Commissions continue again, this one coming from friend of the program @beenthrifty. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication or other processes, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.
This was the first ever TLC match for Edge and Christian’s WWF Tag Team Titles.
It’s a mother fucker of a thing.
Certainly, yes, I recognize bias. You have to. Anyone does, trying to talk about anything like this in a fair way. I cannot imagine someone who began watching wrestling in like 2014 holding this in the same esteem as someone, in my case, who began watching wrestling in 1998. Not only in the sense that it is probably nearly impossible to look upon this with even a shadow of awe in a time not only past this, but past things that have followed this like Shelton in MITB matches in the 2000s or Briscoes vs. Steen & Generico, or in their own way, Ultimate X matches, but also in the sense that there is no nostalgia attached either to these matches or these people. I cannot make someone have their first memories of the Hardys being as psychotic underdogs and all-world babyfaces, in the same way that I also cannot make a younger person’s first Dudleys thought be the deeply deeply deeply deeply canceled and, frankly, embarrassingly entertaining Heatwave ’99 promo. My feelings on this match are — if not locked into place by — at least heavily influenced by even just faint shadows of the feeling it gave me the first time I saw it.
Having said all of that, I think it also just objectively rocks.
So often with matches like this now, it feels as if there is a pretense to it on the front end, that [x] amount of time and/or things have to happen before they get into the heavy stuff, but this match is up there with the most confidence per minute metric in the history of matches like this. They get right into it, never pause, and never ever look back. On top of the confidence of it, it also all feel correct. Beyond how little filler there is, almost every single thing seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger, resulting in a near constant state of hearts in throats in the last half. On top of that, it’s also assembled in a way in which the really huge off the ladder out through table stuff is spaced out, so that each instance feels big.
On top of the efficiency and how it’s a genuine marvel of construction, it’s also pure lunacy for eighteen minutes.
With the exception of bump coward protected ass golden boy Edge, there’s nobody here who doesn’t take at least one genuinely psychotic bump or shot. Gross hits with ladders, huge moves off of them, big falls through tables, it’s a match with so many thrills to it. The ultimate compliment is that if one were to make a highlight reel of what happened in the match, they would have to include just about everything, but that’s just as much about the near total lack of cowardice on display as it is about the planning and construction.
That’s not to say the latter doesn’t also rule.
Narratively speaking, the match is imperfect (more later) but also hits a certain sweet spot. Everything in the match comes down to either the Dudleys being too insane and aggressive, the Hardys — especially Jeff — going way too far with any minor opening of a window to go insane, or the champions hitting a perfect antagonistic blend somewhere in between cowardice, opportunism, and pure luck.
Jeff Hardy and D-Von Dudley get stuck up there with no ladder beneath them at the end, and Edge and Christian take advantage. D-Von drops on his own and the champions throw a ladder into Jeff to knock him down before climbing up to get the win.
Despite the reputation, it is not all it can be.
Partially, that just means in terms of how wild it can get. This match feels like — although having an urgency and efficiency that the WrestleMania 2000 version of this did not quite have almost six months prior — it is still just beginning to scratch a little under the surface, and not just because it is almost a quarter century old. Every inch of it is used well, but there’s something about it (and almost definitely this is the result of a direct rematch that goes even crazier but also branches off with each combo also doing the same) that leaves this feeling like the middle part of something too, even if it is an absolute mother fucker of a middle part.
As a result of the booking as well, it denies itself the greatest possible triumph in acting as a narrative stopgap before a far greater emotional payoff the next month.
The WWF being the WWF, these big attention grabbing showcase matches were all won by the team with the clear project guy on them (do not lie to yourself, Edge was as much of a protected ass golden boy as anyone save for a Cena/Orton/Batista/Reigns figure), and so in a match devoted to these gut reaction high spots and pure visceral thrills, it also handicaps itself at least a little by denying the Hardys the feel good hometown win in classic WWF fashion and having the coward champions luck out intead, stringing it along until Unforgiven a month later in one of the great forgotten matches of this golden era. It doesn’t necessarily make this specific match worse or anything, it is a special thing on its own merits, but given the raw material, one cannot help but imagine something even better.
Still, given all that comes — both in the next month and also in the next year — it is hard to be all that annoyed at a match that opts to simply be one of the great displays of raw artillery and creativity of the time. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t allowed to be, but even in the midst of probably the best year in company history, it’s still so impressive when something this great, especially like this, break loose.
One of the all-time stunt show fireworks ass pieces of bullshit, whose only true flaw in that department is that it is probably not even be the best one these teams had against each other in the same twelve month span.
This was a ladder match for the New Day’s WWE World Tag Team Titles.
It’s a big dumb stunt show and I absolutely love it.
The trick is both a total honesty about that and also the ability to fill the match with big spot ideas that are both incredibly cool and fairly novel. This match also makes clear distinctions between the teams and wrestlers in the match in interesting ways (Big E is strong, Kalisto is the littlest but has the craziest brain, The Usos need to work in tandem to succeed), and it allows for some tension and struggle at all times. Everyone tries to take Big E out, and it always allows the space for Kofi Kingston to sneak around and so some stuff, and it’s how New Day hangs on despite this match being wildly out of the element of half the line up that they went with in this match. It’s a nice touch, and the sort of thought a match like this needs put into it to exist on a level beyond just shouting “COOL!” over and over for fifteen minutes and to stay in my mind for years like this has.
The one major spot also helps out, and if you’ve seen the match, I don’t even have to say more than that.
For the children though:
It’s the high point of the match, but not the end.
With Kalisto and That Uso being taken out, the other tries to handle Big E for good with an equally God damning splash off the top to Big E under a ladder lying on the floor. It’s the same sort of a move that removes someone at the price of also removing yourself, and shows the value Big E brings even when he can’t climb. The pro wrestling version of the gravity that a great shooter in basketball or a great receiver in football gives you. Kalisto manages to get up, as Sin Cara II has just somehow vanished, but Woods gets on the apron and delightfully hurls the trombone at his back. He’s distracted, and Kofi hurls him flipping off the ladder in another wholly unnecessary and wonderful bump, before Kofi pulls down the weird thing the belts are on in WWE and nowhere else.
A great match, but historically, largely a framework for one of the greatest spots of all time.
It’s a god damner of a thing, the sort of spot that belongs in highlight reels for years and years and years (obviously you feature and retain the sort of talent who can do this…). Like the match itself, if the WWE had any idea of how to canonize their history, or if they cared to, this would have a far greater reputation than it does. Better matches than this have suffered from the same problem, but it’s always a little bit of a bummer when you finish a great WWE pay per view match and come to that same realization.
If nothing else, the one spot at least seems to have had some staying power, which is more than you can usually say for a match like this.
This was a Best Two of Three Falls match for the New Day Classic’s WWE Tag Team Titles.
As usual, one of these matches in the WWE never quite gets the time it needs in order to stretch out and be all it can be. Fifteen minutes or less is not enough for three falls, and like so often is the case with matches like these in this company, it feels like a lie. A stipulation shoved into post production, with two nearfalls having a CGI three count added in. As always, it’s a classic example of the WWE insisting on only ever doing things one way, with the changes only ever being purely cosmetic. It’s a three fall match only in the sense that there are three falls, not in terms of tone or length or any noticeable difference to the match compared to past iterations.
