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.
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