Botched!: Bad Officiating, Angle Dropping Bombs, More

Hi, hello and welcome to the column that nobody in wrestling wants to be featured in, Botched! Hope everybody had a good week and is ready to laugh their way into the weekend. Busy week in the wrestling world, with Great Balls of Fire adding an extra spice to things. Let’s look at five things that weren’t quite right.

1. Referee Has a Rough Night

The fans got downright unruly towards the end of the Iron Man tag team match between the Hardys & Sheamus/Cesaro. Why?

With a little over 4 minutes left (30:50 in the video), Matt hit a moonsault on Sheamus and went for the cover. It hit mostly knees and wasn’t the most graceful moonsault of all time, but that’s not the point. The point is that the fans thought that the referee should have counted three but instead stopped counting because Cesaro was supposed to break up the count. The fans were irate and chanted about the referee afterwards.

But was it in fact a botch? You guys can debate this in the comment section if you like, but I’m leaning towards no. The referee’s hand goes up and down three times, but the first time he’s checking Sheamus’s shoulder and makes very little contact with the mat if any. With that in mind, Cesaro did come in at the right time. The fans thought otherwise, but I think they botched their ability to count and gave the referee a hard time for no reason at all.

Or maybe they could look into the future, 34:50 of the video where Jeff’s shoulder was up on the deciding pinfall that gave Cesaro & Sheamus the win. Sorry ref, I can’t bail you out on that one.

2. Which title is on the line?

WWE social media has had a rough time lately. It seems like every week contains a bunch of flubs by WWE’s social media accounts that immediately get picked up on. I usually don’t bother with them, but Great Balls of Fire was a pretty good show and I didn’t notice a ton of mistakes from the wrestlers, so here’s one from the social media team:

In fairness, Ambrose was wrestling for main titles once upon a time.

3. Miz accidentally hits Axel!

Don’t look now, but Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel are actually getting in some offense on people. It’s been awhile, but their alliance with the Miz has led to them getting to be taken somewhat serious and engage in beatdowns like Axel hasn’t gotten to take part in since his days in the New Nexus. There was one slight hiccup in their beatdown on Seth Rollins on Raw though:

Go to 3:10 to see the start of the beatdown, and you’ll see Miz catch Axel with a shot instead of Rollins. They no-sold all that and continued things anyway, but it was funny to see Axel eat a punch from Miz. Well, I thought it was funny anyway. I have a weird sense of humor. You gotta watch out with all those arms & legs flying about.

4. Angle kinda curses!

Pretty awesome segment on Monday night with Kurt Angle, Brock Lesnar, Paul Heyman, Roman Reigns & Samoa Joe. Everybody was on point and it got me hyped about the Universal title scene. Angle had a couple of verbal flubs though, including one that sounded like a naughty word…

9:05 into the video Angle tells Joe & Roman “Let’s fook forward to SummerSlam”, which got quite the reaction from Paul Heyman, who heard it like I did.

Maybe I’ve been watching too many Conor McGregor promos lately.

5. Jey Uso Gets Into Position

The Usos & New Day are still playing the feud, and we’re in the part of the feud that involves singles matches. Xavier Woods got a nice win over Jey Uso on Tuesday night thanks to his elbow drop, but Jey’s positioning for the move was a bit interesting…

1:55 in. I guess the explanation is that Jey was knocked loopy by the kick so he could flop around on the ropes like a fish, but it looked more contrived than any 619 I’ve seen. And I’ve seen some very contrived 619s.

Thanks for reading! If you see (or hear) anything wrong in the world of wrestling, let me know via Twitter or e-mail at [email protected]. Have a good weekend!