The results of WWE Fastlane 2016 are in and it seems as though The Road to WrestleMania continues to be a bumpy ride. This pay-per-view was equal parts absolutely useless filler as much as it was extremely important. On one hand, the main event would determine the No. 1 contender to the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. However, some of the other matches were utterly pointless in the grand scheme of things. Outside of the possibility that championships would change hands on the next few episodes of Monday Night Raw, this was the best indicator of what matches would be booked for this year's WrestleMania. To the optimistic fan, Fastlane was about the potential to see the landscape of WWE change drastically. Would Dolph Ziggler take the Intercontinental Championship from Kevin Owens? Would Alberto Del Rio prove that Kalisto was a fluke United States champion and regain his title? To the pessimists in the crowd, this event's card was stacked with predictable bouts that would result in nothing but the status quo and a waste of a few hours. Keeping all that in mind, what ended up being the positives and the negatives of the night? Did any matches fail to live up to their hype or perhaps even surpass expectations? How does WrestleMania look now that Fastlane is in the books? It's time to break down the night's biggest highlights and low points, presented in order of appearance. It was a running theme of this event that even what was good certainly wasn't amazing, as this show was nothing more than a glorified episode of Monday Night Raw. Therefore, when looking for highlights, the best parts of the night were little glimmering diamonds in the rough that stood out as particularly interesting or odd. One such instance was the booking of the 2-out-of-3-falls match for the United States Championship between Kalisto and Alberto Del Rio. Far too many times in WWE, these stipulations boil down to something as simple as the heel scoring the first pin and the babyface needing to fight back to win the next two decisions. In this case, Del Rio sacrificed the first decision through a disqualification in order to better set himself up for the next two, using a chair to weaken Kalisto considerably. That is the type of thinking that an intelligent heel would be capable of, so it's nice to see WWE giving Del Rio the credit to be able to try pulling something dastardly like that off. Granted, this isn't a scenario that hasn't been seen before. If memory serves correct, a similar situation occurred at Extreme Rules 2012. In that match, Daniel Bryan was disqualified in the first fall to weaken Sheamus, quickly winning the second fall. Considering how this feels like the tenth time Kalisto and Del Rio have faced off in the past month and a half, it's not surprising that the outcome would be something we've seen in the past. However, the good thing is that it wasn't the most often repeated layout of this match gimmick. The action in the match was good enough for the pre-show, warming up the crowd and helping add more credibility to Kalisto, but here's hoping another positive that comes out of this is that this match had enough finality to it so both men can move on to something else for a while. All one had to do was look at the participants in this match and it would be more than obvious how this was going to go down. It's hard to give a lot of praise to a match that has such a clear and obvious game plan with no possibility of something different happening. Sasha Banks is one of the best women in wrestling today and Becky Lynch continues to prove that she's not deserving of being overlooked so much by WWE, but even though those two as well as Naomi and Tamina are talented, this was ultimately a waste of time. Tag team matches like this are best suited for SmackDown because of how justified it is to skip them. If someone didn't see Sasha and Becky win this match, would it matter in the slightest bit? Nobody would have stopped liking them if Naomi and Tamina had been victorious and it's doubtful the winning team gained any new followers by being victorious here. By the time the next match had started, it was easy to forget anything that transpired during the match other than the final outcome. It's hard to imagine anyone would consider this a highlight by any means. If you've been watching WWE for quite a long time, it's hard to look at a pay-per-view through the eyes of a first-time fan. Sometimes, though, that's the best way to gauge whether a match was good or not. In the case of the Intercontinental Championship match, the amount of WWE programming you've watched likely has the biggest effect on your point of view of the segment. The more you've been watching, the more likely you are to look at this as repetitive filler and boring because you've seen it many, many times before. However, if this is your first exposure to WWE or you've taken a considerable amount of time off from watching the product, you probably enjoyed it considerably more. Removing nostalgia from the equation, Kevin Owens and Dolph Ziggler are on par if not superior to the athletes in the midcard title scene of yesteryear. Such a statement might seem like blasphemy, but keep in mind that rose colored glasses tend to blur our vision from the bad. To newer fans, Ziggler is the equivalent of Mr. Perfect and Owens might as well be Roddy Piper. The athleticism seen in