It’s one of the two most controversial shows of the year. It’s crown jewel time, folks.
It’s hard to talk about these shows because they’re always set against the background of the various human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, and WWE’s involvement is a key example of the sports laundering that’s going on in the country. At the end of the day, WWE gets 50 million every year, 100 million total, for those two shows. WrestleMania doesn’t even come close to that kind of money. Those shows will happen, and there’s not much else we can do. So we need to talk about her.
At least they didn’t do much propaganda on the show. They saved that for them impromptu press conference the day before.
Roman Reigns and Logan Paul exceeded expectations as their match turned into a stellar main event. I have to say Logan Paul is one of the better rookies I’ve ever seen. This is match number 3, and he’s already a main event-level talent. It’s really amazing how great he was and I can’t stress that more. Roman Reigns also had a lot to do with this match being great. At this stage in his run, he knows exactly what to do in his matches and they almost always deliver.
I wasn’t too keen on the idea of Logan Paul, and he almost always gets booed in the United States. But he’s so good in the ring at this point that he’ll probably come off as a babyface anyway because of his exceptional athleticism. It’s too bad he apparently blew his knee in the game as that will likely sideline him for a year.
Bayley and Bianca Belair had a really good Last Woman Standing match, better than their ladder match the previous month at Extreme Rules. I’m kind of bored with WWE Destiny matches as they all kind of blend together, but I liked the use of the golf cart in the match and the ending was wild with Bayley taking the KOD in the seat. With Nikki Cross meddling, I have a feeling the Women’s WarGames match will be Belair, Asuka, Bliss, Candace LeRae vs Damage CTRL and Cross, but we’ll see.
Speaking of which, Bliss and Asuka lost the women’s tag team titles back to Damage CTRL after winning them just days earlier on Raw. It makes sense that they probably wanted a title change in Saudi Arabia and that was it. It was good, but the bigger story was that Bliss was cutting a promo before the game when Bray Wyatt’s new logo suddenly appeared on the monitor behind her. She seemed startled by this, but then walked on. So for those eagerly awaiting Lady Fiend’s return, good news, it looks like they’re headed in that direction.
Wyatt later spoke on the show. He argues with himself in a Michael Hayes mask. I don’t find it that interesting or compelling at the moment because Wyatt’s stuff is always about where it’s going and it’s almost never good. Maybe next month will be different. But currently not interested.
Karrion Kross and Drew McIntyre (who has reportedly been battling the flu) had a good match, but here’s something that irks me. Every time WWE introduces the Steel Cage, they emphasize that no one can interfere. So every single cage match they do has someone interfering at the center of things. They’ve made those steel cage matches so meaningless whenever they do. Beating Scarlett, the ref and Drew and locking the cage wasn’t great. But whatever, they had a good game.
The match between Judgment Day and OC was good, but it served very much as a wildcard match. The crucial next fight will involve the return of Edge and very likely Beth Phoenix as they have been pushing hard for the OC at a loss on how to deal with Ripley frequently interfering. Survivor Series sounds about right, but they might as well wait until Royal Rumble (there’s no more day-one show).
Omos vs Braun Strowman was short and okay which means Omos has improved a lot in the last year as I believe he couldn’t have made this match even a few months ago. He didn’t look lost making the spots he needed to make, so that was fine for a mean big guy match. It was very similar to Lashley and Lesnar, only it was miles better. But good work here!
The Usos and Brawling Brutes had a very good match, but we’re at a point in this division where there aren’t any clear favorites to beat the Usos, so we’re just waiting until WrestleMania. The New Day, who have faced the Usos about a million times, are next. All of this will most likely be very good, but this division needs some kind of spark to carry it for the next few months.
WWE will end in 2022 with Survivor Series WarGames, which will of course include the WarGames match that Triple H revived in NXT. It’s not the old WarGames (the new version has no blood but a lot more guns) but it should be interesting to see how they carry that over to the main roster.
#WWE #Crown #Jewel #Review #Logan #Paul #awesome
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