Wade Barrett vs The Miz vs Curtis Axel
This is a triple threat for Barrett’s IC title. Never a big
fan of triple threats, but there were a few bits of this that I liked as clever
touches. Barrett is always looking over his shoulder, trying to be aware of
where the third man is whilst attacking someone, and I like that the importance
of Paul Heyman as Axel’s manager is put over by how he’ll constantly tell Axel
to take his time on the outside, to pick his spots. Axel is definitely the
crowd favourite here, though the portion with just him and Miz in the ring is
nothing to write home about. Not bad, but nothing particularly compelling
either. Barrett is the guy who feels like he’s bringing energy to the match.
Axel gets a huge pop for a Perfect-Plex on Barrett (especially considering its
Father’s Day), and the Miz gets booed for breaking up the pin. The ending
sequence is pretty hot, and I loved the ending, with Miz putting Barrett in the
figure four, only for Axel to sneak in and pin Barrett whilst Miz’s leg are
still locked up. Lovely post-match look to the sky by Axel too.
Kaitlyn vs AJ Lee
The backstory to this involved AJ Lee setting up Big E as a
fake secret admirer for Kaitlyn and humiliating her, so Kaitlyn is on fire to
start, hurling AJ over the Spanish announce table in a hella bump. Aside from
that, Kaitlyn isn’t great at expressing her intense hatred. Feels a bit
stilted. Kaitlyn is still more powerful than AJ though, so things like her big
clothesline and rolling through a crucifix to drop AJ with a stomach buster
still look great. Also dug AJ’s chained rolling neckbreakers. Kaitlyn seems to
have won the match with a spear, but wastes time blowing a sarcastic kiss at
AJ, so only gets 2. Shortly after, Lee locks in the Black Widow to get the tap.
This was fine.
Dean Ambrose vs Kane
This is for Ambrose’s US title. I’ve said it before, but I
really miss THIS Ambrose. He’s wily, looking for openings, realising he’s not
as strong as Kane and therefore trying to pick the right moment to strike. He
kind of wrestles around Kane here, taking out his legs with a dropkick and
slowly trying to break him down. There’s a nice moment where Dean gets a bit
cocky, and tries for Old School on Kane, but he gets countered. This is
actually pretty fun for a 2013 Kane singles match…then it ends abruptly, with
Dean hitting (what we now call) Dirty Deeds on the floor for the count out win.
I appreciate how it makes Dean look a bit cheap and weasely, but it’s a
disappointing end to a surprisingly fine bout.
Alberto Del Rio vs Dolph Ziggler
So here we have, in my opinion, the greatest example of a
badass, Walking Tall, babyface performance in modern WWE history. A face who,
having had his property stolen by a coward who attacked him at his weakest (on
one leg after a match with Jack Swagger), came to this match to wreck a
singular vengeance on an unworthy champion. Here, Alberto Del Rio was the hero
we didn’t deserve (especially those in the crowd who booed him, siding instead
with a weak charlatan), but he was the hero we needed.
At the onset of the match, Ziggler is smug, confident,
slipping out of the ring and swaggering around the ringside area. When he’s in
the ring, he cheapshots Del Rio on a break, but his arrogance backfires as he
misses a corner charge and instead takes a big back elbow to the face. This
triggers Ziggler’s concussion, an injury which had put him out of action for a
few weeks, and Del Rio is happy to repay Ziggler for the cheap shot that cost
him the title in the first place. What’s good for the goose is good for the
gander. Del Rio zeroes in on this in an aggressive fashion, cracking Ziggler’s
skull with a nasty kick as he tries to enter the ring. Del Rio uses his smarts
to get Big E ejected from ringside, trying to create the fair playing field
that Ziggler is obviously too scared to want. This match layout means Ziggler
spends most of it on defence, and that’s probably for the best, as when he does
go on the offensive he hits an impossibly sloppy fameasser. His sleeperhold
does look good, coiling around Del Rio and acting as a metaphor for the snake
that Ziggler is. Credit where it’s due, Ziggler’s selling is phenomenal here,
and the story of the match means he isn’t able to just rebound to his feet to
hit his next move. Del Rio hits beautiful kidney shots with Ziggler tied in the
ropes, which leads logically to a backstabber. Ziggler tries to make a few
desperation comebacks, but an absolutely brutal kick from the apron cracks like
a gunshot throughout the arena, vibrating off Ziggler’s head. Ziggler hits a
final desperation zig zag, but it’s so weak a move that Del Rio is actually
back on his feet first, and he fires a superkick at a kneeling Ziggler’s head
to put the wretched champion out of his misery. An expertly crafted match, and
though the crowd transferred their affection to Del Rio to Ziggler, for the
virtuous among us, Del Rio brought no-nonsense justice to the world of
wrestling.