As is often the case though, it doesn’t quite matter so much when motivated and talented wrestlers get a hold of fifteen minutes of pay per view time.
That goes doubly so for an all-time great like Cesaro.
Even if this doesn’t hold a candle to the Usos vs. Wyatt Family match from ten months earlier with most of the same issues — as Cesaro isn’t as great here as Harper was there, and for WWE project guys, 2014 Usos are better than 2015 New Day bell to bell — it works for the same admirable reasons. Talent being too good to deny and caring too much to have an average match, and succeeding where they can and while they can.
Again, that largely means this is the Cesaro show. Kofi and Big E are not natural babyfaces and so this first year of the New Day run where they work heel is far more lacking than the rest of their time together in the ring. Some people can reverse engineer it after so long on the other end and some people are just naturally one thing. Kofi Kingston and Big E are the latter, so it’s largely on Cesaro and Kidd to lay the foundation before the gifts of the champions can be best utilized in a second half sugar rush. However, short of the John Cena US Open, there is no better show on the main roster at this point and Cesaro lifts all the boats around him. Kidd has some bright ideas, and Cesaro can plug the power of Big E and Kofi as a generic flyer into just about a million different things, all different from the previous meetings. It’s all candy, but it’s good candy.
The brightest spot of this, of course, is a truly great finish.
It’s nothing NEW exactly. Kofi Kingston gets his ass kicked and saved, and when the ref is distracted, Xavier Woods switches places with him and he cradles Cesaro after a cheap shot to take the titles. The twin switch spot is an old one, and like any other old standard piece of pro wrestling nonsense, it’s not inherently good or bad. This is a fun one, firstly because it’s been long enough since it was last seen in the WWE that it provokes a real reaction.
Secondly it works because it allows everyone to go online and accuse the referee of being a racist in one of the few true wonderful bits to come out of the WWE in 2015. Perhaps second only to Rusev throwing a fish.
Unfortunately, this would be the last match of any real note for Tyson Kidd anywhere. Everyone knows the story, it’s one of the big unfortunate injuries of the last decade, especially as he had finally started to get what he had been due for a long time since mid-2014. We never get a real blow off here, we never even get it again. It’s unfair, and it’s a worse version of the usual. It’s not that it got interrupted now by nobody in a decision making capacity being able to pay attention or having horrible opinions. The conclusion failed to appear this time not because of incompetence, but because of cruel and random chance. Nobody is to blame, there’s nothing to really be said or done about it, and we at least got these two delightful pay-per-view encounters.
It’ll be another year and seven months before Cesaro gets to go back and finally give this the sequel that it deserves, and thankfully by then, The New Day will be far more up to the task and in roles more befitting their bell to bell talents.
This was for Cesaro and Kidd’s WWE Tag Team Titles.
It’s yet another WWE midcard pay per view match that succeeds as a direct result of a lack of complexity and of anyone getting in the way of the exceedingly obvious.
The New Day are new to being heels, and if we’re being super honest, never quite become great in-ring heels like they become great in-ring babyfaces a year or more later. That’s largely on Kofi, as Big E has impactful enough offense to make it work, but the solution is one they go to here. It’s just a fireworks show. They control a little bit, but mostly they’re using trickery and then letting the other team go wild.
Now obviously, there’s a reason this pairing works a hundred times better with that approach than with New Day vs. The Prime Time Players or New Day vs. The League of Nations (they call themselves The Lads) or whatever other WWE mediocrities come to mind.
Cesaro is the best.
He gets something of a greenlight here finally as a babyface, and it’s incredible. There’s a stench of failure on him that’s hard to write off after most of 2014, especially the last few months, but even then, it takes him all of thirty seconds of sustained offense to feel like a real ass Superstar. Tyson Kidd is also in this match and he’s great in this match, Big E is awesome in what he gets to do, but this match is Cesaro’s match. He has the most energy, he hits the hardest, he does the coolest stuff, he’s crisper than everyone, and just hoists the entire thing up upon his shoulder every time he gets to do a single thing. He takes the entire thing over, and the entire thing is so much better for it. He and Big E work especially well together, but he also returns a little to 2013 and still has a way of getting more out of Kofi at this point than anyone else can. A masterful performance as a hot tag and then in general from one of the all-time tag team greats.
Naturally, after a hot run of offense and a hotter run of nearfalls, Kofi schoolboys Cesaro with a handful of trunks to take the titles for the first time.
It’s not the most inspiring ending, but given that this feud will have one of the better finishes in WWE all decade and given that the match was still a blast, you really have to just take what you can get when a company that otherwise spends so much time being bad and stupid accidentally lets something loose like this.
This was a two out of three falls match for the Usos’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It’s a really great match and like the match the month before and the best of the Shield tags, it’s kind of this how to on what a workrate WWE formula tag can look like.
There are minor differences, beyond just the stipulation. The story the first match had of getting rid of Luke Harper so that Rowan had nobody directing him was a really cool idea. It was the sort of minor logical touch that you don’t get from a lot of WWE stuff at this point. However, beating Harper at the end this time is a much more emphatic close. If the goal of this all is to just get The Usos over (and clearly, it is, as the WWE whiffed on the best big man of a generation for a solid eight years), this is the most impressive ending. The order of things is different, employing Harper’s dive later in the match and going just a little bit bigger in the last third or so.
Otherwise, it works for all the same reasons. Harper’s the best wrestler in the company at this point, if not in overall talent (Cesaro or Zayn may still have him beat), then in terms of being allowed to deliver like this. All his stuff is perfect and the other three in the match once again manage to not let down all the work he’s doing. The first two falls get repeated and paid off with nearfalls, and the Usos have to do more than ever to chop down Harper at the end. He takes multiple superkicks, the double superkick, and then the ultra rare double flying splash (both at the same time) and it’s enough to end the match and the feud and, for the time being, this tag team.
There are minor differences, beyond just the stipulation. The story the first match had of getting rid of Luke Harper so that Rowan had nobody directing him was a really cool idea. It was the sort of minor logical touch that you don’t get from a lot of WWE stuff at this point. However, beating Harper at the end this time is a much more emphatic close. If the goal of this all is to just get The Usos over (and clearly, it is, as the WWE whiffed on the best big man of a generation for a solid eight years), this is the most impressive ending. The order of things is different, employing Harper’s dive later in the match and going just a little bit bigger in the last third or so.
Otherwise, it works for all the same reasons. Harper’s the best wrestler in the company at this point, if not in overall talent (Cesaro or Zayn may still have him beat), then in terms of being allowed to deliver like this. All his stuff is perfect and the other three in the match once again manage to not let down all the work he’s doing. The first two falls get repeated and paid off with nearfalls, and the Usos have to do more than ever to chop down Harper at the end. He takes multiple superkicks, the double superkick, and then the ultra rare double flying splash (both at the same time) and it’s enough to end the match and the feud and, for the time being, this tag team.
