Overall Show – Smooth Landing
I wouldn’t call this show great, as it had it’s issues with multiple interference and “screwy” finishes. Apart from one match, nothing was egregious and we saw a solid professional wrestling show even if it took place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. On that topic, I didn’t need the promotion of the country and how great Jeddah is by the commentary team. With that said, I understand the business side of it. Just remember you have to sleep in the bed you make.
Smooth Landings
(Kickoff Show) Bianca Belair & Jade Cargill defeat Candice LeRae & Indi Hartwell to retain the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship. The match was fine and not terribly noteworthy. It didn’t overstay its welcome. There wasn’t a tremendous flow in the beginning, but it’s not like Candice & Indi are top talents. It picked up just fine. I did get a kick out of Jade taking a missile drop kick from Candice and backpedaling to make the tag to Bianca, almost as if she didn’t want to sell. I’m not worried about her selling right now, but readers and listeners have made comments. I don’t need her selling for Candice, but she’ll eventually have to sell for a better opponent. With that said, the finish was different from what I expected and that’s not a bad thing.
Liv Morgan defeats Becky Lynch to win the Women’s World Championship. I normally don’t care for interference in championship matches, much less multiple times on the same show, but I understand why it was done here with Dominik getting involved. It made sense that his (apparent) plan to prevent Liv from winning the title backfired. I say apparent because it’s possible he wanted it to look like he was preventing Liv from winning, but he knew Becky wouldn’t use the chair and his distraction was there to help Liv. Whatever story they’re telling with Dominik, Liv, and Rhea Ripley will come to fruition once Rhea gets back in the fold. As far the match goes, it went about the way I expected. As they did in their series a year and a half ago, Becky led Liv well. Liv is never going to be a top tier worker, but I have no problem with what she does. I’m far more interested in her in the heel role than I ever was her underdog, everyone-loves-me-on-social media character.
Sami Zayn defeats Bronson Reed and Chad Gable (w/Otis) to retain the Intercontinental Championship. I thought the brief video they played for Sami and his involvement with the local Saudi Arabian crowd was a nice touch. Not to inject my own personal likes and dislikes, but I absolutely love Sami Zayn and I hope everyone appreciates him in WWE. As far as the match goes, I still don’t like triple threats, but this worked based on the story told. I thought all men worked hard and you didn’t have the egregious, two people working and one selling for a ridiculous amount of time moment in the match either. I hope Bronson is going to be rewarded for being a company guy and doing a lot of jobs. On the downside, this was the second straight championship match with storyline-based interference. Even if it makes sense, that could annoy some people. I thought Gable took it too far with Otis and it felt like it was time for Otis to stand up to him. Since Otis was going to attack Sami and “accidentally” clotheslined Gable instead, I’m assuming they have something in mind. For me it feels like it’s time to get to where they want to go with the Gable and Otis situation. I’m only saying this because I don’t view Otis as a big star moving forward. If there was more potential there, sure, drag it out. There really isn’t any, though.
Nia Jax defeats Lyra Valkyria in the finals of the Queen of the Ring tournament. Nia Jax was the correct winner of this tournament. You either give it to someone who is going to get a big push moving forward (Austin ’96, Helmsley ’97), or a veteran that you want to keep in a prominent position. Nia may or may not win a championship moving forward, therefore this is perfectly fine and she’ll handle the queen bit well. I liked that the finish was clean and reversing a sunset power bomb was a cool spot. I wouldn’t say “Lyra gave it her all and boy did she come up short,” but her effort was fine. I feel like Lyra needs something, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is at this point. I didn’t need Nia hugging Triple H for an extended period of time afterwards and looking emotional. I understand she’s been through a lot personally, but do that in the back and off camera.
Cody Rhodes defeats Logan Paul to retain the (why is still called Undisputed) WWE Championship. The match went a little long, but I think the idea was to see how Logan would do in a longer-formed main event. I thought he did fine. At first, I snickered a little at Michael Cole getting upset over Logan using the knucks, but that’s what a babyface announcer is supposed to do. He’s supposed to put heat on the heel — something we haven’t seen in some time. Logan coming over to confront Michael and Corey Graves getting involved felt like an actual situation and I appreciated the emotion. Cody did his thing, but there’s this little voice in my head worried about him becoming too much the ultimate good guy like John Cena before him. Telling the referee not to count makes sense, as he wants to finish the job, but just jump out of the ring and drag Logan in yourself to continue the fight. Here’s hoping Cody has some real title contenders coming up. Not that there was anything wrong with Styles or Logan, but we all knew they weren’t a threat to the championship.
Rough Landings
Gunther defeats Randy Orton in the finals of the King of the Ring tournament. (Sigh). It was a solid match. It wasn’t great, but it went about the way I would expect it to go between these two men. They’re both very methodical in their ways. I like that they followed up on what took place on Smackdown with the Bloodline attacking Randy. He was unable to cover Gunther after the first RKO and struggled to make the pin after the second. I know they want to protect Randy, but you had protection built-in with the attack from Friday. Randy was struggling both with his knee and back, and the announcers were talking about it. You didn’t have to have Randy lift his shoulder up and have the referee “miss it.” Come on. He moved as he was making the three count so it looked like he didn’t see the shoulder up. Then Cole and Graves don’t say anything, but then Graves obviously picks up on it after a replay with a bad angle? It just looked bad all around and this match deserved a finish better than that, especially when you had chicanery in two title matches already on this show.
Closing Thoughts
I covered everything I wanted to say regarding the matches on the show. I guess I’ll add that while it’s still Saudi Arabia, at least these shows are now part of WWE cannon. For a while they felt like glorified episodes of Saturday Night’s Main Event, visiting old feuds and adding nostalgia. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that was great years ago when there wasn’t a plethora of wrestling to watch. Now, you have it every night. If I want to go down memory lane, I’ll do it on my own.
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