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WWE Crown Jewel 2019: Predictions & Analysis

Here we go again…

I think the point has finally come where we’re out of new things to say about how crap these Saudi Arabia shows are inevitably going to be. I normally like to inject some optimism into what I right, especially when it comes to wrestling, but after Crown Jewel 2018 was a contender for worst PPV of the decade and Super Show-Down earlier this year bored me to tears, I just can’t bring myself to put a positive spin on these anymore.

Nevertheless, WWE has gone more in on promoting this show as a legitimate PPV than with previous shows, so there’s a chance that something that happens on this show will actually hold consequence the next night on Raw…a small chance admittedly, but that’s still a chance.

20-Man Battle Royal &
AJ Styles(c) vs Battle Royal Winner
(United States Championship)

This is actually quite a difficult one to pick, mostly because AJ Styles hasn’t been involved with anyone, in particular, this past month, the only person who’s shown the makings of a feud is Kevin Owens, but since Owens is one of the people who refuses to attend these Saudi Arabia shows, that’s definitely not happening.

Battle royals are always quite fun to watch, and 20 men is just about the right amount to give us a decent focus on a bunch of guys in the match and make it something that’s actually easy to follow, unlike the 50 man cluster from Super Show-Down earlier this year. As I’ve said, the winner could honestly be anyone from Raw, so I’m going to optimistically pick someone that I want to win and say it’ll be Buddy Murphey.

Then, there’s the title match with AJ Styles which, no matter who wins the battle royal, I think AJ is retaining. As I said, there’s been no kind of feud built around this title match and I don’t see what would be gained from a sudden upset win, especially after the competitor will have already fought a match.

Mansoor vs Cesaro

Ok, I get it, you want the Saudi crowd to have a hometown wrestler to cheer on, but why should any of us give a shit about Mansoor if the two Saudi Arabia shows every year are the only time we get to see him? He impressed in the battle royal earlier this year, but I’ve never seen him wrestle a full-length match, which is something he’s clearly not ready for, otherwise he would’ve been wrestling on NXT or 205 Live at some point during the last 6 months.

Luckily, Mansoor in extremely good hands when it comes to Cesaro, so if it turns out he’s as green in the ring as I suspect he is, then we should still get a decent match out of it. As for a winner, it seems pretty obvious Mansoor is going to come out with the win one way or another, probably through some flukey roll-up to make him seem like a plucky good guy in front of his hometown crowd and Cesaro can go back to being horrifically under-utilised on TV every week.

The OC vs The Revival vs Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins vs Lucha House Party vs Dolph Ziggler & Bobby Roode vs The Viking Raiders vs Heavy Machinery vs The B-Team vs The New Day
(Tag Team Turmoil)
(Tag Team World Cup)

Oh, who cares?

Much like the singles world cup from last year, I can’t see this mattering much past the event itself. This should be better than the singles world cup though, if only for the fact that a 50-year-old billionaire won’t randomly insert himself into the main event for no apparent reason and become the worst thing about WWE programming for the next year…hopefully.

As for a winner, it’s honestly anyone’s guess. WWE has proven time and time again that attempting to apply logic to the results of these Saudi Arabia shows is an entirely fruitless effort. My initial thought is that The New Day will start off the match and last in it for quite a long time, only to be struck down by The Revival who take advantage of New Day’s weakend state. As for the eventual winner, I’m going to go with The Viking Raiders, purely because they’re currently undefeated since coming to the main roster and have just won the Raw Tag Titles, so keeping them strong seems like a good idea.

Team Hogan (Roman Reigns, Rusev, Ricochet, Chad Gable & Ali) vs Team Flair (Randy Orton, King Corbin, Bobby Lashley, Shinsuke Nakamura & Drew Mcintyre)

ALL THE WRESTLERS! GET THEM ALL ONTO THE SHOW! MAKE ALL THE MONEY!

Congratulations to WWE for booking a 5 on 5 tag match, less than a month out from the PPV whose whole gimmick is 5 on 5 tag matches, stellar booking right there. If this match was being fought under elimination rules, then maybe it’d have a hope of being entertaining, but since it’s not then I think there’s going to be far too much going on for any of it to be worth watching.

The match will likely consist of very quick tags to make sure everyone gets their stuff in and the match will never get any time to build properly, leading to spots for the sake of spots and nothing interesting will come out it. There’s no way Team Hogan is losing though, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Hogan dropped a leg on Flair for good measure. Joy.

Braun Strowman vs Tyson Fury

I know virtually nothing about boxing and the only reason I know who Tyson Fury is, is because I live in the UK where he’s quite a big name.

It’s wholly impossible to speculate on how good of a wrestler Fury will be since we’ve had more or less no indication of if he’s going through any sort of training or history with the sport outside of a couple photos of him in the Performance Center. I imagine WWE will want him to wrestle a striking-based style which is probably what he’ll be best at, I’m just not sure how it will mesh against a guy like Strowman.

I also don’t think this is going to do Braun any favours whatsoever. Braun desperately needs to start fighting people he can get some good wins against otherwise he’s quickly going to flounder and he won’t be a credible threat to anyone anymore, it’s like they’ve done the same thing to Braun that they did with Big Show, except they skipped the part where Big Show tore through everyone and won some world titles. That rant may have made it obvious, but Tyson Fury is going to win., there’s no way WWE would bring in a legit boxer, pay him FIFTEEN FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS for a single match and have him lose.

Seth Rollins(c) vs “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt
(Universal Championship)
(Falls Count Anywhere)
(No stoppage for any reason)

Well WWE, you’ve backed yourself into an incredibly stupid corner here.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen here, because it’s honestly incomprehensible to me why WWE would do this to themselves. Unless they plan to put the Universal Championship on The Fiend here (which I seriously doubt) then this is a match that looks to do more harm than good. Putting what happened at Hell in a Cell aside, it looks to me like the only possible outcome here is Seth Rollins winning clean which would be catastrophic for The Fiend, not to mention it would turn the US crowds even more against Rollins.

Since Bray Wyatt has been drafted to Smackdown, The Fiend winning Raw’s world title is out of the question and outside of a Seth Rollins heel turn (which is also something I doubt will happen) there’s not a great deal that can be done here to stop the crowds outside of Saudi Arabia hating the outcome of this match. I’m hoping that the Falls Count Anywhere stipulation means that Rollins will at least have to do something HUGE in order to get the pin on The Fiend, but given what Rollins did at Hell in a Cell, only for The Fiend to still leap back up, it’s going to have to be pretty bloody massive.

Brock Lesnar(c) vs Cain Velasquez
(WWE Championship)

I’ve spent this whole month trying to work out how I feel about all this and I’m honestly still not sure.

It all started on Smackdown’s first episode on FOX when Brock Lesnar beat Kofi Kingston for the WWE Championship in 8 seconds. I don’t know whether it’s because I’d already spent 3 weeks anticipating that exactly that would happen, or because I’d been underwhelmed by Kofi’s title reign for the last few months, but this loss didn’t really bother me all that much. Then Cain Velasquez showed up scared off Lesnar. I didn’t know exactly who Velasquez was, but I recognised the name and the moment itself was quite exciting.