I used to have a very strong opinion that this wasn’t as good as the match three weeks before at the MITB pay per view. I’m not sure why I felt so strongly about that. It was a very weird hill to choose to die on (as opposed to a lovely hill you boys chose to die on), and I’m not sure why I did. Watching them more closely together, they’re a lot closer than I remember. They have all the same strengths, Luke Harper is still far and away the best wrestler in the match, and they finish in largely the same sort of a way.
It still is probably a hair behind.
The most significant difference is that there’s really no reason for this to be a three fall match. I don’t just mean in storyline, but in terms of the match itself. The first fall ends on this gorgeous boot from Harper and the second is an Uso roll up. They’re not horrible finishes. The match doesn’t have the problem some lucha matches do where I see a fall and think that, no, absolutely that is not a real finish. Within the confines of WWE and the way the WWE often treats the division, these falls make sense. The real issue is that this feels less like a three fall match than it does like a normal match shoved into a three fall format. The first fall is a transition, the second is a hope spot. A lot of lucha matches take this approach, but because of how much of lucha is done under three fall rules, it feels much more natural than this did. This is the sort of three fall match that feels like a movie that suffers from re-shoots, like someone decided to make this a three fall affair after it was done, so they went in and two of the nearfalls simply become three counts. They don’t take the chance provided by the match to go bigger or longer or anything like that. It’s this normal style great match that is then also this other thing, because the only changes that the WWE has any skill with employing are entirely surface level and purely cosmetic.
Stylistically, it’s not a three fall match so much as it is an already great match that was then retrofitted to also be a three fall match.
Bullshit aside, this rules. It’s among the best work of the year anywhere, it’s one of the best tag team matches of the decade, and even with the ceilings and walls put on them, an example of how great things can be when you cut even one (1) generationally great talent loose. There’s a director’s cut or a producer’s cut of this that’s even better, but even as a theatrical cut with a weird editing choice or two, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than this.
It’s an absolute god damner. One of the most underrated matches of the year for the biggest company in the world, both because of a totally understandable malaise many people had because of how things collapsed after Mania 30 (WeeLC not withstanding) but also because the two-of-three-falls stipulation on the rematch grabbed more headlines and attention. However, this is a blast too and if memory serves, actually the better match. It’s both a perfect pay per view opener and also pitch perfect tag team formula work.
The two pay per view run between these teams (and the extended Wyatts vs. Usos/partner series on television for months beforehand) was the last real gasp of great formula tag work in the WWE for some time, in any sort of extended way. The logical leap to take is that it’s simply that Luke Harper is so great in this match, but this is laid out with the same creativity that so much of the best Shield matches were too. It’s never the thing you immediately expect, there’s always some great twist or turn right around the corner that you never immediately see coming.
The logical leap is hardly wrong though. Luke Harper is SO GREAT in this.
Every piece of offense is mean and crisp and unbelievably cool. He’s the best big man of his generation not just because he was imposing or because he did cool things, but because he could do both at once. These very different things held in each hand and perfectly balanced. So often, me and people with opinions like mine will get on big guys for doing too much or for prostituting their size for easy pops, but Harper is always just on the right side. He has his big dive, but his cool stuff never betrays his size or makes him less imposing. The dive itself is brutal and feels like this desperate sort of a thing, the big weapon that he has when a situation gets out of hand. This isn’t a great match because of Harper. Rowan holds his own and The Usos have turned into genuinely a very very good tag team, bordering on great, but this is a much less great match with someone else in Harper’s position.
Mostly, it’s another one of these matches where everything just goes correctly. It’s lean enough that none of the three non-best in the world level guys are exposed. The crowd is hot enough to elevate the proceedings. Everyone involved, save one bit early on from a Uso, is on their very best behavior, It’s the crispness on offense, good selling on defense, but then also this real energy that the great matches in this style demand.
There’s also a nice little story they tell. Luke Harper is the general and always pulls out these great counters and cut offs. Rowan follows the game plan and they seem unbeatable, until Harper gets taken out for a minute or two at the end. Rowan’s lost without Harper showing him plays or without Bray Wyatt barking in his ear, and he fucks it all up. He tries to up top for some reason, and he gets caught. The Usos break out a rare double superplex, and a rarer version of the splash finish, where each man hits a splash in succession instead of two at once, and it’s enough. Rowan looks great, he’s a hard guy to keep down, but his weakness is that he’s an idiot. It’s the perfect sort of underdog win, exploiting this minute defense in heroic fashion. The Usos come out smarter and tougher, they make Harper look smarter than he did coming in, and Rowan comes out looking just a hair tougher too.
A rare best-of-the-year level gem from the WWE following WrestleMania 30, and among the best work in the career of everyone involved. There was more to this rivalry than just the more famous two of three falls match the next month.
I said once that there were very few full shows that I would ever even consider writing about in full, and this is one of them. Possibly the one of them.
It isn’t that it’s such an overwhelmingly great show that I couldn’t not do it all at once. It’s moreso that the matches and narratives on this show all feel so connected to each other and to something bigger that it would feel incorrect on some level not to just write about the entire show. Especially if I was already going to write about most of it anyways, just split up into more traditional match reviews. It’s too good, too important, and too interesting of a show not to cover as one complete thing.
MATCH #0: THE USOS VS. THE REAL AMERICANS VS. RYBAXEL VS. LOS MATADORES
This was an elimination match for the Usos’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It’s fine pre-show work! Most of the quality in this match comes from The Usos and Cesaro, if we’re being wholly honest, but that’s a great tag team and one of the best wrestlers in the world. The fourth most important person in this is El Torito, and he manages at least one spectacular dive here to almost steal the show in a pre-show match. Cesaro and Swagger run through the two jobber teams before getting to the match that should have simply been here all along, and it’s wonderful. Cesaro against The Usos is wonderful, and they’re a fun enough babyface team to get the most out of Jack Swagger for the limited amount of time that this match asks him to do much of anything. A miscommunication between Cesaro and Swagger gives the Usos the win.
Nothing blowaway here, but a brisk, easy, and fun match. Usually not the case with WrestleMania pre-show work, and it’s almost entirely due to a tag team that deserves more than the pre-show and a wrestler who will finally (briefly) get his due later on.
three boy
Following the match, tensions finally come to a head, and Cesaro does the thing people have been begging for en masse for the last month since his breakout February, and dissolves the team. Cesaro does so with a crowd pleasing many rotation Giant Swing, which is about all that Jack Swagger, this act, and this unbelievably wasteful team ever really deserved.
WWE WRESTLEMANIA XXX
APRIL 6TH, 2014
SUPERDOME
NEW ORLEANS, LOUSIANA
The show begins with one of the more fun pieces of WWE nostalgia bullshit ever. Usually, it’s the same three groups or same twenty people we always see, but with three of the WWE’s former Aces in the ring and three of the four or five top guys in company history, it’s just really cool. Also Hulk Hogan fucks up and says “Silverdome” instead of Superdome and that’s like a bit for a thousand years.
