Power Bomb

VERSE 1

Power bomb your ass through a flaming table

Put that brutal ass shit on late night cable

Power bomb your ass on a pile of thumb tacks

Bleeding out of everywhere after the attack

Power bomb your ass from seven feet high

Better grow wings, because you’re going to fly

Welcome to the injured reserved list, buddy

That hospital bill is going to cost a lot of money

CHORUS

Power bomb!

Power bomb!

Jack your back!

Realign your spine!

VERSE 2

Welcome to the match called Hell in a Cell

Your ass was dead from the opening bell

Welcome to the match called Elimination Chamber

It’s the perfect place for me to take out my anger

Welcome to the match called Tables, Ladders, and Chairs

Use them all as weapons, see if I fucking care

A power bomb will send you to your grave

So much for having more guts than brains

CHORUS

Power bomb!

Power bomb!

Jack your back!

Realign your spine!

VERSE 3

How many years will you spend at home?

How many years will you spend all alone?

Don’t even think of getting back in the ring

If I see you again, death is what I’ll bring

I’ll crush all of your championship dreams

Power bomb you until you burst at the seams

A bloody mess for the one who’s second best

Off to the hospital for a wonderful stress test

CHORUS X2

Power bomb!

Power bomb!

Jack your back!

Realign your spine!

WWE Royal Rumble: Dean Ambrose vs. Kevin Owens

MATCH: Dean Ambrose vs. Kevin Owens in a Last Man Standing match for Ambrose’s Intercontinental Championship
PROMOTION: World Wrestling Entertainment
EVENT: Royal Rumble
YEAR: 2016
RATING: TV-PG for violence
GRADE: Pass

Working the independent circuit in professional wrestling will put hair on your genitals. Working that many matches around the world will give you a myriad of styles that will ultimately become your move set. In Mexico, the luchadors fly around the ring like ninjas. In Japan, they hit each other hard enough to turn the human body into one big purple bruise. In Europe, they do the exact same thing, but with emphasis on technical brawling instead of honor-bound martial arts. And then when you finally make your trip to WWE NXT and ultimately their main roster, you’ll have the crowd eating out of the palm of your hand.

Such are the success stories of Dean Ambrose and Kevin Owens, two badass warriors who cut their teeth for over a decade on the independent circuit. Dean Ambrose has United States and Intercontinental Championship reigns under his belt while Kevin Owens has NXT gold and an Intercontinental belt reign as well. At the Tables, Ladders, and Chairs pay-per-view in 2015, it was Dean Ambrose who won his first IC Championship from Kevin Owens. Ever since then, Owens has been in a horrible mood, bullying and brutalizing anybody in his path, Ambrose included.

There was only one way a rivalry of this much hatred could be settled: Last Man Standing rules at the Royal Rumble. There are no pin-falls, submissions, count-outs, or disqualifications. All you have to do to win this match is beat the living shit out of your opponent so badly that he cannot answer the referee’s ten-count. Heel announcer John Layfield put it best when he said the only thing limiting the competitors in this match is their own imaginations.

When you’re called The Lunatic Fringe like Dean Ambrose is, your schizophrenic visions pretty much guarantee you a colorful and violent imagination. Kevin Owens is a brawler by nature, so he’s no less dangerous with a steel chair or a wooden table. Ambrose and Owens wasted no time in putting their violent visions to good use. They started the match by slugging it out and watching each other get dizzy.

Then the action spilled to the outside and things really got chaotic. Kevin Owens was launched over the English-speaking announce table and landed in Michael Cole’s lap, thus breaking the poor guy’s glasses. Once he got power back in his headsets, Cole was actually cheering on Ambrose when he was swinging a bamboo cane at Owens.

Once the toys were out, they didn’t go to waste, no, sir. Kevin Owens power bombed Dean Ambrose through steel chairs, spear tackled him through the time keeper’s barricade, and fisherman suplexed him through a wooden table. And Ambrose was still staggering to his feet ready for a fight! The man doesn’t quit!

Then it was Ambrose’s turn to put a serious beating on his opponent. A double arm DDT on a steel chair would do the trick. So would an elbow drop through the Spanish announce table. And then there were more whacks with the bamboo stick. The steel stairs had seen crashes and burns from both men.

