I recently wrote another review of this show, which was a little more accessible to non-fans, for www.strangethingsarehappening.com, which you may want to check out if you feel like reading TWO reviews of this show. This is the more nerdy version.
Fandango vs Justin Gabriel
As a Johnny Curtis fan, I really like the aggressive edge to the "new and improved" Fandango. His back suplex onto the apron looked suitably nasty. Gabriel got really impressive height on a springboard moonsault, just a shame only his hands made any connection with Fandango. This was brief, but pretty great from Curtis, nailing Gabriel with a big clothesline, the falcon arrow and the Last Dance to pick up the win.
The Usos vs The Miz & Damien Mizdow vs Los Matadores vs Goldust & Stardust
Mizdow is easily the most over person in this match. I enjoyed Los Matadores in the opening, all quick tags and goofy fun matwork. I love the fact that heels in the match soon realised thet can get great heat by not tagging in Mizdow, even his own partner. I loved Mizdow finally getting in, and Goldust blind tagging him right away. I liked the logic of the Dust brothers, as defending champs, working the heat section just between themselves, not risking getting blind tagged by opponents. Fun series of tombstone reversals between Stardust and a matador leads to a swank looking tornado DDT by the matador. The Usos get in and offer a lot of superkicks, but not much else. There was a really great dive series, featuring both Usos, Stardust, El Torito and finally the Matadores before Mizdow brilliantly blind tagged himself in to get the winning pinfall on Goldust. Hot opener.
Paige, Cameron, Summer Rae & Layla vs Natalya, Naomi, Emma & Alicia Fox
Despite being a heel, Paige gets the second biggest chant from the crowd. The biggest chant goes to Mizdow, who is way more entertaining than this awful match. Naomi sets the tone early with a shitty crossbody, before Cameron obviously sympathises with her former Funkadactyl colleague by hitting a super-bad bulldog on Natalya. Cameron is soon pinned with a roll-up by Naomi, yet somehow removing the worst wrestler from the match doesn't improve it's quality. Normally, the announcers ignoring a match would really annoy me, but here listening to Michael Cole reminise about the Mean Street Posse is preferable to watching the match. Fox pins Layla following a backbreaker. This just goes on for ages and goes nowhere. The only fun part is watching Paige despairing about her awful team-mates, openly calling Summer an idiot. Summer taps to the Emmalock and we get a briefly watchable "Paige vs the world" section, before Naomi pins her. The crowd goes mild. It's unbelievable that they looked at this face team of utter no-marks and decided to have all four of them survive. To be honest, the sooner they release all the non-Paige participants in this bout and promote the NXT girls, the better. Most of this was WEW bad.
Dean Ambrose vs Bray Wyatt
This was a big leap forward in match quality. Really enjoyed the brawling in this one, felt like two guys who really wanted to hurt each other. Ambrose's diving forearm from the apron looked great. Wyatt stamping on Ambrose's hand, a body part he ended up not working on, just made him look really sadistic. Wyatt's big senton was fantastic, he gets great height on it, and I loved Wyatt emphasising his bulk for once by standing like a brick wall in the face of an attempted Ambrose crossbody. I liked the fact Wyatt was able to reverse the rebound lariat after watching Ambrose go through the set-up for it, but later turned his back when throwing Dean through the ropes, and thus got hit by THAT attempt instead. Ambrose hitting a diving elbow when his opponent was still standing really works for his character. The DQ ending was a bit of a copout, but I really liked that Wyatt passed Dean the chair to use on him, and rather than putting the chair aside, Ambrose waffled him with it, then battered him with tables, ladders and a heap of chairs.
Slater Gator vs Adam Rose & the Bunny
Brief fluff that continued the Rose/Bunny split that was never really resolved. Slater Gator don't normally spend too long on offense, so it was fun to see some nice power moves by Titus on Rose before the hot tag to the bunny, who pinned Slater after a second rope dropkick.
AJ Lee vs Nikki Bella
Eh, nothing to this. Brie kisses AJ, Nikki hits the Rack Attack and wins. Still, better than the other divas match.
Seth Rollins, Rusev, Luke Harper, Mark Henry & Kane vs John Cena, the Big Show, Erick Rowan, Ryback & Dolph Ziggler
So, the start of this is pretty fun, I did chuckle at Triple H psyching up Mark Henry, only for him to run straight into a knockout blow from Big Show for the first elimination. I'd rsther have seen Kane go first, but hey ho. Ryback looks really good running wild on everyone, especially nailing a spinebuster on Rusev, which makes his early elimination also seem odd. Harper and Rusev destroying Ziggler is pretty great, loved the big spinning slam from Harper. There's a fun dives spot involving Rollins and Ziggler, before Rusev is eliminated after hurling himself through the Spanish announce table. It was a predictable way to eliminate him, but the execution was terrific. The Rowan/Harper stand off gets a big reaction from the crowd, before Harper eliminates his former team-mate with a huge clothesline. I like the fact that the Big Show turn actually makes sense here - he looks at his two team-mates, sees Cena down and Ziggler barely conscious and makes the best decision he can to keep his job. This of course sees him knock Cena out for the pin and then get himself counted out. This leaves Ziggler against three men, and really is where the match loses any remaining credibility. I can just about buy Ziggler getting one last run of momentum and pinning Kane with the Zig Zag. I struggle to accept him kicking out of a monstrous looking Liger bomb and then being able to roll-up Harper for the elimination. However, one thing that gets totally overlooked in all the hoopla of Sting coming out is the fact that Ziggler hitting Rollins with the least threatening finishing move in the whole WWE somehow knocks Rollins out for nearly seven minutes. I've seen referees recover from real finishers quicker than the "future of the WWE" recovered from being lightly pulled to the mat. Aside from that quibble, it's a fun main event match.
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