The Miz’s mom’s new desktop.
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Best: Tell Your Mom I Said Whassup
Okay, normally I wouldn’t be giving something like this a Best. I mean, for one, it’s Miz TV, which ought to be Worsted as a matter of standard practice, and Roman Reigns was in full-blown WWE babyface dickhead mode here. Miz isn’t even being particularly obnoxious or passive-aggressive by Miz standards, he even lets the fact that his mom wants to bone Roman slide and Reigns just coldcocks him out of nowhere. Normal, non-psychotic people don’t do these sort of things, WWE.
On the other hand, it’s The Miz and LOL.
If that doesn’t look like a Best to you, you need to adjust your monitor.
Best: Sh*t Yeah, Burning Hammer!
Dean Ambrose vs. Cesaro started a little slow, but somewhere around the middle of the match Cesaro seemingly decided, “Screw it, what else can they do to me? Let’s have some fun” and started reversing tornado DDTs into uppercuts of death and hitting freakin’ Burning Hammers out of nowhere. On top of that, the finish was great — Cesaro goes for a German suplex, which makes sense given Dean’s perpetually taped shoulder, then Ambrose reverses to a German attempt of his own, then Cesaro reverses again and Dean reverses to the Dirty Deeds. Bam, misdirection! Clever Boy!
Hopefully Cesaro being lost in midcard purgatory leads to him busting out all manner of Japanese deadliness just for the hell of it — randomly hit Kofi Kingston with a Ganso Bomb in the middle of a match on Main Event for a two-count. What the hell, it’s not like anyone in charge will notice.
Worst: I Don’t Think Even He Knows What He’s Going To Do Next
Just a commentary aside, since I haven’t bitched about it for a while — JBL and Cole’s new canned line when talking about crazy wrestlers (which is now half the roster) is that they’re so out of control even they know what they’re going to do next! Hey, you know who else doesn’t know what they’re going to do next in a fight? Every person who’s ever been in a real fight. If we’re pretending this is real, the crazy one would be the guy who thinks he can predict everything that’s going to happen in a fight.
Worst: A Hellcat With Rabies
A hellcat with rabies? Sounds, uh, sexy?
I don’t really mind Seth Rollins on the mic — he’s well-spoken, he gets his points across, he just had a natural “Moooo-ooom!” whiny cadence that he can’t help. It actually works for him as a heel, but man, he was dealt some rough material here. Also, Dean Ambrose probably shouldn’t have sold Rollins’ saying they were never friends with a “my high school girlfriend just broke up with me” look of despair.
Best: The World’s Saddest Cake
I didn’t find the birthday fun at the wrestling retirement home segment from Raw to be terribly entertaining, but WWE retroactively redeemed it by showing an after-Raw clip of SLATAH GATA! coming out give Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair et al the most charmingly pathetic cake in wrestling history. Thing looked like they made it in an Easy-Bake oven, but they still needed two men to carry it, and when it ends up on Titus it just kind of looks like he mashed a Twinkie on his chest (sorry Twinkie mashing fetishists, this site probably isn’t what you were searching for). Likely for the best that the cake didn’t make it to the ring — I hear Titus pickled the figs himself…
Oh, there was also a match. Titus/Dolph wasn’t bad and featured Heath doing a doofy white guy version of Titus’ gator bark at ringside, so I was happy. Then of course Titus lost and Heath looked all disappointed, because come on — Heath Slater beat Dolph Ziggler once. How hard could it be?
Worst: WWE’s Tragic Attempts To Duplicate Bray’s Entrance
For some fool reason WWE has got it in their heads that Harper and Rowan need their own entrance when they come out without Bray, but the company’s attempts to recapture creepy lightening in a bottle have been…not good. I’m pretty sure they drew inspiration from this for their first attempt…
…and now they’re using a clip from Bray’s brief, regrettable creepy kid phase mashed up with some lazy bad blues bar guitar noodling. Just have them use Brays music or, if you want to go really authentic, dig out Undertaker’s old Kid Rock song.
Worst: Mark Henry vs. Luke Harper
On paper this sounds great — one the biggest, hardest hitting guys on the roster in Luke Harper against the proprietor of the Hall of Pain himself. Thing is, Henry has a fantastic tough guy persona, but he doesn’t actually work a particularly hard style, and in fact wrestling more physical guys can hurt Henry’s mystique a bit. He has to sell too much and his offense looks kind of weak in comparison. The perfect match up for Henry is a Dolph Ziggler or Sheamus (who’s secretly one of the best sellers in the company) not a Luke Harper or Cesaro type.
Best: A Tag TEAM Match
Usually I wouldn’t be in favor of a match I wasn’t particularly digging being extended into a tag TEAM match, but business actually picked up once Big Show and Erick Rowan joined the fray. I’m pretty into the Show Henry combo at the moment, and their new double-team finisher is some ridiculous lily gilding. Nobody ever gets up for either the knockout punch or the World’s Strong Slam — combining them seems downright unsporting. Then after the match we were treated to a world’s biggest hug, because giant bald men gotta stick together. D’awww.
Worst: An Eva Marie Streak
Eva Marie streak — yuck. I’m not sure what this says about Eva Marie, but that combination of words grosses me out on a deep instinctual level.
Uh, so, why in the f*cking f*ck is AJ Lee being distracted by Paige skipping around the ring? AJ invented skipping-based distractions. I suppose the current story is that AJ has some sort of crippling mental disorder that compels her skip wherever she goes, but originally she was crazy like a fox and used the skipping as a weapon. There’s only so many times you can be outsmarted by Eva Marie and yourself from three years ago before I start to lose respect.
Best: Everybody Makes Mistakes
Yeah, they certainly do. The guy who decided Bo Dallas should fold to Jack Swagger in under a minute like he was R-Truth in a wet t-shirt made a pretty big one. Thankfully after the commercial break Bo helpfully explained that he wasn’t tapping, he was just using his hand to maneuver his way to the ropes to make the break. I choose to believe him, because I’d prefer not to have to throw my computer out the window in a rage.
Best: A Night Dedicated to Punching The Miz in the Face
There’s something to be said for ridiculous mismatches. The kind of mismatch we got here, where the guy getting his ass beat has some shred of credibility despite being comically outmatched by his opponent, is actually kind of rare. Basically, there’s just enough semblance of competition that it briefly feels like a real match before the lion gets it’s claws into the gazelle and the bloodbath begins.
If you didn’t get a little spark of glee when you heard the freakin’ Miz would be wrestling Roman Reigns, then you’re a better person than I, and this pro wrestling thing probably isn’t for you. The match was a satisfying dismantling, and the show ended as it began with Miz absorbing a second meaty Samoan fist to his face. Miz may as well retire the moneymaker gimmick now. Where can you go after the Superman punch? Two Superman punches? A Superman punch with Roman Reigns wearing Hulk fists? Well, I suppose the moneymaker thing can stick around a little while longer if WWE makes that last one happen.
