WrestlingNerd Presents: WWE Battleground 2013 Review

What up wrestling fans, I'm the WrestlingNerd bringing you another written review. Somebody told me WWE Battleground was taking place, so let's review it…I guess. Here's a PPV and a bag of tricks along with the--f*** it, let's just get started. 

Here's your PPV… enjoy… I think

As I mentioned during the week, I was not looking forward to this. While some of the hype to the major matches were at least appealing to register a watch, nothing else about the event was really selling it for me; but the final presentation is all that matters at the end of the day, right? Would that occur or would mowing a lawn be more entertaining? Let's find out. The first match of the night was the Hardcore match between Alberto Del Rio and RVD for the WHC. The match wasn't bad and a decent start to the show. It was good, but if you've seen a lot of hardcore matches involving RVD, this was nothing different. Del Rio wins the match after RVD misses a Van Terminator, thus Del Rio attacks RVD's arm to weaken it for the Cross Armbreaker. Looks like a wheel fell off that maneuver for Van Dam…

With the victory, Del Rio pretends the WHC means something while RVD will go home to count his money. Who's the next opponent for Del Rio's WHC? Eh, maybe they'll bring out the 'Insert some random guy here' roulette board to determine who should be next. TAKING ALL BETS!!!

The highlight of the night

I find it amazing how Zeb Colter is the only person in the WWE that can create the art of food…smack talk? Is that a thing? In fact, he probably went out to dip some buffalo wings into some maple syrup after the show. Hmmm… I wonder how that would taste? Anyway, Santino and Great Khali have a match against Almost Real Americans. Yeah, this makes it on Battleground and we aren't even an hour into the show? Maybe the creative staff shut down this week, what do you want from me!? The match is pretty forgettable until you get to the part where Antonio Cesaro swings Khali around. I could seriously watch that for hours. At least Battleground has at least one thing going for itself at the moment. After the 'Punjab-A-Whirl', Antonio pins Khali to defeat Comedy Disaster. After the Cesaro swing, the next best thing about this PPV is Zeb's promo. I'm actually being serious right now… yikes…

Fire Man is a dick

You know what can be a bit challenging? In the first Megaman game, you have to defeat Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, and Guts Man all on one life and no energy refills in between. And even if you manage to defeat all four of them, you still have to defeat Dr. Wily without any energy refills. Why is it so hard? There's challenging and just being completely unfair and THIS is pretty dickish. If only Fire Man's pattern was easy to recognize a--THE F*** AM I DOING!? Sorry, I got distracted with Megaman and I missed out on the IC and Divas title matches. At the same time can you blame me? Nothing about these matches stand out or even serve and importance. I even went back to force myself to watch these and I didn't miss a damn thing. I guess you can argue the AJ/Brie match at least got some build-up, but even then it was lazily done at the last moment. I'm not sure if my mind is playing tricks on me but I think the divas match was longer than the IC title match. To be fair, the matches weren't bad as nothing about them screamed terrible, but by speeding through exposition faster than a bean burrito, it doesn't make me care about the match… It just makes me want to play a video game. Hey look, I somehow connected all of that! Neither of these titles changed hands. Axel won cleanly while AJ had some help from Tamina to steal the match. The AJ match at least had some of my interest as I did not care at all for the IC title match. In fact, what's an Intercontinental Title? Curtis Axel might as well being holding onto a roll of toilet paper since that's pretty much what the IC represents these days…

Hey look, the PPV is trying to do something

The next match was Cody Rhodes and Goldust taking on the Shield in a tag team match. This was one of the few matches I was looking forward to this evening. The pieces were there to make this match truly stick out and I would say this was the best match of the night in terms of quality AND storytelling. The crowd was really into this match and I'll admit that it was definitely worth checking out, but something about it just screams rushed. The Rhodes family coming back in the WWE was a great moment, but you can tell the WWE was playing it up a lot more than they should. This would've been a bigger moment if the Rhodes family had been gone for months to get their redemption, not 3-5 weeks. This storyline needed more time to really go over, but it was enjoyable for what it was worth. 

