enough for it to be a fun application of formula. Cena breaks out a lot of the bigger stuff for a WrestleMania match, even if he’s in the middle of the card for the first time in a while. Wyatt matches him with a few bigger moves and more spectacular moments than usual. It’d be ideal, if not for the end, when that bullshit comes back around. Bray gives Cena a chair for some reason, like he’s going to hit him with it, but without being nearly annoying or mean enough to warrant that. Cena hits the Family outside with it instead, and counters Sister Abby into the FU to win. I’m good with the bullshit on some Buy The Ticket shit, especially with a match this fun otherwise, but yeah, real weird and a depressing harbinger of what’s to come, both for the feud and for the entire Wyatt character, who will not be covered very often on this site from now on.
Pure WWE bullshit, but wrapped up in a surprisingly fun match bell to bell.
an extremely borderline three boy
THE UNDERTAKER VS. BROCK LESNAR
We’re not here to talk about the match. You know that.
This one’s all about the finish, and saying that, this is probably better than its reputation but also nowhere near good enough to eclipse the moment itself. The entire deal is about Undertaker being so assured in his victory after the last five years he’s survived, but no longer really doing anything to guarantee that. The entire match he feels half a speed off, and leans entirely on what worked on the past. He tries the Hell’s Gate from his back that’s won a few in the past, but it totally fails. He never makes a real honest comeback until the last few minutes, and when he needs to do more, all he can break out is fucking Old School or a Kimura. He wrestles like someone assured that something will eventually break in his favor, because for 21 shows and 24 years, it has.
Except it doesn’t.
Brock just never allows him that break, and on the third F5, it finally happens.
I’m not going to eulogize the fucking Streak like it’s a person or something real, but it is a major moment.
Around the time this happened, I read a wonderful and insane piece of fanwank, the sort of theory that redefines fanwank and sticks with you. It stated that Heyman saw Undertaker up close the previous year at Wrestlemania in the Taker/Punk match and saw what was there, that The Undertaker largely won because Punk hurt himself on the big table spot and barely defeated someone like two-thirds his size. Heyman also had a history of paying off The Shield to help his clients, and conveniently, they targeted The Undertaker and hurt him. Brock Lesnar’s next match is then against CM Punk, where he finds himself just about equal and more physically dominant, before nuking another big guy, The Big Show, earlier in 2014 in his next match. Brock fails to make any mistakes here, learning something from almost losing to Punk , and specifically, he fails to make the mistakes others have made against Undertaker in the last few years, despite Taker having been shot since the dive in 2009. It all feels like a plan finally coming to fruition.
Or it’s all bullshit that just happens to conveniently fit together. It’s sort of the beauty of fanwank. Do it with enough art and skill and hey, why not? It’s the WWE, you never expect anything out of them, but it makes sense, so…fuck it. Why not?
Really though, it’s one of the most significant things to happen in the WWE and pro wrestling all decade. A pro wrestling sort of 9/11 or JFK assassination, not in terms of actual importance (this is all nonsense fake fighting, none of it is actually important, we are all incredibly dumb for caring about it at all), but in the sense that most people I talk to seem to remember exact circumstances of their viewing experience or where they were or what they were doing when they found out. It’s not a unique thing, people tend to have those sorts of memories for the big things, but this is such a big thing that it seems almost a universal experience.
For me, I was in my sophomore year dorm room, leaning back in my shitty yet weirdly comfortable standard issue chair after digesting a Dominos pan pizza and bread bites, either drinking an Oberon or leftover Guinness from the holiday a few weeks prior. Headphones in to be nice to that fucking freak Kevin, the roommate who lived on Subway tuna melts and Pepsi Max, talking in a group chat. I was stunned. Genuinely stunned. It’s a result beyond even Oracle capabilities, I’m not sure that I closed my mouth for a whole minute. I’m not sure anyone in the chat wrote anything for a minute or two, which I’m not sure I’ve ever experiences in years of watching live pay per views in group chats.
I’ve never really experienced a feeling like it when watching wrestling otherwise, and the best thing I can say about it is that it’s the entire reason you manufacture streaks to begin with.
The only thing wrong here is that The Undertaker ever wrestled another match after this.
A stunning display of an entire company’s inability to look at a calendar.
THE VICKIE GUERRERO INVITATIONAL
I’ll give this as much respect as the company did. I think that’s fair. It wasn’t especially good, the only match on the show that’s obvious filler and that you could cut and lose absolutely nothing. That being said, after a thing like what came before it, you needed a little bit of a break. Feel sorry for all the women who got thrown to the wolves like this, but it was also easily the weakest match and weakest build on the entire show, so it’s not like it was the wrong choice of matches to sacrifice either.
RANDY ORTON VS. BATISTA VS. DANIEL BRYAN
This was for Orton’s WWE World Heavyweight Title.
