WWE Crown Jewel review: A show that happened

Image: WWE

In case you missed it, there was a WWE premium live event on Saturday in Saudi Arabia.

Cody Rhodes and Liv Morgan won their Crown Jewel championship matches, earning huge, gaudy-looking title belts….that were immediately walked over to WWE’s amusement park/museum/whatever it is a short walk away from the arena and put on display, not to be seen on television for at least a year.

Does this all matter? Not really. Will it be talked about much on Monday? My feeling is no.

Saturday’s show in Riyadh was fine, easy to watch, and went by fast. It advanced the latest in the Bloodline drama, the centerpiece of WWE storytelling at the moment. It was a typical show in Saudi Arabia where the focus was making the country happy by giving them a gimmick that’s for them and them only because they are very special. You get very special status, after all, if you give WWE $100 million dollars a year for two shows.

Crown Jewel’s main event saw Rhodes defeat Gunther with the Bret Hart finish from WWE WrestleMania VIII to become the men’s Crown Jewel Champion. This was a fine main event, but I wouldn’t call it outstanding. The heat was just kind of there and I was expecting more from these two, especially when you consider that this was a champion vs. champion match. But like most of these matches, it is unlikely I will remember most of it by this time next month.

The women’s Crown Jewel Championship went to Morgan who defeated Nia Jax after 1000 people interfered in a match that was not that good. Okay, now I want to talk about my least favorite storyline in WWE right now which is Tiffany Stratton teasing the MITB cash-in. You see, WWE loves to do this tease each year. They spent most of last year and this year with Damian Priest agonizing over whether or not to shoot his shot, and now it’s Stratton’s turn.

After so many years of the same trials and tribulations, it’s boring and trite to see this play out yet again. This year, they have turned up the annoyance factor to 11 as Stratton teases cashing in this briefcase in every single solitary segment she is in. It has now become her entire character. To be frank, I don’t care if she cashes in anymore, especially against Nia Jax who is well on her way to winning Most Overrated in the Observer Awards.

As usual, the Bloodline vs. Bloodline six-man tag match was more about furthering their story than what went down in their match. Not that this was bad, as it was heated and there was some good action here and there, but the story coming out of the match is stronger than the match itself with Solo Sikoa pinning Roman Reigns to score the win for his team, setting up a future singles match down the line. As the new Bloodline picked the bones of the old after the match, Sami Zayn came down for the save but took out Reigns by accident. So not only are Jey Uso and Reigns still not getting along, Zayn has inserted himself back into the story and no one trusts anyone, especially after The Usos saw Zayn talking to Sikoa on SmackDown. Intriuge, especially with Survivor Series just weeks away!

The United States title match saw LA Knight retain the title over Andrade and Carmelo Hayes. Probably the right choice as he’s way more over than the other two despite the good matches Andrade and Hayes have been having on SmackDown. This was cool and had some neat spots, but it didn’t last that long. Knight has now beaten both of these guys multiple times, so I don’t know where you go with them after this. Maybe they’ll just wrestle against each other forever. 

Kevin Owens and Randy Orton didn’t have a match. Instead, they brawled, took out officials, and capped it off with Owens giving Orton an elbow off a platform onto a bunch of tables. Owens is definitely in line for a title match sooner than later, so him doing a job doesn’t make sense and I feel Orton is also getting a title shot somewhere down the line. What happened here was probably for the best.

Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill retained their Women’s Tag Team titles in a pretty good four-way match that was filled with action. This had its strong moments, particularly whenever Damage CTRL were on offense. We’re kinda just waiting to see where the Belair and Cargill team goes as WWE will want to split them, but when will they pull the trigger?

Seth Rollins defeating Bronson Reed was fine, but I kinda expected more of a wild brawl all around the ring and while the finish played into that, most of this was just a wrestling match — a perfectly fine wrestling match, yes, but just a match nonetheless. Reed immediately got back up to his feet after taking a curb stomp, so there’s probably more here to come.

So that wraps up Crown Jewel, a show that will go down in the record books as a Show That Happened. Up next for WWE is Survivor Series, where we’ll likely see Bloodline vs. Bloodline. Finally!