Blowout at WWE Battleground 2015

After a more than passable first half of WWE Battleground, which took place on Sunday night at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, upon the final two matches the event fell apart. Given their magnitude – for these were the two matches given the most substantial builds since last month’s Money in the Bank, featuring WWE’s biggest names, with first the United States and then the World Heavyweight titles at stake – the fate of Battleground really rested on these climactic bouts, and the sense of frustration come the close of the show was immense.

Sheamus vs. Randy Orton is probably from WWE’s perspective an ideal opener: two wrestlers who absolutely look the part, and who have storied careers in WWE behind them, with many title reigns to their names. This encounter stemmed from the duo’s participation in the Money in the Bank contract ladder match, which saw Sheamus emerge victorious, and take the briefcase allowing him a future shot at the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Though Sheamus battled most prominently with Neville during that ladder match, the issue negotiated over the following weeks proved between him and Orton, with both wrestlers interfering in each other’s matches.

While Sheamus’s current look has given the fans a point of engagement with his character – his orange mohawk and braided beard compelling cries of ‘You look stupid!’ – it will be difficult to win them over for any push towards the main event. Orton on the other hand has managed to avoid becoming too stale thanks to his edgy personality, his movement across the card, and his finisher, the RKO, which he can spring from any position, and which alone would keep his matches exciting until the end. But Sheamus and Orton are thoroughly accomplished all-round workers, and this was a good match, with Sheamus on the back foot in the opening stages, then dominating the middle via a string of backbreakers and big knees – in spite of Orton’s attempts to mount some offense inside and outside the ring.

As Orton regained some momentum, Sheamus twice escaped an impending RKO – on the second occasion almost rolling his opponent up for the pinfall. Orton kicked out of a Brogue Kick, then took an age to escape the Cloverleaf – a questionable moment in the match given the role submissions would play later on in the show. Finally, Orton managed to surprise Sheamus with an RKO to gain the victory.

The highlights of the match for the WWE Tag Team Championships took place beyond the confines of the wrestling action. The New Day delivered an amusing heel promo on their way to the ring, with all three members proudly expressing themselves and their confidence towards retaking the tag belts. And with Big E and Kofi Kingston the two challengers, Xavier Woods was verbose watching on from the outside, giddy over every New Day achievement, and reserving special praise for Big E’s ‘tricep meat’.

The match was pretty entertaining too: Titus O’Neill seems to be embracing more fully a power style, and he was able to get the crowd going as The Prime Time Players made their comeback, Titus’s sitout spinebuster seeing them retain the titles which they won from The New Day last month. Still, with Kidd/Cesaro out of the picture, WWE desperately need to elevate more teams if the tag division isn’t to fade once more into irrelevancy; and in the short term The New Day will surely recover their gold.

Bray Wyatt vs. Roman Reigns was another strong affair, lagging a little at the start and stuttering at the finish, but for the most part telling a compelling story. Wyatt dominated Reigns with some rugged grappling on the outside of the ring, manoeuvring him into the steel steps and following up with a series of novel and hard-hitting moves onto the ring apron. Reigns kept coming back, fighting his way out of a couple of Sister Abigail attempts, and nailing a sitdown powerbomb and a Superman punch – but only getting a two count.

As with Sheamus and Orton, this match had been built only over the past month, developing out of the Money in the Bank contract ladder match, which saw Wyatt flick the lights and emerge to cost Reigns victory. As Wyatt again took matters to the outside, Reigns seized the advantage and seemed to stall for time, meaninglessly tossing several steel chairs into the ring. But before he could use them – in a manner which would surely have caused his disqualification – a hooded figure appeared and threw him into the ringpost, allowing Wyatt to rolls Reigns up for the 1-2-3.

The hooded figure was revealed as Luke Harper, suggesting a reunited Wyatt Family. That this received scant reception from the St. Louis audience is unsurprising: for a start, the crowd was behind Reigns, with Wyatt, usually something of a tweener, consigned to the role of heel. But more there is the feeling that both Wyatt and Harper could have had successful solo runs, if there had been sufficient focus on devising and developing storylines for the two wrestlers. Without this, it would have been better never to split the Wyatt Family in the first place. Restoring the cult aspect gives Wyatt’s character a sense of direction which has been sorely lacking; yet it isn’t always easy to interestingly retread old ground.

