WWE House Show Results 11/1- Nantes, France

Credit: Tony Bouin & PWTorch.com

Before starting off, I should mention there were people outside the building conducting polls among kids and their parents before the show (and among that audience exclusively). This seemed to be an official WWE poll, I don’t know if it’s the same in other countries. Here, they were asking parents their family viewing habits, if they watch on YouTube, bought video games or DVDs, asked for adjectives to describe the product, etc… And, for kids, I overheard they were asking them who their favorites were, what they liked (action, characters, comedy, etc.).

Attendance was not good at all, far less than last year, as there were entire sections tarped off and plenty of empty seats throughout the building. I would say 3,000-3,500, but I’m usually bad at crowd estimates. The real story, though, was how few kids there were compared to previous years. Not really surprising since the fad has clearly passed among them in this country and that is why TV here that used to be on prime time is now at midnight. Tons of Cena and Punk shirts in the crowd (including kids wearing Punk merchandise). They were selling Sheamus shirts at the stands, but I did not see one single person wearing them, nor were there Orton shirts, but it was probably because people knew they weren’t going to be there anyway.

(1) Brodus Clay & Santino Marella (w/Naomi & Cameron) beat Primo & Epico (w/Rosa Mendes). All comedy, with the women involved, too. Decent for what it was supposed to be. The finish was Cobra + Brodus splash on one of the Colons for the pin. Then they brought two young kids in the ring to dance. One of them seemed absolutely terrified, not that I blame him. Males around me also wanted to go dance with Naomi and Cameron.

Vickie Guerrero comes out and announced she punished A.J. Lee by inserting her into the upcoming Divas Title match. There was so much heat for her, I could barely hear what she was saying. But, the deal is they’re so used to having authority figures book matches on the fly on TV (to the point it has gotten way out of hand) that they do it for house shows now, too. And, how is that supposed to “punish” A.J. anyway? By offering her the opportunity to win a title in a match where the babyfaces have a two-on-one advantage?

(2) Divas champion Eve Torres beat A.J. Lee and Layla in a Triple Threat match to retain the Divas Title. Eve came out pretending to be a babyface and since the crowd kept booing her anyway, she quickly turned heel. She was double-teamed at first until there was dissension among the other girls after a series of miscommunication spots. Not a very good match, even by Divas standards. It was the only match where the crowd was absolutely dead. A.J. interrupted a pin by Eve by holding the hand of referee Jack Doan. Doan didn’t say anything and then she rolled up Eve out of nowhere for the pin. And, I am ashamed to say this but I was so ecstatic because I thought there was a title change and I had just witnessed history live. I thought they were probably going to switch the belt back to Eve before the European tour is over. But, Vickie came out and I said, “Okay, they got me.” This was worse because I perfectly remember they did the same deal with Kofi & Truth and the Tag Titles for months, but in the heat of the moment, I legitimately bought it. Anyways, Vickie announced A.J.’s actions with the ref’s hand were illegal, the match was re-started, and Eve rolled up A.J. in five seconds to retain.

(3) Michael McGillicutty beat Tensai. McGillicutty played de facto babyface here. For some reason, the crowd was way more into this match than the previous one. I think the deal was that Tensai is he is not fun to watch on TV, but his power moves connect well with the crowd in a live situation. He got heat fine on McGillicutty, who the crowd had no problem getting behind despite his lack of charisma. Tensai missed a charge in the corner and McGillicutty rolled him up (yes, second match in a row with that finish). As a funny side note, at one point Tensai shouted to McGillicutty, ‘Who are you?’ despite them having the same match the night before.

In between matches, they had Dolph Ziggler and Kane & Bryan cutting promos on the screens. The problem was picture and sound were out of sync, which led to some light booing

(4) John Cena beat Dolph Ziggler (w/Vickie Guerrero). Cena got the biggest reaction of the night, of course. During the match, there were constant dual chants for Cena with far more “Cena sucks” chants than last year in the same building, which I attribute to fewer kids. Vickie early in the match slapped Cena in front of the ref, so Doan sent her backstage to a good crowd reaction. They had a somewhat good basic match, but, frankly, I expected better. Ref was bumped, Vickie came back out ready to hit Cena from behind with the MITB briefcase, but A.J. ran out, too, they fought over the briefcase, and Cena planted a kiss on Vickie. AA on Dolph for the pin.

After the match, Cena and A.J. were standing face-to-face, A.J. waiting for a “thank you” or something. The crowd chanted, “Kiss,” and Cena milked it forever, but then motioned to A.J. to just go backstage, looked at us with his face saying, “What did you expect, guys?” I think the deal was he wanted to, but he couldn’t because he didn’t want to give credence to Vickie’s story. At least, that was nice storyline continuity. But, that also means he had no problem kissing Vickie but didn’t want to kiss A.J.?

