WWE Payback fan feedback: House of Horrors match
Thumbs in the Middle
- Best Match: Jericho vs. Owens
- Worst Match: House of Horrors
Show started off fine with a decent tag match with Gallows and Anderson losing to Enzo and Cass. Then came the Miz TV segment with Balor which actually wasn’t bad and the crowd so far is into the show and usually they are quiet for this stuff on the kick off show.
Main show starts with the US Title. Good match here and with a surprise win for Jericho winning the US Title and going to SmackDown, but of course if he won’t be around that means he’s losing it pretty fast and won’t be on TV anyway. So either Owens wins it back right away or they move Owens to the WWE Title picture after Jinder gets beat. I still don’t get how Jinder is the top contender and guys like Owens and AJ are in the US Title hunt, and guys like Tye and Shinsuke are in a holding pattern. They bring these guys from NXT and then take all the goodwill they had and throw it out for nonsense.
Neville vs. Aries was good until the lame DQ finish. In this day and age how the no title change on a DQ is still a thing is crazy given that the ref knows Neville grabbed him on purpose and the opponent gets screwed. They need to come up with some other idea.
Hardy’s vs. Sheamus and Cesaro was another solid encounter with the Hardy’s retaining and poor Jeff lost a tooth. Then the heel turn for Sheamus and Cesaro which I guess they had to do to keep this going.
Bayley vs. Alexa and the curse of being the hometown hero was next with Alexa winning the Women’s Title. Good match and kind of surprised Sasha wasn’t involved somehow.
Then came the real horror of the show, this pre-taped garbage with Orton and Wyatt where they apparently borrowed someone’s house of horrors that is only a few miles from the arena. This was real bad stuff even by low budget horror standards.
Rollins vs. Joe was another solid match, but I think people were starting to get tired especially after that Orton and Wyatt stuff.
Oh boy we get to see the rest of Orton and Wyatt now. Orton is miraculously fine. Jinder and his boys came to play and Wyatt wins a non title match. Wasn’t the original purpose of this rematch from Mania because Bray was owed a title rematch? I guess he’s not getting one. If I was Bray I’d be mad. Oh well. Let’s hope that puts this terrible feud to rest once and for all.
Roman vs. Braun is the main event and it was good. A big win for Braun who should win if he is going to challenge Lesnar soon. Apparently the thirty day rule for title defenses doesn’t apply to Lesnar or anyone anymore.
A few bad things on this show, enough to make it a middle of the road neither here nor there event. Creative needs to really step it up.
– Robb Block
**********
Thumbs in the middle with 3 good matches, though I want to thumbs down it.
WWE Payback 2017 aka WWE Flat Finishes aka WWE No Momentum for Mania Winners (save Rollins)
- Best: Seth vs. Joe ***3/4 (ahead of Neville-Aires and Strowman-Reigns at ***1/2)
- Worst: First half of Orton-Wyatt was * and actual match was a dud so 1/2*
Bayley could have won or could have lost via cheating.. but to lose clean?? They are treating the women the same as the men now flattening them all out into a muddled and meaningless midcard.
Next up: WWE Rise of the Jobbers
– Ed Branscomb
**********
Thumbs Up!
Liked most of the entire card, thought both Cole and Graves were really clever and engaged on commentary and did a nice job. Mildly disappointed in Aries/Neville due to the finish, plus they seemed to be a step off in spots. Dug the main event and was cool with the “coughing up blood” gimmick, but would’ve preferred if they treated him as legit injured instead of the “John Wayne walk off under his own accord” BS.
Best Match: Jericho vs. Owens — Crowd was hot, clean-cut KO is such a great heel and I thoroughly enjoyed the fingertip callback. Thought they were gonna steal some of Scurll’s finger break gimmick for a bit since it’d be new to this audience lol!
Really wanted to like Joe/Rollins more than I did, but they book every Rollins babyface match working his bad knee and during almost all of his comeback, he’s using his bad knee for offense and the psychology takes me out of it because it: A) Makes Rollins seem like he’s a clueless babyface using his injured body part that’ll easily be exploited (Which is why you’d never see a UFC fighter intentionally expose their injured body part mid-fight) and B) Rollins then goes back to selling the knee, which dilutes the sell-job since it mustn’t hurt THAT much, since he’s still using it….I dunno, it drives me nuts lol.
Worst Match: Orton vs. Wyatt — Far too silly and pointless, doesn’t get anybody over except maybe the production people who all work hard. Sounded like the pre-taped stuff killed the live crowd. Plus-side, I thought Orton looked more badass out of his normal short ring trunks.
Overall, enjoyed most of it, everybody worked hard and it was a breeze to watch compared to Mania!