My initial expectations for this match was about as low as low can go, but when I discovered Velasquez’s previous matches in AAA and I was impressed with what I saw. The only problem is, with the way he’s currently being presented on TV, I’m not sure WWE is going to let him wrestle the luchador style that we saw in AAA outside of a couple of spots. Either way, I think this match would benefit from being a hard-hitting 10-12 minute bout that keeps the pace relatively fast the whole time. Will we actually get that? Well, when it comes to Brock Lesnar, it’s honestly impossible to tell.

This does fo course beg the question though, who’s going to win? Were this a situation like Tyson Fury’s where it was a side-project for the man, then it’d be obvious, but Velasquez has made a big deal of late about announcing his formal retirement from MMA and full-time dedication to wrestling. On top of that, when you consider that WWE recently made a big deal out of Rollins finally being the man to end Lesnar’s reign of tyranny in the WWE, I don’t see what there is to be gained from Lesnar holding onto the WWE Championship until Wrestlemania, especially considering the only person he’s likely to face is Roman Reigns which…come on. So with all that said, perhaps against my better judgement, I’m going with Cain Velasquez, purely because the only argument for Lesnar to retain is “cos he’s Brock Lesnar”, which is an argument that doesn’t hold as much stock as it used to.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what you think is going to happen either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back here on Friday for my review of the show!

Every Current Championship in WWE Ranked

A debate that never seems to end on the internet is just how important wrestling championship title belts actually are. Some insist that they’re little more than props and storytelling devices, while others claim they embody the company they represent and are dripping with all the heritage of everyone who has held it. Personally, I think there’s a case to be made that putting too much weight in a championship can be a bad thing, but at the same time, I like shiny things and wrestling titles are among the shiniest.

WWE is currently awash in championships, with no less than 5 different brands all with at least one championship (often more) to their name, so as someone who has spent far too much money on replica title belts, I thought it’d be a fun idea to rank all of the titles currently in WWE from worst to best. The only rule here is that title belts that are just pallet swaps of each other (for example, the Raw Tag Titles and the Smackdown Tag Titles) will be grouped into a single entry.

I’d also like to make it clear that I’m ranking these titles on DESIGN ALONE, I’m not taking into account things like heritage, prestige or the current champions. With that out of the way, let’s get right into it.

13 – 24/7 Championship

There’s no denying that all of the 24/7 title skits have been on WWE shows this year have been great. The title has provided us with a whole host of genuinely entertaining and funny moments as a hoard of wrestlers chase each other around the arena trying to hold the title for just 5 minutes if they can. It’s provided a nice beam of light to break up gruelling 3-hour shows and doesn’t seem to be losing steam anytime soon.

However, the title itself looks like a child’s toy.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter that this title looks crap because it’s designed to be tossed around all the time and change hands at least 3 times on any given night. It’s a title that isn’t really supposed to mean anything in the grand scheme of things so not a lot of effort went into designing it and it shows. I quite like the dark green & gold colour combo, but all three of the plates on it look like they’re badly glued on and have absolutely no detail to speak of.

Like I’ve said, it’s not a title that needs to look good in any way, but that doesn’t excuse it from the fact that it looks like a 4th-grade arts and craft project.

12 – Raw/Smackdown Tag Team Championships

These titles are an interesting case because although I don’t like these designs, I did quite like the look of the previous designs that existed before the brand split, which consisted of bronze plates and a black strap. Unfortunately, I’m here to judge the current designs, not the previous one and these really don’t tickle my fancy in the slightest.

The problem here is entirely down to the colour because the Red & Silver and Blue & Silver combo just don’t come together for these titles. I understand that you need Red and Blue to represent Raw and Smackdown, but both of these colours only serve to make the silver of the main plates look cheap as hell. The thing is, I don’t think that bronze or gold plates would look any better with the blue or red either, perhaps even worse.

I quite like the actual designs on the plates themselves and they’re very easily identifiable as tag team championships, but you’d need a complete redesign on the colour scheme to make them work.

11 – Cruiserweight Championship

Ok, so I need to make it clear that from this point onwards in the list, I like all of these title designs. A lot of them aren’t anything to set the world on fire of course, but I wouldn’t classify any of these titles from this point onwards in the list as “bad”.

I feel like I should like the Cruiserweight championship design a lot more than I do because it’s got just about everything I like when it comes to title designs. The main plate is an unconventional shape with a lot of detail all around, the side plates frame the belt perfectly and the strap is purple, which is my favourite colour and yet when I compare it to all the other titles on this list it ends up falling down to 3rd from bottom.

In a horrific twist, I think it’s the purple on the strap that’s ruining the design. If it were darker then maybe it would work, but as it stands, the purple is quite a bright shade and it makes the whole thing feel a bit cheap. It means that when I look at the main plates, I see tin, not silver and it brings the whole thing down as a result. Not to mention there was that one-time Kalisto brought out a version of the championship with a black strap instead and it looks gorgeous, but we never saw that version of the title again.

10 – Raw/Smackdown Women’s Championship

There’s an argument to be made here that these are just pallet swaps of the WWE Championship, which is absolutely true, but I think there are enough differences to warrant a separate entry in the list.

These titles are ones that I’ve actually slowly grown less and less fond of overtime. When the new women’s championship (now Raw women’s championship) was unveiled, I thought it was a thing of beauty, I’m a sucker for a white strap and the coloured background made it stand out bright and bold, but as the years have gone by, I’ve soured on them.

I still like the white strap, but now it’s the coloured background that rubs me the wrong way instead. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not the biggest fan of the “Red for Raw, Blue for Smackdown” mentality WWE has taken to title designs in recent years and now I think that – like with the cruiserweight title -the bright colours serve to cheapen the look of the title as a whole and I can’t help but feel I would prefer something a lot more regal looking for the women of WWE, perhaps more reminiscent of AEW’s Women’s Championship.

9 – United Kingdom Tag Team Championships

These titles are somehow simultaneously over-designed AND under-designed.

At a glance, these titles actually look quite nice, but when you take the time to look at them for an extended period of time, a few problems surface pretty quickly. The first, and biggest, one is the fact the main plates have way too much on them. There’s the reef design to border it, the UK Lion & Unicorn either side of the main plates, in the same colour as the reef and then both sides of the globe AND the NXT logo in the middle, it’s far too much. If either the reef or the stuff in the middle was coloured silver instead of gold then I think it might work, but as it stands the whole thing is one colour and it just looks overdesigned to all hell.

Then you look outside the main plate and realise that there’s nothing else of interest on the entire belt. For one thing, the main plate looks a bit too small on the strap anyway but side plates are the standard WWE Logo in a circle which is so boring, especially compared to the main plate right next to it. Also, I don’t think the strip of metal between the main and side plates is necessary, it seems to space the plates out too far.

Of course, I have still ranked this higher than a couple of belts I’ve seemed more positive about, but the fact is I’d rather have an overdesigned championship like this one, than a really basic one like the Raw & SD tag titles.

8 – WWE/Universal Championship

Ok, let’s make this clear, if I had ranked the Universal title separately then it would’ve only been just about the 24/7 title because the red is horrible, but I quite like the black strapped WWE title design so I’m mainly focusing on that here.