Stephanie McMahon brought ‘revolution’ to the Divas division on the RAW before Battleground, introducing to the main roster NXT Women’s Champion Sasha Banks, and NXT’s Charlotte and Becky Lynch. While the three-team angle the newcomers have moved into fits uneasily with goings-on in NXT – and their arrival brings into question both the ‘Divas’ epithet and the futures of some of the current roster, although Paige and the Bellas should continue to prove mainstays of the division – it is a joy to see these three women competing at WWE’s premier events.

Becky Lynch is dynamic, with a wide array of moves in her repertoire; Charlotte is athletic, and possesses a rough, suitably old-school style; but Sasha Banks is arguably the most complete superstar in WWE, man or woman. She exudes charisma in the ring, she is agile and good-looking, and at the same time she can construct a match of the highest quality, drawing in the crowd through outstandingly detailed, well-told storytelling. Her character remains consistent and engaging in every gesture, in every moment: from her walk to the ring, to her attitude post-match, to the manner and content of her backstage interviews.

Sasha excelled in this triple-threat tag match, with some devastating moves in the corner, and later a dive through the ropes to the collected competitors on the outside. Charlotte impressed too; and though they receive some stick, the Bellas work hard and rarely look out of place, even if they lack the same wrestling instincts. Charlotte earned the victory for her team courtesy of her bridging ‘figure-eight’ leglock, which forced Brie Bella to submit.

The first match between Kevin Owens and John Cena, which took place at Elimination Chamber at the end of May, was mediocre at best: hugely overstated, it was little more than a standard WWE ‘big match’, an insensible slog featuring too many big moves and finisher kick-outs. Their second engagement, at Money in the Bank, was much better, more nuanced and fluent even though it saw Cena restore parity, picking up the win after a third Attitude Adjustment.

Unfortunately this third – and perhaps final – encounter was more of a piece with their first, poorly structured, with Cena in particular out on his feet after only a few rest holds and Irish whips, and showing a reliance on spots rather than well-navigated wrestling. There were prolonged lulls, and the tired conceit of Owens stealing Cena’s signature moves. Alas, the conclusion was the worst conceivable, as Cena – persevering when locked in Owens’ version of his STF – forced Owens to tap out. So Cena again defended his United States title, while after such a promising debut Owens – on the back of his loss to Finn Balor in Tokyo – finds himself without a belt and wondering where to turn.

Owens strikes me as a well-rounded, but fairly generic heel; with surprising agility in the ring and a diverse range of moves, including some remarkable leaps from the top rope, but wrestling at an even pace which never seems to build much momentum. I’m still not entirely buying into the character; though at the same time I have pondered whether Owens is simply playing a sound heel who – rather than revelling as someone the fans love to hate – aggravates steadily via his resolute sternness.

There still seems something too tidy about Owens’ presentation; but there is no doubting that, as a relative newcomer to WWE, he has lots of potential, and WWE desperately needs to build stars. Bray Wyatt and Rusev – more complete packages at this stage in their respective careers – have endured similar feuds with Cena over the past year and a half, and they both emerged worse off, picking up token victories, but ultimately ending defeated, forlorn, and lacking in all direction. To submit to Cena at such a decisive moment severely threatens Owens’ future prospects.

There is no use pretending that a submission constitutes a reasonable finish in today’s WWE, at least not between men wrestling high-up on the card: it cannot be a reasonable finish, because beyond all reason WWE’s top face is impervious to all submission holds. We have been shown again and again for more than a decade that John Cena cannot be made to tap out. More, we have been told incessantly that Cena will ‘never give up’; and that this constitutes his show of support for all of the sick children he visits outside of wrestling, through organisations such as Make-A-Wish.

The result is that submission moves no longer fit within a wrestling context: they are no longer perceived as holds applying such pressure to certain joints that, at some stage, one must inevitably either tap out or face tears or breakages. Instead, submissions are all about will power and courage and compassion, and John Cena possesses these qualities in abundance, while his challengers clearly do not. It isn’t a matter of succumbing to the better man on the night; it is a matter of core values and strength of character, to the extent that submitting in a John Cena match means the utter debasement of your worth as a private person and as a public figure.

