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

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

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

The story itself is perfect on virtually every level.

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

The match itself is not quite so perfect, admittedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***1/2

Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE Smackdown (4/30/2021)

This was for Reigns’ WWE Universal Title, with the caveat that Bryan would be BANISHED from Smackdown if he lost. It’s not quite title vs. career, as the WWE is always afraid of such classical old pro wrestling ideas and always coats them in bullshit corporate speak, but fuck that. It’s title vs. career.

It’s the sort of thing that it feels like has been building up for years, and the match that really should have main evented WrestleMania instead of some spiritually bloodless three way, if only because of what it ultimately represented. I won’t pretend this is some first time fork in the road for the company, it’s a decision that they made over six years ago at this point, even if it never quite took, because as always, they chose incorrectly at the time. It is, however, the last ever chance to take that other path that will ever present itself and a clear statement of fact in a year that became largely about the WWE redefining what it was after the last decade. One last instance of burning a bridge, having just crossed it. Roman wins definitively, or Daniel Bryan is gone.

Unfortunately, it’s not a stipulation that the match itself truly does justice to, offering up a simple great match that happens to have Bryan’s career on the line, instead of ever quite feeling like a match where Bryan is fighting for more than just the match.

Beyond just that it’s held on free television, it’s been so heavily rumored and basically confirmed forever that Bryan was thinking about not re-signing and then so close to deadlines that it became obvious he was, in fact, not going to sign a new contract. He’s spent his last months already very much as someone leaving, taking losses that have partially diminished his stature, failing to win the Royal Rumble, and losing in the main event of WrestleMania in the previously noted dickless triple threat match. They already even had a big title match on pay-per-view (a better match than this and one that I would have much rather just been Bryan’s farewell). As such, a good amount of the drama of the thing is removed from it, with the outcome already being pretty much assured going in, as well as Bryan not exactly having the most momentum in the world. Put that on top of what the presentation in The Thunderdome takes away from any sort of real authenticity to wrestling matches in general (although perhaps it is fitting that Roman’s victory over Bryan finally comes within an environment totally devoid of any true human reaction), and it’s far from the ideal climate for a match as scintillating on paper as ROMAN REIGNS VS. DANIEL BRYAN, TITLE VS. WWE CAREER.

So, there’s a ceiling on this thing before the bell rings.

It’s also not as good as Fastlane.

I significantly prefer a longer *and* more successfully focused affair that saw a long game successfully break down the juggernaut. This is a match with some attempted work on the arm, but save for one big vanity sell at the end that many people (myself included) remembered more than the rest, Roman’s arm selling isn’t nearly as great as his leg selling nor his arm selling the previous month. It also never quite has those moments of jeopardy for Reigns in the way that Bryan had in their pay-per-view encounter, removing those moments of pure satisfaction at Bryan’s plan working, on top of how perfect the mechanical elements of it were. Satisfaction alone doesn’t make one match better than another, but their previous meeting not only saw a more satisfying affair, but a more interesting story as well.

However, it’s still one of the best matches of the year, and a perfect sort of thing for Bryan to go out with.

The greatest professional wrestler of all time does what he always does with as great of an opponent as Roman Reigns. After spending time patting around up there and figuring out the dimensions and make up of the box they’re in, he finds a way to pry it open, and deliver in spite of every reason that they shouldn’t be able to.

Bryan, once again, is the best babyface in the world in a big situation like this. The rush at the beginning is perfect, his selling from underneath was ideal, and nobody in wrestling has the comebacks Bryan does, mixing violence and desperation perfectly. There’s an element to these Bryan comebacks against Reigns in 2021 that strike this beautiful balance between wanting to see him kick this fucker’s ass and also knowing he can be cut off at any moment by a bigger and stronger guy. It’s a perfect kind of a babyface territory, being able to believably kick ass, but also always fighting uphill. It’s a needle to thread in between those two edges, and very few throughout wrestling history have ever done it better, if there are even any to list.

