Tag: Smackdown

WWE Survivor Series 2020: Predictions & Analysis

We’re just a couple of days away from Survivor Series 2020 and I honestly couldn’t give less of a shit if I tried. The “brand warfare” stuff is boring at the best of times, but at least in previous years then been some proper intensity around it, and at least some semblance of a story. This year, it doesn’t seem like any of the wrestlers care about the matches and are still building to their own independent feuds.

There’s really no build to speak of, because instead of doing sneak attacks or running down Roman Reigns, Orton was too busy fighting off both Drew and The Fiend; only to lose the title and force us to build a new match in a week. The whole endeavour is entirely pointless and come Monday, it will scarcely be mentioned ever again. It’s a classic example of WWE creative having to put all their plans on hold because the calendar says it’s time for everyone to wear red & blue t-shirts while having matches with no steaks.

Still, let’s predict it anyway.

Dual Brand Battle Royal
(Kickoff Show)

Don’t get me wrong, I like a good battle royal, but given they announced this just 48 hours from the show, with no announced participants, I can’t think this is going to be thought through. They haven’t even specified if it’s men or women involved. I mean, given that there aren’t enough women on the roster of a 10-women tag match AND a battle royal, I’m assuming it’s the men, but you never know.

Much like with the Wrestlemania battle royals, there’s really no point trying to logic this one out. They never give it to anyone who you’d think would benefit from a win, it’ll just be someone they’ve never given wins to before now and probably won’t start after it’s over.

I think Smackdown is going to come out the overall winner of the night, and my predictions for the rest of the card dictate a Smackdown wrestler needs to win here. To me, that gives two potential candidates. The first is Daniel Bryan since he’s almost certainly about to be going after Roman Reigns over the winter, but given how he’s being booked on Smackdown, he doesn’t really need it. Instead, I’m simply going to go with who I want to win it, which is Big E.

The New Day vs The Street Profits
(Raw Tag Team Champions vs Smackdown Tag Team Champions)

A tag team match in WWE that I’m actually excited for? Well, colour me impressed.

I know WWE treat tag team wrestling like it’s not worth anything, but The New Day are at the point where they’ve got a bit of licence to get more time and the likes. In many ways, The Street Profits feel like New Day’s eventual successors. They’re perhaps not as funny, but Montez Ford is one of the most charismatic men on the roster right now and they seem to have perfected their ‘fast guy, muscle guy’ dynamic, which makes for some really entertaining in-ring work. Ultimately, it just depends on whether or not they’re given enough time. Although, given that the 5 on 5 matches tend to take upwards of half an hour, I’m not optimistic.

The problem I face with picking most of these matches is that the complete meaningless of the whole endeavour means there’s no real rationale for who should win. I honestly think I’d have better luck flipping a coin than trying to think it through. I guess I’ll go for The Street Profits purely because they’ve got more to gain from winning. No loss could hurt The New Day at this point in their careers and it would be a big win for the younger guys.

Bobby Lashley vs Sami Zayn
(United States Champion vs Intercontinental Champion)

I honestly don’t know what to say about this one. Sami Zayn’s done a better job of building it on Twitter than anything that’s been said on TV.

I don’t understand what the plan is for The Hurt Business. I mean, I know the real answer to that is that there isn’t a plan, but I don’t see a long-term goal for this faction anymore. It just feels like it’s going along with the only purpose of preserving Lashley’s US title reign, which has been pretty underwhelming as it is. What really gets me though, is that if there are no long-term plans for them, why on Earth have they been absolutely dominating Retribution every week? Does Vince just hate Mustafa Ali that much?

Sami Zayn’s been doing much better on Smackdown, but that feels more like by default. His charisma and promo ability are more than enough to carry whatever he’s involved in to be good, and as much as it’s easy to forget, he is a world-class wrestler. Sadly, there’s no way the outcome is anything other than Bobby Lashley winning. WWE management just doesn’t think a guy like Sami can beat a guy like Lashley, and I can’t see them changing their mind now.

Asuka vs Sasha Banks
(Raw Women’s Champion vs Smackdown Women’s Champion)

I would be excited for this match if we hadn’t already seen it a bunch of times this year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it will still be good, these are two of the best women’s wrestlers in the world after all, but the shine is definitely off the apple by this point.

I went back and forth on this one a lot. On the face of it, it seems like Sasha would be the favourite, as she’s actually been on TV every week doing noteworthy stuff, unlike Asuka, who’s just been around and doing nothing of any importance. However, I actually think Sasha’s story is why she’s going to lose. Both Bayley and Carmella are still on Banks’ tail, and I could easily see them both getting involved in this match. Admittedly, it won’t be the best look for Asuka to win this way, but I think it’s consistent with her character. Sasha Banks caused her a lot of trouble over the summer, why should Asuka respect her now, just because Bayley turned on her?

Team Raw (Nia Jax, Shayna Baszler, Peyton Royce, Lacey Evans & Lana) vs Team Smackdown (Bianca Belair, Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, Natalya & Bayley)
(5-on-5 Elimination Tag)

And here we come to the elimination tag team matches. The matches that are sometimes utter brilliance, but 90% of the time are people getting pinned after one or two moves when they’d normally be a lot more resilient.

The biggest problem I have about the brand vs brand matches this year is how the teams have had absolutely no interaction with each other. Now, I’m not saying I wanted full-on brand invasions every week, I think we can all agree those are quite tiresome, but throughout the entire build, Drew McIntyre is the only person to appear on a brand that isn’t their own. On top of that, the booking of both teams has been so lop-sided. Team Raw have been interacting and telling somewhat of a story for the whole month, meanwhile, Team Smackdown didn’t even have a full line-up until yesterday.

Of course, just because Team Raw actually have a story, that doesn’t mean it’s any good. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing Lana get beat up as much as the next guy, but who cares? I don’t understand what they’re building up to here, is Lana going pull out a Dolph Ziggler level performance and sweep the Smackdown team? Or is Jax just going to keep beating the shit out of her? Given how they’ve treated Lana this year, I honestly think the latter is more likely.

