7 Ups And 5 Downs From WWE Great Balls Of Fire

5. An Explosive First Fall

sheamus matt hardy
WWE.com

When WWE books a match with multiple falls (iron man, Survivor Series, 2/3 falls), it’s always interesting to see how they book the first fall. Does it come 10 minutes into the bout, or does it come fairly quickly?

In the 30-minute iron man match for the Raw Tag Team Championships, the champs used a little distraction to great effect. Sheamus was starting out the bout with Matt Hardy, but Cesaro entered the ring and ran at Matt, veering off at the last second. Sheamus capitalized on the distraction and nailed a Brogue Kick for a one-fall lead 16 seconds into the match.

It was a tremendous move that showed the heels to be calculating and immediately put the babyface Hardys in the underdog spot for the entire match. It was just an awesome setup to what was an incredible match.

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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.