wrestling / Columns

The 8 Ball: Top 8 Lessons Learned at Extreme Rules

May 2, 2015 | Posted by Mike Hammerlock

Fresh off the heels of a well-received WrestleMania, the WWE put on one of its lower profile PPVs in Extreme Rules. It didn’t turn into anything epic. We didn’t get a Seth Rollins suicide dive from the moon this time around, but the event had its moments. It certainly wasn’t Battleground bad.

Yet what did we really learn from that night? The Magic 8-Ball is here to sort it out. Honorable mention to booking the Divas Championship match between Nikki Bella and Naomi as an actual wrestling match and not as filler before the main event. Still got plenty of room to improve with the women, but a small bit of booking dignity is noteworthy since it’s been lacking for so long.

8. Unleash the Mid-Card

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Starting with the pre-show where Neville beat Bad News Barrett and then running through Dean Ambrose-Luke Harper, Dolph Ziggler-Sheamus and the tag title match, Extreme Rules enjoyed a hot start. On top of that, a Chicago crowd that may have had a hijack on its mind instead decided it was having too much fun to complain. Ziggler and Sheamus was a perfect example. It was good, not great match, but the crowd was invested in both guys. They really want to see Ziggler win and they really want to Sheamus get his clock cleaned. That’s why the whole ass kissing bit at the end worked so well (either that or Chicago was transfixed by the homoerotic tension of the moment). The WWE has characters who are over and can gin up entire arenas. They just need to be spotlighted.

7. Dosvedanya Rusev

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When we look back on 2015 in December, the sacrifice of Rusev upon the altar of John Cena surely is going to be one of the top disappointments of the year. The WWE was thisclose to building Rusev into an epic heel. Tap out Cena at WrestleMania and Rusev’s the baddest thing since ebola. Now, not only has Cena taken his winning streak and title, but Rusev finds himself in the make-you-my-bitch portion of the traditional Cena feud. The Bulgarian Brute won’t get to escape from this with so much as a single shred of dignity. First off, the match sucked and the previous two weren’t any great shakes either. So Rusev is getting no rub for having lost in spectacular fashion. Second, we’ve seen this story so many times before, it’s impossible to care about it again. Just get to the inevitable conclusion already. That inevitable conclusion, as we learned during the broadcast, will be an I Quit match. Unfortunately they didn’t throw in the wrinkle where they claim Rusev literally has never learned the words “I quit” in English, so no way he can lose. He knows them, he’ll say them and his viability will quit when it happens.

6. The WWE Needs a New Intercontinental Champion

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I love Daniel Bryan, but “wounded guy who can’t defend his belt on a regular basis” is a real bad storyline for him. They mishandled his injury last year by having him refuse to lay down the WWE belt in the ring and instead forcing the Authority to strip him of his title. If they have him cling to the IC Championship now while he’s laid up, it’s bad optics. Maybe he’ll be back to defend his championship by Payback. Maybe not. The problem is that Vince Russo was right that belts are storytelling devices. While AmDrag is laid up, a whole host of potential stories get put on hiatus. Barrett, the newly minted King of the Ring, is still owed a rematch. Is he going to ride the momentum of his recent big victory or is he going to play some interminable waiting game for a chance he almost sure will lose at his former title? And everything backs up behind that — Bryan-Ambrose, Bryan-Cesaro, Bryan-Sheamus. Wherever Bryan’s story goes from here, it should be without the belt, which really shouldn’t be waiting on him.

5. Kane!!!

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I think I speak for most every wrestling fan in terms of the Seth Rollins-Randy Orton clash when I say, “What the hell?” That was stupid. They booked the match to be about Kane. Easily the dumbest Kane-based storyline since they turned Zack Ryder into his chew toy. Kane is a side show, largely irrelevant in today’s WWE. It’s fine if he has a few moments along the way, causes some chaos, plays the heavy in a faction, but you don’t sacrifice a main event on the altar of Kane. He’s simply not that important. He’s not the monster who defined an era. He never got that WrestleMania win over Undertaker. Couldn’t they just have had him go diabolical and refuse to open the door for anyone, forcing Rollins to deal directly with Orton? Instead it was All About Kane.

