Friday, March 29, 2024
EditorialFastLane 2016 Review and Match Ratings

FastLane 2016 Review and Match Ratings

205 views

TRENDING

So, WWE is calling FastLane one word, so we’ll go with that. No matter how weird it is.

Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch def. Tamina Snuka and Naomi

This was certainly better than your average Divas match, that’s for sure. The ending was never in question, but you wouldn’t know it by some of the great near falls involving Naomi and Sasha. It was a basic formula for the heels, with Naomi and Tamina consistently making it a one on two situation, and the formula was good. There wasn’t really a lot of dead spots that I can see, and the action never really dragged. I’m glad we got this match out the way, and it was surprisingly better than what I am accustomed to seeing from the Divas, so good on them. Decent start to the show. ***

Kevin Owens (C) def. Dolph Ziggler – Intercontinental Championship

I don’t think, out of all the matches I’ve seen between these two, that they have had a bad match. In wrestling, a certain pair of wrestlers just click together. Owens and Ziggler are two of those people. Great spots as usual, nothing was forced and the action just kept going. Obviously, the story going into this match was that Ziggler has one-upped Owens for the past two weeks, and if the third time was the charm for Mr. Twerk Boy, he’d become the Intercontinental Champion for the gazillonth time. Owens wasn’t having any of it. The two continued to impress, and this match was no different here. Some may say I am overrating this, and perhaps I am, but I will give them the benefit of any doubt. I thought it was very good. Besides, I’ve received criticism at how stingy I can be with these ratings. So there should be little complaint here, yes? ***1/4


Ryback, Kane and The Big Show def. Braun Strowman, Luke Harper and Erick Rowan

I stopped taking The Wyatt Family seriously a long time ago, but this loss just reaffirmed my decision. I mean, seriously, WWE does a lot of things that are pointless, but this just peaks it. What is the point in giving Ryback, Kane and Big Show the win here? Especially when Braun Strowman is supposed to be the next big thing in WWE? Even more so, the whole faction as a whole just looks incredibly weak now. It seems that in matches that mean something, they always lose. WWE can’t keep having a four man faction of that size to consistently lose. It’s very frustrating, but all my personal animosity is all but gone now, because they can no longer be taken seriously. WWE hasn’t given us any hope that they have faith in the Wyatt Family. I called this match the easiest match to predict in my predictions article. I couldn’t be more wrong. May I also mention that Kane, The Big Show and Ryback had the upper hand to end RAW? Unless I hear a story that Luke Harper took a piss in Vince’s coffee, nothing can excuse this. As for the actual match, it was what you expected. Slow, slow and more slow. The Big Show tried so hard to get the crowd to cheer to Ryback, but to no avail. Crowd didn’t really get into it until the ending sequence where things picked up. It wasn’t a complete flop, but nothing worth seeing. Especially considering who won. **

Charlotte (C) def. Brie Bella – Divas Championship

A very hard match to grade from my vantage point. I will say this though. There were a lot of things that didn’t look right. Attempts at a submission and cradle pins just looked very awkward here. Charlotte just looks very awkward when she wrestles. The way she jumps up and down when she takes a chest kick. The way she flails her body as he attempts to do his father’s famous knife edge chops. Nothing really got going here. The only good part about it was that AJ and Jericho comes after them. Now the winner of THIS match was certainly never in doubt, as Charlotte begins to build towards a match with probably Sasha Banks at WrestleMania. You can pretty much bypass this match. By the way, Brie Bella needs to stop doing her husband’s moves. It’s a pain to see. I get you want to honor your retired spouse, but don’t shame his name if you can’t do it right. **

AJ Styles def. Chris Jericho

I liked the match. A lot. But am I the only who thinks that something was a tad…..off about the match? I asked, and people said it was the crowd. Yeah, they were fluctuating and got dead in some areas and hot for others, but I thought something in the ring just didn’t click. A few spots just didn’t flow naturally and others felt like it shouldn’t have happened and they just said, “F it”. Nonetheless, the action was a good sight. I liked how WWE had this as a battle of attrition, as in who can out-manuever each other the most, with Jericho dropkicking AJ’s top rope punch and AJ trying a bunch of roll-ups, but I can’t help but feel that they had a much better match in them. It just felt kind of dull. Perhaps it was the pace. Their match on Smackdown was better in that regard if you ask me. Maybe it will do AJ good if he faced a younger talent. If this was Y2J 7 years ago, I have no doubt they would have torn the house down. Disappointed in a sense, but the match was indeed good. I especially loved that it was a submission finish as opposed to a pinfall. This diversifies AJ Styles’ arsenal even more. I didn’t like the cop-out handshake respect thing they did at the end though, because Jericho already gave him props after he lost to him the first time. Hopefully a heel turn will come. ***1/2


