KNEEL BEFORE ROLLINS!

Seeing the verbal tics of someone who hasn’t been given much mic time in his career — or at least not at the level of SNL host monologue, which is essentially what the opening segment is — or is rusty vacillates between cringeworthy and unwatchable for nearly everyone… except for Edge. Beyond his considerable stage presence, he also has a way of making the things he is saying seem like what he meant to say. While he has no singular transcendentally great promo and relatively few great matches for an 11-time World’s Champion, it’s equally difficult to think of one that was even mediocre. He’s always done a good to very good  job when given television time, and ultimately that will be the legacy of Edge: a consummate professional who did spectacular things without ever truly being spectacular himself. Not a bad legacy if you can get.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the entire night was not how fresh everything felt — outside of an extremely solid to very good if refried Usos match, naturally — but how open they were with Christian’s unannounced retirement announcement. That it was done almost in passing is pretty much par for Captain Blue Dot Charisma’s career, but it did add a little bit of a drama for the arrival of the Beast Incarnate.

Oddly, what didn’t add to the drama was that Paul Heyman promo. It’s obviously unfair to assume every time Paul Heyman steps up to the mic it will be a home run, but it was unclear exactly what the purpose of having Brock Lesnar on the show was considering the relatively few dates he has left. Having Brock Lesnar involved in the endgame scenario of this show would have at least justified his appearance, but serving as a foreshadowing red herring for Seth Rollins? C’mon, son.

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