The match is constructed perfectly to get the most out of Bryan at every moment, one last time. Kicking ass, taking these huge bumps, eliciting sympathy (even theoretically, with a fake crowd responding to it), and crafting this airtight closing stretch that Roman’s sometimes struggled with against others. In a modern WWE atmosphere that doesn’t allow one of the great bleeders in wrestling history to show that off and in a Thunderdome setting that allows for no sort of organic reaction nor energy, it’s as great a display of all the different things Bryan can do as anything else. Above all, it’s so unbelievably charming and fun that once again — and in the last opportunity to do so — Bryan has once again transformed something of the WWE’s entirely into a showcase of his own greatness.

Roman Reigns is in this match too, and he is perfectly good in it.

That’s not fair, truly. But it’s not fair to be a good wrestler in the ring against Daniel Bryan sometimes. His work in control is as good as it can be. His punches are great, his big power spots are lovely. His arm selling could use work, although I wouldn’t quite call it bad. Above all, he’s despicable. While his in-ring as a heel isn’t up to par with his best and most consistent work as a babyface in 2016-2017, he continues to be an absolutely perfect villain for Daniel Bryan, creating one of those sorts of perfect match ups. As an antagonist, there is no more perfect match up for Reigns, as Bryan not only naturally accentuates all of Reigns’ positives, but makes him work consistently harder in and out of story, exerting the natural pressure of being the best of all time, and making Reigns show up in a way he doesn’t always seem to against the Edges or Drew McIntyres of the WWE. All the best things Reigns does in this aren’t all that special, instead they’re things magnified by what Bryan is able to do and the way Reigns is able to act around Bryan.

As a match, it comes down to the classic gap between the two.

At this point in their careers, Bryan needs to have the best match possible to beat Roman Reigns, and he simply doesn’t.

Unfortunately, Bryan’s work on the arm doesn’t have the work on the leg to pair with it like he did at Fastlane. He runs in more at the start and isn’t able to quite get in Reigns’ head the same way. Bryan’s work pushes Reigns once again further than anyone else is able to get him, outside of a Brock Lesnar, but Reigns finally manages to learn something in the end. The Spear fails him where it didn’t before, but Reigns adjusts and applies the front choke with his good arm primarily and not the bad, and the foregone conclusion come true.

Roman Reigns keeps the title.

Daniel Bryan is gone.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

I don’t know if it’s the right move. Given that they failed to convince Bryan to stay, it’s not the wrong one. There’s something still that rubs me a little wrong about it, with nobody on the horizon to beat Roman after this, and using perhaps his greatest foe to enhance him instead of recognizing the opportunity this always was. Had he been built for someone like Big E or someone else getting their Bryan moment, then it would be hard to say too much against it. If it’s just for Lesnar again, or God forbid as a hunch tells me, Seth Rollins ending a year and a half long title reign, then it’s yet another waste. Not only of Daniel Bryan and not only of Roman Reigns, but ultimately, of them together, and all this match up could have been.

Time will tell, ultimately (and I reserve the right to add an epilogue onto this, should that last hunch be correct), but something about this still can’t help but feel a little bit wasteful, given all that this could have been in the moment, or more importantly, all that this should have been years before.

As I watched this match again and then struggled for a while to come up with something to say about it that wasn’t just entirely hysterics about Bryan’s departure and my frustrations with the lack of a destination in mind with the Roman Reigns heel schtick, I kept going back to one of my old favorite little phrases.

I write “buy the ticket, take the ride” all the time, or at least I used to.

It’s one of my favorite expressions, up there with “pound of flesh” or “spiritually correct” or whatever else you, The Reader, may feel leaping to the forefront of your mind at this very moment. I’ve tried to use it less, as I do any time I sort of get conscious about something like that. You never want to lean on any one turn of a phrase, you know? Don’t force these things. Anyways, it’s the sort of phrase with enough room for interpretation that it can mean whatever you imagine it means, and can be fit into a lot of things. Some believe that it expresses this idea of being in over your head but proceeding anyways, because it’s the most interesting option. No way out but through, and that sort of a thing. Given that its original author stated that he had no sympathy for the devil before saying the line, I’ve always read it with that idea in mind, that overall feeling that you knew what this was when we began and so you shouldn’t be able to claim surprise. To me, it means that you go through with the thing anyways, despite knowing. It means, at least when using it to discuss wrestling matches or things of that nature, that you know what you’re signing up for beforehand, and accept the consequences. You signed up for a thing, you chose to do this knowing what it entailed, and it is time to go through with it.