– Jeff Parker
**********
Thumbs Up
- Best Match: Joe vs Rollins
- Worst Match: House of Horrors
House of Horrors was the worst of all things WWE, in particular the goofy background music. This makes me kind of dread the Hardy’s Broken Universe in WWE because they almost certainly won’t understand what made it unique and fun, rather than cringeworthy. Truly awful, awful stuff.
Loved the brutality in the main event. Joe v Rollins was very good; more than anything it makes me wish Joe had been there 8-10 years ago.
– Erin Hotovy
**********
Thumbs Up!
- Best Match: Jericho vs. Owens
- Worst Match: House of Horrors
I thought the first three matches on the show were excellent. Main event and women’s match were fun. Really good crowd for the whole show helped too.
I was probably in the minority, but I actually liked the Wyatt vs. Orton match at WM. I’m a big 1970s horror movie fan so the special effects on the ring reminded me of movies like “Willard” and “Squirm.” It was funny to do, but that should have been the end of the gimmicks in their program. Overall horror matches/special effects matches don’t work like tonight and they haven’t since WCW did it in the 90s! If I want to watch stuff like this there’s plenty of low budget and indie horror movies on Netflix.
– Jake Koch
**********
Thumbs Down
- Best Match: Owens-Jericho (maybe ***1/4)
- Worst Match: Other than House of Horrors, Bayley-Alexa (*1/2)
First PPV since Extreme Rules 2015, and I’m somewhat regretting taking the 3 free month offer even if I get Great Balls of Fire for free.
Most of the early matches were OK (long Raw TV matches)/slightly above average but nothing outstanding.
Alexa is a great over-the-top character, but her wrestling didn’t impress me. Amazing how badly Bayley has been done given how much she was hyped coming out of NXT. If she has to lose for some reason, she should have just been KO’d rather than having the hope spot with the small package. Losing to a DDT (I don’t care if it’s Alexa’s finish) a minute or two later just made her look bad.
House of Horrors was just sad, from the nice white walls and white sheets on the furniture to the “horrors” not making sense (is Randy Orton’s character that of a family man/father? Did he inhale the mind-altering substance from Batman Begins to explain his visions?); maybe if Bray had set the house on fire at the end it would have meant a little something, but he just turned on a red light. Ooh, scary. Felt bad for the live crowd.
On paper, the guy who retired Undertaker lost in his next PPV match. I know it’s Roman, but wow.
Maybe I’m just meant to listen to you and Bryan recap the shows rather than watch them myself.
– Jim Rogers
**********
All in all it was a far better show than I thought it would be. It did what it could with almost across the board weak or once-strong-but-already-fumbled storylines. A thumbs up, a 45 degree angled up but an up nonetheless.
Best match was the tag title match. I don’t know about the finish and I really can’t see Sheamus and Cesaro as heels, even just beat-people-up ones, but there was a lot of frenetic energy that I find is frustratingly absent from the normal tag matches on main roster weekly broadcasts, which are often so predictable as to be just simply draining.
Worst match was, I don’t know… I guess the House of Horrors Match. The pre-taped segment was corny but in a good way. Leave it to Orton to no sell a freaking heavy duty appliance slammed on to him. The finish is a very strange way for Wyatt to pick up a win, and really does so much more for Jinder Mahal than it does for him. Wyatt really needed a good clean win or he just looks bad, especially since he seems to have completely forgotten that this match was supposed to be his rematch.
– Jay Caron
**********
Overall, I’d say this show is a Thumbs up. I thought every match aside from the House of Horrors match was at least solid, with a couple of great matches to bring this show up to good quality. The best match was Strowman vs. Roman. It was hard hitting and a great bash between two powerful wrestlers. Worst was the House of Horrors match. It failed in every remark. Although I like it when WWE tries something new, this missed the mark completely. It wasn’t campy fun, it wasn’t creepy, intense, or anything aside from a boring waste of time.
– Michael Jahrling
**********
While both go-home shows for this pay-per-view were unexciting, I thought Payback was mostly solid. With the exception of the House of Horrors match, I thought all the matches were either decent or really good.
Jericho vs. Owens was the match of the night for me. This was either on par or better than their ‘Mania match depending on second watch of both matches. Jericho targeting Owens’ hands was an entertaining sequence you don’t see much of anymore and I like the title change to throw people off. I think Y2J drops the belt Tuesday though.
I would put Aries vs. Neville as the best bout had it not been for the DQ finish. It combined the best aspects of cruiserweight wrestling (and these two) into one bout: strength, high-flying ability and technical prowess. Hopefully, the ending sets up a third match between the two. They’re so good in the ring.
The House of Horrors match was the worst one on the card. The first part was just a dimly lit house that needed a Swiffer cleanup. Nothing really memorable about it and I found myself laughing at the dolls instead of being creeped out. The second part wasn’t really spectacular either, and Bray had to have outside help in his own match to win. Even though Bray won, he doesn’t look much stronger than he does before.
