WWE Payback 2016 Thoughts: The Main Event Was Really Good and I’m Glad Enzo Amore Isn’t Dead

Payback 2016 looked good on paper and turned out to be pretty darn likeable in real life as well. For me, it’s the best main roster PPV of the year so far, although it only really has the Royal Rumble in terms of competition. There were no huge moments that will be remembered for years to come, but there were lots of good matches, building to a superb main event that also served as yet another reminder of what a baffling professional wrestler Roman Reigns is- how can someone this good be so difficult to like?

The show started off on a grim note with Enzo Amore suffering a scary injury just three minutes into he and Big Cass’ tag team battle with the Vaudevillains. Attempting to baseball slide out of the ring, he ended up whipping his head violently against the bottom and middle ropes before crumpling to the floor in a heap. Earlier in the night, during the pre-show, Kalisto attempted some kind of springboard move to the outside on Ryback, massively miscalculated it, and ended up plummeting towards earth at a terrifying angle before Ryback heroically scooped him in his arms and guided him to the safety of the fan barricade. So, no matter what you thought of the show as a whole, you can’t deny that it could have gone much worse; it would have been very hard to decide whether Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens was *** ½ or *** ¾ if two people had just been killed in consecutive matches. As it turned out, Kalisto landed safely, Amore escaped with only a concussion, and I reckon Zayn-Owens was *** ¾ and the best match of the undercard fairly comfortably. It started off well enough but really got good down the finishing stretch, as they became so overcharged with loathing for one another that they just started no selling all over the place, popping right back to their feet after running into clotheslines and getting dropped with suplexes. Zayn hit two consecutive blue thunder bombs and couldn’t put the match to bed, while Owens’ found a pair of cannonballs similarly ineffective. This tactic is going to become very tiresome very quickly, but for now they’re still the only wrestlers in WWE really doing it on that kind of scale, a duo whose North American super indy styles have remained relatively unrefined by the developmental process, and seeing them more or less transplant a PWG match into a WWE ring still feels tremendously exciting and gutsy. It certainly distracted me from what was at the time a very real concern that Enzo Amore’s head had fallen off, and deserves much credit for that at the very least.

Zayn vs. Owens marked the beginning of five consecutive singles matches, only broken up by a tedious in ring promo with all the McMahons. I thought this was the biggest issue with the wrestling content of the show- I’d have enjoyed Jericho/Ambrose and Charlotte/Natalya more if they weren’t fairly similar, and didn’t come one after the other (it does show how much the Women’s division has improved though that their championship matches don’t work as a bathroom break before the men do the good wrestling). The action hadn’t begun to feel vaguely repetitive by the time Cesaro and the Miz took to the ring however, and I’m glad because they had a very fun little match that may well extend their very fun little feud. Nobody needs to be reminded what a marvellous professional wrestler Cesaro is, but the Miz never looked out of his depth. He spent much of the match targeting his challenger’s injured shoulder in smart and consistent fashion, and also took a heck of a Cesaro Swing, making the move look effortless for the Swiss Superman. The finishing sequence was a properly thrilling one, as Sami Zayn returned to attack Kevin Owens, who had stayed at ringside to do commentary. This was genuinely unpredictable and felt heated and wild, and also provided an ideal excuse for the match going on in the ring to end inconclusively; Cesaro had Miz tapping out furiously, but the referee was distracted trying to clear away Zayn and Owens, and when Cesaro tried to help out by knocking them both off the apron, the IC Champion capitalised, squirrelling the challenger into a roll-up for the three count. Miz looked sneaky and effective, Cesaro looked a wronged bad-ass, Zayn and Owens looked like they were destined to do this forever. Everyone got over, which is not the sort of thing we can say enough about these kind of angles in WWE.