Outsmart the walrus

Come in, beat somebody up, follow the buzzards, and leave. That seems to be the growing tale for the Wyatt family. Like I said in last week's Raw review, I like the Wyatt family and they show a ton of potential but you gotta do more than just have them repeat themselves every week. In fact, I think people are starting to grow tired of them since nothing's changed. The Punk/Ryback match was… okay. Yeah, it was just okay. Thanks to a slight distraction by Heyman, Punk utilizes his cunning to sneak a low blow on Ryback to steal this match. This was probably the best way to end the match if you wanted to continue the feud. Ryback doesn't look bad since he get screwed over while Punk looks good since he was able to outsmart Heyman. While I understand the reasoning for this type of approach, this outcome just adds to the list of things that aren't making this PPV stick out. That's another negative for the night… That list is really starting to grow, don't you think? 

Here's your knuckle sandwich

After another round of Daniel Bryan/Randy Orton matches, Big Show comes out to knock out DB. It seems as if Randy is about to steal the championship until Show has grown tired of all the pressure and knocks out the backup referee and Randy in the process, thus ending the PPV. I guess we have to wait a few more weeks until we have a WWE Champion as this match ends in a no contest. I know a lot of people are complaining about the ending since it puts things on hold a while longer but I understood why this happened and I don't mind the ending since its been building up to this. Big Show has been pushed to the edge by the corporation and the guy just finally had enough of it all and decided he needed to do something about it, thus screwing over Randy in the process. It was time for him to do something and he'll definitely be dealt with tomorrow when Trips and Steph have to talk to him. With all of that and despite the fact I understand AND agree with this move, the ending does nothing for the overall presentation of tonight's show. That's just another negative to add to the list. Well, let's get just to the conclusion already since that list is about to explode. 

Overall Impression:

I went into tonight's show with low expectations and outside of a few things that stood out from the show, I was still disappointed with this presentation. Nothing about it seems memorable and I have to argue that this PPV does nothing. Why was this even here? Why did this take place? Why does it exist? Is it because the company quota said you had to put a PPV on tonight, is that why? That's sadly the answer to the question but I would even say if this is what you were gonna showcase this evening, you would be better off canceling this PPV and waiting until Raw or Smackdown to air this. In fact, tonight's PPV felt like two episodes of Smackdown combined. Instead of Battleground, it should've been called Battledown or Smackground… That just sounds wrong. I wouldn't call this a bad PPV at the end of the day since the match quality was present. In fact, I would mostly refer to this as a boring PPV. I just had a hard time trying to sit down and enjoy this show. When I just trailed off in the middle of the review, that actually happened. I just got so bored and uninterested with Battleground that I literally had to switch to something else. I would've actually preferred to witness a bad PPV since at least I'd have something funny to look at. I know it seems odd that I would get more enjoyment out of a bad wrestling show compared to a boring one, but that's just how I see it. I watch wrestling to have a good time and be entertained, but when a showing's boring, I honestly just have to look elsewhere for entertainment. If I had to give Battleground a score between 1-10 and 5 considered average, I have to give this a 3 out of 10. I can see some people saying this was slightly below average, but I honestly had to bring it down a notch because of how boring it was. Antonio Cesaro's swing and the Rhodes family dilemma might be positives, but there's just not enough fun stuff to really make this event worthwhile. This is definitely one PPV I never want to look at again. I just hope something changes with Hell in a Cell, but I wouldn't be surprised if HIAC is similar to NoC and BG due to the fact WWE wants to use most of their cards at Survivor Series since it's one of the big four. With that said, I just hope it means things will get a little more interesting in the next few weeks. After all, I gotta hold onto something. Despite how disappointed I was with this PPV, I still think something good can come out of this and it should get better. After all, there's still traces of good stuff here and there and they had something good a few weeks ago. I'm optimistic to the point where I think the interest level will rise once more, but that's just me. That does it for the review and I hope you enjoyed it. If you enjoyed any of my nonsense, check out some of my other reviews and partake in my stupidity. See you guys and girls in the next one. 

WrestlingNerd's Official Score for WWE Battleground 2013: 3 out of 10