I watched it. First one in a while, but I wasn't in work today and I was up last night transcribing notes for my exam, so I decided to watch the wrestling at the same time.
It was pretty damn boring. That's almost the only thought I came away with. The matches were fine for the most part. Some of them were good. But there was nothing worth getting excited about. It was hard to give too much of a shit about anything happening because of the weak build. It seemed like an episode of Raw to be honest, which isn't a good sign given there were two Hell in a Cell matches.
JDD wrote:Ambrose/Rollins was the best HIAC since the ppv started
I'm not sure it was even the best of the night. Cena/Orton had the luxury of low expectations, so they were able to surpass them and put on a pretty good match. Finish was predictable as fuck, but it was still an entertaining match. Not exciting because nobody cared about the winner much, but it was one of their better efforts.
Meanwhile, Rollins v Ambrose failed to live up to expectations. People were looking forward to this match for months, but for me it just didn't deliver the goods. A lot of the match was just contrived. Starting on top of the Cell was an obvious call back to Mankind Undertaker, but I just couldn't see a reason why the character of Rollins would engage Ambrose up there at all. Ambrose is the one eager to get his hands on Rollins (inside the cell so there can be no interference), so why make Rollins chase him? I kinda hated the table spot too, that bit of the match bothered me. It was so staged that it completely took me out of kayfabe.
It was great to see those two guys get a pay per view main event, but they stuck all these bells and whistles onto the match that it didn't need. I just wanted to see them have a war inside the cell and finally see a clean finish between the two. That was the pay off I needed to leave the pay per view happy. Instead we get an overbooked match, with very little meat to the actual match itself. And then an infuriating Bray Wyatt interference.
Everything about that annoyed me. Having Bray Wyatt standing tall at the end of the pay per view definitely made it feel like an episode of Raw. It's always bugged me that every creepy character has the magical ability to turn out the lights, but apparently Wyatt has the added ability of being able to walk through cage walls when the lights are off. The whole thing was just stupid. Why bother coming up with a gimmick where it's harder to interfere when you're just going to pull shit like that? If you want to book an interference in a HIAC then earn it. Like when Edge dressed as a camera man, or Vince pulled the door off the sell. Just turning the lights off and turning them back on with the extra guy already in the ring is a huge cop out and it bugs me.
Plus, it would have been nice to get some closure. Wyatt interfering spits in the face of the closure that everyone wanted for this months long feud. It's a really unsatisfying way to finish this feud. And the way it happened doesn't fill me with confidence that Wyatt has changed in the ways he needs to in order to make his character a success. Which means a feud with Ambrose will likely be tedious and not good for either character.
I was definitely disappointed with the main event last night. None of the other matches disappointed, because I wasn't looking forward to them. I don't think many people were. A couple of them were actually quite good (Cena vs Orton, Ziggler vs Cesaro). Another couple were pretty average and forgettable but not bad (tag team titles, Miz vs Sheamus). I thought the stunt double stuff with Mizdow was overplayed though, it stopped it from being as funny. The Divas matches were completely meh. I still can't tell if there's an upside to Paige. And the Bellas just aren't talented enough to play out what could have been a decent story with other performers.
It was an okay show overall, but there's really not much to talk about afterwards so I'm not surprised by the lack of threads. Outside of the main event, it was mostly predictable outcomes in predictable feuds, many of which have been going for ages and which have basically no heat left. It's pretty obvious WWE didn't care about this pay per view.
