WWE Main Event 16/09/2014

Dolph Ziggler & R Ziggler vs The Miz & Damien Mizdow

Here, R-Truth is cosplaying as Ziggler to counteract the Miz/Mizdow duo. The face team is pretty unexciting in the early stages, so it’s nice when Mizdow breaks their momentum with a headbutt to Ziggler. Liked Miz ducking a superkick to protect his face, allowing Ziggler to roll him up for two. Ziggler briefly plays face in peril, but makes the tag with no real build up. Miz does a terrible job of selling the Fameasser, but Truth does manage to hit Ziggler’s leaping DDT without the need for to slap Miz’s back, making it much better looking. Truth hits a Lie Detector on Mizdow, but Miz is the legal man, and he hits the Skull Crushing Finale to win.

Brie Bella vs Cameron

Surprisingly decent, albeit not particularly long. Both women seem pretty aggressive to start, felt like they were actually battling over moves. Loved the rolling crab Brie gets as Cameron runs the ropes. Cameron gets a brief control that looks decent, hitting a standing splits legdrop and working over Brie’s back. Bella comes back with a diving clothesline and a facebuster to win. Genuinely decent stuff.

Big E vs Seth Rollins

They get a reasonable amount of time – just over fifteen minutes – but unfortunately they don’t make the most of it. A lot of this match sees Rollins in control, and he really drags it out. His beatdown is methodical and not especially interesting, and he fills more time with two long chinlocks. His standing enzuigiri looks nice, but it’s Big E who really impresses here. Aside from his attempt at press-slamming Rollins from the floor to the ring – where Rollins gets stuck in the ropes, and his eventual landing seems him fall not very far – his stuff looks great. He catches a Rollins crossbody to hit multiple backbreakers, he hits full-bodied corner charges, his overhead belly-to-belly and standing splash are both great looking moves, and his spear to the floor looks mental. In the end, Rollins throws him into the corner twice, and the Curb Stomp gives him the win. 

WWE Main Event 01/07/2014

Luke Harper & Erick Rowan vs Xavier Woods & R-Truth

Bit of a disappointment here, as not only is this an extended squash, but Woods and Truth look a bit off the pace here, awkward and hesitant in their movements. I did like the big boot to the face that Harper hit on Truth and Rowan’s match-winning sitout uranage on Woods was decent.

The Funkadactyls vs Nikki Bella & Alicia Fox

Another very short match, and this was mostly all angle. Nikki had lost a handicap match to the Funkadactyls on Raw (in the midst of her feud with Stephanie McMahon). Here, she’s been given Alicia as her tag partner, and we’re all just sat waiting for the moment that Fox turns on her. The bulk of this is Cameron “controlling” Nikki with a submission, before Nikki tries the hot tag…only for Fox to shockingly move out of the way and kick her in the head for the Cameron pinfall. Match was barely two minutes, thankfully.

Dolph Ziggler, Big E & Rob Van Dam vs Cesaro & Rybaxel

On the last Main Event, I waxed lyrical about how a six-man tag match is a pretty solid format, making it easier to hide the sins of the less capable performers in the match. Thus, it feels sad that just one episode later I’m pretty disappointed in this one. Cesaro is working an “injured eye” bit, complete with an eyepatch, so it makes it a bit more jarring when “babyface” shitbag Ziggler attacks his eye and rips off his eyepatch. What a cunt. There were a few bits I enjoyed here – Ryback blocking a Big E belly-to-belly with a few headbutts was nice, and the eventual overhead belly-to-belly by Big E was super impressive. But we get a lengthy RVD face-in-peril section that wasn’t very interesting. Ryback hits a snake eyes on him that has visible space between the turnbuckle and his head, and Cesaro works a long chinlock to the delight of no-one. Ryback at least commits fully to missing the top rope splash that leads to the hot tag. Ziggler runs through all his worst offence – the un-countalong corner punches, the back-slap DDT and the dreadful fameasser – before pinning Cesaro with a zig zag. Yeah, this was a bit of a shit episode.

WWE Main Event 24/06/2014

Rob Van Dam, Dolph Ziggler & Kofi Kingston vs Jack Swagger, Bad News Barrett & Seth Rollins

This is almost indisputable proof that the format of a 6-man tag can cover up the faults of almost all it’s participants to create a decent bout. If I had to create a list of my least favourite wrestlers, then Ziggler, Rollins, pre-New Day Kofi and tubby 2014 RVD would all be quite high on the list, and you wouldn’t put faith in Swagger and Barrett to carry them. Yet, this ends up being pretty fun. Swagger is undoubtedly the MVP of the bout: he lays in some nice blows to Kofi at the start and gets great height on a Swagger Bomb when RVD is the face-in-peril. He even manages to make offence from the two least convincing offensive wrestlers in the company – Zigger and Kofi – look believable despite being the largest man in the bout. Rollins and Barrett are also decent at controlling RVD before it all breaks down on the hot tag, leaving Kofi and Rollins alone. A passable little sequence ends with Rollins hitting the Kerb Stomp to win.

