*Huge h/t to @ceroverde for the awesome header pic.
Previously at Extreme Rules…
Drew McIntyre teamed with Shane McMahon for some reason, Baron Corbin teamed with Lacey Evans for some reason, & Daniel Bryan teamed with Erick Rowan for some reason. Go read the results. The show feels like it took place on a another planet five years ago.
Now let’s dive into THE HORROR SHOW.
POP: The Bel-KO Experiment
Kevin Owens vs. Murphy was a nice little preshow match. Nothing fancy, but a solid short back & forth between two guys who absolutely should not be relegated to preshow status. Kevin Owens is a bonafide superstar at this point & Murphy is low key one of the best wrestlers on all of Raw. Move him & Rollins into the tag title picture already & let the guy shine like he did when nobody was watching him be one of the best things on 205 Live. He’s got a lot more to offer than constantly being roundhouse kicked by Aleister Black. As for Owens, it feels like he’s been meandering around since Mania. Put him towards the top of the card where he belongs. *Cough* turn him heel again *Cough*.
Again, nothing special, but filled with good wrestling which happily set the tone & remained the theme throughout the entire show.
POP: Happy Death (New) Day 2 U
I cannot tell you how excited I was to be wrong on this one. Readers here know that I pretty much thought it was a foregone conclusion New Day would retain here. WWE notoriously likes to do challengers defeating the champions ad nauseam until they ultimately lose when the championships are actually on the line. Nakamura & Cesaro have been thoroughly smashing New Day for four weeks leading up to this match, so anything other than that continuing would’ve felt like a slap in the face.
Thankfully, Shinsuke & Cesaro were able to keep it going & we have new Smackdown Tag Team Champions. I don’t know if the gimmick of people not taking them as a serious threat is actually starting to be believed by these two guys, but they were throwing bombs at New Day in this match. Every other strike looked like there was some malice behind it & Cesaro put Kofi through that stack of tables with visible authority. You want to talk about guys who deserve to be highlighted on your show, these two are at the top of the list. I hope their division gets an influx of some new teams as New Day appear to be the only other actual tag team on Smackdown currently.
Did somebody say Nakamura & Cesaro vs Daniel Bryan & Drew Gulak for Summerslam?
It was me. I said that.
POP: The Ring
Unfortunately for Nikki Cross, she Built Up Negative Momentum™ going into her Smackdown Women’s Championship Match, so I don’t believe anybody thought she was going to pull this one out. She cost Alexa a match three weeks ago & then lost two consecutive matches getting pinned by Bayley, which somehow in WWE’s eyes makes her a viable contender for the championship. There was even a sad little pep rally before she entered the ring with Alexa, Asuka & Kairi giving her inspirational speeches, assuring her they’ll still like her even if she’s a giant loser. Ouch.
The match itself is probably Nikki’s best main roster outing & the best Bayley match I can remember in a while. Nikki Cross works much better as the NXT loose cannon version & not some constantly losing goober you have to have other’s in the division prop up. She was more of the former here flying around with more urgency than we’ve seen lately that I hope continues going forward. The neckbreaker she hit Bayley with early on had some real oomph behind it. As I mentioned weeks ago though, Nikki is always easily distracted so Sasha is able to slip Bayley the new best weapon in wrestling: The BOSS Knuckles. Bayley gut punches Cross, hits The Karen Driver & that’s all she wrote.
The Bayley/Sasha feud is still intact with Bayley retaining & now Sasha has a gigantic mountain to climb in order to get on Bayley’s level in Asuka. The production crew addresses this with one of the best shots of the entire show:
Intentionally or not, that shot shows perfectly the current dynamic between the two & how much work Sasha is going to need to put in to get back to the top. Speaking of which…
POP: The Mist
Arguably the match of the night with unarguably the worst finish belongs to Asuka vs. Sasha Banks for The Raw Women’s Championship. We’ll get to the finish, but everything before that was a hard hitting danger fest. I’m fairly certain at this point before any big match, Sasha’s just goes up to her opponent & says “Please feel free to hit me as hard as humanly possible”. I mean, LOOK at this:
Owwww.
The two go about 17ish minutes before it goes entirely off the rails, but damn if those minutes weren’t some of the better women’s wrestling we’ve seen on WWE tv in a while. I feel like Asuka has lost enough at this point, that Sasha beating her clean would not have been that outrageous & Sasha’s lost recently to Tamina for crying out loud, so her losing could have also easily have been in play.