The Miz is awesome, and should be one of the figureheads of WWE. A natural heel, he is conceivably the most charismatic heel in wrestling since the heyday of The Rock. He has so much going for him: a great look, with an impeccable line in heel clothing; mainstream recognition; and he is also well capable in the ring. However stuck to old conceptions regarding what makes a wrestler, and apparently lacking conviction in their own business, WWE’s use of Miz is pitiful: reducing him to a bit-part in-ring role, and to minor duties as a programme host. After cutting a fantastic promo at Battleground, we had to witness the unedifying spectacle of Big Show taking Miz out with a single punch. With the Intercontinental Champion Ryback out injured, this was a fill-in segment preceding the main event.

In general WWE today is a paradox, in so far as inside the ring, the company has rarely boasted such a fit, athletic, and knowledge roster. The men and women who come up through NXT tend to be acutely aware of wrestling history, and they often look like superstars in the making. What they arguably lack is the sort of experience which can only be gained wrestling in front of large crowds, and with veterans willing to pass on first-hand their understanding of what it takes to engage an audience. NXT can replicate this to a degree, through its live shows and the mentorship of legends like Dusty Rhodes and William Regal. More, many NXT wrestlers have put in extensive time on the independent circuit.

What really hampers the development of the next generation of superstars is the static, over-legislated, and child-friendly environment on WWE’s main shows. Seemingly intent on catering predominantly for the under-10s, this doesn’t manifest itself in bold, colourful, larger-than-life characters. Rather it serves to strip away all excesses and elaborations, subduing character development, and rendering too many wrestlers too similar. It is hard to portray a subtle and realistic cultist, for instance, when the target audience is barely literate; impossible to develop an authentic wild side when your words are written by someone else. There are other issues too: again the rigid big-match template which emphasises toughness at the expense of intuition and experimentation; and notably WWE’s inability to conceive of a heel who isn’t fundamentally a coward. There can be a useful difference between a coward and a cheat.

With WWE failing radically to establish its young talents as legitimate, long-term main event players, it frequently makes matters worse by resorting with indecent haste to part-time legends of the squared circle. What could have been a great match between Seth Rollins – ostensibly WWE Champion – and Brock Lesnar eventually amounted to nothing more than a throwaway.

As expected, Brock dominated from the outset of the main event, taking Rollins to ‘suplex city’ with a mass of german suplexes – though this gimmick is already growing tired, asks too much of Lesnar’s opponents, and isn’t always conducive to a dynamic and meaningful match. Lesnar’s selling is underrated, and in general he can do more than simply toss his opponents about. The nicest and craftiest facets of the main event saw Rollins repeatedly wriggle free of the F5; then target Brock’s knee, a tactic which brought some success, and which could have been developed had the match been allowed to continue.

Instead, after less than ten minutes, Brock landed an F5 and covered a seemingly defeated Rollins – only for the arena to go dark, as The Undertaker made his return. Squaring up to a visibly stunned Lesnar, a flurry of strikes saw him win the upper hand, before he dismantled Lesnar with a chokeslam and two Tombstone Piledrivers. Dropping to one knee and posing in the ring, as The Undertaker steadily and glaringly made his way to the back, Lesnar was left lying as Battleground went off the air.

On Monday night’s RAW – which was built around the issue between Taker and Lesnar, the entirety of the WWE roster being called upon to keep the two men apart – The Undertaker explained his actions as spurred by the boasting of Lesnar and his manager Paul Heyman, always keen to remind the WWE universe that they were the ones who broke The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak.

That is still a thin explanation for all of the questions posed by The Undertaker’s interference on Sunday. Namely, given the prestige of the streak, and the fact that The Undertaker himself confronted Lesnar to instigate their WrestleMania XXX match, does Taker really have sufficient grounds for his sudden upset? After all, he wrestled on the show at WrestleMania 31 in March, a year removed from the events of WrestleMania XXX; and on that occasion chose not to sabotage Lesnar’s title bout, despite it being on the biggest stage that wrestling has to offer. Battleground by contrast is a relatively minor affair, so that The Undertaker’s return appears somewhat fickle.

The main event of Battleground was poorly timed: finishing ten minutes early, there was no reason not to give Rollins/Lesnar another five minutes, and Rollins more fractions of offense. Rollins’ title reign has been thoroughly mismanaged to this point, demeaning both the wrestler and the championship, and the horrible prospect of a match with John Cena at SummerSlam seems to be on the horizon. In all – despite the good work earlier in the show, a standout contest between Sheamus and Randy Orton, and the captivating progress being made by WWE’s women – in the course of just two matches, WWE managed to marginalise its future in favour of an already fading past.