I’ve gone back and forth on both of the tag matches all week, but I’m going to settle on Team Smackdown as the winners for this one, and I’ll take a punt and say Bianca Belair & Bayley will be the survivors. My thought is that Lana will get sick of Nia’s shit and somehow cause her to be eliminated, giving Smackdown the advantage they need to win, because at least that gives the tag champs something to do going forward from here.

Team Raw (AJ Styles, Keith Lee, Braun Strowman, Sheamus, Riddle) vs Team Smackdown (Kevin Owens, Jey Uso, King Corbin, Seth Rollins, Otis)
(5-on-5 Elimination Tag)

Once again, Team Raw has a bit of a story, Team Smackdown has just been largely doing their own thing in the build.

The stories between both of Raw’s teams are quite similar, but the difference is that the women’s team is only teasing falling apart, while the men’s team already did fall apart. It’s been a pretty boring story of people coming up with dumb nicknames for each other and arguing over who’s the captain, but at least Retribution got a win out of it. I think the focus has been all wrong, the people who need to be built like Lee & Riddle have been pushed to the background to serve Styles, Braun & Sheamus’ bickering and I couldn’t care less about any of it.

Ultimately, the fact that Team Raw already did their ‘falling out’ thing on Monday telegraphs pretty heavily that they’re going to pull it out of the bag and win on Sunday. If I were to guess, I think someone like Styles or Braun will be eliminated shockingly early and the rest of the team will pull together to bring it back. I’m going to pick Keith Lee to be the sole survivor for this one, because why the hell not? The fact is, no-one on Team Smackdown needs the win. Jey Uso looks great alongside Reigns no matter what, Rollins is about to take some time off to be a father, Owens isn’t in a great spot right now anyway, and I couldn’t care less about Corbin or Otis.

Drew McIntyre vs Roman Reigns
(WWE Champion vs Universal Champion)

I must admit, going from the least anticipated match on Wrestlemania 35 to the most anticipated match of Survivor Series has been quite the character transformation for both these guys.

Genuinely, this is the one match I actually have high hopes for. I think WWE is big on making both of these guys look like world-beaters and their brutal in-ring styles should clash in the best way possible, even if we do get a wonky finish. I know I moaned in the intro about only having one week to build this match, but the contract signing on Smackdown did a pretty good job of it. Drew has his usual simmering charisma to him, and Reigns was absolutely slaying on the mic.

Roman Reigns is definitely winning though. He’s been built up as someone truly unbeatable and there’s no way they’d waste that on a meaningless match like this. While it’s not the best look for Drew, he’s proven once already he can recover from a big loss and be absolutely fine straight after, so I’m not worried about that. You could have Jey, Orton or The Fiend get involved to protect Drew a bit, but even if they didn’t, I think Drew will be just fine.

So there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this post. Please, let me know what you think is going to happen on Sunday, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back this time on Monday, where I’ll be giving you my review of the show.

WWE Survivor Series 2019: Predictions & Analysis

As the end of the year draws near, WWE brings us another annual Survivor Series, a PPV which – for the last couple of years at least – has always been much better than it has any right to be. This year looks to be no different as there are already several matches on this show which have match of the year potential in my eyes.

Adding NXT to the mix was a stroke of genius as not only did it make TV for this month more exciting, but it finally put stock to everything WWE’s been saying this past couple of months about NXT no longer being “developmental” and being on-par with Raw & Smackdown. In addition to this, they’ve abandoned the idea of every match on the show having to be a brand vs brand match, which means there’s a couple of juicy looking title matches for us to get excited about as well.

All this means that there isn’t really a match on this show where I’m entirely certain about the winner, so let’s dig right into the predictions!

The Viking Raiders vs The New Day vs The Undisputed Era
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

Straight out of the gate with the exciting matches.

So here we’ve got two teams that have already put on a couple of brilliant matches in NXT with Viking Raiders and Undisputed Era and then you add in one of the most consistently brilliant teams of the past decade in WWE with The New Day, how could you possibly not be excited about this match? These are three teams who know everything there is to know about having great tag team matches, my only real fear here is that there’s a chance it could get it’s time cut a little bit given some of the other matches on this show that are likely to go long.

If The Viking Raiders had won the world cup at Crown Jewel, then I would’ve picked them to continue their winning streak here, but since they now have that loss under their belt, that aura of indestructibility they had has faded a lot, especially when you consider that the Raw Tag Titles are the biggest afterthought in all of WWE right now. This leaves us with The Undisputed Era and The New Day and while I think it’s entirely possible The New Day will notch a win here, I’m going with The Undisputed Era to pick up the victory, as I feel like they have the most to lose here, in addition to the fact that I think this match will open the show, so an NXT win straight out of the gate will go a long way to shaking things up for the rest of the night.

AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura vs Roderick Strong
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

Once again, there’s precisely 0% chance this match won’t be great, these are three of the best pure wrestlers in the world right now, even WWE will struggle to mess this one up.

Styles & Nakamura have proved time after time that they can put on solid matches with each other, so you throw in a guy like Roderick Strong, who can easily keep pace with the two of them and wrestle the exact kind of style they can and you’ve got yourself a winning formula. Then there are the standard benefits that a triple threat match provides, with the pace constantly being at a fever pitch, this should essentially be the awesome Cruiserweight Championship triple threat matches we’ve been getting all year, but turned up to eleven.

This is the only match on this show where I feel fairly confident in saying that I don’t think NXT will win. I don’t think that’s any kind of reflection on Strong, but NXT need to take a couple of losses on the night and I think Strong losing this match here will matter the least in the grand scheme of things. In fact, I can honestly say I’m pretty damn confident in picking AJ Styles to win this one. WWE has been extremely high on Styles for a good couple of years now and the past couple of months have shown that enthusiasm isn’t dying down any time soon, so a strong win for the guy here feel like the obvious choice.

