So a lot has been said this week of the ongoing best of 7 match between The Elite and Death Triangle and how tricky these overindulgent teams will find it to have 7 consecutive matches that don’t feel like repeats. I've watched the first two matches of that series and I've already had my fill, and when we all know this is leading to The Elite regaining the titles in the 7th match there's not much of a pull here for me to continue watching the series. Instead I’ll spend my time rewatching a best of seven series from the (recent) past from two great wrestlers, Sheamus and Cesaro, as they found themselves at an impasse in their careers in the hope I'll find it more rewarding. Sheamus was back as a singles midcard wrestler after the League of Nations fell apart, while Cesaro was sporting the 007 rip away tuxedo's and had been feuding over the Intercontinental Championship on Smackdown before his draft to Monday Night Raw in the latest brand split attempt. My memory of WWE in the second half of 2016 was that Smackdown absolutely rocked, while Raw absolutely sucked outside of some Sasha and Charlotte matches, but surely this series would have been a highlight for the Raw brand during this time. Funnily enough Cesaro and Sheamus had two singles matches on Raw in early August with Cesaro winning both of them, so if you want you could consider this a best of 9 series.
But I would prefer not to write 9 reviews, so I'm not counting those.
***MATCH 1***
So this best of 7 series is kicking off like Elite Vs Death Triangle
at a PPV, however these guys are sentenced to the TWO HOUR PRE-SHOW where this
match would have been a welcome relief from Booker T and Jerry Lawler breaking down the hot prospect Dolph
Ziggler’s chances of becoming WWE Champion.
We get around about 15 minutes of action here (just one network commercial break to temporarily break up proceedings)
and it’s obviously a very good standard of action. They do some quick finisher teases at the
start with the Brogue Kick and neutraliser attempts dodged and countered. The theme of the match is that these are two
very evenly matched wrestlers who keep cancelling each other out. They beat the hell out of each other inside
and outside of the ring and look to hit their big power moves when they
can. The highlight of the match had to
be Cesaro doing his impression of Fenix and jumping from
the steel post to the top rope displaying great balance and coming off with a gorgeous crossbody. For a man of Cesaro’s size to jump onto the
top rope and not fuck up the spot is impressive. The Brogue Kick is countered into a
sharpshooter attempt, but Sheamus jams a thumb in Cesaro’s eye to escape, posts
him, and then lands the Brogue Kick to win the match. Sheamus gets off to a 1-0 advantage in the
series, but he has to cheat in order to get there.
Overall we're off to a good start here. This felt more like a very good TV match rather than a blowaway PPV affair, and on a night where AJ Styles and John Cena had an excellent match and Brock Lesnar busted open Randy Orton hardway in the main event, this wasn't the time for them to steal the headlines with their series. A big tick in this series’ box is that there was no finisher
kick out in the opening match. That’s a great thing to have in the back pocket
for future finishes or big nearfalls. I
don’t want to feel like I’ve already seen these two do everything they could
possibly do to one another in the first match.
No comments:
Post a Comment