Tag: Tyson Fury

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!