Even if it’s not better than Bryan’s first match on the show, Hunter once again simply HAVING to outshine his proteges, it’s still a much better match than most people remember.
Obviously, this should have simply been Orton against Bryan. It’s been the central feud of the WWE over the last six plus months, really going back to their series in June and brief team against The Shield before that. It’s not the end of the world though. Batista is an addition that adds to the match in his own way, both as this obvious corporate avatar in contrast to Daniel Bryan, but also as the other representation of the last decade plus of WWE plans that Bryan’s upending.
The match itself is really great. A lot of complaints I’ve read and heard are about sections where Bryan is gone, like it’s WrestleMania XX or something and there’s a long stretch without him, but that genuinely is not the case here. The story is moreso that they try and do that, but never really can. It’s that all the bullshit in the world finally just can’t succeed anymore. The arm doesn’t stop him from getting there. The combined efforts of the two chosen ones aren’t enough, because he’s just better than them. Failing that, Triple H and Stephanie come to stop his win once, and they wave crooked referee Scott Armstrong back out after his absence for months after the plot in the fall of 2013. Bryan’s finally both done playing the game the right way, and also in a spot where he no longer has to, and kicks him in the head. A dive takes out The Authority, and when Hunter goes for his trusty sledgehammer, Bryan easily takes that and knocks him out with it too.
Subtlety may not or may not be for cowards, but there is a time and a place for it, and it sure isn’t now.
Big Dave and Randy manage their big spot to take Bryan out, but it simply doesn’t work. He refuses the stretcher and instead of some big sequence like I think people have turned it into in their heads, Randy simply brings him back into the ring. The big final ran is tremendous. Batista hits his marks as well as he ever had to. Randy’s tremendous. Bryan simply won’t ever go away. They tease a few different results as well as possible, making the most out of a real audience fear that they still won’t ACTUALLY do the right thing, before then actually delivering. Bryan wipes Big Dave out with the knee, and then goes into the Yes Lock. Good things can happen sometimes. Batista taps out, and it’s all finally over, and a year of faith is rewarded.
Daniel Bryan is the WWE World Heavyweight Champion.
It’s not the greatest match ever. It’s a WWE three way, and it has many of the problems of the WWE three way in terms of feeling somewhat aimless at times and three ways being less satisfying in major moments like this. However, they still packed so much into this in terms of the story elements, and with a performance as great and evocative as Bryan’s was, so much of those problems simply do not matter, outside of that I wish he simply just got Orton one on one at the end of all this. It’s a fortunate thing that this was a great match, another fortunate success for Daniel Bryan, but up to a certain point, this was entirely about the result and the match more than came through on that result.
***1/4
There are very few times in decades of watching wrestling that have felt as good as this.
Many are tainted, and the only one remotely on the same level is Money in the Bank 2011. It’s apples and oranges, to some extent. That was a short three week build, and this was something close to a year in the making. The qualities of the former allowed it to feel like a genuine revolution, a combination of a coup d’etat and a college football rivalry game. In contrast, this was the payoff to such a long and arduous struggle. They’re different situations and different feelings. The live element of MITB also can’t ever be separated. They also feel very connected in my head, one cannot exist without the other. Or rather, this cannot exist without that opening the door. All the same, this is the high point of that movement and feeling. It’s the high water mark of a wave of unrest that Punk began, and that Punk eventually sealed with his January 2014 walk out.
I reviewed this entire show at once not just because it’s such a well put together show, or because I like it so much, but because of what it felt like at the time and what it feels like now. It’s such a hopeful wrestling show, the likes of which you rarely get from the WWE, let alone from other pro wrestling. Virtually everything on this show is about the future, and closing the book on the past for good, save for Cena/Wyatt, which exists both as an outlier and as this reaffirmation of Cena as this new generation’s living legend. A new era’s been inching closer for a few years now, Â and this is the show where it feels like it’s finally upon us.
To put it in another way, if the WWE is a long running television show, this entire event feels like a series finale.
Perhaps not a willing one, but definitely a show with that sort of a tone to it. It’s not exactly “Made in America” or “Felina” or “Family Meeting” or the last episode of The Wire, or any of these finales that feel like they know they’re finales. But like a television show that knows it might be the end, and which seeks to wrap up every loose end just in case.
The Bryan thing obviously works to that.
