Live Report 5/17: WWE Live in Vienna, Austria feat. Ronda Rousey

General
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Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/05/17/live-report-5-17-wwe-live-in-vienna-austria-feat-ronda-rousey/

Event: WWE RAW house show

City: Vienna, Austria

Venue: Wiener Stadthalle

Submitted by: Johannes Pressler (@Joe_Pressler)

Match #1 – Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt © vs The B Team vs Heath Slater & Rhyno for the RAW Tag Team Championship
Hardy and Wyatt hit Slater with the Double Sister Abigail and Wyatt pins Slater at 7:08. Fun little opener. Notable: Wyatt made the “Suck It“ gesture towards Bo Dallas.

Match #2 – Cedric Alexander © vs Mustafa Ali for the Cruiserweight Championship
Cedric hits the Lumbar Jack and wins at 10:40. Strong match. Notable: At the beginning, there were some loud “CM Punk“ chants. From an in-ring standpoint, this was the best match of the night.

Match #3 – Zach Ryder & Chad Gable vs Goldust & Mojo Rawley
Gable pins Goldust with a German suplex into a bridge at 7:45. Notable: This was my bathroom match.

Match #4 – Finn Balor vs Baron Corbin
Balor wins with the Coup de Grace at 8:14. Very basic match.

Match #5 – Nia Jax © vs Alexa Bliss vs Bayley vs Sasha Banks for the RAW Women’s Championship
Jax pins Bliss with a Samoan drop at 14:08. Notable: Banks hit a 619 and live it generally stuck out how fluid she moved in the ring.

Match #6 – Seth Rollins © vs Jinder Mahal for the Intercontinental Championship
Rollins wins with his stomp at 13:17. The crowd was super hot for this match. Rollins felt like a superstar and got the biggest reaction of the night. Therefore this was my personal match of the night.

Intermission

Elias sits in the ring and does his typical stick. The crowd was very into him. Then he gets interrupted by Bobby Roode and together they perform “We Are the Champions“ by Queen. Elias hits Roode with a cheap shot, Roode counters and hits Elias with the Glorious DDT. No official match.

Match #7 – Ronda Rousey, Natalya & Ember Moon vs Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan and Mickie James
Rousey gets the hot tag at the 6-minute mark, delivers some punches in the corner, does two judo throws, some more punches and submits James with an armbar at 7:20. Honestly, Rousey did little to nothing. After this showing, I’m a little more worried for her Match at Money in the Bank than I was right after her performance at WrestleMania – but her live entrance was awesome to see and she got the second biggest reaction of the night.

Match #8 – Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman & Bobby Lashley vs Samoa Joe, Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn
Reigns got the final hot tag, every babyface hits their finisher and Reigns pins Owens at around 10 minutes. Pretty basic match. Notable: Sami acting like a gangster during Joe’s entrance was absolutely hilarious. Reigns got a mixed to negative reaction. Also notable: Although Reigns got the pin, the show ended with Strowman’s music. Strowman got the third biggest reaction of the night.

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How did you watch it? Where was it shown?

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This is a live report.

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I feel like this is a very archetypical way to book a “specialty” character though. You protect them from being overexposed by giving them the hot tags and the shine at the end while not letting them do too much. I think it’s reasonable to be worried about Money in the Bank because it’s not as well built of a story, and will obviously be her first match that she can’t really be “booked around” participating in too much, but I feel like anyone who’s sort of a fresher face in a tag match like that is gonna fill the exact sorta role that Rousey did as described above.

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It sounds to me like Rousey was booked exactly how she needed to be. I don’t see the issue there.

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You’re probably right and for such a tag match it was fine. Maybe I was expecting just a little bit more and that they would give her a couple of minutes in the ring with some one-on-one action to see how she’s doing at this moment – that’s why my growing concern for MITB.