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WHAT WORKED:
Hello Tokyo! The atmosphere of the show was a lot of fun. The audience was thrilled to be watching WWE in comparison to the Washington DC crowd last week that was apparently populated by zombies who stared off into space. The lack of digital boards all over the venue distracting from the action in the ring was a nice bonus and we even had the WWE debut of STREAMERS for Finn Balor. All of these little things made the show feel different, international and important.
Jericho vs. Neville. This was the perfect opening match for the show. One, Jericho hasn't wrestled on WWE TV in some time so it was a nice unadvertised bonus. Two, these two had the perfect chemistry in the ring for the Japanese audience. Three, they told a great story with Jericho as the aggressive veteran trying to hold down the agile hungry upstart. They played this perfectly from the moment the bell rang to Jericho having to go into his bag of tricks and whip out the old school Lion Tamer submission.
Finn Balor vs. Kevin Owens. It was pretty obvious that Balor was getting the belt given the heavy promotion he had received over the last month and it was the perfect time for Owens to lose it before fully transitioning to the main roster, but all that said, they crafted a near-perfect match with so many great near-falls that although you suspected you knew the finish, they still "got you" to believe this was the end. Owens throwing the ceremonial flowers out of the ring and doing John Cena's mannerisms and moves were awesome in that so little heels actually try to be legitimate villains anymore. It was so refreshing to see. They played this up as a homecoming for the former Prince Devitt and it was an emotional segment. Just awesome.
The Kofi Kingston Massacre. We all knew Brock was going to murder Kofi and that's what happened, but WWE did a nice job of formatting this to be something like an old Andre the Giant match. The finish was never in doubt but Kingston did a nice job of hitting some offense that while usually effective, could only temporarily stun Lesnar until, like a Friday the 13th film, the unstoppable Jason Voorhees got his kill. I really liked Kingston landing on his feet to escape the first German suplex, because no one expected anything but Kingston's imminent doom at that point. I don't know that I liked the idea of New Day all being wiped out, but it was Brock and he was pissed off after the Authority laid him out, so the judges will allow it.
Cena & Ziggler vs. Kane & Barrett. This match, an unadvertised main event, was a nice change in pace from the usual John Cena matches we were accustomed to prior to the U.S. title open challenges. Cena sold like a champion for the larger Kane, with even his superhuman strength unable to bodyslam him after Cena's back was worked over. Barrett looked like a top-tier wrestler for the first time in a long time, because the match was patterned to allow that. It was very much an old school NWA tag in that the villains kept getting their heat by beating down one of the babyfaces and even after the first apparent hot tag (Ziggler getting in), they took him down and put him in a position where he was in peril for a long time. Not the type of match you'd go back and see over and over but a good solid presentation from all involved and I thought this was the best Kane looked in the ring in forever.
WWE Divas championship. Again, the laying out of the match was very good as Tamina was used for spots where she looked like a powerhouse beast and was otherwise kept dazed and out of the ring. Paige and Bella both had some nice exchanges and I thought they gave this a lot of time that we'd have never seen the Divas get even a year ago.
WHAT DIDN'T:
I am hard-pressed to come up with anything, except nitpicking that I'd liked to have seen the two undercard matches that didn't air also included on the broadcast. Anytime we have a chance to see Cesaro in the ring, I want to see it.
WHAT WE LEARNED:
Less is undoubtedly more. Beast in the East didn't have a big pyro display. It didn't have 100,000 plus digital LED screens or a fancy lighting set-up. There was very little in the way of videos promoting other WWE products. In many ways, it was the modern day equivalent to when live events aired on The MSG Network or NESN or PRISM in the 1980s, where it was simply a live show that was broadcast for the masses to see. We even had instant replays after the matches! This wasn't an episode of a sports-entertainment TV series where they wrestle, it was a pro wrestling event and for the audience that watched it, this was a lot of fun and in many ways a breath of fresh air. The storylines were pretty much unchanged going in, except the Balor NXT title win and that was all OK because the purpose of the show was not to further storylines or have great spectacle but to have a fun few hours of wrestling. That's the type of stuff WWE should want to give their audience to try and get them to subscribe in my opinion. The two hour broadcast zoomed by with more momentum and with less downtime than most TV broadcasts or even PPVs ever do these days. It was FUN during a time period where watching pro wrestling TV isn't always fun.
The WWE announcers need to be produced less and tasked with much less. Although they weren't live in Tokyo, Michael Cole and Byron Saxton did a very good job in announcing the show. Without having 100,000 things to promote, 100,000 questions to throw out there to leave hanging for the audience to wonder about and with all their focus on bantering back and forth as they called a wrestling show, it was one of the better jobs the WWE announcing team has done in forever. Was it Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler in 1998 level? Of course not, but it wouldn't be fair to assume it would be. While some of the pronouciations were off, I give the pair a lot of credit for trying to do some research and toss in some history. Was it perfect? Of course not, but let's also remember they were calling a live show at 5 AM, which means they were up for hours before that. That's a totally different animal. What this show showed is that the WWE announcers should be tasked with promoting less when possible so they can concentrate on calling what's going on in the ring and raising their own credibility level by doing so. If they do, when they are called upon to promote something, the audience will see it as far more important. Perhaps a little less Vince in the ear and a little more freedom would be a good thing for everyone wearing a headset on TV.
Brock is coming to Raw. The main storyline element we got out of the show is Brock is pissed and he's coming to Chicago. BROCK SMASH!
NXT is worldwide. The excellent Finn Balor vs. Kevin Owens match was worth the price of the WWE Network itself alone but it was also so good that for the first time since Smackdown was launched in 2002 as it's own entity, WWE has built, cultivated and branded it's own entity. When fans in Tokyo are chanting "NXT", WWE should know they are onto something special. Here's to seeing it continue to expand and to seeing it continued to be handled correctly.
Feed Us More. When can we get another one of these broadcasts and how soon?
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.
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