Unicorn Gimmick Matches - Symphony of Destruction

Elias vs. Jaxson Ryker WWE Raw 7/19/21

ER: A 1999 style hardcore match that doesn't quite live up to WCW junkyard reckless stupidity, but due to the specific weapon stipulation managed to capture at least a degree of that unpredictability that comes with using non-conventional weapons. This match was the final Elias match in WWE, and to his credit he went out with his best performance of 2021. If WWE actually knew what they were doing week to week they could have easily billed this as a Loser Leaves Town match (instead they just aired vignettes a month later for his return that never happened), but it's still a perfectly fun violent weapons match to go out on. The entire ringside area is filled with musical instruments. It's incredibly stupid but it works because they went so over the top with the instrument selection, and they didn't cheat by fleshing out the match with non-instrument weapons. 

Instruments are great weapons because they are either very heavy or very lumpy, so they are either awkward as hell to land on or heavy as hell to be hit with, and we get plenty of both. Elias takes a nasty bump into a drum kit and there is probably no instrument more painful than a set of drums to bump into (there is one specific way that bumping onto a flute would be much worse, but it's a one in a million shot), and Elias's selling in this match is good enough that I assume his body was completely messed up by this band room brawl. Ryker hits some heavy shots with a huge keyboard, which Elias later pays back by hitting Ryker a few times with a fucking cello. Do you know how heavy cellos are? Not nearly as much as you think, actually. And, since you've never seen circles farther apart than the Venn diagram of WWE Raw viewers and Julian Lloyd Webber fans, Elias takes advantage of that. John Cena used to be really great at putting over the weight of foreign objects, and I have no doubt that there are thousands of kids who believed that the ring steps weighed 200 pounds just from watching how Cena would always labor to lift them over his head. Elias uses that same energy when lifting that cello over his head to smash Ryker, making a 7 lb. instrument look like 70. 

There are some big spots around a grand piano, and the WWE prop department deserves credit for finding a big ass piano just for this blowoff match. I suppose it's possible that Diana Krall had played the arena and the American Airlines Center staff had been looking for a way to get rid of this thing, but regardless, we got to see two guys take bumps on a big piano and that rocks. Also important, is that they fill the time in between weapons shots with hard strikes, with Elias throwing hard elbows after getting busted open, and Ryker throwing shots to Elias's temple to set up the big finish. The finish is the only cheat of the match, as Ryker does an awesome superplex from the top rope to the floor through a pair of tables. A superplex through a grand piano would have been one of the most memorable spots of the year, but I'm not going to hold that against them. Ryker was really good at making sure Elias was punched out on the apron to set up his superplex, making a big spot feel less cooperative than it should have looked, and the superplex itself was definitely something that should end a match. Elias's selling after the pinfall was so good that it would be easy to believe he was hurt, giving his final match the actual gravity that WWE didn't provide.