When WWE gets it right, it can all seem so fluid, so sensible, so seamless in the connection between cause and effect, and so transparent with regard to motivation, purpose and meaning, that the business of professional wrestling, or sports entertainment, would almost appear effortless – if it weren’t for the tremendous effort clearly being expended by the superstars performing in front of us inside the ring. When WWE gets it wrong however, it can get it wrong in myriad ways. It is Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina dictum turned to wrestling. At Elimination Chamber just a couple of weekends ago, too many of the matches themselves were overbooked.
The two matches inside the Elimination Chamber were a mess: a surfeit of spots, slow to set up and lacking any substantial payoff, spoiled the match for the WWE Tag Team Championships; while the Intercontinental Title bout dragged on with an awkward imbalance between faces and heels, and an extended heel ruse by Sheamus that seemed to pass unnoticed by all of the other participants, by the referees, the announcers, and the fans in attendance. Kevin Owens vs. John Cena featured far too many false finishes. And the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match between Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose saw too much outside interference, before a conclusion which insulted everyone’s intelligence as Seth Rollins retained his belt by dubious disqualification.
Still, if the matches themselves faltered, and if the finishing sequences were sometimes overdone, the motivation behind the finishes seemed sound. It was right, for instance, that The New Day retained their tag titles; that Kevin Owens emerged victorious over John Cena on his main-roster debut; and that Seth Rollins should hold on to the World Heavyweight Championship in a fortuitous and underhand fashion leaving Dean Ambrose, and us viewers, wanting more.
Money in the Bank, emanating on Sunday from Columbus, Ohio, was a significant improvement upon Elimination Chamber, because most of the matches delivered. The show was fun to watch, and as always the work put in by the men and women involved was hugely admirable. But this time the motivation behind many of the finishes seemed suspect: the results of several matches were perplexing, seemingly doing nothing towards enhancing either storylines, our relationship with the talent, or the prestige held by title belts.
The Money in the Bank contract ladder match – which secures for the winner a shot at the world title, at any time of his choosing within the next year – is one of the biggest matches in the WWE calendar. It creates a storyline in its own right, whose momentum only builds until the contract is finally cashed. In the right hands, it can elevate a superstar to the main event. The contract ladder match on Sunday was solid if uninspired. The odd number of participants made for an entertaining opening, as with six competitors coupling off, the seventh, Kofi Kingston, made an early grab for the briefcase despite the ring remaining full.
From there the wrestlers quickly cleared out; and while there were plenty of nice sequences and everyone in due course received an opportunity to shine, the match could have done with a longer opening section. Too soon we were left with the scenario of two wrestlers facing off as one attempted to climb the ladder to retrieve the briefcase. These near-grabs are difficult to time without the match losing momentum or appearing too artificial. More, a number of the wrestlers involved have had issues in recent months – Ziggler and Sheamus, Reigns and Kane – and these weren’t sufficiently addressed.
Reigns got in his early offense on Kofi and Neville: powerbombing them through a ladder in turn, with Kofi crashing particularly viciously against the metal. Later Reigns did go after Kane, hitting him with a Superman Punch, before a big dive over the top rope took everyone out. When it looked like Reigns, as the last man standing, would ascend the ladder and win the match, the lights went dim and Bray Wyatt appeared. With Reigns evidently his latest object of interest, a Sister Abigail put him out of contention.
That left Sheamus to take the briefcase, after foiling a late intervention by Neville – a cruel tease which seemed only to exacerbate the crowd’s sense of disappointment. Sheamus has modified his look and upped his aggression in the ring over the past few months, but as a main event prospect he has failed and he’s now outdated. There is something generic about the character which renders the fans disinterested: he is a serviceable mid-card heel, but nobody will be excited to see him cash in on his victory. And again, that robs WWE of what should be one of their most enticing plots.
The match for the WWE Divas Championship was one of the best women’s matches for some time on the main roster. There were some stiff shots in the corner from both Nikki Bella and Paige; and for once the women were given a reasonable amount of time. But the affair was ruined by a silly ending, as Brie Bella swapped with her sister and suffered a pinfall, only for the referee to allow Nikki to clobber Paige from behind for the win. As JBL couldn’t refrain from pointing out, surely this behaviour from the Bellas merited a disqualification – especially after the cheap disqualification awarded against Seth Rollins in the main event of the card just weeks ago. Besides, the twins don’t look similar enough to make this switching convincing on a regular basis.
Ryback vs. Big Show proved the most puzzling encounter of Money in the Bank. Ryback effectively demonstrated his power, and there was an interesting spot with Ryback locking Big Show in an armbar. But after some brief offense from Show – which received scant response from the audience – The Miz, who had taken his seat at ringside prior to the match, entered the ring to pound on Show with a microphone, resulting in an early disqualification finish.
The Miz is arguably the most natural heel in WWE, and he plays his role superbly – but it was bizarre to marginalise Ryback, and the Intercontinental Championship on his first defence of the belt, for some convoluted angle which seems to primarily involve Miz and Show. After all, it was Miz and Show who had tangled physically over the two episodes of RAW prior to Money in the Bank; so that when Ryback gave up his early advantage for the sake of taking a cheap shot at The Miz, he felt obliged to explain his action by shouting that he just doesn’t like Miz’s smirk. We were left, at the end of an unsatisfying match, with Ryback – the babyface and recent title winner – taking a cheap victory, and Miz evidently the heel, but focusing his efforts on Big Show who nobody else seems to regard one way or the other.
While I was critical of the Elimination Chamber match between Kevin Owens and John Cena, disagreeing with the acclaim it received elsewhere – feeling as though the end section of a match had been drawn out for the duration, with no build-up, the two men appearing down and out and ready to slug too soon, and becoming too reliant on signature moves and finisher kick-outs – I thought they put on a much better showing at Money in the Bank. Cena running the ropes before the opening bell was a subtle assertion of his stature; and in the early going, the pace was slower, with more interaction between the two wrestlers, and the match no worse off for being a little looser and less intense.
Owens mimicking the pattern of Cena’s wrestling – with a sequence of shoulder blocks and a side slam – works better than his overt stealing of Cena’s signature moves. And later in the match, there were several fluent passages which demonstrated the strength and agility of the two men: a pop-up powerbomb reversed into a hurricanrana, which Owens followed up immediately with a superkick; then Owens reversing a superplex into what became almost a brainbuster from the middle rope, before Cena landed a stunning sunset flip powerbomb.
There was still the odd occasion when the match devolved into too much of a slugfest. And towards the close, once again there were too many false finishes and kick-outs from finishing moves. WWE has attuned its audience to determine a big match by the number of finisher kick-outs, which is repetitive and hardly conducive to the fans suspending their disbelief.
In a sense the match had two finishes: the 1-2-3 achieved by Cena after a springboard stunner and a third Attitude Adjustment; and then what came after the conclusion of the match, with Owens rejecting Cena’s show of respect, and perpetrating a powerbomb on the ring apron. Perhaps this act is what we will remember of the encounter. But it is still worth asking whether a one-and-done for Owens would have served him best, putting him over while keeping his character fresh. If this feud runs across several more PPVs, will Owens ultimately emerge better off than Bray Wyatt and Rusev before him?
The New Day cut a fantastic heel promo before the start of their tag-title defence, with Xavier Woods almost coming untethered and berating the audience for their lack of support – but being cut off just in time by the relentlessly positive Big E. There was some nice tag wrestling from The New Day, as Woods and Big E took turns stomping on Darren Young in their corner of the ring. But when Titus O’Neil eventually got the tag, a few running shoulders and a sit-down powerbomb saw the titles change hands and The Prime Time Players leave with the gold.
Wrestling against the team of Tyson Kidd and Cesaro, The New Day brought an old lustre to the Tag Team Championships, putting on a series of excellent matches and developing rounded and entertaining heel personas. The crowd have responded to the trio; whereas whatever Titus O’Neil’s upside over social media, the WWE audience are lukewarm when it comes to The Prime Time Players, who struggle to perform adequately in the ring. Taking the titles off The New Day feels like a devastating blow both to the team, and to a tag division which had looked resurgent.
Before the main event of Money in the Bank, Michael Cole announced that Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt had been booked for Battleground in five weeks. In the context of WWE storylines, where The Authority ostensibly remain in a position of power and have recently feuded with Roman Reigns, it must be wondered – who precisely made the match? Did Reigns and Wyatt challenge one another, and if so why weren’t we told and why couldn’t we see? If The Authority made the match, for whose benefit? Surely the match could have been built organically over the course of the next few weeks, rather than thrown together immediately upon the duo’s first meaningful interaction earlier in the show.
The main event of Money in the Bank was spectacular. Since he attained the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 31, I have called for Seth Rollins to be more than a ‘chickenshit’ heel: stressing the need for his character to retain an edge, the threat of violence, and a sense of independence. These hopes began coming to fruition as, over the past two weeks on RAW – goaded by Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose, who was off gallivanting with the title belt – Rollins split with Kane and J&J Security. Asserting that he doesn’t need a ‘seven foot piece of crap’ or the ‘morons’ of J&J Security, and that he doesn’t need The Authority either, tension has emerged between Rollins and his mentor, Triple H.
With his independence already claimed but not yet proven, Rollins’ aggression was the focus of the title bout. This was a ladder match, and a long one lasting more than thirty-five minutes, with extensive action on the outside of the ring. But it showed the desire and the fortitude of Rollins and Ambrose alongside their impressive technical skills; and it told a lucid story, as Rollins drove a chair into Ambrose’s left knee to stop an early ascent, then worked the leg consistently through the remainder of the match. Ambrose’s selling was excellent, because it never let up: he constantly clutched at his left leg, and it affected everything from his walk and his climbing to the moves he was capable of completing.
In the last third, the match became profoundly violent. Dean Ambrose threw a chair at the head of Rollins as the champion climbed the turnbuckle, then nailed a Dirty Deeds on the announce table. After more brawling on the outside, Rollins brought the fight to a climax with two devastating running powerbombs, tossing Ambrose head-first into the barricades in front of the fans; before attempting to finish things with a sit-down powerbomb on top of a ladder.
The ending to the match seemed to divide opinion, but this is little more than an example of people out-thinking themselves. The conclusion was an original idea perfectly executed, and entirely coherent: remarkably so, compared to some of the convoluted finishes we have witnessed recently, from the Divas match discussed above, to the main event between these two at Elimination Chamber, to the Cena/Rusev ‘I Quit’ fiasco which marked Payback. With Ambrose refusing to relinquish his opportunity, both men scaled the ladder to reach for the title belt; and while both were responsible for unhooking it, as they fell from the top of the ladder it was Rollins who held on to retain the gold and vindicate his message.
