Well, Andrew didn’t feel like watching the Horror Show at Extreme Rules and I wasn’t too keen on it either but; Andrew pulled rank so… Welcome to my first WWE Review! There are a good amount of matches on the card and a couple of probable cinematic matches to boot, so let’s see how they fair to the younger Balaz brother’s standards.

Ratings:

• Kevin Owens vs Murphy – Kevin Owens wins via Stunner:  ** ¾
• Tables Match: New Day(c) vs Shinsuke Nakamura & Cesaro for the SmackDown Tag Team Championships: Nakamura & Cesaro win via Powerbomb through a table: *** – TITLE CHANGE!!
• Nikki Cross vs Bayley for the WWE Smackdown Women’s Championship: Bayley wins via Headlock Driver: *** – TITLE DEFENSE!
• Eye For An Eye Match: Rey Mysterio vs Seth Rollins: Seth Rollins wins: ** ¼
• Sasha Banks vs Asuka (c) for the WWE RAW Women’s Championship: Sasha wins via Pinfall(?):  *** – TITLE… Change!?
• Dolph Ziggler vs Drew McIntyre for the WWE Championship: Drew McIntyre wins via Kip-Up Claymore: *** ¼ – TITLE DEFENSE!
• Wyatt Swamp Fight: Bray Wyatt vs Braun Strowman: Camp Crystal Lake resurrected The Fiend…? Yay?

Results:

Kevin Owens vs Murphy

Owens is trying to get Murphy out of the Eye for an Eye match so Seth Rollins can’t get an unfair advantage with his match later on against Rey Mysterio.

KO tries to wrap this up real quickly with a Stunner but, Murphy escapes the attempts and goes to the skies often in the match, taking down Kevin with Meteoras, knee strikes and all of that only getting two counts. Murphy does a great job to discombobulate and shake up Owens but the tide changes when Murphy goes to the well one too many times, gets the Mania 14 special with a Superkick to daze followed up by the Stunner for the win and a great showing from both for the preshow free match and a good start for the main Horror Show to come.

New Day vs Shinsuke & Cesaro

Both teams showing how well they are as a unit as Cesaro and Shinsuke take Kofi out early but Big E comes in and takes them out. Each team goes for numerous table spots with an in ring spot, Big E attempted his Spear through the ropes and a bunch of very, VERY near misses. Instinctively, Shinsuke blocks a lot of table spots and even pushes a table away from the outside.

After all of that though, Kofi makes the error and Cesaro catches him on the top rope and powerbombs him through two tables, winning the tag titles for the Artist Collective.

Nikki Cross vs Bayley

Before the match, The Kabuki Warriors go up to Nikki and gives her the confidence she needs to stop her from doubting herself and that she is Women’s Champion material.

Bayley tries to belittle and pick on Nikki in the opening but Nikki showing she’s not going to quit and takes it to the champion, even using the Purge early but not getting the win. Both showing off mind games in the match with Cross going under the ring to trap Bayley through the ring skirt and using the old Bayley Buddy Wave to do the corner splash on Bayley to give her a taste of her own medicine for once.

In the end though, the usual Bayley and Sasha shenanigans occur with the use of Bank’s rings to sucker punch Nikki Cross and pick up the win.

Rey Mysterio vs Seth Rollins

Seth comes into the ring with a pair of pliers, ready for Rey but is ambushed from behind to take the advantage away from Rollins. They tease spots all the time for the eye with a screwdriver and other tools to the eye, Seth going to the point of the announce table from a head scissors and Rey breaking a kendo stick to get a sharp splinter to jam in his eye.

All of the outside fighting leading to climax was done very well but in the end, Seth takes the guard from Rey’s mask from the previous eye attack and “pulls” the right eye of Mysterio to gain the victory over.

Aftermath: Seth has to walk away from the scene as Dominik and officials come by and Rollins in disgust of his actions, vomits on the outside padding as the crowd boos and yells at Seth for what he has done.

Sasha Banks vs Asuka

The match started really good with both wrestlers showing off their technical prowess and no interference between Kairi and Bayley at all for the most part. Doing amazing and spectacular wrestling between the two, with Sasha’s Powerbomb from the apron to the boards, Asuka doing German Suplexes from the apron to the ring and everything inbetween.