When The Authority formed after SummerSlam, there was kind of a wink and nod way they did it where it felt like the WWE admitting they didn’t want smaller workhorse types to actually be on top, with the entire “B+” and “good little wrestler” lines echoing so much, and justifying a lot of past actions with guys like Punk, Bret, Benoit, Eddie, Jericho, etc. They weren’t just heels, they were this entire system that a lot of fans hated, put on screen, the implicit made explicit. It was made even more real when Punk had enough and quit, so Bryan wasn’t just fighting some good heels with an uncomfortable truth to them, but he was fighting the WWE. This entire thing that didn’t want people like him to succeed, and actively wanted them to either die, give up, or leave. He was fighting the idea of the WWE, the kind of place that’s always told people what they want instead of really listening and valued a certain body type and image in the face of everything else, and it put Bryan over the top as a People’s Champion. So when Bryan wins here, it genuinely feels like he’s broken that. Like WWE finally stopped fighting it and accepted that Daniel Bryan is their top babyface and this needs to ride out, like Bret Hart in the mid 90s. You knew he would never get the full promotional machine, but it seemed like this would at least play out until Reigns and Rollins and Ambrose and etc. were ready, and Bryan would be that guy, in the moment and euphoric feeling that came out of this show.
On top of that, Bryan did it by going through Evolution. Triple H has long been WWE’s most enduring schemer and this was the night that all his schemes over the last ten to fifteen years completely failed in front of the world. Triple H finally gave the kind of performance that seemed to match how he’d always seen himself in his own mind, and it absolutely did not matter. His hubris got the best of him and his world collapsed and his philosophy was defeated on the biggest possible stage. He couldn’t beat Bryan and his greatest creations failed to do the same, so he had nothing but the job title. Triple H’s days on camera being done seemed like they were coming to an end in a 100% believable way befitting of that character at the end of the show. He’s COO now because he married well and because he has the mind for it, but in a Vic Mackey-ish way, where it’s all he has left and he hates it. He’s been so exposed that that’s all there is, and it’s the exact ending he deserves, an embarrassing striver exposed and beaten in front of the world, and resigned to something he hates doing.
Beyond that, The Streak ended. WWE’s longest running story came to a close and got blown off, and The Undertaker finally got beaten. Based on everything else, he should be gone. Done and retired. The Attitude Era was seemingly laid to rest by the new hot group. Cesaro became a star in an amazing moment. John Cena is the outlier, but he works with a hot new heel, leaves him something, and establishes himself as the living legend to a new generation in the way The Undertaker was ten years earlier.
I’ve never seen a WWE show that wraps up this many loose ends.
So naturally, because they put on this “episode” – one of the most satisfying episodes in the entire genre’s history – the show is renewed. Like any good show, they allowed themselves stories to continue and expand on. The Shield are now firmly babyfaces, but now are bound to run afoul of top heels now, with all new match ups there. Bryan as champion and the top babyface in the company, obviously. Cesaro’s babyface turn. Bray’s continued rise as a top level heel, and Cena’s “THE FUTURE GOES THROUGH ME” speech from a month ago as this challenge to all the young guys in the company, many of whom still have yet to test that. And of course, that clear return match between our two top heroes, with a new God level monster Brock Lesnar waiting in the wings.
There’s all this stuff to continue on with in as satisfying a manner as the last twelve months have shown them capable of proceeding. Except, they didn’t. But we can get to that later, say after a certain event on a certain Raw after a certain early June pay-per-view where WWE intentionally ruins their hottest act at a time when with a certain injury to a certain top guy, and the way they’d ruined a certain battle royal winner seemingly 100% on purpose, they needed them the most.
On this night though, everything works and leaves me and you and all good wrestling fans unable to remove the smiles from our faces. The future, if it exists, is the brightest it’s looked after a WrestleMania in 16 years, if not ever.
The WWE has reached something like a peak again near the end and everything that could be blown off has been blown off. A rocky ride, but one hell of a final season.
It sure isn’t what it was in 2013, but even reduced to a simple television showcase for Reigns and Rollins, there’s a lot to it.
As part of The Shield’s slow turn towards the light, they’ve come into conflict with Kane, who’s targeted them for recent weakness. It’s part of the overall story of The Authority cracking as Bryan gets closer and closer, with Kane focusing on punishing the former guard dogs that he long since slipped by. It’s a waste of The Shield for WrestleMania, but it’s a fun little story all told. Kane opts to toughen them up and also kind of punish them by throwing them back in there with Cody and Dustin, who they’ve yet to beat two on two in their previous three tries.
It’s a great set up for a better match than this. Unfortunately, it’s the WWE and part of buying the ticket and taking the ride is accepting that weird and wonderful miracles have to come to an end again some time. Goldust and Cody lost the titles to the fucking New Age Outlaws in January and have been relegated back to jobber to the stars status, putting over the Wyatts and The Shield in six mans to build up their clash, and now doing the same to give those big wins back now that they’ve fallen back out of favor. It is what it is. It’s upsetting, but beyond just the WWE being the WWE and forgetting about things or easily growing bored, they’re Rhodeses in the WWE and Dusty hasn’t had real political power in twenty years. It was an inevitability that’s been corrected, a return to nature in all the worst ways. Nothing ever turns good or bad overnight exactly, and this is the first step in the natural order (i.e. a bad wrestling product) returning.
