Been to watch WWE tonight, decent show. Here's what went down
Finn Balor V Neville - outstanding match. Decent reaction for Finn, and great pop and constant reactions for Neville, with Balor wrestling as a heel. Superb match, scoring 32 stars on the GIMH rating system. Neville won via red arrow
New Day V Tyson Kidd and Cesaro for the tag belts.
New Day continued their descent into being evil heels and they did it well. Kofi must have been dying for a chance to so something like this after years as the vanilla baby face. Good match, I love me some Nattie especially with her attire of late. Champs retained
After the match Xavier (who hadn't wrestled but had been clotheslined by Nattie on the outside) issued an open challenge which R truth answered. He did a whole lot of rapping, incorporating the new day suck chants, and then beat Xavier in about 15 seconds
Next up we had a Connor the crusher video and then a trailer for marine 4 played on screen before miz's music hit. He hit a standard quality miz promo on the crowd before being interrupted by MiZdow
Miz V Mizdow
Decent match. Mizdow grabbed the mic halfway through and asked if he should go back to being a stunt double and then proceeded to mimic Miz each time he took a bump and rolled around in pain. Pretty funny and Mizdow took the win with the skull crushing finale
Next we had Alicia Fox V Natalya. I'm all for giving divas a chance, unfortunately I don't rate Alicia. It was pretty dull fayre, Nattie won via the sharpshooter and looked tremendous again. Afterwards a bunch of other divas ran out for no discernible reason and there was a bit of a scuffle before the faces all celebrated.
Last before the interval was Reigns V show in a 'Manchester Street Fight'
This was a belter actually. The hardcore variant added a lot versus the TV plodders they've had, the crowd were way into it, Big Show bumped about. Enjoyable match.
After the break we were treated to Rosa having a little dance and then Fandango V one of the Usos (whichever one isn't injured). There was a bit of a dance off, and then the match was a total squash, Uso winning in about 7 seconds.
Six man tag next, Bad News Barrett, Sheamus & Bray Wyatt V Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler & Erick Rowan
Barrett came out first to a nice pop. He proceeded to diss both Manchester clubs before bringing out about ten of the Preston North end squad and advising the crowd that if any of them said anything to him then the PNE players would be coming up the stairs and giving them a slap.
Bryan got a huge reception and being there for the yes chant is pretty awesome.
The match was good, formulaic with early tags in and out, then Ziggler getting beaten down by all three heels before the hot tag to Bryan and then the ref losing control. Everyone brought it in this match, even Wyatt
, but Bryan and Ziggler were standout. Faces won, with Wade tapping to the yes lock in front of the closest thing he has to a home crowd. Poor Wade.
Main event John Cena V Rusev for the US title
Rusev got some good heat. Lana is beautiful. Cena got a great reaction, I mean it was mixed but seemed more on the 'let's go Cena' side today. They pretty much had their mania match, springboard stunner and all, no bad thing and it was a lot of fun. Cena won via AA
All in all, I enjoyed it but
my daughter had an absolute blast. She held signs up that she'd made and lost her voice booing Rusev.
Lots of my mates went to ICW tonight which sounds like it was awesome but at the end of the day, WWE is what it is. So many parents there clearly were dragged along and hated it, and fair play to them btw, but it's a lot more fun if you love wrestling yourself but at the same time get to watch it be absolutely magical for your own kid.
Finally, merch store was a little disappointing I thought but you could buy a replica of the world title for £350. Obviously I bought two
If you've bothered to read all this and wonder where the champ himself was, along with Orton, Ambrose, Luke Harper, Kane, Paige etc, the answer is Cardiff. I don't know what they do in the states these days but since the brand split ended they still split the roster for UK tours at least.
