Sheamus & Alberto Del Rio vs Roman Reigns & Bray Wyatt (WWE, 4-11-2016)

WWE Monday Night Raw, Los Angeles, CA

That match. The one with that famous spot that we all loved, whether you were a Bray Wyatt fan or not. Bringing this episode of Raw up, this was four days after Blackjack Mulligan, Bray’s grandfather, had passed.

Roman Reigns is eight days into his new reign as WWE champion, beating Triple H at WrestleMania 32. He’s not being received terribly well as the conquering hero here in LA when he comes out to speak mid-show. Long story short, he is interrupted by the League of Nations — Sheamus! Rusev! Alberto Del Rio! Bad News Wade the King is not with them because he was kicked out the week prior.

Long story short, they’ve got Roman in their sights, and they eventually rush the ring. Then JIK! It’s the Wyatt Family! Bray Wyatt, Erick Rowan, and Braun Strowman are the group at this point. They have their problems with the League, and they clear them out fast.

Roman isn’t sure what to do here, because obviously he has his own pretty extensive history with Bray and the Wyatt Family. Then yo yo yo yo it’s Kendall McMahon to order Roman and Bray to team against Sheamus and Del Rio. “In that very ring” — remember?! Like from older times??

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

The Shield vs Wyatt Family (WWE, 5-5-2014)

WWE Monday Night Raw, Albany, NY

This one wasn’t requested, this is on the house. The fourth and final Wyatt Family vs Shield match, the night after the Shield beat Evolution at Extreme Rules.

As Authority-ordered punishment, Raw started with Dean Ambrose having to defend his United States title in a 20-man battle royal, which he lost, last eliminated by Sheamus. After the battle royal, HHH popped out there to order a Shield vs Wyatt Family match later in the night, further punishment for the lads.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Wyatt Family vs The Shield (WWE, 4-8-2014)

WWE Main Event, Lafayette, LA

A request. Two days after WrestleMania and third of the Wyatt Family vs Shield matches of 2014, with the Wyatts having won both of the first two at Elimination Chamber and the March 3 Raw, the former seeing the Wyatts simply out-war the Shield with a stronger, more cohesive plan of attack, and then the latter seeing Seth Rollins quit on his team.

The second match was partially done, I reasonably (I think!) suspect, because they needed a hot match for Chicago to not shit their pants about the departed CM Punk for the entire three hours. This one was partially done, I think, because WWE were trying to half-heartedly make Main Event appointment television as a live show on the newly-launched WWE Network, and this could be a hook. But neither of those things come together that way if the first match hadn’t been an instant classic, either, so it’s not a bad thing.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Wyatt Family vs The Shield (WWE, 3-3-2014)

WWE Monday Night Raw, Rosemont, IL

A request. About a month ago, I wrote about the first Wyatt Family vs Shield six-man tag from Elimination Chamber 2014, and revisiting it made me realize not just that it was great then and still is, but that it was basically the perfect execution of everything the modern “WWE style” means to be. That is the goal. That is what they hope for everything and anything to attain. Not realistic, of course, but you always want to aim high.

Today we learned that Windham Rotunda, aka Bray Wyatt, has died at age 36. It is a tragic loss, especially for someone to go that young. The older I get, the more I fully understand how truly little time that is.

One thing I’ve talked about online, probably here and also on Twitter and whatnot, is that I sort of fell out of watching wrestling regularly between about 2008 and 2013. I’d keep up and check in, but I wasn’t fully plugged in at all. I came back in the summer of 2013, right when Bray and the Wyatt Family were hitting WWE TV, and I immediately took to them. They had a special energy, and as much as Harper and Rowan played their parts extremely well, if it weren’t for Bray being the leader and having the sort of charisma he did, it could have been totally flat, just not really worked, a forgettable little thing like a million others.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Wyatt Family vs The Shield (WWE, 2-23-2014)

WWE Elimination Chamber, Minneapolis, MN

A request! I’ve actually kinda-sorta been meaning to get around to doing the four Shield vs Wyatt Family six-man tags of 2014, and now this request came in, and thank you for making it the first of them so I wouldn’t have had to immediately watch this one and then anything else that came before in the series. I appreciate this, because my brain is such that I just might not have been able to do that.

Anyway, I loved this series of matches, and then the Shield vs Evolution matches from the same time frame. It was just a real golden era of “trios matches” in WWE.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Roman Reigns & Solo Sikoa vs The Usos (WWE, 7-1-2023)

WWE Money in the Bank, London, England

The Bloodline Saga is not the pinnacle of wrestling storytelling for me. For a person like me, it has had its ups and downs. There’s a lot I’ve really loved about it, though, even if it grates my sensibilities a little bit, in part because it’s just not exactly what I most want out of wrestling, as a person aging out of being very important at all as a “consumer.”

So what I’ve tried to do in recent months especially, with the stakes and tension ramped up, is think of it as a WWE version of — and man, I don’t mean to do a “cinema” thing here — something like the 1956 film Giant, or the 1958 film The Big Country. These big, sweeping Hollywood epics. Flawed. Rambling and at times a little repetitive in simply filling time. Wildly melodramatic. And I am drawn to their grandiose vision, to the scale of what everyone was trying to achieve.

For wrestling, it’s all come about as close to achieving that vision as anything’s gonna. What they’ve done, I think, is take fanfiction-type ideas and distilled them into something that can actually be put on TV, without requiring an accompanying reference book. (So like Bray Wyatt’s last couple runs of horseshit but less fucking stupid.)

Family drama with a couple of loyal outsiders (Heyman and, for a time, Zayn) and a revolving cast of rivals trying to take down an empire. And now we are at the family’s Civil War, an implosion from within.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

REVIEW: WWE WrestleMania 39 Sunday (4-2-2023)

It’s night two of WrestleMania! What a week it’s been, friends. What a great time. All these reviews. All this stupid shit. Here’s the Ko-fi link. You ain’t gotta, of course, but it’s always truly appreciated.

Roman Reigns vs John Cena (WWE, 8-21-2021)

WWE SummerSlam, Paradise, NV

Not the world’s biggest fan of either of these guys, but their track records for delivering in big matches speak for themselves, particularly Cena, but Reigns is building his own legacy, too. Cena going for a “record” 17 world titles, which I do think is fair. Yeah, Ric Flair has 21 in reality, but a handful of those are horseshit changes that nobody acknowledged back in the day, either, because they were horseshit.

Roman Reigns vs Daniel Bryan (WWE, 4-30-2021)

WWE Smackdown, Tampa, FL

Well, it appears there’s a legitimate chance this really could be the final WWE match in Daniel Bryanson’s illustrious career, as it’s been reported his contract is seriously up. And now that I’m looking at this, they really did treat it like it at least could really be it for him in WWE, going over WrestleMania XXX and stuff, as this match has the stipulation that Bryan is gone from Smackdown if he loses.

Roman Reigns vs Edge vs Daniel Bryan (WWE, 4-11-2021)

WWE WrestleMania 37, Tampa, FL

I don’t watch WWE TV much anymore and I really don’t watch Smackdown, so I missed pretty much the entire build to this, but I kept tabs as it went by because I’m very online and on Twitter all day, and the video packages WWE do are designed to fully catch up anyone who hasn’t watched a second. I mean, WWE promos are really just for video package B-reel anymore.