10 Impulse Reactions Following WWE Battleground 2017

Dumped in the SmackDown Live! supercard schedule in between Money In The Bank and SummerSlam, WWE Battleground was in the unenviable spot of being considered a filler pay-per-view before a the card was even announced.

The company looked to get around the perception with several key payoffs to lengthy programmes as well as a John Cena return that in hindsight should have been forecast by his listless July 4th return.

His Flag Match with Rusev was something of an outlier in the build-up, with matches featuring Jinder Mahal, Randy Orton, AJ Styles, Kevin Owens, Shinsuke Nakamura, Baron Corbin, The Usos and The New Day all, in theory at least, booked as potential conclusions to conflicts that had kicked off long before the June Network special.

Subsequently, Battleground gained a level of importance few would have expected. The stakes were higher than usual, and not just the ones carved into all the bamboo. Jinder and Randy's WWE Title simply had to be their final battle, whilst hope sprung that Nakamura and Styles would win their respective feuds to set up a monster secondary title clash at the summer's biggest show.

Featuring prisons, patriots and perplexing puzzlers, Battleground offered little to suggest that the upcoming days of summer won't be as lazy and hazy as they're starting to look.

The match of the night was executed with such staggering simplicity that it beggars belief WWE are incapable of producing a similar level of quality elsewhere on the card.

Unabashed babyfaces that they now are, The New Day were electric in victory over former champions The Usos, the former champions themselves experiencing something of a career renaissance since turning heel shortly after arriving on SmackDown Live!

With Big E patrolling the arena floor and Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods taking care of the heavy lifting, the challengers were able to be high-flying babyfaces cast against the similarly dynamic but altogether more conniving champions.

In the modern era, the 'formula' tag team match is as a rarity and delight. So purely structured and loyally followed because of how sensational it is at working a crowd into a frenzy, the face-in-peril > recovery > chase for the win pathway was expertly followed after Jimmy and Jey flattened Kingston with a powerbomb on the floor.

Woods showed incredible resilience as the bedraggled lone wolf, battling out of a host of seemingly fatal predicaments, including an outstanding false finish in which he ate a brutal superkick off a springboard elbow.

Always better with the belts, The New Day are now at last where they belong again, thus possibly commencing a brand new quest to break their own remarkable longevity record.