While Wrestlemania is the big show with the highest of profile matches, my favourite WWE PPV is the Royal Rumble. I like getting surprised when a wrestler comes out and that happened a lot a last night’s show and with Takeover, the night before this was easily my favourite back-to-back since probably last year’s Wrestlemania.
Firstly I wanted to look back to Takeover: Phoenix and speculate what could happen moving forward to Wrestlemania weekend in a couple of months time.
I loved the opening match and the fact NXT opens the show with the tag teams and Saturday (I watched on Sunday morning due to the time difference and me liking sleep) was no different with champions Undisputed Era and challengers War Raiders utterly killing it.
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The match itself was more of a tornado tag and the crowd had to warm up but were loving it as it went on and you had to catch your breath. I was surprised Hanson and Rowe went over winning the titles from UE.
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The main reason for my surprise as I thought in my preview/prediction piece, I thought UE would keep hold of the titles until Takeover: New York (I’m guessing that’s the name of the show) to give not only War Raiders a bigger crowd pop but also be the passing of the touch as Undisputed Era move to the main roster.
I mean they still could but it’s nice to start building the tag team division around these modern day Vikings.
The next match was Matt Riddle vs Kassius Ohno and I was honestly bored by it, but it did its job of making Riddle look like a beast just battering Ohno to the point he had to tap out and now we should see the King of Bros move up the card looking for title matches.
The North American title was up next as champion Ricochet was hoping to defend his belt against the how heel Johnny Gargano.
This was the best match of the whole weekend, match of the year calibre and the best match Gargano (and that’s a high bar) and Ricochet have had since being in NXT.
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Johnny Wrestling was doing high flying moves while the One and Only was many doing more grounded, mat stuff.
Just go and watch this match on the WWE Network as they were both doing incredible things to get out of each other’s moves and were hitting each other pretty stiff.
I think Gargano winning and becoming the next North American champion is best for the title and NXT moving forward as he’ll make it feel as important as the NXT title. I can’t wait what happens next for Johnny Takeover.
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Before the NXT Women’s title match, I felt a little sorry for Shayna Baszler and Bianca Belair as I following the North American bout as I wasn’t sure if the crowd could get as hyped before the main event, but to their credit both wrestlers made the audiences hyped for this match from the beginning.
Even though, Belair didn’t win as Baszler left retaining the title and ending the EST’s undefeated streak. However, Bianca can be proud of leaving Phoenix looking like an absolute superstar as she repeatedly counted Shayna’s submissions and she cut another human being with her fucking hair!
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I think it’s safe to say people will hope there’s a rematch at Takeover: New York where I think it’ll be Baszler last match before moving up and also Belair will be a fantastic champion leading the new wave in the women’s division.
After two cracking matches, you could see the crowd were tired during the beginning of the NXT championship fight between champion Tommaso Ciampa and challenge, and former champion, Aleister Black.
The match did start at a different pace as Ciampa got a grip of the match after injuring Black’s knee as the match went on the crowd got more into it.
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It took numerous Fairytale Ending’s for Blackheart to retain but there was a moment I thought Black might’ve won. On the other hand, I’m glad Ciampa still has goldie and as the show was ending Gargano came out to celebrate with his former DIY tag partner to close the show.
However, as shown on WWE’s YouTube, after the show finished Velveteen Dream came out to join and steer down the two champs, this was followed by Adam Cole and then Ricochet and finally Aleister Black.
This is leading towards a six-man tag match for Half Time Heat during the Superbowl but I’m hoping for more going into Takeover: New York.
As I truly hope the main event is these six men in a match for both the North American and NXT Championships, especially if it’s a ladder match. The main reason is that it’d be the perfect send-off for Black, Cole, Gargano and Ciampa to move up to the main roster and if Dream to was to win, what an incredible sign that would show from Triple H to the WWE universe.
The other matches on that card would be Baszler vs Belair for the NXT Women’s Championship, Undisputed Era vs War Raiders for the NXT Tag Championship and finally Io Shirai and Kairi Sane vs Marina Shafir and Jessamyn Duke.
Moving onto Sunday night, this Royal Rumble was great and highly enjoyable.
I’m going to fast forward through the kickoff show simply saying Buddy Murphy retained the Cruiserweight title, Shinsuke Nakamura regained the United States Championship making Rusev winning a couple of weeks ago fucking pointless.
