WWE Main Event - September 13, 2016
by Scrooge McSuck
- Taped from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA, with Tom Phillips and David Otunga calling the action, unless otherwise noted.
Kane vs. Fandango (w/ Tyler Breeze):
Breezango are wearing matching puffy shirts, like they're Pirates or something. I guess someone watched an episode of Seinfeld on Hulu and thought this was a great idea. If you'll remember, it was two weeks ago Breeze was in Dubai setting up their Fall wardrobe, and on Smackdown Kane interrupted Fandango's dance session with a Choke-Slam. Wow, an angle being followed up on Main Event?! Why do I get the weird feeling that this pre-match stuff will last longer than the match itself? Fandango calls Kane the "Big Red Dancing Machine." Breeze thinks Kane is jealous and wants one of their shirts. Breeze offers to take his measurements ("don't spook him, he's very gazelle-like"), but Kane knocks the taste out of his mouth and throws him over the top rope. Fandango from behind with rights. Breeze with a jumping roundhouse kick from the floor and Fandango covers for two. Kane quickly recovers and plants him with a side slam. Kane catches him off the top rope by the throat, catches Breeze trying to run in, and the Double Choke-Slam finishes at 1:05. Yep, the pre-match stuff outlasted the match by quite a margin.- Monday Night Raw Flashback, Part I... WWE made a big deal about pulling advertisements for the Clash of Champions match between Sasha Banks and Charlotte because it wasn't officially set in stone. So on Raw, they do a long segment where Sasha and Bayley both stake a claim for a title opportunity, as well as the continued WCW levels of incompetent story-telling between Charlotte and Dana Brooke. The end result is a three-way match to determine a #1 contender. No, Dana Brooke didn't win, nor did she take the loss. Sasha actually pinned Bayley during a pin attempt, and in the process, screwed it up and also appeared to have pinned herself, too. How you do that, I don't know. So OFFICIALLY set for Clash of Champions... Charlotte vs. Sasha Banks. All that hoopla for nothing. - Monday Night Raw Flashback, Part II... Chris Jericho hosted the Highlight Reel, with his guest and former best-friend of Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn. This was done to set up a match for Clash of Champions between the two, with Zayn warning Jericho of Owens' selfish attitude and Jericho ignoring it and acting like a teenage girl who doesn't want to listen to the truth about her boyfriend being a scumbag. I don't know if I care too much for mid-life crisis Jericho, but I guess it's better than Zayn rotting in Superstars Hell (as in being featured every week on Superstars).
Jason Jordan (w/ Chad Gable) vs. Aiden English (w/ Simon Gotch):
I always get a kick out of singles matches featuring two predominantly tag team wrestlers. Gable is still selling the MCL sprain courtesy of the Usos. If you'll recall, it was a loss to American Alpha that turned the Vaudevillains back to the dark side of the wrestling universe. No extended introduction for the Vaudevillains this week. Not even a black-and-white screen! Lockup and English goes to work on the arm. Jordan counters with a wrist-lock and takes him down with a waist-lock. He rolls into a bridge for a near fall. Whip to the corner. English ends up on the apron but hangs the arm of Jordan across the top rope. He pounds away on the arm and shows off his MANLY physique. English with an arm-scissors, complete with squats. English takes Jordan down with a knee into the elbow. He heads to the top rope and misses a senton. Jordan gets an elbow up in the corner and lays into English with rights. High body press, followed by a belly-to-belly suplex. The straps come down, but Gotch saves English from the corner shoulder tackle. English to the top rope and he gets caught with a T-Bone Suplex for three at 3:32. * Too short to go anywhere, but working strictly tag teams has definitely limited what Jordan can do on his own.- Monday Night Raw Flashback, Part III... The New Day and The Club are still feuding, and it still doesn't feel like I should give a crap. I guess in a form of damage control, the New Day were scripted to bury the awful "Old Day" segment from the week before that officially killed the reanimated corpse of this rivalry. The New Day and The Club are scheduled for a Tag Team Title Match at Clash of Champions, but we'll get a sneak preview with the New Day vs. The Club in a SummerSlam Rematch. If you're wondering, that means Kofi and Xavier representing the New Day. The Club won, who cares. Next...
- Monday Night Raw Flashback, Part IV: The Final Chapter... Seriously, FOUR flashbacks of Monday Night Raw in one episode of Main Event. I guess this helps for when I recap Clash of Champions, but I clearly have no interest in recapping Monday Night Raw and yet I'm practically doing it anyway through the weekly episodes of Main Event. The Main Event of Raw was a Non-Title Match between Roman Reigns and Kevin Owens, with the stipulation being Reigns is added to the Championship Match at Clash of Champions if he is victorious. Reigns was in the driver's seat, but wouldn't you know it, Rusev happened to be back from his Bulgarian wedding and honeymoon in time to screw him over, and no doubt setting up our U.S. Title defense for Clash of Champions. Once again, Raw gives away a PPV-level Main Event for the sake of it.
Final Thoughts: I'm still not a fan of Main Event having a run-time of 48-minutes and dedicating 40 of those minutes to recapping Monday Night Raw. Seriously, I just sat through half of the Hulu edition of the show without even thinking about it. The exclusive content was very bleh this week when it came to the in-ring performances. Jordan vs. English I figured would get more time with what was obviously going to be a quickie squash for Kane to open the show, but that match was rushed through as well, giving us less than 5-minutes of bell-to-bell action. Combine that with the 22-minutes of bell-to-bell wrestling on Smackdown Live, and Tuesday Night definitely wasn't the night go to Smackdown if you really care about the in-ring product and not storyline development.
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