More than just being cool, it’s also done in a very cool way, as Stone Cold interrupts Hogan and clowns him, leading to a real fun little bit of tension and also Stone Cold getting a “WHAT” for simply listing the first ten WrestleManias off when describing Hogan’s run. The Rock then comes out to ease the tension, and all three do a spectacular job redirecting it to the current generation, likening Hogan to Cena and Austin to Daniel Bryan, before all three share some beers.
Genuinely cool!
The exact correct use of nostalgia.
Before the show actually starts, the best WWE hype video of the last decade airs –
DANIEL BRYAN VS. TRIPLE H
It’s the best build up and storyline in WWE history.
I am done coaching it in “perhaps” and “maybe” and even “of its time”. It’s better than Austin and McMahon in 1998-1999, and that’s not the fault of either Austin or McMahon. The fact that people had to force this and the rest of this show into being adds a sense of stakes and real struggle to it that Austin and McMahon simply can’t entirely match up with, because Austin was just so obviously the man. All of the little touches between SummerSlam and Elimination Chamber are basically perfect. The Shawn Michaels stuff, the title ceremony, the Wyatts/Bryan feud with the only reasoning being “the devil made me do it”, etc.
Once the match itself got made, just about every segment was a classic. If I was a maniac enough to rank the best segments of the year, I’m pretty sure all of them would come from this program. Hunter’s refusal was perfect, the veneer just barely still on. The invasion of the fans under an OCCUPY RAW banner to force the match, then following up with the fake police handcuffing beatdown, as seen in the video above. The comeback weeks later, Hunter’s shitheel video of all the other fan favorites he’s buried, even these promos on early WWE Network Raw post shows that were just pure shouting about the rights of workers against The Authority. It’s all perfect.
The presentation of this as well is stunning. Daniel Bryan makes a spirited but very normal entrance, eschewing any of the WrestleMania pomp and circumstance usually afforded to people as over as he is. In contrast, Triple H makes this all-time over the top entrance presented as like the version of himself he sees inside his own insane and diseased brain. This gold coated warrior god-king surrounded by his NXT golden girl valkyries. It’s truly truly deranged, and absolutely perfect.
The match itself is one of the best in WrestleMania and company history.
In this match, Daniel Bryan is nearly perfect.
The arm work isn’t entirely airtight, that’s really it. Otherwise, an incredible performance. The fire at the start, the wry sort of way he dominates Hunter initially, even something like changing up the knee off the apron into a tornado DDT off the apron. Read it as a bigger move for a bigger show, or changing up because Triple H is an obsessive tape watcher, it works just as well either way. Say the same for Bryan breaking out a repeated Tope Suicida spot for the first time in forever, so it feels like a huge deal. The selling itself is terrific. Only using the one arm, having problems with the Yes Lock and other holds, classic stuff. Beyond the mechanical, it’s an all time great WWE babyface performance. He’s sympathetic enough to work as a classical underdog babyface, but then fiery enough and whipping enough ass to work as a classical WWE top level babyface in the same match.
The best thing Bryan does here might not even be anything he overtly does from bell to bell. As you may have read on this blog, Bryan is the greatest wrestler of all time, and as much of that is about individual performance as it is about bringing the best out of other wrestlers. Sometimes it means him pushing someone to something or providing an example for someone like him. Other times, it’s a more nebulous thing, with the reputation that Daniel Bryan has forcing someone to bring their best to the table for fear of being to blame if a a match isn’t exceptional.
This match is the ultimate statement of that, because there has never ever been a better version of Triple H than the one we saw here, the King of Kings Road. He’s had matches as good as this, a few even better, but they’ve all had some shortcut attached to them, some gimmick to help him out. This is a boiler plate professional wrestling match, and he has never looked better in one or performed more intelligently in any single wrestling match.
Bryan comes in with his left arm and shoulder bandaged up from the months going into this of people targeting it, starting way back in December 2013. Bryan’s smart enough to keep Hunter away time and time again. There’s a great undercurrent to this that Hunter isn’t quite the technical wrestler he imagines himself to be, and it’s not until he can get into some Attitude Era bullshit with an announce table does his arm work actually pay any sort of dividend. That’s what works so well about this match for Hunter, is that Bryan seems to get the essence of the Triple H character its core and works to it. It’s not some genius god-king like Hunter thinks, but it’s this power wrestler who knows JUST enough to be dangerous and who has absolutely no moral limits. He can’t fight Bryan on the ground, not really and no matter how smart or well schooled he is, but when he can get a Divorce Court on the announce table, he can finally do something. Much like the rest of the feud, they’re also smart enough to weaponize Triple H’s past, as best expressed with his use of the repeated Crossface holds. It’s not a thing that can ever really be said, for totally fair and obvious reasons, but Triple H now using the Crossface is SUCH a god damned thing, and him doing it to Bryan is perfect. This symbol of another thing he snuffed out once upon a time, but also another example of Triple H not totally getting everything he’s doing. He’s smart enough to go to the hurt arm, he’s seen enough to know the right things to do, but he never totally gets how to make the most out of an arm based attack and has no real idea how to win with it.
Hunter goes back to his power game when it gets too hard, and it dooms him. Bryan’s tough enough to kick out of the Pedigree, but that’s all Hunter has. He gets mean and nasty, but at the other end of that is simply going for it again. Bryan escapes, outmaneuvers him, and wins clean as a fucking sheet off of the running knee.
A genuine epic level struggle, but one that manages that without going anywhere close to too far, and one that achieves that status while always being real and grounded. A masterpiece of a match that in retrospect, only Daniel Bryan could ever have gotten off of the ground, Not simply because he brought the best out of Triple H, but because only he could create a scenario wild enough for a match like this to happen, but also for a match like this to be able to be this restrained in the first place. The all time expression of the unstated and often unintentional politics of being the best wrestler of all time.
Bryan gets to the main event after all, and Triple H finally gets one of these “I did the right thing!” moments that he’s actually allowed to talk about, which you know he’s been mad about for the last seven years.
****
Following the match, Triple H and his wife attack Bryan’s arm with a chair, to try and put the main event participation of Our Hero in doubt, despite not being able to actually stop him themselves. The working class hero did the work and got there fairly, only to be kneecapped anyways yet again because The Game has been rigged from the start. So it goes.
THE SHIELD VS. KANE & THE NEW AGE OUTLAWS
It’s two minutes.
It’s two minutes and it’s PERFECT.
The Shield completely runs through three old hacks. It’s exciting and incredibly fun and wholly dominant. They get maybe a punch or two in, but thankfully, this match totally abandons the pretense. These guys are old, they can’t hang, and The Shield completely runs through them. Roman spears all three, Dean and Seth dive on them repeatedly, and the match ends with the first ever Double Triple Powerbomb. Or the Triple-Double. It’s a waste of The Shield, they could have done more on this show, but at the same time, it’s such a wonderful show of force.
At the end, JBL delivers one of his better serious calls ever with, “there goes the Attitude Era”.
It’s obviously bullshit seven years later, but in the moment, following all the fun and positive things that happened so far, it really did feel that way at the time.
