Whoopsie, WWE threw their lot behind Ring of Honor darlings Daniel Bryan and CM Punk, only to have them take a break due to injury and bugger off due to hard feelings, respectively. So what to do now? Why bring back Brock Lesnar after his MMA career stalled and then triple down on the Shield, a faction with some buzz of course. Let’s see how it worked out.
June 29, 2014 – Boston, Massachusetts
John Cena def. Alberto Del Rio, Sheamus, Kane, Randy Orton, Bray Wyatt, Cesaro, and Roman Reigns {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Eight Way Ladder Match}
From the fifth Money in the Bank. As I mentioned, Bryan was injured and lost the title without losing the title for the second time. I thought he retired here but apparently that happened later. Anyway, this kind of sucked. No memorable moments, big clods slowly climbing in ways that were anything but compelling, and a complete missed opportunity to create interesting combinations of wrestlers for ladder spots. I guess Reigns tipping the ladder structure with Cesaro and Sheamus on it was cool, but then Cena came in and tipped it back over, getting two opponents closer to the belts for some reason. Dumb. Also, Sheamus had the match won for two straight minutes and it didn’t make any sense for him to not pull the trigger. And to add insult to injury, the stated Orton/Kane alliance amounted to nothing. Cena won at 26:30. **½
August 17, 2014 – Los Angeles, California
Brock Lesnar def. John Cena {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match}
The first half of this match is Lesnar dominating Cena completely. He went on to have a similarly structured match against Daniel Bryan four years later at Survivor Series with MUCH greater results. Both matches I feel let the squash half go on a bit too long, as I found my mind wandering after a while in this one especially. Once Cena made his first comeback, things picked up. Lesnar smartly tried to cut it off with an F5, but Cena blocked it and hit the Attitude Adjustment to gain a little ground. And that was pretty much it for Cena, save for one STF near the end. At least in the Bryan match there was some hope for Bryan. If they were going to do this it should have been half as long. The boring chants from the crowd weren’t undeserved. It’s worth watching once for the spectacle of Super Cena just dying, but this was very telling about what Lesnar and his five-year dance with the title would be like. Cena’s job to the Undertaker at WrestleMania was much more fun than this. Lesnar won this thing at 16:06. **¾
March 29, 2015 – Santa Clara, California
Seth Rollins def. Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Triple Threat Match}
Well, this is the same as the damned SummerSlam match. This started off as just Reigns vs. Lesnar. Reigns got completely destroyed, though his comeback came at a more believable and compelling point than Cena’s did months earlier. Then Lesnar cut off Reigns’ comeback and Seth Rollins came in and cashed in his Money in the Bank contract to be added to the match. The Rollins stuff was cute, but felt very indie/ECW/silly. I’m not a fan. He pinned Reigns with the Stomp at 16:43. **¾
November 22, 2015 – Atlanta, Georgia
Roman Reigns def. Dean Ambrose {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the 29th annual Survivor Series.Reigns’ WWE career is truly baffling, and a sign of Vince McMahon’s declining mental health (or at least his declining creative capabilities). The desire was to get Reigns over as a top guy, but he was cut off at the knees every time he got near the WWE Championship. Here, he finally gets the title, but by beating a guy who had no credibility in the main event in Ambrose. But then he gets Money in the Bank’d right after. Of course the guy wasn’t over. For as much as WWE is accused of shoving Reigns down people’s throats, historically he was much more made to look foolish or incapable. Ambrose was certainly giving it his all here, and I appreciate them working the match like friends who have probably brawled for fun in their free time. That made for a solid if completely unspectacular tournament finals. Reigns won at 9:01. ***
Sheamus def. Roman Reigns {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match}
And then Reigns got Bank’d in 34 seconds. I get that he wasn’t over in the way they wanted him to be, so spearing Triple H after the match made sense. But who could possibly have felt that adding Sheamus of all people to the mix would help? And if you are going to use Sheamus, think of how badass Reigns would look by beating the big but disposable Sheamus after being surprise attacked. N/A