this match and every match that follows a similar pattern is just as good, if not better, than what used to be considered a five star fight in the past. The only reason it isn't accredited with as much applause nowadays is the fatigue of having seen it more often, making it less special. Ziggler played his role as a babyface perfectly, taking the fight to the bigger man and keeping the energy level up. At times, such as his second superkick, he gave off the impression that he was about to win, making the audience wake up a bit. Conversely, Owens showed why he's one of the best heels in the company. He took advantage of the referee's distraction, capitalized on any cheap mistake he could and showed off his arrogance every chance he could. Was this a match for the ages? No. This will ultimately be forgettable in a day or so, as it's nothing special for a pay-per-view in the current climate of WWE. Years ago, however, this would be something people raved about for months. If you keep that perspective in mind and compare this to how pointless this show was overall, it's a highlight for sure. The easiest way to sum this match up is to simply say it failed to live up to its potential. Here we had six of the absolute biggest monsters in the company today—in some cases, the biggest men in WWE history—yet instead of being an insane spectacle of power, it was incredibly mundane. It's disappointing to see a lack of development in these men beyond what has been seen for months on end. For example, Luke Harper has been on the main roster for a few years and has always been the workhorse of tag team matches who acts as the glue to keep things together, but is always second-fiddle to someone else. In this case, that top priority was Braun Strowman—a man who is not improving anywhere near as fast as he needs to. He couldn't even be trusted to get in the ring for more than a few seconds at a time, proving he's nowhere near ready to handle a noteworthy match at WrestleMania. Erick Rowan continues to prove that if he weren't huge, didn't have a large beard and wasn't willing to take a lot of hits, he wouldn't be a member of The Wyatt Family. Even Bray Wyatt—the only one of them with some charisma—did nothing but sit on his chair during this match! Meanwhile, their victorious opponents of Big Show, Kane[1] and Ryback aren't going to come out of this match with any renewed vigor. They'll continue to struggle to remain relevant and put up with chants of "please retire" and "Goldberg" for the foreseeable future. It doesn't appear that any of the six men involved here has any extra momentum to use in the build to WrestleMania, so what as the point? As much of a broken record as it is to say this, there was nothing separating this from being an average tag team match on Monday Night Raw. Pay-per-views should be something more special and not just a means to eat up a few hours of our time. This match was essentially a win-win scenario. If Brie Bella had won the championship, fans would have rejoiced not only because Charlotte would no longer be champion, but because it would have softened the blow of Daniel Bryan's retirement. On the other hand, if Charlotte were to retain her title, it would earn her even more detractors. After all, she would be crushing the dreams of those people who want to see something that offers them comfort. The latter ended up taking place, but was also framed inside a rather decent match, especially to the standards of most Divas matches that tend to happen. Of course, this was no Sasha Banks vs. Bayley, but it should be hard to find plentiful criticism of it just the same. Similar to the Intercontinental Championship match, Brie was in Dolph Ziggler's position as the fan favorite babyface while Charlotte's method of winning proved that she's a cheat. Ric Flair's involvement wasn't overly abundant, which is another positive, as he can sometimes be too overbearing and take too much of the spotlight for himself. Granted, the way he got involved was somewhat awkward. On such a lackluster card, this had more of a "big match feel" to it than everything that came before it during the evening, and it held up its end of the bargain nicely. If Chris Jericho and AJ Styles hadn't previously already wrestled two matches together, this match could have easily been earmarked for WrestleMania and had fans chomping at the bits to see it. Of course, at WrestleMania, the quality of the in-ring performances would have been even better than they were at Fastlane, since this is an insignificant event by comparison. Despite that, Jericho and Styles still put on a great performance. This was just a straight-up solid wrestling match from bell to bell. Too often, WWE tries too hard to inflate a feud, introducing extraneous elements which end up getting in the way rather than being beneficial. Thankfully, nothing frivolous was added into the mix here, which meant Jericho and Styles could tell a much simpler story. This was the rubber match to determine who of the two had the one-up on the other and after a hard-fought contest, the right man won. Jericho doesn't lose any credibility by losing to someone like Styles, but in taking the loss, he's helped put over the Calf Crusher finishing maneuver. Going forward, Styles will be able to use that submission to take out future opponents and commentators can call back to how it was able to incapacitate someone