I wasn’t looking forward to Chris Jericho vs. Dean Ambrose at all but it overdelivered significantly on my expectations for it. It started out kind of slow and hesitant, but soon improved into an enjoyable, hard fought match, albeit one that maybe dragged on longer than it needed to in the hope of reaching the next level, which it never came close to doing. I enjoyed the finish, which was something different to the usual array of signature moves and kick outs at 2 that herald the end of a match- Ambrose wanted to hit the Dirty Deeds but had to outmuscle Jericho, who was desperately resisting. He eventually got the move after a proper little struggle, and it made for a satisfying and emphatic end to proceedings. The same can’t be said for the ending of the Charlotte-Natalya match, which ended with yet another rehash of the Montreal Incident, Charles Robinson ringing the bell on Natalya almost as soon as Charlotte put the Sharpshooter on her. This match was decent, but the best thing about it was the obvious adoration Bret Hart and Ric Flair have for their respective family members. Every time Ric is on screen with Charlotte you can just see his delight and immense pride. You really get the sense that she’s his absolute world. Similarly, Bret Hart would not have travelled down to Chicago for a B-Level PPV and rehashed Montreal all over again if it wasn’t for the fact that he was so desperate to show his support for Natalya. Heck, Flair even seemed over the moon when Bret first came out on the stage, beaming away at ringside. It’s so sweet that the two of them have been able to put their differences aside in the last couple of years and become firm friends after all this time. All this talk about love and friendship implies that there wasn’t much to discuss about the match, but it was a more than competent outing. It just didn’t stand out against the rest of the show.
At this point the fireworks factory was looming large, but before we could get there Poochie the Rockin’ Dog wanted us to pull over and watch the McMahon family have a shouting match at the roadside. Shane and Stephanie spent an infuriatingly long amount of time bickering in the ring about who would be the best choice to run Raw, before Vince McMahon showed up to reveal his answer was ‘both of them simultaneously.’ This is essentially the worst possible conclusion to the power struggle storyline that has dominated WWE television in the last two and a bit months. I think most people now are in agreement that the authority figure is completely exhausted as a character in professional wrestling; Dario Cueto has been able to inject new life into it by being a genuinely excellent actor and existing in a universe that is slightly askew from the rest of professional wrestling, containing as it does murder and shit, but in WWE there is barely anything that anyone in a position of power can do that hasn’t been done a hundred times before. One of the reasons Raw has been rather watchable in the last few weeks is because Shane McMahon has taken a relaxed approach to running Raw, mostly getting along with everyone and showing up relatively sporadically, making a match or two and then retiring to the back. By having two authority figures, WWE are going completely in the opposite direction; if the storyline is to progress, Shane and Stephanie now have to be all over the place, screeching at each other and booking overbearing match stipulations to prove a point, as happened in the main event. It’s such a disappointing turn of events. You really wish someone would grab the people in a position of creative power in WWE by the lapels and shake them all around and slap them.

Happily that segment eventually gave way to the main event, and it turned out to be just terrific. As I just alluded to, I didn’t love Shane and Stephanie’s involvement, as they overturned count-out and disqualification losses for Roman Reigns in order to find a conclusive winner to the match. The first time I actually quite liked it. PPV main events end via count-out suspiciously infrequently, and so it was nice for a sense of balance and realism to have that happen for once. Of course, it would have been massively disappointing if that had been the ending of the show, and having Shane restart the match was the right thing to do, but doing the same thing minutes later with a disqualification match pushed it a bit too far. For one, it was a limp DQ; Styles went for a 450 Splash, Reigns put his knees up to block and ended up accidentally catching him somewhere not a million miles away from the groin, and that was apparently enough for the referee to end things. I wouldn’t expect that to be a disqualifiable offence in a Raw match, let alone in a PPV main event where historically so many more violent things have gone unpunished. Plus, while you can do a dramatic rule change once and get away with it, if you need to do it a second time, it gets to the point where you start to think “well, looks like we’re just not going to find a winner tonight. Guess it just wasn’t meant to be. Let’s do a rematch at Extreme Rules and hope for better luck next time!” Another restart seems excessive. Finally, it stretched the realms of credibility as a coincidence. Two inconclusive finishes moments after each other? Get out of town! Reigns and Styles deserve a heck of a lot of credit for managing to thread such a compelling match together around it. The action followed the pattern I hoped it would, with AJ flying all over the place and Roman swatting at him and throwing him around. The near falls were great as well; it was fairly obvious that Styles wasn’t dethroning Reigns and probably won’t do so next month either, but I was biting hard on the Phenomenal Forearm and the 450 Splash, allowing myself to believe we were on the verge of a befuddling, delightful upset. I could have done with a couple more dramatic kick-outs, even; Reigns wrapping things up with a solitary Spear seemed a bit underwhelming after all that had gone before it. Despite that, and all the other flaws that were imposed on it from above, this was still a top class outing, and a very serious possibility as the best main roster WWE match of the year so far.

STAR RATINGS
Enzo & Big Cass vs. The Vaudevillains- N/R
Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens- *** ¾
Cesaro vs. The Miz- *** ½
Dean Ambrose vs. Chris Jericho- *** ¼
Natalya vs. Charlotte- ** ¾
Roman Reigns vs. AJ Styles- **** ¼

7.0

The final score: review Good

The 411

If we look back at the end of the year and say Payback was the best PPV event WWE had in 2016, then WWE will have had a crap year of PPV. But that's not to say there wasn't lots to like about it; a great Reigns-Styles match, a very good Zayn-Owens one, and then another trio of rock solid bouts add up to a really satisfying show. It's a bit of a shame that all we got from this mini hot streak WWE had been on was a good PPV and a potentially tortuous Shane vs. Stephanie storyline; last time WWE put together weeks of television as good as the last few have been, it ended with Daniel Bryan winning the WWE Championship! Still, there's no reason not to give Payback a look on the WWE Network. If you'd told me 5 years ago that there'd be a WWE PPV with El Generico vs. Kevin Steen, Chris Jericho vs. Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli challenging for the Intercontinental Title, and AJ Styles in the main event, I'd have given you a very dismissive sneer...