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Its time for the Cell to come down again and now it's a WWE Universal championship match. That means the women close the show. Really thrilled to see Raw take advantage of doing something fresh and special after Smackdown failed to capitalize at the last PPV with Dolph Ziggler vs. Miz when that should have closed the show. We are in uncharted waters here and it's nice to see WWE opening their landscape up.
Rollins didn't show any signs of a back injury as he came to the ring, so we'll see how quickly they play that up in the ring. Well, when he took his shirt off, he had that tape on his back, so there you go. Owens went right for something under the ring but Rollins well, meant to kick him. Rollins controlled him on the floor early. Seth had all the momentum early on.
Rollins set up a table outside the ring but was cut off by Owens. Owens controlled the flow with Rollins trying to fight back. Seth was sent into the cage several times. Owens targeted the back of Rollins. Owens launched him hard into the Cell, which got quite the reaction live. Owens drilled him into the cage over and over. Owens nailed the cannonball into the cage, which was a cool spot. Back in the ring, they went back and forth with big moves including a short SUPERKICK PARTY before closing out with Owens drilling Rollins with a big lariat that sent him spinning in the air. Awesome exchange.
Owens pulled out a second table and tried to figure out what he was going to do with it. He finally placed it above the first table, setting it up at a 45 degree angle off the cage from the apron. Nothing good will come from that! He goes to grab Rollins but Seth reverses and suplexed Owens on the apron, getting some measure of revenge for the powerbomb on Raw. Rollins whipped out a pair of topes into the cage and you could feel the crowd rising.
Owens slipped out of the ring and found a fire extinguisher. He nailed Seth in the ribs with them and then proceeded to squirt the referee in the face...accidentally...twice. They opened the door to help the blinded referee out, allowing Chris Jericho to sprint down and lock himself in with the combatants after the second referee entered the cage. The crowd popped for this and chanted "Y2J." Rollins sent Jericho into the cage but was grabbed and hit with the package piledriver variant for a two count.
The crowd was having a lot of fun chanting "Stupid idiot." Rollins made a comeback and powerbombed Owens through the two tables. The place erupted for that. That was pretty insane. Rollins nailed a hell of a frog splash but Jericho pulled the referee out of the ring as he was making the count. Rollins attacked Jericho and beat him on the floor, tossing him down on the remnants of the broken tables. He beat Jericho and hit him with a running powerbomb into the cage.
Owens cut off Rollins as he returned to the ring and nailed a superkick and a pop-up powerbomb but Rollins kicked up at the last second. Jericho returned to the ring and brought a chair to Owens. The two of them worked on Rollins and due to the rules, the referee can't step in. Owens began beating Rollins across the back with the chair. They set up two chairs opposite of each other. Owens powerbombed Rollins through the chairs and scored the pin.
Really Good, entertaining match. They left the door open to go further with this down the line. It was way too early to change the belt and the way this was set up, they continued cementing the Jericho-Owens alliance. Rollins had a hell of a performance here and the big spots with the table were set up nice.
After the match, Jericho nailed a Codebreaker just to be a bigger jerk. That should set up something for Raw.
The Cruiserweight title bout is up next. I didn't notice any real reaction from the crowd when they announced the title bout. They showed Kendrick asking Perkins to let him win tonight. I don't think the Cruiser division (or Perkins for that matter) has been established enough to the audience that the fans should care about this yet, but that's just me. Thus, that level of drama they are looking for won't be there.The work in the ring should be good, but coming after that Cell match, it's going to be hard to get the crowd to invest in this.
The Perkins' entrance is great. I love the 8 bit videogame feel. He's come a long way from playing a hand me down character and then being pretty much forgotten in TNA. They had a lot of nice back and forth wrestling action early on. Kendrick was getting frustrated that fighting Perkins head on wasn't getting the job done. Kedrick began cheating, including using Perkins' own wrist tape and taping him the ropes. He worked over Perkins for a bit until he was drilled in the legs with a dropkick.
Perkins came off the top with a nice missile dropkick. Kendrick went to the floor and Perkins nailed a pescado to the floor. Perkins went to the top but was nailed with a dropkick as he came off the ropes. Perkins made a comeback and scored a two count after a Detonation Kick. Kendrick caught him with a nice belly to back cradle suplex. That looked good. The work is fine but you don't get a sense the crowd sees this as anything important. It may be they are burnt out from the Cell.
Kendrick locked in the Captain's Hook but Perkins fought for the ropes. Perkins finally slipped out and locked in a knee bar. Kendrick made it to the ropes. Kendrick went for Sliced Bread #2 but was shoved off. He came down like he hurt his knee, so they are doing the heel faking an injury deal. The ever so sympathetic Boston crowd booed all this. Perkins went to help but was headbutt and locked in the Captain's Hook. Perkins finally tapped.
Match was decent but nothing amazing. The crowd didn't care about it in the least. I think the right guy won as Perkins, for whatever reason, never seemed to shine on Raw once he shifted over from the CWC. Kendrick as the heel everyone is chasing seems to make better sense, at least to me, on paper. Giving Perkins something to chase and someone he wants to get revenge on, at least gives him a hook that the audience can get behind, something they really didn't have thus far. I think this will be a case of Perkins taking a step back to take one forward down the line. The placement of where this match was on the card and the storyline leading into this pretty much made this DOA.
My blog will conclude on Page 3 looking at the WWE Women's championship main eventing a PPV for the first time ever and more!
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