Team Raw vs Team Smackdown vs Team NXT
(Women’s 5 on 5 on 5 Elimination Tag)

This is a lot of wrestlers…

The main problem I always have with Survivor Series elimination matches is how inept and weak it makes some of the wrestlers look. For the wrestlers who last in the matches for a long time, it’s great, but for the wrestlers who get eliminated in the first 10 or so minutes, it’s horrible. Generally, the first half of these matches are some very basic chain wrestling, followed by 3 or 4 wrestlers getting pinned to a single signature after about 2 minutes of time in the ring, sometimes not even that. So with 15 wrestlers in the mix instead of just 10, I can only expect this problem to be even worse.

That said, once the early eliminations are out of the way the action tends to pick up quite significantly and I almost always have a lot of fun watching the latter halves of these matches. In addition to this, there’s some great opportunities here to have some really intense confrontations between people we’ve never got a chance to see go at it, like Rhea Ripley & Nikki Cross, or Candice LaRae & Charlotte Flair, or Io Sharai & literally anyone.  The confrontation last night’s Smackdown implied that NXT’s team would be Rhea Ripley, Mia Yim, Candice LaRae, Tegan Nox & Toni Storm, but WWE has only officially announced Ripley as a participant, with the rest “TBD”, which almost certainly means they haven’t made their minds up yet whether they’ll include heels like Io or Belair yet.

This factor does make things a little harder to predict, however, I don’t think Team NXT will win this one regardless since most of them will be beaten down from WarGames the night before, but in a more general sense I think there are people on the other teams that need the wins more right now. As for the other two teams I’m quite torn. Team Smackdown has Sasha Banks who, after losing HER feud to Becky could really do with a win and Nikki Cross, who is being built up a bit more as a singles star. That said, Team Raw has Charlotte Flair, and it’s hard to bet against Charlotte Flair. When you consider this alongside the fact that the tensions between Nikki & Sasha have been played up significantly, I think everything points towards Team Raw coming out on top, most likely with Charlotte & Natalya being the survivors.

Team Raw vs Team Smackdown vs Team NXT
(Men’s 5 on 5 on 5 Elimination Tag)

I mean, if we’re looking at this from a purely kayfabe standpoint, Team Raw should walk this one.

Once again, this is a match that suffers from the WarGames problem, as they can’t announce anyone for Team NXT as there’s a good chance one or more people could get messed up by WarGames. That said, assuming no-one gets injured I’d say that Saturday’s Team Ciampa, with an added Matt Riddle seems like a pretty solid bet to me. In terms of how good I think the match is going to be, you can pretty much just copy/paste what I said about the women’s match, it’ll start off kind of boring, but become really fun by the end.

I’m struggling to determine who I think is going to win this one. My gut says that it’s definitely not going to be Team Raw, but I don’t really have any logic for that, other than they don’t exactly have anything to lose from a business standpoint. Smackdown has only just moved to FOX and I’m sure WWE would like to please FOX by making their show look like it’s better than both of USA’s shows, but at the same time, such a big deal has been made out of NXT invading and showing that they’re just as good as the other two brands that a loss here could be very damaging; and I’m sure WWE wants to do everything they can to make sure their ratings victory over AEW Dynamite on Wednesday isn’t a one-off.

I’m going to go with Team NXT to take this win, but just know that I’m not very confident in that pick at all.

Becky Lynch vs Bayley vs Shayna Baszler
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this has all the potential in the world to be the match of the year. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got here. We’ve got a woman whose been the biggest star in the whole industry for the past year in Becky Lynch; A fantastic wrestler whose character has recently gotten a new burst of life in Bayley; and one of the best heel wrestlers on the planet right now in Shayna Baszler. This match is going to tear all the houses down.

These three women have dominated their respective brands for the majority of the year so this match really feels like it’s a clash of the titans. I’m expecting tonnes of exciting action all the way through this with all three competitors getting plenty of licks in and hopefully, this will get plenty of time to do it all.

This brings us to the matter of who wins because I can honestly make a pretty solid case for all three women. There’s Bayley, who hasn’t had a big opportunity to show her stuff since turning heel and for the past month, she’s been somewhat undercut by Baszler showing up, so a win here would do her the world of good. Then there’s Baszler, who is currently amidst a long-running streak of dominance that’s become the focal point of every NXT Women’s storyline, so having her lose here would certainly do significant damage to that in the short-term. Finally, there’s Becky Lynch, who’s still the biggest star in WWE, so her winning would be no surprise.

Ultimately, Becky is never going to be damaged by a loss, especially one where she probably won’t take the fall. As much as it’d suck to see Baszler lose, she’s been made out as being such a huge deal on Raw & Smackdown this past month that as long as she gets a strong showing, her losing won’t be the end of the world. Which is why I’m picking Bayley. The fact that Shayna & Becky have been treating her as an afterthought is something that’s been played up a fair bit for this whole build and I think that will be the deciding factor, allowing Bayley to sneak in at the right moment and pick up the win.

Adam Coles(c) vs TBD
(NXT Championship)

This is a fantastic decision.

For the past couple of months, we’ve heard so much from WWE about how NXT is now the equal “3rd brand” but there hasn’t been much but empty words behind it until this point. I’m very glad that Cole didn’t just get shoved in the elimination tag match and more importantly, the NXT title is being treated just as important as the other two world titles, getting it’s own featured match between two of the brand’s top stars.

While Cole could end up facing any of the three men in the triple threat match, I think it’ll probably be Pete Dunne, partly because he’s that perfect mix between someone the fans might’ve heard of, but isn’t an already established wrestler on the main roster like Killian Dain is. On top of that, I think Cole vs Dunne will be a brilliant match, even if it doesn’t get as much time as it would on a Takeover.