Cutting Edge Peep Show Segment

Yeah, this was a complete waste of time. Guys, I need to be honest with you about The New Day. For a while, they were very funny and were definitely the best part of RAW programming for a while. However, now, I feel as though everything they do, from their weird twerking to their incessant yelling into the microphone just feels forced because they cannot do anything else. Sadly, that’s what happens in the sports entertainment business. You are hot for a while, but then when you have nothing else, everything just becomes a repeat of your previous antics. This was more of a roasting session than an actual segment. Each side traded jabs at each other, then the League of Nations came out, and I thought at the very least we would have a WWE Tag Team Championship match between the two teams, but instead we got more talking and no action. I gotta say though. The whole “I never have seen chocolate act so vanilla” comment? Does WWE not care that it is Black History Month? Many thought the team of Big Cass and Enzo Amore would debut and make their presence known, but nothing happened there either. Bottom line, if this is what the segment was going to be the whole time, it should have been on the pre-show instead of Kallisto/Del Rio. Easily a waste of time.


Curtis Axel def. R-Truth

Oh goodie. More filler on a PPV. No offense to the Social Outcasts, but after that stupid segment, WWE shouldn’t torture the fans more with a Superstars match. This match doesn’t get a rating from me, because it didn’t last 5 minutes. But in terms of what little we got, it ranges from a DUD to *. So do with this as you will. Nothing to see here. Moving on. Oh, and I don’t know where they are going with this Goldust thing they are teasing, but they need to start building to something.


Roman Reigns def. Brock Lesnar, Dean Ambrose – Triple Threat Number 1 Contender Match

From the reviews of this match, there seems to be two sides. Some thought it was a short, predictable main event that was boring and didn’t provide anything spectacular while the other half thought it was a fantastic wrestling main event. I am somewhere in the middle portion, perhaps leaning towards the “Great main event” description. Here’s how I view it. Lesnar came out looking like Broly against the Z warriors dominating each one individually. That I liked. I also liked Ambrose and Reigns teaming up to finally get the upper hand and Brock Lesnar got power bombed twice through two tables. That may have been overdoing it, but it was fine. The action between Ambrose and Reigns was also fine to. The only the thing that I didn’t really like was the ending. You have Ambrose destroying Lesnar and Reigns with a steel chair and all of a sudden Roman pops up and spears Ambrose to win out of nowhere. And it felt like there was much more match left between those three. More German suplexes. More chairshots. More near-falls. Nonetheless, I thought it was a good main event for what we got. Of course now, in addition, we have the predictable finish to WrestleMania seemingly already in place with Triple H being the one to put over Roman once and for all to become WWE Champion once again.Remember the days when WWE wasn’t so predictable? Peppridge Farm remembers. ***3/4


Conclusion:

Overall, I thought this was an average show. I thought the Styles/Jericho match would be much better, but it wasn’t memorable. There really isn’t anything on the show that you should go out your way to see only if your’e that curious to see how the triple threat dynamic with Lesnar, Reigns and Ambrose worked out. The undercard was solid for the most part, the cutting edge segment was amounted to a pile of horse feces and the filler after it didn’t do the show any justice either, which makes me question why bother having the United States title match on the pre-show since no character development, debut or match came out of it. I’m going to go thumbs in the middle here, because while there wasn’t anything bad, there wasn’t anything blow me away good to make me fully reccomend it. As a side note, while I didn’t see the Kallisto/Del Rio match I heard it was solid, so why the left that out boggles my mind. Though, nothing WWE does surprises me at this point to be real honest with all of you. Plus, I heard the stream was lagging, so that may have hurt the experience for some who weren’t at the Q Arena. So, there you have it. Agree? Disagree? Let me know. Until next time.

- Advertisment -

LATEST NEWS

- Advertisment -

Related Articles