Image courtesy of Ringside Rumors Dot Net.

By Nicholas Jason Lopez

With another installment of recent exclusive WWE Network live specials, this time we had the spectacle of seeing Brock Lesnar make an appearance in the “World’s Most Famous Arena” – Madison Square Garden in New York City, in action against The Big Show, a match 13 years revisited in the same arena.

Also on the card was The New Day defending the Tag Team Championships against the “hometown” Dudley Boyz, who were going for their 10th Tag Title reign.

Ultimately, this ended up just being a glorified house show, with nothing out of the ordinary occurring.

(Aired 10/3/15)

The Breakdown

– The opening video played up MSG’s illustrious sporting history and hyped up the steel cage match for the United States Championship between WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins and John Cena and the Lesnar-Show main event.

– The Sheamus/Rusev-Randy Orton/Dolph Ziggler tag match was pretty basic and straight-forward with Ziggler doing most of the selling until the hot tag to Orton, who factored into the finish with a Superkick/RKO combo for the win. Rusev’s post-match promo insulted Sheamus, saying he ruined the match and could’ve beat Ziggler/Orton himself and compared him to Lana. We knew it was building to a Brogue Kick, but probably not a face turn. Poor Rusev.

– The Corporate Kane backstage promo saw him act happy-go-lucky referring to his leg injury and sadistically saying Rollins’ name before happily saying he wanted to be there to witness history. He also touched up on interacting with Rollins and assuring him he’d “take care of that Demon.” The personality switches were at least funny, but from this alone, we knew something would go down in the main event.

– The Stardust-Neville match (yet again) had some good back-and-forth action slowed down with a bit more time. Neville’s athleticism particularly shined with impressive aerial maneuvers while Stardust obsessed with the cape, all leading to swift Red Arrow Justice. Seen it already. Next.

– Paul Heyman’s backstage promo was basic Show-Lesnar hype as he lectured Renee Young on how to properly introduce things, on a “new yaw-kah” level. He talked up the arena’s historic significance and compared Show to a visiting Boston sports team. Easy way to get a crowd to boo someone else. You could practically hear the crowd chant along with Heyman’s lines, which was a nice touch.

– The Six-Diva Tag match between Team Bella and Team PCB seemed like a confusing one to book but explained the most recent Smackdown backstage segment where Charlotte/Lynch told Paige she was either with them or against them. So, this was tweener Paige teaming with Charlotte/Lynch. Paige did things like blindly tagging herself in and having words with Charlotte. This was more about PCB dysfunction than anything else, as Charlotte/Lynch purposely abandoned Paige when she went for a tag, leaving her prey for Team Bella to win. Paige’s promo post-match cried about her teammates saying she’d never do what they did, even though she did it on Raw two weeks ago. It actually made Charlotte/Lynch look like the smart ones this time, while Paige was the delusional heel. We think.

– The Intercontinental Championship match between Chris Jericho and Champion Kevin Owens looked quite pleasant on paper, though we guess we’re supposed to forget Jericho bumped shoulders with Dean Ambrose on his way out of the ring at Night Of Champions. Even worse to show the Roman Reigns-Bray Wyatt highlights before that. Jericho’s promo touched up on the day being his 25th anniversary in the business, pointing out Lance Storm in the front row who he wrestled his first match against – a 10-minute draw in a 50-person show in Alberta, Canada. The match was about as excellent as you could get from these two in eight minutes, as not one man had the advantage throughout, with many clever spots and moves worked in. Babyface Jericho was the perfect foil for the brash Owens, who took to the air many times and was quite agile. We expected Owens to retain and it was good to see it happen with him using dirty tactics.

– The Tag Team Championship match between The Dudley Boyz and Big E/Kofi Kingston started with an excellent hype video that played up the Dudleys’ NYC history and insane crowd reaction in Brooklyn upon their return and also put over the Tag Division. New Day’s opening promo tore down the Dudleys for their “senseless chest shoving, 90’s TV references, and wearing glasses with no lenses” and set up “saying good bye to the Dudleys farewell tour.” This was a perfect comedic heel promo actually. The match was entertaining while it lasted and it says a lot about New Day getting a pro-heel city like NYC to boo them senseless. The finish was actually nice since having Woods break the pin that would’ve made the Dudleys winners and stopping the crowd from erupting was a good way to keep the belts on New Day and gain mega-heat. Either way, Woods went through a table at the end of it all. No Spike Dudley like the rumor went around, but perhaps that comes to fruition on Raw.

– The Lesnar-Show match had the biggest crowd reaction of the night thus far and while it didn’t last long, it did its job. Lesnar took three consecutive Chokeslams and kicked out at two, before delivering four German Suplexes and hit the F5 upon a second try. The ease of throwing Show around was enough to get the crowd in awe and that the three-count was loud. The post-match interaction saw Show flip off Lesnar, who came back to the ring and delivered another Suplex and F5. How will Show recover from that one? Hopefully less TV time to sell the loss.

– The United States Championship steel cage match between John Cena and Seth Rollins was your usual melodramatic bout that lasted way longer than needed, but never slowed down pace-wise and was entertaining, getting better as it went along with some good near-falls and counter-reversals. The finish with Demon Kane coming down to the cage while Rollins was on top with Cena laid out was both a good use of him and a way to further the recent storyline. Post-match saw Kane chokeslam and Tombstone Piledrive Rollins, but no visit to hell this time. All in all, an unsurprising end to a much unsurprising show, despite some quality matches. We’d recommend Owens-Jericho for the competitiveness, Lesnar-Show for the crowd reaction and Rollins-Cena for the entertainment.

Results

• Randy Orton/Dolph Ziggler def. Rusev (w/Summer Rae)/Sheamus via pinfall
• Neville def. Stardust via pinfall
• Six-Diva Tag – Team Bella def. Team PCB via pinfall
• WWE Intercontinental Championship – Kevin Owens (Champion) def. Chris Jericho via pinfall to retain
• WWE Tag Team Championships – The Dudley Boyz def. Big E/Kofi Kingston (w/Xavier Woods) (Champions) via DQ; The New Day retains
• Brock Lesnar (w/Paul Heyman) def. The Big Show via pinfall
• WWE United States Championship – John Cena (Champion) def. Seth Rollins via pinfall to retain