After enduring all of this hardcore violence, you would expect both men to be bleeding, burned out, and ready for ambulance rides. Hell, they hit each other so hard that maybe a hearse was necessary. They stood up on wobbly legs and punched each other some more. Kevin Owens gave his opponent a pop-up power bomb and Ambrose, being the loony tune he was, got up and wrapped a steel chair around Owens’ head before boxing him in the face.

A normal man would have quit under these combative circumstances. He would have nightmares for months and would have chugged enough Xanax to kill an elephant. He would have had hospital bills that most one-percent billionaires couldn’t even afford. These two warriors aren’t normal men. They get up and smash each other some more with steel chairs, bamboo canes, fists, feet, and head butts. And then they smash each other some more. And smash each other some more. At this point, the referee could count to a thousand. He could wait for a whole decade to go by and they would still thrash each other endlessly.

But it was one mistake by Kevin Owens that cost him the match. He set up two wooden tables outside the ring and stacked one on top of the other. Owens was also perched on the top turnbuckle, presumably for a moonsault. And then Dean Ambrose jolted back to life once more and shoved Owens off the turnbuckle, sending the Canadian grizzly crashing through both tables. Owens shivered several times in his laying position, but made no attempt to pull himself to his feet. At the count of ten, Dean Ambrose was declared the winner and undisputed Intercontinental Champion.

With the crowd chanting “This is awesome!” and carrying their momentum into the Royal Rumble match itself, it’s clear there were no losers in this match. Dean Ambrose is the rightful IC Champion, but Kevin Owens is a winner too in my mind. Those two beat the living shit out of each other so badly that they limped their way into the Royal Rumble match. How they weren’t even in wheelchairs was a mystery to everybody there. How Kevin Owens managed to eliminate fellow independent wrestler AJ Styles is beyond me. How Dean Ambrose was one of the final two men in that match left standing is something that would stump Nostradamus.

The fact that two men could put on an apocalyptic brawl and still be able to compete later on in the night should be a testament to how tough pro-wrestlers are. Getting clotheslined or body slammed is bad enough. Being driven through tables, smashed with a kendo stick, and slammed through steel chairs takes more guts than the stomach has room for. It was amazing Dean Ambrose and Kevin Owens didn’t have their own guts spread all over the arena that night. Yes, it’s a TV-PG rated pay-per-view, but you wouldn’t know it from how banged up and battered these ring warriors were afterwards. I’d even say this is an early contender for Match of the Year in 2016. Congratulations, you two. You just made an entire arena full of people shit their pants with excitement. Now it REALLY looks like a battlefield out there!

WWE TLC: The ECW Originals vs. The Wyatt Family

MATCH: The ECW Originals (Bubba-Ray Dudley, D-Von Dudley, Tommy Dreamer, and Rhyno) vs. The Wyatt Family (Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, Erick Rowan, and Braun Strowman) in an eight-man tag team elimination tables match.
PROMOTION: World Wrestling Entertainment
EVENT: TLC: Tables, Ladders, and Chairs
YEAR: 2015
RATING: TV-PG for violence
GRADE: Mixed


All throughout the 1990’s, Extreme Championship Wrestling defined the spirit of hardcore wrestling. Power bombs through flaming wooden tables, Irish whips into skin-shredding razor wire, repeated kendo stick shots until the opponent bled buckets, high flying dives off of the tallest structures, broken bones, insane fan participation, and saying “Thank you, sir, may I have another?!” the next day. If you wrestled for ECW, you couldn’t just be a moderately good athlete. You had to be tough as nails, nasty as hell, and maybe even godlike at times. The pain you will suffer, the scars you will obtain, the blood you will spill will all be in the name of legitimizing professional wrestling. ECW has since closed its doors permanently in 2001, but Bubba-Ray Dudley, D-Von Dudley, Tommy Dreamer, and Rhyno are invoking the spirit for this confrontation at TLC.

Good luck, boys, because The Wyatt Family has dominated the WWE on a consistent basis for three whole years, temporary separation aside. All four of these stable members are giants among insects. In addition to towering over all of their opponents, their scraggly facial hair, ugly faces, sheep masks, and cultist mind games give them a psychological edge in their matches. Just imagine if Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, Erick Rowan, and Braun Strowman came to your door to deliver a pizza. Could you in all good consciousness eat that pizza knowing four zombie rednecks with serial killer mindsets are the ones at your doorstep? You’d better give them a million dollar tip lest you be squashed and strangled to death by these behemoths of men.

