Dean Ambrose is still the Intercontinental Champion after winning a downright nasty last man standing match against the challenger, Kevin Owens.
Royal Rumble 2016 results: Dean Ambrose outlasts Kevin Owens in brutal Intercontinental Championship match
This was delightfully violent.
Ambrose and Owens have been feuding over the Intercontinental title over the last couple of months, ever since Ambrose lost to Roman Reigns in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament and turned his attention on this title. Ambrose beat Owens for the IC strap at TLC in December, and they’ve been beating the heck out of each other ever since.
The match had only been going on for two minutes when poor Michael Cole got taken out. Ambrose dove through the ropes and pushed Owens over the top of the announce table, incapacitating WWE’s brave play-by-play announcer. As a result, once Cole came back, he was very openly cheering for Ambrose to beat up Owens with a kendo stick.
Frustrated that a cannonball into the ringside barricade and a slew of kendo stick shots couldn’t take out Ambrose, Owens decided to introduce no fewer than six chairs into the match. That backfired spectacularly when Ambrose back body dropped him on to two of those chairs.
Owens came back from that and incapacitated Ambrose to the point where he could set up a stack of tables on the edge of the ring. He tried to put Ambrose through them to no avail, with Ambrose hitting his finisher Dirty Deeds a couple of times. When the first one didn’t keep Owens down, he did it again onto a chair, but Owens managed to stand up again.
More tables came out. Ambrose jumped off the top turnbuckle and put Owens through one. Owens stood up again. KO went on to quite literally turn the tables, pun very much intended, and put Ambrose through one himself. Of course, Ambrose stood up. Owens delivered his finisher, the Pop-Up Powerbomb, and Ambrose got to his feet again.
Owens thought he was about to win the match when he laid Ambrose on a stack of chairs and went up to the top rope. But before he could jump off, Ambrose sprung to his feet and shoved Owens, sending him flying through the stack of tables he set up earlier but didn’t have the chance to put Ambrose through. He couldn’t answer the count of 10 and Ambrose retained his title.
This match was everything it was supposed to be -- equal parts good storytelling and brutal stuff with weapons and tables. The Royal Rumble couldn’t have had a more perfect opener.
See More:
