8 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Extreme Rules 2017

2. Familiarity Breeds Excellence

the miz dean ambrose
WWE.com

WWE fans have seen Miz square off with Dean Ambrose a lot during the past year. Between their feud on SmackDown and now on Raw, they’ve battled physically and verbally over the Intercontinental Championship for six months now.

And while an easy argument can be made that these two should be forced to separate and find new dance partners, it was easy to see Sunday night what that familiarity could do for their match. Their IC title bout, which opened Extreme Rules, had a lot of solid action, with the underlying story that Ambrose couldn’t get disqualified or he’d lose his title. That provided a nice backdrop for the action, which was also bolstered by a raucous crowd.

When the stipulation was added to the match, you knew it could go one of two ways: either it would be groan-inducing, or it would work really well. And having Miz get desperate enough at the end to have Maryse slap him to try to draw a DQ was a great bit. John Cone played his part perfectly, threatening to DQ Ambrose multiple times, which got the fans to lose their minds at the thought of Dean losing the IC title like that.

While many might be tired of this rivalry, the match itself was a good one and a solid opener.

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Contributor
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.