KEVIN OWENS vs. DEAN AMBROSE "LAST MAN STANDING MATCH": Good match. And these two have been facing each other a million times in the last month, so it's nice to know it's good enough to not get sick of (kind of how you never got sick of seeing Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins during their endless feud). They used Singapore canes. Owens power-bombed Ambrose through two sitting-up chairs. Ambrose delivered a top rope elbow through Owens on a ringside table. The genius finale had Owens on the top rope ready to flip onto Ambrose who was laying on a bunch of chairs set up. Ambrose got up and pushed Owens from the top rope and through two tables set up on top of each other at ringside. Good opener. Ambrose retained the IC title. *** (out of ****)
THE USO'S vs. THE NEW DAY: This was about as good as a Smackdown match. The crowd tonight was total insider wrestling fans. They booed The Uso's and cheered The New Day. The New Day retained the tag titles when Big E. caught a leaping Uso off the top rope and slammed him and pinned him. Entertaining but average. **
KALISTO vs. ALBERTO DEL RIO: Kalisto did some cool, high-flying moves...but Del Rio is so fucking boring. Kalisto won the title clean after delivering a second Salida Del Sol. Kalisto winning would be a big deal (it was for the U.S. title) if he hadn't already won it on RAW (he quickly lost it on Smackdown). Bringing Del Rio back was a major mistake. *1/2
BECKY LYNCH vs. CHARLOTTE: The best part? After Ric Flair interfered to cause Charlotte to retain the Women's title...Sasha Banks came out to a big crowd pop. She kicked Lynch out of the ring and then turned on Charlotte and put her in a submission hold. I guess it's a good thing that the Women's division is more relevant than usual...but the problem is all the best matches with the Diva's are happening in NXT. *1/2
THE ROYAL RUMBLE (TRIPLE H): The favorite won, even if HHH was unannounced and entered as the surprise #30. The biggest deal was AJ Styles debuting in the WWE at #3. He got big crowd chants all night. Kevin Owens eliminated him about halfway through. The big story line was that Roman Reigns was defending his title and entered at #1. During the match, Vince and The League of Nations came out and dragged Reigns under the ropes, beat him up, then Rusev ran across the announce tables and splashed onto Reigns and through the collapsing French announce table. Reigns was taken to the back by the EMT's and later came back out looking perfectly fine. Brock Lesnar was in the match. Unfortunately it was only to set up a Wrestlemania match with Bray Wyatt that no one wants to see. The Wyatt Family teamed up to eliminate Lesnar. The final three were Ambrose, HHH, and Reigns. HHH tossed Reigns out. This was set up so that Reigns and HHH weren't left alone. Reigns was booed all night. They didn't want HHH to be cheered since he's the evil heel. They knew Ambrose would be cheered and he was. Manipulating the live crowd so often lately just to protect Reigns has to tell the WWE something, right? Like...maybe he isn't the guy? Either way, Wrestlemania has Lesnar vs. Wyatt and HHH vs. Reigns and those are two extremely lame match ups. This Rumble was entertaining in spots. It had too much of the usual guys-walking-around-fake-punching filler as usual. Seeing AJ Styles on the big stage was pretty cool...but knowing that this year we won't be seeing him in any NJPW masterpieces just breaks my heart. **1/2
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