Often, it’s about the WWE being the WWE. This evil backwards monolith that almost always gets some element of the thing wrong, even in the process of trying to get it right. Never understanding why things worked, stifling them, trying to repurpose them to serve far less interesting aims, treating you as a viewer with a sort of contempt, that sort of a thing. Sometimes things break loose, but one should never expect them. I write the phrase in regards to the many times the WWE seems to go out of its way to be as cruel and heartbreaking as possible, in response to those who imagine this to be a bug and not a feature. Kofi Kingston has the hyperemotional title win at WrestleMania that meant so much to so many, only to eventually get nuked in ten seconds by Brock Lesnar? Big E being abruptly cut off in a similar fashion? Any number of things, including my own personal experience with this sort of a stupid belief and then heartbreak, there it is. There you go, believing in something, when you should have known full well by this point not to do something like that. Point at the sign at the front of the bus. This is the company you’re watching and it is what they do.

I say all of that to say that very few have made it a better ride than Bryan Danielson does.

Few others make it worth the ride, in spite of how it so often comes to an end.

That’s not just because he’s the greatest wrestler of all time, but it is one of the more impressive things I can think of about Bryan Danielson. In fact, being able to do that is part of why he’s the greatest wrestler of all time. Even in a bullshit environment like this, Daniel Bryan is able to have matches like this when few others can. Daniel Bryan is able to create environments like this when few others again. To instill that belief in spite of everything the human brain tells you about why something is impossible. You can write all of the unoriginal gutless tripe you’d like about Bryan’s talents being wasted, as if he wasn’t still very clearly among the world’s most skilled, talented, and productive wrestlers from 2010 through spring 2021, but truly, it is an achievement, and one beyond simply having a hundred workrate epics, I think. Daniel Bryan is the greatest wrestler of all time for more reasons than just this ability, but the most impressive one still might just be that in spite of everything else, he was still able to get me to buy in and get that ticket, time after time after time.

If Daniel Bryan had to leave — and he did not, it is one of the great ball drops in recent wrestling history, and could easily prove to be one of the great ones ever — it is only fitting that it takes place in a match like this, losing to his polar opposite once and for all in a match that forces everyone to put on paper who they are, what they believed in, and where they stood on the greatest wrestler of all time.

Roman Reigns finally defeats Daniel Bryan, and in the process, does the thing all of the best WWE texts do, and making the implied into the explicitly stated. Bryan makes Roman Reigns into a good enough wrestler — and more importantly a smart enough wrestler — that he’s able to really and truly beat him. It’s the best version of Roman Reigns in a kayfabe sense that’s ever existed. He’s spent this heel run imitating tropes from gangster films, but in this match, he comes the closest he’s ever come to the best one there’s ever been. Removed of his greatest and most definitive enemy, something about Reigns has been missing ever since when removed from that sort of a friction. Conquering the world once and for all and losing a major piece of himself in the process. Roman Reigns looks out at Lake Tahoe. Cut to the past.

If not the best version of this match up, it’s still one with an honesty that I really respect.

More than any other match in recent memory, it’s a match that completely spells out the ideology of the promotion holding it. Only in WWE can a story about a smaller working class hero against a corporately chosen and protected super-athlete end with the latter learning the game of the former and adjusting enough to win clean. It simply is what it is. Bryan did as much as anyone could for eleven years to change that, but 2021 was a year of pure revanchism in the WWE, and this spelled it out as plainly and perfectly as anything else could. A villain territory, through and through.

In the end, the house wins.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Daniel Bryan made it more interesting than all but a few names ever in wrestling history. It’s not a park removed of any and all attractions at this point, but removed of the greatest wrestler both of all time and currently working, it’s one that I’m not nearly as excited to return to any time soon and that hasn’t been quite the same without him.

