Quick Thoughts #5: Summerslam's Shortcomings

I’m going to start off here by saying this article will barely touch on the astoundingly bad booking of last night because I feel that should (and will) have been covered by everyone and their dog by now.

This article is focused on another area where Summerslam fell badly short – in the ring.

I found watching the show last night extremely depressing as I realised how damaging the complete lack of psychology was in the two biggest matches of WWE’s biggest show of the summer.

Take Brock vs. Undertaker, I sat there and watched Brock hit three F-5’s on ‘Taker and not once did I think there was even a remote chance of that being the finish.

When that’s the case how can I even slightly get excited and into the match?

The answer is I couldn’t.

I sat there and watched as Brock brawled with ‘Taker for a bit before the whole thing just descended into yet another finisher orgy.

I openly pondered how many finishers it was going to take before I bought into the finish of the match.

10, 15, 20?

I’ll never know because I didn’t even get a chance to find out with the asinine ending that they decided to go with.

It’s weird to think how we’ve got to this point since for years if I was watching an indie show people would tell me that it wasn’t nearly as good as WWE because the psychology wasn’t there.

At this point that psychology no longer exists, at least not in the big matches.

I think I can trace the problem back as well.

To trace it back to what feels like the origins of this lack of psychology we have to go back to one of the greatest matches of all-time.

The stage was Wrestlemania 25 and the match was The Undertaker pitting his undefeated streak against Mr. Wrestlemania himself, Shawn Michaels.

There were multiple near falls and several finisher kick-out’s and it was an absolute masterpiece.

However, it was only a masterpiece because of the psychology that had been previously built up.

Prior to that match you knew the Tombstone Piledriver was a deathly finishing manoeuvre and, to a lesser extent, so was Sweet Chin Music.

So Shawn and ‘Taker kicking out of those moves meant something.

The problem is WWE saw that formula worked for them and ran with it for other big matches too.

It worked for a while as well, because they didn’t do it too often so the psychology somewhat remained intact.

Money in the Bank 2011 saw CM Punk and John Cena kick out of each other’s finishers repeatedly but it still meant something.

The problem is, over the five years since that amazing Shawn/Undertaker match these matches have become more and more frequent.

It wasn’t just Brock vs. ‘Taker that was culpable last night either, Cena vs. Rollins was equally guilty.

And that seems to be a recurring theme for Cena recently, they’ve went into overdrive with this type of match for him this year throughout his US Title Open Challenge’s and his PPV encounters.

It used to be that if you kicked out of Cena’s AA that was a huge moment and really made whoever kicked out seem legitimate.

Now, it means nothing because we as an audience have become conditioned to expect it.

Did Rollins kicking out of the AA last night make him look like a star?

Or help recuperate the months of horrendous booking he has gone through?

No, because everyone kicks out of Cena’s finisher now, so it means nothing.

I think the change for me in terms of just being conditioned to expect this was the second Cena/Owens match earlier this year.

I thought the first match was excellent and unpredictable.

Then they had the exact same match at Money in the Bank just with a different winner and followed it up with an exact replica of that match at Battleground.

You could say that I’m clearly just another jaded wrestling fan who needs to walk away from the fandom as a whole but I consume an insane amount of wrestling every year from companies all over the world and WWE is the only one making me feel this way right now.

I watch ROH matches and can get into them, same with Lucha Underground or PWG or NJPW or even WWE’s own developmental organisation in NXT – and that’s a pretty damning indictment.

Going back to last night I was watching Summerslam with a group of friends and we’d decided that since we were going to be watching Summerslam together we’d meet a few hours early, avoid spoilers and watch the previous night’s NXT Takeover event too.

There was a tag team match on that card between then NXT Tag Team Champions Blake and Murphy and now NXT Tag Team Champions The Vaudevillians.

It was quite an old school match with the way they built up to the hot tag and by the end of the match I was out of my seat cheering The Vaudevillians on – and I wasn’t the only one in the group doing that.

It was because of the excellent ring psychology of that match that I got so into it.

And that tag team match, second on the card at WWE’s developmental show, had more psychology to it than Brock/Undertaker and Cena/Rollins put together.

Something about that isn’t right.

So I personally feel that it’s not just me being a jaded wrestling fan, it’s WWE as a whole losing sight of the psychology and storytelling that pro wrestling is built on and conditioning fans to do the same.

