Those two words popped in my head after Seth Rollins pieced Cody Rhodes over the heads with that fabled Rolex. The territory smartly seeded Cody\u2019s gift to Seth into this story early, making us all aware how important that watch is to both men but especially Seth. It signified how they put their differences aside for one common cause at WrestleMania XL. It also showed placated his ego and soothed his insecurities; it said that, at least he thought, Cody believed he was the best. The jewelry symbolized Seth\u2019s leadership above all else, making clear that he was the guy to lead this company into that promised land he\u2019s always going on and on about.<\/p>\n
And for a moment, it looked like Seth wrestled with all of those thoughts at once when he picked up the watch but declined to use it.<\/p>\n
What made this match work for me was the outside stakes. I really don\u2019t care which of them gets that gaudy Crown Jewel championship. The backstage action is the juice. This match meant more because of The Vision. Paul Heyman made it clear on Raw and prior to this match that a loss might make Seth\u2019s vision a little blurry. I\u2019m surprised he didn\u2019t pull out a mob cliche because he all but told Bron Breakker & Bronson Reed to send Seth on a long walk off a short pier if he loses the match. Paul E. even told them that to stand down if Seth looks to the locker room and begs them for help. \u201cThis is a meritocracy,\u201d said The Oracle. If Seth can\u2019t defeat Cody, by hook or by crook, then he doesn\u2019t deserve to lead any group, much less one with ECW\u2019s former majordomo. That put huge stakes on this thing that just didn\u2019t exist when it was simply champion against champion for the sake of it.<\/p>\n
So when Seth kicked out of a Cross Rhodes from the top rope, I knew he was winning. I knew this was a story about a desperate man testing his limits on equally desperate measures. Besides kicking out of that move, he kicked out of a Cody Cutter, he executed a hellacious coast-to-coast move that put his shoulder at risk, and he showed the moxie (no pun, I promise) that I usually attribute to Cody. Seth was the one with the never say die attitude because he knew this was it. That championship on his shoulder would morph into a paperweight if he lost this battle to a guy that\u2019s sonned him so often he\u2019s great grandsonned him. Seth rocking gear from every one of those sonnings was a nice touch too as it showed just how much this whole thing ate at his soul.<\/p>\n
The drama made this match. And Seth looking at the watch, picking it up, then putting it back down added to that drama. Once he got really desperate, he decided winning the match meant more than a watch. Even a Rolex.<\/p>\n
A fitting conclusion to this chapter of an increasingly compelling story between two guys who are a lot more alike than either of them acknowledge. Cody walks away from this win with his head held somewhat high, or as high as one can hold their head after getting hit with a Rolex and two stomps. He didn\u2019t need this win though; Seth did. What happens in The Vision now? Sure, Seth got the W but this thing revealed fissures between he and Paul.<\/p>\n
Time will tell how all that plays out. For at least one day though, Seth can see clearly now because the rain is gone.<\/p>\n
Based on an important lesson from my childhood<\/a>, Roman Reigns must know what a crumpet is because he understands Cricket. Or maybe he\u2019s a Casey Jones enthusiast and just wanted to use a Cricket bat because it\u2019s a bat. Just needed to get that out my system!<\/p>\n Roman used that bat during the Australian Street Fight, which opened the show to the crowd\u2019s delight. And it was all Roman in the beginning before it was Bronson\u2019s turn to punish. But the major issues started when Bron Breakker leapt out of the crowd and speared Roman while the Tribal Chief ran full speed towards Bronson. The match evolved into a two on one scenario with The Vision putting Roman flat on his back with their version of a Shield Bomb through the announce table. Now, remember when Roman told The Usos to let him handle this on his own? Yeah, well, they didn\u2019t listen. They hit the ring and provided some help but everything went south when Jey accidentally speared Roman through a table.<\/p>\n This is exactly what Roman worried about. Well, part of it. After Bronson pinned Roman, becoming one of the few men to score a singles victory over WWE\u2019s king since his reign started in the dark times, The Vision celebrated while Bloodline-ish sat befuddled in the ring. Roman chastised them for showing up when he didn\u2019t ask for it, but then things turned interesting. He expressed his love for both Jimmy & Jey, but said he doesn\u2019t want to see them \u201cuntil Christmas.\u201d I almost spit out my water at that line. Not because I disliked it but because those are some cold words to tell anyone, let alone family. He also complained that people around the world think he \u201ccan\u2019t do sh*t\u201d on his own. Then he said this isn\u2019t back in the day; the Bloodline stuff doesn\u2019t work now but if it is to work, it will only work one way. My assumption is that that one way is Jimmy & Jey obeying any order Roman gives, like when he told them not to interfere in this match.