Tonight’s WWE Fatal Four Way Pay-Per-View is brought to you by the letter F, the letter A, the letter I, and the letter L. What do those letters spell? F.A.I.L.
Because when you’re running low of stupid gimmick PPVs, you do one after a match where four guys fight each other for a pin… or to be more realistic, two guys fight while the other two pretend to be incapacitated until it’s their turn to do stuff. Fatal 4-Ways are often a lazy attempt to get as many guys (or gals) in a match as possible and trying to make them interesting has been a tall order.
Spoiler alert: This didn’t get the job done.
Besides that, the only thing that is remotely worth a damn is to catch for whatever follow-up to the NXT invasion bit might come up, even if the shine has since been dulled. I mean, seriously; Bryan Danielson or no Bryan Danielson, WWE had a goldmine with this thing and not even a week later, in the first segment no less, they fucked it up. They’re going to need to do something BIG in order to recover from that.
(Spoiler alert from the future: They never did.)
But enough about FAIL. Let’s talk about the PPV and discuss the matches:
Intercontinental Champion Kofi Kingston defeated Drew McIntyre to retain the title. Not a bad opener, even with the Matt Hardy run-in and ref bump.
Alicia Fox defeated Divas champion Eve Torres, Maryse, and Gail Kim to win the title… I was taking a break around this time and there’s a good reason for it.
Evan Bourne (a.k.a. Matt Sydal) defeated Chris Jericho in what may be the best match on the show because it was an older guy making the younger guy look good while still coming off as a believable threat. If this isn’t on a best of compilation somewhere, then I don’t know what else to say. But seriously, this is really, really good shit.
Rey Mysterio defeated World Heavyweight Champion Jack Swagger, a masked CM Punk, and the absentee Big Show (who was only a factor for a short bit) in the first of two Fatal 4-Way matches to win the title… because Rey Rey as World Champ worked SO well the last time we did something like this. I didn’t care for this one because there was no real reason to care. Fatal 4-Ways usually are difficult to pull off any sort of emotional investment or storytelling and there was neither one here. It’s unfortunate because a World title change should feel like a big deal and it really didn’t.
United States champion The Miz defeated R-Truth with a roll-up to retain the title. This was a thing that happened.
The Hart Dynasty (DH Smith, Tyson Kid, and Natalya) defeated The Usos and Tamina Snuka in a six-person tag match. I am amazed that the fresh new hot tag-team that is of Samoan blood and related to a former WWE Superstar who once did it for the Rock (wink, wink) didn’t go over since WWE seems to have a hard-on for the tough Samoan types.
Sheamus defeated WWE champion John Cena, Randy Orton, and Edge with the assist of the NXT rookie run-in brigade during the Fatal 4-Way main event to win the title. The only drama to be had here was waiting for the eventual run-in from the new guys and I thought that part of it was the only good thing to look forward to here. I like the fact that Sheamus used the chaos around him to steal the title from Cena and I’m curious to see where this goes from here… probably not very far, but regardless, the ending made the whole thing worthwhile.
If you can, find that Jericho/Bourne match online somewhere and skip the rest of the show. Despite the two World title changes (that end up going nowhere, but hindsight and all), you’re really not missing much by skipping this show.
dtm666 