4. There is Hope for Roman Reigns

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We should recognize just how high the chances were that Reigns-Big Show turned into an abomination that critically undermined Reigns’ career. If their match had been a painfully slow and awkward affair, that crowd would have buried them. Instead they put on a really good, heavy-hitting contest. I’m a workrate fan, but that was a hoss match done right. Both guys beat the crap out of each other. The brutality and emotion really came through. Also, Show sells Reigns’ offense as well as anyone on the roster. That was a better match than Reigns had with Daniel Bryan at Fast Lane, which was a perfectly good match in and of itself. More than that, Reigns carried more of the action this time around. It’s progress. Hopefully they’ve resolved to give him more of a slow burn, which also keeps open the option of a heel turn, but Extreme Rules was a step in the right direction for the Samoan Dreamboat.

3. Tag Teams, Who Knew?

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The best thing about Daniel Bryan’s injury is that the Cesaro/Kidd vs. New Day match got rescued from Afterthought City. You can make the argument that they stole the show. That was some premium wrestling entertainment. Can’t stress this enough, the tag division should be a prominent feature of every big card. Why? Because it gives you variety compared to all the singles matches on the card. It’s instantly different. Also, since the WWE possesses an insane amount of talent on its roster, it can run hot tag matches from here to the end of time. Kofi Kingston, Big E, Cesaro and Tyson Kidd worked that match at cruiserweight speed with heavyweight impact. That was hybrid wrestling at its best. In one fell swoop, New Day went from an unpopular gimmick to a kick-ass faction. All they needed was the platform.

2. Main Events Matter

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Since the dawn of the WWE Network last year, the WWE has struggled to deliver satisfying main events. Daniel Bryan vs. Kane was an overbooked disappointment. John Cena’s Money in the Bank win and Roman Reigns’ Royal Rumble win drew thunderstorms of boos. I don’t care how much you may love the participants, Rollins-Ambrose at Hell in a Cell and Wyatt-Ambrose at TLC were disjointed affairs. The Battleground four-way never had a pulse. On paper, Seth Rollins and Randy Orton in a cage should be awesome. They had a good match at WrestleMania and the stage was set for them to kick it up a notch, instead it veered down a dark alley. Even before we hit DEFKANE 1, the match was plodding along. We can’t blame Kane for everything that went wrong with the main event. The crowd was positively sleepy by the time the wanton overbooking reared its ugly head. The thing is, when the main event falls flat, it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. Extreme Rules had been a mostly entertaining night right up until its conclusion. It deserved a better end than one that left us feeling ambivalent about the product.

1. Let’s Do Wrestling!

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This flows from some of the previous points: what worked about Extreme Rules was the wrestling. Just so happens that’s the same thing that worked at WrestleMania. Oddly, when the professional wrestling promotion gives us well-worked professional wrestling matches, we are sports entertained. The problem in between WrestleMania and Extreme Rules was the month of dreck they aired on Raw and Smackdown. The quality matches were few and far between. It’s asking a lot of your fans to have them bear with you through weeks of pointless television programming in order to get to maybe a good wrestling card for the low, low price of $9.99. Unquestionably, the wrestling part of the gig works when it’s given a chance. They’ve got to find a way to have weeks of good wrestling build to a night of great wrestling. Just as an example, instead of Damien Sandow mocking poor Curtis Axel, how about tell the tale that Sandow’s new attitude has him geared up to chase some big prizes in the ring? Extreme Rules put the depth of the roster on display. Leverage it for crying out loud. Set the industry standard for in-ring action. Fans will love it.

I take requests.. The purpose of this column is to look forward. What could be? What should be? What is and what should never be? What would make more sense? 411 has plenty of columns that count down and rank things that happened in the past. This is not one of those columns. The Magic 8-Ball is here to gaze into the future. If there’s someone or something you think should be given the 8-Ball treatment, mention it in the comments section. I might pick it up for future weeks.