the caliber of Jericho, meaning he has two viable options for finishing maneuvers. There aren't many specifics to delve into as to why this was an entertaining match—it just checked off everything it needed to on the list of what fans would have looked for to enjoy. There was a time period where cable television existed as a means to pay for programming without having to watch commercials. Eventually, commercials found their way on the shows and it just became the standard. Commercials are no stranger to WWE, as the company makes a point to air video packages and reruns ad nauseam, spending more time promoting things than ever necessary. Even on pay-per-views, far too much time is dedicated to recapping what we've already seen or running commercials for other programming. Then, there are times where WWE decides instead of having a match, it would be okay to run yet another commercial. It's masked as a special in-ring interview to help hide the fact that it's nothing but a small step up from just re-airing the same advertisement we've seen for weeks. Any fan who has a brain cell knows that this was the case with The Cutting Edge Peep Show, so there's no need to explain that. What we should do, however, is point out how frustrating certain elements of this segment were. The New Day's contribution to this segment was basically to say "booty" a few times and to gyrate. For being such an amazingly entertaining stable in 2015, the past month or so has really been a time of stagnation for them. If they've run out of material, they need to tap out. Edge and Christian's comedy wasn't all that much better, as they've proven in the past that they're much better than this, too. Nothing they said will be catching on with the crowd. Why did The League of Nations come out? They didn't do anything but get into the ring to tell everyone to leave and then follow suit doing the same thing themselves! At the very most, this was WWE's poorly conceived idea to build toward a Fatal 5-Way match for the WWE Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania featuring The New Day, The League of Nations, The Ascension, The Usos and The Dudley Boyz. However, if that's the case, this failed to create any buzz, since three of those teams didn't show up and the two that were there did absolutely nothing. The way this segment ended perfectly summed up the entirety of it, as out of nowhere, Edge and Christian just started telling people to watch their show. Mission accomplished? If you weren't able to use the restroom and get some food to eat during the Cutting Edge Peep Show segment and hoped WWE would put something else on the card that you didn't need to watch, you were in luck! The Social Outcasts came out to kill some time as Curtis Axel defeated R-Truth due an inadvertent distraction by Goldust, who was only trying to help. This storyline between R-Truth and Goldust is absolutely ridiculous and not to a level where it becomes hilarious. Instead, it's just embarrassingly bad. Since every Social Outcast member is a total jobber, how bad must you be to be on the losing end of a match with them? Guaranteed, nobody will look back on this pay-per-view with fond memories of this segment, as there was nothing to be complimentary of. The downside to this match was just how predictable the outcome was, but the upside to it was how these three managed to wrestle in a way where there were still a handful of times where that inevitable result was in doubt. The smart bet was never to assume anyone but Roman Reigns stood a chance here, as the writing was on the wall from before the Royal Rumble even took place. However, when Dean Ambrose hit Dirty Deeds, you probably got a little anxious, didn't you? Another positive was that WWE avoided booking a scenario where Brock Lesnar was taken out of the equation by The Wyatt Family. That was something many fans expected to see and it wouldn't have been a shock in the slightest bit. Not seeing it was more of a surprise, actually. Ambrose looked like a crazy man with his offense and how he had no problem wielding chairs and landing low blows. Lesnar continues to look like an absolute beast after all of the punishment he took, with the two powerbombs through the tables being the most fun spots of the match. Then, of course, Reigns earns his rightful spot as the challenge to Triple H's WWE World Heavyweight Championship—a title that Reigns has been screwed out of multiple times by now. It's a story that we all wrote the ending to well in advance, but that doesn't discredit it from being a good one to tell. WWE needs to make sure next year's Fastlane doesn't continue the pattern for the third time in having the main event be a No. 1 contender's match, as that defeats the purpose of the Royal Rumble event, but at least something decent was able to come out of a structurally flawed concept. What did you think were some of the best and worst moments of this year's Fastlane event? Do you agree or disagree with this list? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below! Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment[2] and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk[3] on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook[4] and elsewhere for more.
References
- ^ Kane (bleacherreport.com)
- ^ Smark Out Moment (www.smarkoutmoment.com)
- ^ Smack Talk (www.youtube.com)
- ^ Facebook (www.facebook.com)