That brings us to the finish, which was for lack of a better term, a complete horror show. Let’s just recap it so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about. Sasha gets trapped in the Asuka Lock, so Bayley decides to throw one of the tag titles into the ring as a distraction. The referee goes to get the belt out of the ring & on the same side of the ring Bayley rolls in to save Sasha. Banks is seen tapping out during all of this behind the referee’s back, but wait, there’s more. Asuka kicks Bayley in the head after breaking up the submission leading her to drop the other tag belt, which Sasha picks up to hit Asuka with, but is caught by the referee, who takes the belt away. During THAT, Kairi slips Asuka a mist capsule to spray Sasha with, but she ducks & it hits the referee instead. Bayley slides BACK in, hits Asuka with the tag belt the referee dropped, then steals his shirt & puts it on. All of this takes about twenty seconds, but Sasha still crawls over & pins Asuka with Bayley counting the three. (Note: I have no idea what Kairi Sane was doing this entire time). The timekeeper rightfully no sells the pin, but then rings the bell after Bayley gets in his face & Karens all over him. Ho-lee shit, you guys. Exhausting.
Look, you want to book a cheap finish that allows Sasha to steal the title, be my guest. What you don’t need is FOUR of them all in a row all at once. The two run off with all four titles & The Golden Evil Wives are born.
POP: Final Girls
But who cares about that messy finish!
We have now successfully reached Sasha & Bayley’s final form. They’ve fulfilled The Undisputed Era’s prophecy, capturing all the gold they can with half the people & in half the time. I saw a lot of you wanted either Bayley retaining & Sasha losing, thereby furthering Sasha’s jealousy of Bayley, or Sasha becoming champion of Raw & have Bayley lose her title to flip the script. Both scenarios would naturally lead to them turning on each other, like has been predicted for the better part of a year now.
You know what, though? This is the better play. I’m perfectly happy for these two to reach peak insufferableness for until at least Summerslam. There’s no reason to rush any important feud like that, especially when you’re still running shows in front of tired masked up PC recruits. People have been fantasy booking New Day or UE’s breakup for a while now & it hasn’t happened. Those guys are all doing fine (Well, not Roderick Strong, but that’s another story…).
What’s better still is these two have been such antagonizing jerks the past few months that they have ready made feuds with at least half of Raw & Smackdown’s rosters. You can keep it going with Bliss-Cross, The Kabukis or The IIconics. Shayna Baszler is looming. Charlotte is always looming. Ruby Riott & Bianca Belair looked good in their tag team debut. I’m sure Naomi would like to stop singing & getting her hair knotted into the ropes. Personally, I’d like to send Kairi Sane off into the sunset at Summerslam against Sasha if the rumors of her going back to Japan are true & on the Smackdown side, I’d like to see Sonya Deville return from The Phantom Zone to stuff Bayley in a locker.
The point is this: Ding Dong! Hello? Evil Wives forever & ever & ever!!
BOTCH: The Invisible Man
The clear lowlight of the evening is MVP basically redoing the same bit after he unveiled the new United States Championship a couple weeks back, declaring himself the titleholder since Apollo Crews has vanished into the ether. Tom Phillips feeds us a line that Apollo isn’t medically cleared, but as he’s been off of tv for almost a month at this point, that’s either something you could’ve said weeks ago or a complete lie. At the very least, I’m guessing this is a way to push the feud back without stripping him of the title. Somewhere Sami Zayn & Jordan Devlin tweet out thinking face emojis.
I don’t get why WWE is so weird about Covid. I get it, you want to be a distraction from what’s going on, but at the same time we all know you’re in the epicenter of a national crisis, so just saying someone needed to stay home for safety precautions isn’t going to make us dislike you. You give us numerous other chances to do that elsewhere.
EYE POP: Children Of The Corn(ea)
Given the absurd premise of the match in the first place, I think Rollins & Mysterio did about as good of a job as they could have with the eye for an eye stipulation. Had this been just an Extreme Rules Match, this would have been one of the better bouts of the evening, but them trying to constantly take each other’s eye out undercut some of the action. Not a whole lot to say about the match otherwise. It’s two guys just trying to literally take an eye out from their opponent & that’s what they did.
Rollins wins the same way the whole cycle began by forcing Rey’s eye onto the ring steps, which “pops it out” & gives us this hilarious visual:
The sight of this causes Rollins to puke all over ringside & Vince McMahon to consider him a Droz gimmick from tonight onward. Not Even A Real Medicine Charly Caruso shows up later in the show to inform us that despite his eye dangling out his face, Rey Mysterio should be fine going forward. Those of us hoping for some sort of pirate luchador character are very much let down.
