Csonka’s WWE Greatest Royal Rumble Preview

WELCOME back to column time with Larry! Today, I am going to discuss and preview tonight’s WWE Greatest Royal Rumble event. The event takes place at the King Abdullah Sports City’s King Abdullah International Stadium in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. WWE and the Saudi General Sports Authority announced the event, which is part of a 10-year strategic multi-platform partnership between WWE and the Saudi General Sports Authority that will make WWE millions. Of course with the financial infusion, comes the backlash over WWE doing business with a country that won’t allow the women to perform there. As always, I’ll be breaking the show down match by match. Feel free to make your picks in the comment section. Thanks for reading! It’s wrestling, we love it and will disagree. The only rules are “have a take, be respectful, and don’t be a dick.”

BREAKING: The @WWE #Cruiserweight Championship match is set for #WWEGRR, PLUS @reymysterio @shanemcmahon @RandyOrton @TheMarkHenry @FightOwensFight & The #GreatKhali are confirmed for the 50-Man Greatest Royal Rumble Match this Friday! https://t.co/ujHcCFk4dG

— WWE (@WWE) April 25, 2018

WWE Cruiserweight Champion Cedric Alexander vs. Kalisto: This was originally going to be Cedric Alexander vs. Buddy Murphy. But Murphy failed to make weight, and Kalisto won a gauntlet (featuring Tony Nese vs. Mustafa Ali vs. Drew Gulak vs. Kalisto vs. TJP) match to earn the last minute title shot here. This has all the makings of a tremendously fun babyface vs. babyface match. Ideally, they should give these guys 10-12 minutes, and have them work a balls to the wall all-out sprint. Just let them cut loose, hit all of their big shit, and work crowd-pleasing athletic display. Unless they pull a title switch just to pull a title switch, Alexander should retain. I think the end game with Alexander is an eventual heel turn, with him dropping the title down the line to Ali. WINNER: Cedric Alexander

For The Vacated Raw Tag Team Titles: The Bar vs. Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt: For now, Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt are the new toy on Raw. It’s a polarizing pairing, as some love the wacky team, and others absolutely hate them. They have also been completely average in the ring so far. The Bar is a great tag team, and hopefully are good enough to get something out of the Woken Warriors. With The Bar moving to Smackdown, Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt winning seems like the safe call here. WINNERS: Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt

US Champion Jeff Hardy vs. Jinder Mahal: Jeff Hardy won the title on the Superstar Shakeup edition of Raw, and the next night, moved to the Smackdown brand. These two had a solid match, and hopefully, will improve on that here. It’s always possible that they pull the title change, and then change the IC title as well, swapping the titles to different brands again, but I personally see no need to do that. Hardy should win, as I think that Hardy facing Orton at Backlash will follow, with a possible Orton heel turn coming. WINNER: Champion Jeff Hardy

WWE Smackdown Tag Champions The Bludgeon Brothers vs. The Usos: The Bludgeon Brothers have been a dominating force on Smackdown since their debut. They beat down the New Day & Usos on their way to an easy title win at WrestleMania. This will be interesting just to see how they work this. Will they try to have a long form, quality match? Or will The Bludgeon Brothers just destroy the Usos with ease again? I love The Bludgeon Brothers as a pair of ass kickers, but I really want to see them have a higher quality match. I think that they can do it, as they have worked well with the Usos in the past. No matter what match they opt to work, I feel that it’s too soon to take the title off of The Bludgeon Brothers. WINNERS: The Bludgeon Brothers

John Cena vs. Triple H: When the WWE Greatest Royal Rumble event was announced, the word right away was that this was going to be an all hands on deck event. That’s where this match comes in, because love them or hate them, John Cena & Triple H are stars. As far as the match goes, it’s hard to know what we’ll get. Cena always works hard, and Triple H was in great shape and moving around well at Mania. They’ve also faced off a lot on the past and should know each other well enough to have a good match here. Both guys are essentially part-time these days, but with Cena losing in under three-minuets at Mania, and the fact that he will be working more matches than Triple H this year (unless things change for both of them), Cena picking up the win here makes the most sense. WINNER: John Cena

