WWE Payback 2020

[Mr Butternut Squash]

Meh. Roman wrecking shop and leaving was decent but probably not worth ten minutes of Wyatt and Strowman to get there. The stuff with the contract was typically weak WWE storytelling where everyone comes off looking stupid. 

Rest was more than solid. Really enjoyed the tag matches. While I wish they would do more with Rey, him and Dominik are the best new babyface team in forever. It was cool to see Shayna be Shayna again too, for one night at least.

Only in their warped minds is Apollo Crews a babyface. What an annoying little shit he is.

I barely noticed the fake crowd noise which is good. You can tell they're still tinkering around with it, even pumping in claps for the chinlock comebacks. 

 

[I Bent My Wookie]

Am I right in thinking Apollo tried to attack Lashley after the match or was it the other way round? Very little baby face moves there if he was the one. 

[DavidB6937]

8 minutes ago, Shy Dad said:

Am I right in thinking Apollo tried to attack Lashley after the match or was it the other way round? Very little baby face moves there if he was the one. 

He went for Lashley. Not very baby like but far more interesting than generic smiling.

[WeeAl]

I thought the fake crowd noise was incredibly noticeable. So much so that I couldn't hear if Roman had new music until he was pretty much at the ring. 

Good show I thought, and better than SummerSlam. It was going to be at least decent when I seen "2:32:00" at the bottom. Skip all the ad breaks and some entrances and I saw this in under two hours. 

Keith Lee winning so quickly surprised me. I liked this. I'm a big fan of some recent matches (including Orton, come to think of it) not being finisher kick out fests. The more often this is the case, the better. There should be other methods for matches to end that aren't either finisher spamming or cheap DQ's. Bret Hart was the master at this. A company could do worse than get him on board in a Pat Patterson role of helping come up with creative finishes that make sense. 

The action seemed decent in Corbin Vs Riddle, but I had no interest in it. Half of that is Corbin and the other half is the allegations against Riddle, and how he came accross trying to defend them. The last thing he seems to be, is likeable. 

Big E and Sheamus had a nice "Big fella's beat lumps out of each other" match. 

Mysterio's Vs Rollins and Murphy was very good I thought, with the baby faces finally going over. They absolutely had to win here. Good stuff. 

Roman looks bad ass. Glad they got the belt off of those other two geeks and onto him. 

 

Edited August 31, 2020 by WeeAl

[AshC]

I tell you what, for a B-level PPV on six days build, that was a darn good show!

[Statto]

Decent show, but the highlight was definitely Roman staggering back to lean on the ropes to sell the Mandible Claw, the ropes not being there and him going for a burton to the floor.

[BomberPat]

It's a low bar, but this is the most I've enjoyed a WWE show in a long time. Partly because it's the first I've watched with someone, in person, for a long time, partly because it was maybe just three hours long including the pre-show. I still can't fathom watching a TV show longer than this PPV every week.

There was some filler - couldn't care less about Lashley vs. Cruise, the pre-show tag match struggled to get out of first gear, and I don't particularly want to watch a Matt Riddle match where he's a babyface and his "problems at home" are being played for sympathy, but there was some really fun stuff.

Big E vs Sheamus was some great big men playing human conkers, and it really feels like they're finally hitting the button on E.

Women's Tag Title was solid, though playing up the "can they co-exist" angle with Shayna and Nia against a tag team who are also forever playing a "will they break up?" angle, on the same show that they had the Riott Squad also doing an "are they really a team?" routine, and when I'm sure there are other male teams in the same spot, was a bit much. Shayna's finish was superb, and Bayley being the one to tap out could lead into some fun stuff with Sasha feeling like she's not doing enough to support the team. Nia immediately over-celebrating the win in a hitherto uncharacteristic way tells me that they're going straight to the Edge & Christian break-up angle of her taking unearned credit for all their success, when Shayna literally singlehandedly beat both women.

Keith Lee vs. Randy Orton was great, and Lee going over that strongly was fantastic to see. I just worry that WWE's recent history is mostly typified by a complete failure to capitalise on star-making matches, so I don't see this mattering much six months down the line.

Dominik & Rey vs. Rollins & Murphy was right along in case you hadn't had your fill of tag teams not being able to get on with each other. I probably preferred this to the Summerslam match, as it wasn't full of dramatic spots that were lessened by the lack of audience to actually give it the heat they were building around. There were some clunky spots, but Dominik is mostly great already. There was a moment where Rollins hit the ropes and you heard the metal of the turnbuckles crack - that made much more sense once we saw the gimmicked ring in the main event. Dominik did the 619 on the right hand side, which looked weird, but I assume that - rather than it being a lucha "working the other side" deal - it's so he and Rey can both hit it at once. 

Main event was a bunch of overbooked nonsense, including the welcome return of The Fiend's Big Comedy Hammer, and one of those magical contracts you can sign halfway through the match, and the shittest ring breaking spot to date. But the swagger of Reigns, and the intrigue of when and how he would show up, and the novelty of him with Heyman, carried the entire thing to be better than it had any right being. It really feels like a proper star showing up. It really highlighted the need to fuck off the Money In The Bank gimmick for a while, though - while this wasn't a MITB cash-in, it's functionally the same thing, and since they invented the magic briefcase, they can't seem to come up with any way of adding surprises/urgency beyond "someone else enters the match".