10 Things WWE Regrets About Fastlane
6. A Match That Did Nothing For Nobody
A monumental disappointment, this strange 2017 opener underscored several of the ills that plague the company.
Samoa Joe decisively defeated Sami Zayn in a slog of a match - a sentence you'd absolutely not read, had any other company with the funds to promote both wrestlers had promoted it. Joe, in the build, proclaimed that he had arrived on Monday Night RAW to "make a statement".
Broad in its objective - and that's fine, the idea was to put the recently-debuted Joe over as a killer - even this objective failed. This wasn't a gruesome, head-turning lightning squash but rather a drizzle of slow-paced offence that all too effectively helped us to realise why Triple H had chosen Joe as his chosen 'Destroyer'. This methodical opener, wrestled in the trademark WWE gear that is somehow imposed upon Vladimir Kozlov and Jinder Mahal and Samoa Joe (!), was a very Triple H match. Almost gruelling in its pace, we weren't left with the idea that Samoa Joe was anything of the sort.
It was a match held under an old mentality, undermined by a pointlessly extended duration necessitated for the most cynical of reasons. All matches need to go long to create an artificial impression of the Network's popularity. And, if you don't like it, you're already subscribed to the Network.
In many and all respects, this was definitive of its circular era, at least.