WWE IC Title Ladder Match: Champion Seth Rollins vs. The Miz vs. Finn Balor vs. Samoa Joe: Miz, Balor, & Rollins had great match at WrestleMania, one of the best on the show. They have developed a great chemistry, and now we’re adding in a fired up Samoa Joe that sounds like he has something to prove these days. The match certainly has show-stealing potential and it’s the match I am looking forward to the most on this show. Like in the US Title match, it’s always possible that they pull the title change is they decide that they want to swap the titles between the shows…

…But I really hope that they don’t do that because it would feel like doing things just to do things. Rollins is on a roll and I really want him to have a nice and long run with the title. WINNER: Seth Rollins

Casket Match: Undertaker vs. Rusev: On one hand, I feel I should be happy that Rusev is being trusted with an important match like this on such a big show. On the other hand, he’s just there to put over an Undertaker that should have stayed retired. I don’t care what Michael Cole said on commentary at Mania, Taker didn’t look better than ever. He looked better than the previous year because he didn’t have to really do anything and the match was under three-minutes. Don’t get me wrong, I respect Taker, but I’m not expecting much here. He’ll hit his trademark shit and win unless Rusev rallies the troops and pulls a 1994 Rumble and has a group of heels behind him to attack and put Taker in the casket. Unfortunately, Taker doesn’t celebrate Rusev day, because he’s a communist. WINNER: Undertaker

WWE Champion AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura: While AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura was good, it was also a disappointing match. On one hand, it was almost impossible to live up to their first match in NJPW, it was simply missing something and they lost the crowd. But the Nakamura heel turn was good and his follow up on Smackdown has been highly entertaining. The question now is if he can effectively transition that to his ring work. If he can, and if he can find his fire that he’s largely been missing in his WWE run, this could be really good. Styles pretty much always delivers and with this being a big show, he’ll be out to impress. I don’t quite think it’s time to take the title off of Styles, but it also feels like WWE may want to go all in on heel Nakamura and mix things up following Nakamura’s failure at WrestleMania. WWE is pushing this as a big time event, and may see the title change as something big enough to add to the show. Nakamura will low blow Styles, Styles will reveal he’s finally wearing a cup, take it out and gloat, and will then get cock punched later without it in, eat a Kinshasa and lose. WINNER: Shinsuke Nakamura via fist to cock and knee to face

WWE Universal Title Steel Cage Match: Champion Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns: And here we go, the WrestleMania rematch of Roman’s latest failure. I actually really liked “the work” of their Mania match, it was violent, brutal, and fun… unfortunately not one single solitary fuck was given. Brock F5’d him, and nobody cared. Brock F5’d him again, and nobody cared. Brock F5’d him again, and nobody cared. Brock busted him open big time, and nobody could bother to give a fuck. People thought Roman was winning, they stopped caring about Brock, and Roman’s latest coronation was stopped again as Brock managed to sign another new prior to the show for even more money. On one hand, it’s absolutely pathetic, but on the other hand, I have to respect Brock for getting the most for doing the least. I have absolutely no fucking clue what they are going to do here, and I find it hard to care after they abandoned Reigns again and the horribly apathetic reaction to his Mania match. You’d think Vince would want to keep going with his boy Roman, but who really knows at this point; they may not even know. I just hope that the crowd cares this time. WINNER: DA BIG DAWG… I guess

The 50-Man Greatest Royal Rumble: I was not a fan of the 40-man rumble, it was too lethargic, poorly laid out, and had too many goofs involved to actually make me care. And now we’re doing a 50-man rumble, because Vince always thinks bigger is better, but hey, the Saudis are ponying up the big bucks, so they’ll do it. Obviously, there are a lot of ways to go as far as a winner here, but if I am booking this, I think that you maximize the goodwill and momentum following the return of most over babyface in the company… WINNER: Daniel Bryan

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– End Scene.

– Thanks for reading.

“Byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye Felicia!”