THE ANDRE THE GIANT MEMORIAL BATTLE ROYAL
The best WWE battle royal in a long time, close to a decade. There were several surprisingly good ones in the mid 2000s, and they succeeded for the same reason that this did, and it’s the overwhelming pool of talent in the ring and some creative composition. The dead weight gets out of the ring fast and for the most part, it’s all fun and creative. You get down to the meat of the thing, and it’s all great wrestlers. The Big Show, Sheamus, Del Rio, Mysterio, Ziggler, Cesaro, Goldust, and the like. Cool eliminations, fast pace, really gets rid of every issue with boring and routine WWE battle royals.
Somehow Cesaro makes it to the end against obvious winner The Big Show.
Except that Cesaro just explodes on him? He hits a flurry of uppercuts on the big fella, AND THEN SLAMS HIM OVER THE TOP AND OUT HOLY SHIT WHAT?
It’s another seemingly impossible feat on this show. A battle royal win that genuinely feels like a huge deal and a starmaker. Beyond that, a battle royal with real substance and that’s full of cool stuff, instead of just being the means to an end. Easily the best of all of these Andre battle royals, as the only one they took entirely seriously, and the best WWE battle royal in close to a decade in either direction.
***
Between the big turn earlier in the show and a win as powerful and definitive at that, it seems almost impossible to deny Cesaro going forward.
Before the next contest, WWE manages to accidentally touch on something real in the media world at the time when it’s happening. Another total stunner, I know. Bray Wyatt comes out to his swamp voodoo song in New Orleans with a live performance from the band in these elaborate and creepy little costumes, at the exact time that the first season of True Detective (the good one) was a big and major deal with a real similar overall vibe. We’re in Carcosa now. It’s the peak of Bray Wyatt’s career, this incredibly cool entrance while the entire act still feels like a huge huge deal.
JOHN CENA VS. BRAY WYATT
I’m not going to waste whatever credibility I may or may not have selling you on the idea that this is great.
It isn’t.
What it is though is a whole lot of fun.
The story itself is quite silly. Bray wants Cena to kill him and reveal that he’s a monster as part of some plan to show the world that Cena can be mean and violent too and that their hero is no better than him. It’s especially weird because like…yeah, no shit? If you have a working memory, you remember all these big violent things Cena’s done to end feuds. The part of it that does work though is Bray trying to bait Cena into a disqualification so he has a huge WrestleMania win, but as always, the story told bell to bell is rarely the same as the one told on commentary when it comes to these WWE concept matches.
If you can get past that though, this is a lot of fun. It’s Cena against a Monster of the Week, but Bray’s physical and over enough for it to be a fun application of formula. Cena breaks out a lot of the bigger stuff for a WrestleMania match, even if he’s in the middle of the card for the first time in a while. Wyatt matches him with a few bigger moves and more spectacular moments than usual. It’d be ideal, if not for the end, when that bullshit comes back around. Bray gives Cena a chair for some reason, like he’s going to hit him with it, but without being nearly annoying or mean enough to warrant that. Cena hits the Family outside with it instead, and counters Sister Abby into the FU to win. I’m good with the bullshit on some Buy The Ticket shit, especially with a match this fun otherwise, but yeah, real weird and a depressing harbinger of what’s to come, both for the feud and for the entire Wyatt character, who will not be covered very often on this site from now on.
Pure WWE bullshit, but wrapped up in a surprisingly fun match bell to bell.
an extremely borderline three boy
THE UNDERTAKER VS. BROCK LESNAR
We’re not here to talk about the match. You know that.
This one’s all about the finish, and saying that, this is probably better than its reputation but also nowhere near good enough to eclipse the moment itself. The entire deal is about Undertaker being so assured in his victory after the last five years he’s survived, but no longer really doing anything to guarantee that. The entire match he feels half a speed off, and leans entirely on what worked on the past. He tries the Hell’s Gate from his back that’s won a few in the past, but it totally fails. He never makes a real honest comeback until the last few minutes, and when he needs to do more, all he can break out is fucking Old School or a Kimura. He wrestles like someone assured that something will eventually break in his favor, because for 21 shows and 24 years, it has.
Except it doesn’t.
Brock just never allows him that break, and on the third F5, it finally happens.
I’m not going to eulogize the fucking Streak like it’s a person or something real, but it is a major moment.
Around the time this happened, I read a wonderful and insane piece of fanwank, the sort of theory that redefines fanwank and sticks with you. It stated that Heyman saw Undertaker up close the previous year at Wrestlemania in the Taker/Punk match and saw what was there, that The Undertaker largely won because Punk hurt himself on the big table spot and barely defeated someone like two-thirds his size. Heyman also had a history of paying off The Shield to help his clients, and conveniently, they targeted The Undertaker and hurt him. Brock Lesnar’s next match is then against CM Punk, where he finds himself just about equal and more physically dominant, before nuking another big guy, The Big Show, earlier in 2014 in his next match. Brock fails to make any mistakes here, learning something from almost losing to Punk , and specifically, he fails to make the mistakes others have made against Undertaker in the last few years, despite Taker having been shot since the dive in 2009. It all feels like a plan finally coming to fruition.
Or it’s all bullshit that just happens to conveniently fit together. It’s sort of the beauty of fanwank. Do it with enough art and skill and hey, why not? It’s the WWE, you never expect anything out of them, but it makes sense, so…fuck it. Why not?
Really though, it’s one of the most significant things to happen in the WWE and pro wrestling all decade. A pro wrestling sort of 9/11 or JFK assassination, not in terms of actual importance (this is all nonsense fake fighting, none of it is actually important, we are all incredibly dumb for caring about it at all), but in the sense that most people I talk to seem to remember exact circumstances of their viewing experience or where they were or what they were doing when they found out. It’s not a unique thing, people tend to have those sorts of memories for the big things, but this is such a big thing that it seems almost a universal experience.
For me, I was in my sophomore year dorm room, leaning back in my shitty yet weirdly comfortable standard issue chair after digesting a Dominos pan pizza and bread bites, either drinking an Oberon or leftover Guinness from the holiday a few weeks prior. Headphones in to be nice to that fucking freak Kevin, the roommate who lived on Subway tuna melts and Pepsi Max, talking in a group chat. I was stunned. Genuinely stunned. It’s a result beyond even Oracle capabilities, I’m not sure that I closed my mouth for a whole minute. I’m not sure anyone in the chat wrote anything for a minute or two, which I’m not sure I’ve ever experiences in years of watching live pay per views in group chats.
I’ve never really experienced a feeling like it when watching wrestling otherwise, and the best thing I can say about it is that it’s the entire reason you manufacture streaks to begin with.
The only thing wrong here is that The Undertaker ever wrestled another match after this.
A stunning display of an entire company’s inability to look at a calendar.
THE VICKIE GUERRERO INVITATIONAL
I’ll give this as much respect as the company did. I think that’s fair. It wasn’t especially good, the only match on the show that’s obvious filler and that you could cut and lose absolutely nothing. That being said, after a thing like what came before it, you needed a little bit of a break. Feel sorry for all the women who got thrown to the wolves like this, but it was also easily the weakest match and weakest build on the entire show, so it’s not like it was the wrong choice of matches to sacrifice either.