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There was a pointless throwaway match taking the Raw tag champions Bobby Roode & Chad Gable beating the random team of AOP’s Rezar and Scott Dawson from The Revival.
This match just says to me that Vince McMahon is doing everything to piss off The Revival.
The main card started with champion Asuka taking on Becky Lynch for the Smackdown Women’s Championship in a spectacular 18-minute opening match in which could’ve been the main event.
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With the Empress of Tomorrow winning setting the stage for the crowd and those watching if Lynch will take part in the royal rumble.
Smackdown continued to take centre stage with The Bar defending the brand Tag titles against Shane McMahon and The Miz.
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I can’t describe how much I fucking hate this storyline and wanted it to end with them losing but they didn’t and now Shane O’Mac and Miz will be taking the belts and defend them at Wrestlemania.
Though McMahon’s Shooting Star Press was impressive.
Though McMahon’s Shooting Star Press was impressive.
I just hope this leads to tag teams like Gallows & Anderson and SAiNtY having issues with this and start a program.
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The Raw Women’s belt was up next as Sasha Banks was hoping to beat the champion, Ronda Rousey. Sadly that didn’t happen but what we did get was a great 14-minute match in which Banks pushed Rousey all the way and was the best performance of the UFC hall of famer.
What was great to see the continued tease of the Four Horsewomen (Banks, Lynch, Charlotte, Bayley) and Four Horsewomen (Rousey, Baszler, Duke, Shafir).
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Elsewhere, Kacy Catanzaro played basically the Kofi Kingston role avoiding elimination and re-enter the rumble. I also laughed during the very creepy Hornswoggle and Zelina Vega moment.
Seeing Lynch enter the rumble especially in the way they did and burying Lana at the same time but The Man winning was the right thing as it’s likely to now go on to main event Wrestlemania against Rousey.
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To go back to Ripley, honestly, I think once the rematch against Toni Storm for the NXT UK Women’s title is done than The Nightmare should move to the main roster as I don’t think there’s anything in NXT that she could do.
During last night’s Raw, we now know Becky will be taking on Ronda for the Raw Women’s Championship at the grandest stage of them all and will now more likely be the main event. It just depends on if they add Charlotte in the match.
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Due to the placement of the match, I think Daniel Bryan vs AJ Styles for the WWE Championship was duller than it actually was as I was worn out by the rumble, but do think the match itself was longer then it needed to be.
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However, keeping the championship around Bryan is money and is right to take it into Wrestlemania.
If anything this and the Smackdown tag match should’ve swapped and introducing Rowan is interesting but could’ve been done sooner, but I love the fan speculation on Twitter of possibly having Harper and Bray Wyatt join to basically reimagine Wyatt family, but instead Bryan leading the group as more of a liberal, ego friendly heels.
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The match shows that The Beast will sell to the right person like AJ and Bryan and now add Finn to the list and it was at breakneck speed as it lasted eight minutes.
I enjoyed the match so much I would love to see it at Wrestlemania as part of a triple threat with the men’s royal rumble winner but now after just missing out on winning and the beat down after means, the Demon would come out.
Finally, the men’s royal rumble was enjoyable but I liked the women’s match more this year.
The things I loved were seeing Black showing up and eliminating Dean Ambrose and was in the ring with a number of top main roster talent.
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The same goes for Pete Dunne and I think every UK wrestling fan were so happy and pleased to see Dunne in the rumble and with the likes of Seth Rollins, Drew McIntyre and Samoa Joe.
Additionally, he did a great job and hopefully, he drops the UK title soon to Walter and move up to the main roster.
After winning the North American championship it was great to see Gargano involved in the rumble and stay for a long time. Speaking of staying a long time this match clearly shows how much WWE and Vince think of Andrade as he was in the final four, the last man from Smackdown and will soon be having titles around his waist.
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I also want to see Nia vs Randy Orton as a Wrestlemania match because I think Orton is a wrestler who would handle it brilliantly and she would probably learn a lot from him.
As for the winner himself Seth Rollins sure he’s now confirmed on Raw he’ll face Brock for the Universal title and it’ll be a good, hopefully, great match but it doesn’t excite me.
The rumble has also show Braun’s moment is long gone the crowd didn’t care and that’s on WWE because they had the chance to make him “the guy” after Crown Jewel.
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