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 Interested in a “Doc Says” t-shirt? Click here Follow @TheDocLOP QUESTION OF THE DAY: This was not a month in which great matches were aplenty. What would your choice be for the best of the lot? The following is a case study of WWE’s product for the month of April 2015. Match of the Month: Big Show vs. Roman Reigns at Extreme Rules In 1999, the San Antonio Spurs won the NBA title in a lockout shortened season that caused many pundits to call them the champions with an asterisk; at no point in modern pro basketball history were there more out of shape players or a lower standard of excellence. Well, I thought long and hard about this month's top match and have made my decision for reasons to be explained momentarily, but we may have to consider Show vs. Reigns the winner with an asterisk; nothing clearly stood out amidst a ses of 3-to-3.5 star bouts. I will say this about the Last Man Standing match: it was not chosen because of its proximity to the present date. Though, as mentioned in the Extreme Rules Review, it greatly benefited from exceeding lowing expectations, the bottom line was that it came across like a bigger deal than it was originally presented. In most other months, the lack of a truly standout PPV match would have opened the door wide for a TV match or something incredible from NXT to steal the award. Yet, there was not a fantastic TV match and nothing from NXT did excel to extraordinary levels, making Show vs. Reigns - as the generally regarded best performance from the biggest night of the wrestling calendar in April - the winner virtually by default. The runner-ups were the Tag Team Championship match from the PPV and Dolph Ziggler vs. Neville from Raw early in the month. Each were rapid-fire entertainment at its modern best, but crisp action is only one element to the complete picture of a pro wrestling match and Reigns vs. Show getting that extra couple of minutes allowed them to tell a better overall story. Despite the asterisk, give credit where it's due to Reigns owning three straight Match of the Month awards. His match with Show may well be remembered as akin to one of those blockbuster movies that doesn't strike the chord necessary to see it in on the big screen or even spend money to rent the DVD, but winds up being in the "worth a watch" category after you see it on TV. Previous MOTM winners: Seth Rollins vs. Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena at Royal Rumble (Jan), Daniel Bryan vs. Roman Reigns at Fast Lane (Feb), and Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar [vs. Seth Rollins] at WrestleMania (Mar) Wrestler of the Month: Sheamus The Celtic Warrior's character reinvention has served him well, thus far. Unfortunately, the same opening paragraph from the MOTM section could be copied and pasted here, so I'll just skip to the reasoning. Seth Rollins could have won Wrestler of the Month, but he did not do anything in his first month as champion that met or exceeded what he'd already done so well prior to. Call it the curse of being consistently very good at his job if you will, but he did not stand out to me. Rollins was my #3 for April. John Cena came in second because of the Open Challenge concept and how refreshing it is to have him in a spot that involves at least the illusion of having his spot taken. Time will tell if his move to the mid-card lasts or if its just a pit stop before he gets back into his usual, tired, main-event groove, but even if his weekly position has changed merely from the end of the third hour to the end of the first (on Raw), then it's still a good change of pace for the time being. Right now, he's having good matches on a near-weekly basis with a wide variety of talents. Sheamus got the nod over Cena because one overachieved in his spot on the PPV and the other underachieved. Cena's match with Rusev should and could have been the best match of the month, but it was very disappointing. Sheamus, on the other hand, was expected to have a one-off, "this could have just as easily happened on TV," back and forth match with Ziggler and, instead, offered an angle-enhancing performance that completely engrossed the top WWE crowd in the United States. He was excellent all month getting over his persona shift; an alteration that so well suits him and reminds me of why I became a fan of his in the first place during his rookie main roster year in 2010. It may reinforce the notion that the only wrestlers that get to play interesting characters are those that portray heels, but take nothing away from Sheamus. He does look stupid. He's also doing a great job. The match that he had with Ziggler turned the heat up on their feud and raised the stakes for the next PPV bout, which is twice as interesting going in as the last one. Previous WOTM winners: Brock Lesnar (Jan), Daniel Bryan (Feb), and Seth Rollins (Mar) May Predictions With a triple threat match already booked for the WWE Championship and the last installment of Cena vs. Rusev at Payback, the PPV card for May is not off to a particularly exhilarating start. Reigns vs. Rollins vs. Orton should surely be better than the April main-event, but it already comes across like last year's Battleground Fatal Fourway as a placeholder to transition us from a non-important show to an event that will garner more creative attention. Cena vs. Rusev laid an egg in April; do we need another month of reinforcement that Cena won the feud? How they pull that off without Rusev looking like a chump moving into the next phase of his career will be key. I'm not sure that they can, frankly. The mid-card looks primed to carry May as it did in April. Bad News Barrett as King of the Ring should join Sheamus the bully and the fresh