Mixed Match Chambers – Jake’s MMC Review – Week 5

We are now officially halfway through the WWE’s first foray into producing a round robin tournament, Mixed Match Challenge.

So, is it working?

Let me get to this question AFTER I finish the match reviews for this week, which I plan to to as quickly and painlessly as possible to get this shit out of the way. Last week I was starting to have an existential crisis about the process of reviewing matches, so I was hoping this week would draw me back in to what I loved about season one of the MMC, but this one was bad… capital B-A-D-Double D!

As always, 411mania is the home to the greatest show/match reviewer alive, Larry Csonka, and his weekly review of this show is going to be much kinder than I was, even though we basically agree it was BADD!

Below is the rubric for my alternative “star ratings” that specifically focuses on the MMC universe, including examples from other mixed gender matches WWE has put on this year. Honestly, though, I didn’t have to think hard about what rating the matches from this week deserved.

MMC Match Rating Rubric

5 Stars – a transcendent match that truly evens the playing field for the male and female wrestlers involved at a main event level.

For example = Ronda Rousey & Kurt Angle vs. Stephanie McMahon & Triple H: a marquee match that enraptured a Wrestlemania audience with action, drama and moments of believable inter-gender combat. It is unlikely any match from MMC 2 will be able to reach this rating level.

4 Stars – near-flawless and exciting wrestling action, where characters are out of the element and realistically trying to win the match in dramatic fashion; elements of inter-gender wrestling will be a strong bonus.

For example = MMC S2 – Week 1 – AJ Styles & Charlotte vs. Jimmy Uso & Naomi: featured a house-show level competitive back-and-forth between Charlotte and Naomi, fun verbal interactions between Styles and Uso, and inter-gender elements that resulted directly in the finish.

3 Stars – solid, clean wrestling where you don’t notice any continued errors or lethargic sequences; if lacking in drama or action, superior exterior features such as macro or micro storylining and/or character flourishes are taken into account.

For example = MMC S2 – Week 2 – Alicia Fox & Jinder Mahal vs. Mickie James & Bobby Lashley: Some very well-timed sequences fit together like dominoes, giving four wrestlers with often little opportunity to stretch their legs on the main roster a chance to fill out a compelling and satisfying match.

2 Stars – even if the wrestling performed is average or the outcome predictable, a match at this level should feature a solid pace that stops it from being boring or pointless.

For example = MMC S2 – Week 3 – Naomi & Jimmy Uso vs. Lana & Rusev: Overly relied on dance off segments that failed to pay off, but the quick-paced short wrestling segments rescued the match from being dull.

1 Star – basically a match that goes through the motions, relies heavily on rest holds, or features a lop-sided effort from competitors of one gender; mistakes and botches that stand out significantly more than any of the actual action in the match.

For example = MMC S2 – Week 3 – Finn Balor & Bayley vs. Jinder Mahal & Alicia Fox: a mess of awkward exchanges and rest holds featuring wrestlers who were clearly not having fun but straining to make it look like they were.

MMC2 – Week 5 Review

Match #1: Country Dominance vs. Team Paws

The only good thing I can say about this match is that at least there was no dance off.

Other than that, this match was terrible. Rest holds, extended knock downs, awkward stare downs, botchy sequences, and a flubbed ending. It was boring, stupid and lame – everything the original season of Mixed Match Challenge was not! The strength of that season was the mix of characters, either main event level, or interesting ones on the fringe who had something to contribute personality-wise, like Goldust or Sami Zayn. We never had a match that was just four complete duds like we have here. Bobby Roode was definitely one of the weakest links in that first season, but he was always thankfully dragged along by the superior wrestlers and characters around him.

In this match, his first one replacing the quickly-missed Kevin Owens, highlighted everything about Roode that has made him such a bore his whole career. Dude is a horrible babyface, has no chemistry with Natalya (rarely has a wrestler who is defined by being in tag teams been such a weak member of the teams he’s on), and his offence is straight from the Jeff Jarrett school of looking superficially like pro-wrestling but making none of it seem impactful or painful.

