WWE Payback review: At least it started strong

On paper, Saturday’s WWE Payback from Pittsburgh looked to be one of the weakest WWE shows of the year. In execution, it was actually a pretty good show until the final two matches.

Shinsuke Nakamura was not successful in defeating Seth Rollins with Rollins retaining the World Heavyweight title in a match that never really got going. 

The work in the match was fine, but neither ever really picked it up a notch beyond that. Nakamura is one of the most charismatic pro wrestlers in the last ten years, and the build to the match was pretty good. But, he’s terribly inconsistent (at best) in the ring at this stage of his career, and while everything was fine, it never reached great. There have been so many great WWE main event matches this year, it wasn’t even close to being on par with those.

Even weirder, the show closed with Nakamura looking sad on the outside as Rollins recovered in the ring. The period between Rollins winning and the show going off the air was so long that one would assume something, anything, was about to happen. Maybe Nakamura would attack Rollins or Damian Priest would sneak in and go for the attack to cash in his Money in the Bank contract. But no, the show just ended. Weird.

Here’s the rest of the card, which had its ups and downs:

• The steel cage match between Becky Lynch and Trish Stratus was awesome — a great opener that really should have been the main event. This was easily the best match on the show. These two had just about the best cage match you can possibly have nowadays, hitting each other hard. Stratus is almost 50 and you would never know it because she doesn’t move like someone who is nearing that age. This was an extremely physical match that paid off a long-running feud well.
• I liked the undisputed WWE Tag Team title street fight match which saw Finn Balor and Priest capture the titles from Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. The crowd was super into the match, which helped it move beyond just your typical weapons match (that and Owens did an insane swanton bomb off a balcony). They’re putting a lot of emphasis on Balor & Priest, so it makes sense for them to make them strong until the eventual turn finally happens.
• LA Knight defeated The Miz in a match that felt VERY LONG. Everything they did was fine, but they just kept DOING STUFF for a long period of time. At least the crowd was into it and Knight in general.
• Rey Mysterio kept the United States title, defeating Austin Theory. I thought this was fine with Mysterio looking real good. Theory isn’t bad by any means, but they have given him this hard push for well over a year now and still comes across as a very generic and okay, but he’s hardly an interesting heel.
• Rhea Ripley defeated Raquel Rodriguez in a bland match to retain her Women’s title. The crowd wasn’t into it and the work was all over the place, some of it looking good, some of it not so much. I never thought this gelled.
• The Grayson Waller Effect segment is only notable in that Jey Uso was moved to Raw in what will likely be a long-term storyline. I hardly believe that’s the end of his involvement with The Bloodline storyline. I’m guessing they are holding off the brother vs. brother match for WrestleMania, so in the meantime, he can go to Raw while Jimmy remains on SmackDown, perhaps setting up an eventual match with Roman Reigns.

Next up for WWE is Fastlane on October 7. Reigns doesn’t appear to be on this show, so there is a chance this could be another lame duck card as there was nothing on this show to set up anything for the immediate future. WWE has some long terms plans cooking, that can clearly be seen on their television. But right now, we just seem to be going through the motions until we get closer to the new year.