It's time to look back on WWE's Great Balls of Fire - the oddly themed and terribly named RAW branded PPV/Network Event that had a surprisingly strong (on paper) card thanks to solid feuds built between Samoa Joe and Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman, Enzo Amore and Big Cass, and the Hardys and Shesaro/The Bar.
So how did it all play out? What were the highs and lows? The peaks and valleys? How many balls were there and were they, in fact, on fire? Let's do the thing!
It was a wise move to open the show (Kickoff match, notwithstanding) with Seth vs. Bray since this little angle is sort of a stalling, wheel-spinning storyline for both dudes containing very murky, undefined themes. So might as well catch the crowd at the open when they're hot.
Why does Bray hate Seth? Why does Seth hate Bray? Who the eff knows? Either way, this was a disposable match that all but spelled out a win for Seth - WWE's 2K18 cover boy.
Bray's M.O. is that he loses a lot - though recently over the past year he's been winning quite a bit, and winning big. Still, he's known for feuds that carry little weight, in that he'll always just move from one to the next, picking a new person to boogeyman after he loses whatever the previous blow off match was. ANYWAYS, this was a long winded way of saying "Hey, Bray actually won. That was neat!" Neither man needed the win or the loss here, so it was just cool that Bray won the coin toss.
I don't mind DQs or count out finishes. Honestly, they used to happen all the damn time back in "the day." It was a way to keep stars protected and feuds going. After unintentionally burying Bayley for the meantime, WWE needs Sasha in Brooklyn for SummerSlam. They haven't figured out a way, given the size discrepancy, to pit Nia against Alexa so Sasha's the hero they desire right now (even if she's still best as a heel).
Alexa retaining the title but then getting mauled by Sasha was a nice way to keep the challenger strong, the champ wicked, and still show glints of a possible villainous turn for Sasha down the line. You could argue that babyfaces attacking after the bell is a cheap move, but I'll still take this over Sasha on 205 Live.
Also...it had to be intentional, right? Ramming Alexa's head right into dem balls? C'mon! Also, why did it HAVE too be two balls in the logo? It could have been three. I could have been many balls. Just as long as it was more than one. This was all avoidable.
Okay, so there was a downside to the Iron Man tag match in that...it was 30 minutes. That's really the main stip for this match - it's a half hour. It's a chunk of time. And if you're not invested in the tag division, or these two teams, it's a time suck. Especially on a show not featuring Finn Balor (and his assumed match with Elias Samson) or the R-Truth/Goldust feud.
That being said, the match was really well done. No table spots or ladder junk, just good old fashioned tag teaming and such. And there were a lot of falls too, which made the 30 minutes go down a bit easier. Also, the accidental "color" we got at the end made the final minute pretty exciting. Also also also - the right team won.
I don't know how much longer the nostalgia support for the Hardys will maintain if they don't reclaim the Broken gimmick (they're pretty dry without it), but it's definitely the right time to push Shesaro. They're awesome.
As much as the aftermath of the Ambulance match bugged me (it's coming up later), the shot of a bloodied Braun Strowman limping is way off into...who knows where? The ocean? The vast horizon? Endless oblivion? It was awesome. It was actual intentional blood, and I relished it.
The crazed 30-second ambush that Joe delivered to Brock, putting him through a damn table, was everything. The match itself was great too, but nothing quite matched the rush of that first onslaught where Joe demolished Brock and threw him around like a sack of onions.
Overall, I wish it had taken two F-5s to put away Joe (of course, a Joe win here would have been ideal), but this was still a ferociously fun match that helped make Joe stronger, even with the loss. My hope is, when all is said and done with the repercussions for what Roman did to Braun, that Joe stays in the title picture and that SummerSlam is a three way dance with Brock, Roman, and Joe. This was a blast.
The title of this PPV is still irksome. Why THIS song? It has nothing to do with Dallas. Or Texas even. Or anything even remotely adjacent to WWE or anything they're promoting. Then, on top of the title (and the TWO balls in the graphics), there was a 50s drive-in movie theme going too.
If this was a long-standing PPV, fine. As in Great Balls of Fire was something created a decade ago and this was its 10th year. Okay. But it's new. Someone came up with this title in 2017. This is outlandish, folks.
I don't mind Big Cass going over Enzo - but a squash match? After that lengthy Enzo speech? I feel like the only reason the squash was drawn out, when it could have ended in a minute, was so that the match would be at least as long as the speech and not shorter.
When's the last time we heard someone talk this big a game and then lose so spectacularly? What a weird avenue to explore. THAT'S LIFE, RIGHT?
Really, you're just going to leave Finn Balor off the show? What? Why? There were so many things that could have been done to make time. Firstly, Hardys vs. The Bar didn't need to be an Iron Man match at all. Secondly, there was a good 10 minutes of wasted space where they showed the ambulance crash over and over again while rescue units bored us with all with real time usage of the jaws of life (can't you get to the back of the ambulance though the cab?).
And for those asking, YES I did want to see Finn face Elias. I'm irritatingly invested in that minor feud. I also kind of wanted to see Truth fight Goldust. Again, you can blame the match that was guaranteed ahead of time to go 30 minutes if you feel like it. I choose to blame Roman Reigns. For most everything in life.
So. Roman lost because he got suckered into the ambulance. Braun basically Rabbit Season/Duck Season'd the dude in to the truck. He dodged a spear, making the whole match rhetoric about "incapacitating" your opponent a bunch of hooey. This loss for Roman was the equivalent of Kalisto making Braun trip into that dumpster. Anyhow, a win for Braun until...
...Roman decided to become a homicidal maniac, trying to kill Braun via car crash up in the back. Now, I have nothing against Roman, once again, going berserk after losing to Braun. It's his way. He's an a***hole. What I do object to is the way the crash, and the saga to rescue Braun from the "wreckage," made everything come to an ass-grinding halt. The show, right before the main event, seemed to stop while we watched the replay over and over again. Side note, the more you watch the replay, the less impressive it gets. The more you think "Oh, that probably wouldn't have hurt that bad." So less would have been more here.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at http://ift.tt/2aJ67FB.
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