There is an argument to be made here that this base design is quite boring and while I don’t necessarily disagree with that, I think it’s relative plainness works in its favour. It’s quite a simple design, with a jewel-encrusted WWE logo, bordered by more jewels and a small plate with “World Heavyweight Champion” at the bottom directly on the leather.

For some people, this design is way too little, but I really like the look of it. It’s clean and clear in what’s it’s communicating, with many other belts you often have to focus for a couple of seconds to notice the logo in amongst all the gold and silver patterns (*cough*AEW*cough*) but when you look at this, there is instantly no mistaking what championship this is and who it belongs to. I also love the personalised side-plates, it adds so much more character to a title than the simple nameplate and although that feature has made it’s way to several other titles in WWE now, this one did it first.

7 – United Stated Championship

If you had asked me to draw what I think an unapologetic American wrestling company would have as the design for their United States Championship, what I draw wouldn’t look very dissimilar from this title. There is no way you could ever wonder what this title is for, it’s loud and proud, plastered with enough red, white and blue to make an army general think they have to salute it and I love it.

I’m speaking as a non-American here, but I get a kick out of how in-your-face this title is, so much so that I look at the old WCW and laugh at how pitiful it looks in comparison. Aside from the bold colours, the WWE logo, nameplate and central text are positioned in the right places to ground the title a bit and stop it from being WAY too much. It’s undeniably gaudy, but that’s arguably the point and it makes it a lot of fun to look at.

6 – Women’s Tag Team Championships

These belts take some of the best elements of both the tag titles and the women’s titles to make an incredibly elegant looking title belt.

First off, the unorthodox shape is a great place to start, I honestly think the four prongs along make this championship look so much better than it would do as just a flat circle. Then there are the colours which are spot on, the gold is noticeably lighter than on most of the other titles but I think that adds to the effect and goes really well with the silver on the plate and the white on the strap.

Using the gold as a framing for the silver was a nice touch too, but the arrangement of them is what brings this design to its true form. The rings of gold and silver specifically serve to draw your eyes right into the centre of the title, where the words “TAG TEAM” stand loud and proud. The reef that goes around the silver ring is a nice touch to stop it from looking too plain and creates that nice sense of elegance I mentioned. It’s just a shame we don’t get to see these titles on TV all that often…

5 – NXT Tag Team Championships

This title is an interesting one, because there’s a lot to it at first glance, to the point where I wouldn’t blame you if you saw it as over-designed, but there’s a big difference between these and the UK tag titles.

The main plate has a lot going on with it (a feature of most NXT titles) but here everything comes together in a much better way than on the UK tag titles for two major reasons. The first is shape, not the shape of the plate necessarily (although I do like that) but the shapes on the design itself, most of it is very rigid and pointy, there are clear lines and bordered between each segment, which allows the only circle on there to stand out and highlight the NXT logo in the centre.

The other reason is the colour. The gold is all over the title, but it actually only serves as a frame for the centrepiece of the title, it’s there to keep the aesthetic of NXT clear with the black and gold, everything important in the centre of the title is actually in silver, which makes it stand out so much better. Not to mention that gold, silver and black are colours that go well together. It all comes together to create a design that’s got a lot going on with it, but not so much going on that you feel overwhelmed.

4 – Men’s/Women’s United Kingdom Championship

It would’ve been really easy when designing this championship to just pallette-swap the US title with a Union Flag and call it a day, but I’m very glad they took a different route because I love this title.

To get my only major complaint out of the way first, I’m not a big fan of the shape being identical to that of the WWE Championship, I think that is a shape that only works for that particular championship and I wish something a bit more creative could’ve been done with it. Outside of that issue though, this ticks all my boxes.

I’m usually not a fan of one plain colour (in this case, gold) but I think it works in this instance. The whole aesthetic WWE set forth for NXT UK was focusing on the regalness and typical colours therein, so keeping most of the main plate gold and black doesn’t bother me, plus the red of the shield in the centre breaks it up enough so that it doesn’t become plain. Then there’s the actual design, which follows that of the UK coat of arms. I think that design looks great at the best of time, but seeing it on this title made me love it all the more, it’s framed so perfectly that it makes the shape of the belt itself not seem as bad and the banners reading “United Kingdom Championship” at the top and bottom fill in what would’ve been empty space very nicely.

While I wish the shape was something more interesting, I think the design of this title is the perfect fit for NXT UK and just looking at it creates an air of prestige for the division.

3 – North American Championship

Whoever came to the realisation that a burgundy strap was the way to go, I hope you got a raise for the idea.

For the most part, I’d agree that any colour strap other than black or white is a bad idea, I’ve talked about it already with the men’s tag and cruiserweight titles, but this is one of those rare instances where a different colour adds so much to the effect of the title. The burgundy colour invokes this old school feel – as many championships from the ’60s and ’70s had similarly coloured straps – and given that the main appeal of NXT is the insanely high match quality, a more old-school looking championship is a perfect choice.

The main plate had quite a simplistic design, but I think that adds to the overall feel of the championship, if it had been much more than what it is, it would’ve felt overdesigned and at odds with the rest of the belt. The colours are a perfect choice, there’s a more yellowish-gold than we’re used to seeing on titles, but it goes perfectly with the burgundy of the strap and the black and silver being the main colours of the centre plate keep the design simplistic without looking plain.

This title was able to stand out amongst the very high-quality crop of NXT Championships, creating a division that feels surprisingly different from the main event scene in the best way.

2 – Intercontinental Championship

The Intercontinental Championship has gone through several designs over the years, but I’m very glad they eventually went back to this classic design because the 2000s version of the title looked awful.

First off, it’s got a white strap, which instantly gets bonus points because white straps look brilliant on championships, especially ones like this that are almost entirely gold in colour. The shape is also a brilliant choice, it doesn’t quite conform to the standard shape of most other wrestling championships (especially not in WWE) and I really love the slimmer look on the main plate, it sits really well across the lower torso when it’s worn.

As for the plate itself, there’s just the right amount of detail. The banners displaying the name of the title are in the perfect places, sitting at the exact right size to draw all the attention to the globe in the middle, where the blue of the ocean break up all the gold and add an extra dash of the character to the whole thing. Then when you look around the plate, there are only a couple more things to look at, mostly just the stars which help to frame the globe in the centre a bit better and are just generally some nice details.

Finally, there’s a brilliant touch on the side plates where, instead of just having WWE logos, there are little pictures of some traditional wrestling holds which is a good shout back to when the IC championship was seen as “the workhorse belt”. I honestly can’t find any major flaws with this design and I hope the prestige of the title sees a nice increase over the next year or so to match that.

1 – NXT Men’s/Women’s Championship

The NXT title is a work of art as far I’m concerned, it manages to blend a traditional feeling championship with modern title design and it’s unmatched in the WWE right now.

The shape of the title invokes those traditional vibes for me, having a somewhat similar shape to WCW’s “Big Gold Belt”, only with pointier edges. The irregular octagon on its own wouldn’t be the more interesting design, bu the prominence of the “X” in the middle that breaks out of the main plate means that it’s much more interesting to look at. When you look at the inside of the plate things get even better, the “X” remains the focal point of the plate and way it’s outlined with thick black lines and filled in with gold looks brilliant, not only that but the grooves it has all the way through add a layer of depth when you’re looking at the title and stops the centre of the main plate from being filled with nothing.