I give this show a thumbs up.
– Amerigo Allegretto
**********
The show over all was meh. It wasn’t awful, but for some reason I just wasn’t hyped for the show.
I liked the Owens/Jericho match, as well as the tag match. There wasn’t any match I particularly disliked but what in the world was that House of Horrors match? This first part in the house was interesting and fun but the in ring portion was so flat and boring. The Roman/Strowman match was okay. The blood spot was poorly executed and it took me a second to figure out where the blood was coming from.
Again, the show was meh. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful.
– Isaiah Cloger
**********
Thumbs up
- Best match The Hardys vs. Cesaro/Sheamus
- Worst match Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton
Well Bray/Orton seems to have worst feud of the year wrapped up and possibly worst match also…that match was an atrocity.
– Wade Haugen
**********
This was a difficult show to judge. Terrible build up to it but most of the in ring was pretty good.
I would go thumbs up as I did enjoy most of it but the problem with Brock is just feels like it’s missing that true consequential main event for the title.
- Best match: I really liked Joe-Rollins but finish was flat so I’ll go with Jericho-Owens. Really good match and story telling.
- Worst match: Neville-Aries were having a good match but it had a flat finish. House of horrors I didn’t mock and hate as much as most. It was stupid but I was glad they attempted something different.
I’ll go house of horrors as worst match. Did think they did a solid job with building Aries-Neville story, tag title picture and Braun.
– Mike Flynn
**********
Thumbs Down.
- Best Match: Sheamus and Cesaro vs. Hardys
- Worst Match House of Horrors.
Honestly at the end of the show my first thought was that this show sucked, but realistically, the show was ok to very good right up until the House of Horrors match, then it dove off a cliff. I HATE that they beat Bayley clean in her home town for no real reason and instead of building someone up to matter again, we’re back to feuding just to feud, but the match was good.
The Owens-Jericho match was good, and I figure they’ll have a rematch Tuesday on SmackDown to finish the storyline off, so I wasn’t really bothered by that, other than it would be nice for them to put someone over strongly for once that wasn’t Roman. Aries Neville was quite good, but felt like it ended abruptly. Bayley Alexa was good except the ending.
House of Horrors might have been the worst thing I’ve ever seen them do on an event. The entire room burst into laughter seeing Randy shirtless in the back of a limo waiting and then the fact that the limo guy waited for them to finish and it wasn’t the worst part of what happened says a lot. If they were in San Jose, I think Randy showed up at 6 PM local time to Bray’s house but it was night there. Weird, almost like WWE doesn’t pay attention to detail.
Seth/Joe was disappointing to me. You talked about how Finn just felt like a guy now for whatever reason, that his presence was hurt or something, and I absolutely feel the same way about Seth. Rollins went from being one of if not the best wrestlers in the world to barely being in the top ten wrestlers on his own show. He’s slower now, he doesn’t work great as a face as it stands now anyway and i don’t think his promos help, and the matches since he came back the first time were no great shakes and now they’re worse. I didn’t like that he beat Joe, but if they’re building him up to be the next face to challenge Brock or whatever, that makes sense, and it isn’t too bad that they built up a face besides Roman a little.
The finish to the House of Horrors was almost worse than the start. It’s a testament to how silly the Jinder stuff is that no one really cared when he came out outside of initial surprise, and it makes you wonder who was supposed to benefit from all of this because Bray comes across as a goober needing help to beat down a dude he threw a refrigerator on in his own match, Randy lost to a bunch of goofs after getting beat up for what felt like an hour, and Jinder and the brothers felt like they barely managed to do anything to Randy after he’d been beaten and abused for so long. I can’t understand why anyone thought any of this was good.
Braun vs. Roman was exactly what you’d expect, but worse, and they did the injury cop out finish which is fine, except that they couldn’t help themselves from having Roman look strong at the end by running Braun off. It’s just typical at this point, and one of the reasons it feels like you’re better off not watching Raw.
– Jonathan Beckner
**********
MOTN: The Hardyz vs. Sheamus & Cesaro. It was a brutal match with the genuine injuries of Jeff’s tooth and Matt’s head, and the wrestling was great, and the heel turn at the end was what their feud was really needing.
Good matches: Y2J vs. KO, Alexa vs. Bayley
Bad matches: The House of Horrors match was easily one of the worst matches of the last few years. It had no logic to it, it had a bunch of errors, it was edited like a student film, it seemed like somebody was trying to make a spooky flash game or video on Movie Maker, and it was genuinely awful. I have no idea why their feud didn’t end at WrestleMania. This was god awful.
– Katy Lawson