Not the best match of 2021 nor the best WWE match of 2021, but in so many ways from the departures to the cuts to everything with NXT (a show initially built around Daniel Bryan, even in a prior format) to the core message that nobody truly matters but a select five or six people tops, perhaps the definitive WWE match of 2021.

***1/2

Adrian Neville vs. Sami Zayn, WWE NXT Takeover R-EVOLUTION (12/11/2014)

This was for Neville’s NXT Title, with Sami Zayn’s NXT career being on the line as well.

It hasn’t happened on the main roster since WrestleMania XXX, but this is another great example of what it looks like when the machine runs as it should. Great stories built around great wrestlers, resulting in great matches that also feel important and that engage virtually everyone watching. Hand in glove as opposed to two hands unaware of what the other is doing at any given time.

The match itself doesn’t do it for me quite in the way it did in the moment, but all that means is that I think it’s merely really great and one of the best matches of the year and no longer this slam dunk all-timer. A lot of the reason for that change is that it’s a lot easier to separate match from moment years after the fact, and this match relies a lot on the moment. To be fair though, it’s a hell of a moment, and completely sticks the landing as NXT’s biggest storyline payoff to date.

It’s one of the great WWE payoffs of the decade. If not for a real famous match in 2015, I wouldn’t hesitate in the least to call it the best payoff in NXT history. If not for the season finale of the WWE earlier in the year, it would be the best payoff in wrestling all year period. The difference between this and something else is that it isn’t just that this beloved wrestler finally wins the big one. In some cases, like Candice’s PWG Tag Title win earlier in the year, that can be enough in and of itself. Here though, there’s more than that. As much as it’s about Zayn finally winning the big one, it’s also about the question of whether or not he’ll finally bend the rules or get a little more opportunistic to win the title, like Neville’s done lately. To that end, the match then also becomes just a little bit about how much farther Neville’s willing to go once an improved and refined version of Sami Zayn shows up to fight. There’s a lot to this, and they manage to tie it all together pretty perfectly.

The match itself is also real great for what it is.

I still would PROBABLY call this their best match together because it’s the strongest overall package, but if someone really wanted to champion their PWG matches, I don’t especially feel like fighting that. It’s a fair thing to say. Those matches weren’t exactly loose and sloppy, and they’re a lot more immediately sensational than this is, but that goes with the territory. It’s WWE, you trade in certain things for other things. A lot of the time, that doesn’t work out, but it really really does in this case.

It’s the WWE version of a thing. That’s not always this huge insult, but generally speaking, it means they sacrifice a lot of the more impressive things they can do and dumb the match down, but the trade-off when done right is that they can give you this big emotional moment at the end. The match isn’t as long as it could be or as substantial as it could be, Neville’s control work isn’t great, and there’s points early on where it feels like they’re filling time, but what they get right here, they get absolutely perfect. They focus a lot more on the character work than anything else. For Sami Zayn, that’s not so bad. He’s great at all of the little facial expressions throughout. For good reason, his looks at the end have always drawn heavy praise, but there’s a moment early on that I think is just as good in a more minor way. Sami comes into this match with a game face on and clearly focuses on not getting caught up in things and being the best version of himself there is, and does well. However, there’s a moment when one of his big reversals just doesn’t work at all and Neville flips through something and wags the finger at him. Sami initially smiles at it, before it fades away, like the stakes of the match crawled back into his head after initially just being a good dude and honestly being impressed by someone else.

The rest of the match is kind of like that. Sami shows up presenting the best version of Sami Zayn that’s ever existed. He stays on top of Neville, he avoids getting sidetracked and taking risks before it’s time, and generally operates with a much greater poise than ever before. He’s also much more ready for all of Neville’s stuff, having all of these counters ready and overcoming things that have happened to him before when Neville beat him. His work is tighter, in the sense that he always feels like he’s trying to win. There’s no bad luck to Zayn here and not a single unforced error. Even then, Neville is still always just a little bit ahead of him, without ever feeling like he’s had to plan for Sami Zayn or prepare anything special for the match. He’s still stronger, he’s still a better athlete, and most importantly, there’s not a battle within him. Neville doesn’t have to improve himself like Zayn has throughout the series, he’s grown into it for the last year. Neville eventually becomes quite the good heel, but even then, this is his career performance.

