It’s the final stop on the road to Wrestlemania, and the last chance for three superstars to earn a championship match against Triple H at the grandest stage of all professional wrestling. When Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose and Brock Lesnar step into the ring it will be brother versus brother… versus Beast, and only one man will earn the right for the marquee match at Wrestlemania 32. After his WWE debut at the Royal Rumble, AJ Styles made an immediate impression by defeating Chris Jericho on Raw, but Y2J wasn’t convinced. Jericho evened the score to 1-1, and one more match at Fastlane will settle the score; is Styles great, or is he Phenomenal? Also on the card is a Divas title match between Brie Bella and Charlotte and Kevin Owens defending his newly won Intercontinental Championship against his nemesis of late Dolph Ziggler. There is one more stop on the road to Wrestlemania, and it is at WWE Fastlane!
+ Brock Lesnar vs Dean Ambrose vs Roman Reigns (winner will face Triple H at Wrestlemania): Every time Lesnar is in the ring you get the feeling you are about to watch someone get murdered on live TV. After Lesnar’s previous triple threat (against Cena & Rollins) at Royal Rumble 2015, this was sure to be a spectacle, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The match was full of brutal shots at a hectic pace, and the finishing sequence leaves much to be discussed and disected, and we now have a challenger for Triple H at Wrestlemania
+ AJ Styles vs Chris Jericho: The third meeting of these two was, once again, great. I can’t help but think, however, that they are saving their best for a Wrestlemania match. The crowd was loud and evenly split for this match, and the sheer fact we are seeing AJ Styles in the WWE is something I am not quite used to just yet. This was probably the Match of the Night, on an event where the bar was set to roughly middle of the road
+ Kalisto (c) vs Alberto Del Rio (2-out-of-3 falls, United States Championship): Relegating this match to the pre-show is simply a travesty, because it was fast and furious, if a little bit by the books. Both Del Rio and Kalisto are good enough in the ring to make a good story out of the basic movements
+ Kevin Owens (c) vs Dolph Ziggler (Intercontinental Championship): It never ceases to amaze me just how much the crowd loves Owens, considering Owens is such a bad, bad man. Conversely, I can never quite wrap my head around why the WWE keeps Ziggler as the good guy when the crowd shows such indifference to him. Even though we’ve seen this match what must be nearly a dozen times over the last few months, this match was bloody fantastic. A handful of reused spots from previous outtings mixed in seamlessly with new close falls and high impact moments to create a near instant classic
+ an impromptu Curtis Axel (w/ Heath Slater, Adam Rose and Bo Dallas) vs R-Truth match was surprisingly good, and advanced a handful of side stories going on. The WWE could use more of this sort of stuff
– Becky Lynch & Sasha Banks vs Team B.A.D (Naomi & Tamina): It was interesting to start the show with this match, because the crowd was not into it, and the action was predictable. Not necessarily a bad match, performance wise, but simply nothing special
– Big Show, Kane & Ryback vs The Wyatt Family (Braun Strowman, Erick Rowan & Luke Harper) (w/ Bray Wyatt): there are so many things wrong with this match, and I don’t really know where to even begin. Harper deserves far more. Kane and Big Show need to wind their careers down. Ryback just cannot do anything other than a clothesline convincingly. Strowman is useless and Rowan is best as a tag guy. Not to mention Wyatt himself being completely wasted. This match was horrible, and helped absolutely nobody
– Charlotte (c) (w/ Ric Flair) vs Brie Bella (Divas Championship): Holy gosh darn crap. Literally no redeeming qualities. One of them had a leg worked on the whole time, and then SOLD THE OTHER LEG AS INJURED. God almighty, stick your hand in a blender before even thinking about watching this
– Cutting Edge Peep Show with Edge & Christian: this accomplished a huge amount of nothing. A new challenge for the New Day? Perhaps, but if it was the other ‘guests’ of the segment, then I think we are better of without
Should you watch this event: Based on the above, with four good matches and four bad, this is the definition of a hit or miss pay per view. Check out Styles/Jericho and Owens/Ziggler, and maybe the Triple threat main event (if the result doesn’t seem too obvious to you just from the line up), but just find some results for the rest.
MoshFish Reviews 