That said, I can’t see the title changing hands on this show. Dain & Priest definitely won’t pick up the NXT title anytime soon and while I could see Dunne potentially getting a run with the strap I highly doubt it’ll happen this soon after his mammoth UK Championship reign. Not to mention that WWE has absolutely been pushing Adam Cole & The Undisputed Era as the featured NXT stars of this whole “invasion” angle, so I’m pretty confident in picking Adam Cole for this one.

Brock Lesnar(c) vs Rey Mysterio
(WWE Championship)
(No Holds Barred)

In a strange twist, Survivor Series has become a show where we can consistently expect one thing: great Brock Lesnar matches. His matches against AJ Styles in 2017 and against Daniel Bryan in 2018 were both fantastic lengthy wrestling matches and while his 2016 match against Goldberg wasn’t a clinic it certainly blew us all away. So as we sit here in 2019, Lesnar has a title match against none other than Rey Mysterio, a wrestler who wrestles a similar, small-guy, fast-paced style to Styles & Bryan and has shown absolutely no signs of slowing down with age.

Lesnar always works best when he’s fighting guys significantly smaller than him and they don’t get much smaller than Mysterio, not to mention that these two also worked together a couple of times during Lesnar’s first run in WWE in 2002-2004, so there’s tonnes of potential here for something really great to come out of this.

This is one of the two matches on this show that I’m pretty confident about picking a winner for. While it’s true that Lesnar is no longer the indestructible monster he once was, I don’t see Mysterio picking up the WWE title any time soon. I’ve no idea what the end-game is for Lesnar in this title reign, but the fact remains that he’s still where the money is and it makes sense for him to hold on to this title until at least Wrestlemania. Although I wouldn’t consider it a major shock for Mysterio to win this one, I’m sticking to old reliable and picking Brock Lesnar to retain.

The Fiend Bray Wyatt(c) vs Daniel Bryan
(Universal Championship)

Yes!

I’ve never got much of a chance to talk about it, but one of my favourite matches from this past decade was Daniel Bryan vs Bray Wyatt at Royal Rumble 2014, it was the match that made me realise how brilliant of a wrestler Bray Wyatt really was and I’m so excited that we get to see it again, only this time for a world title and with Bray’s extremely exciting new character and style.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how The Fiend’s style meshes with Bryan’s because on the surface, it doesn’t seem like they should; but if anyone can make it work, it’s the man I constantly herald as the best wrestler in the world today. The main feeling I’ve got from all of The Fiend’s matches so far is that they’re something “different”, sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad, but it’s always a really interesting thing to watch unfold.

That said, as much as I think the match will be great, I’m entirely confident in saying The Fiend Bray Wyatt will walk away as the champion. There’s a chance that this will be a non-finish so the feud can run longer, probably to a TLC match next month, but there isn’t a chance in hell that The Fiend is losing that Universal title anytime soon.

So there you have it! Those are my predictions for Survivor Series 2019, thank you very much for taking the time to read this article, please let me know what you think will happen on Sunday either on Twitter @10ryawoo or in the comments below! Finally, make sure to come back tomorrow for my review of NXT Takeover: WarGames III!

Every WWE World Champion Since the 2016 Brand Split Ranked

In 2016, WWE realised that their roster was far too big for only one set of champions all of a sudden, thanks to NXT signing every free agent they possibly could, also the Smackdown ratings were tanking but I’m sure that’s not important. Their solution was to do what they did from 2002 to 2013 and make Raw and Smackdown separate brands with their own world champions.

We can argue the merits of this decision until the cows come home but that’s not what I’m here to do. Instead, just three years later in 2019, we’re facing a situation where the brand split could very well be ending in October thanks to the new Fox deal coming into effect. The future on this is still unclear, however in the event, we are about to see it all end, now would be a good time to start looking back.

Since the brand split started, we’ve seen 16 different world championship reigns between 14 different men across both brands, and not all of them are up to the prestige level that you’d expect from the grandest prize in all of pro-wrestling. With that in mind, I’m going to dive in and analyse all of these title reigns and comprehensively ranking them.

These rankings are going to based on a combination of the pure numbers, the quality of their matches and the overall impact that they left on their respective titles. NOTE: I’m not going to be including current champions, Seth Rollins and Kofi Kingston in these rankings since, as of the time of writing they have each only been champion for 3 weeks and it would be unfair to assess an incomplete title reign.

12 – Finn Balor – 1 Reign
(Universal Championship)

Won from: Seth Rollins at Summerslam 2016
Lost to: Vacated on Raw 8/22/16 due to injury
Days as champion: 23 Hours
Best match as champion: vs Seth Rollins at Summerslam 2016

I know, I’d like things to be different as well.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment on the list (although there’s a bit of competition for that dishonour), we all thought the chosen one had ascended with WWE finally fully embracing our NXT beloved when the recently debuted Finn Balor became the first ever Universal Champion at Summerslam. Even if the fans stupidly weren’t paying attention to the match because they were so fixated on how awful the brand new Universal Championship looked, people were over the moon at the former Prince Devitt’s rise to the top of the company.

Sadly, the celebrations would be fairly short-lived, as the next day the news came out that during the match with Seth Rollins where Balor had won the belt, he suffered a Labrum tear during a powerbomb to the ringside barricade during the match. This injury would require Balor to have surgery with an estimated recovery time of 6-8 months, meaning he wouldn’t be able to compete as champion and was forced to vacate the championship that he had only just won.

It’s always going to be one of the big “What if?” questions in WWE history. How long would his reign have been? Who would he have eventually lost the title to? How many amazing matches would he have had? and so on, and so on. Unfortunately what we’ve got was a 23-hour reign where he didn’t even lose the title in a match, so it, unfortunately, can’t be placed anywhere other than the bottom of the list.

11 – Roman Reigns – 1 Reign
(Universal Championship)

Won from: Brock Lesnar at Summerslam 2018
Lost to: Vacated on Raw 10/22/18 due to Leukaemia
Days as Champion: 63
Best match as champion: vs Finn Balor on Raw 8/20/18

What is it with the Universal title at Summerslam?

