Bang For Your Buck PPV Review: Extreme Rules 2013

“I Quit” Match: Jack Swagger vs. Alberto Del Rio

Zeb Colter has moved from “vaguely super racist to specifically super racist” and I’m not entirely comfortable with it. It’s one thing to make broad references to things, but when you get into specifics, it ends up coming off more like a person (or company) making a political statement and placing it right next to something they’ve clearly demarcated as “chicanery and character work”. When you blur the lines like that, it hurts the credibility of the product.

Not hurting the credibility of the product? Almost any match involving Alberto Del Rio. This one got “extreme” fairly quickly, a function of both the stipulation and the “animosity” between these two. They’ve developed this into a much better rivalry than it had any business being, and this match was a showcase for it. There’s so often a distance between the quality of their matches and the fans, partially because they both essentially have mouthpieces and have to deal with the level to which Ziggler is over with the smarks in the crowd. Forcing them to talk — and knowing that Ziggly Puff wasn’t there/the winner would be facing him at some point in the future — created an engagement in the crowd that made this the best match so far in their feud.

And then they did one of the more brilliant false finishes/restarts in recent memory. After having Alberto Del Rio get stuck in the Patriot Lock in the middle of the ring, they had Ricardo tease throwing in the towel before thinking better of it only to have Zeb chase him off and throw in the towel as the ref’s back was turned. This led to another referee coming down to tell Mike Chioda what happened, which cause Chioda to do the unthinkable: using replay to determine who threw in the towel. This little bit of art moved briskly, with everything clearly set up beforehand, but it allowed Swagger to “beat” ADR (taking him out with the Patriot Lock), “win” (technically and briefly) and still lose the match (after they restarted it when Del Rio could stand on his own). We all know this won’t be the blowoff match for their program, but it may end up being the best.

Match: +.8

PPV Total: 1.8

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