WWE Live Event Report 3.11.17: Balor & Triple H in Action

Jake Chambers coming to you live from the Ricoh Coliseum on a beautifully frigid Canadian Spring Saturday evening at a WWE RAW-brand house show. Now, I’m no fan of the RAW brand, it’s a tortuous television show to sit through, and dirt poor PPV efforts like last weekend’s FastLane are no reward for following along with the “product”, as they say. So while you couldn’t force free tickets to any of that televised crap on me without Bossman’s handcuffs and the Mountie’s cattle-prod, a house show is a different deal and I’ll gladly drive or fly to see the closest one to me whenever possible. House shows are professional wrestling in its purest form, and despite all of the WWE’s changes over the years they still can put on the best live wrestling shows. And last night’s event was no exception.

The Ricoh Coliseum is the venue where WWF/WWE has performed in Toronto with the least amount of character. This minor-league hockey arena located within the west-of-central Exhibition Centre, a summer carnival-style fairgrounds most notably where the WWF Big Event took place at the former CFL football stadium here in the 80s. Lacking the history and personality of the old Maple Leaf Gardens or the contemporary relevance of the Air Canada Centre, The Ricoh Coliseum is a generic hockey rink set up, clean and dull, with a single bowl for seating along with the floor. This size does make it that every seat is a good one, and therefore shows here are usually close to full, which has got to be in the 5-8,000 person range. Of all the countries and cities I’ve seen live wrestling over the years, Toronto fans were – and still are – some of the most passionate.

Match #1 = 8-man Tag Team Match: Golden Truth, Sin Cara & ? vs. Bo Dallas, Jinder Mahal, The Shining Stars: Byron Saxton announced it as an 8-man tag team match despite only three members of the “babyface” team coming to the ring, which Goldust explained was due to their other partner being caught in traffic. This was a good match to start the show, everyone was moving around, and the good guys were generally dominating despite being short-handed. Goldust in particular continues to shine in this type of pure-wrestling environment, as he and R-Truth are just such pros at feeling out a crowd and giving them perfectly timed moved and gestures that would elicit goofy cheers, whether it was a series of inverted atomic drops or a pelvic thrust. Maybe on TV this stuff seems dumb, but in front of a hungry live crowd (of mostly kids) it works so fantastically.

After the tide shifted, and the heels were about to finally overwhelm their opponents, of course some music hit… and out came The Big Show… as big a show as can be, strutting down to the ring and proceeding to legally tag in and then clean house by clotheslining Mahal over the top, double choke-slamming the Shining Stars (despite their generous offer of a time-share deal), and then cold-cocking Bo Dallas for the win. The crowd ate it up.

Match #2 = Cruiserweight Title Match: Neville vs. Rich Swann: All of Rich Swann’s happy dancing didn’t seem to sway most of the crowd away from cheering for the still miserable Neville. This one turned out to be the most “work-rate” style match of the night, not surprisingly, as they started with Swann doing a lot of dynamic moves, countered with Neville slowing things down, and then eventually heading out of the ring with a couple of dives, near count-outs, and finally ending with Swann tapping to Neville’s Rings of Saturn-type variation after what was close to 15 minutes. The crowd was enthusiastic throughout, and started to buy into Swann’s comebacks, while still mostly popping for Neville’s big moves like he was the real hero.

Match #3: Sasha Banks & Alicia Fox vs. Nia Jax and Dana Brooke: Feels like every house show always has an odd match like this, one that on paper just looks terrible but you can understand why the WWE wants to sandwich it between the hot openers and the pre-Intermission mini-main event. Each of these performers have unique flaws and letting them go out there and try to hold a hot crowd with their blend of different strengths is a good learning experience, and it was generally successful. Alicia did most of the grunt work, Jax looked insurmountably menacing to her foes, Sasha came in at the right moments with her flair to make sure they never lost the crowd with Brooke flopping around perfectly for her, including submitting to the Banks Statement, after a harmless 5-7 minutes.

Match #4: Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns: Whereas Neville/Swann gave us the best variety of moves on the show, this was the match that most felt like an important PPV match, the rare house show match that goes past the predictable end moment and makes you think for a second that something unpredictable might happen. After hitting multiple Superman punches, and even an awkward Strowman back-drop into a Superman punch bit, Reigns still was unable to put him away. They ended up outside following a reversal of a spear attempt by Roman into a backbreaker by Braun, and the frustrated big man just hit Reigns with the ring steps, getting himself DQ-ed after the referee had warned him against such an action previously in the match.