additions to the roster as the ones to watch. There's also the question of Daniel Bryan's health. If we end up with an easier pair of choices for WOTM and MOTM in May, I'll consider it a successful month. Expectations are pretty low. Extreme Rules Review WrestleMania Season is my favorite sport/entertainment time of the year. When it ends, my mind transitions to the NBA Playoffs. I've been watching a lot of basketball lately, with certain games delivering high quality hoops at a better rate than others. WWE Extreme Rules reminded me of the Dallas Mavericks vs. Houston Rockets series. There was a decent amount of hype heading in and the end result was a perfectly acceptable wrestling show void of anything that could be considered epic. Dean Ambrose needs a spotlight of any kind right now to stay relevant. His match with Luke Harper was above average in the manner in which it provided him the limelight. I expected a better match than they executed, but the reason for the downgrade was the same reason that Ambrose ultimately benefited more from the experience: the mid-match pause that led to the climax occurring 50-minutes later. They underachieved in the ring, but overachieved in the overall presentation. The same could be said for Dolph Ziggler vs. Sheamus. Instead of stealing the show as some predicted, they merely executed a story that was not quite riveting but was no less than thoroughly engaging. Ziggler winning became more probable as the bout progressed; that was a good win for him. Sheamus got his heat back in a substantial way immediately after. He's got something going here. The Tag Team Championship match received a major boost in profile in my view from being bumped to the main card after Daniel Bryan was ruled out for his IC title defense. It also damn near stole the show. With crisp action for its ten-minute duration, all four participants had moments that stood out. I was surprised at the title change, but only marginally so given how over the New Day has become in the last few weeks. THAT is what I had hoped for the trio when their vignettes began airing last fall. A self-righteous heel group is perfect for them and the crowd is responding to it (***). The Divas Championship match was also very good. Naomi is a special athlete in the female ranks; she's playing above the rim while all of her peers play below it. If Paige vs. Nikki prior to WM hadn't already happened, then this would've been the best Divas title match in quite some time. Cheers to both of them and the effort from the division overall in the last year. The headlining bouts were truly a tale of expectation vs. end result. John Cena vs. Rusev produced two of the best matches of 2015 at Fast Lane and Mania. As big a mark as I am for the Chain/Rope/Strap match (see Piper vs. Valentine, Sting vs. Vader, and Guerrero vs. JBL as reasons), I was expecting something outstanding from them at Extreme Rules. Alas, the gimmick simply did not suit the performers. Cena is an awkward athlete in the first place, but he couldn't seem to put it all together with that chain in his way. He was uncharacteristically sloppy and the match never established much of a flow. Some will blame the PG Era on the lack of sustained violence that is the hallmark of the match's history, but I'll only buy that as a secondary excuse. The primary culprit is that they got 13-minutes and did nothing but run around slapping the posts. Very disappointing match. On the other hand, Big Show vs. Roman Reigns offered very little in the way of pre-match excitement. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that anything involving the World's Largest Athlete at present time sucks the enthusiasm out of the product for a lot of people, myself included. Too many rants have already been wasted on the guy in the last year. For the first several minutes of the Last Man Standing match, it was difficult not to allow the general blase attitude toward him to affect perception of the performance. However, the longer it went and the harder they hit, all of a sudden it was difficult not to applaud Show for his willingness to bump like he did in order to put Reigns over. Roman, meanwhile, stepped up huge for a third straight PPV and hopefully silenced some more of his critics. If he keeps up his rate of progress, then surely he'll gain some babyface momentum. I thought they stole the show. It wasn't a great match, but it was a very good one (*** 1/2). Is it time to retire the Cage match? Has there been a truly epic Cage match since Edge vs. Matt Hardy in 2005? I can't honestly remember one. Here's what they've become - you can't bleed so they're not violent, you don't want to take too many risks so there is limited movement off the cage, and - though the intent may be to keep people out - every Cage match seems to be blatantly wrought with interference. That's why the best Cage match of the decade, thus far, is Cena vs. Miz vs. Morrison at Extreme Rules 2011. In all other instances, there's too much psychology and not enough action. Great matches have both elements. Most modern Cage matches feel like they're "always stuck in second gear...it hasn't been a Cage match's day, week, month, or even its year" in a decade (Doc's note - that Friends reference came about organically, I swear). Orton vs. Rollins was a mess. Given the Architect's penchant for re-defining gimmick matches for the modern era, it was colossally disappointing that they were strapped with so many moving parts in the Kane storyline and the lack of an RKO and the Authority. For crying out loud, this could have been a phenomenal main-event and instead, because WWE overbooked, it goes down as memorable because of what it could have been rather than what it was. Still good; should have been very good to