A neat little surprise from Raw here. Sami’s, of course, someone that I’ve loved and enjoyed for over a decade now, so it was a little difficult reconciling the immense praise he received for his part in The Bloodline storyline with my general disinterest in the angle. I bought in for Sami, but not for the story itself. Combine that with the fact that none of his matches in the last year, even those against opponents I enjoy, have really hit the high marks I know him capable of have had me lower on Sami’s recent work than others might have him.
Bit of a shock for me then when he gets to have something this great with Drew McIntyre. I don’t dislike Drew, but there’s a ceiling to my enjoyment of his work. A lot of that’s likely to do with environment, things just don’t bloom in the WWE the way I want them to, but I’ve never been over the moon for McIntyre here.
And yet, I have to credit Drew for driving a lot of the energy in this bout. He’s hitting hard and giving Sami the space to fight back in return which really allows this to develop quite nicely. I love that Sami’s able to showcase some of his own striking in this too, combining that with his selling makes for the ideal babyface that I know he can be. Sami also throws in some of his best bumps of the year in this too. Those big suplexes from Drew to start, then that ugly looking (for the better) crash into the announce desk early on all look delightful.
There’s a certain subtlety too to how they build towards the finish. Sami continuously tweaks his knee when attempting offense off the ropes in this, until it accumulates to a point that he can’t run to build momentum for a big tope. When McIntyre finally recognizes the weakness, he goes right for it which wins him the day. Production wise, they probably gave McIntyre’s lightbulb moment to attack the knee a little too much space. It becomes one of those blunt WWE-style choices to hammer in a storybeat instead of letting it just move accordingly. But that never really takes away from how neatly structured this all is. Leave it to Sami Zayn to breathe life into this sterile company.
Rating: ****
