5 Reasons To Temper Reactions To Crown Jewel
If you watched Crown Jewel this past Friday, one thing is for sure: it got you talking.
It was baffling to give Brock Lesnar the Universal Championship again. It was baffling to have Shane McMahon win the World Cup Tournament.
I'm with the majority who was befuddled as to why Strowman isn't champion. Did Shane McMahon really need to win a tournament when he's not a wrestler?
What we have to remember is that on the immediate surface, yes, the outcomes of a lot of the matches were ludicrous. WWE is, however, often in the long-term payoff business of storytelling.
It happened with Daniel Bryan's fight for respect against the Authority and it happened with Roman Reigns' pursuit of the Universal Championship.
While it might be annoying, in some cases it works and the payoff is worth it (Daniel Bryan winning at Wrestlemania 30).
As we've seen before, feuds have often been drawn out over multiple PPVs and motivations are sometimes provided on the following Raws/Smackdowns.
Here are five reasons why I and we all need to temper our reactions to Crown Jewel just a little bit.
#5: We knew beforehand not to expect magic
Let's face it - we all knew the card beforehand.
And if watching the Greatest Royal Rumble last year taught us anything, it's that the show wasn't going to be on par with the good PPVs.
The World Cup Tournament featured a field where half of the wrestlers were better five to seven years ago (Rey Mysterio, Kurt Angle, Jeff Hardy, Randy Orton).
We had another Universal Championship match with Lesnar. While we all hoped for the best, we should have known to expect for the (likely) worst. They probably paid Lesnar a boatload for the match and they wanted a return on investment.
It sucks for us fans, but as a business move, it made sense for the WWE.
If you were expecting a five-star match from DX and the Brothers of Destruction, what wrestling have you been watching for the last five years?
While Triple H is still in game shape and Kane has been active for the last few years, Shawn Michaels hasn't had a sustained match since Wrestlemania 26.
And even if you love him, the Undertaker has looked rough ever since his match with CM Punk at Wrestlemania 29. It's why he only wrestles a handful of times a year.
The Smackdown Tag Team Title match was going to be good either way, but we've seen that match at least 10 times over the last two years.
To make a long story short, we knew that there might be good match in the pile, but overall it would be a lesser version of normal WWE PPVs.
And we knew Triple H would have to be a part of a near 30-minute match.