A lot like a Ricochet or a 1990s Rob Van Dam, Neville’s natural gifts make him hard to really support unless an opponent is truly vile. He’s not quite so great as a cocky little show off, but in this old style champion role, he excels. He’s consistent and quiet about it, but also easily dominant in a cold and impersonal sort of a way. It’s a perfect contrast to Zayn’s energy and desperation. His performance here is a testament to the power of a great performance within that role, and arguably provides an even stronger and more realistic counterweight to Zayn’s performance. It’s all well and good to support someone when they’re against someone bad or outright evil, but this story is just so much more interesting and more relatable. Good vs. evil undeniably exists in the world, but a story like this feels so much more common. Virtually anyone who’s ever had a job can probably understand it and immediately latch onto one or the other. An underdog who refuses to take the little shortcuts and exploit the field’s grey areas against someone who isn’t a bad guy, but is a lot more willing to take advantage. The age old struggle between doing the right thing and doing what it takes.

Ultimately, the match comes down to that.

It has to.

It’ a story of two different referee bumps, and again, not just because of Sami Zayn. The first time, it’s a total accident. He almost loses because he checks on the referee, nearly once again being punished for having a basic sense of decency by the writing of a company that has none. The second time, the referee bump is far less of an accident, as Neville pulls the referee in the way of an oncoming Zayn in the corner. It’s different from pulling the ref out when it’s legal or working a little more aggressively, it’s a genuine low. A step over the line into actual cheating, coupled with him then again doing what Zayn wouldn’t and bringing the title in. Zayn stops him, but then has the famous moral panic.

It’s the only time that this sort of thing has ever really worked for me in an NXT or WWE setting. It’s not staring at your hands or deliberating over whether [x] weapon is okay to use, it’s this guy with a history of refusing to take this step coming right up to the line and clearly grappling with the decision. Most importantly, it’s that he doesn’t do it. It always feels like a way to make it okay for a babyface to do something bad because it’s written down somewhere, but the more uplifting thing is for the babyface not to do it. You can justify a bad thing however a company like WWE might prefer, but in reality, the better ending is the good guy sticking to his guns, not selling out, and succeeding anyway. It’s such an un-WWE style match in that it steers away from embracing the Vince McMahon worldview that you have to cut every throat you can, sell everyone out, take every shortcut in front of you, and all of that, and the match is so much better and more iconic as a result.

Zayn almost pays the price again, but survives. For once, it’s Neville making the mistake of repetition, trying to catch Sami Zayn slipping up twice in the same way. Zayn can follow up after that with the Helluva Kick for the long overdue victory and major moment. It’s an uproarious reaction that comes out of the crowd at Full Sail, and personally, this entire match was the first time I really began to think to myself that Sami Zayn/El Generico might really be the best babyface of all time.

No other title victory in 2014 can really be the feel good win of the year after what happened at WrestleMania, but it’s a testament to the performances of Zayn and Neville and to the entire story going into this match that this even comes close.

Following the match, there’s a big celebration with all of the roster, and two more major story beats take place. The first is that having lost and been proved wrong, Neville defines himself in the moment by embracing Zayn, making up with his old friend, and celebrating his success. Not only is it a great moral victory for Zayn on top of the result of the match itself, but it’s also this beautiful contrast for what comes next.

Because, see, Kevin Owens also happened to debut in the opener of this show, so he’s there to celebrate Sami’s big moment.

And then to ruin it, as his wont.

It’s another perfect piece of booking. Pay off one thing, and immediately go into the next. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but here’s a time when it absolutely does. Everyone knew it would happen, you don’t have them both around at this point with a top storyline gap and not run it. There’s no point in waiting. This sort of thing was a hallmark of ROH and ECW before it, to go right into the next thing, and it’s right out of that playbook. For once, when borrowing something from those sorts of companies, NXT got it entirely right here.

