WWE Battleground 2017: Results and observations from the show

My personal expectations were not all the high heading into Battleground and it turned out I had good reason to feel slightly pessimistic, as the final pay-per-view before SummerSlam left a good amount to be desired.

I have certainly witnessed worse pay-per-views from WWE, but the company's offerings so far this year have been consistently good on both sides of the brand extension. Even Great Balls of Fire was a hit with me.

Unfortunately, Battleground was the first real dud of the year. The timing could not have been better, I guess, as I was in actually at the Wells Fargo Center to witness the event in person, which is the reason why I can't be overly negative about the show.

I still had a good time watching live wrestling, which is usually the case. It is always better to watch professional wrestling with a group of people — in this case, a group of thousands — as oppose to watching alone in my home or at my desk at work.

If I had done either one of the latter two options, I might have a more bleak view of the show.

Before I delve deeper into the show, here are the full match results:

- Kickoff match – Aiden English def. Tye Dillinger

- Smackdown Tag Team championship – The New Day def. The Usos

- Shinsuke Nakamura def. Baron Corbin via disqualification

- Five-way elimination – Natalya def. Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Tamina & Lana

- WWE United States championship – Kevin Owens def. AJ Styles

- Flag match – John Cena def. Rusev

- Sami Zayn def. Mike Kanellis

- WWE championship (Punjabi Prison match) – Jinder Mahal def. Randy Orton

The Great Khali lends Mahal a helping hand

You are not reading that sub-headline wrong. The Great Khali made a surprise return to WWE at Battleground — for seemingly only one night — with the intention of lending a helping hand to a fellow wrestler of Indian descent.

Khali literally used one of massive hands to stop Orton from climbing up the outer cage of the Punjabi Prison and choked the life right out of him, allowing Mahal to climb right past the challenger to successfully retain the WWE title yet again.

I know Mahal mentioned Khali as being the supposed innovator of the Punjabi Prison match, but I would not have expected WWE to actually call up the former World Heavyweight champion to appear in Philadelphia Sunday.

Fans reacted in shock and awe as Khali lumbered his way to the ring. It was crazy enough to think that Mahal was in the main event of a pay-per-view for the third consecutive month, but we also got a Khali sighting in WWE for the first time since 2014.

Before Khali shocked the wrestling world, Orton and Mahal had what was easily the best Punjabi Prison match to date. Now, I recognize that is a low bar to clear with the other two matches being pretty lame, but the truth is the truth.

That is not to say that the match did not have its flaws. The initial flaw occurred before the bell rang, as fans quickly noticed once the monstrous structure was lowered from the ceiling of the Wells Fargo Center that the sightlines were going to be less than ideal.

That is to be expected with a cage match, but the Punjabi Prison has a design that is even more unique than a typical cage, making it sometimes tough to see what is going on.

Another issue was that the slow, methodical pace of the match took the crowd right out of it. The fans quickly became disinterested and began chanting for CM Punk and for everyone watching outside of the city to "Trust the Process." Sixers fans do not need an excuse to yell about "The Process."

However, I thought there were positive aspects of the match. I thought Orton and Mahal worked very hard, but perhaps the hardest workers were the Singh Brothers, who seemingly took just as much punishment as the competitors in the match.

One of them even fell from the top of the outer cage of the Punjabi Prison all the way through an announce table below. It was pretty a wicked bump that was worthy of a few extra bucks on his check for this show.

The biggest positive coming out of all of this is that the long, disinteresting rivalry between Mahal and Orton should finally be over.

Natalya is headed to SummerSlam

Smackdown Live's women's title was not defended at Battleground, but the No. 1 contender to the title at SummerSlam was determined via a five-way elimination match, which saw Natalya come out as the victor.

The finish was kind of anticlimactic, but the match overall was good.

I know there are some out there who are not big fans of Natalya. Do not count me as a member of that camp.

In the ring, Natalya is capable of having fantastic matches and I think that if she gets Naomi one-on-one at SummerSlam, the two women are capable of putting on one of the better women's matches all year.

The storyline leading up to it may not set the world on fire, but the match should deliver.

The biggest question coming out of all of this is when and where will Carmella come into play? She is still carrying her contract for a future championship match in that white briefcase of hers and I have a funny feeling she will prevent Naomi versus Natalya from either being a one-on-one contest or happening at all.

What I do know is that I sincerely hope Smackdown Live gets away from the multi-woman matches for a while

Cena wins LOL

The least surprising finish of the night was Cena defeating Rusev in a flag match.

This match was nothing to write home about, which is kind of frustrating considering Cena and Rusev are tremendously talented.

However, this was the match that woke the crowd back up after a series of underwhelming finishes.

The one thing I found strange about all of this was that WWE changed the rules of a flag match.

Instead of a race up the poles to grab the flags, Cena and Rusev essentially had a brutal relay race, where one of them had to first grab their respective flag from a poll in the corner of the ring and then race to the stage to plant the flag in a flagstand that was on a pedestal.

The meant flags being dropped on the ground, which could understandably upset some people.

What hurt the match the most was each man's slow ascent up the steps of the pedestal to end the match. Cena and Rusev would fight each other tooth and nail, but suddenly barely walk when it came time to walk up the steps of the pedestal.

I know wrestlers do that to build drama, but in this case there were only about five steps.

Underwhelming finishes to Owens/Styles and Nakamura/Corbin

Arguably the two matches on the card I was looking forward to the most both kind of let me down with underwhelming finishes.

Corbin and Nakamura were having decent match, but it ended abruptly when Corbin kicked Nakamura below the belt, forcing the official to disqualify him.

I guess that was done in an effort to prevent either man from being pinned, but it didn't go over too well with the fans in attendance.

In the United States title match, Owens pinned Styles' shoulders to the match while the latter had the former in a submission hold.

The finish left fans confused at first, as they had no idea what was going on. Maybe if the fans had the benefit of hearing the announcers, they would have.

I would imagine that being able to hear the announcers would have helped clear up what happened.

Fashion X-Files … to be continued?

We may not have gotten satisfying conclusions to those two of matches, but I was sure that we were going to get one from Breezango and their latest installment of the Fashion X-Files.

WWE led fans to believe that something was going to happen in the ring with Breezango.

Instead, Fandango and Tyler Breeze never appeared before the live audience. They stayed backstage and filmed another segment.

The segment was funny yet again, but the ending said, "to be continued," which I probably normally wouldn't have a problem with, but it came after a couple of underwhelming bouts.

The New Day are champions again

Kofi Kingston, Big E and Xavier Woods won tag team titles together for the third time Sunday night after defeating The Usos, but for Woods it was the first time he scored the pin fall to win a championship.

More important than that was the match that the New Day had with The Usos, which was easily the best of the night. In fact, I'd venture to say that it was the best tag team contest WWE has produced in 2017.

Woods and Kingston may have come out on top, but they took some nasty bumps during the match.

Unfortunately, this match was the first on the pay-per-view proper, which meant the rest of the card failed to measure up.

Aiden English won

In a surprising move, English actually won a televised match on the Battleground kickoff show.

Although English won Sunday, I could easily see WWE booking a rematch between he and Dillinger that would see Dillinger get his victory back.

Vaughn Johnson has a podcast with Nick Piccone called the Straight Shooters on WildfireRadio.com. Check it out here HERE.