WWE BATTLEGROUND

Sunday, July 20th, 2014
Tampa, FL

Crazy that it's July 20th already. Right? Summer flying by. Didn't help that the WWE's annual great ppv, Money in the Bank, was pushed earlier to June. & this, Battleground, is an odd duck. CM Punk quit, Daniel Bryan is hurt, no Brock Lesnar on this B-show...and Battleground is between MITB and Summerslam. So...yeah. The opener and main event were good. The rest was bad. So it goes.

THE USO'S vs. LUKE HARPER & ERIK ROWAN "2 OUT OF 3 FALLS": Great match. The first two falls were so-so but the 3rd fall was epic and awesome. These two teams really click, which is good. ***

SETH ROLLINS vs. DEAN AMBROSE: Never happened. Ambrose beat up Rollins backstage so HHH barred him from the building and canceled the match. This didn't prevent Ambrose from attacking Rollins in the ring later and then in the parking lot later on. Not sure why they didn't have a match. I guess to build up their match at Summerslam.

AJ LEE vs. PAIGE: Man...Paige botched a ton of spots. Probably because Vince McMahon doesn't like her and she knows it and her dreams of being a WWE star are perhaps over. -No Stars-

RUSEV vs. JACK SWAGGER: So Rusev, who's Bulgarian, has a Russian spokeswoman that comes to ring with him and praises Vladimir Putin and puts down the U.S. This is all well and good, but she mentioned something in the news and American propaganda. On Thursday, pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine shot down a plane that killed 298 people. So of course the news had a field day with this saying the WWE made fun of a plane crash or something stupid. That was realistically the only interesting thing about this match and it not only happened a day later but involved pre-match talk. Sigh. 1/2*

CHRIS JERICHO vs. BRAY WYATT: Jericho is back. & he won! These two just didn't mesh at all. *

BATTLE ROYAL (THE MIZ): The winner won the IC title. Sheamus and Dolph Ziggler battled last and Ziggler won! But no...The Miz had gone under the ropes and waited. He came in and tossed Ziggler over the ropes and won. Nobody likes The Miz. So why is he here? *1/2

JOHN CENA vs. ROMAN REIGNS vs. KANE vs. RANDY ORTON: A good match. The end had a lot of big moves and near-falls and it was exciting. Not as good as a Daniel Bryan vs. ? title match would've been but this is what we're stuck with. **1/2