6 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Clash At The Castle: Scotland (Results & Review)

1. Killing The Country

At one time, WWE was the living embodiment of the wrestling expression “killing the town,” putting on a bad show where they insulted fans by having hometown heroes lose in embarrassing fashion.

That seemingly had died off in recent years with Vince McMahon gone, but Saturday, they opted to royally piss off the entire country of Scotland by building Clash at the Castle around Drew McIntyre returning home for the first-ever WWE PLE there, only to have CM Punk screw him out of the World Heavyweight Championship.

On paper, this story makes perfect sense: Punk and McIntyre have been locked in a bitter feud, trying to one-up and make the other as miserable as humanly possible. Punk running out pretending to be a referee to screw over Drew was very logical.

However, this also has the chance to piss off fans, rather than make them want to tune it. It left a bad taste in many fans’ mouths in the arena and spoiled the mood. What makes it worse is that there were other ways to involve Punk without resorting to this result.

As Michael Sidgwick noted, the SummerSlam ’97 finish of guest ref Shawn Michaels accidentally hitting Undertaker and having to count rival Bret Hart’s pinfall was right there to lift (it’s been far more than seven years, so the statute of limitations has passed). Imagine Punk going to hit McIntyre and waffling Priest by accident, and then Drew reluctantly takes the pin to regain what was rightfully his.

Or maybe Punk could have intentionally helped McIntyre win, just so he had an asterisk next to this title win, and then he would get to challenge Drew for the title. Either of those options would have worked better than a straight screwjob to piss off fans.

McIntyre going berserk on Raw Monday night might alleviate some of this, but it still felt like the wrong call at the wrong time.