The Fabulous Rhodes Boys and the No-Finish of Doom: WWE Battleground Review

The Rhodes Boys will ride again, if you weeeeeell
Photo Credit: WWE.com

TH Style, yo

Highlights:

• In the pre-show, Dolph Ziggler took advantage of an exposed knee and parlayed it into a Zig Zag on Damien Sandow for the victory.
• Using a chair to both Pillmanize Rob van Dam's arm and as a base for the cross armbreaker, Alberto del Rio retained the World Championship via tap-out.
• In a tag match, the Real Americans defeated Great Khali and Santino Marella, as Antonio Cesaro pinned Khali after a giant swing.
• Curtis Axel defended the Intercontinental Championship over R-Truth with his neckbreaker DDT hybrid.
• Using Tamina Snuka womping on Nikki Bella as a distraction, AJ Lee retained her Divas Championship over Brie Bella via roll-up.
• In a scuffle that saw Dusty Rhodes laying a Bionic Elbow on Dean Ambrose, Goldust and Cody Rhodes defeated Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins to get their jobs back. Cody pinned Rollins with a Cross Rhodes.
• Bray Wyatt countered the SOS into Sister Abigail's Kiss in his victory over Kofi Kingston.
• CM Punk defeated Ryback via low blow after Paul Heyman interference backfired.
• In the main event, The Big Show knocked out Daniel Bryan, replacement referee Scott Armstrong, and Randy Orton, causing the match to end in a no-contest. The WWE Championship is still vacant.

General Observations:

• Tensai on the pre-show panel in hipster glasses and a suit, exposing his slight Boston Southie accent? Sometimes, I think WWE is a manifestation of what the mainstream media blithely labels as "weird Twitter."
• I understand that wrestlers love ribbing each other, but does JBL have to keep referencing that Dolph Ziggler's elbow spam caused Jerry Lawler to have a heart attack? Yeah, I guess Lawler's okay with the reference, so I shouldn't complain. But I do feel super creeped out.
• Ziggler at one point launched himself crotch first into Damien Sandow that I thought it was part of a sexy new shift in character. Lots of crotch thrusting in WWE nowadays. I dig it.
• Sandow injuring his knee after pulling the kneepad down was a clever way of keeping him out of cashing in, although as WWE would show in the next match, the World Champion would not be worse for wear.
• El Torito sexually harassing Renee Young seemed funny at the time, but reflection always seems to make me feel gross about the entire Los Matadores act.
• I did chuckle at the "He's aggressive" line, though.
• Tensai put on a beard to make his pick of Daniel Bryan in the pre-show. If he stays with WWE just to be their pre-show version of Lee Corso, then I'm good.
• "Rules are pinatas, made to be broken." I don't even, Lawler...
• Alberto del Rio went hard into the ladder on a Rob van Dam corner whip and then as the blood cherry on the broken bone sundae, he went all the way over the top rope. Man, he doesn't want to walk in three years, does he?
• I will say RVD came with his workin' boots on in this match. Best I've seen him against someone not named Samoa Joe in like ten years.
• How would YOU follow up beating a dude senseless with an aluminum trash can? If you're del Rio, you break out the fishhook. Folks, that reason is why I love the man.
• Ricardo Rodriguez finally got in on the action with his old bucket. Ah, synergy. His involvement and the entire exchange between him and del Rio was a great close to a chapter in their combined story.
• Zeb Colter cutting promos on illegal Canadian immigration was definitely the best Tea Party promo ever, because everyone sane knows no one from Canada would want to emigrate here, despite what the Ted Cruz crowd might think.
• I admit that I chuckled at Hornswoggle's garter snake, but I took even greater joy at Jack Swagger ripping it in twain.
• I got a bit scared when Antonio Cesaro took the brain chop without delivering his giant swing, but for once, Jack Swagger proved useful in his miserable existence by breaking up the pin.
• Cesaro's giant swing on Khali may have "only" gone a rotation and a half, but what a fucking rotation and a half it was. His best one yet.
• Paul Heyman facepalming at Curtis Axel continually getting near-fallen by R-Truth epitomized his entire repackaged run to date.
• Daw, Tamina Snuka wore AJ Lee's shirt to the ring. I like team synergy.
• AJ Lee skipping around the ring as a taunt is something I can get behind.
• The highlight of the Rhodes family promo before their match was definitely Goldust's Darth Maul-inspired facepaint. The promo was good, but that facepaint was badass.
• Full disclosure: I liked The Phantom Menace more than most people.
• Seth Rollins picked Roman Reigns out of the ring to regroup and not take damage, which totally fit in The Shield's uber-team ethic.
• That sequence led to an awesome, Mexican-standoff between the two trios on the outside of the ring. In my mind, their standoff was the beginning of a King of Trios match in my wildest dreams.
• Goldust actually HIT a somersault cross body press in the lolwut moment of the match, and then followed it up by hilariously whiffing on a regular cross body to the point where he slid right out of the ring. I actually thought that was a brilliant bit of psychology, the old dog trying a new trick desperately to get his job back.
• Reigns grabbed Goldust in a rear naked choke and barked "He can't breathe." He has a long way to go before he gets to Mark Henry levels, but I admired the effort.
• BIONIC ELBOW! BIONIC ELBOW! BAH GAWD, DADDY, DUTHTY RHODE GONNA TAKE DIS ALL DA WAY TO DA MUDDASHIP, DADDY.
• I can suspend my disbelief a whole lot in wrestling, but no way was I gonna sit there and take Dusty Rhodes and Arn Anderson embracing like they were old friends sitting down. DON'T YOU WWE FUCKS KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT 1980S JIM CROCKETT PROMOTIONS? HORSEMEN AND DUSTY HATED EACH OTHER GAWD.
• Y'know, R-Truth is due for a character shift, so him as a low rent Baptist preacher type would be a welcome change for him.
• The McMahon-Helmsley Hydra has left Brad Maddox in charge for the rest of the night? I smell shenanigans.
• Bray Wyatt doing the reverse crab walk was legit the creepiest thing he's done to date. I think he's got a great future guys, what about you?
• I was a bit tepid on the Kofi Kingston/Wyatt match, but that SOS counter into Sister Abigail's Kiss was fucking legit.
• CM Punk wore orange and black to the ring. I know he's doing this whole "Punk-tober" thing, but I'd like to think his wardrobe was a subtle way of trolling Sabres fans in the crowd by rocking Flyers colors.
• Punk and Ryback had one of the best matches of the year in a TLC setting on the first RAW of the year. This match was pretty sleepy though, even if technically sound.
• Paul Heyman's antics, whether the mic spot interrupting the Go 2 Sleep or his flailing with the kendo stick backfiring and allowing Punk to hit the low blow, made him the MVP of this match though.
• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THE POWER WENT OUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
• I tried snarking on folks who equated the outage to bad Internet pay-per-view service, and believe you me, WWE's regular PPV smokes WWN Live's iPPV service. But then I remember back to when all those folks who tried to watch WrestleMania on the Internet got hosed, and I regretted going down my path.
• Neat bit of chain wrestling in the beginning with Daniel Bryan going with the over the shoulder armbreaker three times, but with Randy Orton catching on with the third one and going right into his backbreaker.
• Orton caught a Bryan missile dropkick and plastered him with a power bomb before going into the Boston crab. I'm pretty sure Orton goes home, plays Fire Pro Wrestling and adds a new move to his arsenal each week.
• Big Show's music hit, and hey, the shenanigans had arrived! Except he not only KOed Bryan, but also the returning Scott Armstrong AND Orton. WWE ending a pay-per-view with a non-finish? Somehow, I was not surprised, but I was also not really that angry over it either.