outstanding (***). Tune into this week's episode of "The Doc Says" (Wed. at 5PM) for extended thoughts. Mundane Television Booking Opens the Door for New Stars to Stand Out If there has been a more lackluster year for WWE TV in my thirty years of watching their product, I am struggling to remember it. Mundane should not be confused with horrible, but at least bad television is noteworthy for an exceptional reason. They’re going through the motions right now. I had someone tweet me the other day that they were mightily struggling to watch WWE in 2008 on the Network. I like that comparison – 2015 to 2008. I said on my podcast the month before Mania that the card for 31 was reminding me of the card for XXIV, in that the build was decidedly lackluster but the card should deliver. It did and I'm happy about that. Unfortunately, the worst thing that I can say about 2008 was that it laid the foundation for my ever-growing opinion that I no longer needed to watch Raw or Smackdown to enjoy PPVs – where 99% of the best matches of this century have taken place (excluding the Smackdown Six Era circa autumn 2002). I brought this up in 2013, the first half of which also featured a lot of ho-hum TV: if you're a WWE fan, is there a reason to watch their TV show if you have the means to watch their PPVs? Every now and again, you'll get something amazing on Raw, but I bet if we performed a statistical analysis, we'd find that four Raws per year offered something you wouldn't have wanted to miss live. Take 2014, for instance: Cesaro vs. Cena in February (TV MOTY), #OccupyRAW, pick the best Paul Heyman promo, and Seth Rollins turning on the Shield. Is there anything else that you’d have felt silly if you did not see as it happened? WWE PPVs offer the slick video packages that tell you the story of each featured match in far more glorious detail than the majority of the actual feuds would do, week by week. Is that fair to state? The post-WrestleMania creative lull is generally noticeable by around May. This year, the creative lull started early and simply hasn’t ended. Since Mania, I've found nothing offensively wrong with WWE TV. I want to make that clear. It's just not particularly stimulating either. My current viewing habit is to start the DVR version 1.5 hours into the show. I'll usually catch up to the live broadcast in roughly an hour. Since the advertised main-event this year has been an endless trough of 6-man tag matches involving Big Show and Kane, I've seen little incentive not to just go to bed early or read. Given that I'm not typically the one to write thousands of words about what I dislike, the above is merely written to set the tone for the following statement: in the absence of top level feuds that are built to make us anxiously anticipate PPV matches, I have to seek alternative motivation to keep watching. Knowing that I'll get everything I need from Rollins, Orton, Reigns, Wyatt, Bryan (hopefully), and the like when the PPV airs on WWE Network - which provides the perfect opportunity with its “no additional cost” model to bypass TV and just watch the specials - to avoid skipping Raw altogether, I've found a new reason to tune in for the time being – a pair of new additions to the main roster and two established stars offering something fresh. Neville is can't-miss right now. NXT showed me what he could do, but I quite enjoy seeing him mix it up with WWE's elite. His matches, from the word “go,” have caused me to stop fast-forwarding and watch intently. What makes him special is his athleticism. It remains to be seen if he can further develop as his best quality diminishes. Shelton Benjamin never could. Kofi Kingston never has. They were similarly must-watch because of their unique gifts, earlier in the careers especially. However, for the foreseeable future, Neville will have me glued to the TV. He’s a novel performer. Kalisto has been a revelation. I never watched him work in NXT, mainly due to the fact that he was paired with Sin Cara, who – no matter the version – bores me to tears. I still don't care for Cara (and, in fact, I fast forward when he's in the ring), but Kalisto reminds me greatly of Rey Mysterio when the former World Champion first came to WWE. Kalisto seems to be everything that the original Sin Cara was billed to be. Not to be too hyperbolic, but it would surprise me if WWE didn't strap a rocket ship to his back. The search for the next great Latin star continued through Alberto Del Rio, but he was never able to organically connect with the audience. In just a few weeks, Kalisto has gotten over as much as Del Rio ever was in three years. John Cena’s current role and his weekly “Open Challenge” is the perfect thing for him to be doing. If you question Cena’s ability between the ropes, then I question your judgment. The guy gets it done. He has thrived in TV matches over the last few years since the change to the three hour format; it has allowed him ample time to work. The “Open Challenge” has mostly been a breath of fresh air, allowing talents like Dean Ambrose, Stardust, and Wade Barrett a chance to remind the world that they’re top flight performers. Cena has spoken in interviews lately about the quality of his younger peers; now, he’s getting a weekly opportunity to have good matches with them. Couple the newbies and the “Open” with the reinvention of Sheamus - whose targeting of internet darlings as the embodiment of the anti-IWC darling has, thus far, been impressive – and I'm like a basketball fan who may have tuned in to see established All Stars, but wound up finding more entertainment in the young kid from Greece with the last name I can't pronounce and the scrappy bench guy who's far better than he looks.
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