WWE Hell in a Cell Approximately Live Blog 10/25/20

I think this show has a chance to have a couple big match deliveries, as Sasha/Bayley and Reigns/Uso both have strong on paper potential. Phil has a rare Sunday evening free so will also be sitting in and contributing to a couple cherry picked matches. And Jeff Jarrett is there? Jeff Jarrett is with WWE now? Is it weird I want to see Jarrett wrestling in NXT? 

R-Truth vs. Drew Gulak

ER: I don't follow the 24/7 title so I do not understand any of the Little Jimmy references that Drew Gulak is making. Does Truth have an imaginary child friend that accompanies him? I don't know about any of that. Is Drew Gulak bringing his Chikara mime training into the WWE where I don't want it? This is perhaps the most Chikara match I have seen Gulak work in WWE, and it's a bummer that it feels like he had those great silent era matches with Daniel Bryan and then opted to take him off TV. Now he's bumping for Truth's John Cena cosplay (which might also be a regular thing? Again I haven't seen 24/7). This looked like they would get the comedy out of the way right at the beginning and then work their way into a good match, with Gulak twisting Truth's ankle and dropping down with Indian deathlocks. But the Cena comeback jokes came really early into the match, and went right through to the end. During the straight faced moments of the match they had real nice chemistry, and that delayed sunset flip snare was pulled off by two guys who could have turned several cool sequences. I don't think we're ever getting that match though. 

Jey Uso vs. Roman Reigns

PAS: I think this ended up being a bit much. Samoan acting is more visceral than white boy acting, so this match was better than the super dramatic NXT matches. It came close, and I bought most of the emotional beats of this match, but it was really long and there was long sections of conversation and emoting and not a ton of wrestling. I also really need more violence in the Roman goes-too-far section of the match. That stair-assisted dropkick looked like something that Tommy Dreamer didn't cleanly hit in a comedy hardcore match, not something that showed Reigns lost his soul or whatever it was supposed to convey. I thought the spears looked great and Roman has a nasty guillotine, and that the finish worked well. It needed to be about 10 minutes shorter and Jey's white pants needed some blood for it to totally work for me. Afa and Sika at the end was awesome though, and I imagine this leads to Rock vs. Roman for the true head seat at the table which should be incredible. 

ER: Is this really the first WWE I Quit in five years? But I am not really enjoying this. I am not a fan of these Marvel battles where guys speak dialogue to each other before taking theatrical bumps and gnashing their teeth at the lights. If they were doing this on a windy green grass hillside cliff I could possibly get into it more. It does not work for me as pro wrestling, and it does not work for me as high drama. It was like they were doing a musical so the story took 5x as long to tell itself, ended up going way too long, and had too much dramatic build between each bit of wrestling. The spears were spaced well and I enjoyed things like Jey scrambling to choke Roman with the strap, but this dialogue thing is boring as hell to me. I don't think guys sound cool while barking one sentence "in a fight" platitudes. I think this stuff is really terrible, at least this presentation of it. I think I Quit match structure can already have a lot of lags and downtime, but they were dragging things down with dialogue AND I quit back and forth, which means we got a ton of lying around, far too much talking, and far too much of the ref asking if Jey wanted to quit every couple seconds. The only benefit of having this long slog of a match first is that the show still has plenty of time to recover. I liked the Wild Samoans appearance at the end and even though this match bored me to tears I would be undeniably excited by a Reigns/Rock match. 

Elias vs. Jeff Hardy

ER: I've been into comeback Jeff Hardy, and I'm fully into appreciating Hardy as an all time great at this point. But this kind of thing feels like a Raw angle and not something that needed to be on PPV. 

The Miz vs. Otis

ER: I really liked this and how it felt like a late 80s Saturday Night's Main Event match. They worked straight and that benefitted the match, and I loved everything after Otis's big babyface shirt tear. This was a strong Otis babyface performance. He ran into a Miz boot and looked tough as Miz was laying in kicks to the chest. But the wild man shirt tear Otis was him having the fun kind of breakout that will keep someone memorable and durable, like Jim Duggan. Otis hit a great spinning lariat and smashed into Miz, felt like a guy who would be getting huge potential reactions if we had crowds. It isn't hard to picture Otis catching on as a durable cult character with crowds, the same way Santino was but even more pushable as a wrestler. The Tucker turn could have gotten a surprised reaction from the crowd too, like or love where they go with it. This was pretty easily the best match so far on this show, but I hope we get something stronger. 