CM Punk vs Chris Jericho
Punk is in his “tattooed Bradley Wiggins” phase here. This
is Punk’s first match back since losing to the Undertaker at Wrestlemania and
is in Chicago, so he gets a monster pop. You know how much Chicago crowds love
chanting for Punk when they know he isn’t there? Just imagine how much they
chant for him when he IS there. Sadly, this match is pretty terrible. The
commentary team bring up how Punk might have ring rust after his time off, and
I don’t know if that was something Punk was trying to play up or not, but he
was terribly sloppy here. He stumbles about trying to apply an early armbar, he
kind of ambles when being Irish whipped into a corner and he stumbles again
trying to apply a neckbreaker. Jericho looks much crisper, though he isn’t without
his flaws with some of his punches looking utterly shambolic. There’s a really
nice sequence where Punk hits his corner knee, takes too long showing off and
gets his bulldog reversed, followed by a Lionsault and swift cover by Jericho
for two. Jericho also hits a great codebreaker to counter an attempted
springboard clothesline by Punk. It’s just a shame there are too many awkward
spots like Jericho trying to apply the Walls of Jericho, and bending really far
down for seemingly no reason other than to let Punk clumsily pull himself up
and lock in an Anaconda Vice. The end was pretty neat, with Punk hitting the
GTS, which sends Jericho into the turnbuckle and bouncing back into another GTS
for the win, but overall this was poor.
Roman Reigns & Seth Rollins vs Randy Orton & Daniel
Bryan
Orton and Bryan are mismatched tag partner who’ve got a
shaky mutual respect, which makes the tag champ Shield members the favourites.
Reigns and Bryan is already a great match up at this point, loved Reigns
flooring Bryan with a huge kneelift, needs to bring that back. Reigns sells the
fuck out of Bryan’s kick flurry too. Orton looks great when he tags in, hitting
everything so crisply, and the transition to the Shield offence looks so
natural: Orton reaches through the ropes to grab Rollins and gets nailed by a
Superman punch from nowhere. Rollins had a few nice moments in the match, loved
Orton starting to make a comeback and Rollins hitting a standing enzuigiri to stop
that momentum dead. Orton makes the hot tag after exploder suplexing Rollins
into Reigns in the corner (a little too far away, Rollins had to kind of
awkwardly headbutt Reigns in the arse) leading to a great Bryan hot tag run.
However, Reigns pushes Rollins away from the suicide dive and Bryan wipes out
Orton instead. This leads to a red hot ending, as Orton accidentally pushes
Bryan into a Reigns spear, then takes Reigns out with an RKO, only for Rollins
to shove him out and Curb Stomp a still groggy Bryan for the win. Good little
tag sprint, with nice execution and a fun underlying story.
John Cena vs Ryback
This is 3 stages of Hell: lumberjack match, tables match and
an ambulance match. This felt like an interesting challenge for Cena: partly
because Ryback was unproven as a big match singles worker, partly because they’d
have to work 3 different matches and partly because of our knowledge that,
obviously, neither guy is going to win the first two stages consecutively, so
they need to work harder to make the second stage interesting. Overall, I’d say
it’s just about a win.
So the lumberjack match was pretty fun. Interesting to see
who was at ringside – Ted DiBiase and Alex Riley (in his own t-shirt! I bet
they didn’t sell many of those) stand out as long forgotten roster members. They
both threw some big power moves at each other early doors, and Ryback seemed to
enjoy throwing Cena out to the hostile lumberjacks, with Cena taking some big
bumps to the floor. Loved Ryback pressing Cena onto one side of lumberjacks,
but he showed his naivety when Cena throws him out, and he decides to start a
fight with the surrounding mass. It led to a big schmozz which ends with Cena
diving from the top rope onto the heaving mass of bodies. Really great visual.
They re-enter the ring, where Ryback counters an STF by powering up into
Shellshocked for three.
With Cena 1-0 down, he was always going to win the tables
match. Ryback doesn’t really give the impression that he’s going to win this,
as his tactic seems to be to put Cena through tables by hurling the ring steps
at him, which always breaks the tables when Cena ducks. Even if I was foolish
enough to believe Ryback was going to win two straight falls, I wouldn’t
believe he was going to do it by blitzing Cena with a thrown staircase to the
face. Ryback also doesn’t seem to take it Cena in this fall, maybe putting over
his overconfidence at being a fall up. Inevitably, Cena escapes Shellshocked to
hit the AA through a table to even it up.
The ambulance match finishes things off, and I liked Ryback’s
tactic of battering Cena, powerbombing him through the announce table, before
the match started, and then carrying Cena’s prone body up the aisle to the
vehicle. Good logic, and it also meant we avoided the two unnaturally fighting
their way to the entrance way. Cena recovers and we get a fun weapons brawl
built around the ambulance. Cena whips Ryback into an open door, ripping it
from the hinges, before Ryback rips some bodywork off to use as a weapon on
Cena. The ending requires both guys to be on the roof, so I appreciated Cena
climbing to the top and ripping the flashing lights off the top to use as a
weapon, makes the ending look a bit more organic rather than them climbing to
the top just because that’s where they need to be. Of course, when both guys
seem hesitant to climb onto the roof, you know what’s up and, yep, Cena hits
the AA to send Ryback crashing through the roof to win. Not very much of this
lagged, despite containing three bouts, and this is an overall success.
