Bang For Your Buck PPV Review: Extreme Rules 2013

Strap Match: Mark Henry vs. Sheamus

As someone who loves Mark Henry with all their heart, and is fundamentally okay with Sheamus — he’s a transcendent worker (See: any match with Daniel Bryan, HHH or John Cena for reference) for his size but is too much of a bully to really feel anything other than annoyance when he’s trying to trick Henry during legitimate(ly constructed, at least) tests of strength in order to gain an advantage —  I desperately wanted this match to be great from the start. But once they introduced those terrible straps, my heart sank. How you can have an interesting match when the fun part of the stipulation (dudes going H.A.M. on each other with actual leather straps that leave actual welts) is made into a joke?

Well, you don’t do *exactly* what Sheamus and Mark Henry did, but you definitely use it as a blueprint. They took advantage of the fact that there aren’t (nor have there ever been) many strap matches in the WWE. Using classic tropes like Sheamus hitting the corners as Mark Henry carried him around the ring and Mark hogtying the Celtic Warrior and dragging him around the squared circle, they told a fun story that didn’t rely on the shock value of “leather hitting against flesh” to sell it. Sheamus went over, but in a way that let Mark still be the World’s Strongest Man, which is what you want from a match like this. Now if only Sheamus could be less of a jerk, he’d a real chance in this business.

Match: +.5

PPV Total: 1

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