The match is wonderful though! Goldust and Reigns are once again tremendous against each other. Goldust is the best babyface tag team worker of all time once again, and Cody Rhodes has never been in a more natural role than being a babyface hot tag at this point. The fireworks show is wonderful, even at a lower grade, and the Disaster Kick catch into Rollins’ turnbuckle powerbomb now actually goes somewhere when he follows with the fake curb stomp for the win. It feels less like a win over the team that dominated them previously than it does a showcase win over a mid level tag team, but that isn’t anyone’s fault in the ring. If nothing else, the ending itself shows the sort of progression this needed to deliver in a broader sense, and the small details in the body took care of the rest.
While the match never hits the highs of their series in the last quarter of 2013, it is at least a different sort of a match, as something closer to a pure face/face battle. Roman and Seth are aggressive and booked strongly, but there’s not a lot of cheating or shit talk anymore. It’s the sort of slight turn that began after the Royal Rumble and that’s worked out wonderfully, as such a thing always does. The key to a great slow face turn like this is slowly turning into a different direction with enough grace that it feels gradual and realistic, but also enough subtlety that you can get there without always telegraphing it. It means the eventual turn can still feel huge and exciting, but also like the most natural thing in the world.
A borderline great match wrapped up inside of some great booking.
Again, it’s how this is supposed to work. Hand in glove. Everything helps everything else. The frustrating element aside, it’s another outstanding piece of wrestling television, as this comes only a few segments before one of the most memorable segments of the last ten years, with Bryan’s plant fan assisted protest. Everything’s working together suddenly. Great matches, good booking, interesting character, and incredible angles. It’s another look at the dying days of what mainstream wrestling television can be when everything functions this smoothly.
The closer we get to the WWE’s series finale, the more there seems to be behind everything. It’s always lovely to see a show that keeps a foot on the gas headed towards the finish line, even if the last few seasons weren’t up to those old standards. Nobody sane would ever accuse the WWE of having an imperial phase outside of 1998-2001, but this 2013-2014 run is the closest they’ve been in some time, and a run of television like they’ve had in February and March 2014 really really drives that home.
It’s the first time the WWE puts on a show in Chicago since CM Punk left, and this is one of the centerpieces of a surprising effort from WWE to actually give people things they want. It’s a stunning concept all these years later, I know.
Generally, it’s a fascinating show in retrospect. It feels like a make-good effort, or at least an attempt by the WWE at placating a hostile audience. Either way, it’s the sort of effort you don’t really see much of after mid-2014. There was an all-time great Paul Heyman promo redirecting the expected “CM PUNK” chants into heat on the otherwise fairly cold Taker/Lesnar WrestleMania program, the Tag Titles got removed from the New Age Outlaws to give The Usos their overdue title win (yes, they dethroned the Rhodes Brothers who are now doing a losing streak angle. Nothing gold(ust) can stay. Buy the ticket, etc.), the card was packed with good matches elsewhere like Sheamus vs. Christian and another Ziggler vs. Del Rio fight, and the show otherwise revolved around the Daniel Bryan WrestleMania build. It’s a stunning amount of effort for a normal television show, more effort than they’ve put into most pay per views since 2016 or so. Save for a few episodes of 2016 Smackdown Live, it’s one of the last times ever that anyone in this horrible company gets serious and decides that this episode of television simply cannot fail.
The kicker is this match though, as WWE placates people by hurling this smash hit back out there, now on free television.
Fortunately, we’re still somehow in this accidental golden age, and it’s not simply a blatant retread but an exciting continuation of the previous encounter.
It’s a lot like the match on Smackdown some nine months prior in which The Shield lost for the first time. This doesn’t quite have the same well built up payoff and punch to it, I doubt it’s going to make a MOTY list at the end of 2014, but it has many of the same qualities. It’s only eleven minutes on television but they pack a lot of great action into that, and work in some exceptional story beats to anchor it to the Earth and add in some gravity outside of all the major high points.
Following all the ways things went wrong eight days earlier, Ambrose returned to the fold with more craziness and aggression than ever before. Roman accepted him back, but Rollins is a little more tense with everything. He’s the one to explode initially, and basically runs the table on his own for the first few minutes. More genuinely remarkable stuff. Some of the best of his career. There’s a great little bit thrown in early on when Harper tries to cut off the hot start with the Tope he used to shut Seth down eight days earlier, only for him to block it now. There’s another when Roman has this huge smile on his face while he’s watching Seth run wild. It’s the sort of thing that made this 2014 face turn so natural, both that they’re doing it to people way less likeable than them, but also that it’s just good as hell to watch people have fun while doing remarkable things, and it’s naturally way easier to support a group that seems as genuinely close and real as The Shield starts to at this point. Less and less, it feels like a manufactured young boy band factory style superteam like it did in late 2012, and feels more like just a group of guys who all have these distinct personalities, but gel perfectly as a team.
