Review for WWE Beast in the East

This special event, almost a PPV in itself, was intended to showcase the best of the WWE in Japan and to some extent it does with its' tagline 'Beast in the East' the main event should be Brock Lesnar...

But it's not.

He's not even semi-main. This seems bizarre, almost like promoting a concert with Bruce Springsteen, only to have him turn up thirty minutes in, play bass on one song and leave. If anything, this hurts the whole event and when it gets to the actual main event, you wonder who it was putting the whole thing together.

That pedantic part aside, this is a very good event, definitely worthy of being a WWE PPV, though an extra couple of matches wouldn't have hurt. At only five matches (not including pre-show) there are some great moments throughout, but this is certainly not something that all fans will go out of their way to get hold of.

Chris Jericho has a pretty good match against newcomer Neville and I just wish the ending had been better. I don't think this is Jericho or Neville's fault, I just think this is what they were told to do. However, it was a great way to kick off the show and showed that Jericho could always put on a great match.

Shame I can't say the same about the Divas Triple Threat match between Nikki Bella, Paige and Tamina. This was just a mess of a match and proof that the Divas are not ready for multi-diva matches and should stick to one on one or tag matches. Sad thing is, when Paige and Tamina are one on one it is great, but sadly Nikki's awkward performance lets this match down.

Then we come to Brock Lesnar against...

Kofi Kingston?

What? Of all the people to put him against, this was almost like in the early 2000s of Lesnar when he would be destroying people in less than five minutes. This is exactly what he did. I was shocked, just simply shocked that they would waste someone like Brock Lesnar in a match like this. I'm not saying that the match is bad, it's not. But they could have at least have had him against someone who could be a threat. Even Kofi's New Day partner Big E. would have at least looked like a challenge.

NXT Championship between Kevin Owens and Finn Balor is proof, if proof was needed, to why people should watch NXT. Both men are great in the roles and the match is given enough time to mean something. I do hope that WWE focus on NXT more and maybe release some of their PPV events as they are some of the best wrestling I have seen in years. This is definitely the best match of the night.

Sadly, it is not the main event. How could it be, John Cena is not in it? This tag match between him and Dolph Ziggler against Kane and King Barrett means absolutely nothing. It makes no sense in regards to the storylines and has no real consequence on anything within the WWE. All four put on a good showing, but this is a match that had little or no effect on me.

The Beast in the East is a mixbag. Apart from the NXT match, I can't imagine watching anything on this PPV again and sadly the main reason why people bought or would watch it is a blink and you'll miss moment. It could be argued that my expectations are too high, which is probably true, but I still expected more than just one match that I wanted to watch more than once. With a few tweaks it could have been a PPV quality event, instead it felt like just an episode of Raw without the hour of promos. Just not sure if that's a good thing or not.