January 20th
Nutter Center (Dayton, Ohio)
The crowd was absolutely dead for this one, which for the most part was not a reflection on the in-ring action. The match was put in the usually dead 10:30 timeslot (right before the main event and after 2 ½ hours of the show have already gone by) which certainly didn’t help. It also doesn’t help that the Wyatt Family is not quite over yet, at least to the point where Harper and Rowan can work a 12-minute RAW match without facing an uphill battle from crowd hear.
Perhaps in an attempt to wake the crowd or perhaps just coincidentally, the Usos and Wyatt Family really slugged it out. Harper’s strikes – uppercuts, forearms, and chops – were all laid in snugly while the Usos made their usual energetic and hard-hitting comeback. The finishing stretch was fun with dives, super kicks, and Michinoku Drivers waking the crowd up a bit after a mid-match promo from Bray Wyatt failed to do the trick.
Of course, the crowd only really got going when Daniel Bryan ran in to attack Bray. With Bryan’s two-week side trip to the Wyatt Family now over, the crowd is free to cheer him as loudly as they want which they have kindly obliged to these past two Mondays. That particular story appears to have done little to hurt the reactions Bryan gets from the fans.
Stiff | Watchable | Quality/Angle