This week’s WWE Main Event was taped at the Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado, before Monday’s Raw.
Jimmy Smith replaced Kevin Patrick at the announce table, joined as usual by Byron Saxton.
Veer Mahaan defeated T-Bar (5:36)
This was a good fight between two big men that was largely 50-50 but didn’t overstay its welcome.
Mahaan may or may not be coming to Raw, but he’s pretty much a Main Event regular these days and is now undefeated since adding Mahaan to his name.
T-Bar is increasingly more convincing as a powerful presence. He’s adding more power moves to his in-ring moveset and is slowing down to work more methodically. There’s a gimmick in there somewhere, but his character needs work.
This was heavy, pun fully intended, on big moves here: splashes, suplexes, power slams and big boots. But, that’s what a match of this length really warranted.
This is the first time fans have seen someone kick out of T-Bar’s High Justice on Main Event, but Veer got his shoulder up at two and countered with the Million Dollar Arm and then finished him with what’s described below.
Mahaan continues to experiment with a finisher. He’s used an unnamed riff on a Sister Abigail/Cross Rhodes but went for a less effective-looking spike DDT here. If he joins the main roster anytime soon, this is just one of the wrinkles that needs ironing out.
The Hurt Business (Cedric Alexander & Shelton Benjamin) defeated The Dirty Dawgz (Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode) (7:08)
This was an excellent tag match between outstanding in-ring workers who really know how to put a good bout together.
Ziggler on Main Event is a rarity to say the least. With only one appearance on the show in the last six years, he’s largely managed to avoid Main Event. For Roode, this was his first outing in three years on this show. It’s a shame the outcome was a loss.
This was exactly what a Main Event tag match should be. It wasn’t anything too flashy, but it was solid, avoided the dreaded rest hold spots, and was pieced together in order to get the live crowd behind the drama of it.
Ziggler is doing a lot of throwback stuff in his work these days. He did the Ric Flair strut, the NWO finger points and some Shawn Michaels poses on the apron while Roode was in the ring and the Jake Roberts DDT finger twirl to signal that they were going home.
All four worked really well together and led me to wonder why this wasn’t on Raw where more eyeballs would be on it.
The finish was everything you would want out of a curtain jerker match like this. It was complicated and went back and forth with twists and turns. When Benjamin hit Roode with the Pay Dirty, the crowd really reacted as The Hurt Business got their hands raised.
Final Thoughts:
One really strong tag match and one perfectly fine singles bout meant this was a very watchable show this week. Mahaan’s promise of a Raw debut that never arrives seems to be a running joke, but he actually needs more time to work on things on a show like this.
Catch the tag match if you can, because it was good fun. But Ziggler must be a little concerned as being farmed out to NXT 2.0 and now appearing on Main Event doesn’t look particularly great.
