7 Match Star Ratings For WWE Extreme Rules 2021
5. The Usos Vs. Street Profits - SmackDown Tag Team Championship
The best thing on the show by a considerable distance.
It's a shame one has to rate WWE pay-per-view matches like this, but it was great in spite of the fact that both teams had just worked a feature-length TV match a couple of weeks prior. It was impressive because it didn't feel like regurgitated, uninspiring content churn.
It was also impressive because it was a dramatic, urgent, well-worked match in and of itself that executed the key beats of the form - often, with a sense of restraint incomprehensible by WWE standards. In one exquisite, nerve-shredding near-fall, Montez Ford, reaching his spectacular heights, drilled Jey Uso with the Frog Splash. That complete f*ckwit Kevin Dunn actually had the nous to settle on one (1) very good camera angle for more than a second, and thus obscured Jimmy's last-nanosecond save to enhance the drama through production.
In another simple spot enhanced by its execution, Ford, who has WWE Champion potential now so let's enjoy that in six years, outwitted everybody - his opponent, the commentary team, the crowd - by popping up on the apron in a tiny window to make a tag in plain sight. That was unbelievably well-timed.
Ford's selling informed the prolonged drama in the finishing stretch, and was so convincing that he lost nothing in clean defeat. Did WWE learn a key lesson here?
Cut to 'Directed by Robert B. Weide' credit...
Star Rating: ★★★¾