WWE Clash Of Champions 2017: Star Ratings For All 7 Matches
5. Fatal 4-Way Match - SmackDown Live Tag Team Championship Match
Spare a thought for those on the smaller side of the atlantic.
B-level WWE pay-per-views are broadcast between 1AM and 4AM, necessitating either an all-nighter or a split sleep shift. In any event, we watch through blurry eyes, with a sense of physical detachment, willing the performers to wake us up.
The first two acts of this match felt like a lucid waking nightmare. WWE excels at the multi-man formula, to such an extent that they can throw in the most limited workers and obscure their weaknesses. No performer of the eight here even remotely resembled that descriptor, and yet, WWE contrived to f*ck up an un-f*ck-up-able formula. The revised rules saw two matches unfold at once (!) - why, we'd have no idea even after a Sunday morning lie-in - yielding both confusion and apathy. A would-be whirlwind turned surreal still image, it was as if Brian 'Road Dogg' James simply felt like triggering his Twitter critics.
What's absolutely insane is that, if any match required two referees, it was this.
The finish was hot, so there's that. Rusev emerged as the star everybody but his employer perceives him as, and Chad Gable's jaw-dropping Chaos Theory demolition of the Bulgarian Brute was the stuff of which wrestling, at its very best, is made.
Ultimately, the talent nearly rescued the match from the crippling crutches of creative. A potent metaphor for both the show, and the company that promoted it.
Star Rating: **