After last night, Dean Ambrose might be my favorite wrestler of all time. Oh, the hilarity! I am hopelessly in love. That man is a brilliant character. I thank the gods he did not go softly into the lunatic fringe. I will say I was concerned — he was on the verge of becoming a one dimensional madman, and wrestling has a history of turning promising characters into simplistic types. But suddenly he appeared composed, exacting in his brilliant strategy to calmly distract Seth Rollins so lowly Heath Slater could sneak in for the pin!
When is the last time we saw a man steal the show with such comedic genius? With the soda and popcorn, and JBL’s cowboy hat? I saw in him shades of Stone Cold Steve Austin last night, but the look on his face when Rollins got pinned was something new – payback’s a bitch in a flavor more slacker frat boy than working class leather jacket hero. Dean Ambrose may be evolving to become an everyman for the millennial generation.
Seth Rollins’ own performance was Oscar-worthy in the end as well. He really hammed it up, slamming things around and yelling at Jerry Lawler for letting Dean Ambrose mess with the Money in the Bank briefcase. I loved Jerry Lawler’s giggling response: “What were we gonna do about it?”
And if I could just gush for one more moment here: I love that Dean Ambrose has become a guy who wrestles in torn jeans and a wife beater. And how about that grey jacket he goes around in? What is that, Members Only? Because who is going to tell Dean that thing is thirty years out of fashion? Not me! When that’s the dynamic, the wearing of such a jacket becomes hella sexy in my humble o.
In fact, the entire match was a flawlessly told story, one that I think will be remembered in certain retrospectives beside pinnacle Sean Michaels and Steve Austin matches. It even upstaged Stephanie and Brie’s epic contract signing, two ladies about whom I have been eagerly percolating another post (On the Renaissance of the Divas Part II). But perfect turns of the unexpected in the interplay of Rollins, RVD, Slater, and Ambrose captured our attention and still held a piece of it while Stephanie was demonstrating that she’s still got it.
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