wrestling / Columns

Clash of Champions: A Great WCW Tribute

September 26, 2016 | Posted by Jeremy Lambert

Clash of Champions looked like a strong show on paper. Sure, the build-up wasn’t very good, but the matches looked like they would deliver. On paper, there didn’t seem to be a bad match on the card.

I guess there wasn’t a bad match on the show. The problem is, there were just a bunch of average matches that were bogged down by terrible booking. Clash of Champions was everything wrong with WWE Raw at the moment.

Let’s start with the main event, Where Kevin Owens needed the help of Chris Jericho, a ref bump, and quite possibly the help of Stephanie McMahon to defeat Seth Rollins. I’m all for heels cheating to win, but there’s a difference between a desperate heel needing to take a shortcut and a loser heel who needs all the help he can get. AJ Styles was the perfect desperate heel at Backlash. Kevin Owens was the perfect loser heel at Clash of Champions. Then there’s Rollins. I had high hopes for his babyface turn, but he’s fallen into the same story that every top babyface on Raw falls into. He just keeps losing, complains about getting screwed, and then continues to lose. I’ve seen Rollins vs. Owens before. It was Rollins vs. Ambrose last year. It’s the same tired Authority storyline that I feel like I’ve been watching for almost 20 years now. It was fresh when it was Austin vs. McMahon. It’s 18 year old milk now.

In the co-main event, they told an ass backward story where Roman Reigns crashed Rusev’s wedding for no reason, beat the hell out of the guy at SummerSlam, and then took his title at Clash. Basically, Rusev was wronged and Roman got revenge. They have a chance do something with Roman as the United States champion, but they’ve wrecked him so far beyond repair that I’m not sure he’s worth making an insurance claim on. As for Rusev, the guy has been one of the best all-around performers in the company over the last year or so, but they have no clue what to do with him. His U.S. Title reign was filled with meaningless matches and feuds against Titus O’Neal and Zack Ryder, and he constantly loses to the bigger star. We complain about Bray Wyatt going nowhere and always losing, but I’m not sure Rusev is much better.

At least we can no longer complain about women’s wrestling not being on equal footing with the men, because they’re booked just as bad. Bayley has already lost any appeal she had when she debuted a month ago as she keeps losing these multi-woman matches and the real story seems to be about Charlotte and Dana, not Bayley or Sasha. The match wasn’t bad, it was just hindered by the interference and the usual WWE multi-person formula.

Chris Jericho beat Sami Zayn because, much like Bayley, the people in WWE heard about Zayn and Bayley being “lovable underdog losers” in NXT and just decided to drop the underdog part. I think Jericho’s character work has been fantastic over the past couple of months, but please tell me why he needed to beat Zayn, clean as a sheet, in this match. Zayn had all the momentum in the world after the Kevin Owens feud and now he’s back to being a guy who loses all the time.

Sheamus and Cesaro were having a hell of a match that ended with both of them kicking too much ass. And now, they’ll probably have another great match, but who could possibly care? These guys have wrestled each other nine times in just over a month, and while every match has been average at worst, there’s only so much you can do different in that time. They’ve yet to clarify which title the winner of this series will get a shot at and when Sheamus went up 3-0, the next three matches felt unimportant because everyone knew Cesaro would make a comeback. Obviously, the series was always going seven, but the “babyface falls into a 0-3 deficit and mounts a comeback” was predictable and lazy. At least make it a 3-1 comeback and capitalize on the Warriors/Cavaliers jokes.

I’ve already written about the Cruiserweights and won’t re-hash those comments. TJ Perkins vs. Brian Kendrick was a fine match, and I love Perkins video game entrance, but they need to make this division and the title matches feel important. I don’t have much faith in them doing that.

New Day retained the titles, which really felt flat. New Day has lost something since turning face, and while they’re still entertaining, their 3-on-2 tactics feel out of place. Gallows and Anderson were floundering as comedy heels, but their switch to seriousness over the past couple of weeks worked and should have paid off here. When Gallows immediately took out Big E and Xavier, they should have hit the Magic Killer and won the titles. Show that they aren’t messing around, make them look like ass kicker, and have New Day chase a bit.

Five out of seven matches included interference or some kind of screwy finish and the show lasted just as long as your typical Raw, which is another big problem. I know WWE can’t help it that Raw is three hours, but that it really makes these PPV events drag when they don’t present anything different.

New Day winning isn’t new, Chris Jericho winning isn’t new, Charlotte winning isn’t new, Cesaro vs. Sheamus isn’t new, Reigns and Rusev had a better match on the Raw before SummerSlam, and either no one cared about Perkins vs. Kendrick or they had seen the CWC and knew both men were capable of more. Enzo and Cass, arguably the two most over guys on the Raw roster, were nowhere to be seen.

The crowd was dead for Rollins vs. Owens because they sat through two and a half hours (more if you count the pre-show) of average wrestling with bad finishes and knew that something screwy would happen in the main event as well.

While Smackdown is flourishing with a clear direction amongst the top guys, Raw is giving us the same thing we’ve seen for years. Smackdown isn’t perfect, but they have well-defined characters (except for you, Apollo Crews) and Authority Figures who either stay out of the way or actually look weak.

Clash of Champions felt like an old WCW PPV with questionable booking decisions, a good Cruiserweight match with an underdeveloped story behind it, and an overbooked main event. And given the title of the event, I guess that’s fitting.

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