It’s only right that four hardcore extremists and four monstrous hillbillies get together for a tables match, where the rules are simple: if a wrestler gets slammed through a wooden table, he must go back to the locker room and wait for the match to be over. The losing team is the one who has all of their members slammed through tables. There are no pin falls, no submissions, no count-outs, and no disqualifications. If you can dream it up in your sick and twisted imagination, you can do whatever the hell you want to your opponents in this kind of match. Hell, you might even get a way with bending the limits of a TV-PG environment.

As soon as both four-man teams made their entrances, they stared each other down and waited for that bell to ring. When it rang, nobody was safe. Punches, kicks, slams, head butts, elbows, these basic moves turned a wrestling match into a head-stomping, mosh-pitting riot. These wrestlers already do a good enough job with the wrestling aspect of their matches. But when the toys come out, you’d better watch the hell out. Kendo stick shots form the biggest welts on the Wyatt Family’s skin. Metal garbage cans flatten and twist as they bounce off the zombie rednecks’ skulls. Braun Strowman was the only one who could contain this extreme riot. He went around clubbing and clothes lining the ECW originals until his Wyatt Family had the edge once again.

It was only a few minutes into the match and it already looked like it had TV-MA potential. But it didn’t take long for this match to earn is mixed grade. There were a few spots in this match that looked a little botchy to me. Bubba-Ray Dudley was supposed to use a metal garbage can to block a haymaker from Braun Strowman. Bubba put up his guard too soon…and Braun punched the defensive shield anyways. Not long afterwards, you had Erick Rowan attempting a running kick on one of the ECW guys only to put his foot through a table (which for some odd reason didn’t count as an elimination). Erick Rowan had D-Von Dudley spread eagle across another table and was perched on the top turnbuckle only to be shoved off by Rhyno. Rowan broke the table, but only the edge of it and D-Von had supposedly rolled off in time, though it still looked sketchy to me who was at fault for this botch.

The WWE fans are rarely happy with the choreography of a non-Daniel Bryan match (I swear, that guy has spoiled the audience rotten). This time, I can empathize with their unhappiness. Just this time. But hey, the action picked up again when both Dudley brothers slammed Erick Rowan through a table. Once he was gone, there were more kendo stick shots, more beatings, more chair shots, and then the ECW guys were being slammed through tables until Bubba-Ray Dudley was the last one remaining on his team. Before that scenario took place, Bubba did a spot where he was supposed to do a cross body block on Braun Strowman. Those two took a while to get positioned and when it finally happened, Braun stumbled backwards and fell as if it wasn’t meant to happen.

Never fear, original ECW fans. Just when the crowd was about to die, Bubba-Ray Dudley set up another table in the ring, but also brought out some lighter fluid and a cigarette lighter. He squirted a very liberal amount of fluid on that wooden table and stunk up the entire arena with chemicals. All that was left was to light it on fire and power bomb Bray Wyatt’s fat ass through the hardcore toy. But that never happened. It probably couldn’t under a TV-PG setting. Luke Harper super kicked Bubba-Ray under the chin while Braun Strowman heaved the ECW warrior in the air before slamming him through the table, thus ensuring the match-ending elimination and a victory for the Wyatt Family.

All in all, it was an enjoyable match to watch, especially since I have a lot of nostalgic feelings for the old ECW promotion. But let’s face it: the match at TLC earned its mixed rating. You could blame the hard-to-impress fans, you could blame the botchy spots, you could blame the false advertising when it came to the would-be flaming table, but there’s one other thing that stuck out in my mind. Elimination matches are tricky bitches as far as putting the winning team over is concerned. The Wyatt Family lost only one member of their team during that match: Erick Rowan. Losing three members would make the Wyatts survivors. Losing two members would also make them survivors. Losing zero members would make them dominant and scary like they’ve always been. But losing Erick Rowan exclusively made me believe that he’s being singled out as a weak link of that stable. I know it’s not true since he’s every bit as powerful and intimidating as the rest of his clan. All I’m saying is that one elimination looks suspiciously like a weak link plot. I’m interested to see where the WWE creative team goes with this. I hope they don’t go anywhere with it and just have Erick Rowan be treated as an equal.

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.