I thought Styles/Jericho sucked before the lol result. Both guys seemed really off and the spots looked crazy slow.

They won't have to replace their asterisk keys for a very very long time.

Battle royale half star--if you're gonna book corbin to win and push him, maybe have him do something in the match too. I don't know who the heck this guy is... and he did nothing so this didn't do **** for him.

Ambrose Lesnar--one star. WTF were you all watching, this was the worst non gimmick match of the night (sidenote--I did not see the preshow, intentionally). They went farther away from the ring and used more things in hell in a cell. Massive disappointment of a match.

Taker Shane--one point five stars. It's a one spot match that took wayyyyy too long to get to it and let's make taker look weak the whole match and shane look okay??? Yeah, let's give those two all the airtime at mania, that'll get all the full time wrestlers over.

Rowan Rock -5 stars. This could've worked out with bray vs rock if they didn't have the wyatt's do nothing for months beforehand.

New Day/LON 2 stars. Just mediocre correct team won though and then they blew it by making them all look like complete jobbers. Look, I get it people wanna see the old guys, but they're not gonna tune in tomorrow if you make it seem like all the current guys suck.

AJ vs Jericho 2 stars--was lackluster in the middle, not interesting mostly due to already having fought a ton. Jericho going over is fine assuming he gets a title shot and buried by roman instead of AJ... oh wait. (still fine with jericho anyway as AJ is essentially never winning the wwe title)

HHH vs Roman 2.25 stars. Crowd was dead for this since it had been a million hours and match was just okay->meh. People complain about these part timers--then still complain when they correctly lose?

Ladder Match 3 stars. Solid spot fest including polka dot ladder. Result tarnished the match a fair bit. You thought that title prestige couldn't get any lower and it did. What happens when you create a match where every option to win is a bad one.

Women's Match 3 stars. Love Sasha/Becky but this wasn't anywhere near as good as I had anticipated. I'm struggling at why anyone rated this 4 stars, likely not even top 10 for any combination among those three.

It was a gimmick match.

4-Way RAW main event: 4 stars. You should go out of your way to watch this.

Meltzer's ratings:

NXT
Tag Titles: ****
Aries-Corbin: **1/4
Nakamura-Zayn: ****1/2
Women's Title: ***3/4
NXT Title: ***1/2

Wrestlemania
US Title: *1/2
10 Woman Tag: **1/4
Usos-Dudleys: *1/2
IC Title: ****1/4
Jericho-AJ: ***3/4
LoN-New Day: **1/2
Lesnar-Ambrose: ***1/4
Women's Title: ****
Taker-Shane: **1/2
Battle Royal: *1/2
WWE Title: ***1/4

RAW
Main Event: ****

10 woman tag rating is egregious

Dammit, so close on my prediction of Meltzer giving four stars to Jericho-AJ.

It was technically cromulent, after all

3.25 for Lesnar/Ambrose and HHH/Reigns is absurd. First was way too short. Second was way too long.

Lesnar/Ambrose seems more indefensible than Reigns/HHH. Lesnar Ambrose was basically a bad 2001 hardcore title match where one of the competitors could only throw German suplexes.

HHH/Roman rating is bad and he should feel bad.

I miss the old days when Meltzer would go out of his way to **** on the WWF. Heart just isn't in it anymore.

Meltzer still ****s on the WWE, but only hates the booking and promos now, not the in ring work. The matches he gives these star ratings that are seemingly inflated compared to his own standards.

WWE PAYBACK 2016

#1 Contender Tourney Final - Enzo & Cass vs. The Vaudevillains: Well, we know what happened here.

Rating: N/A

Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens: I admittedly was pretty distracted early in this one because of the Enzo Amore situation…my instinct is to say that this one started slow, but it might have just been because of bad match timing. Owens and Zayn, even more than most, get victimized by the WWE booking model where amazing high-impact spots that don't happen to carry the "finisher" label can't win unless accompanied by a distraction or something. They did some spots that would be great near-falls if WWE bookers weren't huge droolers with no ability to branch out. As is, I couldn't buy the near-falls and they couldn't add anything. Still, after the shoulderbreaker and then frogsplash were kicked out of, Sami and KO kicked it up to a new gear and did tremendous work here. I went from thinking that this wasn't a four-star match to thinking it cleared that mark with relative ease.

Rating: ****1/4

IC Title - The Miz (c) vs. Cesaro: Owens on commentary was certainly +EV for this match, and that includes the awesomeness of Sami Zayn's reappearance. Cesaro was a joy to watch as usual even though some of his offense felt more like an inorganic showcase than natural storytelling. Miz going over fluky after a visual pin was a great decision by itself, and the way that it was done, all while Kevin Owens has made his interest in the IC Title clear, made it even better. Good match.