December 14, 2015 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Roman Reigns def. Sheamus {WWE World Heavyweight Championship vs. Career Match}
From Raw 1,177. So Reigns wins the title and gets to hold it for more than ten minutes… on Raw? The best part of this match was Vince McMahon supporting Sheamus from ringside and pacing maniacally after every near fall. For as much as he’s declined creatively in the last two decades, the man is still a fun performer. But the match was largely heartless because of how neutered Reigns had become. The kids in the crowd got loud when McMahon and the League of Nations got physically involved, so at least we got some noise leading to the title change. Reigns won at 13:25 shown of 16:55. **¼
January 24, 2016 – Orlando, Florida
Triple H def. Roman Reigns, R-Truth, Kane, Mark Henry, Brock Lesnar, The Big Show, Chris Jericho, AJ Styles, Goldust, Alberto Del Rio, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, The Miz, Dolph Ziggler, Ryback, Sheamus, Neville, Stardust, Kofi Kingston, Dean Ambrose, Jack Swagger, Luke Harper, Curtis Axel, Bray Wyatt, Titus O’Neil, Erick Rowan, Tyler Breeze, Rusev, and Braun Strowman {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Royal Rumble Match}
From the 29th Royal Rumble. This was engaging until Kane came in at #7 and the match lost focus. At that point, all the energy around Styles’ debut disappeared. Truth came in at #12 and that cued fun spots from him and Kingston, as well as a League of Nations attack on Reigns. But that only lasted a few minutes before another lull. About 28 minutes in there was a glimmer of hope when Owens livened up the joint, but that also didn’t last terribly long. This was a lower echelon Rumble in a big way, made worse by Reigns’ run being interrupted with a nonsense injury angle. He wasn’t even winning the match, why do that? The commentators never talked about their being definitely a new champ when Reigns was backstage for half the match. That’s such lazy storytelling. The match all but completely fell apart in the 20s, as Lesnar sleep walked through eliminating a bunch of guys who weren’t over. Triple H eliminated Reigns second to last, and then won the title by tossing Ambrose at 61:42. **½
April 3, 2016 – Arlington, Texas
Roman Reigns def. Triple H {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From WrestleMania XXXII. This felt like it was hours long. Nothing was bad or embarrassing on its face, but the pacing was some of the worst I’ve ever seen. For a match to get a good reaction in front of a crowd this big in a space this huge, you need everyone making noise at the same time. When there’s this much resting and resetting in a match, that can’t happen. Triple H at WrestleMania post-XXX is a self-indulgent nightmare. Reigns got the title back at 27:11. **
June 16, 2016 – Las Vegas, Nevada
Seth Rollins def. Roman Reigns {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match}
I want to know who to blame for this new WWE PPV main event style. This match did not need ten minutes of Rollins getting in no offense, only for the match to last another fifteen minutes after that. If the story is that Rollins slowly but surely gets the edge over a dominant opponent, he doesn’t need to get smoked out for ten minutes like Cena or Reigns did against Brock. The match had some merit after that first long segment ended, but by that point my brain was already mush. But I will say that countering a spear with the Pedigree is dope. Rollins won at 26:00. ***¼
Dean Ambrose def. Seth Rollins {WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match}
These kinds or title reigns baffle me. Rollins had to vacate his title due to injury, and now he wins it back only to drop it moments later? This was not the kind of cash in that I like because it wasn’t a match at all. But the crowd absolutely loved it, so it wasn’t without value. Ambrose beat Rollins in eight seconds for the title by sneaking up behind him with the briefcase and hitting him with it. N/A
The title became exclusive to Smackdown after this because the brand extension came back. It was also renamed the WWE World Championship, which doesn’t really make sense to me since Raw’s WWE Universal Championship didn’t take the word Heavyweight on. Anyway, from here WWE basically starts just throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick, including putting the title on new faces both likely and unlikely.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