RANDY ORTON VS. BATISTA VS. DANIEL BRYAN
This was for Orton’s WWE World Heavyweight Title.
Even if it’s not better than Bryan’s first match on the show, Hunter once again simply HAVING to outshine his proteges, it’s still a much better match than most people remember.
Obviously, this should have simply been Orton against Bryan. It’s been the central feud of the WWE over the last six plus months, really going back to their series in June and brief team against The Shield before that. It’s not the end of the world though. Batista is an addition that adds to the match in his own way, both as this obvious corporate avatar in contrast to Daniel Bryan, but also as the other representation of the last decade plus of WWE plans that Bryan’s upending.
The match itself is really great. A lot of complaints I’ve read and heard are about sections where Bryan is gone, like it’s WrestleMania XX or something and there’s a long stretch without him, but that genuinely is not the case here. The story is moreso that they try and do that, but never really can. It’s that all the bullshit in the world finally just can’t succeed anymore. The arm doesn’t stop him from getting there. The combined efforts of the two chosen ones aren’t enough, because he’s just better than them. Failing that, Triple H and Stephanie come to stop his win once, and they wave crooked referee Scott Armstrong back out after his absence for months after the plot in the fall of 2013. Bryan’s finally both done playing the game the right way, and also in a spot where he no longer has to, and kicks him in the head. A dive takes out The Authority, and when Hunter goes for his trusty sledgehammer, Bryan easily takes that and knocks him out with it too.
Subtlety may not or may not be for cowards, but there is a time and a place for it, and it sure isn’t now.
Big Dave and Randy manage their big spot to take Bryan out, but it simply doesn’t work. He refuses the stretcher and instead of some big sequence like I think people have turned it into in their heads, Randy simply brings him back into the ring. The big final ran is tremendous. Batista hits his marks as well as he ever had to. Randy’s tremendous. Bryan simply won’t ever go away. They tease a few different results as well as possible, making the most out of a real audience fear that they still won’t ACTUALLY do the right thing, before then actually delivering. Bryan wipes Big Dave out with the knee, and then goes into the Yes Lock. Good things can happen sometimes. Batista taps out, and it’s all finally over, and a year of faith is rewarded.
Daniel Bryan is the WWE World Heavyweight Champion.
It’s not the greatest match ever. It’s a WWE three way, and it has many of the problems of the WWE three way in terms of feeling somewhat aimless at times and three ways being less satisfying in major moments like this. However, they still packed so much into this in terms of the story elements, and with a performance as great and evocative as Bryan’s was, so much of those problems simply do not matter, outside of that I wish he simply just got Orton one on one at the end of all this. It’s a fortunate thing that this was a great match, another fortunate success for Daniel Bryan, but up to a certain point, this was entirely about the result and the match more than came through on that result.
***1/4
There are very few times in decades of watching wrestling that have felt as good as this.
Many are tainted, and the only one remotely on the same level is Money in the Bank 2011. It’s apples and oranges, to some extent. That was a short three week build, and this was something close to a year in the making. The qualities of the former allowed it to feel like a genuine revolution, a combination of a coup d’etat and a college football rivalry game. In contrast, this was the payoff to such a long and arduous struggle. They’re different situations and different feelings. The live element of MITB also can’t ever be separated. They also feel very connected in my head, one cannot exist without the other. Or rather, this cannot exist without that opening the door. All the same, this is the high point of that movement and feeling. It’s the high water mark of a wave of unrest that Punk began, and that Punk eventually sealed with his January 2014 walk out.
I reviewed this entire show at once not just because it’s such a well put together show, or because I like it so much, but because of what it felt like at the time and what it feels like now. It’s such a hopeful wrestling show, the likes of which you rarely get from the WWE, let alone from other pro wrestling. Virtually everything on this show is about the future, and closing the book on the past for good, save for Cena/Wyatt, which exists both as an outlier and as this reaffirmation of Cena as this new generation’s living legend. A new era’s been inching closer for a few years now, and this is the show where it feels like it’s finally upon us.
To put it in another way, if the WWE is a long running television show, this entire event feels like a series finale.
Perhaps not a willing one, but definitely a show with that sort of a tone to it. It’s not exactly “Made in America” or “Felina” or “Family Meeting” or the last episode of The Wire, or any of these finales that feel like they know they’re finales. But like a television show that knows it might be the end, and which seeks to wrap up every loose end just in case.
The Bryan thing obviously works to that.
When The Authority formed after SummerSlam, there was kind of a wink and nod way they did it where it felt like the WWE admitting they didn’t want smaller workhorse types to actually be on top, with the entire “B+” and “good little wrestler” lines echoing so much, and justifying a lot of past actions with guys like Punk, Bret, Benoit, Eddie, Jericho, etc. They weren’t just heels, they were this entire system that a lot of fans hated, put on screen, the implicit made explicit. It was made even more real when Punk had enough and quit, so Bryan wasn’t just fighting some good heels with an uncomfortable truth to them, but he was fighting the WWE. This entire thing that didn’t want people like him to succeed, and actively wanted them to either die, give up, or leave. He was fighting the idea of the WWE, the kind of place that’s always told people what they want instead of really listening and valued a certain body type and image in the face of everything else, and it put Bryan over the top as a People’s Champion. So when Bryan wins here, it genuinely feels like he’s broken that. Like WWE finally stopped fighting it and accepted that Daniel Bryan is their top babyface and this needs to ride out, like Bret Hart in the mid 90s. You knew he would never get the full promotional machine, but it seemed like this would at least play out until Reigns and Rollins and Ambrose and etc. were ready, and Bryan would be that guy, in the moment and euphoric feeling that came out of this show.
On top of that, Bryan did it by going through Evolution. Triple H has long been WWE’s most enduring schemer and this was the night that all his schemes over the last ten to fifteen years completely failed in front of the world. Triple H finally gave the kind of performance that seemed to match how he’d always seen himself in his own mind, and it absolutely did not matter. His hubris got the best of him and his world collapsed and his philosophy was defeated on the biggest possible stage. He couldn’t beat Bryan and his greatest creations failed to do the same, so he had nothing but the job title. Triple H’s days on camera being done seemed like they were coming to an end in a 100% believable way befitting of that character at the end of the show. He’s COO now because he married well and because he has the mind for it, but in a Vic Mackey-ish way, where it’s all he has left and he hates it. He’s been so exposed that that’s all there is, and it’s the exact ending he deserves, an embarrassing striver exposed and beaten in front of the world, and resigned to something he hates doing.
Beyond that, The Streak ended. WWE’s longest running story came to a close and got blown off, and The Undertaker finally got beaten. Based on everything else, he should be gone. Done and retired. The Attitude Era was seemingly laid to rest by the new hot group. Cesaro became a star in an amazing moment. John Cena is the outlier, but he works with a hot new heel, leaves him something, and establishes himself as the living legend to a new generation in the way The Undertaker was ten years earlier.
