Over the last few weeks the WWE has been locked in a battle with Monday Night Football that they can never even attempt to win and their attempts at battling it have been illogical, to say the least. Tonight’s show was, for the lack of a better word, bad. While it was admirable that they wanted to spend so much time focusing on breast cancer awareness the way that they did it was never going to hold a wrestling audience’s attention and the crowd was pretty much booing throughout a lot of the segments.
Thankfully they didn’t boo the actual cancer patients, but there were a few moments where many of us were wondering if they would. Kathie Lee and Hoda (who?) came out with Adam Rose and the Rosebuds and it was just as bad as you’d imagine, especially with Kathie Lee pushing her brand of wine on the air. The Joan Lunden segment later on wasn’t as painful, but Jerry Lawler introducing it still felt like a very odd choice.
This was the tale of a few shows because on the one hand you have the fact that you have current WWE. Currently the WWE has an incredibly talented roster of performers that the fans really, really want to see on a regular basis and are really into, the only problem seems to be with the company itself. Sometimes they get it right, other times they just do things all wrong. There were some really good things on this show, but they happened after so much bullshit that it was hard to find myself that invested.
The biggest takeaway is of course going to be the surprise appearance by The Rock. It was mildly rumored earlier on today but nobody thought that it would actually happen, which meant that it was a legitimate surprise. The thing was, it didn’t make any sense whatsoever. The Rock came out while Rusev and Lana were cutting a promo on the Big Show and we got a long segment of classic quips from Mr. Hollywood as well as lines that felt really, really out of place and weird.
This isn’t the Attitude Era anymore and a lot of the stuff Rock is saying is just, well, weird. It was especially weird during BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH to hear him calling Lana a prostitute. That kind of stuff worked for him ten years ago, but now in the PG Era of WWE it felt really, really out of place. Fans still ate it up and went along with it and #RussianStreetWalker still ended up trending on Twitter, but The Rock was arguably the biggest d**khead on the show. He also handily beat up Rusev with a few punches, which felt weird because it honestly didn’t matter who was in the ring with Rock. It seemed like a great opportunity to work something a bit deeper into the Miz’s character of being a Hollywood reject if he would be in the ring with the highest-grossing movie star in Hollywood.
But seriously, it felt really weird to be honoring women all night and then the Rock sees a woman in a skirt and blazer and tells her she looks like a hooker.
The good stuff is that they are kind of hitting the soft reset on the Wyatts (not breaking them up!), Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose are the centerpieces of the show right now and Roman Reigns is crashing and burning.
Onto whatever good we can salvage from this flaming wreckage.
Damian Mizdow is the Best
Miz and Sheamus had what was a pretty good match while Damian Mizdow was pantomiming and the Brooklyn crowd chanted for him to the extent where the announcers had to acknowledge it and try to cover it up. This was pretty much exactly what you’d want out of a Miz/Mizdow pairing of Mizdow saving Miz, taking a Brogue Kick and the Miz with a rollup for the win.
We Finally Have a Match For Hell in the Cell!
Hell in the Cell is a few weeks away and there were literally zero matches announced for it yet. Nothing. Brock Lesnar also won’t be working the show and hasn’t been on TV in weeks. This, plus Roman Reigns being injured, has left WWE in a bit of a lurch, but luckily they have some really solid talent to fall back on in the way of Rollins and Ambrose.
The Rollins and Ambrose feud has taken center stage while Brock is away, the only bummer being that John Cena has been shoehorned into it and doesn’t really fit — at all — into the equation. At Hell in the Cell it will be John Cena vs. Dean Ambrose with the winner taking on Seth Rollins in the cell. Ambrose has to win against Cena, right? Like there seems to be no other way, but who really knows.
This all went down by Rollins opening the show, followed by Cena running him off, Ambrose attacking him and then Ambrose jumping on both Rollins and Cena before everything was broken off. Ambrose and Cena were to face Kane, Orton and Rollins later on, but halfway through the show Ambrose decided that he was going to leave, which was then followed by footage of him on the NYC subway system to go get a hotdog. Not joking.
This left Cena in a 3-on-1 scenario to close out the show only for Ambrose to make the save with a hotdog cart and filthy chaos ensuing. The show ended with Ambrose and Cena being told they had to fight each other, then Ambrose laying out Cena with a Double Arm DDT much to the crowd’s delight.
