Intercontinental Champion Big E Langston def. Damien Sandow

HOUSTON – Alas, Damien Sandow remains uncrowned, as the self-styled scholar fell to the rolling Intercontinental Champion, Big E Langston, in what was to be his grand bid for redemption following a failed Money in the Bank cash-in.

The esteemed Mr. Sandow certainly aimed high in attempting to rebound from the historic shortcoming of his cash-in, targeting the most physically intimidating of WWE’s current champions as his would-be comeback opponent. The Enlightened One’s gaudy bravado leading into the match, however, was quickly exposed as hollow hubris when Langston laid into his feisty challenger with the force of a freight train.

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A champion who speaks softly ( but entertainingly) and carries a big stick, Big E let his storied strength do all the work of Sandow’s interminable orations and then some, shutting down Sandow’s opening salvo by putting his entire 290-pound frame into a pair of monstrous corner splashes. Sandow’s strategy gave him a brief leg up at the expense of Big E’s own when he rammed the titleholder face-first into the turnbuckle outside the ring, and the challenger capitalized on Langston’s disorientation by taking him out at the legs before pouncing with the Elbow of Disdain.

Sandow inched his way closer to victory by punishing  Langston with a bare knee to the small of the champion’s back. Big E kept himself in the game with several well-timed power maneuvers, including a plus-sized Electric Chair drop that nearly put Sandow through the concrete. Ever the fan of the classics, Sandow came the closest to victory with that most classic of maneuvers, the roll-up pin, during a frenzied trade of offense as the bout approached its breaking point. Yet his underestimation of Langston’s resolve proved to be the self-styled intellectual savior’s undoing, as the big man plowed Sandow into Tuesday (the 24th, not this Tuesday) with a running splash and wiped him out moments later with the Big Ending.

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While it’s unlikely the humiliation will deter Sandow for long, perhaps it’s poetic justice – the kind an enlightened soul would truly appreciate – that the story of his sinister redemption now becomes another chapter in Langston’s unlikely, unmissable rise through the ranks of WWE. If nothing else, Langston has silenced Sandow for the time being, something for which the WWE Universe can give a hearty “thank you.”