6 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Payback 2016

4. A Hard-Fought Victory

dean ambrose payback
WWE.com

Chris Jericho and Dean Ambrose had a tough act to follow Sunday night after the Kevin Owens/Sami Zayn masterpiece and the Intercontinental Championship match that saw Owens/Zayn spill over into it.

But the two had a match that built slowly and picked up steam toward the end. It wasn€™t as flashy as some of the other matches on the card, but it worked pretty well with two veterans who know how to put together a good match. The ending was somewhat unique to WWE, with Ambrose fighting to lock in his finishing maneuver, Dirty Deeds, kneeing Y2J in the face repeatedly until he could drop him with the DDT.

That sort of ending wasn€™t flashy, but it looked more €œrealistic€ than slapping it on out of nowhere. It made it look like Ambrose had to battle to get the three count, rather than getting lucky and hitting the move. That€™s a lot different that we see most of the time for a finish.

Hopefully, Ambrose€™s victory becomes something he builds on and he continues his winning ways.

Advertisement
Contributor
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.