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Welcome to the Excellence in Column Writing by Mr. Tito, yours truly, for a WWE Battleground review. Heading into this show, I was anticipating good things from Cena/Owens and Brock/Rollins but I wasn't anticipating that the undercard matches would deliver bigtime to make WWE Battleground 2015 to be a well rounded event. Damn, great job by the undercard tonight whereas the double Main Event just either finished up a storyline arc (Cena/Owens) or hyped SummerSlam 2015 instead (Rollins/Lesnar). I have to say... I really enjoy the WWE Network. I'm binging through the documentaries and roundtable discussions on here. LOVING IT. That, and I'm burning through the Steve Austin and Jim Ross Podcasts. Ross and Austin make my lawn mowing experience worthwhile. Lots of great wrestling to content that helps ease my sometimes disgust with today's wrestling. Makes me wonder why the WWE lets great minds like Paul Heyman, Steve Austin, and Jim Ross be on the sidelines when each of those 3 guys should be on your Creative Team. Especially Steve Austin... I'm learning a ton from that guy just speaking on the psychology of the business. I'm in a good wrestling mood right now and the $9.99 for WWE Network is now worth it. And when the WWE delivers GREAT Pay Per Views like they did tonight, I'm further satisfied as a customer. Now, if they could only make RAW episodes more interesting... Hey, maybe WWE could learn from tonight's show on making the midcard better? ------------------------------------ MR. TITO'S PHAT WWE BATTLEGROUND REVIEW I did not watch the WWE Pregame show, as I was coming home from a family event for the day. Happy to see Wade Barrett win an actual match. Fans in St. Louis, Missouri were ready for this show. Great crowd throughout. If you give them good wrestling match-ups, they'll cheer as St. Louis has lots of history as being a major part of the wrestling business (formerly a major part of the old National Wrestling Alliance, NWA). They really seemed to pop for the next generation wrestler in the first official match of the night. Randy Orton vs. Sheamus was the hot opener. From the start, the fans were chanting YOU LOOK STUPID at Sheamus and they are 100% correct. WWE needs to step in and fix Sheamus's look by (a) removing the braids from his beard, (b) removing his Mohawk, and (c) tell him that nose piercing was a BAD idea. He looked perfectly fine before... Sheamus's issue remains booking. He's a good in-ring wrestler but he's been overpushed at the wrong time and flipped and flopped between heel/face too many times now in his short WWE career. Randy Orton had full fan support from St. Louis tonight and you could tell that it motivated him to higher heights tonight. GREAT match from these two... If both guys were more carefully booked, this could have been an impressive Main Event match for ANY Pay Per View. The only thing that I didn't like about this match was the ending. Randy Orton locked in the Texas Cloverleaf for about 2 minutes in this match and he's able to immediately get up and hit the RKO without selling ZERO effects of the Cloverleaf. Shouldn't that hurt your back and legs? It's this lack of emotion and selling as to why Randy Orton can't get over as a top guy in all cities, other than St. Louis. I wish that Sheamus's White Noise could be a finishing move instead of a transitional move. But blow by blow, this match was nearly perfect. Both guys hit all of their offense and this match felt like a legitimate Heavyweight match. Bad ending deducts points from this match, but both wrestlers should be proud of this one. **** Tonight was a GREAT NIGHT for the Prime Time Players. Both Darren Young and Titus O'Neil clicked perfectly as a tag team AND as babyfaces. Why on earth did the WWE break them up again? And Titus O'Neil should have been a babyface singles wrestler, not a heel. The guy has loads of charisma and personality. If I were the WWE, I would continue this momentum from tonight and push Prime Time Players to be a STRONG tag team that never loses for a while... Then, in about a year, push both as singles wrestlers... To the New Day's credit, they sold Young/O'Neil's offense like champs to make book look amazing. Good to see some tag team moves AND to see both teams sporting matching tights. Crowd was fully invested in this match because it was a solid tag team match. Loved the move Darren Young hit with the Fireman's Carry where his opponent was dropped on his knees. That's a good finisher to use as a singles wrestler when the time comes. ***1/2 We had another bigtime heavyweight bout between Bray Wyatt vs. Roman Reigns. Started off slow and like it would be just a RAW standard match but then Wyatt/Reigns unloaded all of their offense on each other. Some brutal moves hit on the outside of the ring and around the barriers. Both guys are great at delivering offense but both struggle to sell pain or to show vulnerability to fans. You know, psychology. But hitting spot after spot through nice execution can get over too, for one night. Lots of near finishes at the end and that got the St. Louis crowd revved up and a pretty loud THIS IS AWESOME chant broke out. Bray Wyatt eventually won the match... I don't have too much of an issue with that as I'd recommend scheduling several rematches to see if WWE can pull something out of Roman Reigns through this feud. Slow start but it eventually became one of Roman's best matches to date. ***1/2 With Ryback out with an injury and cancelling the Intercontinental Title match-up, we were treated to Brie Bella vs. Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte Triple Threat instead. No complaints. Before the match, the towering Stephanie over announcer JoJo (seriously, Stephanie had over a foot in height on that girl!) said that each trio could select 1 representative to wrestle in the Triple Threat. Nikki Bella teased being Team Bella's choice but Brie filled in instead. From this match, I'm really impressed with Sasha Banks. She is not only a great worker, but she is loaded with charisma and personality. While I predicted that Charlotte would be a big star due to pedigree, Sasha may be the most talented. She's amazing. Sasha was commanding this match, pretty obvious... Lots of physical stuff hit for a Divas match which makes me really excited for what is to come... Then, later, I see a promo for Total Divas and that show is pushing Eva Marie and I'm immediately worried. WWE's focus now, though, appears to be on Charlotte as she beat Brie Bella with her Figure 8 (love that name) submission hold. *** I did not get overly excited from John Cena vs. Kevin Owens. It's not an issue from match quality but it's just attempting to follow 2 EXCELLENT matches previously from these two. Secondly, the psychology of this match bothers me... Both guys hit HUGE moves that should normally pin somebody but yet both were repeatedly kicking out of stuff. Seriously, John Cena hit an Attitude Adjustment from the TOP ROPE and Kevin Owens kicked out. Huh? How on God's green Earth does that make sense? Psychology is just off, but the guys are hitting move for move without flaws. Eventually, John Cena hit his STF submission hold and Kevin Owens actually tapped out. Their other 2 match-ups were better, in my opinion, and that's actually a compliment. ***1/2 I'm iffy on having Cena retain the US Title, but at the same time, I would be curious to see how good Kevin Owens is beyond wrestling John Cena. I really like the "open challenge" Cena can go and his efforts as an opponent has made a name for Owens. Now, it's up to Owens to prove himself. I figure WWE will make Owens pay some dues in the upcoming weeks. The Miz comes out to the ring with a microphone in hand and he's upset at not wrestling tonight. Some nasty comments by Miz on the Big Show, ouch... He even mocked St. Louis for possibly losing the Rams to Los Angeles. The Big Show arrives and delivers a knock out punch to Miz, walks away... You know that it's a GOOD NIGHT when even Miz can deliver a good promo. Main Event was Seth Rollins vs. Brock Lesnar. Complete domination to start by Brock Lesnar over Seth Rollins, very similar to Cena/Lesnar from SummerSlam 2014. Rollins, however, escapes Suplex City, attacks the "injured" knee (which Lesnar no-sold in Japan), and Rollins went on the attack with multiple kicks to the head. Didn't result for much as more German Suplexes, this time the rolling variety that Angle/Benoit used to do, and Rollins responds with a slap in the face. BIG MISTAKE. Another German (#13 by JBL's count) and Brock Lesnar hits the F5 for the 1, 2, and... DONG, lights go out... The Undertaker arrives! Crowd pops HUGE! Brock tries to attack and hit a F5 but Undertaker escapes and kicks Lesnar in the groin. Chokeslam by Undertaker and then a safely executed Tombstone piledriver on Lesnar. Undertaker looks PISSED and St. Louis has loud "Undertaker" chants. That may have inspired him... Tombstone #2 hit, oh damn. WWE wants a HUGE SummerSlam match-up and are going for the kill here. Undertaker does his trademark pose and his theme music hits to end the show. **1/2 for the match because it really didn't go anywhere... BUT, I like the psychology of Undertaker attacking here that ruins a WWE Title shot for Lesnar to prompt a rematch at SummerSlam... Hope Undertaker brings his A-Game and that Brock Lesnar acts responsibly as a professional this time around. He seriously injured Taker at Wrestlemania 30. LAST WORD: This show was legitimately trending as an ALL TIME great Pay Per View event but fizzled at the end... BUT, Owens/Cena had to top TWO great matches and Lesnar/Rollins was there to build up SummerSlam's Undertaker/Lesnar rematch. Thus, I'm fine with this event and am quite satisfied from the show. It was quite nice to see everyone on the undercard nailing great matches tonight. That's HUGE for the WWE and they should try to keep that momentum up in the midcard. After all, every great era had a strong midcard that complimented the drawing Main Event scene. A+ for this show, for sure. SO JUST CHILL... 'TIL THE NEXT EPISODE! Comments and feedback are welcome. Follow and Tweet me @titowrestling or login in below to post comments. © Mr. Tito and LordsofPain.net/WrestlingHeadlines.com - 1998-2015
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