[Intermission. Poor Justin Roberts, who now gets his own entrance music by the way, now has so many things to plug: upcoming matches for tonight, upcoming dates in France, upcoming PPVs, WWE '13, WWE app, t-shirts, autographed photos, and now even Tout, all in under a minute.]

(5) Antonio Cesaro beat Zack Ryder to retain the U.S. Title. I was literally three feet away from Cesaro during his entrance so I could notice he doesn’t shave his thighs. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s very rare in this day and age for a wrestler. He took the mic and in perfect French introduced himself. This is something I hate, personally, especially when it seems every heel in WWE does that. It’s not that people paying tickets for this show don’t know who he is and even if they didn’t, it’s not like they have a ring announcer announcing his name and it’s not like there’s his name on his Titantron video. And, on TV, it’s not like they have announcers speaking over the air calling him by his name. Anyways, he said he likes the U.S. better than France, then Ryder interrupted him. They worked many nearfalls in a relatively short match and Ryder took one or two sick bumps making this match much better that it had any right to be. Antonio won with the Neutralizer. Ryder was not as over as last year at this time in this same building, which was during the height of his cult popularity. There were far fewer shirts of him in the crowd, but he was still more over than his push.

(6) WWE tag champions Daniel Bryan & Kane beat Team Rhodes Scholars (Cody Rhodes & Damien Sandow) to retain the Tag Titles. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” chants during the entire match. Bryan’s entrance was one of the highlights of the show, as I expected. I still don’t know what he’s supposed to be, though. He wrestled like a babyface but acted like a heel to the crowd, tearing up signs and such. I don’t know if his character is just a mess by this point or if he’s playing a more subtle multi-dimensional character that we’re not used to having from WWE anymore. Rhodes and Sandow took each other’s robe and jacket off. Then, Bryan asked Kane to do the same for him for his t-shirt. I don’t know if that was planned or improvised because both Bryan and the referee burst into laughter over this. Kane refused, so Doan ended up doing it. As you can imagine, the match was just about the bickering between the champs. I think this whole deal already feels stale as it has been way overexposed on TV for three months now, but it was over and they seemed to have tremendous fun doing it. Bryan with the No! Lock on Rhodes.

Afterward, they did a deal where each one wanted both belts, they argued, they hugged it out to a great crowd reaction, and Bryan took the belt Kane was holding during the hug and quickly returned backstage celebrating with both belts. Okay match, but tremendously fun live due to the crowd interaction. As a side note, the line of the night came from a spectator behind me, as the crowd shouted “Yes!” and Bryan was doing his thing “No!” back and forth, that guy jokingly shouted at the crowd: “C’mon stop! Can’t you see that pisses him off?”

Then they showed a video package on the finish of the HIAC PPV. Justin Roberts asked us what we thought of Brad Maddox’s actions. There were boos and that was it, on to the next match. Weird.

Next was a WWE Title main event of C.M. Punk vs. Ryback. No Heyman, though. But, here’s the deal. Punk was mega-over as a face including with kids here. He was treated as the second biggest babyface behind Cena. So, Punk took the mic and said he’s not saying this because he’s a bad guy, but he really hates France, doesn’t want to be here, and said we were cheese-eating, smelly surrendering monkeys and all that. That got him booed… for five seconds and he did have dual chants for the whole match a la Cena. So, Cena is your top face, but a significant portion of the crowd hates him, Punk is your top heel but a significant portion of the crowd cheers him and Bryan is supposed to be whatever. Talk about characters that are clicking with crowds, but not the way they’re supposed to. Ryback was over, especially with the kids that were not pro-Punk.

(7) Ryback beat WWE champion C.M. Punk via DQ; Punk retained the WWE Title. There were “Feed me more” chants, but not overwhelming. Not very good for a main event. My opinion is that Goldberg for all his flaws was pretty agile for a guy his size and could have good long matches with the right opponent. Ryback is not there yet at all. Plus, if you can’t talk for 20 minutes in the current WWE environment, you’re not in a good spot. That’s why I don’t see the Ryback experiment lasting very long, no matter how much he is over (and even that is debatable). As for the finish, Punk hit him with a chair for the DQ. He kept hitting him in the back with the chair until Ryback started no-selling, hit the Shell Shock, and celebrated with the crowd to end the show.

Overall, I was satisfied with the show, as the card had way more depth than recent U.S. Raw house shows and in that sense, it exceeded my expectations. No blowaway matches, in my opinion, but nothing sucking too bad, either.