Sasha Banks vs. Bayley

ER: I am very very excited for this. For the past year plus Sasha has been one of the only people in WWE who actually makes me WATCH. She has had several stretches like this over her career, and has been a consistently great wrestler and character for the better part of a decade now. I think her work in this Bayley feud has arguably been the best of her career. And I liked this match and much preferred their method of storytelling, even if they didn't quite take things the direction I would have wanted. I liked the emotion and I liked a lot of the brawling and selling, but I didn't love the stretches where it became a propped up weapons showcase. When you actually fighting each other gets way more heat than making arts and crafts weapons, just go for the easier option of fighting each other. Sasha contributes the best parts of this for me, but they're a good pair. I loved Sasha's tope and her being crazy enough to get the back of her head whipped into a chair on a sunset flip. She's a CZW wrestler doing joshi drama and it rules. She gets trapped in the ring skirt in a cool way and is a strong enough salesman that the beatings she takes are always more convincing. All of the fighting was great, and all of Sasha's assorted meteoras looked awesome. But the prop set up slowed things unnecessarily, as a strong match was right in front of them with much simpler weapon usage. But Sasha was great at throwing herself face first into ladders and chairs, and her comebacks always played strong. The finish was great, with a Banks Statement around a chair a nasty worthy way to end a long title reign. Banks could honestly be the biggest female star in WWE history. I think she has great potential to break out on a big level. 

PAS: I thought had some very good moments, but ultimately went too long. It felt like a big time Indy wrestling stips match that didn't know when to end. They had a bunch of cool ideas and crazy bumps, and if they had picked four of them and built the match around those four moments it could have been awesome, instead they had twenty ideas and it kind of just kept going. I thought the finish of the match was awesome as was all of Sasha's double knee variations into parts of the cage. They undoubtedly took a ton of cool looking punishment, but at some point twenty five concussive shots with weapons just drags on.

 

Bobby Lashley vs. Slapjack

ER: Okay Bobby Lashley vs. SLAPJACK might be one of the weirder singles matches to land on a WWE PPV. Shane Thorne has never been on a WWE PPV, and hadn't even appeared on a TakeOver in four years. But here he is, debuting on PPV as Slapjack, and I think that is a kind of fun odd thing? It's a fun quick match, with Slapjack bumping around nice on Irish whips into the buckles and flies around for every Lashley throw. His comebacks were convincing and the big schmozz finish was used better here than the Hardy/Elias match. This was a nice palate cleanser and honestly the most interesting use for Retribution might be as a jobber stable. A stable of masked jobbers who all bump makes a ton of sense. Their faces are even covered so you don't have to see their shamed faces. WWE doesn't need revolution angles. They need 6-8 masked jobbers to flesh out their undercards and get fucking worked over by more interesting people. A dedicated crew of people who never win and nobody expects to win, bringing back showcase squash matches and 90/10 mildly competitive matches to establish new offense and alternate finishers. Do that and it will be a more successful idea than whatever Retribution ever leads to. 

Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton

ER: This was boring and not at all what I want from pro wrestling. They do not do this high drama wrestling as stage craft bullshit well, and it is infecting these shows. This show especially feels like ACTING has been featured far too much. They're taking advantage of the Our Town set up and getting a little bit too confident with their stage chops. This was slow and masturbatory and I couldn't stay engaged in any way. The end. 

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WWE Battleground 2015 Live(ish) Blog

ER: So even if the shows aren't always good, the live blogs are always fun. They break me out of my usual writing style of watching something and then writing about it from memory, more thoughts as the show is happening and I haven't had time to process things fully. So in that regard even a bleh show can be fun for me. I truthfully have watched minimal WWE TV since the last PPV. There is a lot of stuff I've missed, and I don't really know current storylines. I'm sure some video packages will catch me up, and if there's any WWE TV matches that people think are MOTY worthy, tell me in the comments so I know to search for them.

1. R-Truth vs. Wade Barrett

ER: Man cutting to commercials during the throwaway pre-show match is LAME. What is not lame, but hilarious, is JBL casually talking about T.I. and Yelawolf like these are people who he just knows. This probably got more time than any other pre-show match in the last year, and boy did they not fill it in very interesting ways. Things happened, Barrett wins, we learn little about life, somewhat about ourselves. I learn that I still find it necessary to watch pre-show matches. Does Michael Cole ever sound less genuine than when he is talking about somebody "having fun"? Whenever he talks about how much fun somebody is having he sounds like a man who has never experienced a day of fun in his life.

2. Randy Orton vs. Sheamus

PAS: Pretty good match which ran a bit long. Watched this with my wife and her main comment was that they had too many kick outs.  Which was accurate, this match could have used an editor to clip out two or three minutes in the middle. It is more fun to watch Orton matches in St. Louis where people give a shit about him, and I am a Sheamus fan, if a wrestler takes a beating and gives one I will forgive a lot of sins. RKO out of nowhere was a little boring, as he can hit it out of cooler places and in cooler ways.