It’s only when Wyatt draws Ambrose in, so he can throw him to the ropes to knock Seth off the top rope, that the match turns in the favor of The Shield. Ambrose gets distracted from a tag once when he and Roman get drawn off the apron to fight, but he makes it a third time, only to get cut off. Constantly, The Shield feels like a team that’s been totally figured out now. Not in the way Daniel Bryan did where he caught onto that you take Roman out and you can close out one of the other two easier if you’re talented enough, but in a way where it seems like their playbook has been figured out. They’re never in the right place at the right time. More importantly, Bray’s figured out how to throw Ambrose off, and Harper’s figured out the physical part against all three. The work in control itself is mostly Like Harper once again, so it works. Even then, Rowan’s weird head crusher hold totally whips ass, so it’s not this one man show.
The final third is then where the wheels come entirely off of The Shield. Rollins gets frustrated and walks away from a tag out from Ambrose, and shouts at Roman about always being the glue. Dean and Roman try to do it themselves. It’s cool to already see the fault lines here. Seth overstating his role and being petulant, but Dean and Roman actually having a closer bond than Seth is capable of having with either of them or probably any other human being ever. The action itself rules. To the match’s benefit, it’s not especially well organized at this point, it’s the two guys left hurling themselves around until the numbers catch up. Harper’s cut off works on Roman this time, and Dean makes up for the disappearing act at the pay per view by fighting all on his own now at the end. It fails, because that’s always going to fail. Bray hits the Sister Abby again for the win while the traitor watches from the aisle.
The shame of this match is less that it was short and more that there isn’t REALLY a payoff to it. They have two more matches, but not to the level of these first two. John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt is cool or whatever and eventually leads to one of the best spots of the year a few months later, but also, fuck them. With the benefit of hindsight, the WrestleMania match should have been Shield/Wyatts III with The Shield finally going over to cement the big face turn. It’s the thing that seems like it has to come after this, but it’s the WWE and outright expecting more than you’re getting moment to moment is how you go insane.
What we do get is one of the best and most organic slow face turns in WWE over the last ten or twenty years or something. Namely, we get this wonderful segment over the next week of television where The Shield hashes all their problems out and…and that’s it. Nobody turns on anyone (yet), they just air their grievances and stay friends like normal people do, entering a wonderful and tragically short third period where now Rollins is sort of presented like the leader, but more accurately where it finally does feel like a totally equal partnership instead of anyone lagging behind. It’s the babyface run in 2014 (including this feud) that really takes them from just being this thing that clicked perfectly for 6-12 months into being one of the best things WWE’s ever done.
Bel to bell, this is a spectacular match from one of the last genuinely great episodes of wrestling television (main roster) to come out of this company. I recommend the entire thing, because it’s such a rare and wonderful thing to see a company this big and monolithic and seemingly bulletproof being forced not only to do the one thing, but being forced to actually put forth their best foot forward. I won’t say it doesn’t matter why, because it does. The why of it is why it doesn’t last, and why it’s never really been this good again for any significant length of time. It’s done out of panic and a little fear rather than any sort of altruistic or long lasting ideology, so it won’t last once that panic is gone, but what an incredibly fun ride they managed to assemble.
Much like the big two on the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view, this episode is what it looks like when everything’s working like it always should.
I’ve written at some length before about one of my favorite tropes in wrestling, and that’s the idea of building two forces up entirely separate from each other and then hurling them towards each other at great speed. Get two acts over, keep them apart, and then suddenly spring the match up on the world so it’s not only this meeting between two hot acts, but also tinged with this element of being surprised that it would happen, because people simply weren’t thinking about it. Prince Devitt vs. Kazuchika Okada was an incredible example of the idea, a hot heel and a recently turned hot babyface who was the previous year’s hot heel. There’s a lot of that in here too, but for once, the 2010s New Japan version of a thing is so much more slapdash and far less well executed than the WWE version of a thing.
For once, the WWE actually lives up to all the things they claim and pretend they do, and adding a story to this before hurling opposing forces at each other works to the match and the feud’s benefit.
The old thing WWE’s always done, going back decades, is to find a match up that works or that excites people, then break it up and keep them apart until it’s time to do it now with something more behind it. The earliest example I can think of is that in 1986, Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage had a series of house show matches against each other in the late spring and early summer. It was exciting, it drew, and there was a chemistry there. They then were suddenly hurled apart, only to then finally meet in front of the world at WrestleMania V, resulting in a defining match of the era because this proven great pairing now had such a great build up too. They’re hardly alone. It’s never been done quite as long-term or with such patience as the Hogan/Savage thing, but you can see examples of it throughout the Attitude Era, finding TV pairings that worked (Rock/Benoit, Austin/Angle, HHH/Benoit, Rock/Angle, HHH/Jericho) and then figuring out a clear and logical way to get back to that match up on a larger stage. For the most part though, it’s felt like a lost art in recent years, with only a few incarnations of the idea that feel less like someone saw a great pairing and made a plan and more like pure coincidence.