Between the match and everything after, it’s the best it ever got for the NXT Title.

There are better matches in NXT history and at least one better payoff eight months from now, but I’m not sure there was ever a better booked half hour in NXT history than this, and maybe no better booked show in NXT history.

***1/2

 

Bobby Gunns vs. David Starr, WXW 16 Carat Gold 2020 Night Two (3/7/2020)

This was for Gunns’ WXW Unified World Wrestling Title and David Starr’s career in WXW.

We need to talk about David Starr.

This is not a conversation I want to be having. I don’t enjoy this. I got back into independent wrestling in a “watch current things, not stuff from 1-2 years back” way in 2017 during the middle of the David Starr vs. WALTER rivalry, and I gravitated to him. A hard fighting technician, who could have these big dramatic hardcore matches, but who also seemed to value a sort of efficiency in his work? He was perfect. Somewhere in 2019, that changed, and I don’t know why. My instinct is to blame European wrestling as a concept, but he had been in Europe for years already. I’m not sure why it happened. I’m not sure when it happened. But it’s happened and I don’t think it’s something we can chalk up to just being the way one promotion is anymore. This is another thirty minute plus David Starr match. Say what you will about it being for the title and in a main event. Say what you will about it being David Starr’s final match in WXW. These are fine enough reasons to go big. Admittedly, I haven’t seen the Corvin match yet. There’s a Jeff Cobb match I need to see too. Thanks to a service industry job and the coronavirus, I’ll be watching both of those pretty soon. But it’s been over six months like this, I’m not sure David Starr is a great wrestler anymore.

Of course, he is very far from bad. That’s the frustrating thing. David Starr is no longer in the conversation for best wrestler in the world, but he has become the runaway pick for most frustrating wrestler in the world. The first third or so that’s all down on the ground and grappling focused, that’s great. It’s tremendous work. They slowly escalate from the ground up and it’s very well done. The fight outside isn’t ideal, as they repeat a few things, but there’s a spot off the Big Medium Ramp, and there’s some sort of cumulative selling. None of this is necessary at all though, as Starr misses a dive and careens into a row of chairs, hurting his left shoulder. The work on it is very good. Starr is a tremendous vanity seller and while Gunns is not a wrestler who’s lighting the world on fire, he’s again at his best when a match gives him something to focus entirely on. He still doesn’t always do this, and he still has some crummier moments, but the moments when he’s on are the best moments in his entire career.

David Starr then makes his comeback about twenty minutes in and the finishing run lasts for half the match.

Pro wrestling is weird. There aren’t really any rules. Things are bad, but someone comes long and does them well. You can pretty much do anything if you do it well. A finishing run that’s half the match isn’t the worst thing in the world. In the last twenty four hours, a review was posted of a match between El Satanico and Sangre Chicana where the final stretch was the last ten of twenty minutes. There’s classic All Japan title matches that do the same thing for longer. Very few things are bad categorically. It’s not that this can’t be good, or that matches this long can’t be great, but this wasn’t, and the long matches Starr’s been involved in really haven’t been. Here, he puts on one of the finer selling performances in recent memory. It’s nerd bait, it’s vain as hell, but him crumbling when he tried the cartwheel evasion was goddamned incredible. He sold it all match, he sold it well, and it mattered. It’s the sort of thing I get on other people for not doing. That alone can’t make the match. Bobby Gunns is very good in this match. Starr leads him well enough. They just don’t have forty minutes worth of material. By about twenty five or rhirty in, this is very firing. A WXW crowd is a lively crowd, and they are tired by the end. They’re engaged, they care about this match and David Starr, but enough is enough. It’s just not here tonight.