The side plates only add to this effect, it allows the idea of the WWE championship to be kept with the customisable side-plates but makes sure they’re not just circles like every other title with them. Instead, they keep with the NXT aesthetic of sharp shapes and clear cut designs, bringing in a square that points out on the far edges to better frame the main plate and makes the whole thing feel like one big shape that’s been broken up a bit.

This title has a sense of controlled chaos to its design, it keeps in line with the feel of all the other NXT Titles while making sure it stands out on its own merit, knowing exactly where to place the colours and make sure that every little detail on all of the plates are exactly right and that’s why it’s my favourite championship in WWE today.

The Circle 2019 Review

Most people in my life wouldn’t see me as the type of person to watch reality TV and for the most part, they’d be right; but there’s one exception. Last year, a friend of mine introduced me to a new reality show on Channel 4 in the UK called The Circle where the basic concept is this: It takes the Big Brother format of throwing personalities in a house to see what happens, but the twist is that the people never actually meet. Instead, they can only communicate through a messaging system known as “The Circle”, this means that people can literally be whoever they want and no-one will ever know and I think it’s brilliant.

They always get a nice mix of genuine people and catfish for the show and watching them all interact and slowly all grow suspicious of each other is extremely compelling TV, amplified by the fact that eliminations aren’t down to public vote, instead the participants rank each other from their most to least favourite person and then the most popular people decide who to eliminate (or “block”).

I loved watching the show last year and the now the second season has recently come to an end, I can say the show is going from strength to strength, there were a couple of tweaks to the format this year, most of which I think were positive, and the personalities on the show have become a lot more pronounced and varied than the original season. Probably due to the success of the first season giving the producers a much larger number of applicants.

The first change is how the ratings are done. For those unaware, in the 2018 season players rated each other out of 5 stars, everyone’s star ratings would then be averaged out to create the rankings. While this system was fine for the most part, it meant that the finals were entirely decided by 3 of the participants rating everyone tactically low and 1 person rating honestly, essentially handing the win to their favourite player. The change to a ranking system completely avoids that problem, since now everyone has to give top marks to someone else, but it doesn’t kill the tactical element of putting people higher up that you think are on your side.

There was also the weekly votes, which gave the general public a chance to influence the game by deciding things like, who should be the next new player? or who should get the power to block anyone they want? I thought they were a nice way to bring in a level of audience interaction without unfairly affecting the game too much. Speaking of the weekly live shows, they were a bit hit and miss, the first one was awful as the live segments ate up so much time on the show that it barely felt like anything happened with the players, however in later weeks they adjusted the format, got rid of the celebrity interviews and instead focused on talking to blocked players & hyping the votes which was much more entertaining.

Of course, what really makes a show like this entertaining to watch, is the people so I’m going to run down what I thought of each of the players in the order they were blocked. I’m not going to judge them as people, because that just seems rather mean, I’m instead going to talk about how they played the game and how they affected my enjoyment of the show.

Emelle, Age 31: Playing herself, but straight and age 24 – Given that Emelle was only around for two episodes of the show, it’s honestly hard to say much about her. I think she had exactly the right kind of personality for the show and I think that had she made it past this first blocking, she would’ve become quite a popular person amongst the group. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be as Sammie correctly identified her as a threat early on and made sure to kick her out as fast as possible, which from a tactical standpoint, was absolutely the right move given the powerhouse she could’ve become.

Sy, Age 35: Playing himself – He’s a farmer, that’s just about all we ever found out about him. Sy was one of those people that I didn’t have any kind of dislike for, but he also never stood out amongst the other players. Ultimately his one-note presentation of himself was what got him blocked and I can’t say I expected him to go much further. In those early stages of the competition, he felt like such an afterthought compared to the other players, who all had extremely strong personalities, ultimately I just think he was never going to last very long regardless.

Richard Madeley, Age 63: Playing “Judy”, a 27-year-old woman – Yes, THAT Richard Madeley. I was a bit apprehensive about a celebrity being inserted into The Circle this year, I was worried the producers would focus too heavily on them and it would drown out the other players, but this was handled really well.

For one thing, Richard was a great choice of person to bring in, he’s got a very down-to-earth personality and being a presenter he found it very easy to connect with people and come across like a proper player of the game, not a gimmick. On top of that, his role in the game was handled very well, allowing him to become a member of the group before hitting him with the secret mission to get himself blocked. It meant he was able to get in the best of his personality and really add to the game, then removing him from the game before it became a tired act. Funnily enough, though, I actually think he could’ve gotten quite far if he was allowed to keep playing nice.

Katie, Age 43: Playing “Jay”, her 25-year-old son – I’m of two minds with Katie, because for the longest time, she did quite a good job of fitting in as “one of the lads”. There was plenty of cringes to go around, but for quite a while there weren’t many people holding suspicions of her, she made a lot of allies in there, only amplified that she still managed to land 4th in the ratings where she got blocked. Ultimately her stumbling block was going into too much detail and not quite preparing properly for the wave of questions thrown back at her and once people started asking her specific questions about being a builder, the game was over for her. She wasn’t necessarily one of the strongest personalities, but I think she added something to the game in the time she was there.

Brooke, Age 24/25: Playing herself – At the start, I honestly thought Brooke would be a contender to win, she got right in there early on, made friends with everyone and made sure to get her personality across as much as possible, unfortunately after the first week or so, she faded into the background completely and never recovered. She became somewhat of a supporting player to the people who had started leading the charges in games & group chats and ultimately became a bit boring to watch. She stopped being featured as heavily with her private chats (which isn’t entirely her fault but they obviously weren’t interesting enough to make TV) and with almost every group chat her contributions were pretty inconsequential so I’m not surprised that the other players got bored with her. Maybe she’d have gotten much further if she’d kept that energy she brought early on, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen.

Jack & Beth, Age 29: Playing “Joyce”, a 62-year-old woman – So let’s get this out of the way first, as solo players in the game, they were boring and I’m not surprised they got blocked as quickly as they did. However, when they got the opportunity to come back as a duo and play Joyce they became extremely entertaining to watch.

Putting the extreme amounts sexual tension between them aside, it was very interesting to watch them going through the feeling out process of working as a team and creating Joyce’s personality (as they had no time to prepare, unlike the other catfish). Unfortunately for them, this led to some pretty major stumbles early on and once the seed of doubt was in people’s minds it was impossible to remove, even if they did become quite good at playing the character towards the end. While I wouldn’t want it to become more common in later seasons, I enjoyed watching these two work as a pair, the way they were able to bounce off each other made them feel like much stronger personalities than when they were on their own and I’d even go as far as to say that they might’ve been quite successful if they had more than an hour to prepare Joyce’s character.

Busayo, Age 24: Playing “Josh”, a 24-year-old man – Did anyone tell Busayo this was a game about being popular? Because I honestly don’t think she knew based on how she played the game. She wasn’t as bad as someone like Precious from the first season, who was extremely confrontational, but it seemed like she didn’t have any idea how to deal with shade being thrown her way.

She’s someone who I genuinely think would’ve done much better on the show as herself, because the way she played Josh meant that there was no personality injected into the character whatsoever and she couldn’t make any real connections with people, so no-one wanted to save her. There were several times where she put her foot in it and made it very obvious she was a catfish, including confronting the whole group about it at one point which was honestly the stupidest move possible and is what sealed her fate.

