An excellent match.
A match overall better WITH commercials breaks, because while you miss out on neat sequences, they are ultimately filler for the live crowd and take away from this match's biggest strength, which is how efficient it is without ever feeling like it.There are still some small gaps, particularly Sami's flying nothing he loves, when the pointed elbow he uses is right there, and the outside ring interactions that are more cobbled together fast tracks.
But when constructing this match, they hit the jackpot on the premise they chose as a creative starting point, as it takes them the whole way. It's never a line they're holding on to, a helpful tool for focus but at the cost of a lower ceiling of enjoyment ( Bret Hart vs. Roddy Piper), but it is a creative current they wandered into that reveals itself as a perfect domino effect of in-ring, meta, and creative goals all covered in 1 sweep multiple times, creating that efficiency; that snowball effect characterizes the ideal of any creative endeavor.
This match still remains within a framework behoved to the extremely minutely produced TV format, as WWE Unreal showed. But rather than the overshadowing, overly praised Bad Blood HIAC match two days earlier, racing through its many checkpoints to break through the roof of this framework and reach a faux-improvisational primal ignition missing in WWE (albiet still very much contained within the framework; a respectable attempt), this match instead manifests a creative domino effect with the minute checkpoints of HHHWWE production.
Though the match itself doesn't attempt anything improvisational, the river of it, of a rock slicing the stream into two, before the barrier ends and they're reigned back into one, will reveal itself as inherently exuberant, you will see.
Gunther dominates Sami in this match because he hardly ever gives him any room to turn the tides. The first stretch establishes this: Gunther literally keeps Sami strapped to him with a kneeling headlock, which Sami attempts to push Gunther out of, Gunther responding with the basic and traditional escalation of a headlock takeover to ground them both. Sami simply successfully uses the same counter again after a single punch (which Gunther sells as significantly as he can), sending Gunther running the ropes uncontrollably after a drop down and out the ring, leading to his embarrassment at the first commericial break spot.
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| Very baseline sequence. |
Gunther from there on simply sticks to defensively combatting Sami directly with strikes because Sami can't compete with Gunther on that front as his strikes are obviously weaker. He won't attempt a unique maneuver because Sami's theoretical best chance to take advantage, as the smaller opponent, is to slip out of one and reverse it.
Gunther's plan, the aforementioned jackpot, accomplishes many things: First, it has a response to the Wrestlemania match that doubles as kayfabe and meta. In that match, the momentum shifts are much more weighty and numerous, first as a result of both Sami and Gunth's approach, as Gunther entered that match cocky without much of a plan, while Sami had to abandon his corny Rocky impression almost immediately, so it resulted in most of that match being, very broadly, a feeling out process compared to this one. And in the meta, it's a response to how that match was a Wrestlemania match where they went all out with their unique moves, so this match limits them because Gunther won't attempt any, and subsequently Sami hardly can either, and it's a television match so you tone it down. But it isn't done in a cheap way but rather, in a way that makes the Wrestlemania match look cheaper.
It also excels in both puts over Gunther since he dominates 80% of the match in a sensible way, and Sami because of how he responds as an underdog. So what does he do?
To be even more direct than Gunther! Sami strikes Gunther back, but of course he can't defeat him like that, so does he switch it up? No! He in fact amplifies the directness, and subsequently, the efficiency of the match even further: he will attempt the Blue Thunder Bomb over, and over, and over, until his opponent inevitably forgets to reverse and he successfully lands it.
The BTB attempts response is fucking perfect. It posits 2 opposing questions of your choice:
"Does Gunther have Sami outdone to the point that's all Sami can muster in his mind after being dominated?"
or,
"Did Gunther take the wrong approach in staying very rudimentary to defeat Sami through attrition because Sami is even more of an rudimentary attrition god because of his bleeeding heart that allows him to execute it and resist it, both to even more extremes?"
And when that doesn't work, coming out of the 2nd commerical break, he will turn into a zombie and roll up on his back after Gunther chops him down, and immediately recover from the second chop, winding up in a gulf of silence to tackle him, lobbing punches that are weighty because of gravity, yet scrapey because Gunther has fucked him up. A beautiful comeback sequence, and a recipient for encasement, as is Sami's most secret, profound role.
