WWE Payback 2017: Best and Worst Moments
By Bryan Heaton
Best: Unpredictability, Part 1
Before Payback, I wrote about ways that the show could exceed expectations. My big concern was that every match on the card seemed like it had a foregone conclusion. On paper, there was too much predictability.
With the first match of the show, any notion that everything would be going by the book was blown right out of the water. Kevin Owens dropping the US Title was something that no one was predicting, for a variety of reasons. But, lo and behold, here we are with Owens taking the loss.
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Sending Chris Jericho to SmackDown is an odd choice, for sure. But as far as the Payback pay per view itself, Jericho winning the United States Championship set a great tone for the rest of the night. All of the smarks (myself included) who thought we knew better and had the whole show plotted out in our minds were proved wrong. And that adds another layer of excitement to the show.
Honestly, it wouldn’t have mattered if every other match the rest of the night would have gone exactly to the plan we thought we knew. By getting the unexpected result early on, you question yourself and wait for another unexpected result.
The way the finish worked was brilliant, too, and shows how good Owens is as a competitor. Besides continuity with the WrestleMania match (which built off of a Michelangelo parody, if you can believe it), KO sold an injury to his finger – both on offense and defense for the submission. Beautiful stuff.