I also can’t get over how fed up she looked at the finals.

Jan, Age 58: Playing herself – I don’t really know what to say about Jan, because we found out so little about her. Entering as late as she did (a week before the final) seems like such a curse, the blockings come thick and fast in that final week as the players are whittled down from 9 to 4 and it means Jan had absolutely no time to create any connections that were anywhere near as deep as the ones everyone else had built with each other over a longer period of time. I honestly can’t say whether I think she would’ve done well or not given more time because this brief glimpse we got of her didn’t show us much of anything about her, she’s a victim of circumstance and it’s a shame it had to happen like it did.

Ella, Age 24: Playing herself – SHE WAS JUST SO NICE.

Seriously, I don’t think I need to say anything more about her, she was on a mission in The Circle to spread positivity everywhere she went. I won’t lie, I initially wasn’t a fan, she came across as a bit much to me and it felt like she was trying too hard, but once I got used to her and she got more comfortable in the environment I couldn’t help but adore this unabashedly kind and genuine person.

She was a victim of the game as it happened, you can be nice to everyone all you like, but in a game like The Circle where the whole point is to be as popular as possible, that kind of attitude is going to make other players think you’re being tactical. I wish I could’ve been there to see exactly what the deciding factor was when Georgina & Tim made their decision to block her and that shot of her face as she saw Georgina walk into her room and knowing she was blocked is perhaps the most heartbreaking image of the whole series.

I wish she could’ve made it into the finals and even though she got taken down by people who thought she was something she wasn’t, it doesn’t take away from the fact that she was an absolute joy to watch and gave the whole show a much more positive atmosphere whenever she was on screen.

Woody, Age 18: Playing himself – Could pretty much copy/paste what I said about Ella and it’d cover my exact sentiment on Woody, it’s no wonder they were such good friends.

Woody had this combination of youthful optimism and down to Earth vibe that made watching him interact with everyone a really pleasant experience. It’s not quite like with Ella where I was constantly awwing and how nice he was being, watching him talk was just such a calming and positive experience in so many ways. Not only did he honestly and seriously try to be as friendly as possible to absolutely everyone, but he also didn’t have a shred of naivete about him, he was constantly on the ball when it came to sniffing out the bullshit and still did his damndest to turn all of it into a positive.

When the last few days of the series came down and the intensity was ramping up thanks to things that we’ll get into in just a moment, Woody remained a breath of fresh air and ultimately seem unburdened by it all. He’s got the kind of attitude towards everyone else around him that I would love to have, but in reality, I think I’d be a lot more like…

James, Age 26: Playing “Sammie”, a single mother – I don’t think this series would’ve been half as interesting as it was without this man. He was able to put us through the full run of emotions, being manipulative and tactical, riling us all up in one moment, before having some really heartfelt moments and bringing on the emotion hard.

I prefer this version of catfishing to Alex’s – who played as “Kate” in series one – because Alex deliberately made Kate a person with a less distinguished personality, there were plenty of jokes about Kate being a “fence-sitter” and it was entirely by design. James playing Sammie, on the other hand, went fully into this character he had created and did a damn good job of it too. Watching James chat with other people was always fascinating to watch because it always came across like he had full confidence in what he was doing, it was the complete opposite of Katie playing Jay, he never had any hesitation or doubts in what he was going to say to people and it made things all the more interesting when he decided to turn the heat up.

Yes, it was cheesy. Yes, the spark that caused it was incredibly petty but by God, if I wasn’t enthralled by the goings-on with “The Circle Revolution”. Perhaps my favourite segment of the whole series was James and Tim going head to head in that penultimate blocking. It was so unbelievably tense as these two incredibly dominant personalities pushed up against each other extremely hard to try and topple the other.

Like him if you can; Hate him if you must; But don’t for a second try to tell me he wasn’t entertaining.

Georgina, Age 21/22: Playing herself – My opinion on Georgina went back and forth so much over the course of the series and I’m honestly still not sure if I liked her or not.

Early on she was wonderful, she was never timid and always made sure that her voice stood out amongst everyone else’s and the connections she made with people like Brooke and Tim meant she’d always be able to bring the most amount of fun from everyone around her at all times. Then Brooke got blocked. Naturally, she was quite ticked-off by this as they were extremely close and I think from that point onwards, she became notably less cheery. It felt for a little while like she was just floating around aimlessly, putting negative spins on everything everyone said until the Circle of Trust came about and seemingly filled her with a whole new burst of energy.

Going into the finals, I was just about expecting her to win over everyone else and when push comes to shove, I don’t think the game would’ve been the same without her. She didn’t have a gimmick, she wasn’t “quirky”, she was just a regular woman and in a Circle full of somewhat over the top personalities, it meant she added a lot to the viewing experience.

Viewers’ Champion – Tim, Age 58: Playing Himself

Tim’s the kind of person that we think all old men are like when we’re young. He’s got a big beard, a warm smile, a thick Southern-English accent and the most eccentric attitude it’s possible for a person to have. Every word that comes out of that man’s mouth puts such a smile on my face thanks to the sheer joy that he pours into every sentence.

Not only that, but he was easily the sharpest mind in terms of working out what’s going on with everyone else in The Circle. Nothing ever slipped past him and the moment he had a string, he’d tug on it hard to see if anything came tumbling down with it. Watching his mind whir as he interrogated so many of the people he suspected to be catfish was so interesting as he always knew the right way to come at them, like exposing Katie by asking for building advice (since “Jay” was supposed to be a builder) or constantly pushing James to talk about Sammie’s fiction son Charlie, especially as James was trying to distance himself from that side of the character.

He filled a role in The Circle that I don’t think anyone else ever could, the energy he had was truly one of a kind and although I didn’t vote for him (I voted for Woody), he is incredibly deserving of being crowned the Viewers’ Champion.

Winner – Paddy, Age 31: Playing Himself

Going into the finals, I didn’t think Paddy was going to win and I didn’t really want Paddy to win, but now he has won and I’ve seen the breakdown of the final rankings, I think he’s a very deserving winner.

Paddy always had a touch of everything to him throughout the whole show. He could bring the happiness just as hard as anyone else in there (especially when he was lusting after Jack), then he’d be able to bring the emotion, having some really sweet conversations with Georgina, Sammie and the whole group at one point. My favourite side to Paddy though is when he decides he wants to throw a punch because boy does he go all in. When he fired that shot at Josh, heavily implying they were a catfish while not even in anonymous mode I almost whooped right out of my seat. Not only that, but when Sammie presented the idea of the “The Revolution” to him, there wasn’t even a hint of hesitation before he decided he wanted in.

I get why people might not be happy with Paddy winning given that he only joined halfway through the series, but the fact of the matter is, he got in there, made friends with the right people, wasn’t afraid to show his true colours (mostly pink) and made real bonds with everyone left in there. You don’t get rated 1st,1st,2nd & 2nd “by accident” as Twitter seems to be saying.

Paddy had a personality just as strong as anyone else in The Circle and made sure to let it shine through at every opportunity, his presence had a great effect on the other players and he added a lot to the show because of that, I couldn’t think of a more perfect description of a deserving winner.