And if it keeps going it could be really damaging for the brand because why should you care the next time someone hits an F-5 or an AA or a Tombstone Piledriver when I know that the opponent’s just going to kick out?

That’s not a road they should want to go down.

Quick Thoughts #4: You Can’t Manufacture Special Moments

Last night Ring of Honor presented the thirteenth edition of its annual Death Before Dishonor event and overall the show was very good.

Obviously it wasn’t a top level show but it was more than worth the $19.95 asking price.

A decent card from top to bottom with nothing mind-blowingly good saw Adam Cole and Dalton Castle have probably the best match of the night.

The point of this article though is to discuss pro wrestling’s obsession with trying to manufacture special moments.

It is a problem that seemingly plagues all companies from the very top to the smallest indie.

We see it in WWE all the time what with Jerry Lawler screaming “Wrestlemania moment” about thirty times every April.

And last night we saw the epidemic strike in ROH.

A decent show was heading to what looked to be an exciting conclusion with a tantalising main event pitting Jay Lethal against Roderick Strong.

Lethal and his cohorts in the House of Truth, in particular Truth Martini, have provided us with some of the most entertaining moments of 2015 so far and Strong seems to have had more great matches this year than I’ve had hot meals.

So you could forgive me for expecting great things from this match.

The bell rang and for the next sixty minutes those two men beat the living daylights out of one another.

I could not begrudge the wrestlers what they did in this match because they gave it everything and looked understandably dead on their feet by the time the match ended.

The problem was the result; they went to a sixty minute time limit draw.

Now I have no problem with time limit draws and as a matter of fact I think they are a woefully underutilised trope in pro wrestling.

The problem was last night ROH tried to manufacture something special whilst failing to realise that you can’t manufacture a special moment – it has to occur organically.

I realise that in a business like pro wrestling which is pre-determined people will be thinking that nothing can happen organically and you have to manufacture everything but last night proved that simply isn’t the case.

ROH has a history with time limit draws and following the match I measured the quality on my own personal ROH time limit draw scale which starts at Aries vs. Black from Final Battle 2009 and goes all the way up to Joe vs. Punk from Joe/Punk II.

I came to the conclusion that this sat at about the level of Punk vs. Daniels from The Homecoming show during Punk’s title reign.

And I stand by that, it was a solid, if unspectacular, time limit draw.

The problem was ROH had clearly tried to manufacture this match into a truly special moment planned to be a moment that fans would talk about for years to come and organically it just wasn’t.

In that sense it reminds me more of the Austin Aries vs. Bryan Danielson match from Testing The Limit.

At that show, if my memory serves me correctly, Aries and Dragon went 78 minutes in a 2/3 Falls match and at the end it felt like we were supposed to be in awe at the epic moment we’d all just witnessed.

But once again it felt forced, it felt like they were too focused on creating history and manufacturing that fabled special moment that they forgot to have a good match.

And that’s what Lethal vs. Strong felt like last night, it was good but the match was too focused on trying to be special to actually be special.

Pro wrestling as a whole has got to realise that it can’t create these moments and they have to just let them happen organically.

Obviously you have to book the best show you possibly can but a booker can only create what he, she or they believe to be the best narrative possible – the rest is out of their hands.

There is a multitude of different factors at play and you can’t just decide, right, this is going to be a special moment – we’ll make sure of that.

You can have an inclination that something could be special but you can’t force that fact down the audience’s throat otherwise it will never be that special moment.

Daniel Bryan’s moment at WrestleMania XXX felt special because it felt organic, not because Michael Cole told me it was special.

Last night felt like Kevin Kelly trying to force me into believing I’d seen something special.

Undoubtedly ROH can now take this forward in a myriad of interesting ways though.

The one positive they can take out of this is they now have a match lined up that possibly could be remembered as epic.

As a result of this draw we will obviously see a rematch and after a sixty minute draw there’s only one specialist ROH match that would be a fitting stipulation for said rematch – a Ringmaster’s Challenge match.

The Ringmaster’s Challenge is a 2/3 Falls Match with a few additional stipulation’s.

The first fall must be won via pinfall, the second via submission and the third if (note: when) required is a 15 minute Ironman match.

Pitting Lethal vs. Strong in this type of environment would be fantastic and quite possibly allow ROH to have the moment they were so desperate for last night.