Any discussion of this match has to also include this one groanworthy segment. Bobby Gunns hesitates to cheat because he wants to win. David Starr is able to slip in the low blow and title shot, and then the arm trap Piledriver. It’s the exact sequence lifted from the famous Jordan Devlin match in OTT in October (the bad one of their two in 2019), and Bobby Gunns kicks out. As if one would now assume that he is tougher than Jordan Devlin as a result. A year ago, there was a similar sort of WXW/OTT mirror. I thought it worked incredibly well, as WALTER played on a recent history of backinf off and covering up against Devlin to lure Starr in. It was an ode to something everyone had seen, but didn’t come off cheap. This comes off incredibly cheap. There is no cause for it, and it just feels very silly and petty. From there, David Starr makes some NXT Faces and they have a re-set spot because him being sad is some just as devastating as all of that. Bobby Gunns retains with two consecutive Northern Lights Bombs. This feels less like the finish the match earned and more like the one that was on paper somewhere. I do not believe Bobby Gunns could defeat David Starr cleanly. He should not have. Even if David Starr is the best loser in wrestling of his generation, this one’s real demoralizing. Not a single big win in his entire WXW run is a little far. I’m all for the correct ending, and this wasn’t it. David Starr has his wins in OTT, but I really wish he got to win in the only promotion where he’s still booked like the babyface everyone in the crowd recognizes him as.

A tremendous performance coupled with a solid performance, in the middle of a bad match. Yes, it’s possible. It’s these incredibly well crafted gears that go into making a bullshit Mickey Moose watch. Great parts to a far worse whole. It feels weird to write and it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it feels correct, and there are no real rules actually. David Starr is one of the most talented wrestlers in the world, and maybe he sucks. He is one of my favorite wrestlers and while he is always good, I do not like his matches anymore. He is one of the smartest wrestlers in the world and is right on just about every major social issue confronting our world right now, but he hasn’t had more than a handful of great matches in the last six to nine months. I don’t know what to say. For someone who is so anti-WWE to the extent that if it’s a work, it’s a Brian Pillman level super work, he sure wrestles a whole lot like a bad NXT main eventer. It’s very frustrating and confusing. Matches like this do not help. A great individual performance in a bad match still ultimately results in a bad match. A great individual performance in a not-great match still doesn’t produce something great. In some ways, it’s more frustrating than actually being bad. I could handle that better, it’s a sort of absolute thing that sets in concrete. WALTER is The Coward now, and he is bad, because he works for a bad company that does not understand exactly why he became such a star. It sucks, but I can get it. There’s no wiggle room. David Starr is nothing but wiggle room, maybes, and meaninglessly great individual performances. At some point, all the great little moments in bad matches stop being a persuasive argument when that’s all the argument there is. At some point, when this sort of a match is all you have, the problem isn’t a structural one, I don’t think. He’s the worst great wrestler in the world.

Alternately, shifting his entire approach to be a more selfish one — focusing more on how great he individually looks in these big epics moreso than how the match as a whole comes off, the end result being talking more about great David Starr performances than great David Starr matches –as a reflection of his OTT heel character as a phony populist pretending to be about the greater good but actually only ever being out for himself (genuinely terrible character, a perversion of the things people actually love him for, and borderline irresponsible by OTT in a time like this) could be one of the greatest works in history. Galaxy brain level stuff. Truly admirable. No, I have not broken self isolation in five days. why do you ask?

It wouldn’t suddenly make this match good or fix any of the many other similar eggs that Starr’s laid in the last six months, but I would at least respect something that courageous and that evil. The only way to defeat Shawn Michaels is to become Shawn Michaels.

**1/2

Special credit to the the crowd chanting “INDEPENDENT” and “BERNIE SANDERS” in support of David Starr during his farewell speech, but who still showed up here. It’s a very weird thing. There is no ethical consumption of major European wrestling, besides OTT. You can buy a ticket here to see Starr or to see Thatcher’s farewell or greats like Kingston and Daniel Makabe, but it all feels a little hollow to be here in this venue and to chant that. It’s 2020, and you know who signs the checks. The moment this stipulation was made, you all knew. You knew whose thumb was on the scale, forcing things to that way. Implicit force isn’t explicit force, there was no mandate, but soft power is still power. WXW is what it is. Look the thing in its eye and call it what it is. You can’t have it both ways. David Starr might not be a great wrestler anymore, but at least he understands that.