This Week in The Universe 2018 #1
Just like pretty much every Raw of 2017, the first of 2018 starts with a GM in the ring. Kurt Angle is out to announce that the Women's Royal Rumble match will be the same as the Men's in that there will be 30 participants and over the top rope eliminations. NOICE!! The Bar came out made about losing the tag titles last week to Seth Rollins & Jason Jordan and accused Angle of playing favourites. This brought out Jordan who challenged Cesaro to a match which Rollins came out to say he would be in Jordan's corner but didn't exactly seem too happy about Jordan going into business for himself. Jordan Vs Cesaro was next and was a decent match as you would expect from two athletic dudes. Jordan got the win and after the match Rollins was trying to celebrate with him but Jordan wanted to celebrate on his own. Nice seed planting there! After an interview with Roman Reigns and a promo where Sasha Banks announced she would be in the Rumble we got a match between Bray Wyatt & Apollo Crews. Solid match considering how Crews is often booked but Bray gets the win AS HE SHOULD! After the match Matt Hardy showed up on the titantron to freak out Bray with his face appearing dozens of times. The build continues. Asuka vs Alexa Bliss in a non-title match happened next. Decent match with Alexa doing the best selling of how dangerous Asuka is that I've seen since she debuted. Asuka gets the win making me wonder if they will take her out the Rumble and give her a shot at the PPV instead? Samoa Joe interview with Joe being his usual awesome self. Dissing Dean Ambrose in front of Renee Young was fantastic. Braun Strowman destroys Rhyno & Heath Slater next in what was a match I think. Braun doing great fan service continually powerslamming Rhyno & Slater. Finn Balor was backstage and declared himself for the Rumble. He is one of my picks to win the whole thing! Angle asked if he had found partners for a 6-man tag match against Elias & The Miztourage. Gallows & Anderson showed up and I FAN-BOYED HARD!! Next up was Roman Reigns Vs Samoa Joe for the IC Title in another excellent match between these two. I really hope we get a PPV main event between these two for the Universal title in the near future! The story going in was that if Reigns got DQ'd he would lose the title and there was a few clever spots where it almost happened but they didn't over do it which they have in previous matches. Reigns hit the spear after escaping the Coquina Clutch for the win. Lovely stuff! Absolution were backstage and declared themselves for the Rumble. Paige has to be one of the favourites. Next up we had a Cruiserweight Tag Team match with Ariya Daivari & Drew Gulak taking on Cedric Alexander & Goldust....WAIT WHAT?? Since when was Goldust a Cruiserweight?? Anyway Cedric got the win. After that nonsense we got Elias & The Miztourage Vs The (Bullet) Club. Too sweets between Balor, Gallows & Anderson sent me into a frenzy! Balor got the easy win on Bo Dallas after a Coupe De Grace/Magic Killer combo. Please let this run longer than one week! MAIN EVENT SEGMENT TIME!! Universal Champion Brock Lesnar came out with Paul Heyman hyping up his title defence at the Royal Rumble. After they said their piece they were about to leave but were interrupted by Kane who came out for a brawl. Kane chokeslammed Brock and he sat up almost immediately. This eventually led to a pull apart with the Raw Locker room and that was the end of the show. WHERE WAS BRAUN??
Smackdown opened with the WWE Champion AJ Styles who is probably the most over guy in the company right now. Daniel Bryan & Shane McMahon came out and Shane apologised for being responsible for AJ losing to Kevin Owens last week. He said he would be at ringside along with Owens for AJs match against Sami Zayn tonight and Bryan said he would be there too. Its gonna be a lovely picnic! First match of the night is a SD Tag Title match between The Usos & Gable/Benjamin. Weird match as initially it looks like Gable & Benjamin won but they pinned the wrong Uso so the match is restarted and The Usos end up winning. I would have preferred them to let Gable & Benjamin have the win and then set up a rematch for next week but perhaps this is the catalyst to turn them heel we shall see. Best Friends Zayn & Owens are backstage talking about the main event and how good of a GM Bryan is. Foreshadowing? SQUASH MATCH ALERT!! The Bludgeon Brothers destroyed Breezango once more. The Ascension show up to make the save but get destroyed themselves. They get a crack at the Bludgeon Brothers next week. Good luck lads! Next we got another US Tile Tournament match between Aiden English & Xavier Woods. Rusev was out with English and they got loud 'Rusev Day' chants. This was a fun match between under-rated talents with Woods getting the win. He advances to face Jinder Mahal in the next round which I could see go either way. The Riott Squad got a fairly easy win over Natalya, Carmella & Tamina. After the match Ruby Riott cut a promo declaring Liv Morgan & Sarah Logan for the rumble. This brought out Charlotte who said she had some friends to deal with the Squad. First Naomi and then the returning Becky Lynch who the crowd popped for. They came down for a brawl with the faces standing tall. I would love for Becky to win the Rumble and face Charlotte at Wrestlemania! Baron Corbin said he would be in the Rumble and I can see him doing pretty well. MAIN EVENT TIME!! WWE Champion AJ Styles in a non-title match against Sami Zayn. This was a pretty good match between two of the best workers in the company. Not surprisingly the finish was filled with shenanigans as there was alot of people at ringside. Shane tried to eject Owens but Bryan got into an argument with him causing a distraction for Zayn to Helluva kick AJ and get the win. Sami Zayn just pinned the WWE Champion in the main event of SDLive. You couldn't say that 6 months ago!! Styles was understandably miffed and sarcastically suggested a handicap match against Owens & Zayn. Bryan took that as something AJ really wanted and booked the match for the WWE Title at Royal Rumble! That should be interesting!
And that was my thoughts on Raw & SDLive this week. What did you guys think of the shows? Let me know on twitter @chris_dons or in the comments section below. Until next time thank you all for reading!
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