Add the ROH World Championship (and possibly the Television Championship too) into the mix and you've got yourself a potentially epic main event for further down the line.

That is providing they don’t try hard to make it special and just focus on producing the best match they possibly can.

Quick Thoughts #3: Is Battleground Cursed? A (Not So) Brief Review/Rant

I may be beating a dead horse here because I’m sure many of you out there have made similar gripes to what I’m going to outline in this article but here goes.

Last night WWE produced their latest PPV/Special Event – 'Battleground'.

The card on paper looked a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde affair.

The undercard looked bland and uneventful but the top two matches seemed a lock to deliver.

The undercard actually performed a little better than I expected. I got nothing personally out of the Sheamus vs. Orton contest but the Tag Team Championship match was better than I’d hoped and even Wyatt vs. Reigns was not as bad as I’d feared.

It also taught me that Bray Wyatt has one of the most brutal looking lariats in North America at the minute – a true thing of beauty.

We also got a nice little bonus in the fact that we got a follow up to Monday’s debut of Becky Lynch, Charlotte and Sasha Banks as we got to see Charlotte vs. Sasha vs. Brie Bella in a three-way dance.

The match was probably the best diva’s match on a main roster PPV since AJ Lee and Kaitlyn at ‘Payback’ in 2013.

It wasn’t quite up to the level of the NXT matches we’ve seen but it was very, very good and told a good storyline.

I’m really looking forward to seeing where they take this in the future.

Next we get into the meat of last night’s problems with the double main event.

First off we had John Cena and Kevin Owens lining up the third match in their budding rivalry and I was expecting very good things.

Their first match was excellent and the United States Open Challenge has led to some great moments.

This looked like it could be a culmination of all that coming together.

I, admittedly, didn’t care for their second match too much because I felt it was just a re-hash of their first match merely in a different sequence and with a different winner.

But that didn’t put too much of a dampener on my hopes for this outing.

After all, they weren’t likely to have the same match three times and the storyline had built to a perfect conclusion.

There are some times in wrestling where I get an indescribable feeling about how something needs to play out.

Sometimes it is just the absolutely right time to pull the trigger on a performer.

The examples I have been using that recently gave me this feeling was I felt TNA needed to pull the trigger on EC3, which to the surprise of many – me included, they actually managed to pull off – and at Ring of Honor’s June PPV ‘Best in the World’ they needed to pull the trigger on Jay Lethal which they did.

I actually wrote an article in this series a couple of months back where I referred to the need to pull the trigger on Lethal and ROH did just that.

Last night was WWE’s moment.

The storyline, the performers, the stage, the moment – everything was perfect to pull the trigger on Kevin Owens by having him beat John Cena and win the United States Championship.

I had justified the result so much in my head not just from the point of view of what it would do for Owens and how big of a star it could and would make him but also how it would help the rest of the card.

I had already heard about the impending arrival of The Undertaker (a scenario we’ll get to in a little bit) and his apparent feud with Brock Lesnar into ‘Summerslam’.

This fact would leave Seth Rollins with very little to do at the third biggest show of the year – something your WWE World Heavyweight Champion should not be doing.

But by having Kevin Owens beat John Cena you had the perfect opportunity to give Rollins a big match.

Love him or hate him a match against Cena for the top prize in the industry is a big deal and it would have been great for Rollins.

The match-up is relatively fresh, the matches would be good and it would feel like Rollins was a big deal because he was getting in the ring and beating John Cena for the title.

So I had already made my mind up that this all made too much sense for them to do anything else other than have Owens beat Cena for the US Title.

Then they didn’t.

Owens tapped out to the STF.

I was stunned.

I thought at the time and still think now, no longer sleep deprived at 3:15 in the morning, that it was a bad call.

It was the perfect time to pull the trigger on Owens and the creative team fluffed their lines.

It wasn’t just that – the match itself wasn’t any great shakes either.

They didn’t exactly have the same match for a third time but it was very similar and it was the type of match that, had it taken place on the independent’s, people would have crucified for the blatant abuse of finishing move’s and late kick-out’s.

They tried so hard to manufacture drama that there was none and it left the match with a somewhat empty feeling.

The ending and result was merely the cherry on top.

 

It was okay though, there was still time to save this show – the main event was coming and it was sure to be great.

