6 Ups & 2 Downs From WWE Bash In Berlin (Results & Review)

Downs...

2. Main Event Snooze

WWE Bash in Berlin Gunther Randy Orton
WWE

There will be some praise forthcoming for Gunther versus Randy Orton, but one sizable part of it deserves criticism.

The World Heavyweight Championship main event really could be broken into three parts: the opening half, the next 35%, and then the finishing sequence. The first half was excellent, and the finish was solid, but that middle portion dragged something fierce.

The story of the match was Gunther dealing with an injured right arm, while Orton nursed a surgically repaired back and neck. The problem was that Orton, who at his nadir as a main-eventer was politely labeled “methodical” in his approach, slowed his style down to the point where he was spending a good minute or two between each move.

Their fight outside where Orton slowly dragged the steps over so he could drop Gunther through the German announce desk seemed to take a solid five minutes to build up to a mediocre spot at best. And then Orton posed. It felt like 2015 all over again.

In the greater context of the entire match, this wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t dramatic or intense or anything like that. It was just slow and draggy.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.