11 Reasons WWE Battleground 2017 Was Absolutely Terrible

6. A Flag Match In 2017

Rusev John Cena Battleground Flag Match
WWE.com

The flag match concept has been outdated for a very long time. WWE still goes to the evil foreigner well with some success, but matches based on nationalist flag-waving have no place in 2017. They had no place in 2007.

This was a humongous waste of the talents of John Cena and Rusev, but more on that shortly. The rules of the match were only explained before the bout itself, taking an entirely obsolete concept and changing it up for reasons that are almost unexplainable. The two men were fighting to get their respective flag to the top of the stage. This basically meant that the match was lazy brawling and slow walking.

How much did these flags weigh? Wrestling must be watched with a pinch of salt, but this was utterly stupid. Why would fans care about the USA getting one over those dastardly Bulgarians? The same goes the other way - Bulgarians generally don't care about the US in 2017.

This was a match from the '80s transplanted into 2017. It didn't work, it was never going to work, it simply could not work.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.