The show opened up with the most beautiful Ultimate Warrior montage. Genuinely moving. If you haven’t seen it already, the WWE’s tribute documentary to Warrior is tremendous and his sit down interview on his DVD is equally fascinating.
Big E v Titus O’Neil
Weirdly it
feels like both of these superstars are going nowhere, despite Big E being WWE
Intercontinental Champion. They’re both huge, strong, charismatic, good workers
but there’s nothing for them right now.
They go back
and forth (Big E actually leap frogs Titus in the early going – Titus is 6’ 3”)
and then Big E hits a flying shoulder barge before getting caught in a scoop
slam by Titus. Titus dominates with boots and then amazingly picks Big E up and
flings him to one side like a rag doll. Crazy how strong these two men are.
Leg drop
from Titus leads to a two count before we go to a rear chin lock. The crowd
chant for Big E who powers out of the rest hold before being slaughtered by an
enormous meat hook clothesline. Another two count and Titus goes back to a chin
lock. Not sure Titus quite knows how to pace a match just yet but he certainly
gets heat from the crowd who are behind Big E.
Titus
dominates and taunts Big E before E turns things around and hits a side suplex
and his big splash. The straps go down and he hits the Big Ending for the pin.
Strange
little match in some ways. Big E got beaten up for four minutes until he got
angry enough to turn things around.
Winner: Big E via pinfall in 4:57
Raw Rebound this week showed The Usos against Batista and Orton
plus an Adam Rose video and the Bray and Cena promos from Monday.
Los Matadores (w/ El Torito) v
3MB (w/ Heath Slater)
Deep sigh.
This match again on Superstars. I’ve lost count of how many times it’s been the
longer match on the show. It’s normally fun, entertaining and finishes strongly
but there are so many other guys on the roster doing nothing every week.
Drew and
Diego start things off. Clean shaven Drew is still weird to me. He has a good
look and certainly works well but he’s stuck in lower card tag team mediocrity.
Tilt-a-wirl headscissors on Drew leads to a two count; side Russian leg sweep
gets Drew down again but he gets over and tags in Jinder. Quick tags between
the two until Drew sweeps Diego’s leg, he goes to the floor selling it and we
head to a Total Divas ad.
Jinder and
Drew work over Diego after the commercial (although Tom Phillips on commentary
keeps calling him Fernando). Eventually, Diego fights back with a neck breaker
and an elbow blocking McIntyre. Drew finds a way out again and continues to
work over Diego’s left leg. Diego sells like he has torn his ACL until the ref
intervenes. Drew uses every trick in the book to hurt the leg, using the ropes
and quick tags with Mahal who smacks the knee outside on the apron. A pair of near
falls from Mahal leads to a double team suplex off the ropes from 3MB. The
crowd start to really get behind the frustrated Diego who is kicked and stomped
repeatedly. It is really quite brutal, actually.
Diego
eventually blocks, plants a DDT on McIntyre whilst hopping on one leg. He crawls
to make the tag and Fernando gets the heat and runs wild. He does a springboard
moonsault on to Jinder, covers him but Drew makes the save. The action breaks
down as Drew gets thrown outside and Jinder and Fernando ‘collide’ in the ring.
Possibly the worst collision I’ve ever seen.
Nice finish
here. Torito and Heath are both cheerleading until El Torito crotches Heath on
the top turnbuckle. Distraction allows Fernando to reverse Mahal’s attempts and
he hits a legsweep DDT for the win.
Winners: Los Matadores via
pinfall in 7:50
The show
ends with a montage video to hype Evolution v The Shield and Kane v Daniel
Bryan and the end of the 3 on 11 match from Raw.
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