By Nicholas Jason Lopez

“Notes In Observance” features random thoughts and analysis on recent television shows. Quick results can be found at the bottom of the post.

(Aired 9/21/15)

Raging Paige 

– Not even two seconds into the show and we got The Wyatt Family sounder. Bray was in all bragging mode, Roman Reigns his subject, who was quick to come out alone to suggest he and Bray fight one-on-one, just like how it started. It was sort of odd that Bray accepted a challenge and ended up getting laid out, which only drew Luke Harper and Braun Strowman to his rescue, which in turn drew out Dean Ambrose and Randy Orton. The “brawl” was entertaining enough to stray from the ordinary, yet restrained enough from being extraordinary. We got a few things here – Strowman was finally vulnerable to a degree, when the face trio cleared him from the ring, though he fell to his feet. Orton drew his “line in the sand” so to speak, which made sense since he was getting revenge on the people who attacked him. We know a six-man tag with these guys is down to happen now, perhaps at the 10/3 WWE Network Live Special at Madison Square Garden? What was odd though was a lack of followup on the tension situation with Chris Jericho, who bumped shoulders with Ambrose on his way out of the ring the night before. Perhaps they pick it up on Smackdown? The crowd chanted pretty loudly for Jericho before Orton came out, which was interesting.

– Backstage, WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins went into The Authority locker room to look for Triple H/Stephanie McMahon and found Corporate Kane instead, who had no recollections of what “the demon” did last night and informed Rollins his United States Championship rematch against John Cena would happen later in the night. It was an obvious case of mind games by Kane using his corporate position to maintain power over Rollins, who hoped to formulate a plan to get rid of Kane. The play on irony was chuckle-worthy, even if this storyline screams a little close to the Joseph Park/Abyss one in TNA, but even that was a rehash of Attitude Era Mankind and Mick Foley’s split personalities.

– The six-man tag match with Stardust/Ascension-Neville/Lucha Dragons was a rematch of the kick-off we saw just the night prior. Since comic book battles happen multiple times, we can understand why they’d do it again. This time, we’d need to see Neville/Dragons come out on top, so they could trade victories. We had Kalisto pin Konnor in what was maybe a more concentrated version of what we saw last night. Bad Sin Cara botch aside (the amount of times that statement is said in life…), we got what we expected.

– Backstage, the Trips/Steph/Rollins segment consisted of a paranoid Rollins screaming about Kane attacking the night before and his office encounter, sounding like a crazy person. Trips and Steph’s facial expressions here sold that reaction until Trips told Rollins he should focus on the opportunity to get gold back, ignoring Rollins’ complaints about not being in shape to compete again.

– The Ryback-Bo Dallas match with Intercontinental Champion Kevin Owens on commentary started with Dallas cutting a promo about Ryback losing the belt because he wasn’t better than Owens, which the Champ approved. Owens was entertaining on commentary as always, but the match was your basic squash followed by Owens attacking post-match and fleeing before he could get Shellshocked. Basic, yet effective progress building towards their eventual rematch probably at Hell In A Cell.

– The “Charlotte Celebration” segment was obviously the big highlight coming out of the show. This was a pleasant turn of events that found a way to use Charlotte’s latest success as an excuse for Paige to rant her delusional frustrations with some twisted forms of truth in there. The Ric Flair-Charlotte embracing was genuine father-daughter bonding that would get anyone emotional – a perfect cue for Paige’s tirade. As for the “shock value” of it all, her statements weren’t completely off-kilter. For a while, it was Paige standing up to Team Bella by herself, until Becky Lynch and Charlotte came along. Her mentioning of other Divas like Summer Rae and Lana “hopping on top of other guys” and how the Bellas “really got to where they are” were more for shock, but still kind of valid. Her dissing of Team BAD as “all flash, no substance” and Lynch as “the least relevant of everyone” were also hard to argue. Her mention of Natalya asking if she still worked there was surprising, but a good foreshadow of her return to weekly television. It was a good step to partly disbanding Team PCB, as Charlotte is the easy one to get behind now. We can only hope Lynch gets a chance to truly show off her skills too down the road, not fading into the background like she currently is. Paige’s biggest verbal dagger was at Charlotte, saying she only got where she was because of her “old man,” which drew Charlotte to have to be held back by Lynch. It was odd to follow it up with “Queen Bee” Nikki Bella immediately dissing Paige as “classless and trashy,” which made it come off as catty women arguing than selling the heel turn. Nikki did have her place in the segment though because she had a rematch clause and wanted to warn Charlotte about the troubles of being “on top, making everybody jealous of you.” This also set up the next Brie-Charlotte match and hype the rematch. Essentially, everyone got what they finally wanted – a reason to talk about the Divas Revolution with a shakeup worthy enough to at least build the foundation for the team splits. Where does this leave Paige and Sasha Banks though with their feud?

