Top-Down Smackdown: Help Them, Obi-Wan Kenobi

As finishes to main-event matches go, it was certainly original.

After a back and forth match between Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose that constantly threatened to derail, as when both men were almost wheeled out on stretchers after the first big bump…the lights went out. A chant began in a language not obviously English, and as my wife needled me to translate what she was certain was German, it started to sound a bit like backmasking.

Then the light of a lantern turned on in the middle of the ring…and nothing else. Until…

A life-size hologram of what looked vaguely like Princess Leia. Though in the context of the storyline, we were to believe that it was, in fact, the ghost of Bray Wyatt’s dead sister Abigail.

That’s right, folks – a pay-per-view ended with a run-in from a ghost. Naturally, Wyatt himself showed up afterward to attack Ambrose for no particular reason; the Wyatts had an old grudge with the Shield, but that would presumably make them just as liable to attack Rollins.

Points for creativity, I suppose. But negative points for killing the possibility that the show would actually close with a good wrestling match, which would have been a nice bonus after the predictable slog everything else was. Rusev beat yet another guy just because the storyline says so, rather than because it’s in any way believable? Check. Nikki Bella gets one up on her sister Brie, AGAIN? Check. John Cena and Randy Orton, still boring as fuck six years along? Check. The Rhodes brothers having no worthy opponents besides the Usos again? Check check (seriously, WWE, at least freshen this angle up by bringing their dads into it, even if you don’t take my suggestion of having said dads switch sides).

Hell in a Cell 2014 was a terrible pay-per-view that only emphasized how boring most of the current storylines are. WWE should just go ahead and pay Brock Lesnar extra to work all pay-per-views – he’s never going to have a wide variety of opponents on his current sched, and it would spice things up. For example: would Hell in a Cell have been way better if you’d even added Lesnar versus…oh, let’s just pick someone silly…Jerry Lawler? Hell yes it would. Lesnar-Lawler would be a squash, but an entertaining squash that would still be more fun to watch than most of last night’s matches.

Next PPV we get Cena-Lesnar again, unless we don’t, because the date of that match hasn’t been specified, and they could stretch it to TLC or even the Rumble if Brock gets sadistically specific with his work dates. And by segueing Ambrose into a feud with Bray Wyatt, I’m thinking that main event push may be ending before it really began, which is sad, because despite all the crap he had to work with, Ambrose was clearly the top entertainer in the company yesterday, as usual. He’s like the Peter Capaldi of wrestling.

Also, Ukraine just had elections, so expect Vladimir Putin to do something awful soon, and the Rusev angle to get even worse.