Fandango vs Bo Dallas

Not even a match – Summer Rae comes out to fight with Fandango’s replacement dancer Layla, and the distraction lets Dallas hit the Bo-Dog for the win.

Rybaxel vs R-Truth & Xavier Woods

Sometimes you get surprised out of nowhere by a match that exceeds any expectations you had for it. Loved Woods at the start, as he’s paired up with Ryback and lays in his strikes and kicks sufficiently that you buy he’s actually hurting the big guy. Ryback takes control awesomely, catching Woods in the air and swinging him fluidly into a big powerslam that looked great. Rybaxel are really fun shit-talking idiot bullies in this, with Ryback being especially good at it. Axel hits a brutal looking running knee to the face. Woods gets the hot tag and it all breaks down with Woods taking a huge bump over the top to the floor. In the ring, Truth misses a corner splash and Axel swiftly hits the

 Axeliser to win. Really dug all this. 

WWE Main Event 27/05/2014

Cody Rhodes vs Curtis Axel

Pretty much the definition of a solid little match. Axel looks good here, takes his usual flip bump onto his head when Rhodes kicks his leg out, and has some nice intensity on offence. Axel never does anything fancy, but what he does looks good. Rhodes’s offence is a bit less impressive – he does both Goldust’s drop down punch and Bob Holly’s abdomen kick, but does it worse than both. Nice looking moonsault press though. Ryback distracts Rhodes, allowing Axel to hit a chopblock and roll up Cody to win.

R-Truth vs Damien Sandow

Sandow comes to the ring rapping, which is very much not hilarious. This is a lot shorter than the match they had on the previous Main Event, which is good, and this time they manage to make a victory roll look better. Sandow yelling “Put your hands in the air” before the Elbow of Disdain raised a smile, but Truth hits the Lie Detector from nowhere to win, and it looks a little bit shit. Not great.

Brie Bella vs Natalya

Well this was better than expected. The idea of a match starting with Brie Bella and Natalya working the mat sounds terrible, but it actually looked pretty good. I mean, it definitely felt like Natalya was walking Brie though it, but it was enjoyable. Brie’s running knees in the ropes looked a bit pony, but Natalya swiftly reverses a single leg crab to the sharpshooter and this ended up alright. Very short, but surprisingly fun.

The Usos vs Erick Rowan & Luke Harper

Less surprisingly, this is also a treat. Love the Usos using hit and run tactics against Rowan, the slower, less intelligent member of the opposing team. With Harper, they seem like they need to be more proactive in attack, knowing that he’ll be able to match them for pace (a dropkick out of nowhere catching Jimmy Uso proves that early doors), but against Rowan they stick and move. Of course, when Rowan does get them, it seems more devastating, with a fallaway slam sending Jey all the way outside the ring. Jey becomes FIP, which is a fun sequence of Wyatt offence, and things break down on the hot tag with all four guys in. A double dive by the Usos looks great, and I dug the ending where Jimmy looks to have Harper down and goes up top, but gets briefly distracted by Rowan slamming his brother into the ringpost. Though Jimmy is able to leap over a now-standing Harper, he walks right into a discus lariat for the win. Really good main event.

WWE Main Event 20/05/2014

First episode of Main Event reviewed in months and they only give us two matches. Even more frustratingly, this is sandwiched by two Cesaro/Mark Henry segments where they build up to a match in the first, then yank it away in the second. Poor show lads.

Damien Sandow vs R-Truth

This episode is filmed in England, so Sandow is cosplaying as Sherlock Holmes. This match seems to go on for ever, which is surprising as nothing really happens. The match goes to commercial with the only happening being a really ugly roll up attempt by Truth. At least when we come back we get a huge over-the-top rope bump from Truth. Sandow controls the bout with a long headlock and some unconvincing offence – his “vicious elbows” to a downed Truth consist of him leaning over his body and punching the mat. Truth makes a brief comeback, but misses the Lie Detector and Sandow hits a full Nelson slam to win.

Aksana vs Naomi

Am I nuts for wishing this had gone a bit longer? Naomi goes for Aksana’s eye to start with a few punches, which is a nice throwback to the injury suffered at Aksana’s hands. Naomi hits a nice looking seated butt splash, which feels like a move she should do more often considering her derriere-based offence. She also hits this nasty looking Pedigree variation, with Aksana draped over the ropes. The camera very wisely zooms in during a terrible bit of Aksana offense, making it hard to tell what happened. Naomi wins with the Rear View from nowhere.