Roman Reigns winning the Universal Championship was a complete and total inevitability going into 2018, with most excepting it to happen at Wrestlemania 34. Instead shockingly – and pretty stupidly – Brock Lesnar retained the championship at Mania in order to convince The Beast to extend his contract for another year, this meant the title change was pushed back to that year’s Summerslam instead.

As much as the match itself was crap, when Roman held the title high it felt like a breath of fresh air washing over Monday Night Raw since Lesnar’s reign as an absentee champion was long past its sell-by date at this point. Having a fighting champion on the show every week was invaluable to the red brand since now it didn’t feel like everyone was just spinning their wheels every week until Brock came down from his mountain top to defend the title once or twice a year.

That said, in the brief time Reigns was holding the title, there wasn’t a great deal to love about it. It was refreshing to see the title every week for once, but Roman was busy in 6 man tag matches for a lot of his reign thanks to The Shield reuniting for the 147th time since they originally broke up. His only actual title defences were against Finn Balor the night after he won it, which was a good match; against Baron Corbin in September for no discernable reason and against Braun Strowman inside Hell in a Cell, a match which mostly consisted of people who weren’t in the match fighting on the outside before Brock Lesnar broke into the cell and caused the match to end in a No Contest which was ridiculous.

The title reign wasn’t off to the greatest of starts come October, however, it was likely to run for many more months, so there was still time to turn things around.

Tragically, it wasn’t to be, as on the October 22nd edition of Raw, Roman Reigns announced his Leukaemia that had gone into remission 11 years ago had returned and he would be taking an undefined amount of time off until he recovered. Thankfully, the Leukaemia went into remission again earlier this year and Roman has now returned to action, however, it meant that his Universal Championship reign had to end prematurely with him vacating the belt just before he was due to defend it against Strowman and Lesnar at Crown Jewel.

This reign stands above Finn Balor’s due to the fact that Reigns actually had 64 days to do something with the title before vacating it, even if that something wasn’t very good. That said, a short reign with a vacated title at the end still can’t rise any higher than this.

10 – Goldberg – 1 Reign
(Universal Championship)

Won from: Kevin Owens at Fastlane 2017
Lost to: Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 33
Days as champion: 27
Best match as champion: vs Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 33

Goldberg. Champion. In 2017. I honestly still can’t believe it.

Goldberg created one of the most shocking moments in recent memory at Survivor Series 2016, where he pinned the hyper-protected Brock Lesnar in under five minutes. When this happened it was clear that a Wrestlemania rematch was in the works for the two, and it also became clear that WWE wanted the Universal Championship to be at stake in that match as well. Naturally, the sensible thing to do would’ve been to put the title on Brock Lesnar for that match, since it would be ridiculous if the 50-year-old Goldberg won a world championship after not wrestling for over a decade…

What’s that? They did it anyway? Oh.

Goldberg walked into Fastlane to face Kevin Owens for the Universal Championship, and 22 seconds (and a distraction from Chris Jericho) later, Goldberg was your new Universal Champion. Madness. Goldberg wouldn’t wrestle another televised match until Wrestlemania, meaning there’s very little to analyse here. Everyone knew that Goldberg would be losing the title to Brock at Mania, so we were never going to get any kind of extended reign from Goldberg, which is probably for the best.

After 27 days of doing precisely nothing with Raw’s top prize, he walked into Wrestlemania, had a short but fun match with Brock, and then did the favours for Brock Lesnar, kicking off his first of two reigns with the title. The following night on Raw, Goldberg addressed the fans, thanked them and we haven’t seen him in the ring since.

Goldberg was the very definition of a transitional champion. He won the Universal Championship for the purpose of a single match, and once that match was done it was all over. If it wasn’t for the two reigns where the title was vacated, then this would most certainly be dead last.

9 – Randy Orton – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: Bray Wyatt at Wrestlemania 33
Lost to: Jinder Mahal at Backlash 2017
Days as champion: 49
Best match as champion: vs Bray Wyatt at Wrestlemania 33

It says a lot about the Universal Championship, that this is the first entry on the list that actually feels like a proper title reign. It wasn’t the longest reign in the world, but Randy actually acted like a champion during this time, including wrestling more than two matches for his entire reign.

As much as it did enough to be classed as a proper title reign, it was arguably one of the worst title reigns in recent memory for a couple of reasons. For one thing, he won it at Wrestlemania in what was probably the most disappointing and boring match on the whole show, and it doesn’t bode well that it can also be classified as his best match during this rather short reign.

Following this, we had a rematch in the one and only “House of Horrors” match, featuring some of the most spooky imagery imaginable! Such as lots of baby dolls badly taped to the ceiling, a hand popping out of an obviously fake wall and….erm…a tower of sticks? It was that level of bad that goes past being so bad it’s funny into just plain awful, what’s more, is it wasn’t even for the title. This was mostly because they wanted to give Bray the win without giving him the title, but it was justified in kayfabe by the fact that Jinder Mahal stole the title the Smackdown before the match.

This brings us to the sad an awkward fact that Randy Orton would end up losing this WWE title to…Jinder Mahal, a man who up until a month prior to this, had lost more matches than Curt Hawkins, and that’s Hawkins’ whole gimmick. It was an extremely boring match as well, with the only thing even remotely exciting is when Randy almost accidentally killed one of the Singh brothers by dropping him neck first on the announce table.

Even compared to Orton’s 12 other world championship reigns this is among the worst of them. When you’re only notable matches as champion are the two that you lost, you know it can’t be any good.

8 – Jinder Mahal – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: Randy Orton at Backlash 2017
Lost to: AJ Styles on Smackdown 11/7/17
Days as champion: 170
Best match as champion: vs AJ Styles on Smackdown 11/7/17

I’m as surprised as you are that it landed this high up.

When Jinder Mahal pinned Randy Orton at Backlash 2017, the entire wrestling community went through various stages of grief all at once. There were those that reacted with unbridled anger that WWE would sully the most prestigious prize in the business like this; others gave an extended sigh and prepared themselves for the dark times to come, and there were a few who laughed maniacally in twisted delight at the sheer ridiculousness of what just happened.

