I think this might be the WWE’s first PLE in Paris. It started early in the day for me (PST) which was good since I could do other things and not wait all day to review this show. But there were a few matches that legitimately interested me, even though the outcomes mostly were obvious. Outside of calling this show a PLE, for the most part it was a glorified TV show.
Bronson Reed vs Roman Reigns
Main story has been that Bronson has been taking Roman’s sneakers and collected two pairs. Not really a great story but this match was actually quite good. Outside of the fact that they took 15 minutes from the start of the show until a lock up occurred, the match was paced decently. Mostly, the idea here was to see Bronson Reed more on a main event level where he could go long in a meaningful singles match. This went reasonably long and Bronson got to really display himself here. For my money, this was the match of the night. The best part was that the afterbirth actually happened after the match so this match didn’t feel overbooked with a stupid Heyman-esque ending.
With the aftermath, Roman regained his stolen sneakers from Heyman who groveled then snapped on a neck vice to knock Heyman out for the remainder of the night. As Roman celebrated with his reclaimed sneakers, Bron Brekker snuck up on the other table to deliver a nasty spear to Roman (which might’ve hurt Bron a bit given the delay). Thereafter, they delivered a few more Tsunami’s onto the prone Roman with Jey Uso coming in for the save.
Some people thought that Bronson should have taken the win here but I disagree. The post match beat down was perfectly executed and well motivated. It sets up Bron down the line for a singles match against Roman while Bronson looks not only imposing as a threat but showed here that he can do a long, great singles match with minimal gimmicks. He didn’t need to win as long as the ending visual continued to keep him looking strong. So this whole thing was well executed.
Tag Team Match
I completely skipped this because I can’t stand either team. My only prayer for the WWE’s tag team division is for Bron and Bronson to just snatch up the tag titles and keep them for a long time. There isn’t anyone else in the tag team division that really deserve it because no one else is remotely interesting at the moment. Also, I’d love for Bron and Bronson just to squash everyone else in the tag team division. We need more old school squash matches.
Becky Lynch vs Nikki Bella
This match wasn’t great and started off really bad for Nikki Bella. She missed a few things including a terrible looking top rope kick that was far off the mark. I’m guessing that a ton of ring rust, poor stamina and bad nerves affected her. The match did improve but I’m still more impressed by Becky Lynch. Crowd couldn’t stand Nikki and treated Becky like the true star of the division. I mean let’s face it. Becky really is the actual top star in the women’s division over there but there’s no one on the female’s side she can face that can help elevate her any further or create an interesting situation that people want to see. As for Nikki, once things got going about half way into the match, she looked better. But she’s worse than Chelsea at this point so they need to put her in the middle and use her name to elevate someone like a Chelsea.
Sheamus vs Rusev
I like Rusev but this match wasn’t good. Crowd was very much into it towards the end. There were a few ridiculous bumps but I think Rusev is better as a more traditional wrestler.
John Cena vs Logan Paul
This match started off very slow and I think it was John trying to find his pace and warming up. They could’ve cut about 10 minutes from the match with too much posing and milking the crowd. However, once it started rolling the match ended up being quite good. Cena hit all types of stuff that I don’t believe I’ve ever seen, including a Styles Clash, a rana, Code Red (he did it before but this time he did a rana into a Code Red), etc. Besides the CM Punk match, this could’ve been Cena’s best match since announcing his retirement tour. It was definitely far better than the Cody match (which makes me think Cody is horribly overrated) and made Cena look “modern,” although it feels really late in the game for him to pull off those “new” moves. I suppose though him doing these things kinda shuts up the critics who chant “you can’t wrestle.”
Seth Rollins vs CM Punk vs Jey Uso vs LA Knight
This was a stack the odds up scenario against Seth Rollins but keeping Jey and LA Knight at the main event level. I hate multi person matches for the most part but they did have a few interesting spots such as their tribute to the Dudley Boys. However, I saw this match as a way to begin elevating LA Knight to the main event scene. He had a few long moments and got to showcase himself. Also, he got a chance to work with Punk and Jey. I’m guessing that the WWE wanted to see if LA Knight can pull off a main event spot (much like Bronson Reed earlier in his match against Roman Reigns).
The downside to this match was the typical cliches of multi person matches with two people going down and disappearing while two others do their thing. But here it makes even less sense to have people disappear off camera for long periods since you can always have two people battling in opposite corners. Outside of three ways, the WWE should really re-examine multi person when there’s more than three people in the ring. Like the 1997 Fatal Fourway with Vader, Bret Hart, Austin and the Undertaker was much better just because all four people would battle each other at the same time rather than making the match look overly choreographed. Also, the automatic no DQ stipulation is dumb. Might as well not even have a referee at some point.
Besides LA Knight getting a main event match, the other real story was Becky Lynch showing up in another overly done cliche with the ninja/black ops hoodie outfit and nut shotting Punk so that Seth could pick up the win. Believe it or not, outside of the stupid ninja manifestation, I did like that finally Becky Lynch and Seth (or Seth’s group) connected.. Heyman, Reed and Bron were all out which made Seth a loner seemingly. But with Becky showing up, I got kinda stoked because it’s something that just made a lot of sense. The other thing is that Becky Lynch is just miles above the rest of the women’s roster where she can’t honestly get more over than she is. I mean as an example, Nikki Bella, who was a “star”, got bad reactions from the heel Becky. That’s just because people still love Becky.
Part of the situation makes me think back to the suggestion that this group could be a new Dangerous Alliance. With Becky being part of this group, you have an interesting dynamic because the during Dangerous Alliance days, there wasn’t a real women’s division in WCW. More importantly, there wasn’t any intergender matches back then so Becky could take part on occasion with Seth. The other hint referenced after the show ended was Punk looking at a sign concerning his wife AJ Lee. Whether or not that was a plant is irrelevant but a return by AJ Lee where Punk teams up with her against Becky/Seth would be pretty big. I don’t know if AJ would come back full time, but I can see her doing the part time schedule like Trish Stratus. Right now, is as good a time as any for her to come back.
Final Thoughts
Nothing really special. I ended up being surprised by two of the matches and the angle with Becky joining Seth was really good. So I wanted to see everything except the tag team match. Bronson continues to develop towards the main event, Becky still is the top female in truth in the WWE and I’m not sure what they’ll do with LA Knight. All indications make me believe he is being moved into the main event scene but he’s in a real weird spot where he isn’t in a position to really beat anyone for a major title. But I think that window for him is closing fast. Originally, I thought he could’ve been someone to join Seth’s group. But the only thing he might hold is the IC title, which wouldn’t be a bad idea just so that he has something.
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