Match of the Night: Cody Rhodes and Goldust vs. Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins - Dusty Rhodes should know a thing or two about tag team wrestling. He had the Rock 'n Roll Express battle the Midnights across the South using a tried-and-true formula built to get the most out of a crowd even without the benefit of a Ric Flair or a Magnum TA. His two sons and their black-clad foes may not have had Express attached to the back of their team names, but by God, they imported the formula straight out of the Jim Crockett Promotions B-circuit and played that Buffalo crowd like a fiddle.

From the point when the two triads stood off on the outside, teasing what could have been my dream King of Trios match in another life, until Papa Dust laid that Bionic Elbow on Dean Ambrose into son Cody delivering his best Cross Rhodes ever, this match delivered everything I could have wanted in a high stakes tag match without any gold on the line. Goldust brought his savvy. Cody Rhodes had the fire. Reigns had muscle, and Rollins? Every time he took a big move, whether it was the springboard dropkick or the Alabama Slam, he did what he does best.

On top of the big heat segments and hot tags and the shenanigans from Big Dust and Ambrose, each team didn't disappoint with furthering their own agendas. Most notably, Rollins kept the Shield-as-a-well-oiled-unit story trope alive by dragging Reigns out of the ring on a rope-run, saving him from some Rhodes-dealt damage. But no matter what, the Cross Rhodes and the ensuing celebration was what solidified this match for me. They had a specific story to tell, and they nailed every beat. Sometimes, wrestling can be so simple and yet so satisfying in said simplicity.

Overall Thoughts: Maybe I'm not super pissed at the end of this pay-per-view because the match I ordered it for delivered big time. I had no pretense of getting this show because of anything other than watching the Rhodes Boys scuffle with them paramilitary thugs, and the only way I thought the show could have been better is if that match was the main event. Clearly, the main story in WWE has revolved around Big Dust and his lads. The WWE Championship, at least for this month, wasn't getting resolved, right? Sometimes, you just have to know when to deviate from formula and shuffle each show to send the crowd home either happy or supremely swerved.

But the idea of keeping the belt vacant for at least one more night didn't bother me, mainly because we're in the point where WWE is running through pay-per-views and filling their once-a-month quota while still trying to have a nice, long build between Elimination Chamber and WrestleMania. I'm not entirely sure fans should accept this paradigm shift. If anything, maybe WWE should cut back on pay-per-views so as not to be tempted to get into these kinds of traps.

Or maybe WWE is actively trying to temper expectation for non-core pay-per-views? I don't know. I'm not in their marketing department, and I've been trying to get myself out of the habit of apologizing for what they want to do when I like their direction. In a way, while no payoff was attained with the WWE Championship, the focus may have been more on Big Show and his status as the Easy Button for what has now been termed as The Authority. He made a statement tonight. I'm not saying you have to accept a non-finish as resolution for a story thread, but how I interpret how the ending of the show went down makes me believe that even with a no-contest, we were given some warped sense of resolution.

Regardless, the show built decently to the main event before the power went out. I can't type any more good things about the Rhodes/Shield match because it was sublime, fantastic, amazing. Alberto del Rio dragged a surprisingly superlative match out of Rob van Dam (or maybe RVD just needs to be surrounded by garbage to excel?). We got R-Truth with the preacher voice. Bray Wyatt did the reverse crab walk. And GIANT SWING ON GREAT KHALI. Battleground wasn't nearly the best show of this year, but I would buy this show again just to see the Rhodes Boys bring clubberin' back into style.