Csonka Reviews Free WWE Matches With Seth Rollins, Charlotte, & More

Csonka Reviews Free WWE Matches With Seth Rollins, Charlotte, & More

– From WrestleMania 34 – WWE Intercontinental Championship Match: Seth Rollins defeated Champion The Miz and Finn Balor @ 15:32 via pin [****]
– From WWE Survivor Series 2018: Ronda Rousey defeated Charlotte @ 14:17 via DQ [****]
– From WWE WrestleMania 33 – Non-Sanctioned Match: Seth Rollins defeated Triple H @ 25:45 via pin [**]

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WWE Intercontinental Championship Match: Champion The Miz vs. Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor: I love this choice for the opener. Miz sends his minions to the back. We got a tremendously fun opening stretch, with everyone going for pins and Balor hitting a tope. They are working a great and frantic pace to begin, working really well together and keeping the crowd invested. They work into some basic triple threat formula for a bit, with 2 in and 1 out, leading to dives by Rollins, and keep the pacing high, avoiding a lot of down time. While the pacing is fast, they are also working a really clean and smooth match and mixing in really nice spots involving all three. Rollins did the tease of the barricade bomb in a nice callback with Balor, leading to Balor & Rollins renewing their rivalry, and working into some really good back and forth. Rollins then hit the superplex, but Balor blocked the deal in a nice call back to their recent matches. They mixed in some great near falls, and the crowd is eating this up. Miz hit a super skull0crushing finale, but Balor hit a double stomp to break things up. Balor hits another, but Rollins hits the curb stomp and then another to win the title. Seth Rollins defeated Champion The Miz and Finn Balor @ 15:32 via pin [****] This was a great opener, and exactly the right way to kick of the main show, with an all action match and a hot crowd.

Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte: The glam squad attacked Rousey again. They lock up and Rousey lays in kicks and they work to the ropes. Charlotte shoves her down and Rousey scores a takedown, they tease submissions and counter into a stand off. Charlotte gets a takedown, grounding the action. Rousey to her feet but Charlotte slams her to the buckles. Charlotte works her over in the corner, hits the XPLODER and covers for 1. Charlotte starts working the leg, grounding Rousey again. Rousey looks to escape, and her mouth is busted open. Rousey counters back and hits a jumping knee strike. She then gets the hanging arm bar in the ropes. Rousey heads up top, but Charlotte crotches her and follows her up. Rousey fights off the superplex, dumps Charlotte and pulls Charlotte back and rolls into an arm bar attempt. Charlotte tries to cradle out and then powers Rousey up and locks on a crab. Rousey fights, counters the figure eight, but Charlotte kicks her in the face. Natural selection countered and Rousey attacks the arm. Charlotte rolls out and hits a big boot. Rousey blocks the moonsault with her feet, and hits her rolling slam deal. Charlotte firs up and hits the spear for a good near fall. Charlotte gets the figure eight, but Rousey fights and rolls it and they roll to the floor. Rousey slams Charlotte to the barricade back in and hits a series of throws and lays in strikes. Charlotte fires back with chops, takes out the knee, and Rousey now blocks the chops and runs into a big boot and Charlotte covers for 2. Rousey counters the suplex and rolls for an arm bar, but Charlotte rolls to the apron. Rousey hits the swinging slam and looks for an arm bar, but Charlotte rolls to the floor. Charlotte breaks the count, Rousey follows her out and Charlotte hits her with a kendo stick for the DQ. Ronda Rousey defeated Charlotte @ 14:17 via DQ [****] I am far from a fan of DQ finishes on PPV, but I felt that this played very well and Charlotte as a heel is much better than her as a babyface. This was a great, hard-hitting match; really dirty in a real fight feel kind of way. After dropping off match quality wise following the win over Asuka, Charlotte has been really good since the feud with Becky. I really love how different Rousey feels compared to the rest of the division because so many of the women’s matches feel the same, but her matches are always different.