This lacked the patience of any of those things. There’s three months between when they realized they lucked into a match up that everyone demanded to see and when the match happened. But by drawing back initially, giving these reasons not to do the match, and only then delivering once people had started to forget about it, the match feels huge. That’s the biggest thing the match has going for it, that it feels absolutely gigantic. It feels gigantic both because these groups had been built up so well before being thrown at each other, but also because of the way they’ve been thrown at each other. The build up for this match was three or four weeks of dueling promos, and one brief physical altercation on the preceding week’s episode of Raw. It’s alarmingly simple, something you don’t really get a lot of anymore, and it absolutely worked.
All the match really has to do is not blow it, and it did so much more than that.
To get it out of the way, it’s not perfect.
I don’t think this works so well on its own. It somewhat lacks that sort of granular quality. I think it’s probably a very good match removed from all of that, but certain things like Ambrose getting taken out, The Shield getting stuffed by another big man’s explosiveness, the big table spot, the three on one ending finally turning around, etc., all works so much better with the last year of context, of slowly learning what The Shield is, and what each member individually is.
Mechanically and production wise, it’s somewhat imperfect too. You can also maybe do without one of the Wyatt Family control segments. I don’t think it ever drags, but it’s not a match that I would ever describe as air-tight. There is also the issue of Dean Ambrose at the end of the match. When it breaks down, he and Bray Wyatt fight off into the crowd, and Ambrose simply vanishes. It’s hard to tell what the plan is. Given the reception the Shield’s slow face turn and this match received, if he was supposed to have simply ran off, that was retconned very shortly. If he was supposed to have taken something to remove him from the match, it was missed out on. It’s very rare that the WWE doesn’t explicitly spell something out for you, so a mystery like that stands out as incredibly weird. Given that Wyatt does return to the match, does so with a smile, and Ambrose is gone for the remaining two or three minutes, I’m inclined to side with the latter. But it’s incredibly weird and feels like a loose end on this thing that doesn’t quite fit in with the precision to be found everywhere else in this match.
Outside of that though, holy shit!
It’s an arguable career performance for at least half the guys in this match. As good as the Daniel Bryan match was a month prior, I’m not sure if Bray Wyatt individually has ever had another performance as good as the one he had here. Erick Rowan, for his part, was tasked with a good chunk of the last third of this in the ring and definitely overdelivered. Lastly, this match asked more from Rollins than most other Shield matches have, not only being the big stunt guy, but also being the final of the two Shield members isolated and also providing a huge emotional spark in the final stretch. He delivered all of it. I don’t have a single negative thing to say about Rollins’ performance in this match, and I really wish that I did. I love tearing him down, I love pointing out any single flaw I can see in anything he does, and it just didn’t exist here.
Beyond that, it’s also one of Roman’s best babyface performances ever as the big hot tag in the end, and the last man left standing. It’s the first time Luke Harper gets to really show a main roster WWE crowd everything he can do, and he arguably steals the show. He’s the motor behind the middle of the match, like the Wyatt Family’s secret weapon when he begins doing more than simple meathead clubbering. There’s a wonderful moment in transition to the Wyatt Family’s first period of control, when after a great and lively run of Shield control (which worked 100% as a babyface segment, something they’d never really done before and looked so natural in doing) in which Harper explodes and takes the wind out of Ambrose with a dropkick. Nobody really saw it coming, and it’s this first big moment in the match when The Shield get taken aback and begin to realize what they’re actually up against. He’s also perfect in his big spots later on, particularly his big dive to stuff Dean’s frantic run of offense. On that note, it’s also definitely the best Dean Ambrose main roster WWE performance. He’s as manic as always, but so easily flips the switch to being able to do that in a way that’s likeable now. Leaping at people wildly, flinging his body around, and then also suddenly being this incredibly sympathetic character in peril in the middle of this thing when it’s not really something he’d ever been asked to do before.
The main thing though is just how well it’s put together. The match begins with a brief fight before settling down, so nobody can ever stand up and shout “I LOVE WHEN GRUDGE MATCHES BEGIN WITH LOCK UPS” (as they are usually correct to do). Each segment seems to have something to say. Establishing The Shield’s dominance, calling out Ambrose’s hubris and unpredictability as a weakness, Seth’s hot tag both being a false start to a finishing run before him then being punished for being a glory hog and trying to do it all on his own, and then things breaking down. The way they break down, for once, is never in The Shield’s favor. It’s great on its own, but this is a large part of what I mean when I say that context helps. Daniel Bryan’s figured things out and The Shield’s eaten some shit before, but it always came suddenly at the end, never this slow process that the Wyatts undertake. It’s disabling Seth as the spark plug (including an announce table bump that looks a lot like how The Shield used to take people out), taking Ambrose out of the equation, and for once, leaving Roman alone.
