10 Impulse Reactions Following WWE Great Balls Of Fire
Shaken Nerves and Rattled Brains.
It's a best of times/worst of times situation for WWE at present, with mouthwatering opportunities such as a Brock Lesnar/Samoa Joe main event in 2017 propped up by an undercard largely full of encounters already hashed out across the company's endless television output.
In Brock as Universal Champion, the company only have a titleholder so hot thanks to his own indifference to working the full schedule normally expected of a top superstar. Wise to the realities of the modern era, Lesnar maintains his value through absence rather than familiarity, and thus stands atop virtually all of his rivals.
A 'dream match' trigger possibly pulled earlier than necessary with Joe at least provided diversion from too much conversation about the show's utterly absurd name. That said, a certain sense of disarray and danger hung over the entire evening in a manner the company tried and failed to replicate with June's Extreme Rules event. Should this be felt internally too, the decision may be to keep the name around, adding it as an annual favourite amongst the moribund entries such as Backlash and Payback.
Thematically, the show was a complete bust, with allusions to the 1950s motif utterly abandoned from the opening segment. But while babyfaces flailed and flagged as usual, top heels Samoa Joe and Braun Strowman showed 'Balls' and 'Fire' respectively, unintentionally managing to deliver the promised frenzy despite their drastically differing evenings.
10. Duty-Bound
WWE have reframed pay-per-views in recent years to enhance the status of the card opener in order to maintain a crowd's introductory electricity. Many bonafide stars are now of the opinion that if 'you can't be last, be first' on the supercards, suggesting the days of the 'curtain jerker' are passé.
However, no two performers currently deserve the derisory demotion more than Seth Rollins and Bray Wyatt.
This is thankfully not the time or place to debate the nuances of Bray's persistent failings, but both he and 'The Kingslayer' reek of creative disinterest from the company's thoroughly disengaged writing team.
Wyatt's a lost cause at this point, but the fall of Seth Rollins has been something altogether more perplexing. A nothing defeat in a nothing match means nothing, so he'll have absorbed this lost before the end of the next edition of Monday Night Raw. The concern comes from just how little people care.
His redemptive quest fell flat at WrestleMania, he's been frozen out of the Universal Title picture almost entirely, and his dynamic moveset no longer pops the crowd as it did during his first flushes as a babyface with The Shield. As lazy a solution as it may be, the return to the flack jackets may suit him as well as his former comrades.