Reigns v Styles

Roman Reigns v AJ Styles (Payback, 5/1/16)

What the hell man? I know this has been talked up pretty much since it happened, but I wasn't expecting to think it was this good. It was exceptional and easily one of my favourite WWE matches of the 2010s. This period of WWE is a whole blur of nothing to me so I had no idea Reigns was even the champion coming in. Was this after he beat Helmsley at Wrestlemania? Or did they let him wrestle someone actually interesting like the Repo Man or Tatanka? The crowd are not particularly fond of him, I'll tell you that. It's a wee bit jarring watching Kevlar vest Reigns work babyface to a chorus of boos. I actually think this Reigns was a more interesting wrestler than current Tribal Chief Reigns even if the latter is much better as a character, but either way, on this night, he never much tried to appease the folks who weren't down to ride with him anyway. Even if the roles weren't necessarily reversed, AJ in some ways worked more like a babyface than Reigns. I thought both guys were great, though. Say whatever about AJ, but his execution on stuff is always terrific and everything looked CLEAN here, all of his bumps had real snap and he brought flash without doing too much. Early on he was clearly just trying to get under Reigns' skin and I guess it was a strength v speed match up when you boil it down, albeit one layered with strategy that they both communicated really well. AJ was outright telling Reigns to chase him and eventually Reigns got annoyed enough to do it, which obviously led to openings for Styles. AJ's strike flurries were really good, he had about three big ones, each adding an extra strike or two, culminating with the Pele Kick on his final flurry that Reigns sold like a sledgehammer blow. There was one point where he landed a mean back elbow to Reigns' jaw (Reigns sells getting elbowed in the jaw as well as anyone ever, btw), then when he tried it again later Reigns ducked it and Styles immediately rolled him into the Calf Crusher. It was kind of staggering how often they pulled off things like that without them looking contrived or telegraphed. I mean WWE is a company now where stylistically they butter their bread on reversal-heavy matches, but it's not always easy to do a ton of reversals, especially intricate ones, without it being obvious that those reversals are coming. I thought basically every big moment came off as organically as you could ask for here, from teased finishers to big table bumps to the finishing stretch as a whole and then the finish itself. Even the nearfalls were brilliant and they managed to get huge reactions off a select few of them. The table bump was spectacular as Reigns got cut in half off the Phenomenal Forearm without jumping into it and trying to soften the blow. He just ate that thing and let the edge of the table do what it would to his kidneys and lower back. They timed things like the Superman Punch reversal to the second Forearm perfectly, set up the Spear without it looking obvious, even stuff early in the match where they'd do rope-running sequences didn't look contrived, especially the one where Roman clotheslined AJ clean out his boots. I loved all of Reigns' mannerisms throughout. He's a great seller through facial expressions and body language and actually employing some subtlety and he did all of that here. Early on AJ would throw a series of leg kicks and Reigns was great at sporadically trying to work out a knot in his hamstring during the match, not drawing so much attention to it that you think it's actively hurt or a "story point," but enough where it puts over something relatively innocuous as being potentially dangerous. It was realistic, like during an actual sporting contest where a player will try and stretch out or massage a dead leg. After that first restart he was amazing at selling the effects of going through the table, slowly crawling away from Styles while the latter went up top to finish the job. During that early part where AJ was riling him up you could tell Reigns took pleasure in shutting him down when he finally grabbed him. He rolled Styles up at one point, not really to pin him but more to set him up for what was pretty much a one-armed powerbomb, and for a move that always requires obvious cooperation from the person taking it Reigns just yoinked Styles up with enough force that it did not look as if Styles had a say in the matter. He also picked Styles up for a regular powerbomb while Styles was flat on the mat, and again it was just pure strength, very little input from AJ. That boy was getting flung about whether he liked it or not. I could see some folk being iffy on the restarts, but if nothing else I thought they allowed Reigns and Styles a little extra time to recover from the things that caused the match to end in the first place. Both stoppages were only like 30 seconds anyway so at least they never detracted from the wrestlers in favour of McMahon power struggle nonsense.