And that’s my thoughts on The Circle 2019! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and let me know what you thought of this year’s show either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Make sure you come back this weekend where I’ll be running down my favourite championship designs in WWE!

Every Chapter in Celeste Ranked

2021 UPDATE: Since I’ve got nothing better to do, I’ve decided to start streaming over on twitch.tv/strongstylesmark. At 2PM GMT Tuesdays & Thursdays I’ll be trying out indie games I’ve never played before, and at 6PM GMT on Saturdays, I’ll be playing games I love. I’ll be starting Saturday 16th January, so please come over and give me a follow to be notified when I go live!

I’ve spent a lot of this year getting around to games from the past number of years that passed me by when they originally came out and although I played it for a bit when it first released, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I properly sunk my teeth into Celeste. What I discovered was a masterclass in level design and movement mechanics in games, the likes of which I haven’t seen on this quality since N++.

So, I thought what better way to celebrate everything that’s great about Celeste than ranking each chapter and analysing what makes each one tick. This does mean that one chapter is going to have to be last, but I want to make it clear that I think every chapter is masterfully designed, it’s just some rely on gimmicks and features that don’t enthuse me as much as others. Also, I’ll only be taking into account the A and B sides of each level, because I’m not nearly good enough to tackle the C sides yet and also Chapter 9 isn’t being included because I can’t even put a dent in that thing.

And with that, let’s start.

8 – Chapter 3: Celestial Resort

Cycles, cycles, so many cycles.

What puts this level firmly in last is the gimmick because I really find the nature of the Dust Bunnies to be incredibly frustrating. The overall visual design of the level is great and I feel a heavy atmosphere when playing through this level more so than most other levels in the game, but the platforming challenges relied so heavily on setting off at the right time so your jumps and dashes meet up with the cycles that it often became frustrating to find the right time to begin.

That said, it does work from time to time and I think the gimmick as a whole works a lot better in the B-side, where the whole point is that it’s impenetrably difficult when you first encounter it. When the level gives up on the idea that it’s supposed to be a fair challenge and just throws everything it has it ends up working a hell of a lot better, perhaps because I went into the B-side with a very different mindset compared to that of the A-side.

As I said in the intro, this is by no means a bad level but it’s certainly the one that gives me the most negative emotions whenever I revisit it.

7 – Chapter 1: Forsaken City

This almost feels a little unfair, because, for the first proper level in the game, this is the perfect design. The reason I’m dropping it so low is simply that once you’ve got good enough to complete the later levels, this becomes way too easy and pretty boring to replay.

All the other levels have some degree of replayability, even once you’ve completed the game and have far superior skill to what you did when you first started the game, but this is the one level that doesn’t feel fun to replay at all. It’s absolutely necessary though, since if the game threw some of the seemingly impossible scenarios at you straight away most players wouldn’t push forward with the game at all, but it’s at the cost of replayability. Even the B-side, although much more difficult, is still fairly easy when compared to all the other B-side levels in the game.

What I love about Forsaken City though, is the aesthetic of the place. The visuals of this city that are only half-finished and has been left to be reclaimed by nature has an eerie beauty and when paired with the simple music & ambient sound effects, it creates a level that can be quite threatening in its beauty, which is much what I imagine a half-built & abandoned city would feel like in real life.

6 – Chapter 4: Goldern Ridge

FUCKING WIND!

So this is another level where the gimmick is something I’m not particularly a fan of, the difference here though is that the gimmick doesn’t run through the whole level, only the latter half of it. Not to mention as much as I have my annoyances with the wind it’s actually a very clever idea in terms of making a challenging puzzle platformer; at least with the way it’s implemented here.

The reason I’m not particularly fond of it is mostly down to personal taste because of some reason I find this to be one of the most frustrating mechanics in the game. I think the reason for that is because over the course of the game up until this point I’d built up an understand and feel for how Madaline moved, the run speed, jump height and such like so for simple jumps I could rely on instinct to know when was the right moment to jump, dash etc, but the wind changes that.

When there are winds blowing against Madaline her movements no longer correspond with what I’ve got in my head, meaning I have to re-learn everything again to be able to platform accurately. Like I said, it’s a very clever way to implement a challenge into the game, but I struggled for quite a while to go against these instincts that I’d built up and it made for a rather frustrating time while playing through the latter half of this chapter.

5 – Chapter 8: Core

Chapter 8 is extremely different from any other chapter in the game, which is in some ways to its benefit and its other ways not so much.

First, the things I liked. Changing the rules on when Madaline’s boost could recharge for this chapter added a brilliant new layer to everything and allowed the level designers to have much greater control over where you would be able to have your boosts, putting a lot more importance on where they should be used. I also thought the switching between hot and cold was a great gimmick for the level, that allowed for two very different styles of platforming in the same level, sometimes even in the same room and the micing of those two styles is where a large portion of the challenge for the level comes in.

When it comes to the difficulty of this level, I’m of two minds because Chapter 8 is a significant leap in difficulty from Chapter 7. On the one hand, I wasn’t a fan of going from the slight steps up in challenge that the game had presented me with until now to this massive leap I experience and it felt a little unfair. However, given that you need at least 4 crystal hearts to get into this level at all (which involves either solving vague puzzles or completing the B-sides) it means that you’ve got to have a decent level of skill by this point anyway, so if it is an issue, it’s not a very big one.

What I don’t like about Core mostly comes down to the details of the rooms themselves. While the extra limits on boosts create a good challenge, it did get incredibly frustrating at times and there were a couple of rooms that I found I mostly lucked my way through, especially the one room that’s full of the bumpers, which seems like complete random chance if you survive or not. Of course, you could easily chalk down those complaints to me being crap at the game, which isn’t entirely untrue, but these aren’t problems I’d had with any other chapter before this one.

4 – Chapter 2: Old Site

This suffers from several of the same problems as Chapter 1 did, but what makes me like this one so much more is how much fun this level’s gimmick is to mess around with.

There’s something about the way the dream blocks work that makes them so much fun to continuously boost through and the puzzles involving them are easily the most enjoyable to platform through. Here, the relative ease of the chapter seems more to it benefits than its detriment because of how satisfying and fun it can be to platform through, not to mention the B-side for this level is definitely my favourite in the game…apart from the last screen which is the worst.

On top of that, you’ve got the chase section with Badaline and I always love it when platformers put the pressure on you to pull off tricky platforming very quickly, it’s why that bit in Mirror’s Edge with the people chasing you through a wide-open space is the best part of the game. That section, in particular, gives you so much to think about as you’re dashing through the dream blocks trying to get away because while going quick you also have to account for timing of where Badaline’s going to be, not to mention having to work out how to get through the room at all very quickly.

I can’t rank this too highly because of the lower difficulty level, but it has a lot going for it so that I still enjoy going back and giving it a replay.

3 – Chapter 5: Mirror Temple

This chapter is quite unique when it comes to its design. All the other levels are fairly linear, with one room going right into the next, with hidden rooms and secret paths only leading to collectables, however, chapter 5 takes a slightly different approach.

