This Week in The Universe 2018 #6

I've been feeling terribly under the weather the last few days so this weeks blog is going to a bit briefer than usual. The road to Elimination Chamber is full steam ahead and we got two more qualifying matches for the Men's chamber match. Roman Reigns defeated Bray Wyatt in a match that was better than I was expecting even though the outcome was kinda obvious. Reigns would pull double duty later in the night stepping into the injured Jason Jordan's place of Seth Rollins tag partner to challenge The Bar to the belts. The match was fun and resulted in Jordan accidentally costing Rollins/Reigns the match continuing their story. In the other qualifying match The Miz punched his ticket to the chamber defeating Apollo Crews. Crews had another great performance and will be part of a second chance 4 way match next week against Finn Balor, Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt. The participants for the first ever Women's chamber match were announced as Alexa Bliss will defend against Bayley, Sasha Banks, Mickie James, Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville. Nia Jax has her own match at the PPV against the undefeated Asuka and if she can get the win she will challenge for the Raw Women's title at Wrestlemania regardless of who Asuka chooses to face. NOICE!! The main event was a triple threat match to determine who will enter the Men's Chamber match last night. When this match was announced I was so sure that Elias was eating the pin but low and behold Elias pinned John Cena. SHOCKING!!

Smackdown Live is on the road to its own PPV at the moment and in the main event of the show we found out who will face AJ Styles for the WWE title. Best friends Sami Zayn took on Kevin Owens in a match that is always decent between these two. AJ Styles got involved and the match ended with no clear winner so GM Daniel Bryan announced it would be a triple threat match at Fastlane. Should be good! We got a really fun US title match between Bobby Roode & Rusev. Both guys are incredibly over and in the end Roode retained the title with the Glorious DDT. As Roode was celebrating he ate an awesome RKO out of nowhere from Randy Orton who then dished out RKOs to Aiden English & Rusev. More teasing in the tag title scene as The Usos and The Bludgeon Brothers continue to build towards the inevitable match between these two teams. Smackdown Women's Champion Charlotte defeated Liv Morgan and proclaimed that was one down, two to go as she wants to take down all the members of the Riott Squad. Hopefully this leads to a Charlotte Vs Ruby Riott at Fastlane for the title which should be a really good match!

Two more first round matches took place in the Cruiserweight title tournament this week on 205Live and both in my opinion delivered. Kalisto Vs Lince Dorado had a match that was like watching a WCW Cruiserweight match from 1997 between Rey Mysterio & Eddie Guerrero. Both guys came close to winning with Dorado hitting a Shooting Star Press but Kalisto rolling out and then Kalisto hitting a Selina Del Sol but Lince barely grabbing the ropes in time. Kalisto finally got the win after a second SDS and we got a great show of respect after the match as the awesomely named Lucha House Party lives on! Next week we will have two more first round matches with friends Tony Nese & Drew Gulak facing each other as well as what should be great match between Akira Tozawa & UK competitor Mark Andrews. The main event saw Hideo Itami & NXTs Roderick Strong in an outstanding match. What was great about this match was that it was so different to any other match in the tournament so far with both guys being such incredible hybrid athletes. The stiff shots both guys were dishing out were brutal and the backbreaker Hideo took on the side of the ring was savage! Strong got the win with the always awesome looking End of Heartache to my surprise! I thought Hideo would make it to the final but now I'm feeling Roddy might win the whole thing!!

NXT was abit of a hit and miss show this week. I'm not really huge on Heavy Machinery and I'm not a fan of Moss & Sabbatelli breaking up because I have had enough of teams breaking up for a while! Bianca Belair is someone I'm really unsure about and having her compete in 20 second squash matches doesn't help. We got a firey passionate promo from Johnny Gargano which brought out NXT Champion Andrade Almas and Zelina Vega who didn't appreciate Johnny getting so much love from the fans. Candice LeRae came out to brawl with Vega and they bailed out of the ring. Johnny proclaimed he wanted another shot at the title which Vega agreed to if Johnny put his place in NXT on the line. OOOH tasty stakes!! The show was bookended by two of the best groups in NXT history doing what they do best. I could watch Sanity & Undisputed Era beat the hell out of each for years to come and I would never get bored! Killain Dain got the win with the Ulster Plantation after pretty much taking out Undisputed all by himself. FIGHT. FOR. EVER!!

That was this week in the WWE universe! Apologies again for the shortness this week but thank you all very much for taking to time to read my ramblings!