Yeah I knew, having been exposed to The Undertaker spoiler earlier, that it wasn’t going to end cleanly but I knew the match would be good and I hoped Rollins would come out looking relatively strong.

I must say, the reason I was so excited for Brock vs. Seth is it has kind of been a dream match of mine since Seth threatened to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase on Lesnar at last year’s ‘Night of Champions’ event.

Right then I realised how great a match between those two had the potential to be.

Then I saw the triple threat at the ‘Royal Rumble’ earlier this year between them and John Cena.

That only cemented the idea in my head that this would be something special.

So, despite knowing very little of the build towards this PPV due to my nigh on non-existent following of ‘Monday Night RAW’ over recent months, I was excited.

It came and I started the way I knew it would with Brock dominating and Seth getting the odd shot in.

This wasn’t a problem because Brock has been booked on an almost God-like tier in the past couple of years and I was sure that Seth would use his wits to get in a bit more offense later on.

But he didn’t.

Brock basically squashed the, kayfabe, top guy in the entire wrestling world for nine minutes and then had him beat after thirteen German Suplexes and an F-5 until a gong hit.

The Undertaker appeared and everything went from bad to worse.

Not only had WWE just made their WWE World Heavyweight Champion look like a complete chump but they had done it so that they could protect and build two guys who between them might work four different PPV’s in any given year.

That in itself is mind blowing and indicative of a larger problem the company is currently suffering from.

Not to mention Undertaker’s attack on Lesnar was nonsensical on two other fronts.

From a non-kayfabe point of view The Undertaker is an undisputed legend in the WWE and trying to turn him heel left me with a similar feeling that the ending to ‘WrestleMania X-7’ did.

You could see it in Undertaker’s face too; he knew that the heel turn had already failed.

Secondly, from a kayfabe point of view – why is Undertaker attacking Brock now of all-times?

Yes, Brock beat him at ‘WrestleMania XXX’ but that was almost sixteen months ago.

‘Taker has actually come back and feuded with a different guy since then. Why all of a sudden has he decided to exact his revenge on Brock’s breaking of his streak, now?

So we left ‘Battleground’ in 2015 the same way we did in both 2014 AND 2013.

With tangible disappointment, negativity and a complete bait and switch in the match that the people were most excited for.

Maybe ‘Battleground’ is cursed.

Quick Thoughts #2: ROH/NJPW Supershows, Best in the World, Jay Lethal & The Television Championship

Welcome to another addition of me rambling on about pro wrestling in a completely inane fashion. This time I’m going to look back at the exciting ROH-NJPW Supershows (of which I’ve only seen one so far) and where ROH should look to in the future.

ROH has had a pretty stellar 2015 so far. The World Championship division has been somewhat stagnant but has been saved by the other parts of the card as well as the surprise returns and debuts we’ve seen. All in all ROH seems in a very good position right now, producing very compelling television on a weekly basis. Their production values seem to have gone through the roof too (horrendously bad looking Supercard of Honor show aside) and the whole company seems to be on the up.

On June the nineteenth they return to pay-per-view with their annual Best in the World show. A show which, despite having only debuted in 2011, has quickly become ROH’s second biggest event in any given year. This year looks set to be no different with a mammoth main event scheduled (spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the results from the latest set of TV tapings). But we’ll get to that in due course.

ROH’s partnership with New Japan seems to be going strong and on the back of two excellent shows last year they followed up with four collaborative efforts this time round (albeit the fourth of which was merely a TV taping). War of the Worlds last year was one of ROH’s best shows of the year and this year they more than met expectations.

The talent ROH and New Japan had agreed to use looked pretty good on paper but something about the Global Wars iPPV card just didn’t sit right with me. It looked like a very average show but being a ROH/New Japan show I decided to go ahead and watch it anyway. The show delivered in spades.

Every match, aside from a pretty weak Tanahashi/Elgin match, was at worst mildly entertaining and at best mind-blowingly brilliant. A match-up between Cedric Alexander and Kazuchika Okada pitted two guys raved about (to different extents) by their personal company’s fanbase that I’ve never really understood the hype for but they absolutely tore the house down with a great showing.

ACH and Shinsuke Nakamura had a very good match too although not as good as I had personally hoped given the talents of both men and the fact that the latter is, in my opinion, the best wrestler on the planet right now. Jay Lethal continued his streak of great matches with another against a man who seems, to me at least, unfairly marginalised by the New Japan crowd in Tetsuya Naito.