Instead, the main portion of the level is quite sprawling, with several large rooms featuring as the centrepiece to a level full of side rooms each providing their own challenges to get both collectables and keys necessary to progress. This often gave a little breathing room between each of the challenges and overall made for a level that I had a lot more fun exploring because it wasn’t difficult challenge after difficult challenge; not to say that style of level isn’t great of course, but the differences in this level make it a breath of fresh air.

Following that segment, there are the segments where you have to outmanoeuvre the Seekers in what are some pretty fun challenges and very satisfying when you time your jumps correctly to send you flying to your goal. This is of course followed by carrying Theo through the exit to the temple which is once again, a challenge that no other level has anything similar to and it results in quite a challenging segment when it starts to throw everything at you at once.

This level hits on a lot of unique ideas that no other level has to the point where it feels fundamentally different to everything else in the game. It makes for a bit of an oddity of a level, but one that I have quite a fondness for whenever I go back and play it.

2 – Chapter 6: Reflection

The story of Celeste is something I haven’t really touched on up until this point because for the most part, it’s a very small part of the game, however, this chapter is where all of the conflict comes to a head and it makes for a fantastic level to play.

Right at the start, there’s the absolute gut-punch of being shot right back down to the bottom of the mountain, after spending 5 chapters clawing your way up to that point and you have to deal with that annoyance as you claw yourself out of that pit for the first section of the level. The mechanics in this part of the level are fairly minimal and not all that difficult which is fine because it’s not what the main focus of the level, although I do like the feathers, which add a lot to other levels after being introduced here.

The focus of this level, however – and the reason I’ve placed it this high – is the “fight” with Badaline. Mechanically it’s a masterwork, the layout of the rooms give you so many opportunities and chances to make ground and Badline’s attacks are balanced in the perfect way to make it just the right level of challenge, I always have so much fun when I’m playing through it. Outside of the mechanics of the game, however, there’s so much emotional significance to it. If you weren’t aware, Celeste’s story is about living with mental health problems, specifically anxiety and depression, and that side of Madaline’s personality that she’s been trying to bury for so long is exactly what Badaline represents.

This chapter is when Madaline tries to get rid of her for good, thinking she’s doing the right thing and helping them both out, only for Badaline to completely freak. It forces Madaline to understand that fear Badaline feels after Madaline has spent her entire life ignoring her or trying to get rid of her and she’s so hurt that she refuses to listen when Madaline realises she was wrong. The “boss fight” isn’t much of a right, in reality, it’s simply you quite literally trying to reach Badaline as she tries to stop you getting close and that’s just a brilliant metaphor for how coming to grips with your own mental health problems can feel.

The whole concept of it was an absolute genius stroke of game design and it’s still just as fun and challenging as every other stage in the game to boot.

1 – Chapter 7: The Summit

I dunno what it is, but something about the opening card to that level alongside the music fills me with more determination than I’ve ever felt in my life.

This chapter is the culmination of all the trials and tribulations you’ve been through in your journey to climb the mountain, the highs and lows, all of them pay off in this level as you start from the very bottom and go all the way to the top to complete your quest. Going into this level I was so pumped to finally finish it and the way the music started me off it honestly made me feel like nothing could stop me and I had so much fun on this final ascent.

We caught a glimpse of it at the end of chapter 6, but here we see the two boosts used to their full potential as the genius level design pours into every room of the level, creating some incredibly challenging, but very rewarding puzzles. By this point in the game, you will have developed quite a large array of skills and this level makes sure to put it all to the test.

This chapter quite literally takes through all of the previous stages with brand new rooms containing each of the level’s gimmicks and it’s such a joy to return to each level, only now with the difficulty cranked up a notch. This feels like a true final exam for the game because you have to actually recall every skill you’ve used throughout the game in order to get through each of the previous stages, only for it to throw a whole bunch of new stuff at you.

The final segment where you climb the very peak of the mountain is easily what secured this level as first place in my mind. First off there are the flags, as I mentioned before I already felt determined coming into this level, but having the numbered flags as you reach the top was a stroke of genius to push those feelings into overdrive. I’d completed the exact same mental transformation that Madaline went through in the story, my attitude was no longer “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this” it was now, “I can do this and I WILL do this” and I didn’t even notice that until after the fact, but it was such a beautiful moment.

On top off that there’s the fact that the platforming challenges in that final segment are easily the best in the game, I ran through some of them first try on luck and instinct alone, while others had me ramming my head into them over and over again (flag 9 to 8, you know what you did). When I finished most other chapters in the games I felt a sense of relief, but when I finished summit I stood triumphant, I had fought this mountain head-on and I came out the victor, it felt like a true achievement…then I played the B-sides…and then the C-sides…and then Chapter 9…I can never win.

And that’s my list! Thank you very much for reading this, please let me know what your favourite chapters of Celeste were either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back the same time next week where I will be ranking every championship currently in WWE!

WWE Hell in a Cell 2019: Every Match Ranked

Going into this show, I really wasn’t sure how I’d feel coming out of it Monday morning and now I’m sitting here beginning to type up this review, I honestly still don’t know how I feel. This show was filled with a lot of nothing, which I suppose is to be expected when you shovel 5 matches onto the show mere hours before it’s set to begin (and in one case, less than an hour).

That said, the matches that were noteworthy had quite a lot to them, which admittedly just be because we have the last-minute matches to compare them to but still. Then, of course, there’s how the show ended and the outrage it’s caused (don’t worry, I’ll get to it). I guess it’s time to take a dive in and rank every match from Hell in a Cell 2019.

9 – Natalya def. Lacey Evans
(Kickoff Show)

No points for guessing where this one would land…

I honestly don’t know what to tell you about this match, it’s my least favourite wrestler in WWE right now wrestling someone who doesn’t seem to be improving at all despite being given all the opportunities in the world. The match was slow, sloppy and boring, the commentators keep talking about how heated a rivalry this is, but I honestly couldn’t even tell you why it is they’re fighting and that’s after going back and looking for reasons from Raw.

Still, apparently, it’s heated enough to warrant a Last Woman Standing match tonight, can’t wait to see if Natalya can beat Lacey after watching Natalya beat Lacey

8 – The Viking Raiders & Braun Strowman def. The OC via Disqualification

Someone did tell Vince McMahon this wasn’t an episode of Raw right?

As I sat down to write this article, I realised that not only had I forgot who won this match, but that it even happened full stop. For the most part, it was perfectly fine, but this is the exact kind of match we’ve come to expect from Raw main events that mean literally nothing, even while they’re happening. The match was at least fairly fun to watch and it probably would have landed a place or two higher if it wasn’t for the god-awful finish.

Not only was it a pointless DQ finish, but it was also the worst kind of DQ finish, where the ref just decided “No! You’re wrestling TOO MUCH!” and calls for the bell, it’s never made sense to me and it didn’t help anyone here. Utterly pointless.

7 – Chad Gable def. King Corbin

Do you get the joke? It’s because Chad Gable’s not as tall as Baron Corbin, which makes him somehow inferior. High-brow stuff I know, I didn’t get it until the 47th time they repeated it.

Extremely tired short jokes aside, this was an ok match. It got more time than I was expecting it to and both men put in a good effort to justify this spot, the only problem is I just don’t have the capacity to care because I’ve seen this match twice a week for the past three weeks now and if the backstage segment after the match is any indication, we’ll be seeing it again tonight.

