I said I needed a palette cleanser… I’m not sure that this qualifies, but hey, it’s a WWE PPV from the Thunderdome. And quite a notable one, for it is the first PPV main event for the returning Roman Reigns, who would make waves on the go-home edition of Smackdown by aligning himself with the former advocate of Brock Lesnar and future wiseman, Paul Heyman.
That’s right, kids. This is where the Tribal Chief legend begins… and it’s at the cost of one big stupid dummy and a fiend in a silly mask.
Enough talk. Let’s dive in for… more talk.
(…or rather, let’s not, since this went up as scheduled and I forgot to update the post with a proper musings… or maybe I just want to pretend the show doesn’t exist. I don’t know… but here we are, almost a couple weeks later, and we fixed this up so that there’s a “proper” write-up that you wish hadn’t gone up. Sorry.)
Bobby Lashley defeated U.S. Champion Apollo Crews to win the title in a perfectly acceptable wrestling match that only served to give Bobby Lashley some guy to beat up. And yes, this is Hurt Business Bobby Lashley with MVP and Shelton in tow. In the Thunderdome. Which is a thing that exists and I wish that it hadn’t because it still looks hideous.
Big E defeated Sheamus in a thing that happened. I don’t even want to call this a “bad” match or anything because it’s not. It’s just not the kind of meat-slapping match you’d expect from two sizable fellas. Big E was a tremendous talent before the injury and Sheamus has his moments, but this was not one of them.
Matt Riddle defeated King Korbin… yeah, so I guess there was a King Of The Ring tournament at one point and it was won by Baron Corbin, who redubbed himself King Korbin in the latest in a series of bad repackages of Baron Corbin, who isn’t necessarily a bad talent when left to his own devices, but when given stupid gimmicks like commissioner titles or happy go lucky Corbin or whatever, it really undermines whatever interest you’d have in the guy because he’s just saddled with so much crap. So yeah, it’s kinda lame that he was suddenly let go without warning because he deserved better than what he got. As for the match… it was a thing that happened in the Thunderdome and let’s never speak of it again.
Nia Jax and Shayna Bazler defeated Women’s Tag Team Champions Sasha Banks and Bay Ley to win the tag titles. The very definition of a piss break match, which featured some very talented women (and Nia Jax) performing with all the grace and skill of a monkey smashing a banana against a tree bark. Not good.
Rey and Dominik Mysterio defeated Seth Rollins and Murphy… a.k.a. Buddy Murphy… a.k.a. Buddy Matthews of AEW fame (I guess?) in what may have been the first genuinely good match on the card. Dom is not yet Dirty and Rey isn’t a deadbeat dad, so they place nice together for the moment, but other than that… yeah, this was a mostly fine match. Took us a while to get there, but there we are.
And then we have the main event, which is advertised as a three-way between the reigning toy belt champion THE FIEND (yes, they gave Bray Wyatt the title again), Braun Strowman, and the returning Roman Reigns, who is now aligned with Paul Heyman because this is the beginning of the whole Tribal Chief/Bloodline gimmick… except Roman doesn’t show up until the tail end of the match where he just beats the piss out of everyone involved and pins Strowman to win the title and begin that illustrious reign… hey, where was the outrage for Roman Reigns killing the Fiend’s title reign before it began, huh? You lousy fuckers, you.
I don’t know what to tell you. What I’ve seen of Bray/Braun before didn’t inspire me with much confidence and this was certainly a thing that took place before the really important thing happened – that being Roman just wrecking everyone. To be honest, I don’t know why I was compelled to watch this thing. The only noteworthy thing to happen here was the Roman deal and I’m pretty sure that’s already up on Youtube somewhere as a clip. The rest of the show felt like a complete waste of time and I feel as though I could say the same for a lot of these Thunderdome shows.
I joke about AEW’s best years being when they were performing in front of an empty arena, but I will safely say that I’ve enjoyed more pandemic-era AEW shows than I have WWE shows. At least those shows have SOMETHING worth watching that hold up well today. The same can’t be said for WWE during this time period and the lousy creative during this time certainly didn’t help matters, either.
Well, it’s been fun revisiting these old WWE shows… okay, that’s a lie; these were utterly dreadful to revisit, but that’s all done now because Wrestlemania 41 is right around the corner and, well… yes, there will be a Ramblemania next week.
Later.
P.S. Apparently, I missed a Keith Lee/Randy Orton match… Randy Orton dominated most of the match before Keith made his comeback and won. You didn’t miss much.
dtm666 