BOTCH: The Grudge
The WWE Championship Match also could have been in contention for match of the evening if it hadn’t been for Dolph Ziggler being such an idiot. Dolph picks a one sided Extreme Rules Match, so that he can only use weapons/illegal blows & McIntyre can’t or he’s disqualified & loses the title. He also says if Drew gets counted out, that too will result in Doplh becoming champion. That’s multiple stipulations picked, but whatever. Extreme Complicated Rules! Dolph takes advantage of this by, unsurprisingly, completely blowing it.
Let’s agree that you can’t pick an absurd match idea like “I win no matter what” match & have to work within the confines of how WWE normally operates (Yes this show has eyeballs being removed as a stipulation, but work with me). Extreme Rules Match is a good enough idea, but if anything, weapons against this version of Drew McIntyre at best make it an even fight for somebody like Dolph Ziggler. The countout stipulation though is actually smart. Anybody who’s played a WWE video game knows it is the best way to get a cheap win without putting in the work. There’s a point in the match where Ziggler is standing on the announce table with Drew keeled over on the floor, so he dives off & hits him with a Fameasser. The two lay on the ground until the referee reaches a count of seven & Dolph Ziggler rolls back into the ring, giving Drew ample time to beat the count. You idiot. He does it again later after putting Drew through a table on the outside.
I will say, it was unclear if a double countout meant Dolph loses, but at the very least keep bashing on the guy until the referee reaches a hard nine & then scurry back in. Ziggler blows two great chances to become WWE Champion the easy way, so with that failing he instead decides he can beat him physically (he can’t). Dolph tunes up the band as McIntyre is lying on the mat, which I assume Drew reads as Morse Code as the 3-2-1 countdown & Claymores Dolph hopefully back to the midcard.
You idiot.
POP: Let The Right One In
Never let it be said that Bray Wyatt does not have a mind for this stuff or doesn’t know what he’s doing. Whether or not the weird, occult WWE stuff is for you, there’s no denying that Bray pays attention to history, character motivations, & circumstance, combining all of them together in order to tell a layered story.
Case & point: Braun Strowman. Braun was absolutely nothing in terms of a character up until last Friday, when he decided to show an emotion beyond mild annoyance or choo choo train. He went from Guy Who Wears Black Sheep Mask to “Get These Hands!” with very little in between. Not a ton to work with there going into a Bray Wyatt cinematic feature, especially after the Deconstruction of John Cena from WrestleMania setting the bar so incredibly high. I mean, what was Wyatt going to do? Have the ghosts of all the vehicles Braun has flipped upside down over the years return to haunt him? (Note: That would have been awesome).
Nope. Enter Blisster Abigail. Wait, did I forget to mention Blisster Abigail?!?
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s sifting through years of Braun Strowman, taking a throwaway little “Will they, won’t they” secondary story line from a nothing show in The Mixed Match Challenge & creating a viable plot point for the story you’re trying to tell. I’m fairly certain Braun was supposed to be hallucinating after he was bitten by that snake before she appeared, but if Alexa Bliss shows up Friday with a black veil over her face, that’s perfectly acceptable.
As for the “match” itself, there was enough there to keep this story going with just enough action that I didn’t feel like it ever dragged. Braun vs. Hooded Justice from Watchmen was also in contention for match of the night. Bray made a solid case for the two teaming back up, but it was clear Strowman was never going to go for it. After that, a lot of it was just them going at it in & around the swamp. Their fight was fairly reminiscent of The Boneyard Match, but unlike that, there was an actual story playing out. Here’s hoping Ghost Tractor vs. Ghost Boat makes the Summerslam card.
I think everybody & their mother knew how it was going to play out in the end. If you missed it, Braun eventually gets the upper hand against Bray as they’re brawling on the dock at the swamp, kicking him into the water. Braun, who has never seen a Friday The 13th movie apparently, bends down to the water to look for the body & believes he’s finally won. Bray then of course reaches out from below, applies The Mandible Claw & drags Braun under. The Fiend enters the picture & we’re off to Summerslam with Braun vs. The Fiend. The obvious next step for the feud, but even though we all saw it coming, still worked.
Now get The Fiend his title back that he never should have lost in the first place.
P.S. – Bray also gets a million bonus points for shitting all over Smackdown’s karaoke segment from two weeks ago earlier in the show.
And that’s our horror show!
Overall, I’d say a pretty good outing. The wrestling was good to great across the board, but some of the finishes took away from making it a truly great show.
Like what you’re reading? Feel free to drop a comment below our join the conversation on our Discord! We’re on the road to Summerslam, so tune in the next coming weeks as WWE hopefully starts trying & looks to end some feuds that started three months ago! Probably not though!