It feels unfair because it’s not the fault of either man in the ring that no forethought went into any part of this show, but it’s the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.

6 – Randy Orton def. Ali

I’ve been pretty snarky about these last-minute matches so far, but this is the first one that I can honestly say I enjoyed.

I can’t say I was (or ever am) expecting much from the show’s Randy Orton match, but god-damn if Ali didn’t work his ass off trying to make it entertaining. Ali’s style of offence worked surprisingly well with Orton, who didn’t spend much of the match on offence in hindsight, Ali made sure to keep the pace fairly fast outside of one part where Orton decided to work a chin lock for about 3 minutes.

Then, there was one of the coolest looking RKO counters I’ve seen in a long time, with Ali going along with the move only to pull off a handstand at the last minute. However, it was all for nothing when Orton hit the RKO and won the match anyway, but it was a cool moment. Contrary to what I’ve been saying so far in this article, I wouldn’t mind seeing this one again with a longer runtime.

5 – Charlotte Flair def. Bayley(c)
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

This is one of those situations where I enjoyed this match, but at the same time I know these two can do better, so I’m a bit disappointed.

It might be due to the fact that this match got less time than both Orton/Ali & Gable/Corbin, but I couldn’t help coming away from this match a tad underwhelmed. There was still a fair amount to like though, including Bayley’s dominance for a large portion of the match, which is the first time she’s actually looked like a competent wrestler against Charlotte in ages, and to my surprise Charlotte did a pretty good job of wrestling as the face in this match, it’s become so easy to see her as a heel in every situation that I was honestly taken aback when I saw how she was wrestling.

I also don’t mind Charlotte winning, if the other women’s title match had gone the other way then I might’ve complained, but given where I think this storyline is going to go in the coming months (I’ll talk about that when I talk about Sasha vs Becky) I don’t have a problem with it for now. It’s just a bit of a shame that Bayley’s title reign was rather an unremarkable one outside of the moment she won it.

4 – The Kabuki Warriors def. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross(c)
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)

Say what you want about this show, Kairi Sane won her first championship on the main roster and I’m never going to be unhappy about that.

If it wasn’t for the finish, then this match probably would’ve been a few places lower, because while I enjoyed the action of the match, it wasn’t anything special for the most part. I liked Nikki’s seeming omnipresence in the match, as she seemed to be involved in just about everything that happened in the match, which could lead to a good storyline now her and Alexa have lost the titles.

The finish is where the main attraction of the match is though, with Asuka unloading a green mist in Nikki’s face to win the titles. With any luck, this means we get a more heelish Asuka, perhaps even pitting her at odds with Kairi, who didn’t seem aware of what Asuka did to win the titles. With any women’s tag title win though, I have to ponder whether any of this will matter when they inevitably don’t get featured on TV for a month.

3 – Seth Rollins(c) vs “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt ended in a No Contest
(Universal Championship)
(Hell in a Cell)

Ok…here goes.

Imagine, if you will, the most amazing gymnastics routine you could possibly think of, incredible flips and spins, the likes of which you never even thought were possible. Now imagine the gymnast landing sideways on their ankle, breaking their arms as they attempt to cushion their fall and cracking their skull open on the mat. That’s roughly the story of this main event.

I really struggled to find a place for this match and in the end, this felt right. Everyone’s going to focus on the finish – and I’ll talk about that in just a moment – but the thing is, everything leading up to it was BRILLIANT. Honestly, the only thing I’d change about that match is the referee throwing it out, I would absolutely keep everything else from before and after the match, exactly the same. The red lighting was a bit gaudy, but I think it worked in this instance, the atmosphere of the whole match was this tense and terrifying feeling that was absolutely fantastic, a feeling that was helped out by the slower pace.

Admittedly, making the Curb Stomp look like the most ineffective finisher in the world might’ve been a silly thing to do, but it made The Fiend look amazing when he kicked out at one after taking about 8 of them. Even the stuff after the match where he popped up to take out Rollins looked brilliant as all of the referees scattered from the ring. The Fiend is still something amazing and unique…but that finish WAS NOT the right way to handle this.

I think the level of outrage we’re currently seeing online over this is a bit much, especially considering this almost definitely is just the first chapter of the story, however, I sympathise with the frustration and I feel it myself. Two years in a row now, we’ve had a Hell in a Cell match end in a no contest, going completely against the whole point of the stipulation and it’s getting ridiculous, but it’s especially bad in this instance considering that after the referee threw the match out, it became clear that the sledgehammer to the head didn’t hurt The Fiend at all. I love the idea of telling the story that The Fiend is driving Rollins to an extremely dark place, but throwing out the match was a bad way to go about it.

Unlike most of Twitter though, I think this can still be saved and I’m confident that we’re nowhere near done with this story and I honestly think writing it off a disaster this soon does everyone involved a disservice.

2 – Roman Reigns & Daniel Bryan def. Erick Rowan & Luke Harper
(Tornado Tag Team Match)

In amongst all the terrible last-minute additions to this show, the stipulation of a tornado tag match here turned out to be a stroke of brilliance.

This match didn’t quite blow me away but I still had a lot of fun watching it. Roman Reigns is always at his best in matches where he can be the exclamation point, not being in action the whole time gives his high-impact offence a lot more weight and it great fun to watch. On top of that, it was refreshing to see Daniel Bryan wrestle a face style for the first time in quite a while. I particularly liked the sequence towards the middle of the match where he was alone again both Harper & Rowan, kicking wildly as they bore down on him trying to break free.

I also enjoyed the big spots of the match since none of them took ages to set up and the payoff is always great; sure, we could all see Roman’s Spear through the table coming a mile away, but it doesn’t make it look any less cool.

I’m not sure Roman & Bryan were the right choices to win, but ultimately I’m not all that fussed about it. Erick Rowan has shown he can stand on his own as a mid-card wrestler if you ask me and I don’t think any of us were ever in doubt of Harper’s abilities. I might’ve been good for Harper & Rowan if they’d won, but ultimately, if this is what it takes to end this feud, I’m not going to complain.

1 – Becky Lynch(c) def. Sasha Banks
(Raw Women’s Championship)
(Hell in a Cell)

Well, it’s nice to have something on the show that I don’t have to complain about.

I’m always trepidatious when Hell in a Cell rolls around, weapons-based wrestling is generally my least favourite form of the sport and I generally believe most competitors can put on higher quality matches without it, but I’m happy to say that this was really good, and I enjoyed it more than their encounter from Clash of Champions.

This match managed to avoid almost all of the pitfalls weapons matches can fall into, I though all of the spots looked impressive and impactful, while only one of them looked overly contrived – the chair on the kendo sticks – but I can forgive that because the result looked great and it was a rare example of a brand new spot in a Hell in a Cell match.

Although it’s not what I would’ve done, I don’t have a problem with Becky Lynch retaining, partly because I’ve loved Becky’s title reign and I’m happy to see it continue, but also because I have a hunch Sasha Banks is going to be making her way to Smackdown in this week’s draft after this loss and there’s some good story potential over there with Bayley. Although honestly, after all the mediocre-crap stuff on this show, I’m just happy there’s something I can say was genuinely very enjoyable.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this review, let me know what you thought of the show either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back this Saturday where I’ll be talking about Celeste!