WWE Extreme Rules (July 15th, 2018)

[improper]

They need to ditch gimmick PPV's, they really do.

Especially when they don't even use the damn gimmick in any of the most prominent matches.

[Scott Hall]

Did anyone see the air cushion deflate under the announce table after KO took that bump? I didn't notice
it at first but people on twitter mentioned it and you can clearly see it on one of the replays. Never saw
that before during bumps like that.

[WRau1]

The cushion has been there during those spots for a long time, it was very noticeable for Shane's WM bump v Taker.

[Scott Hall]

I never ever heard it mentioned before or remember seeing it do you got any pics or video of it?

[bestnamezRtaken]

A decent but not great, odd but okay PPV...I guess a typical WWE show. I'll start with the pre show.

Andrade v Sin Cara was okay. Nothing too spectacular but it gets Cien over, gets him a match, and hopefully this is the last we see of this feud. I know we're all on the same page about Almas in that he deserves better but he's gotta go through the Vince cycle. He doesn't have Dolph to feud with right away like most NXTers. He's gotta do his time and he'll get his push, he's too good not to.

Sanity v New Day was good for a pre show match. They didn't have much time to work which obviously was going to hurt this match and make it seemed rushed, which is what happened. But thankfully the New Day and Sanity made it a decent tables match for what it was...and the correct team went over. It'll be odd to have two heel tag teams feuding against each other when it comes for Sanity's time against the Bludgeon Bros...so unless they're planning to drop the titles soon, which would be an absolute mistake right now...I dunno what Sanity does. Maybe they run through the Usos?

Now on to the main card...The B Team winning the tag titles over Bray and Matt...I was shocked but at the same time, not shocked. It was cool to see the crowd pop when Bray and Bo were face to face and then Bo instantly tagging out to not give the crowd what they wanted. So I thought that little bit was cool. And I'm trying to give the B Team the benefit of the doubt because Bo was NXT champ and Axel was IC champ for 150+ days...so maybe this bumps them up from jobbers to lower mid carders? I dunno what they do with Bray and Matt now though.

Finn v Corbin was okay, glad to see Finn get the win, however useless it is to him right now. But a win is a win and he needs any sort of momentum he can get because Vince is very good at killing it in an instant (see Finn beating Styles one night and then losing to Kane the next). Corbin can do without the win and still look decent. But as long as Finn is on Raw and Brock has the title...Finn is gonna stay in the mid to lower card for now, getting meaningless wins like this one. Decent match between the two, the roll up victory was needed to keep Corbin looking decently strong as Constable.

I am not shocked at all by what they are doing to Asuka. I called her loss in the KIA topic and could see it a mile away. Ellsworth is going to escape the shark cage and screw over Asuka some how...and he did. What a piece of garbage of a match. I did like Asuka demolishing Ellsworth but I would have liked it better if she was doing it....as the F***ING CHAMP! Just disgusted with the booking of the women's division.

Shinsuke squashing Jeff for the US title win was very unexpected but let's hope that Hardy is injured and being protected than him failing a pee test. Randy Orton coming out to kick Jeff in the nuts again? Why? Are Randy and Shin forming a tag team? What was the point? Whatever.

Kevin getting the win over Braun was odd...you know the rules of the match and you're going to make your opponet win by tossing him off the cage? Okay Braun. But for real though, Kevin is so amazing. Giving a stunner to Braun, giving him the Suck it chops, I know you MF'ers marked a little on those two spots, I did too, hahaha. But that bump though, regardless of the cushion still looked like Owens hit the back of his head/neck on the part of the table that "protects" the monitors...it looked like it hurt a lot but it was cool seeing gifs on twitter of the table deflate. I missed that watching it live and I'm sure Vince hopes everyone else did too (apparently not though). I mean, we all knew something had to be rigged for bumps like this to happen but actually seeing it, good stuff. Glad to see Owens get the win even at this expense. And someone mentioned it but it would be cool to see Kevin create a stable to stop Braun...and not a Miztourage type stable but a believable one.

DBry v Bludgeon Bros was lame in my opinion. I hate the whole "Attack in the back injure one half of the tag team, then come match time only one half of the team comes out and competes and then mid match the other one hobbles out to make the big save blah blah blah". It doesn't do the Bludgeon Bros any good to have smol Daniel Bryan keep up with them a little bit on his own...I know that eventually they wore him down to ignite Kane to come out but still. It was a predictable match and predictable scenario as well. Who goes up against the Bludgeon Bros next? (also, I can't bring myself to call them the BBs to shorten it, I feel it takes too much away from the word Bludgeon, hahaha)

Seeing Bobby Lashley v Roman as the next match made me think, hell yeah! I predicted correctly! AJ and Rusev are gonna be the main event! Awesome! That's all I cared about when it came to this match. Seeing Bob finish Roman off with a spear though? Okay sure, whatever. Thank you Bob for beating Roman to hopefully be next in line for Brock at Summer Slam now please take your boring ass off my screen and to the back. You to Roman, get up.....Hah hah. So with Kurt demanding Brock to show up and with Bob winning, how is Roman going to insert himself into the match at Summer Slam? It's gonna be a triple threat match so that Roman takes the pin and Brock can still look strong.

Alexa v Nia...I didn't see much of this match as I was cleaning up the kids during dinner time. I knew Ronda was going to get involved somehow and she did (though I think I said no in the KIA for some stupid reason). But the finish was predictable. Not much else to say about this match. I mean, I guess Nia is looking good in her weight loss journey, you can tell.

