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That was a very disappointing night.
A lot of problems became quite clear quickly in the booking of Smackdown’s latest pay-per-view. We had lots of cheap finishes, a handful of 50/50 booking decisions, a surprise return and slow, long-winded matches. It was clearly one of the most overbooked and worst pay-per views of the year. It is quite depressing to see the quality of Smackdown drop so much in such a short time since WrestleMania.
With all of this in my disappointed mind, I present my list of the top five most surprising moments of WWE Battleground 2017:
#5. Aiden English Wins
I have felt sorry for Aiden English. He has worked hard in the WWE system for over five years and has struggled a long time to have very limited success. After he lost his tag partner earlier this year, he seemed destined to fail. He rarely appears on television and loses all the time. Then came Battleground. He won a pay-per-view match.
English has good chemistry with the vastly underused Tye Dillinger. I fully expected a similar finish to their match as Backlash with both going back to being afterthoughts. Instead, I got a solid match followed by a clean win for English. I hope this surprising result leads to good things for this talented performer.
#4. Screwy Finishes
They were a lot of strange booking decisions and abrupt finishes at the Battleground. Sami defeating Mike Kanellis in his pay-per-view debut is an interesting one. Baron Corbin ending his match with a low blow fits that category as well. However, nothing seems as anti-climatic and surprising as the finish to the Kevin Owens vs AJ Styles match.
Their match at Backlash ended with a screwy finish. I figured they wouldn’t want another bizarre finish and abruptly change the title yet again. Instead, they did a strange finish at Battleground that made little sense. The referee was knocked out and woke up, but just to do a quick three count for Kevin Owens to win back the title.
They ignored that both wrestlers shoulders were clearly down. The pin was counted. The announcers didn’t mention the screwy finish or show a replay. Kevin Owens simply took the belt and quickly left. At some point, we can just get a good and clean Styles-Owens match right?
#3 Natalya Will Fight For The Title
I am pretty tired of all the Fatal Five Way Matches but the one at Battleground was fun while it lasted. It was pretty fast paced and built believable finishes for all but the final fall. Was it strange to see Natalya win in such an anticlimactic finish? Sure, but it was more surprising seeing Natalya win in the first place.
Natalya hasn't held any title since her sole Divas Champion reign in 2010. She has been a solid hand but hasn't won a big match. She mainly is around it seems to make other looks good.
So when she got a pin on Charlotte, the decorated 4-Time RAW Women's Champion and earned a title match with Naomi at Summerslam, it did come as quite a surprise. It certainly wasn’t the match a lot of us expected at the second biggest pay-per-view of the year.
#2 Xavier Woods Is The Star Of The Match
Poor Xavier Woods. Despite a wrestling career that spans back to 2005, he hasn’t had a lot of in-ring success in the WWE. Sure he is a fantastic talker but that has been his major role in New Day. He talks a good game and Big E/Kofi Kingston take care of business during a majority of their tag matches. Thankfully that did not occur on Sunday night.
The tag match between New Day and The Usos was clearly the highlight of the night. It was a well-timed and fun encounter. Xavier was the perfect person to be a part of the match. He took a great bump from The Usos. He performed an incredible leap across the ring as well. It was great to see his high flying style pay off at Battleground. It was surprising it took so long for WWE to allow him to shine! It's also really surprising that the opener was the match of the night.
#1 Great Khali Interferes In The Terrible Main Event
The main event made little sense. I cannot even begin to imagine the view for the fans in the arena. I doubt they could really see much that was actually happening in the ring during the Punjabi Prison Match. Needless to say, they didn’t miss much in the illogical and slow main event.The main event left too many questions to be answered:
Why did the Prison have its own theme music?
Why did we have four doors that were open for only 60 seconds?
What is the point of fighting to get out of the doors if you could simply climb the first cage anyway?
Why bother climbing the Prison at all if you could go through it like the Samir Singh did?
It was a frustrating and illogical mess throughout the match. However, nothing compares to seeing Great Khali help Jinder Mahal win a title match in 2017.
That isn’t a good surprise. You could tell by the crowd reaction they weren’t exactly thrilled to see the Great Khali in a WWE ring for the first time in three years. Great Khali wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire with his in-ring abilities when he left.
Poor Great Khali had problems literally moving around in the ring. The image of him slowly walking down to stop Orton from winning was pretty bad. Why he would help Jinder who made him a “slave” at one point is baffling. But there was a lot of baffling choices on Sunday night.
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