These would very much be the three camps that stuck around for the entirety of Jinder’s 5 and a half month WWE title reign, even though it felt like it lasted a couple of years. No-one was quite sure what to make of it at the time, with a whole range of opinions flooding the internet following every one of Jinder’s awful title matches.

Jinder spent the next three months putting on some of the worst matches of the year with Randy Orton, including a Punjabi Prison match where The Great Khali helped Jinder to victory only to never have his appearance explained and Khali hasn’t been seen since. He then moved on to fight the new golden boy of Smackdown live in Shinsuke Nakamura, a feud which is remembered only for the racism involved when Jinder claimed that Shinsuke’s facial expressions always “rook” the same in front of an audience who just seemed to be made uncomfortable by the whole thing.

Things were looking to hit their worst point yet going into Survivor Series, when a match with Universal Champion Brock Lesnar on the horizon, only for AJ Styles to mercifully take the title away from the Modern Day Maharaja 2 weeks before the event.

Though opinion may have been divided at the time, it’s pretty clear looking back that Jinder’s reign as champion was pretty damn bad. All of his PPV title defences sucked and the only match of his reign that could really be considered good is the one in which he lost it to AJ. Not only that, but AJ’s mammoth reign that would follow it meant that Jinder’s reign was almost immediately forgotten and Jinder every quickly fell back down the card into the same position he was before his title win. Granted not all of that can be placed on his shoulders, but when you spend over 5 months as world champion it doesn’t elevate your standing in the pecking order at all when you finally lose it, then you were clearly never up for the world title in the first place.

7 – Bray Wyatt – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: John Cena at Elimination Chamber 2017
Lost to: Randy Orton at Wrestlemania 33
Days as champion: 49
Best match as champion: vs John Cena vs AJ Styles on Smackdown 14/2/17

Bray’s and Randy’s are very easily comparable, since their titles reigns came consecutively, and they spent the same number of days as champion, which means you can really boil the argument down to who did more with the title?

Admittedly that’s a pretty easy argument because even though Bray’s reign was a lot shorter than most of us wanted it to be, and the build to his Wrestlemania match with Orton was absolutely bizarre, Bray actually had some really enjoyable matches for the title. The Elimination Chamber in which he won it, is perhaps the best Chamber match in history, and his triple threat against former champions Cena and Styles two nights later on Smackdown was fast-paced and tense action from bell to bell.

His time as champion brought the best out of him as a performer, with him having a couple of the best matches of his career during this very short run. Even on Smackdown, Bray was front and centre every week, regardless of whether or not he’s wrestling, which is something that can’t be said for several of the champions on this list.

Given there was all this great stuff involved with the title reign, why isn’t it higher? Well, for one thing, the length brings it down, as much as you don’t need months and months as champion to make an impact, Wyatt’s reign really felt like it could’ve done more time to really give Bray back the credibility he’d lost over the years, losing matches to basically everyone. Also, the match where he lost the title at Wrestlemania 33 was boring, as I previously mentioned, and unfortunately the manner in which someone loses a title can have a big impact on the opinion of their reign.

In the annals of WWE history, Bray Wyatt’s brief time at the top probably won’t be remembered fondly by many, but when you break it down you can see exactly what Bray Wyatt at his best can be if he was ever given a real chance to shine.

6 – John Cena – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: AJ Styles at Royal Rumble 2017
Lost to: Bray Wyatt at Elimination Chamber 2017
Days as champion: 14
Best match as champion: vs AJ Styles at Royal Rumble 2017

It’s really weird to think that John Cena’s record tieing 16th world title reign only lasted two weeks. Then again, about 12 of Cena’s title reigns were all transitional really.

Given that I dropped Randy so low for a reign over three times as long as this one, this may seem like an odd choice, but as short as Cena’s reign was, there were great matches during it.

The match where we won the title was Styles was arguably the best main roster match of 2017 and capped off an absolutely brilliant feud from 2016 to boot. Then he had a surprisingly good match against Randy Orton on Smackdown where a shorter match length allowed for a more exciting match than most of their other encounters. Then his reign was topped off with arguably the best Elimination Chamber match in history where he would lose the title to Bray Wyatt.

Cena’s reign was incredibly brief, but he managed to do more with the title in that time than everyone else I’ve already talked about so far, putting on many great matches and leaving a reign that is still remembered and talked about fondly to this day. Moreso than that, it proves just how good John Cena can be for a world championship when it’s done properly. If Cena ever gets his historic 17th world title, I certainly wouldn’t mind if it was anything like this one.

5 – Dean Ambrose – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: Seth Rollins at Money in the Bank 2016
Lost to: AJ Styles at Backlash 2016
Days as champion: 84
Best match as champion: vs Roman Reigns vs Seth Rollins at Battleground 2016

Ambrose’s reign is a little weird in the context of this list because although it started before the brand split began, the majority of this reign took place inside it.

It started with one of the most exciting WWE moments in recent memory, where Seth Rollins would shockingly beat Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship pretty much as clean as possible, only for Dean Ambrose to cash in the Money in the Bank briefcase he won earlier in the night and walk about of Las Vegas as WWE Champion at long last.

Ambrose’s title reign was something most people had wanted ever since The Shield broke up in 2014, and finally seeing him hoist the title high was a brilliant moment for fans (even if I think he was the worst wrestler of The Shield, but that’s neither here nor there). Also, since it was a long time coming, they had to do something memorable with the reign itself, which I think they achieved for the most part.

After a great match with Rollins that ended in a double pin, and a follow up on the night the brand split began where Ambrose would come out victorious, we got the match fans have been begging for for years, when Ambrose, Rollins and Reigns would face off against one another in a triple threat match for the title. While that match didn’t live up to many people’s expectations, it was still a fantastic contest, that would eventually end with Ambrose walking out still with the title, bringing it to the blue brand for the foreseeable future.

