Extreme Rules 2018: 5 things we learned from Sunday’s WWE event

Extreme Rules was so super incredibly extreme that there was exactly one (1) match using Extreme Rules on the entire card. And half of that match was spent having one wrestler throw weapons away that another wrestler attempted to use on them.

There were still things to like about Extreme Rules, even if the show focused much more on the rules part of that name than the extreme part. Let’s pick five of them out and talk about them, since that’s what the headline promised we’d do.

If you want a more detailed recap, you can check out last night’s live blog, which went through each match on the card as it happened.

Kevin Owens made the mistake of pissing all 6 feet, 8 inches, and 375 pounds of Braun Strowman off a few weeks ago. Since then, he’s spent all of his time trying to run away from the monster among men, and it hasn’t worked out very well for him. RAW commissioner Kurt Angle decided to put the two in a steel cage match, where escaping would grant Owens a victory, but would also be next to impossible considering how Strowman operates.

I give you all of this recap for the pre-match activity this morning in the post-match period for a reason: to explain to you why it was never about collecting a win here for Strowman. He wanted to make Owens pay for his indiscretions, which meant winning the cage match didn’t necessarily matter: making Owens hurt is what mattered.

It’s not one of those “wins and losses don’t matter” ideas that hurt the progression of Bray Wyatt’s character so much for years as it is a reminder that Strowman loves destruction, and destructing an opponent can be just as important as a win. So, when Strowman grabbed Owens at the top of the cage, and considered how much winning the match meant to him, he decided it meant less to him than throwing Owens from atop the cage to an announce table below would.

And the thing is, this would backfire on him if Owens were the kind of heel, and in the state of mind, to loudly and publicly claim this victory over Strowman — since KO’s feet touched the ground first, he won, even if he couldn’t leave the match under his own power while Strowman was able to walk off as if nothing happened. Owens is terrified of Strowman, and never wanted any piece of this or any other match with him. He was the one who tried to rally everyone else in last month’s Money in the Bank match against Strowman, because he knew they had to, that Strowman was the biggest threat of everyone else in the match. Owens was correct, too, as even with the organized effort against him, he still ended up winning.

Owens isn’t going to brag about his W over Strowman. If he’s smart — and smart is the kind of heel Owens is — he will never make mention of it again, because the last thing he needs or wants is for Strowman to yell “I’m not finished with you!” in his direction like he violently has to others in his way before.

So, Owens gets a victory he didn’t earn, but in another, truer sense, he earned with his blood. Strowman loses the battle, but in service of winning the war, and also, that war is already over because of how the battle was ended. I loved all of this, as it actually managed to avoid the tropes of WWE cage matches while leaning heavily into how the characters think and feel. Great stuff.

There have been all kinds of rumors that Jeff Hardy’s back is hurting, and that it’s limiting him at house shows. On Sunday, his defense of the United States Championship against Shinsuke Nakamura included a pre-bell low blow and getting kneed in the face once before being pinned and losing the title, so it sure seems like those rumors are true and Hardy is going to need some time off to recover.

Regardless of the reasons why, this match was one of the most intriguing on the card. It was fast, it was unexpected, it showcased Nakamura’s character trait of absolutely walloping on a dude’s beans. And then you get a further surprise in the form of Randy Orton showing up, presumably to challenge Nakamura for the United States Championship... until he joined in on the dick-smashing party to everyone’s surprise, including Nak’s.

Is Orton trying to ally himself with Nakamura? Does he see a kindred spirit with a love for testicular destruction across the ring from him? Or does he just know that a simple RKO won’t intimidate Nakamura, and that to beat the man, you need to speak his language. Which, in Nakamura’s case, is not Japanese, but is brutal blows to the balls.

I’m fine with either of these outcomes: Randy Orton trying to intimidate Nakamura into a title defense by being better at crotch destruction than he is, or, Randy Orton and Nakamura joining forces to form a tag team where 90 percent of their offense is strikes to their opponents’ dicks.

Oh, like you don’t want to see Orton and Nakamura arm themselves with the Bludgeon Brothers’ hammers in a tag title opportunity so they can start taking swings at their bludgies.

[deep sigh]

okay, so

I’m perfectly fine with Asuka losing to Carmella. At Money in the Bank, at Extreme Rules — it’s fine. Asuka shouldn’t win every single match! What I have a problem with is how the only two modes they seem to have for Asuka are cunning, intelligent, unstoppable force, or, like she was on Sunday, a complete dork with a glass jaw.

