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| Like being back on da muddership Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Heath (I almost typed Heather, which means I'm either clairvoyant to future chants or doing these too damn latearly in the day) Slater and Justin Gabriel picked a really bad Main Event to engage in some Perfectly Acceptable Wrestling. In case you were looking to set your watch by their match I'd go for ten before five.
I say this only because instead of me grousing like I have been the past few weeks about Main Event being something I wanted it to be more like, this week was one of those times when it actually was.
The bulk of the show brought a secondary title out of purgatory and into the spotlight. It started with a recap and an interview with a smug man and ended with him humbled and bent on revenge with two dreadlocks in his hand.
And in the middle?
As the kids on the World Wide Interweb say nowadays, AWW YISS.
It's no surpise that Antonio Cesaro is involved in a really good match nowadays; this may've been the coming-out party of one Kofi Kingston, high-level good guy. Not since Randy Orton was getting clowned at MSG did Kofi look as good as he did here. Partially due to opposition, but in a lot of ways due to his absorbing punishment and hard shot after hard shot at the hands of the Very European Uber American. It felt like a hole in the time-space continuum had opened up and placed me on WTBS on a Saturday afternoon at 3:05 in 1986 in the best kind of ways--the sneering foreigner (boss Aviators and beret on and all pre-match) vs. the undersized but plucky American, the new father with high flying flash out to prove his title victory a few short days ago no fluke.
There was so much goodness by way of new offense, revamps of old offense, and acute attention to detail it's little wonder this earned three segments. You know as a wrestling dork you're in for good times when early on you get minutes of chain wrestling followed by a blind leapfrog being caught in mid-air, reversed into a takedown, and pulled up into a Cesaro Lift quicker than it took you to read that sentence. Kofi would come up for air under the onslaught--occasionally a signature move like the Boom Drop or the SOS would get involved -- but Cesaro carried the brunt of the weight on his broad shoulders while busting out with some sweetness like blocking a sunset flip attempt with the Summerslam '92 ending on the technical end and things like his charging avalanche Eurocut, a Regalesque butterfly suplex and quite nearly a tilt-a-whirl Michinoku Driver on the impact end.
(It's as close as the E'd allow such a RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME MOVE in the post-Voldemort era; given the deliverer of it it looked nearly as bad as the concentrate version would be. Irregardless, it needs to go in the arsenal tuite suite.)
The last portion saw even more high-flying off of Kingston, only to see Cesaro bust out not only a half crab (twice!) but two old school ways to set it up. The latter was especially heartwarming for a grumpy cat like myself, almost as much as Kofi fighting for the ropes--then getting pulled back to center--then fighting back towards and getting the ropes, only succeeding because when he went to grab them Cesaro wasn't quite able to grab his hand while it came up! Plus Cesaro's multiplex has to be seen to be believed. Even the ending, out of nowhere, made sense and was the exclamation on a handful of reversals. It wasn't Del Rio/Ziggler earlier this winter, but it's the only thing I can remember since delving into the WWEME canon that's close.
After the match, Striker "interviewed" Kofi, who admitted his year was starting horribly, but even in the hard times, daddy, he was going to keep fighting. He beat Cesaro for the belt and by the time he was shouting out his wife and brand new kid before he beamed. yelling "Daddy's coming home a champion!" waves of stunned amazement and smarkfree joy flowed through veins. You mean to tell me something's in the McAid this week turning babyfaces into reasonable, adult, nuanced human beings who don't sink to their opponents' blackhattery but try to overcome based on their skillset alone? Make mine a double.
You know, on second thought, nix that. Because after Cesaro jumped Kingston in the back frustrated he wasn't about to start another 240 days as YOUR United States Champion and ripped Kofi's dreads out of his head RHOWC style (again, another thing that's been there the whole time, but guess who's first), you know this can't be over. And hopefully it ends here after another great nearly 20-minute match and 25 minutes given to it rather than being the sixth-string story on an overbloated RAW. You can pour a triple. I can handle it.
Some weeks after Main Event, the question is why?
This week?
The question is "What kind of fresh heaven is this?"