It had been going well up until this point, but it was soon to come crashing down, as Ambrose would then put on a 15-minute snoozefest against Dolph Ziggler for the title at Summerslam, and it was becoming clear that Ambrose’s title reign was fun, it needed to end pretty soon. One kick in the plumbs from AJ Styles later and Ambrose would find his title reign over at Backlash 2016.

Ultimately, Ambrose’s title run did have some crap stuff in it, but it will generally be remembered for the good stuff a lot more than it is the bad, and with Ambrose having left WWE just a couple weeks ago, I don’t think this was a bad legacy to leave behind.

4 – Kevin Owens – 1 Reign
(Universal Championship)

Won from: Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins & Big Cass on Raw 8/19/16
Lost to: Goldberg at Fastlane 2017
Days as champion: 188
Best match as champion: vs Sami Zayn Raw 9/5/16

Kevin Owens’ reign was filled with a whole host of ups and downs, it reign that by many standards would be considered mediocre at best, so it says a lot about the state of the WWE world title scene that it’s landed this high…

Owens’ reign started off to a very good start as far as I’m concerned. Following Finn Balor’s tragic Labrum tear after winning the title. WWE quickly set upon crowning their next Universal Champion who would actually be able to carry the title over the coming months. So a Fatal 4 Way formed between Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens and Big Cass.

Most expected either Rollins or Reigns to walk away with the title here, since, up until now, Owens hadn’t been treated like he was on the world title level for the longest time. Fate would strike again, however, as after laying out Roman Reigns, Triple H looked to hand Seth Rollins the victory only to suddenly turn on the architect and hand the title to Kevin Owens. With Raw ending with Triple H holding Owens’ hand aloft in a brilliant moment.

Owens title reign will likely be remembered mostly for his excellent partnership with Chris Jericho as an extremely entertaining duo who bounced off of each other perfectly. This would also mean that very nearly all of Owens’ major title defences would end in some form of dirty finish, with Jericho and occasionally Strowman getting involved to save Owens’ skin. His title run also ended in disappointing fashion with a 22 second lost to Goldberg thanks to another interference from Jericho.

If you look at Owens’ title run in terms of his matches and PPV defences then it seems like one of the worst, but when you consider how entertaining he was week to week on Raw with Chris Jericho, including the absolutely perfectly done “Festival of Friendship” segment, then it’s one that will always be looked back on fairly fondly.

3 – Brock Lesnar – 2 Reigns
(Universal Championship)

1st Reign:
Won from: Goldberg at Wrestlemania 33
Lost to: Roman Reigns at Summerslam 2018
Days as champion: 503
Best match as champion: vs AJ Styles at Survivor Series 2017

2nd Reign:
Won from: Braun Strowman at Crown Jewel 2018
Lost to: Seth Rollins at Wrestlemania 35
Days as champion: 156
Best match as champion: vs Daniel Bryan at Survivor Series 2018

Groan all you want, but the numbers don’t lie.

In a bubble, Brock Lesnar’s two reigns with the Universal Title seem amazing. With over 600 combined days with the title, and nothing but clean wins in every single defence, Lesnar’s world title reigns seem like the template for what a perfect one looks like. Unfortunately, this title reign didn’t happen in a bubble and anyone who watched through Lesnar’s time at the top knows all too well why it’s not higher up.

While Lesnar did almost always retain his title cleanly, and most of his title defences were Ok-Great matches, the problem was to do with his schedule. During his first run as champion which, bare in mind, lasted 503 days, Brock Lesnar wrestled a total of 12 matches, and that’s including non-televised matches. Compare that for a second to Randy Orton, who wrestled 21 matches – almost double – in just 49 days as champion.

That said, it did have some upsides. For one thing, a Brock Lesnar title defence felt like a big deal, and there was always a lot of speculation made around who his challenger was going to be. Also, with the exception of the Roman Reigns matches, the stories building up to the match were generally very compelling. Samoa Joe’s feud with Lesnar felt intense and finally gave Joe that killer instinct he’d been lacking before that point, Finn Balor got to show that he can hang with the biggest and the best and Braun Strowman was elevated from mid-card monster to main event murderer.

I think that’s the thing with Brock Lesnar as champion, with the exception of Kane, and in his later matches, Strowman, everyone who fought Lesnar for the title came out of the feud looking better than when they went in. It didn’t matter if they lost, because guys like Joe and Balor got to show their in-ring intelligence when trying to take down an indestructible foe, and in a strange way, it would bring the best out of whoever he was competing against.

I’ll admit, if Brock Lesnar never wins another world title again, then I’ll be very happy with that since I really feel like WWE overplayed their hand in 2018 with Lesnar, but it did serve a purpose and several other wrestlers benefitted from his presence at the top.

2 – AJ Styles – 2 Reigns
(WWE Championship)

1st Reign:
Won From: Dean Ambrose at Backlash 2016
Lost to: John Cena at Royal Rumble 2017
Days as champion: 140
Best match as champion: vs John Cena at Royal Rumble 2017

2nd Reign:
Won from: Jinder Mahal on Smackdown 11/7/17
Lost to: Daniel Bryan on Smackdown 11/13/18
Days as champion: 371
Best match as champion: vs Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series 2017

A man who many thought would never even wrestle in the WWE, let alone reign as champion for over 500 days, AJ Styles has done much better for himself in WWE than I think most of us thought he ever would.

AJ’s first reign as champion was shorter but arguably more effective than the second. Being a heel allowed for much greater opportunities for his character to be entertaining, not to mention I just generally think AJ’s always been better at being a heel, especially in WWE. Beating Dean Ambrose with a swift kick to the balls only added to the shock of a man who was then still considered Mr TNA winning the WWE Championship and it carried on great from there.

