Not all the titles can be winners, okay?
Pre-show Notes:
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Hit the next page for your Main Event of the evening (er, afternoon)…
Worst: Los Matadores Winning Ever
Oh God, Gold and Stardust just came through the curtain – if the Usos are next out, I swear…
…okay, false alarm, it’s just Los Matadores, so this should just be boring instead of spirit-crushing. Not a whole lot to comment on in this one aside from the odd fact that one of the Matadores (Diego I think?) is suddenly in much better shape than his brother. Guess somebody realized he’d need to lay off the empanadas if he ever wants Rosa Mendes to writhe awkwardly at ringside for him again.
So anyways, Los Matadores won after Torito hurricanrana’d Goldust, which is the most frustrating thing ever. WWE can’t seem to decide what kind of stupid comedy team they want Los Matadores to be – one week, they’re 3MB-style loser comedy guys, and next week they’re early-Adam Rose, winning effortlessly and humiliating the heels. You can’t do both, because real tag teams look like complete shit when they get beat by the guys you usually treat like loser jokes. Make up your mind WWE, or better yet, just spare yourselves the trouble and stop putting these guys on TV altogether.
Main Event Status: Los Matadores are barely worth rating, and apparently Gold and Stardust are even worse than them, so meh, I’ll give this 1%.
Worst: Context is Everything
Welp, The Ascension came out, said they were better than the Road Warriors and beat some baby-sized local talent while JBL vomited in rage at ringside. You know the drill. I’m not sure what else to say about it, aside from this is yet another sad case of WWE chucking NXT characters on regular WWE TV without providing the proper context. The Ascension are basically a couple greasy, leather skirt-wearing Emmas. This thing they’re doing with them requires a year of backstory to make sense – in NXT, The Ascension held the tag belts for a year, so their inflated egos were somewhat justified, but they also mostly faced goobers, so the announcers gradually turning on them also made sense. Without that foundation, the main roster version of The Ascension just seem delusional, and the commentators come off as cranky, irrational old men (moreso than usual).
Stop assuming everybody watches NXT, WWE. They don’t. Hell, more people watch this stupid show. You can’t just call up new faces without a “This Past Year in NXT” recap.
Main Event Status: Blah blah, couldn’t carry Road Warriors’ jocks, argle-bargle, 5%.
Best: This Should Go Well For Justin Gabriel
Hmmm, I’m not sure if I like Justin Gabriel’s chances in this one, although it would be wonderful if he did randomly win. The evil Russian is finally defeated by a white guy from South Africa and the crowd goes, uh, ambivalent?
This match was actually more competitive than I thought it would be. Gabriel and Rusev traded some solid strikes early, and Gabriel even got in a few good moves, like his stomp off the top rope, before eventually succumbing to the Accolade. Really, Rusev’s streak would be so much more interesting if they did stuff like this more often. Instead of doing nothing but minute-long formulaic squashes and mostly dull PPV matches against plodding big men, mix in the occasional scrappy underdog near-win. Make it feel like the streak is constantly under threat. Of course that might make Rusev too sympathetic, but hell, he’s already secretly a good guy, so whatevs, let’s make things exciting.
Main Event Status: Rusev is a pretty solid get for Main Event, and Gabriel wasn’t treated like a complete nobody, so let’s say 30%.
Best: Macho Feelings
WWE has to stop kicking so much ass with these Randy Savage video packages – they’re really giving my manly stoic facade a beating. Wrestling doesn’t usually give me a lot of big feelings, but dammit, Savage was my childhood favorite, and well, he died only months before my dad in a similar, sudden sort of way. I believe they might have even been the same age when they passed. I’m not sure what the point of this paragraph is exactly, other than to say, cherish those important greying guys in your life. They may not seem that old yet, but every year after that big five-oh is an uncertain gift.
Best: A New Day For The New Day
A match featuring The New Day and Adam Rose? That’s instant Worst material, right? Well, not so fast – it also involved Cesaro and Tyson, got a surprisingly luxurious 15-minutes to play out and in the end was actually pretty damn solid. It wasn’t The Shield vs. Wyatt Family good or anything, but it was a more than passable little six-man tag.
As much as I kind of hate Cesaro and Tyson hanging around with Rose, at least this match provided Rose the a rare opportunity to actually be a real wrestler, as opposed to the guy who always wins or loses in under a minute. Of course, The Swinging Cats were great as always, but The New Day also brought it with some nice double-teams and a pretty sweet triple dive spot (suck on that Usos). Hell, Kofi Kingston went so far as to bust out a new move, hitting a downright Daniel Bryan-worthy running knee in the corner.
They even let these guys do nearfalls and finisher kickouts, like this match mattered or something! Really, the only downfall of the match was that it ended with the nonsensical Big E/Xavier combo finisher instead of the far superior Kofi/Xavier variant. That aside, even thought these are six of the more lowly guys on the roster, when WWE actually let them do their jobs uninterrupted for a few minutes, they all shone. Go figure.
Main Event Status: Nobody in this match is a huge stars, but they all looked like stars here, so I’ll be generous and give this one a 25%.
Final Main Event Tally: A passable 61% this week. This was an entirely wrestling-based show, but most of the wrestling, particularly in the back half, was pretty solid, so I can’t complain too vociferously. Get me some Miz and Sandow and maybe a good women’s match on next week’s show though.