Non-Sanctioned Match: Triple H vs. Seth Rollins: Triple H rides out on a three-wheeler with Stephanie and motorcycle police. Triple H is most certainly in WrestleMania shape here. Rollins is sporting a spiffy new gold outfit. They brawled right away, taking the fight to the floor almost immediately with Triple H attacking the legs before they battled over the barricade. Rollins then dumped Triple H over the barricade and then flew off of it with a lariat. Rollins then hit a suicide dive, a second and then slams Triple Hoff of an announce table and starts to dismantle it. Triple H fights off the pedigree and hits a DDT to turn the momentum in his favor. Triple H then attacks the knee of Rollins with chair shots, as he starts to dismantle Rollins. Back in the ring and Triple H continues to focus on the knee. Rollins looks to fight back, slams Triple H to the buckles but can’t follow up. He slowly climbs to the top, gets cut off, Triple H follows him up and they battle back and forth, Rollins looks for the sunset bomb (which hurt his knee and cost him Mania last year) and collapsed as he tried a Liger bomb. They both tease pedigrees, and Rollins manages the buckle bomb and then collapses again. The crowd tries to rally Rollins, who avoids a charge and Triple H flies to the floor. Rollins slowly climbs up top, and hits the high cross to the floor and immediately clutches at his knee. Rollins posts Triple H, and then grabs chairs and tosses them in the ring. He then gets a table. Back in and Rollins slowly climbs up top and hits the high fly flow for the near fall. He grabs the chair, but Triple H begs off and kicks out his knee and then wraps the chair around the knee, hitting knee and elbow drops to punish Rollins. Triple H up top now, but Rollins fights to his feet and tosses a chair into Triple H’s face. He follows Triple H up top, SUPERPLEX and rolls through and hits a falcon arrow (HE DID THE DEAL) for the near fall. the key here is that Rollins keeps struggling after any significant move, selling the knee. Rollins up top, Stephanie crotches him and Triple H locks in the inverted figure four, Rollins escapes and rolls to the floor and Triple His right there to work him over with the chair and apply the hold again. Rollins looks for help from under the ring, and slides out a sledgehammer, which Triple H grabs and then stalks Rollins back into the ring with. They then trade strikes, face buster by Triple H but Rollins fights back with a superkick but Triple H decapitates him with a lariat, turning Rollins inside out. The crowd again tries to rally Rollins, and he hits an enziguri to stop the sledgehammer attack. Rollins grabs the sledgehammer, but Stephanie takes it away allowing Triple H to hit the pedigree for a great near fall. Triple H up top again, pulls Rollins up with him and Rollins backdrops him off to fight off the super pedigree. Rollins then hits the Phoenix splash for the near fall. This is feeling really, really long now. Triple H fights off the pedigree, Rollins again favors the knee, counties a powerbomb and Triple H attacks the knee to escape the Rollins pedigree. Rollins superkicks Triple H into Stephanie, she takes the table bump from the apron and Rollins hits the pedigree for the win. Seth Rollins defeated Triple H @ 25:45 via pin [**] This was a bookend match, it was all about the beginning and the end, with the middle coming across as too long and mostly filler. The crowd was hot at the beginning, and got into the homestretch, but like last year’s Triple H match, needed some of the middle edited out to make it come off better. I thought that a lot of the ideas were really sound, especially from a psychology standpoint, but trimming out some of the middle for some more violent and heated action would have greatly helped this, and probably would have kept the crowd better. You have to play to your audience, and this deep into the show, the crowd didn’t want to see tedious Triple H offense for so long, they wanted a fired up Seth Rollins getting revenge, not selling for Uncle Paul and scraping by with the win, while not really selling the danger of the stipulation or working to its full advantages (which Triple H knows how to do, just look at his SS match with HBK) does nothing. Unfortunately this is the new Triple H feature match, good ideas, but overly long and completely self indulgent.

The 411 on Wrestling Podcast returns to the 411 Podcasting Network for episode 100. On the show, 411’s Larry Csonka & Steve Cook take a trip back to 1998, and the start of the Steve Austin era with retro reviews of WrestleMania 14 & the following night’s Raw. Ian Hamilton then joins the show to talk the best of the wXw 16 Carat Weekend. The show is approximately 168-minutes long.

* Intro
* Retro WWE WrestleMania 14 Review: 5:00
* Retro WWE Monday Night Raw 3.30.98 Review: 42:45
* Ian Hamilton Talks wXw 16 Carat Weekend and Compares Notebook Matches With Larry: 1:31:47

* iTunes
* Spotify
* Stitcher
* Google Play

– End scene.

– Thanks for reading.

7.2

The final score: review Good

The 411

This collection of free matches clocks in at around 56-minutes and was good overall.