The other three were no better in this match, but at least they’ve shown in previous matches this season that they can elevate their enthusiasm a bit when stronger personalities were in there with them. Bobby Roode’s gravity of pro-wrestling non-charisma pulled everyone into his snoozy black hole. And don’t be shocked when you realize that three out of the four wrestlers in this match were all TNA regulars a few years ago.

What I fear we’re quickly seeing is Mixed Match Challenge going the way of Main Event, Superstars, and every other periphery show the WWE tries to produce with the main roster. What started as high profile is degrading into a place for mid-carders to go through the motions. The mixed-gender format is salvageable if they were to set this up as it’s own universe the way NXT or 205 Live have become, but if the WWE just wants this to be a spot for some forced comedy and dullards to do rest holds to earn their paycheques, then cancel this fucking show now!

Match Rating: *

Match #2: Awe-ska vs. Ravishing Rusev Day

Poor Asuka. The dopey antics she’s forced to fill time with when competing against someone as limited as Lana is one thing, but for the violent Asuka of NXT to have to almost go 50/50 on offence with Lana is just insulting to wrestler and viewer alike. I mean, it was embarrassing to watch Asuka have to try and sell whatever submission hold Lana was going for in a messed up simultaneous submission sequence they tried (which was actually pulled off in the first match on this show, that’s some great producing right there… ugh).

The interactions in the end, while they were intergender, which I was hoping for more of in this tournament, involved Lana, so predictably they sucked. While not as lifeless as the first match, Lana and Rusev are – at this point – like watching a not-over Santino try to wrestle matches teamed up with a civilian girlfriend and not Emma or Beth Phoenix. As long as Rusev’s career is weighed down by wrestling matches WITH Lana and still sucking in tournaments tailor-made for mixed gender matches, then the ship has sailed on this dude ever being cool again. Maybe there’s a commentary career in his future, I mean, it would have to be more energetic than whatever ’80s movie robot Renee Young is channelling on this show… yeesh!

Match Rating: *

Fine, so this week sucked. We’ve seen a literal downward spiral in quality from Week 1 to Week 5, which is the exact opposite you’d expect to see in a series that’s structured around a round robin tournament.

The WWE has never done a tournament like this before, and we might be seeing why. They are booking the whole thing the same way they have the “Classics” and UK single-elimination tournaments from the past few years. They follow the same, arguably successful pattern, with first rounds featuring all matches of stronger favourites versus underdogs, and then each subsequent round gets slightly more competitive. That is a fair strategy, and one we see played out in real sport on the regular.

However, booking the block matches of a round robin tournament needs to place more urgency on the winning of matches in waves, not a slope. We see it in all the Japanese tournaments of this style, matches in the beginning feel just as big as matches in the end, with a lull in the middle to level out the more surprising wins that happen at first. And if we’re comparing to real sport, this is closer to how the block stage of the World Cup works too.

In this season of the MMC, by organizing the wins from the first 5 weeks in the same way you would a regular single-elimination tournament, they’ve basically doubled-up (at least) the number of less-important, jobber first round matches. And it doesn’t help that the wrestlers losing those multiple matches are literally jobbers. If they had let Fabulous Truth or Mahalicia get surprising wins in their first two matches, that would have levelled off the drama of the first half of this season and put more pressure on the higher-profile teams to win their final two matches, and at least play for ties. This spreads the tension across matches rather than what we’re seeing play out, which is just bottle-necking the clearly dominant teams on their way to the only important matches of the season in the final week. This is boring, predictable, and I guess – not-shockingly – very WWE.

Booking a web of results and drama is not the forte of WWE’s forward-pushing, blinders-on style. Given this recent overabundance of single elimination tournaments that the WWE produces, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they’d approach the first half of this round robin tournament with the same logic. Except that’s like trying to fit a square into a circle, and even if this is the “squared circle” what we’re getting is neither the good wrestling we see in those other tournaments, nor the fun and drama we got in the MMC’s first season.

2.0

The final score: review Very Bad

The 411

Following last week's lethargic and un-funny show of bad dance-offs, the MMC needed to follow up with an intense episode of teams vying to get into strong positions for the block standings. Instead, the WWE came back with the laziest, most dull episode yet: not fun, not dramatic, and not good in-ring. Shame.