The match of the night without doubt though had to go to the main event. It was a match that Jim Cornette would have absolutely loathed but I loved it. I like a little bit of everything in my wrestling and I love a good technical classic (i.e. Steamboat/Savage) or a match of brute force where two guys just destroy each other (i.e. Danielson/Strong). Hardcore, big man matches etc. almost everything has its place – and so does a good spotfest.

Make no mistake that is exactly what this main event was. A 10-Man Tag that saw the Bullet Club taking on the ROH All-Stars and it was glorious. Superkick’s, plancha’s and finisher’s galore. It was phenomenal to watch and a really good way to top off an all-around excellent show. The best thing that happened on the whole show though was what happened after the main event. After Mark Briscoe had pinned Nick Jackson a certain ROH World Television Champion came out and laid out both ROH World Champion Jay Briscoe and IWGP Heavyweight Champion AJ Styles.

This man, Jay Lethal, has completely transformed my opinion of him in little over a year. I’ve never rated Lethal and honestly when he won the Television Championship off Tomasso Ciampa at last year’s WrestleMania weekend show a part of me groaned. Another part of me was intrigued by what a partnership with arguably the greatest manager not named Paul Heyman in professional wrestling today (Truth Martini) could do to rejuvenate his character.

Lethal, since returning to ROH in 2011, had been nothing but a very bland babyface and the act had more than worn thin. Lethal turning heel at least gave him a chance to start over in my eyes and boy has he done that. He has been one of the most consistently entertaining performers in ROH in the past twelve months and it has got to the point where I will be absolutely ecstatic if he wins his Title versus Title match with Jay Briscoe at Best in the World.

ROH absolutely should pull the trigger on Lethal right now, he is on the cusp of breaking through in the same way Adam Cole did when they put the Championship on him. However, as much as ROH pulled the trigger on Cole at the right time they have previous for failing to capitalise. Names such as Nigel McGuinness and Tyler Black spring to mind, with Tyler the more prominent of the two. Black was over enough to win the title eons before he did to the point of, when he did, the crowds just didn’t care anymore.

ROH can’t afford to do this with Lethal, he is ready and putting the Championship on him could spark a bit of life into the division that has been kind of messy for lack of a better word since Michael Elgin’s issues of last summer.

The problem I have with it is the Television Championship has become an excellent secondary title in recent years and I really don’t want to lose it. I get why they’re doing what is essentially a unification match because it makes the match even more attractive but they have to execute it in such a way that allows the Television Championship to remain active without tarnishing it forever by having Lethal merely discard it once he’s won the actually important Championship.

It’s a fine balance but presents ROH with an opportunity. If they can somehow word it whereby (much like with Austin Aries and Hulk Hogan in TNA a few years ago) ROH Matchmaker Nigel McGuinness decides that he can’t have one man holding both the singles Championships and forces Lethal to vacate the belt then that would be great.

What they should follow up on that with is a tournament for the vacant Championship. It adds prestige to the title to see multiple guys fighting over it and tournaments always give you the chance to put an up and comer over. For example how huge would it be if Adam Page were to eliminate a stalwart like Roderick Strong or even Adam Cole (although logistically that may difficult since Cole seems to be remaining heel for the time being) in a match.

The tournament finals seem to be a no-brainer to me. Fresh off finishing off their feud with the KRD over the Tag Team Championships (perhaps with a bit of miscommunication during their loss to them in the two teams’ final encounter) it should be Bobby Fish facing Kyle O’Reilly.

Personally I’d have Fish weasel his way to a win over O’Reilly and start a brutal feud between the two friends and partners based on Fish’s jealousy of how O’Reilly was always seen as the star of the team. The feud just seems to write itself.

So, overall thoughts – ROH is in a good position right now and I hope that continues for many moons to come and they should really put the World Championship on Jay Lethal and have Bobby Fish beat Kyle O’Reilly in the finals of the tournament for the vacant Television Championship. I can only hope I’m right.

Thanks for reading, I’m sure I’ll be back with another “Quick Thoughts”/thesis sooner rather than later but until then you can follow me on twitter @watadam20 and I’ll see you again soon hopefully.

P.S. Adam Cole is back, and the world should rejoice……. BAYBAY!