WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins is backstage looking for Triple H & Steph. He walks into their office and it's Kane. Not Demon Kane that attacked him last night, it's Corporate Kane with mug in hand. Oh my. It looks like we have a split personality version of Kane on our hands and I love it. Rollins walks off confused after Kane informs us of Rollins getting his US Title rematch later tonight.
1) Neville & Lucha Dragons vs. Stardust & The Ascension
This is a rematch I wanted to see. Neville & the Dragons seem like such the perfect team, as do Stardust & The Ascension. For extremely different reasons, of course. They actually got a decent amount of time with a commercial break even being interjected into the match. Cool exchange happened before the commercial and we come back to Neville being worked over. This leads to Kalisto getting the hot tag and doing his thing. He hits his variation of the sliced bread on one of the members of The Ascension for the victory. Pretty fun for what it was.
Match rating - **1/2
Rollins finally finds HHH & Stephanie getting into the arena and he's freaking out about Kane. They simply tell him not to worry about it. They'll handle Kane and he needs to focus on his US Title Match tonight.
2) Ryback vs. Bo Dallas
NEW IC CHAMP KEVIN OWENS is on commentary! Yeah boy! KO shakes JBL's hand and turns down Cole's attempt. It was beautiful. Ryback looks severely pissed off at KO and rightfully so. Ryback dominates Bo Dallas for the most part before putting him away with a meathook that turns him inside out. As soon as the bell sounds, Big Kev hits the ring and beats on Ryback. He sends The Big Guy in for the pop up powerbomb and MEATHOOK FROM HELL! That was brutal as shit, wow. Ryback powers KO up for the shell shock, but Owens scurries away like the dirtbag heel he is. So good.
Match rating - **
Ric Flair comes out and introduces her daughter as the new Divas Champion. It gets emotional for both of them. Paige & Becky are flanked at Charlotte's side. This started off pretty corny, but would soon turn into one of, if not THE, best segment of the "Divas Revolution" thus far. Paige goes off on Charlotte and calls her a place holder. Best Paige promo yet, easily. The Bellas come out which leads us to our next contest.
3) Charlotte vs. Brie Bella
I kind of was dreading this, but I was pleasantly surprised. Solid little match based around Charlotte's knee which Nikki had targeted last night. Brie picked up where her sister left off and since they had something to focus on, this wasn't sloppy and felt well put together even though it was extremely simple. Brie works the leg, Charlotte comes back and wins. Simple, but something solid to build off of.
Match rating - **1/4
4) Sheamus vs. Mark Henry
Yeah. This happened. SQUASH. Sheamus with the win and a promo after saying that as far as he's concerned, he's the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. That made me laugh for some reason. I love you Sheamus.
Match rating - *1/2
5) The Dudley Boys & Dolph Ziggler vs. The New Day & Rusev (w/ Summer Rae)
I knew this would be pretty fantastic as soon as New Day revealed their plan to build a wall around Dudleyville prior to the match. There are just so many great characters in this match that it couldn't possibly be bad. New Day has the best heat segment in the biz right now. Possibly one of the best ever because I actually look forward to it due to how entertaining they are. Summer Rae even got in on the action here by helping Xavier play the trumpet. Ziggler & Kofi had a nice exchange early on where they traded monkey flips. Ziggler ends up getting worked over which was an awesome choice. He sells everything in epic fashion and as mentioned before, New Day is New Day so yeah, it ruled. Not to mention Rusev. That guy is on a roll right now and it continued with his performance here. He's such a personality and I'm glad that it's been brought out in recent months. The finish with Xavier blowing the trumpet loudly at Ziggler only to get superkicked which leads to Rusev superkicking Dolph for the win. The crowd was dead for a lot of this, but it was extremely enjoyable.
Match rating - ***
6) Natalya vs. Naomi
This was what it was. I've come to realize that we have to take what we can get with the Divas because they're not used to wrestling longer matches so this revolution has been an experiment all the way around. This wasn't overly long or anything though. In fact, it felt kind of forced and smushed together. They did stuff for a few minutes and then Naomi won off interference from Sasha Banks. Yeah, Sasha Banks was just an afterthought here. Sigh.
Match rating - *3/4
7) Cesaro vs. The Big Show
Cesaro has slowly but surely ventured back down to where he was prior to his mid-summer push. Back to where he was before his tag team with Tyson Kidd. Back to where he was after his push following his huge moment at WrestleMania 30. Yep. Fourth time that he's dropped to the bottom due to no fault of his own. Don't mis-interpret, I'm not saying he's buried. Because he isn't. He'll get randomly pushed again. He'll have a great match potentially as early as next week against a viable opponent, but he's back to having no direction and being used as a talent enhancer. He had his strong moments here. The suplex on Show was a great one. However, it feels like he's just going in reverse. I've learned to accept it for what it is though. WWE sees Cesaro as just that good wrestler to be extremely consisent in the mid-card. If that's the case, I'm fine with it. That wasn't the case here. Show beats Cesaro essentially as an example to what he'll do to Brock Lesnar.
Match rating - **
8) John Cena (c) vs. Seth Rollins - United States Championship Match
Rollins charges Cena at the bell in vicious fashion. I loved that. We don't see it very often in big matches in WWE these days. The ref separates them and allows the bell to ring before things get fully underway. We've seen this match multiple times over the past 6-8 months however it never gets old and always delivers. This wasn't as good as their three previous meetings, but it certainly wasn't the weakest. There were a number of awesome sequences and even several callbacks to their match from Night of Champions such as Cena going for a hurricanrana and getting caught in powerbomb position for the buckle bomb. Another moment I loved was Cena going to sling Rollins headfirst into the top turnbuckle only for Rollins to jump up onto the second rope for a moonsault. Seth was a real star here once again. From locking Cena in the STF to nailing him with a falcon arrow to attempting a phoenix splash. He looked really good even in defeat. Speaking of that, I was SO shocked to see Cena win clean again. Most expected a faulty finish with Kane involved so I'm interested to see if those same people will be complaining that Rollins got beat by Cena two nights in a row. None the less, this was a highly entertaining main event and a fitting first title defense for Cena.
Match rating - ***1/2
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