Last night, Monday Night Raw put on their brand-exclusive Extreme Rules Pay-Per-View event. Two title matches resulted in belts changing hands, there was solid in-ring action all throughout, and it felt like a big episode of Raw until the main event. With tons of matches filling out three hours of a pretty decent show, let’s take a look at what went well and what went poorly.
The Best
The Main Event Nails It
To close the show, Finn Balor faced Samoa Joe, Bray Wyatt, Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins in a Fatal Five-Way match to determine the #1 Contender for the Universal Championship. From an in-ring standpoint, it was done really well. Wyatt and Joe dominated early on with their temporary alliance, and the action ramped up when Rollins, Balor, and Reigns started hitting big spot after big spot. Joe taking the brunt of the first big spot led to him recovering just long enough to snatch Balor into the Coquina Clutch to seal the victory.
Joe is a great pick to face Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship. Both men are massive with surprising speed and they both feel dangerous in the ring. Joe could give Lesnar some of his best matches since becoming The Beast Incarnate, and this will hopefully be longer than a one-way trip to Suplex City.
Sheamus & Cesaro Reclaim the Tag Titles
Since The Hardy Boyz won the Raw Tag Team Championships at WrestleMania, Sheamus and Cesaro have stopped at nothing to go and get them back. They defeated the entire tag division outside of the champs, but they could never defeat Matt or Jeff Hardy in any type of match. Well lucky for them, a tag team Steel Cage match doesn’t require pinfall or submission. All Sheamus and Cesaro has to do was leave the cage faster than the Hardy Boyz did, and they succeeded by about half a second.
When it comes to wrestling ability, Sheamus and Cesaro are probably the best tag team Raw has to offer outside of The Revival. They proved this throughout their entire tag team run and even before that when they competed against each other in a Best of Seven Series.
Kalisto & Apollo Crews Kick Off the Show Right
Kalisto is getting a special shout-out here. Since he held the United States Championship last year, the Diminutive Dynamo has done a great job of maximizing his time on several different Kickoff Shows. Last year, he had memorable matches with Ryback that were sometimes the best matches of the night. Last night, he showed that he could do it again with Apollo Crews.
Kalisto and Crews are two of the most athletically gifted Superstars on the roster, and their story with the Titus Brand had done enough to give the match a sense of purpose and direction. Both men traded impressively agile moves until Titus O’Neil ruined everything for Apollo Crews and Kalisto scored the win. This did a good job of progressing the story while getting the crowd hot for the main card.
The Worst
The Women’s Title Match Gets Almost No Time
Since the week after the Superstar Shake-up, Alexa Bliss and Bayley have been feuding over the Raw Women’s Championship. Bliss belittled the former champion, humiliated her in front of her family, and assaulted her multiple times with a kendo stick. The story they told in their championship match was more of the same, which was fine. What soured the match was how little time they took to tell it.
Bayley was the first woman to grab the kendo stick, but she hesitated too long and Bliss ended up taking from her. Since then, it was a one-sided assault where Bliss would win in a couple minutes. The story and the result could have been the same, but perhaps with more build to the finish. Sami Zayn does a good job of doing this with his matches, and Bayley could excel with the same thing.
