This week’s WWE Main Event was taped at the Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio before Monday’s episode of Raw.
Bronson Reed defeated Akira Tozawa (4:04)
This was pretty much an extended squash, but Tozawa is always entertaining, even in defeat.
These two have had quite a few Main Event matches in the last year or so and they largely follow a similar pattern. The difference now is that in his current gimmick, rather than just plucky, Tozawa gets to tear his shirt a la Hulk Hogan, and the crowd loves it.
Probably the only newsworthy thing here was that Tozawa managed to bloody up Reed’s nose after kneeing him to block a suplex, but it was otherwise big man vs. waspish babyface by the numbers.
It was funny that Reed played the match in such a strong way here that even when Tozawa managed to finally get him off his feet with a DDT, the cover barely resulted in a one count.
Tozawa dodged a charge so that Reed smashed into the turnbuckle and he used a spinning kick and super kick to take control. But once the shirt was ripped, it was all over as Reed had clearly had enough and he launched him into the air before finishing him with Tsunami.
Once again, nothing wrong with this, but we’ve been here for a while now with Bronson Reed. They clearly don’t know what to do with him. At least, they haven’t turned him into a comedy character or made him go on a losing streak…yet.
The Creed Brothers (Brutus & Julius Creed) defeated New Catch Republic (Pete Dunne & Tyler Bate) (7:55)
Needless to say, this was a ton of fun. If you are in the crowd waiting to watch a Raw taping, this was exactly the kind of curtain jerker you want to whet your appetite and get the blood pumping. All four never fail to deliver and no exception here.
This was a rematch of the match they had on this show back in May and the result has them even.
After the early going, the ring filled and New Catch Republic cleared the Creed Brothers out. Bate did a tope and Dunne hit a sweat moonsault to keep them at bay and we crashed to the break.
After the ads, they made it clear that while we’d been watching commercials Brutus and Pete had been working hard and after a German from Brutus, they both stayed down and crawled to make tags.
Bate used a head-scissors on Brutus and, after a springboard forearm, Julius had to break up the pin to make the save. Dunne and Julius then brawled outside and Bate used a discus clothesline for a near fall, before using the airplane spin. This got over huge last week, just as it always does, and the Toledo crowd dug it here, too.
In the end, Julius took out Tyler Bate to leave Dunne isolated and Brutus engineered a way to damage his knee in a suplex attempt. They set up and hit the Brutus Bomb for the win and it felt right to give them the win after having met a few defeats over the last month or so on Main Event.
