7 Most Insane Things Happening In Wrestling Right Now (May 5)
The last days of kayfabe.
WWE Payback was a B-level pay-per-view both nominally and in quality.
The decision to put Alexa Bliss over hometown hero Bayley should classify as insane - but it was standard, spiteful WWE fare. Vince McMahon likes to bury babyfaces in their hometown not because he's malicious (of course not) but because the heel benefits from generating a more emotive strand of heat...which they have absolutely no chance of maintaining even a day later because WWE tends to promote shows in different cities each night. The alternative - giving the audience what they want and ensuring return business - isn't a more attractive proposition.
The finish of Seth Rollins Vs. Samoa Joe was designed to be inconclusive because very few feuds last for just one pay-per-view match. Rollins got his Payback, but there's always a Backlash and then a Battleground for the rubber match. Quite where Jerry Lewis fits into that is anybody's guess. The result of the Kevin Owens Vs. Chris Jericho United States Title bout was bizarre, but nothing out of WWE's usual 50/50 norm. The match itself was solid, particularly the finish - and it set the tone for the rest of the night.
Nothing was amazing, nothing was downright terrible - with one horrific exception...
7. Jerry Lee Lewis Called...
Has there been a worse name for a WWE show - in its entire history - than Great Balls of Fire?
In Your House: Beware of Dog was so terrible that it missed the definite article, and even if that is the more widely used American phrasing, the show was built around the British Bulldog's challenge of Shawn Michaels' WWF Championship. The Washington DC-hosted Capitol Punishment was a risible pun, but even if it only murdered R-Truth's main event prospects, there was at least some connotation of violence.
Both are nowhere near as incongruous as 'Great Balls of Fire', the new name for the RAW-exclusive pay-per-view event scheduled for July 9.
You can almost picture McMahon orgasmically frothing at the mouth at the thought of the mooted Brock Lesnar Vs. Braun Strowman main event, channelling his New Generation carny bluster in a production meeting and using the last wider pop cultural reference he remembers to describe it. That's not me being facetious; we are discussing a man who scripted millennial babyface sensation Roman Reigns to say "sufferin' succotash!" in 2015. The phrase was introduced by a cartoon character in the 1940s. Great Balls of Fire was penned by Jerry Lewis in 1957, so McMahon has caught up on a decade in the meantime, at least.
Look out for Braun Vs. Brock II to take place on WWE Ain't No Mountain High Enough, coming to you live later this year.