I’ve never seen a WWE show that wraps up this many loose ends.
So naturally, because they put on this “episode” – one of the most satisfying episodes in the entire genre’s history – the show is renewed. Like any good show, they allowed themselves stories to continue and expand on. The Shield are now firmly babyfaces, but now are bound to run afoul of top heels now, with all new match ups there. Bryan as champion and the top babyface in the company, obviously. Cesaro’s babyface turn. Bray’s continued rise as a top level heel, and Cena’s “THE FUTURE GOES THROUGH ME” speech from a month ago as this challenge to all the young guys in the company, many of whom still have yet to test that. And of course, that clear return match between our two top heroes, with a new God level monster Brock Lesnar waiting in the wings.
There’s all this stuff to continue on with in as satisfying a manner as the last twelve months have shown them capable of proceeding. Except, they didn’t. But we can get to that later, say after a certain event on a certain Raw after a certain early June pay-per-view where WWE intentionally ruins their hottest act at a time when with a certain injury to a certain top guy, and the way they’d ruined a certain battle royal winner seemingly 100% on purpose, they needed them the most.
On this night though, everything works and leaves me and you and all good wrestling fans unable to remove the smiles from our faces. The future, if it exists, is the brightest it’s looked after a WrestleMania in 16 years, if not ever.
The WWE has reached something like a peak again near the end and everything that could be blown off has been blown off. A rocky ride, but one hell of a final season.
This was for the Rhode Brothers’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
A big bonus of this is the format in which I watched it, which is not one I would have explored a week or two ago (post written on 3/29/2021) before the WWE Network went down.
I watched this through other means, with a legal avenue removed from me. As such, the format in which I saw it was not only the international cut of this episode of Smackdown, with no commercials on it, but also with the commentary only on one channel of the audio. The result is that with only one headphone in, I could both watch an uninterrupted WWE television match, but I could watch it without any WWE commentary.
It’s the dream.
As is this match!
It’s pure formula, but they do SO MUCH with the formula to keep it fresh and interesting. Goldust is the best babyface tag team worker of all time and this match lets him riff and riff and riff. It’s only twelve or thirteen minutes, but that’s all he needs.
This isn’t quite in the universe as the best Shield match, but this does have what The Shield didn’t, which is the best big man of his generation in Luke Harper. As good as Roman was, he’s not Harper. Everything he does is perfect. Nasty power moves, an uppercut that puts doubt for once into the idea of Goldust having the best punch in a given match. Over twenty years (admittedly off and on) of being a great wrestler on television at this point, and I’ve almost never wondered if Dustin was the best puncher in a given match. It’s not THE ultimate testament to Harper/Brodie, but it’s a hell of a thing.
They also do a lot to play around with the format, with the goal of making Harper and Rowan look incredible, despite them not winning the titles. Cody gets finally isolated halfway through, after the champions kept outmaneuvering them and taking advantage of Rowan’s lack of experience. Harper does it, but it’s not just him doing it through muscle. By presenting the champions as relatively dominant early on in a few different ways (both faster and smarter), Harper comes out better when he finally figures out how to shut that down. Control on Cody is exceptional. Rowan is basic, but during this 2014 run especially, he got a lot out of a little. Harper’s tremendous at plugging him in at just the right times, but Rowan has a real mastery of the character. A big farm guy who just learned to wrestle would only logically know the basics, and he does the basics in a mean and intimidating sort of way. With Harper there to do the heavy lifting, it’s fine!
The real magic here is in the way they handle the end. Specifically, in the way that a hot tag never happens. They cut Cody off every time, and we see Cody having to break out big offense to stay alive, instead of just getting space. When you always do something one way, differences like this stand out a lot. A difference in this way, with the story of this match, makes the Wyatts look especially good.
The finish itself is a work of art, as Goldust manipulates a perfect scenario against the weaker link on the other side, to immediately snatch the win from nowhere.
It’s yet another display of classic Rhodes Brothers tag team formula, paired with the best big man worker of a generation, and a super unique finish. I can’t recomend this enough.
Usually, I would break these up, but this is one of the most perfect hours of WWE television they’ve put together in nearly sixty years of existence and it flows together so perfectly that it all belongs in one post together.
It’s a nice Friday after Thanksgiving on Smackdown. It doesn’t matter. You’re at home, after fighting your way through a Best Buy to get a deal on a PS3, perhaps buying what you don’t know is the last ever edition of NCAA Football that will ever be released, along with GTA5. Perhaps you’ve come back to your dorm room early, and are lounging at your desk and watching this on the television for which you rigged up a cable hook up across the ceiling to the cable hook up on your roommate’s side of the room. He’s not back yet from whatever weird stuff he and his pervert family get up to. You crank it up, crack a beer. Make a leftover sandwich.
It’s a breezy show, even if it doesn’t matter. Some stuff’s happened for sure. Titus O’Neil has thrown up on JBL. Classic pro wrestling. For some reason, the scheduled main event opens the second hour. Some bullshit might happen. Ah well.
We begin with a simple tag, the third iteration of one of the great tag team rivalries of the year.
CODY RHODES/GOLDUST VS. THE SHIELD (ROMAN REIGNS & SETH ROLLINS)
This was for the Rhodes Brothers’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It doesn’t quite live up to the title change from October 14th, but it’s just about as good as the more famous Battleground match. Now, OBVIOUSLY it doesn’t have the big emotional payoff. But for the same sort of pure formula match, this gets more time to breathe and develop itself, and I think they do a better job with it overall. The big title change has the fireworks show at the end with all these great payoffs, but in terms of just a pure execution and refinement of the formula, this is it. With close to twenty minutes to work with, they’re allowed to stretch out a little more and create a real lived in sort of a match on their third two on two shot at it. There’s some restraint for reasons tht become apparent at the end, but it doesn’t really hurt this much at all. The environment helps them out too, because if Smackdown is a house show (and it is), it means they’re a little freer here to riff it out and see what happens.
What happens mainly is that Goldust, once again, is on fire.
Goldust and Roman once again are dynamite together. Roman gets a little cut under his eye, so you know this one’s not bullshit. The usual great hot tag work after yet another quality piece of Shield control on Cody, with an all-time little hoot and holler and applaud in your private domicile moment when he actually manages to hit the big Crossbody off the ropes. The transition comes in another way, and it’s so good. To have him succeed where he usually fails makes it seem like the end is coming up, only to get cut off once again, leading into an even better piece of Shield control. The comeback there is also a delight. The more I watch of this run, the more I start to lose grip on the “maybe” part of the “Goldust is maybe best tag worker of all time” statement I’m always throwing out here. If nothing else, I’m pretty sure he’s the best pure babyface tag team worker that there’s ever been.
Cody’s hot tag isn’t all that bad either!
If not for his partner being Dustin Rhodes, I’d be over the moon about it. Even still, it’s another entry here for the best and most consistent period of Cody’s entire career. He and Rollins have surprisingly great chemistry, and manage to do that classic Shield thing where there’s always just some slight difference. Counters to things from the previous match they had on Raw four days earlier, counters to stuff from earlier in this rivalry. Cody manages a new way into the Cross Rhodes after breaking out a super rare La Escalera to take Roman out, and they’ve finally got The Shield dead to rights.
