WWE Crown Jewel review: Logan Paul is great

It’s one of the two most controversial shows of the year. It’s Crown Jewel time, folks.

It’s hard to talk about these shows because it’s always amongst the backdrop of Saudi Arabia’s various human rights violations, and WWE’s involvement is a key example of the sportswashing going on in the country. At the end of the day, WWE gets paid 50 million, 100 million total, for these two shows every year. WrestleMania doesn’t even come close to making that kind of money. These shows are going to happen, and there’s not much we can do otherwise. So we gotta talk about them.

At least they didn’t do much propaganda on the show. They saved that for the impromptu press conference the day before.

Roman Reigns and Logan Paul exceeded expectations, as their match turned into an excellent main event. I have to say, Logan Paul is one of the better rookies I have ever seen. This is match number 3, and he already is a main event level talent. It’s truly astonishing how great he was, and I can’t emphasize this more. Roman Reigns also had a lot to do with this match being great. At this stage of his run he knows exactly what to do in his matches, and they almost always deliver.

I wasn’t sold on the Logan Paul idea, and he’s almost always booed in the United States. But he’s so good in the ring at this point he’ll probably get over as a babyface anyway because of his freak athleticism. It’s too bad he apparently blew out his knee in the match, as that will likely put him out for a year.

Bayley and Bianca Belair had a really good Last Woman Standing match, better than their ladder match the previous month at Extreme Rules. I kind of get bored with WWE stipulation matches as they kind of all blend together, but I liked the use of the golf cart in the match, and the finish was wild, with Bayley taking the KOD on top of the seated chair. With Nikki Cross interfering, i feel like the Women’s WarGames match will be Belair, Asuka, Bliss, Candace LeRae vs. Damage CTRL and Cross, but we’ll see.

Speaking of, Bliss and Asuka lost the Women’s Tag Team titles back to Damage CTRL after winning them just days earlier on Raw. It makes sense in that they probably wanted one title change in Saudi Arabia, and this was it. It was good, but the bigger story was Bliss cutting a promo prior to the match when all of a sudden Bray Wyatt’s new logo appeared on the monitor behind her. She seemed startled by it, but then moved on. So for those that are eagerly awaiting the return of Lady Fiend, good news, it looks like they are going in that direction.

Wyatt did speak later in the show. He’s feuding with himself in a Michael Hayes mask. I don’t find it that interesting or compelling at the moment because with Wyatt’s stuff, it’s always a question of where they are going, and it’s almost never good. Maybe it will be different next month. But as of right now, not interested.

Karrion Kross and Drew McIntyre (who was reportedly battling the flu) had a good match, but here’s something that annoys me. Every single time WWE brings in the steel cage, they stress that no one can interfere. So in every single cage match they do, the focal point is someone interfering. They have made these steel cage matches so meaningless whenever they do that. Scarlett macing the referee and Drew and locking the cage was not great. But regardless, they had a good match. 

The Judgment Day and OC match was good, but it very much served as a placeholder match. The key next bout will involve the return of Edge and very likely Beth Phoenix, as they have pushed heavily that the OC are stumped in regards to how to handle Ripley, who is frequently interfering. Survior Series sounds about right, but they could also hold off until Royal Rumble (there is no longer a Day One show).

Omos vs. Braun Strowman was short, and okay, which means that Omos has improved a lot in the last year as I don’t think he could have done this match even a few months ago. He didn’t look lost doing the spots he needed to do, so this ended up being fine for a mean big guy match. It very much was like Lashley and Lesnar, except that was miles better. But good job here!

The Usos and Brawling Brutes had a very good match, but we’re at the point in this division where there’s no clear favorites to beat The Usos, so we’re just biding time until WrestleMania. The New Day, who have faced The Usos approximately one million times, are next. All of this will be very good most likely, but this division needs some sort of spark to carry them over for the next few months.

WWE will end 2022 with Survivor Series WarGames, which will of course feature the WarGames match that Triple H resurrected in NXT. It’s not the WarGames of old (the new version has no blood but way more weapons), but it should be interesting to see how they carry this over on the main roster.