ER: Orton is a guy who always makes me groan when I see I'm about to watch a Randy Orton match, but then it seems like I usually like his PPV matches. Yet I still end up dreading Orton PPV matches. I can't explain it. This takes a while to get rolling, gets good around the 8 minute mark, and then kinda gets uninteresting again. My interest grew when Sheamus took his great Cassandro bump, and from there bumped all over for Orton's stuff and made it look legit. Nice bump to the floor off a clothesline, big superplex bump, big bump off the rope drape DDT. Cruisers don't put over Orton's stuff this well.And really Phil (and Chelsea) are right about this being too long. Sheamus is one of those traditional WWE guys like Christian or Matt Hardy who kind of learned to work the perfect 11 minute WWE match. The finish was flat, but I'll HAPPILY take Randy Orton's standard RKO after seeing Jay Lethal's shitty handstand one and Killshot's even shittier somersault one over the last couple days. Seeing just a normal RKO was like a fucking glass of ice water after running a marathon.

3. New Day vs. Prime Time Players

PAS: Another pretty good match, Kofi works so much better as a big bumping heel and Big E v. Titus big man battles are pretty great, that splash on the apron by Big E was really cool got a ton of height. I am not sure where they can go with this feud, but I enjoy all of their matches with each other.

ER: These teams are such good uses of everybody involved. PTP work so great together and New Day takes 1 guy I like and 2 I don't and makes it work. Rachel is amused that practically every black man in the fed is shoved into the same match. Darren Young is one of the best bumpers in the fed and I loved his corner bump into the cameraman. Big E's apron splash was epic, gonna be tough to beat that for my favorite spot of the night. He got insane height and it landed with so much more impact than any fat man who does a splash. This match wasn't bad but I'm sure they've had better TV (or even house show) matches.

4. Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt

PAS: Well no more doubting Roman Reigns, as this was yet another awesome singles match, he pretty much can do no wrong at this point. He is just breaking out classic after classic. I really loved this, as it was just two giant dudes beating the shit out of each other. The clothesline counter of the dropkick was a total holy shit spot, as was the counter of the spear. Finish had a minimal amount of bullshit for the first part of a feud, and I am all in favor of a Wyatt Family reunion.

ER: I really dug both guys in this. It's become kinda popular to dump on Bray but I always end up digging him in matches. All his stuff landed (his crossbody is beautiful), he bumped huge for Roman, he is one of the only guys in WWE who knows how to work a side headlock (his shit talking took it to another level too, with stuff like "He's giving up on you!"). Wyatt and Shield guys have really developed a nice sense of timing with each other, and now I feel like a dummy for ONE MATCH AGO saying that Big E's splash will be spot of the night, because like 15 minutes later we get Wyatt knocking Reigns out of the sky on his apron dropkick attempt. Oh my stars. Wyatt looks really great throughout this. Loved him kneeling on Reigns' chest while punching his face, and Reigns is great working underneath here. Both guys are coming out of this one looking damn good. I loved Bray turning the crab walk into an Undertaker sit-up spot. Reigns repeat corner clotheslines could use some mustard on them. He should tighten them up or drop them. They never look that good, like when Batista's crappy corner shoulderblocks to the stomach. Just club him, Wyatt can take it! And YES Luke Harper coming back with Wyatt. GOOD. I wish it didn't lead directly to the finish, but oh well. Rachel during the match even said she wished they'd just throw the Wyatts back together. Awesome match that filled its long running time well. Again, both guys came out of this looking better.

5. Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte vs. Brie Bella

PAS: Feels like the booking of the Divas invasion is going to guarantee a lot of 3 ways which is going to be problematic. This was a bit sloppy which is to be expected, still this had a lot of energy, and the crowd seems willing to get into the NXT girls. I think Sasha can do better, and hopefully will get a chance to have a singles match which builds a bit. I actually thought Brie looked better then Charlotte, as she was laying it in, and clearly doesn't want to be lapped. Dive train was a mistake as none of those dives looked good at all.

ER: Sasha has clear superstar charisma and I really hope they give her a nice long singles run. It sucks for the Divas that it seems like they always get dumped into 3-ways on the PPVs. Sasha "breaking boards" in the corner with the other two was amusing, and Charlotte is really good at throwing herself face first into things. Her apron bump was great. The 3 way rears it's ugly stupid head as Brie is out selling a knee drop for a preposterously long time. Rachel watches Total Divas so during this she was filling me in on how Brie wants to have a baby, and how Rachel is glad that Brie doesn't feel pressured to get boob implants, and then jokes how Charlotte should consider hip implants so her body isn't as mannish, and then says how Charlotte must have played volleyball, and then looks it up and informs me that Charlotte was apparently a high end high school volleyball player. She is doing this while playing a Zelda game on Game Boy Advance and drinking a Lagunitas Lil Sumpin. She...is crushing her Sunday, essentially. I kind of liked the dive train, in the same way I liked Vince taking bumps, as it always looked really dangerous. Brie's trust fall bump was scary as she kind of overshot, all the dives saw limbs all flying where they shouldn't be. It was ugly, but compelling. The figure 8 is such a great sub. I've never seen a figure 4 look more painful. Surprised to see Charlotte go over, and the match went probably too long, but this was good enough and it's a nice sign that it went long as at least that's them getting a chance.

