7 Ups And 3 Downs From WWE NXT TakeOver: Toronto

2. Stipulation Rendered Meaningless

The moment it was announced that Paul Ellering would be suspended above the ring in a shark cage during the finals of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, smart fans already had to be thinking about how the manager would get involved in the match to help his charges, the Authors of Pain.

Stipulations such as being locked up at ringside or handcuffed to the ringpost almost always guarantee that the person being restrained either gets free or manages to help his/her friends. Otherwise, why wouldn’t you just ban the person from ringside altogether?

However, Ellering’s only involvement in the match was the drop a chain to Rezar, only for him to miss when trying to strike TM-61’s Nick Miller, with the chain going flying into the crowd. Moments later, the AOP won the Dusty Classic without any interference or foul play.

That’s not a knock against the Authors of Pain, that they should have cheated. The problem here (and it’s a somewhat minor one) is that there literally was no point to Ellering being suspended in the cage and dropping a chain. If the chain factored into the match in some fashion, that would have made sense. But you could’ve locked Ellering in his dressing room and gotten the same result.