HIT: Brock Lesnar squashes WWE Champ John Cena Yeah, wow. Lesnar, the former WWE and UFC champ, dominated Cena, hitting a reported 16 German suplexes and a pair of F5s, one 45 seconds into the match, the second as the finisher.
Interesting booking to have Lesnar win this way. There had been some feeling before SummerSlam that Lesnar was going to win, but as a part-timer would lose a return match to Cena next month to get the strap back on the company’s biggest face heading into the fall.
It’s hard to imagine that the way this one played out. Cena barely got any offense in. Not even one five-knuckle shuffle, just a quick AA and an STF late in the match before the finishing sequence.
Lesnar is now the monster heel champ. WWE will feed him a line of faces between now and WrestleMania 31 to build toward Lesnar-Roman Reigns.
MISS: Roman Reigns Dude is still in over his head as a top face. Reigns is over with fans on looks and looks alone. He is terrible on the mic and below-average in the ring. We saw that part of it in his match with Orton, who dragged Reigns into a three-star match, but that’s as far as a supreme in-ring talent like Orton could get us.
Reigns has some time between now and WM31 to get better on the mic and in the ring to earn the strap they’re going to put on him next April. He has a lot of work to do.
HIT: The Bella Twin Swerve Nice writing and execution on the new feud between Brie Bella and her sister, Nikki, that came out of the Brie Bella-Stephanie McMahon match. It had seemed clear that Stephanie was due for the win, and that it would come with a schmozz ending, but nobody saw Nikki being the schmozz with her heel turn.
Stephanie did her job well, and now she can exit stage left and let the Bellas fight each other for a while.
MISS: What happened to the Daniel Bryan affair? This you can’t like. Just six days ago on Raw, Stephanie brought out some chick they claimed was Daniel Bryan’s physical therapist to claim that she’d had an affair with Bryan as a way of getting at Brie. Aside from the montage that introduced fans watching SummersSlam to the details of the feud between Stephanie and Brie, we got nothing on the supposed affair Sunday night. It was as if the Raw revelation never happened.
HIT: Bray Wyatt elevated in win over Chris Jericho Jericho, once again, did his job, raising a new superstar with his presence, putting on a four-star match with him on a pay-per-view, then losing by clean fall at the appropriate time.
Nice addition to the elevation by having Luke Harper and Erick Rowan banned from ringside to clear the way for the clean fall.
Wyatt now owns PPV wins in 2014 over Daniel Bryan, John Cena and Chris Jericho. Not bad for a guy who has spent exactly zero days this year in the WWE title picture.
QUICK HITS/MISSES
- Dolph Ziggler wins the I-C Title: If Ziggs is finally over his concussion issues, he could be due a big push.
- Rusev wins the Flag Match: And what was the point of that again? To play the Russian national anthem on a live broadcast? At least give us a run-in to set up Rusev’s next opponent.
- Psige wins the Divas Title: This was a logical next step for the Paige-AJ Lee storyline, which is not over by a long shot.
– Column by Chris Graham
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