In the same way that 12/6/96 reversed the question of “What if Misawa can’t save his young partner?” to ask “What if the young partner can’t save Misawa?”, this turns the usual formula against The Shield around in such an interesting way. Bryan’s teams succeeded by removing Roman so he couldn’t suddenly turn the tide. Recently, they showed themselves to be aware of it, and able to stop it. Here, Bray and the gang do the opposite. With Seth and Dean gone, Roman’s explosiveness can’t set anything up for anybody else. The Shield have always been about strength in numbers, never the strength in a singular member, and they finally pay for it when that’s figured out. The Wyatts do the big Shield thing at the end, with the three members each standing on a side of the apron to trap Roman. It’s a lot like the big 11 on 3 match from the previous fall, with Rollins suffering that fate at the end, but different enough in tone to feel like a big deal all the same. It’s a testament to how well the WWE’s done both handling The Shield and (save the big showy moments), handling Roman’s slow turn and elevation, that this not only doesn’t feel like an uproarious fist pumping moment like the tables being turned on Rollins, but feels almost hopeless.
Roman’s doomed comeback is some of the best babyface work of his career ever (and I only say “some of” because these guys aren’t quite Brock Lesnar). It’s exciting and surprising, but always feels foreboding in the ways that help out so much. To say it again, it is one thing to fight against odds in a way that seems winnable. It is another entirely to fight against odds that are genuinely insurmountable. Heroism is fighting a battle you can’t win just because it’s a battle that has to be fought. To that extent, it might well be the best babyface performance of Roman’s life, because it’s the one time he was ever really able to tap into that without a human cheat code being across the ring from him. He does so well, and he gets so far, and he comes so close, only for it not to matter. Seth and Dean got taken out so much worse than ever before in a match, the save is not coming. Harper throws himself in the way of the Spear to save Bray Wyatt, and he bulldozes Roman with the hellacious double elbow block, setting up Sister Abby for the win.
A phenomenal piece of business, in which the Wyatt Family are thoroughly legitimized and made, but without The Shield seeming to lose any part of themselves.
In the best ways, it barely feels like a WWE match sometimes. At least not one from 2014. In a lot of ways, it’s the best Dragon Gate match of the year. All this necessary context, these built up little in-match scenarios, stable warfare coming to a head.
In other ways, it is SUCH a WWE match.
The pristine construction, the big setpieces, all the character work that enhances everything. At its best, applying the sort of ethos of the company honestly, this is the sort of thing they’re capable of at their best. Setting the stage, unleashing great wrestlers, and using every tool in the toolbox to help the not-so-great ones. Unbelievable shows of athleticism from larger than life characters, set up by an interesting story, thrown together in a match that feels Important.
This is what it looks like when everything runs like it’s supposed to.
The machine works. This could have never have risen to these heights without the proper support from every facet of the company. The shame of it isn’t anything in the match, it’s that months later, the machine largely stopped working on a permanent basis, was broken up with a sledgehammer (or chair), and stripped for parts. The Shield reunited two or three or four times, and they never put together anything even vaguely resembling this match. The magic is still there, just waiting to be activated again.
Even if it seems like a miracle all these years later, it’s one of the most exciting things the WWE’s done in the last twenty years. When someone trips over their dick and greenlights something like this, enjoy it. Yeah, there were some issues. Yes, it would have ruled if the WWE didn’t massively fuck up the Wyatt Family after this with the Cena feud and refusing to strap up Harper and Rowan over the summer. In retrospect, they didn’t do much of anything with the gigantic rub that this match gave them. But it’s the WWE, you know? Take what the water gives you. Never expect anything, because you genuinely will go insane. Your brain will break. You know what you’re watching, you know what you signed up for.
It’s not really about that, as this is about building a Sheamus vs. Christian feud and continuing the wonderful Road To Elimination Chamber series, but you’ve got the line up you’ve got, and the WWE’s best in-ring rivalry all decade is incapable of falling into the background.
