2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Bryan/Rowan vs. Big E/Woods

15. Daniel Bryan/Erick Rowan vs. Big E/Xavier Woods WWE Smackdown 8/6

ER: WWE has a really great tag division, and there's no actual reason we aren't getting a match this good every week. There are good tag teams, give them some time and give us some cool main event tag wrestling. Bryan is a great guy to be leading a main event tag run, and Big E gives him a super intriguing opponent (and a match-up that I still want to see a ton more). Bryan is a guy the crowds are always invested in - New Day, too - so matches opposite each other are always gonna be hot and Bryan is someone who knows how to peak a crowd. Rowan and Bryan were fun cutting Woods off from Big E, and I especially loved Rowan hitting that big running crossbody (loved when Mike Knox started making that into a big man spot a decade plus ago) and working a big cravate, then setting up Woods to eat a big Bryan dropkick. But the match gets great when we finally get the Bryan/Big E showdown, Big E starts chucking Bryan with huge belly to bellys, big splash, Bryan kicking at him, a Big E stretch muffler, a LeBell Lock, and a Big E powerbomb. These two were dynamite in there, and it was all part of a huge final stretch. Rowan's spinkick hits like a construction worker getting hit with a swinging I-beam, Woods hits a big ropewalker elbow, Big E takes Bryan out of action with that big damn spear to the floor (that is still one of the craziest spots going), we get a great pinfall save by Bryan, and I don't even mind the DQ finish. A DQ finish done with style is still fun, and I loved Rowan just clonking Woods with the ring steps when things were getting out of their hands. Bryan and Rowan need to face the roster.

PAS: This was pretty incredible, we are a bit sensitized to TV matches these days. There is an obvious corollary between Rowan and Bryan and the Hart Foundation, skilled technical wrestler teaming with strong dude with a long beard. Did the Hart Foundation ever have a match this good? Is there more than a half dozen things Bret Hart did in his entire career as cool as the Stretch Muffler to LaBell Lock to Triangle Choke to Powerbomb sequence that Daniel Bryan and Big E pulled off? I am a Jim Neidhart high voter, I can't remember any Anvil spot as cool as that crossbody/forearm to Xavier Woods jaw. I am a curmudgeon about modern wrestling, I would much rather watch something from 1979, 89, 99 or 09 then current stuff today, but you got to give it up sometimes. WWE is putting out a minimum of 9 hours of televised wrestling a week (3 RAW, 2 Smackdown. 1 NXT, 1 NXT UK, 1 205 Live, with most weeks having a Takeover or PPV) with a transcendentally talented roster. It's the proverbial monkeys typing on the proverbial typewriters, you will get stuff like this, and it will be forgotten a couple of weeks later. I thought the beat down on Xavier was really cool (although we missed some due to commercial), the hot tag to Big E was great and your final finish run was about as good as that kind of WWE nearfall finish run gets, every spot built to a cooler second spot and the finish was nasty and brutal. This was awesome, totally worth trying to remember at the end of the year.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST