Ask and you shall receive, apparently, because I was hollering for the newly-called up Ricky Saints to be booked in a stronger match after he went from facing Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes in his “SmackDown” debut to facing Matt Cardona last week. I’ve said somewhere in one of our various columns that he should feud with Carmelo Hayes for the shot at Trick Williams’ United States Championships, and tonight, WWE may have kicked off just that. If not that, at least tensions between Hayes and Saints that could lead to a number one contendership feud, and the men had a pretty great match tonight.
Hayes returned from around a month off of television, which I think was probably good for him. He wasn’t booked on the WrestleMania card, so in addition to the rest, he was also kept fresh, to keep the people wanting more of him and to keep the #WeWantMelo phenomenon alive. He had a backstage segment with Saints, where they were verbally evenly matched, which then led to the pair squaring off in the ring.
Saints looked great to start off the match, but he was too cocky, and Hayes hit a springboard leg drop to get him off his feet. I noticed Saints heeling it up to those fans in the front row on the ramp during a picture-in-picture break, which I thought was excellent. The longer the match went, the more Saints was getting visibly upset that he couldn’t put the former US Champion away, though he hadn’t even attempted to hit the Roshambo yet.
I think they got going a little too fast toward the end of the match, however, and Saints appeared to slip on the Revolution DDT, but Hayes recovered it quickly with a First 48, which Saints kicked out of. Saints then hit the move, and Hayes kicked out of that, which evened things out, so maybe that was the plan after all, but the missed DDT just looked sloppy to me.
In the end, Saints heeled it up once more and had his feet on the ropes in an attempt to put Hayes away, and Hayes was able to roll his opponent up as he argued with the referee, which I think could be grounds somehow for Saints to demand a rematch. After tonight, I definitely wouldn’t mind these two having a series of matches, or coming back to this eventually for a feud, as they worked well together. If they slow things down just a tad, especially after facing one another already, they could really be on to something great. I was excited to see this match booked ahead of the show, and these guys did not disappoint.
Written by Daisy Ruth
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