WWE Extreme Rules 2015

To kick off the show Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson beat The Usos in an okay match that the fans did not appear overly bothered about. There were plenty of boos for The Usos which is partly due to their connection with Roman Reigns but also because they are just a really uninteresting tag team. The heels went over fairly decisively here.

Speaking of decisive victories, Rusev hammered Kalisto to win the United States title by submission. Kalisto is a talented performer but he has little connection with the fans and his title reign has been highly forgettable. After more than a year of being completely wasted Rusev seems to be set for a renewed push. Hopefully this is not just so he can be sacrificed to the returning John Cena.

The New Day (Big E & Xavier Woods) defeated The Vaudevillians to retain the tag team title with an assist from Kofi Kingston. The finish made the super-over champions look like the heels but I don't think the fans really care about that. The match was a very standard affair.

Intercontinental Champion Miz managed to survive a fatal four-way against Cesaro, Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens in a superb match-up. There were some hot near falls in this one and quality performances all round before Miz stole a pinfall to retain the gold. As I said last month I feel the title really should be the focal point of the Owens/Zayn feud and not wasted on The Miz.

Dean Ambrose's "Asylum" cage match with Chris Jericho was designed to be an epic but it just did not happen. The heat wasn't there and the fans got bored and started chanting for Seth Rollins. Even Ambrose's elbow from the top of the cage didn't elicit the booming response it should have. What did pop the crowd in the end was the introduction of thumb tacks. I was surprised it was Jericho that took the big bump onto them before Ambrose DDT'd him (and himself) into them again for the win. I thought it was important that Ambrose won this as opposed to them evening things up with a Jericho victory but Ambrose has definitely lost a lot of momentum this year.

Charlotte retained the women's title over Natalya in a disappointing match with another cheap finish. Towards the end of the bout Ric Flair's music played and Dana Brooke came out to distract Nattie allowing Charlotte to pick up the win by Figure 8 submission.

Finally Roman Reigns defeated AJ Styles in an excellent brawl fought under "Extreme Rules". Reigns was booed heavily once again but is reacting much better to it these days. Styles put in another top class performance to carry the action but Reigns looked good here too. The interference of "The Club" and The Usos made storyline sense as it did last month and there were some really good near falls late on. Reigns' match winning spear to Styles mid-air was executed perfectly. The biggest pop of the night came after the bell as Seth Rollins made his return and took down Reigns with a Pedigree. I was hoping this would lead to a great build up to a big title match at Summerslam but it looks like they're going the hot shot route and doing the match at Money In The Bank instead.

On the whole it was a decent enough show for a 'B' pay-per-view. The only matches that really need to be sought out are the Intercontinental and World Heavyweight title bouts. The rest you could really take or leave.

WWE Payback 2016

Just a few thoughts about Payback from this past Sunday night...

On the whole I liked the show. It was much more entertaining than Wrestlemania, the event had a better build up and the crowd was really lively as is usually the case in Rosemont. I don't think there was a bad match on the show but at the same time I expected more from a couple of them. My main gripe coming out of the show was despite it being the beginning of a so-called "New Era" in WWE, two championship matches were complete rehashes of pay-per-view main events from the 1990s. The worst offender was Charlotte versus Natalya which was a good match until they did the ridiculous "Montreal Screwjob" finish for the 258th time. Is that the only reason they brought Bret Hart in? It's like WWE want Hart to only be remembered for that one night in the Molson Centre. Just let it go. Hart was clearly still in some discomfort following his recent battle with prostate cancer which was no more evident than when he carefully put Ric Flair in the sharpshooter after the bout. The main event between Roman Reigns and AJ Styles was another good scrap but the story of the match bared a striking resemblance to the Shawn Michaels/Vader main event at Summerslam 1996. Styles, like Vader won the match by count out and then by disqualification only for the match to be restarted twice so the champion could go over by pinfall in the end. Once Shane McMahon had restarted the match declaring there could be no count outs it was just a matter of time before a disqualification was called so his sister could have her share of the spotlight. I did like that we were kept guessing on the relationship between Styles and his former Bullet Club buddies but it was obvious Reigns was always going to win this one.

Elsewhere on the show... Enzo Amore was very unfortunate to suffer the injury he did and hopefully he recovers quickly... The New Day were fantastic once again in their role. The have great chemistry together but I just worry that people now care more about their comedy routines than their actual matches... Kevin Owens versus Sami Zayn was a tremendous match with a really good build. I don't understand why their feud is not over the Intercontinental Title though... Speaking of which The Miz's title defence over Cesaro was decent enough but was overshadowed by Owens' brilliant performance on commentary. It looks like we're heading for a four way match at Extreme Rules so there's hope yet that the IC title will end up back in the Owens/Zayn feud... Dean Ambrose scored a much needed win over Chris Jericho but the match, while not bad at all, was still quite sloppy in places and I felt it should've been better... Finally Vince McMahon decided that both Shane and Stephanie will run Raw (or is it WWE as a whole?) together. Nobody was particularly happy with that outcome which is something else that has been done before by Steve Austin and Eric Bischoff back in 2003. I seriously doubt it will be anywhere near as entertaining featuring the McMahon siblings in 2016. That said I thought the segment itself on this show was good fun.