Beast in the East consisted of five matches, two of which were marquee bouts, while a third featured a legendary wrestler who only sporadically competes. Any of those three matches would have been ideal to close out the show. It was understandable why Chris Jericho versus Neville opened the show, but neither of the other two matches Brock Lesnar versus Kofi Kingston or Kevin Owens versus Finn Balor were the main event. That honor went to a makeshift tag match pitting John Cena and Dolph Ziggler against Kane and King Barrett. To wit, there was no existing feud (or big alliance) between any of the competitors. It was just a house show main event to send the fans home happy. It also was a 25-minute match that saw two extended heat segments on both Cena and Ziggler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hELaOikrIRs No one bought Kane and Barrett, two guys who have lost a great deal of matches this year, as legit threats, and without any kind of feud, it was just a decent tag team match that could have and should have taken place in the middle of the show. The NXT Championship match, which was an exciting and rewarding bout, should have closed out the show. At the very least, they could have shaved 10 minutes off the match and added Cesaro versus Diego to the telecast.
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.