And then the next match...me, freaking dumbfounded and confused...why is this match not the last match of the night? AJ v Rusev....what? It sucked that this match was next because I was very distracted by my kids and getting them ready for bed time. I tried holding out but they were far to cranky to do so...so I missed a chunk of the match. I'm gonna have to go back and watch it from start to finish though. Like, I saw that Rusev was either trying to get the Accolade on AJ or if he really got it on him? But the finish of the match leads me to believe that Rusev and English are going to break up soon as English sort of cost him the match. I mean, we all knew AJ was going to win but not like this. Why can't we ever get a good straight match with nothing stupid happening? Let's get a rematch of this please.

And then the main event...this led me to believe we were going to get a Dean Ambrose return and he was going to make or break Rollins...but we got far worse. First of all, the crowd. I thought it was hilarious at first! The Rumble count down and them doing the buzzer........but after awhile, it just got annoying and took away from the match. It had to of been a distraction to Dolph and Seth too, he even tweeted about it sort of mocking them. It's like, come on you guys. Focus on this match that will hopefully pick up...and it never really did. The end of the 30 minutes was dumb, Kurt coming out and abusing his power to SUDDEN DEATH OVER TIME only to have Drew come in and cost him the match....why why why why why? People are questioning how someone who was tossed from the match was able to come back...well....technically it was a new match? Therefore, the previous "tossing of Drew Money" was no longer in affect thus allowing him to come back and blah blah blah. That's how I think they'll explain that whole mess. Very dumb. I don't like it.

Something to note though as an opinion, was I think Roman v Bobby wasn't the main event, because Vince didn't want people leaving early like last time. So he put it towards the end...because I think people would have left had this match gone on last. It most certainly didn't deserve the main event slot either but neither did Seth v Dolph.

Overall....it was a fine WWE show. Some dumb crap happened, some cool crap happened. I'm curious to see what happens on Raw tonight due to the outcome of the show, so we'll see.

[skbucks1985]

I didn't think this show was that bad. But, I think the biggest problem with the show was that it just didn't have a lot of high points. The Styles match was solid, but it was the lower-end of a Styles PPV match. The main event was good but was hampered by the overbooking and the crowd. And the Smackdown tag title match told a good story and served its purpose, but wasn't anything special. And there was plenty of bad stuff that just didn't have conversely commensurate quality.

I am very happy that Lashley beat Reigns and not even because of my feelings about Roman. But rather because Roman wouldn't get anything by beating Lesnar. Whereas I think Lashley beating him would really cement Lashley as a top guy in this current run.

Lashley-Lesnar seems like the obvious option for the title. And while my preference would be Drew turning on Dolph because Dolph is probably better now than he's been since at least the Miz feud almost 2 years ago. But even then, when you watch the two of them he's just not on Drew's level and needs to stop playing second fiddle to him. But, I doubt that's the plan and I wonder if we see this duo add a 3rd member to set-up a 6-man tag with The Shield at Summerslam.

[improper]

DBry v Bludgeon Bros was lame in my opinion. I hate the whole "Attack in the back injure one half of the tag team, then come match time only one half of the team comes out and competes and then mid match the other one hobbles out to make the big save blah blah blah". It doesn't do the Bludgeon Bros any good to have smol Daniel Bryan keep up with them a little bit on his own...I know that eventually they wore him down to ignite Kane to come out but still. It was a predictable match and predictable scenario as well. Who goes up against the Bludgeon Bros next? (also, I can't bring myself to call them the BBs to shorten it, I feel it takes too much away from the word Bludgeon, hahaha)

Also, NXT told the exact same story a couple of weeks ago, but told it much, much, much better, which kind of undermined this match, which was inferior both in the ring (sad considering the respective talents involved in each match) and from a storytelling perspective.

I also think that the Bludgeon Brothers aren't really the type of team that would hurt an opponent in the back to get an advantage. They're monster heels. Monster heels shouldn't need to cheat to win. It's also beyond stupid that they had a video of them injuring Kane, yet Paige didn't do a damn thing about it. She's a face GM! It's in her power to do something about that sort of thing!

[Ruzious]

There's nothing worse in pro rasslin than when a group of fat smarks in the audience tries to take over and ruin a main event for everyone else.

I would like to hear what the story is with Jeff Hardy - hope he's doing well. Any chance Bray and Matt losing was related to Jeff's issue?

Kevin Owens amazes me - not so much with his great talking skills but with the way he moves so precisely with his shape. He and Joe.

[tugs]

I hope Matt "cleanses" Bray again, reverting to the old Bray (take some time off, hopefully with a clear direction this time upon returning). Then Matt goes to SD to reform the Broken Hardys.

[Scott Hall]

There's nothing worse in pro rasslin than when a group of fat smarks in the audience tries to take over and ruin a main event for everyone else.

I would like to hear what the story is with Jeff Hardy - hope he's doing well. Any chance Bray and Matt losing was related to Jeff's issue?

Kevin Owens amazes me - not so much with his great talking skills but with the way he moves so precisely with his shape. He and Joe.

Out of curiosity what did you guys used to think of the "10" chant when guys were outside the ring and
Vince effectively killed off by nuking Tye Dillenger off TV?

[improper]

Out of curiosity what did you guys used to think of the "10" chant when guys were outside the ring and
Vince effectively killed off by nuking Tye Dillenger off TV?

I think it was one in a long line of instances of Vince punishing a guy for having the gall to get himself over on his own.

[Scott Hall]

Out of curiosity what did you guys used to think of the "10" chant when guys were outside the ring and
Vince effectively killed off by nuking Tye Dillenger off TV?

I think it was one in a long line of instances of Vince punishing a guy for having the gall to get himself over on his own.

I'm sure that's part of it but I read Vince despised the 10 chants

[improper]

I'm sure that's part of it but I read Vince despised the 10 chants

Given WWE's booking, he seems to generally despise the fans too.