WWE TLCS: Erick Rowan vs. The Big Show

MATCH: Erick Rowan vs. The Big Show in a Steel Stairs Match

PROMOTION: World Wrestling Entertainment

EVENT: Tables, Ladders, Chairs, and Stairs

YEAR: 2014

RATING: TV-PG for moderate violence

GRADE: Pass

The WWE broadcast team calls The Big Show the World’s Largest Athlete for a reason. He’s over seven feet tall and weighs a quarter of a ton. He’s not just a guy who hit the genetic jackpot. He’s strong, agile, and hits so hard his victims feel the pain for years on end. The Big Show started his wrestling career in the 90’s with WCW and won several championships there. He jumped to WWE in the latter part of that decade and is still a dominant ass-kicker in today’s wrestling world, having won even more world championships and being billed as a future first ballot Hall of Famer. I can’t say The Wrestling Observer Newsletter readers like him very much judging from all the negative awards they’ve given him over the years, but whatever.

And then there’s his opponent Erick Rowan, a seven foot tall, over three hundred pound Generation Y member who just arrived on the scene in WWE in 2012 as part of The Wyatt Family. Though he never won any major championships while he was with the group, he did make a major impact as somebody who was also strong and agile at the same time. He and his brethren Luke Harper and Bray Wyatt have dominated WWE by assaulting top tier guys and leaving them broken heaps. The three of them even won a Best Gimmick award from the WON in 2013 for being a backwoods cult. The Wyatt Family has since split up on account of Bray Wyatt “curing” Luke Harper and Erick Rowan, but these three ring warriors are no less dangerous.

Rowan and Show’s rivalry started when they were both on Team Cena at the Survivor Series 2014 pay-per-view against Team Authority, where Big Show betrayed his team at the last minute by knocking out John Cena and having him eliminated. Though Team Cena would still win the match, the anger towards Big Show from the WWE Universe was still strong for his cowardly act. Who would be the first to confront him and show him what an idiot he was? Erick Rowan, who in no uncertain terms said he doesn’t like bullies before dispatching of The Big Show.

And now we have this Steel Stairs Match at the TLCS pay-per-view the following month of December. In this match, there are no count-outs or disqualifications, only pin falls or submissions. Steel ring stairs are not only legal to use as weapons, they’re encouraged as such. Steel ring stairs weigh about as much as a typically-sized wrestler, which is somewhere north of 220 lbs. Erick Rowan and The Big Show are so huge and so strong that when they pick up steel stairs, those big pieces of metal look like toys in their arms. They make lifting the stairs look easy and make using them as weapons look even easier. It’s like a D&D-style gnomish rogue carrying a punch dagger. It’s that easy and that crafty.

To start off the match, Erick Rowan threw a martial arts spin kick and knocked Big Show down. I repeat, a 350 lbs. man threw a spin kick like he was Adrian Neville or Sami Zayn, both of whom are cruiserweights. Then the two wrestlers threw each other into the posts, into the barricades, and slammed each other on the outside floor, which is made of concrete and nothing more.

After the beginning flurry from Erick Rowan, The Big Show put on a dominant, squash match-style performance for the rest of the fight. Among the things the Big Show used the steel stairs for included as a battering ram, as a throwing weapon, as a slamming surface, as bowling pins for throwing Erick Rowan, he even put that huge piece of metal on the English announce table and scared the crap out of Michael Cole, JBL, and Jerry Lawler.

Over and over, Big Show smashed Erick Rowan with those stairs and knocked him unconscious several times. Rowan was dizzy and dumb after multiple blows to the head. His “high IQ” dropped a few points after this destructive ass-beating. And then to top it all off, Big Show figured Erick Rowan was going to kick out anyways, so Show held the steel stairs against Rowan’s gigantic chest and pinned him for a three count with all of that pressure. Even a zombie wouldn’t be able to kick out of that.

The creative ways to beat people with stairs, the impact of the blunt force trauma, the easiness of their use by both men, and the athletic displays also by both men are all what make me want to give this match a passing grade. There’s just one thing that bothers me, but it’s not enough to demote this match to a mixed grade, so don’t worry. Ever since this one-sided ass-kicking from Big Show to Erick Rowan, the latter was very rarely seen on television, and by television I mean Raw and Smackdown and not anything on the WWE Network.

The last time I heard of Rowan’s whereabouts was that he had a match with “The Swiss Superman” Cesaro on a minor league show called WWE Superstars. How exactly does a former Wyatt Family member with that much hype go from a deadly war at TLCS to being mingled with lower-status wrestlers? My theory was that Erick Rowan was only carrying the top spot until various injured wrestlers came off the shelf. It’s sad and unfortunate to think of Erick Rowan that way. He had and still does have lots of potential.