Saturday Night's Main Event XXXIX: Everybody Returns, Nobody Gets Enough Time

Four good wrestlers are asked to make thirteen minutes feel like twenty, then the commercials take a tax anyway.

Sami Zayn supplies the early urgency, Bron Breakker supplies the violence, and CM Punk versus Seth Rollins carries enough unresolved electricity that even a routine exchange feels like a preview of something larger. Breakker's clothesline on the announce table is the first moment that gives the match some teeth. Punk's hot tag wakes the building up again after the first break.

The finish is really an introduction. Paul Heyman distracts the referee, Bronson Reed returns, and Punk disappears through the barricade. Breakker spears Zayn for the pin. Reed then stands beside Rollins, Breakker and Heyman, which turns a good television tag into the night's most consequential segment.

The match never becomes great because it is chopped apart and because the ending belongs to the angle. It is still comfortably the most complete wrestling on the show.

Five minutes is not much room for error. Unfortunately, this match finds some anyway.

Chelsea Green gets the first meaningful opening with the powerbomb from the apron, and the match briefly settles into a sensible champion-versus-former-champion rhythm. Then Vega's 619 goes badly, Green is bloodied, and the entire thing loses whatever smoothness it had been building.

The avalanche Code Red is a strong visual finish and Vega retains cleanly despite the Secret Hervice at ringside. That is about all the match has time to rescue. The title defense feels less like a special-event attraction than a hurried obligation squeezed between larger stories.

R-Truth comes out dressed as John Cena, to John Cena's music, to fight the John Cena who now insists the audience ruined John Cena. Wrestling occasionally writes sentences that sound like a fever.

The match is barely a match. Cena mauls Truth, Truth gets one affectionate burst using Cena's own shoulder tackles, Five Knuckle Shuffle, Attitude Adjustment and STF, and the crowd reacts because the relationship between these two men is the entire attraction.

Cena appears to reconsider using the championship belt. He hands it to the referee. Then, because this version of Cena has discovered subtlety and immediately misplaced it, he kicks Truth low and wins with the AA. The post-match belt shot completes the cruelty.

As wrestling, there is almost nothing here. As a four-minute character scene, it has a purpose.

Damian Priest and Drew McIntyre finally get a cage, which should mean the feud is ending. WWE also gives them a door, which means Jesse Ventura gets a new feud of his own.

The physical material is good. McIntyre launches Priest into the cage, Priest survives the Claymore, McIntyre steals South of Heaven, and the chair becomes increasingly central as the match moves toward the finish. The problem is television architecture: the early commercial removes the middle of the climb, so the match keeps asking the audience to reconnect after momentum has already been sold to an advertiser.

Priest eventually crushes McIntyre with a Con-Chair-To and simply walks through the door. It is decisive in one sense and strangely bloodless in another. Ventura's disgust with the escape rule is almost as memorable as the match.

Still, this is sturdy, physical work between two wrestlers who know exactly how to make one another look dangerous.

The World Heavyweight Championship main event begins with the clock already glaring at everyone.

Jey Uso and Logan Paul have less than ten minutes to establish a title match, survive a commercial, hit the required athletic beats and leave room for two larger stars to run in. They do not really solve that equation. Paul has a few sharp moments, including the dive and the big right hand. Uso answers with the Samoan drop, superkick and splash. Nothing has enough time to accumulate weight.

Then John Cena pulls the referee out during Uso's apparent winning sequence. Cody Rhodes returns for his first appearance since WrestleMania 41, clears Cena away, and Uso finishes Paul. Cody immediately challenges Cena and Paul to face him and Uso at Money in the Bank.

The title match becomes scenery for the next card. Cody's return gets the reaction. Jey's championship gets the closing graphic.