He had a great triple threat against Cena and Ambrose at No Mercy before going on to get entangled with James bloody Ellsworth for far too long, even going as far as having Ellsworth being directly responsible for AJ retaining after an excellent TLC match between Styles and Ambrose at the PPV of the same name. Then there was the match at the Royal Rumble with John Cena, which as I’ve already mentioned is perhaps the best WWE world title match in recent memory.

His second one wasn’t really as good if you ask me, and this second reign is the main reason I’ve dropped him to second place. It started off very well, with him finally getting a good match out of Jinder Mahal and ending the reign that felt like it was going to last forever. He then went on to have a fantastic match with Brock Lesnar, and it seemed like things were going to be great. He had his formality of a rematch with Jinder the next month, then had a couple of OK matches at the Royal Rumble and Fastlane before finally looking towards Wrestlemania 34.

His match with Shinsuke Nakamura was very good indeed, however it was marred by a couple of things. The first was that Shinsuke didn’t win when it felt like he should have, although that wasn’t too big of a deal since Nakamura turning heel after the match meant the story still had legs. However, it also has to be mentioned that many fans (myself included) didn’t really feel like it met expectations. Admittedly this is down to what you could argue were unreasonably high standards we got from seeing AJ vs Nakamura wrestle a year earlier in New Japan Pro Wrestling, but it still felt like it ended quite suddenly, and about 2 minutes too soon.

This would’ve been fine if the rest of the feud had delivered, but it really didn’t. What we got was a match the Greatest Royal Rumble event, where it ended in a double countout; another one at Backlash which ended in a double KO because both men simultaneously kicked each other in the balls and a pretty good Last Man Standing match at Money in the Bank, but the magic was long gone by that point and left fans disappointed once again after Shinsuke Nakamura failed to win the title.

Following this was a short, but entertaining feud with Rusev before we were launched into the destroyer of families known as Samoa Joe. Once again this feud started off rather well, with a very good match at Summerslam that showcased a rare example of a DQ finish that enhanced the story. Unfortunately, that turned out to be the only highlight of the feud as a dirty finish at Hell in a Cell led to two more mediocre title matches that the fans at large really couldn’t have cared less about by this point.

The dying breaths of this title reign would go some short way to redeeming it a little as the match in which he lost the title to Daniel Bryan was great but suffered slightly from not being on a PPV.

Ultimately, AJ’s title reigns were good, the first one especially was great, and the length of them allowed AJ to establish himself as an all-time legend in WWE in just 3 short years. However, whenever I think back to these title reigns, I’m always going to be reminded of the mediocrity that came with a large portion of the second one, so I can’t honestly give it number one.

1 – Daniel Bryan – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: AJ Styles on Smackdown 11/13/18
Lost to: Kofi Kingston at Wrestlemania 35
Days as champion: 144
Best match as champion: vs Kofi Kingston at Wrestlemania 35

You can have your Kenny Omegas and your Kazuchika Okadas any day, but Daniel Bryan is the best wrestler in the world.

When Daniel Bryan made his miraculous return from injury in March 2018, it only seemed like a matter of time before he held world championship gold once again. Bryan was the biggest babyface in recent memory, so having him standing victorious with the WWE Championship in his hands would be the perfect way to cap off his return year.

How foolish we all were…

Once again we found ourselves building to Survivor Series, where AJ Styles was set to have a rematch with Brock Lesnar from the previous year’s event, he just had to get past Daniel Bryan one night on Smackdown. We would then be hit with a double whammy of shockers on that night, with not only Daniel Bryan taking the title from AJ Styles, but cheating to do it, officially turning heel.

After putting on one of Brock Lesnar’s best ever matches at Survivor Series, Bryan came out week after week on Smackdown with a brand new personality, calling the fans fickle and reminding us all that our planet is dying and it’s our fault. It’s the kind of gimmick that on anyone else would seem stupid to be a heel, since the majority of wrestling fans seem to agree with that line of thinking, but Bryan was so good at saying it in a way that just pulled the boos out of you, even if you agreed with his message.

Bryan would have a match with Styles at TLC where Bryan would adapt his wrestling style to his new persona, focusing on old-school holds, strikes and technical wrestling instead of his more explosive babyface offence which resulted in a brilliant match; which ended in the master of the small package reclaiming his throne. The pair would then have a not quite as good match at Royal Rumble, hindered heavily by the fact that it had to follow Becky Lynch winning the women’s rumble and the finish involved interference from Erick Rowan of all people.

Past that match Rowan’s presence would only help Bryan as a character, giving him not only a big dude to have his back, but someone who agreed with his message, which only added to his preachy persona. Following the Royal Rumble, Bryan was set to defend his title in an Elimination Chamber match, when the cruel hand of fate would cause Mustafa Ali to go down with an injury and pull out of the match, leaving a spot open. Enter Kofi Kingston.

In one of the most unexpected, yet wonderful stories in recent memory, Kofi Kingston would take Ali’s place in the match, and remind us all that he’s one of the best, and deserves to be recognised as such. This became the main story of Bryan’s title reign going into Wrestlemania 35, and it couldn’t have been any better. Bryan and Kingston went 25 minutes at the start of a gauntlet match on Smackdown, in which Bryan showed exactly why he’s the best wrestler in the world because he can go to absolutely any length to make his opponent look like the best wrestler to ever do it, without making himself look totally inept.

It was in large part thanks to Bryan’s performance in this match and the ending of the Elimination Chamber that we all got behind Kofi Kingston as much as we did. It all culminated in the best match of the Wrestlemania 35 card, where Kofi would finally overcome and take the title from Bryan.

Daniel Bryan may not have had that long of a reign with the WWE Championship in comparison to other champions on this list, but Bryan got more out of his 144 days as champion than someone like Styles did in over 500. While Bryan was champion he was able to elevate himself, and anyone he ever got in the ring with to stratospheric heights, and that is the mark of a champion that is truly one of the greatest to ever do it.

And those are my rankings! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and a share would be greatly appreciated if you enjoyed. If you disagree with this list then let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back next week, where we’ll be diving back into the mines of Doctor Who opinions.