Rating: ***1/4

Dean Ambrose vs. Chris Jericho: Jericho gave this a go - his dropkick through the ropes to the floor early on was a very nice-looking spot - but damn if this wasn't mostly really boring. Just a throwaway match that couldn't keep my attention at all.

Rating: **

Women's Title - Charlotte (c) vs. Natalya: Started strong. Didn't stay strong. They had a great atmosphere built up with the inclusion of Bret Hart, and the early action kept the momentum going, but the match fell off a cliff after a few minutes and became botchy and boring, then got paid off with a stupid ending.

Rating: **

WWF Title - Roman Reigns (c) vs. AJ Styles: Some great spots, some legit drama…I don't want to give credit to a believable false finish when in fact it's a ridiculous superhero kickout, so I won't. But the match still had me interested. Unfortunately the booking was incredibly stupid, from the not-remotely-believable interruptions to the SuperCena ending. Still, I would say that it was good enough to warrant like 4.5 stars from Meltzer, and three stars from me.

Rating: ***

WWE Payback
5/1/16

Enzo/Cass vs Vaudevillains:
No rating. Enzo injured. Match called off.


Sami Zayn vs Kevin Owens: * * * * 1/4
Just excellent, excellent stuff. Started off a bit skittish (understandable after Enzo injury) but really got it going. Even got the crowd back into it after the Enzo injury which is no small feat. Loved the decisive finish. Couple really great sequences. Interview segment after also great.


Cesaro vs Miz (c) - IC Title Match: * * * 1/4
KO commentary was enjoyable. Match was fun. Cesaro hit his fun spots with the running uppercuts and the Giant swing. Booking was perfect for it with Miz tapping while ref was distracted by KO/Sami fighting outside. Sets the stage for a good 4 way feud. Two storylines merged together well.

Dean Ambrose vs Jericho: * * 3/4
It wasn't bad but didn't really grip me. Nothing major I can point to that I disliked a lot but for whatever reason just wasn't feeling it.


Charlotte (c) vs Natalya - Women's Title: * 1/2
Even before the ending the match had nosedived. Natayla runs the ropes like kelly kelly (or at least did here). Finish was abysmal, made no sense, and wasn't even attempted to be explained. Lost probably a star on the finish to me.


Reigns (c) vs Styles - WWE Title: * * *
This was pretty good I thought up to the countout stoppage. There was a great spot with the table. Some Reigns dominating offense early (he's much better as a beast than overcoming the odds). After the restart the match went downhill. The DQ stoppage didn't work as well as the countout and then the match turned into Reigns overcoming the odds which as I mentioned doesn't work for me. BC and AJ weren't enough and very similar to other matches with him in that role I hated the finish of "getting beat up SPEAR win". It wasn't terrible, but 2nd half much worse than first.

oh we were pretty close this time lol

Oh I guess I can also do this:

nxt dallas: 9/10
wrestlemania 32: 3/10
payback: 5.5/10

Realest Guys/Vaudevillains - INC
Owens/Zayn - ****
Miz/Cesaro-***
Ambrose/Jericho - *3/4
Charlotte/Natty - *
Reigns/Styles - *** 1/2

This show's sum was worse than the sum of its parts (matches) because of the Enzo situation that was a bummer but not a "give it bad star ratings" bummer, and the McMahon stuff that was completely awful and painfully long, but wasn't a match and thus doesn't get rated.

Show was still fine, but I don't know quite what I would rate it. I'll just stick with individual match ratings.

On further reflection I should probably have Nattie-Charlotte a bit lower. I think on some level the fact that they had me believing we were headed for a good match early left me giving too much credit to the first part, because it left me thinking, "It was below average, but not THAT far below average." Two stars may be about right on the merits before the ending, but the ending was an embarrassment.

Feel solid about the rest of my ratings.

Not going to rate anything but this show was >>>>>> WM.

Yeah, I think just on a match basis and the booking of the first half of the show it'd be higher for me. Enzo, mcmahon segment, and the ppv ending with "welp that didn't matter there's a rematch in 3 weeks" kind of knocked it down for me.

I can't imagine Metlzer giving this match 4.5 stars. I know he tends to overrate main events. But this match was clearly worse than the Zayn/Owens match and was only used to build to the rematch and to further the Shane/Steph angle.

I'd say it's better than one would think. But I think most people know that Roman is actually capable of having really good matches (more capable than Ambrose, for example), though he needs a good opponent to do so.

I would actually rate it higher than 3. Probably around 3.5.

Clearly. This PPV had at least 3, maybe even 4 matches better than anything at WM. Even the Ryback/Kalisto match in the pre-show would have competed with anything on the WM card except the triple threat.

Ha, that quote is the first I realized that I called it the WWF Title. That MNW thread is ****ing with me.

I considered going ***1/4 with the main event and it was basically a coin flip between that and the *** I ended up on.