Luckily, it’s another of these matches in which just about every part of it is terrific. Sheamus and Reigns again have tremendous chemistry already, and Sheamus vs. Ambrose also gets explored a little here. The new addition is Christian, who had a brief spat with The Shield in the summer of 2013, but never had partners up to his standard like he does here. He only gets the hot tag, but he’s exceptional at that too. Then, yes, it’s Bryan against The Shield and it’s so good. They explore a new avenue here where The Shield guys start to get more and more prepared for Bryan’s usual attacks and dodge or counter them for some of the first times. Reigns dodges the corner dropkick for a less flashy transition then usual, but it works. Later on, when Bryan’s helping Christian clean house, he does what’s worked for months for him and he goes to take Roman out first to disable THE JUGGERNAUT OF THE SHIELD, only for Rollins to then immediately follow up Bryan’s tope suicida with one of his own. It’s a fascinating new approach, finally learning from Bryan’s consistent success against them in this second leg of the feud since the fall, and getting Bryan out of the way first like Bryan taught people to do to Roman in order to beat The Shield.
In a way, it’s a real bummer, because the new change in approach reveals that, somehow, there could have been a third leg of Shield vs. Bryan stuff dealing with this.
Still, it’s great one last time. Christian’s hot tag is a fresh addition, and he’s a master at laying things out in new and interesting ways. With Bryan out, Christian and Sheamus need to rely entirely on getting along, but they just don’t do that. Sheamus misses a Brogue Kick on Deano and hits Christian instead. Roman takes Sheamus out and Ambrose grabs the pin for the win.
Another great Shield television tag, and an interesting contrast to the Wyatt Family build up six mans too. Those have seen them rush people with pure force, overwhelming these thrown together teams, whereas this was all outmaneuvering and pure teamwork. It’s more than just the back and forth promos that made the feud work so well without much physicality going in, it was also the clear difference in styles and philosophies presented in all of these matches.
Again, a complete accident and a total mirage, but it’s amazing what can happen with just a little attention and the slightest amount of work on minor details.
It’s another instance of pure formula, but god, this is such a fun formula.
The Shield one again makes a ten minute TV tag work, not just because they’re all so impactful and clearly give a shit, but also because they’re all so different and always have different people to play with who are also good. Kofi hasn’t been thrown into a Shield match in a while, and he’s a perfect tackle dummy for them. Big E is a delight, and the idea of The Shield having to deal with another powerhourse in a rarity is still fresh enough to be interesting. The crown jewel of course is Rey Mysterio. One of the best of all time fits in perfectly with everyone, and even if he’s not quite Bryan and doesn’t quite have the tag team Midas touch that Dustin does, but everything is all still simply so good. Roman overcomes the power of Big E at the end, only for Ambrose to then steal the tag and beat his rival other midcard champion with the headlock driver. Once again, this is how you do it without such blatant transparency, the baby steps. I mean that both about Roman’s turn and elevation, but also about planting break up seeds. Easy does it. All the pieces matter.
Did I need to cover this? No. Not really.
But in like four months, a match this good this will seem far less routine on WWE television once they remember who and what they are and cut this shit out forever (and counting). It’s worth recognizing the good times while we’re still in them.
Earlier in the show, the long awaited Shield vs. Wyatt Family match was announced for Elimination Chamber following The Shield breaking loose from their paymasters for the first time and demanding the fight. As effective a start to a slow face turn as there can be, reflected somewhat in the match.
More importantly, before the match, The Wyatt Family greets The Shield with their all time best promo, featuring an all-time great line from Luke Harper, the line for which he’ll likely be best remembered, years from now.
“you three boys picked a beautiful hill to die on.”
The match itself is a delight.
It’s another ten to fifteen minute display of pure formula, but you have two of the best of all time in Bryan and Rey now in charge of the other side of it, and it’s the easiest and most fun thing they can do. As always, you get minute little changes that always keep it JUST fresh enough to not feel boring, and to let the genuinely exciting stuff still be exciting. Roman vs. Sheamus is a blast once again. Mysterio fits in perfectly against all three Shield members. And yes, once more, Daniel Bryan is the greatest wrestler alive and of all time. There’s a fascinating sort of thing here, where in the same week in which Roman Reigns set a new Rumble dominance record and easily managed John Cena in the tag on Raw, he still has absolutely no answer for Daniel Bryan. Love it when a seven to eight year long story accidentally winds up being told.
The finishing run is crazy in all the right ways while also being restrained enough for Smackdown. Bryan goes nuts, but gets out because that’s not the story anymore an now that there’s a full green light behind Bryan, he’s not going to be involved in a finish if he doesn’t go up. He and Sheamus clean up, but Rey is left alone with Reigns again. They hit the same finish as their series of tags in November, but now pulled off much more smoothly. Rey dropkicks Reigns to the ropes to set up the 619, only for Roman to now just bounce off and turn to catch him perfectly with the Spear for the win.
Yet another great television match, the sort of which when paired with the exceptional pre-match promo, makes a television show worth not only watching after the fact, but regularly carving out time to watch in the moment. It’s not some secret, but given how WWE television goes once a switch flips in early June, it might as well be.
HANDWERK 