<\/p>\n Roman walked out on his cousins, followed by an angry Jey walking out on his brother. Jey said Roman is always going to do him no matter what, so why stick around?<\/p>\n Is there still juice in The Bloodline saga? All three men are in different positions, especially Roman\u2019s former right-hand man who is more concerned with putting gold around his waist than keeping gold around Roman\u2019s. Roman is getting back into mob boss mode if he\u2019s not already ensconced in it. How do Jimmy & Jey react to that? Jey looks like he\u2019s had it up to here but he\u2019s looked like that before. As has Jimmy. Running the story back the same way bores me but with a few new wrinkles, it might prove worth a revisit.<\/p>\n Maybe you can go home again.<\/p>\n I\u2019m paid for how I use words. But I don\u2019t have anything thoughtful to add about John Cena vs. AJ Styles. It was awesome. Their match became a loving ode to former opponents and to pro wrestling history. In other hands and in a different context, a match with wrestlers using other wrestlers\u2019 signature moves and finishers might not work. But these two are special and with both men looking retirement in its eyes, it just worked. They showed what made them into the wrestlers they are and homaged everyone who helped them get to this point. Even AJ\u2019s attire, along with Cena\u2019s lovingly handwritten intro for him, honored the past. This is just another reminder that we wasted a few months with the Cena heel turn rather than doing this. Well, truthfully, anything other than that would\u2019ve worked for me. But I digress. Besides reaffirming how much I\u2019ll miss Christopher Smith John Cena, it also made me realize how much I\u2019ll miss AJ when his time is up in 2026. Well done, gents.I wondered if this was the moment Kairi Sane finally abandoned this toxic relationship with Asuka. She\u2019s clearly loyal to The Empress and I understand why. But that loyalty can\u2019t abide disrespect. This sadly wasn\u2019t the moment, but Kairi certainly suffered as a result of said loyalty, and she\u2019ll get nothing from it but a hell of a brow beating that may give away to an actual beating. During the closing moments of an awesome tag match where Rhea Ripley got a hero\u2019s ovation in her hometown, got the hot tag, but still ceded the spotlight to IYO SKY, it was Kairi who most affected the action. With she and Asuka stranding on the apron, Mami loaded a big boot in the chamber. Knowing its trajectory, Kairi pushed Asuka out of harms way and took the bullet. That essentially knocked Asuka out of the match for the ending, leaving a dazed and confused Kairi all by her lonesome. Rhea hit Kairi with a Rip Tide, tagged in IYO for an Over the Moonsault, and that was all she wrote. This was a very physical match, which I always adore. But it wasn\u2019t physical just for the sake of it; that was part of this story between three women joined at the hip and another doing her best to save her friend from a fate worse than death. With all that emotion, a simple \u201cwrestling\u201d match doesn\u2019t work.I really expected a dustier finish than this. I predicted Stephanie Vaquer vs. Tiffany Stratton might find a way to make both women look good despite Stephanie\u2019s victory. That\u2019s not what we got here, although Tiffany didn\u2019t look terrible in defeat. It was a clean finish that put both women on the same level but that La Primera is a tad better on this day. This was my favorite sequence<\/a> as it showed Tiffany\u2019s agility and power in one chain, but also narratively expressed Stephanie\u2019s determination. My only complaint is it needed something more than just that championship. It was the one match on the card that was just about Crown Jewel\u2019s crown jewel. I suppose that\u2019s necessary but when everyone else has a lot to sink their teeth into, it\u2019s odd to not do the same with these two.<\/p>\n Crown Jewel was a fun show, with Cena vs. AJ standing out. AJ was right about them leaving it all in the ring and putting on something magical. That aside, we got a show that moved some stories along, possibly closed one, and put another brick in Stephanie Vaquer\u2019s foundation as the next Chosen One. Oh, and the crowd was nuts, as they usually are Down Under.<\/p>\n My one complaint? No Crocodile Dundee in that Street Fight. I promised I\u2019d flip furniture if he didn\u2019t show, so know that I did politely turn over a rug in my kitchen before putting it back in place. I\u2019m not a heathen.<\/p>\n What say you, Cage Siders?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Those two words popped in my head after Seth Rollins pieced Cody Rhodes over the heads with that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,4366,122826,8316,4367],"class_list":["post-218295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-wwe","tag-wwe-crown-jewel","tag-wwe-raw","tag-wwe-smackdown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}