This lead to them heading back into the ring where Reigns did finally hit a massive spear, to a thunderous (mixed) response from the crowd. And look, critics can say whatever they want about Reigns, and sure he isn’t generating that insane electricity John Cena does at house shows, but it’s close. And what he shares with Cena that many WWE main event-ers struggle with, is being able to perform to a mixed reaction in this non-verbal environment without flinching. And that guarantees that he doesn’t lose his own supporters, and eventually wears down the haters, without trying to be “cool” or just pushing through with blinders on. Reigns will be a major star for years to come, and I’ll happily attend any house show he’s headlining.

Intermission – Speaking of Cena, dude can move merchandise and he’s not even a threat to be in the building… Reigns, not so much.

Match #5: WWE Tag Team Title, Fatal 4-Way Match: The Club vs. New Day vs. Enzo & Cass vs. Cesaro & Sheamus: With all these good guys, how could the crowd not be into it? I’ll tell you how, by putting Gallows or Anderson in the ring for any extended period of time, but once those rousing moments of rest holds and half-missed moves were over, and it just became a clusterfucck of finishers and dives, the match was on fire. Anderson gets the cheap roll-up, foot on the ropes, win over Big E, and then for some reason he and Gallows wanted to continue the beatdown on the New Day post-match. Thus Anderson eventually gets surrounded by the 7 faces, takes a number of finishers and a like 30-rotation Cesaro Swing for his stupidity. This then (d)evolves into some kind of trombone-led dance party that sees a reluctant Sheamus eventually doing some kind of pelvic thrust move for a brief second that you’re just hoping no producers backstage saw with Funkadactyl hearts in their eyes.

Match #6: WWE RAW Women’s Title Match: Bayley vs. Charlotte: Charlotte came to the ring with no robe, and disappointingly no mic time other than a short hype video earlier in the night. Bayley did have her dancing balloons and a pretty big pop when she came out. Unfortunately, this was no sustained once the match began, and Bayley was the only hero wrestler of the night who couldn’t get the crowd to clap her back to life when she was in various wear-down holds. The crowd, for whatever reason, just was not buying into Bayley, and I can’t imagine a flash pin following, of all moves, a belly-to-belly suplex (yes, I know this is her “finisher”) is going to help get her over with the crowd either. Easily the biggest disappointment of the night, a short, heatless match.

Match #7: 6-Man Tag Team Match: Triple H, Samoa Joe & Kevin Owens vs. Finn Balor, Sami Zayn & Chris Jericho: One of the more intriguing and rare house show matches to see given the combination of wrestlers involved. At about 15 minutes long, it was fine but a little bit of a let down considering the crazy amount of talent in the ring. The audience was hyped to see HHH live again, no doubt, and the guy looked to be in incredible shape. However, I’d say after his first 3 minutes in the match he’d already went through about 4 rest holds from the other team: a headlock, arm bar, hammerlock and wrist-lock. It was interesting to see him matched up with the recently re-heathified Finn Balor (who by the way looked damn tiny by comparison) so often in the match, but it was predictably Zayn who got the sustained mid-match dominance by the heel team.

Balor, for his part, did look slightly off on his timing from my perspective. Also, I think the crowd was lost early on when HHH offered him the “Too Sweet” wolfpack hand signal, and when Balor eventually (strangely) went for it, HHH psyched him out and crotch-cropped him instead. That’s a lot of references, and heel/face inter-dynamics for a crowd of restless 10-year-olds to get after 3 hours of wrestling, but no one ever accused Triple H of not trying to make himself look eternally cool, have they?

The ending of the match didn’t step too much on the earlier Fatal 4-Way finisher frenzy, instead going for the catharsis of keeping Owens and Jericho apart until the end, when they wildly brawled, and eventually following some ins and outs, Jericho hit the Codebreaker on the Universal Champion one-week removed for the surprising clean victory. Well, the audience loved it, so job well done. Jericho then took the mic to let everyone in Toronto know they were “on the list”, and this now positive switch for that gimmick was no doubt a crowd-pleasing way to end the night.

So yeah, go see a damn house show! If you think the WWE doesn’t know how to put on a satisfying 3-hour show with their RAW superstars, then you’ll be shocked at how incredibly fast and easy a house show feels compared to the grind of trying to watch that horrible Monday night TV program. 5-star night of wrestling!