Until they don’t, because Ambrose hits the ring for the save.
A really great match, even before any of the nonsense, and there’s still a solid forty minutes of show time left!
***1/4
The Shield sticks with the gang attack, only for CM Punk to then come out to make things fair. This all winds up leading to one of the five or six different authority figures Vickie Guerrero making and impromptu six man, because Teddy Long’s DNA is woven into the material of Smackdown still all these years later.
CM PUNK/CODY RHODES/GOLDUST VS. THE SHIELD
It’s the one of the three that isn’t quite great.
This is the bridge match.
Not as airtight and fleshed out as the Tag Title match and not as out of control, frenetic, and wild as the one to follow. But a way to get from Point A to Point B in a neat and tidy fashion. Keep the engine running.
Still, a lot of fun to be had, because there’s very few people who I’d trust as much to keep the engine running as these guys (and also Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes). As the fresh guys, this leans on CM Punk and Dean Ambrose a little more than the other four. The reason it isn’t quite great isn’t because of Punk though, because he’s pretty good here. We’re never getting 1000% effort bump freak CM Punk ever again, but he does a lot of little things that brought a lot to this. He was clearly directing traffic for the team, in a way that helped the match, and explained why they wound up controlling Rollins for longer than The Shield controlled any of them in this segment. Again, Smackdown is a house show and someone as experienced and jaded as Punk is at this point knows that, but he still brings a certain presence and lightness to everything that helps a lot, like the other half of what a house show can be. There’s a certain joy in watching people have fun while they’re doing what they’re doing.
Ambrose doesn’t quite have that going for him, but he’s the bump freak in this match up, and takes a bunch of great stuff. He gets another great little run against Cody in this, before Punk gets back in and some bullshit happens.
There’s a Wyatt flash, and the Wyatt Family shows up to attack Our Heroes in response to Cody & Goldust beating them the previous week to keep the titles and to CM Punk and Daniel Bryan’s victory over them at the Survivor Series.
Rey Mysterio and The Usos come to save and to make it even once again, and we have our second impromptu continuation, now in a twelve man tag team main event.
CM PUNK/REY MYSTERIO/CODY RHODES/GOLDUST/THE USOS VS. THE SHIELD/THE WYATT FAMILY
This one’s short too, but real breezy, and it’s when you get the payoffs and the big fireworks show. Like the last match leaned on the newer entrants into this big wonderful mess, this one leans on the Wyatts, Rey, and The Usos a lot. And for a moment, do you know what that means?
LUKE HARPER VS. REY MYSTERIO.
Not for nearly long enough, but given that it happens a few more times in more cut down tag matches in early 2014, it’s hard to be too bummed about it. Granted, we never got that slam dunk obvious singles match between the best pure little man underdog babyface in wrestling history and the best big man of a generation, but we get a taste here, and it is exceptional. That’s not all though, because Rey does his best to try and match Goldust’s in-peril work earlier in the hour by getting career work to this point out of Erick Rowan too! He’s great against Ambrose and Bray when called for too, just a wonderful performance. There’s also yet another nice little Shield/Wyatts touch, as they get along better now after having previously tagged up, but still have these little moments of discontent.
Punker gets the hot tag to send it home. Not the best choice, but being the biggest star in the ring and probably like the #3 or 4 guy in the company at this point, hey, it is what it is. It’s not offensive. He’s helped out by the others for your big fireworks show. The discord between the two bad guy factions rears its head at the end in a cute little way. The Wyatts all clearly hold back at the end and let The Shield eat all the big bullets like the Usos dive, most of Punk’s hot tag, etc., before trying to vulture the match. It doesn’t work though, because Rey bails Punk out and keeps it even. Rowan eats the 619 to feed him into the Go To Sleep, and we’re all sent home full and happy to end the show.
It’s a shorter final match, but it’s fun enough and good enough to coast on the goodwill from the preceding fifty minutes and stick the landing.
three boy
Things like this don’t ever really happen and it’s why I still remember it so fondly seven years and change later.
One of the most exceedingly and enduringly fun episodes of WWE television in some time, as a result of one of the more memorable little ideas in recent memory. Not each of the three matches is great, the first is the best of them, but it’s something so unique and so fun and so just entirely unimpeded by any sort of WWE Bullshit at all. It’s pure pro wrestling, the sort of stuff designed to put a smile on your face. It’s a very Heyman-ish booking idea, flowing all these matches into each other, but doing it doing all the same guys and the match just gradually building up and up is so cool and different. It stands out for WWE but it stands out for just regular wrestling too. It’s a genuinely novel idea, executed with the sort of energy and joy needed to stick the landing as perfectly as they did.
“Smackdown is a house show” is usually a license for people to not care about matches being good or for writers to not put anything into it, but for once, it meant that the WWE got to loosen the reigns and let people get loose and relaxed and a little goofy. This, for once, manages to capture the fun of a good house show on live television, a thing that very few other matches ever have been able to do. One of the all time WWE 2013-2014 examples of how good and enjoyable this dumb shit can be when you just let people breathe and work some stuff out and get out of the way. It’s genuinely one of my favorite things in wrestling history, one of my favorite non-major viewing experiences in wrestling history, and if you wind up checking this out, I’m really happy that you do and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did at the time and again here.
An all-time greater than the sum of its parts total package, creating one of the great episodes of wrestling television this decade.
This was for the Rhodes Brothers’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It’s removed now from any major stories, as the big emotional climaxes have both already happened. Instead, it’s now slotted in as a pure popcorn match to open up a WWE pay per view. Just as importantly, it gets the One Great Match designation on a weaker card, getting to do a lot of bigger stuff and having to succeed.
It does!
There’s too much talent in this for it to fail, and by “too much talent”, I mostly mean Goldust.
The other five are good here and manage to land all their stuff perfectly and exceed in their roles (hot tag, control work, dive/finishing run spot guys) respectively, but it’s the Goldust show once again. It’s his fifth time against The Shield in three weeks, and it’s all new stuff. Not new new, but he’s right up there with Bryan at finding all these different little ways to change things up so it feels fresh or maybe more importantly, so it doesn’t feel so obviously like the thrown together retread-as-spotfest that it is. He’s the best ace in peril once again, he’s amazing early on putting on an uppercut clinic, and what the finishing run asks of him is great too. Very obviously the guy here directing traffic and holding it all together while the other five go wild once the switch flips.
They could probably do more here than they do, but it’s enough. Superplex onto a pile on the floor spot, dives, finishers and pinfall saves, all of that. It’s chaos, and the Rhodes brothers just happen to both be in the ring at once in time to hit their stuff in a row, and the Cross Rhodes pins Rollins again.
Total junk food compared to the filling meals that were the two major Shield/Rhodes Brothers tag matches in the last month, but there’s nothing wrong with a little junk food. Put some Fritos Honey BBQ Twists in your cart along with the leafy greens and deli meat.
HANDWERK 