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And it works! It scares Gunther and makes him retreat to the outside, but the aforementioned gap is reached: Sami follows him but Gunther kicks him in the gut and attempts a powerbomb but gets backbody dropped.
It's a flat description because any hint of desperation there is too vague, theres not much struggle, it's on a random spot on the floor. It's clearly a cobbled together fast track.
But that fast track ends up propelling the match even further, because when Sami hits the Helluva Kick, it doesn't feel unearned as one would suppose since the struggle was lacking, but rather it's a surprisingly smooth passage through what couldve been a litany of slight hiccups. It feels like a big leap, like "oh shit, he actually hit it, maybe he can win this", further accentuating the tragic underdog motif of Sami taking too long to get Gunther in the ring that makes me teary, because of the prior match structure coming in for the save. It is a potential bow that is straightened out.
It isn't the universe putting things back in their right place; it is the gravitational pull of the snowball effect they're in.
Back in the ring, Gunther clotheslines Sami's attempt on a 3rd Helluva Kick, and ramping up, escalating the directness due to a close loss, attempts a powerbomb. Sami's reversal, while clearly snatching a great opportunity for an extra pop, is also a quiet de - escalation, as it's reversed by a non offensive, desperate move: the small package rollup, indicating Sami may be powering down somewhat.
It's a 2nd quiet alternate route I've wandered upon, straying from the open main path, into the still lit shadows from the crowns of trees, a weedy garden poking out along their base, before you emerge into the sunlight once again...
Thus entering into powerbomb Gunther finally lands , and the stellar choice of a 1 kickout by Sami, that accomplishes 2 things:
1. It brings up the double edged sword of Gunther's strategy again. Gunther, with his directness, inadvertently trained Sami's own directness, to just push his way via pure willpower through Gunther's own strategy, that this match never strays a bit from as stated before. It crescendoes not with his win, but with Sami's kickout. A sharp convergence.
2. It keeps Sami's world title contendership in the air, that he has something like that in him that hadn't been seen before. A teaser for what's to (hopefully never after 2026) come...
But Sami will never hit a another move after that.
Gunther grabs the defiant Sami, and it leads to one of the brightest glimmers Ive ever seen: after Gunther latches on to him, Sami turns with Gunther applying a sleeper hold, and turns towards the rope, stretching his hand out to it.
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| Another one of Sami's enchantments |
In this moment, a bright glimmer that intensifies before shutting itself close, the match is distilled.
The primitive spirit in pro wrestling is associated with images of wrestlers yelling, covered with their or the opponent's fluids, in the midst of a struggle. A chain link for good measure. These signifiers is the greatest show for the love of this sport after all (and lures them to think Willow Nightingale is on the same level as Sami!).
All one homogenous "sense".
The primitivity here conjures the opposite. After he successfully turns towards the ropes with Gunther on his back, in a superb contrast with his long hair and beard yet the hooded doe eyes underneath, the grittiness disappears and Sami's whole being becomes very direct, just stretching his arm out to the ropes, no offense or defense towards Gunther; he is possessed by an angel... it's as if hes reverted to a child!
It is as if he's purified.
It is the horseshoe theory to those primal images. That's why it's so striking.
Sami circumvents HHHWWE's imposed limitations on primitivity through this, what cannot be understated, specific, individual, exact movement.
He is much more than a reliable good match, one of the greatest faces, one of the greatest sellers on the basis of adding friction to the match, all well intentioned but still reliant on common wrestling signifiers, as opposed the leaking of primitive memories through such cloudiness, that pro wrestling as the most primitive artform allows.
Sami Zayn is the most beautiful wrestler.
EXTRA:
There is in fact an incredible moment where Sami visibly readies for a chop before a fantastic slow fall sell in a kayfabe breaking moment. But with this pair, Gunther as the skeleton to Sami's ectoplasma, it becomes a sneaking behind the curtains moment and seeing the mechanism behind the play, forming a core childhood memory that lasts for the rest of your life.
These gaps are what allow me to breathe.
