WWE: The Demon Finn Balor May Have Finally Hit The Mark on the Main Roster

With The Demon Finn Balor making a surprise return at SummerSlam and laying waste to Baron Corbin in less than two minutes, have Balor and WWE finally cracked the code on making The Demon truly special?

In her comic with Serg Acuna for Boom! Studios telling the tale of how Finn Balor won his Demon powers, Tini Howard closed with the line, “For demons hold great power, but fall victim to their greed. And so Finn learned the lesson… Use it only when you need.”

This gets to the central core of what The Demon has been and always should be for Balor: Something special that only gets unleashed when it’s absolutely 100 percent needed in his mind.

In NXT, that worked out perfectly with the TakeOver model since those events only occurred once a quarter instead of the monthly model of a WWE pay-per-view. It built the anticipation the Demon’s return while also building Balor as a competitor in his own right.

Since his call up to the main roster though, the use of The Demon has been a bit touch and go for Balor and it’s not entirely his fault. WWE did a great job of establishing The Demon as a big deal before his Universal Title match with Seth Rollins and how Finn used the power of story to build himself up, but injury kept both Balor and the Demon away for seven months after winning the match.

Upon Balor’s return, the Demon wasn’t seen again until Balor found himself in a feud with Bray Wyatt. WWE hyped up the coming of the Demon twice in this feud, but the whole thing came across more goofy instead of scary.

The whole thing was supposed to build to The Demon facing Sister Abigail at TLC right before Halloween, but Wyatt ended up being sidelined with the Mumps and Balor faced AJ Styles instead. It was a fantastic match for sure and my personal favorite match of 2017, but the Demon was ultimately an afterthought in the entire affair.

Credit: WWE.com

Since TLC, the Demon had not been seen or even mentioned on TV. Balor opted for building Balor Club instead and bounced between extreme highs and some very weird lows. Still, it did the job establishing that Finn could be a performer away from The Demon. He could be quick and sarcastic, with a bright smile, a heart of gold and open arms for anyone to join the Club.

At SummerSlam though, the dichotomy of Finn and The Demon was re-established in an effective way while keeping Finn’s streak of being The Demon at SummerSlam alive. The Demon was unleashed on an unsuspecting Baron Corbin, who tried to argue that it isn’t what he signed up for.

The Demon worked quick with him though and absolutely destroyed the man who had saying he wasn’t good enough due to his size in record time. It was a level of anger and aggression that had not been previously seen from Finn Balor’s alter ego, and it absolutely clicked.

It’s easy to try and argue that Balor pulling out the Demon here was a waste since this match had no real stakes involved. However, that goes back to the point of “only when you need.” Balor has spent the past year establishing that he doesn’t need the Demon to win or have good matches.

What he did need to do at SummerSlam though was remind Corbin of who he was and why he was not someone you wanted to mess with. No blood pour or summoning. Just straight surprise leading to a straight ass kicking.

Time will only tell how The Demon is treated going forward, but as of right now, it feels like WWE has struck the right ground with it. Keep it special so Finn Balor doesn’t have to paint himself up every week and cause it to lose its shine, but keep it a surprise so that the audience and his opponents are kept off guard. And let him have that intensity every time so that way The Demon stays a threat, especially with the Universal Championship finally becoming a thing on Raw again.