This Week in The Universe #7

With Battleground now in the books both RAW and Smackdown are now in full swing on the road to SummerSlam widely regarded as the second biggest event of the year in WWE. Here are my thoughts on the weeks events!

The opening segment was very enjoyable starting with Kurt Angle reminding us that is son is Jason Jordan. Then all talk switched to SummerSlam and the Universal title match as Braun Strowman, Samoa Joe & Roman Reigns all made their cases. Angle made the decision that all three men will get to face Brock Lesnar in a Fatal Four Way match. NICE! The segment ended with the three men getting into a brawl eventually being broken up by roster members. They will do battle next week should be very interesting to see who wins that! Finn Balor Vs Elias Samson in a no DQ match was really good and in my opinion Elias's best match to date. Samson got the win after Bray Wyatt interfered giving Balor the Sister Abigail. I think we can pencil in Balor Vs Wyatt for SummerSlam. Enzo Amore did a passionate promo before getting SQUASHED by Big Cass again. After the match Cass tried to beat up Enzo some more before Big Show came out and he got beat up instead. Emma (remember her) got herself a match after getting herself into trouble with GM Kurt Angle and got SQUASHED by Nia Jax who won the match with a very impressive flipping splash. She is not like most Girls. Akira Tozawa still selling his injuries from last week showed his fighting spirit by demanding a match with Ariya Daivari even though Titus O'Neil got it cancelled. Cruiserweight Champion Neville came out mocking Tozawa and the two got in a brawl. Daviari came out and laid out both Tozawa and Neville with RAINMAKKKERRRSS! See where this goes. Bayley and Sasha Banks had the match of the night as you would expect from these two. The crowd was really into and both women came out of the match looking great. Bayley got the win which was a bit of a surprise as the booking up to now seemed to suggest a Four Way with Alexa Bliss and Nia Jax. Hopefully Bliss and Bayley will have a better match than their previous ones at SummerSlam. Jason Jordan SQUASHED Curt Hawkins which was expected. Jordan is a guest on Miz TV next week so some rumblings suggest he's getting an IC title push. The Revival took on Gallows & Anderson which is kind of a dream match but was just solid in my opinion. G&A played the roles of faces in the match which I could be down with as Raw is in dire need of Face tag teams. The Revival win and after The Hardy Boyz got involved to get some revenge for last week. MAIN EVENT TIME! Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose teamed up for the first time in 3 years to take on The Miz, Bo Dalls & Curtis Axel. Pretty standard main event tag match with Ambrose getting the pin on Miz after a Dirty Deeds. They are continuing the story of Rollins trying to win back Ambrose's trust and Dean not being ready yet which is a story I am enjoying. Its either going to end in a Shield reunion or a Dean Heel turn it seems which both would be very entertaining.

Outstanding open to Smackdown Live this week as New US Champion Kevin Owens came out initially to reopen the US title open challenge for next week which brought out AJ Styles who wanted his rematch tonight. BREAK THE WALLS DOWWWWNNN! Y2J IS BACK!! WE ALL FORGOT ABOUT HIM!! Chris Jericho returned to a HUGE ovation making his claim to a US title rematch. Shane McMahon came out and announced both Styles and Jericho will get rematches tonight in a triple threat match! Huge main event!! A rematch from Battleground took place between Baron Corbin and Shinsuke Nakamura. I thought the match at Battleground was good as this was good too. In a nice call back from Battleground Shinsuke this time avoided the dick kick from Corbin and got the win after the KINSHAASSAAAA!! Naomi and Natalya had a good promo backstage building up to their title match at SummerSlam. Speaking of the Women's Division Charlotte & Becky Lynch defeated Lana & Tamina in a pretty easy win which seems to have broken up Lana & Tamina. Not sure at the moment what they have planned for Charlotte & Becky at SummerSlam. WWE Champion Jinder Mahal came out demanding a SummerSlam opponent which brought out John Cena. Before Cena could make the full challenge though GM Daniel Bryan came out and announced next week we will have a no.1 contenders match between Cena & Shinsuke Nakamura! AWESOME!! Aiden English did some great singing as always and introduced his tag team partner for the evening Mike Kanellis along with Maria. They took on Sami Zayn & Tye Dillinger in a solid match that had a fast paced and frantic ending. Both teams could make decent proper tag teams if they wanted to go down that route. The New Day were gonna come out to celebrate becoming the new Smackdown Tag champs but they were jumped and beaten down by The Usos. That was brilliant! MAIN EVENT TIME!! AJ Styles Vs Chris Jericho Vs Kevin Owens for the US title. This match was FANNNTASTIC! This match should be watched by everyone. These 3 men went full throttle for about 15 minutes and there was some incredible sequences. Jericho hasn't missed a beat and is still amazing at 46. Styles won the match to once again become US champ fuelling the rumours that the finish at Battleground was indeed a botch. Styles & Owens will have a rematch next week which should be the end of their rivalry and they move on to new opponents at SummerSlam.

Following their confrontation on Raw Ariya Daviari and Neville had a match with Akira Tozawa on commentary. The match was decent enough and Daviari got the count out win after Neville was distracted by Tozawa. It looks like they might be heading towards a Triple Threat Match for the title probably on the SummerSlam Kick Off. The segment between The Brian Kendrick and Gentleman Jack Gallagher was awful and the less said about it the better. It could be a good feud between these two but this segment was far too silly! MAIN EVENT TIME! TJP teamed up with Tony Nese to take on Cedric Alexander & Rich Swann who TJP as been involved in some 'Friendly' competition recently. I really enjoyed this match as I thought this was a really good showcase of all four men's abilities. TJP got the win on Cedric with some assistance from Nese. I wouldn't be surprised to see these four men in a tag match again soon probably on Raw next week!

NXT opened with Women's Division action as Ember Moon took on Lei'd Tapa who has previously worked in Impact Wrestling. After some early offense Tapa, Moon took advantage with an awesome looking Tornado snap suplex and got the win after the always impressive Eclipse finisher. After the match Moon challenged Asuka to a title match at Takeover: Brooklyn III which GM William Regal made official later in the night. That should be great! Authors of Pain came out to face some jobbers but were met by Nikki Cross on the ramp and Alexander Wolfe & Killian Dain got in the ring and attacked the jobbers. AOP & Sanity got into a brawl with AOP getting the upper hand building up the inevitable title match at Brooklyn. The Velveteen Dream took on Cesar Bononi in an OK match that really wasn't anything special. Drew McIntyre came out and gave a strong passionate promo declaring Bobby Roode in NXT, We are NXT! Roode will give his thoughts on that next week. MAIN EVENT TIME! Hideo Itami took on Kassius Ohno in a STIFF MATCH! Lots of brutal looking and sounding chops and kicks. Itami gets DQ'd after a savage looking dick kick to Ohno. Itami beats Ohno down post match with 3 GTS's including one on the steel steps. This is bound to lead to a rematch at Brooklyn which will hopefully be No DQ which would be REALLY GOOD!

And that was this week in the WWE universe! Thanks you all for reading! I thought both Raw and Smackdown delivered strong shows to start the road to SummerSlam and should be good next week too. 205Live had some good story progression in between an awful promo. And NXT continued to build towards Brooklyn III which should be an excellent show as it often is! What did you guys think of this weeks shows? Let me know on twitter @chris_dons or in the comments section below.