You need to build a feud like this, where Carmella isn’t the equal of Asuka and utilizes James Ellsworth to make up for that difference, so that everyone wants to see Carmella lose because she’s a terrible person bending and breaking the rules to defeat her opponent, who otherwise would win. That’s some basic wrestling storytelling! Asuka should deserve to win, but not win, building tension for the moment where she eventually overcomes Ellsworth, Carmella, and whatever other schemes she has in place to keep Asuka from a rightful SmackDown Women’s Championship victory.

Instead, we get Asuka staring at Ellsworth for a whole-ass minute at Money in the Bank, instead of reacting in some way like with violence or being too surprised to counter a rollup or attack from the back by Carmella. It just made Asuka look like a dork who doesn’t understand how clothes work. Then, at Extreme Rules, we have Asuka — who again, is shown to be cunning and intelligent and focused in a way that helped her defeat all her opponents over a long enough stretch to surpass Goldberg’s undefeated streak — completely forget that Carmella could come up from behind her and attack her. She beat on Ellsworth for way too long, then went down for the count because she went face-first into the shark cage Ellsworth was hanging from.

That’s not good writing! It forgets Asuka’s history and the kind of wrestler she is, and makes her just like basically every other WWE babyface: a complete moron. I still want to see Carmella lose, but I want to see her lose because I want this feud to be over: not because Asuka deserves to hand-deliver comeuppance to Carmella’s face with her fist. This is as lazy and uninspired as the Strowman-Owens match was thoughtful, and it’s disappointing to see happen considering how talented all of Asuka, Carmella, and even Ellsworth are.

Roman Reigns vs. Bobby Lashley was a pretty typical power vs. power WWE-style match, which means it was perfectly serviceable, and at times, even good! The problem here is that there was no real successful way to pull off a match result: if Reigns won, it likely set him up to face Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam, which has already happened this year at WrestleMania 34 and A Saudi Arabian Prince Books WWE For One Night Only a few weeks later. No one wants that, not even if the result of it all is Braun Strowman showing up and destroying both of them and becoming Universal Champion himself.

The alternative is to have Bobby Lashley win, which means Bobby Lashley is probably going to be the one to defeat Brock Lesnar and take away the Universal Championship, which, uh... him? Really? A cardboard cutout of Bobby Lashley and the actual Bobby Lashley have the same level of charisma, and despite the visual display of muscles, both struggle to lift up their opponents. This is the guy, on one of the most talented rosters WWE has ever assembled, that gets to challenge and maybe beat Brock Lesnar?

Anyway, I predicted back in April the literal day Lashley showed back up that this was going to be how things went down, and it is a prediction I am proud of only because it proves I’m not cynical, I’m just insightful. Eat at Arby’s.

I loved how they built up Seth Rollins vs. Dolph Ziggler in their 30-minute Iron Man match. For a 30-minute match, you need to tell some stories within stories, and they accomplished that in the night’s main event.

Rollins is clearly the superior of the two — he got out to a quick 2-0 lead in the Iron Man match, on the strength of his wrestling ability vs. Ziggler’s wrestling ability. Then, the equalized got involved: Drew McIntyre started beating the shit out of Rollins while Ziggler laid on the ground and recovered, and while it gave Rollins a 3-0 lead due to disqualification, it also dropped his HP significantly, allowing Ziggler to tie things back up with ease over a now very much in pain and tired Rollins.

Ziggler then played defense for most of the rest of the match, just trying to hang on long enough to avoid giving Rollins back the lead. He was successful in the end, as the clock ran out right before Rollins could pick up the fifth and final fall that would have earned him back the Intercontinental Championship. Ziggler won the sudden-death overtime with an assist from another McIntyre attack, this one out of the ref’s view, and Ziggler was able to retain.

We’ve got a clear-cut story here: Rollins looks incredible and is clearly the better wrestler, the more deserving wrestler, between himself and Ziggler. He’s outgunned, however, as McIntyre is a giant mass of muscle willing to kill in the name of Dolph. Ziggler is an opportunistic ass who undeservedly still has the IC belt, and at some point, Rollins is going to figure out a way to handle both McIntyre and Ziggler, and it’s going to feel amazing when he wins back the title Ziggler ripped away from him.

Now do you see why the Asuka thing makes me so upset? You don’t have to make your faces look like dorks, WWE!