Dean Ambrose Pinned Seth Rollins, But...

Dean Ambrose beat Seth Rollins for the WWE championship at last night’s Elimination Chamber event … or did he? At the end of the match, Rollins used the referee as a shield against an Ambrose maneuver from the top rope. Ambrose hit his Dirty Deeds finisher, and it seemed like it was gonna be one of those times where the good guy got cheated out of his win because the ref was indisposed. BUT ANOTHER REF CAME RUNNING IN and counted 1-2-3.

After a few seconds of jubilation, it was announced that Ambrose won … by disqualification, which doesn’t yield a title change. It’s one of the weird rules of wrestling. Why wouldn’t the champion just start every match by grabbing a steel chair, mutilating his opponent, and keeping the belt via DQ? (Sometimes there are no-disqualification matches, as with the tag-team match in the Elimination Chamber earlier in the evening.)

Undeterred by the official ruling, Ambrose (with some help from Roman Reigns) snatched the belt and scampered up through the crowd, celebrating as if he were the rightful champion. Raw will open tonight with some sequence involving Triple H and Stephanie McMahon using their authoritative powers to deploy security to wrest the belt away from Ambrose. He and Rollins will presumably meet again at Money in the Bank in two weeks, where it’s likely that Ambrose will just get screwed again. Nothing endears the good guys to wrestling fans like the idea that they’re getting bent over by the powers that be.

In wrestling parlance, last night’s conclusion was what was known as a “Dusty Finish.” As Grantland’s Masked Man wrote in 2012, the construct gets used as a way to book the storyline without changing the actual status quo. While wrestling fans have grown tired of the idea, and will probably be bitching in full force tonight when Ambrose gets his title taken away, recent history suggests there will be a payoff coming down the line that will make all of this worth it.