– The Charlotte-Brie Bella match carried off the last segment’s momentum, seeing how Charlotte would react to Paige’s tirade. Cole cleverly mentioned that Paige was getting frustrated lately, though she was the only one that first stood up to the Bella Twins, starting the revolution and getting jealous when Charlotte came along and became Champion. The match wasn’t anything special, but Charlotte made Bella tap out to the Figure Eight.

– The Sheamus-Mark Henry match was a formulaic squash match to keep Mr. Money In The Bank strong, needing two Brogue Kicks to finish him off, though it was more because the first one looked botched. Henry is such an afterthought at this point. It’s kind of sad, considering he was pretty over as recently as a couple years back.

– The Kane/Trips/Steph backstage segment was another fun way of showing Corporate Kane unaware of the demon’s actions while being happy-go-lucky at being back. Trips/Steph were rightfully suspicious as they called him out on disappearing and showing up with no warning. Steph asked for things to be straight-up and wanted the mask back, but Kane didn’t know where it was, but would look for it.

– The Paige-Natalya backstage segment saw a decent interaction, as Natalya lectured her for being “unprofessional” while Paige didn’t want to hear it. It also confirmed that Natalya was back in the ring, fighting Naomi later on.

– The six-man tag between WWE Tag Team Champions Kofi Kingston/Big E/Rusev and The Dudley Boyz/Dolph Ziggler was another clever clash of ongoing feuds. It started with a New Day promo, surrounding the visual aide of a piece of the table Woods went through in a Baggie. Brilliant. The match itself was what you’d expect, which was a good thing. Woods and his trombone were entertaining again, especially when he played Rusev’s theme song once he was tagged. The finish was decent as Rusev Superkicked Ziggler, after Ziggler Superkicked Woods off the apron. It gives the heels some necessary momentum. It was also hyped that the Dudleys would get their rematch against New Day at the 10/3 MSG Special and another six-man tag would take place on Smackdown with Rusev/Owens against Ziggler/Ryback.

– The Naomi-Natalya match carried off the earlier segment where Natalya “took Paige to task for acting unprofessional” while also her return was a story in of itself. Paige watched from a backstage monitor to keep it going. Basic match where Tamina/Banks helped distract Natalya enough to help Naomi win with her ass. No, really.

– The Trips/Steph/Rollins backstage segment had Trips/Steph believe Kane was willing to be back to corporate responsibilities. Rollins was paranoid over Kane, while Triple H yelled that they would take care of Kane and told him to worry about Cena. Usual stuff with Trips being harder on his protege.

– The Big Show-Cesaro match was another clash between the two, which was frequent since the KO punch two weeks prior. At the same time, Show was announced as Brock Lesnar’s opponent for the 10/3 MSG Live Special, so he was built up by commentary a good amount by showing domination. However, Cesaro was able to get in some good offense, culminating in a suplex on a bad back that had no effect on Show, who got the KO win again. Post-match he cut a promo that sent a message to Lesnar and put himself over some more by calling himself someone who pinned him at Survivor Series 2002 and took his Championship. Funny that it happened in MSG also, but we don’t think Paul Heyman is going to turn on Lesnar this time around. Show arguing with the fans about not going to “Suplex City” was pretty illogical considering he took a suplex from Cesaro just minutes before. It is what it is.

– The Wyatt Family fog promo saw Harper put over how he was influenced by Wyatt as a savior, Strowman skinned a snake and drank its blood and Bray mentioned “they all fall down and soon, so will you.” Creepy stuff, yet entertaining.

– The United States Championship match between Cena and Rollins was another straight-forward quality wrestling match though we had a sneaking suspicion we’d be seeing a demon somehow factor into the finish, so it was hard to watch without keeping our guards up. However, that didn’t happen thankfully. Post-match saw Corporate Kane mention that people were gunning for Rollins, people he wouldn’t even suspect. Demon Kane’s music hit and he came up through the ring and literally dragged Rollins back into the canvas with him, presumably going to hell? It’s hard to suspend our disbelief for that when we could’ve got the same effect with a conventional chokeslam or letting Rollins run away, but the impending “challenger of the month” is evident at this point. Is this because “Hell” is in the show name? Wasn’t crazy about the silly way the show ended though, as it brought us back to days we’d want to forget.

Quick Results

• Six-Man Tag – Neville/The Lucha Dragons def. Stardust/The Ascension via pinfall
• Ryback def. Bo Dallas via pinfall
• Charlotte (w/Becky Lynch) def. Brie Bella (w/Nikki Bella, Alicia Fox) via submission
• Sheamus def. Mark Henry via pinfall
• Six-Man Tag – Rusev (w/Summer Rae)/Big E/Kofi Kingston (w/Xavier Woods) def. Dolph Ziggler/The Dudley Boyz via pinfall
• Naomi (w/Sasha Banks, Tamina) def. Natalya via pinfall
• The Big Show def. Cesaro via pinfall
• United States Championship – John Cena (Champion) def. Seth Rollins via pinfall to retain