6. Kevin Owens vs. John Cena

ER: This is kind of a lame response to this match, but I really don't know how I feel about their feud at this point. We've kind of seen them have a variation on the same match three times now. I loved the first one. Second one was fine albeit a little sloppy. This one also seemed fine but left me a little cold. Moves happened, moves were kicked out of, eventually a move ended the match. At one point after a kickout Cole asked "When will it end?" and while he didn't mean it this way, that's what I was feeling. It never felt like they were ever building to anything in this one, just felt like they were doing every move they knew to fill a certain amount of time. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe there were subtle things I was missing because I was typing about it. Maybe this is a flaw in the "write as you watch" format. I thought Owens looked great in it. But for whatever reason nothing in the match moved me. Nobody ever looked very vulnerable, they both kinda just looked like supermen who did a lot of moves to each other. Many of the moves looked like they really hurt, but nothing about how they treated the moves made me think they hurt. I'm not sure where they go with each man now. I haven't been following WWE TV so not sure what is being built for Owens after this, not sure which direction Cena is going with his US reign. This whole thing just made me feel like I was watching a modern Christopher Daniels match, and that's a shame because I clearly like each guy more than Daniels. But hey, maybe I'm wrong.

PAS: Yeah I was out on this too. I really liked Owens cutting Cena off with a nasty punch to the mouth, and I was hoping they would mix the match up a bit and make it a little nastier, but then they shot into finisher spam, the big problem with this match up is that they never mixed it up, it felt like two guys taking their match to a bunch of different indy shows. The first match was their IWA-MS match, the second was their EVOLVE match and then they did their 50 finisher PWG match. Tough to watch those basically all in a row in front of the same audience. Also man did they overdo the stare unbelievingly into the lights, I am not sure how many wide eyed glazed eyed stares we got, but it was a ton. At one point Cole said "I haven't seen that look in Cena's eyes since he wrestled the Rock" I was thinking you saw it three minutes ago when Owens kicked out of something else.

ER: Ryback sacrificed his leg so that I wouldn't have to sit through a Miz match. And a 3 way no less!! Thank you, Ryback.

7. Seth Rollins vs. Brock Lesnar

ER: Few modern workers (or, let's face it, workers in the history of me watching wrestling) get me as excited for a match as Lesnar. Just a natural excitement for his matches. And WAIT THAT'S THE END!?!? Where did the referee and Rollins go?? Did Undertaker's magic make them disappear?? I...don't even know what to say. I hadn't heard Undertaker was coming back (not sure if this was common knowledge or anything, I haven't been following the rumor mill), and I'm a-ok with him being a part of this match.....but for NOTHING to happen afterwards??? The match just ends?? Did Rollins just leave, but duck out of the camera? Were we supposed to think he vanished? I honestly have no clue what the fuck happened here. I mean, the referee must have vanished into thin air. He already counted two, does a three count not matter if it's done in the dark? I don't get it. And I'm not sure what WWE wanted me to think about Undertaker, but all I felt was "Oh god his knees must be killing him after that Tombstone. Oh shit he's doing ANOTHER one? God his knees are gonna be barking." I don't want to see another Taker/Lesnar match. I was LOVING Lesnar/Rollins. Loving it. Rollins was getting tossed all over, bought into him landing on his feet out of a German and tossing out all the superkicks, loved him hitting multiple topes to try and just gain SOME ground.......and then people just poof vanished.

PAS: This stunk, Lesnar v. Rollins was something they had been building since Wrestlemania, and we didn't even get a match. It was like Hogan v. Piper on Nitro ending in two minutes so the NWO can spray paint everyone. What a waste of a Brock match and a main event.

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Belligerent Ghouls Run Regal's Schools

William Regal v. Daniel Bryan v. R-Truth WWE 11/9/10 - GREAT

Kind of a WARish lineup, I can't remember why these three guys would be wrestling each other, but it worked surprisingly well. Truth worked a bunch of really fast rope running exchanges with Bryan and which made it more juniorish, and when Regal and Bryan would match up they would just rip into each other. You can tell Bryan was loving working Regal in London as he was doing some Regal mannerisms, including a curtsey and the phony handshake exchange. Not a ton of three way spots, but there was a great stacked superplex where Regal just hurled both guys down. Real neat discovery.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE REGAL

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