3 Ups & 2 Downs From WWE 205 Live (Dec 20, 2016)

1. A Quality Main Event

The tag team main event was the best match WWE has promoted all week; handily eclipsing anything on RAW and SmackDown!, it advanced storylines, reinforced characters and developed others.

The narrative was focussed around Neville, and his new role as a powerhouse was perfect casting. The massively-muscled Neville, in order to differentiate himself from TJ Perkins and Rich Swann, emphasised his scary dead-lift power game to underscore his big dog status. He still used the Red Arrow, but that, too, was logical. The man looks invincible. Kendrick, meanwhile, looked on at Swann’s plight with a pithy smirk, underlining his conniving opportunist character. Perkins was also decimated by Neville, and while neither face generated much in the way of sympathetic heat, the foundations, slowly, are being erected. Then again, the embarrassing empty seats likely didn't help.

A triumph of body language and character progression, WWE even managed to avoid one of their more annoying quirks by booking Perkins to take the pinfall. Swann was protected. After last week’s episode and the events of Roadblock, he needed it.

Though the upcoming Neville Vs. Swann feud promises much, here’s hoping that Perkins and Kendrick aren’t left to resume hostilities. That feud is as stale as Daviri’s gimmick.

Promisingly, WWE did run a vignette hyping the return of a man who might question Kendrick’s claim that he was the origin of the Cruiserweight style…