Seth Rollins and Finn Balor’s 2016 SummerSlam rematch wins WWE’s match of the week.
On August 21st of 2016 the WWE hosted it’s 29th edition of the annual SummerSlam pay per view. That year’s version, hosted at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, was the sight of the finals to crown the first ever WWE Universal Champion.
The pairing of Seth Rollins and Finn Balor in this match had many fans salivating as this borderline dream match was set to be a reality. However, with Balor being fairly new to the roster having only debuted less than a month earlier, and with Rollins missing the majority of the prior year due to a severe knee injury, the heat for this match wasn’t exactly where it needed to be.
However, with two brilliant workers in Rollins and Balor, many fans still predicted a masterpiece. And did the match live up to masterpiece level? In a word: no. Not to say it was a bad match, that’s not the case. It was a solid, yet unspectacular match that saw Balor walk out as champion. But it wasn’t without consequences.
Rollins’s buckle bomb into the guardrail about halfway through the match proved costly to Balor as examinations after the match showed a labrum tear which forced the Irishman to vacate the newly won title and take to the shelf for the next six months.
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Balor returned to the red brand in February of last year and for the next 11 months, despite being on the same show, he and Rollins have essentially managed to avoid each other. However, that all changed last week on Raw as Balor, along with long time friends and stablemates Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, entered into a six man tag match against “The Architect” alongside his tag team champion partner, Jason Jordan, and SHIELD cohort, Roman Reigns. On this night, Rollins kept his momentum going against Rollins as he scored the victory for his team via the Coup de Grace.
A week later, and due to Jordan’s suggestion, Rollins and Balor decided to finally go one on one again, the announcement delighting the crowd in San Antonio. And this time around the two former world champions put on a stronger match than that of SummerSlam 2016 while at the same time furthering some of the current story lines on Raw. The Bar’s inclusion into the match worked as they continued their feud with the champs which will lead into The Royal Rumble. But another layer was added as they brawled it out with Gallows and Anderson which could lead to their names being thrown into the tag team title picture.
Where Rollins and Balor’s first match suffered in terms of build up and psychology, this one excelled. Now as two of the best confirmed workers on the roster, the match had the crowd fully engrossed. The duo used a beautiful blend of speed and agility mixed with a grind it out kind of style that worked infinitely better than their first tilt. And the finish was maybe the best part as Rollins brought back the The Curb Stomp, now renamed the Black Out which got a major pop from the crowd due to the history of the move being banned. Add in Balor’s phantom 3-count that seemed to end the match early on, which would seem to set up a rematch, and you have yourself an extremely productive main event on what was one of the better episodes of Raw in quite some time.
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Based on what Balor and Rollins accomplished Monday night, a singles feud between the two is something that clearly needs to be examined somewhere down the line. Because if the duo showed this much improvement over their first match, they could clearly be in for big business down the line if not for a world title, than a secondary one. Wouldn’t a Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor match for the Intercontinental title at WrestleMania be an absolute barn burner? WWE, make it happen.