This was a solid match… up until tom foolery happened. Bayley tries to run interference, the ref gets distracted, Asuka sprays the mist but Sasha ducks and the ref takes it then… Bayley takes the referee’s shirt and puts it on to do the three for Banks. It was a great match for the most part and then too many cooks in the kitchen.

Dolph Ziggler vs Drew McInytre

Alright so Dolph threw in little brother Madden Rules for this Championship match. I get five downs, you have to tell me the play you use before I pick, I pick your team and—I’m getting flashbacks because I always lost no matter what. Dolph decided that this match would be an Extreme Rules for him only and if Drew is counted out or Disqualified, Dolph wins the title. Now, I’m not gonna lie. If this was a five second match with a Claymore, I would have been satisfied because this type of stacking of the deck has never worked for me.

Both men using strong offense, Dolph was not shy about trying to use weapons for the advantage and Drew had a great little moment with the table that was on the outside because he wanted to use it and quickly turned a suplex away so he didn’t lose the championship. Gimmick aside, this was probably the best match on the card so far and the picture perfect Kip-UP from the Scottish Psychopath into a Claymore is more than a fitting end.

Now, I need to go see if I can beat Andrew with these rules after all these years…

Bray Wyatt vs Braun Strowman

This was entertaining but, I’m not considering this a match. No ring, no ref, all Bliss. It started off corny with “Luke Harper” and Bayou Goon #3 attacking Braun and the only reason why Braun is knocked out is because of his past self. Bray goes on with a lecture about how Strowman needs him and he would be nothing if it wasn’t for Bray and also how his success is borrowed because who knows how long that it will last before getting attacked by a snake to knock out Braun again.

Braun is placed near a firepit and takes out Mr. Luke Harper and sets the other guy on fire then, making a reference to Alexa Bliss and Braun with the Mixed Tag Challenge and trying to entice Braun only to be sucker punched by Bray. Bray is obviously the bad guy because well… who ambushes someone while thinking of Alexa Bliss? That’s rude.

After a fight on the docks and taking each other into the water and then we think Bray is finally gone, the Extreme Rules logo comes up but Bray takes Braun to the swamp and both seem to go into the swamp and because of the Swamp Water of Rejuvination—I mean Bray trying to fight it, The Fiend returns.

Overall Score: 4/10

Thanks Bret Hart, still a Michaels fan but, this was not good at all. The matches that would have been good were okay at best or complete headaches to watch in my honest opinion. That the fact the kickoff show was as good, if not better than the main card, says things. The tag title match was good but they incorporated way too many tables for my liking. It seemed like any form of a rest period, we need to grab a table. Cross showed that she can go and play with the mind games of Bayley during the match but, Sasha is just better at interfering than any of the women in the division. The eye for an eye match was good because a lot of times when Seth or Rey would attempt to gouge the eye out, it looked sickening. The vomit at the end was just a little too much though. You knew what you had to do, you knew what you would do, why vomit because it was a gruesome thing that you saw? You can look away, you can think how much of an awful person you are for this. We are in the middle of a pandemic, why vomit whether it’s real or fake?

Sasha and Asuka looked like it would be a great match, it showed off how crafty they were, how good they are and their technical prowess to boot. Then we got to referee bumps, distraction, do the stuff and over complicate the entire thing. Would have been match of the night until we got to the last five minutes. Drew and Dolph were clever with the whole match, Drew having to move his suplex so he doesn’t put Dolph through the table, Ziggler going full on assault with weapons to win his stacked match for the championship. In all honesty, it sloppy at times during the match where things were in the way or things weren’t placed right from the camera and then the Swamp Fight was okay for a cinematic matchup. There were a lot of references to the Wyatt Family which was nice but a lot of it was just, why expand with things like past Braun not liking the current Braun or the whole speech while Strowman was tied up in the rocking chair, it had it’s good moments don’t get me wrong but, all of it was just a lead up to the remake of the reboot of the rehash of Friday the 13^th with the Fiend returning.

With all of that said, it seemed very… lackluster compared to what we had yesterday. Maybe RAW will be better since they struck some matches off and put it there, who knows. All I know is that this wasn’t as hyped up as Slammiversary was and drastically dropped the ball. At least Bray or Braun didn’t throw in a towel because it looked like it was too dangerous or Big E holding Kofi up on Shinsuke or Cesaro OMG move. That would have been talked about around the world though.