Based on what we saw at Saturday's WWE Night of Champions, the end of tThe Bloodline may be near.
Or, at least, they are making progress towards that.
Jimmy Uso was the latest to turn on undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns, superkicking him after Reigns pie faced him during Reigns & Solo Sikoa's challenge of WWE Tag Team Champions Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn.
The Usos had accidentally superkicked Sikoa after saving Reigns from Owens who was about to put Reigns through a table. Jey Uso was shocked by Jimmy Uso's actions, but eventually left with his brother as Sikoa was pinned by Zayn. The show ended with the champions heckling Reigns, who sulked to the back.
The turn capped off what ended up being a pretty good show with everything delivering in terms of in-ring work. The main event in itself was probably the best match on the show in terms of drama. It's good that The Bloodline storyline is finally going somewhere after weeks of teasing dissension.
What's most interesting is that it's playing into the longer storyline of Reigns and Cody Rhodes as Rhodes told Reigns that The Bloodline would fracture once he won the undisputed WWE Universal title. Even with Rhodes' loss, it looks like that is happening regardless.
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Seth Rollins did capture the WWE World Heavyweight title, the bronze medal in WWE, after pinning AJ Styles. While it was a good match, perhaps very good, I don’t know if it was a great match. It was your usual classic main-event style WWE match with a strong emphasis on near falls and finishers.
I’m not sure what’s next for Rollins as I don’t feel like he’s in the position of being the strongest character on the brand (that goes to either Owens & Zayn or Rhodes). Maybe if they bring Drew McIntyre back as a heel, that may be another long-term storyline that could work.
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Rhodes lost his rematch against Brock Lesnar, passing out after a second kimura attempt after valiantly fighting the first. This was short, but fast-paced and also dramatic. Despite losing, they gave Rhodes a ton, using his titanium cast to give him an advantage despite “being injured." Some people were upset by this loss, but unlike WrestleMania, I can see why they did this as they are building to a third match, perhaps either next month in London or at SummerSlam. Don’t fret, folks: the story continues and will for a long, long while.
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Asuka won the WWE Raw Women’s championship, defeating Bianca Belair in another good match. I think the most interesting part of this match is Belair losing the title, which she had held since last year's SummerSlam. They had already gotten the line out that she was the longest-reigning Women’s champion of the modern era, so once she hit that, the title run became endangered. I don’t think this is the end of the feud, but we’ll see.
Rhea Ripley destroyed Natalya in seconds to retain the WWE SmackDown Women’s title. There's not much to say about this as my best guess is a longer rematch, either on TV or the next pay-per-view.
Becky Lynch and Trish Stratus had their first-ever match….and it was good! Stratus can still have a good match at this point in her career and it helps a lot that she had this match with Lynch. The finish saw Stratus win after Zoey Stark attacked Lynch, allowing Stratus to hit the Stratusfaction. So, there's clearly an alliance there and this feud must continue, which seems to the the theme from this show. We’ll likely see the blowoff at SummerSlam as the rumors had it a month or so ago.
WWE Intercontinental Gunther defeated Mustafa Ali. That was a given and for what they were given, it was fine. To me, it’s just weird WWE has a lot of these matches where someone lucks into a title match, then they go out of their way to tell you that these people have no chance of winning. They did it last month with Zelina Vega and now this. This was fine, but not to the level of recent high-profile Gunther matches.
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These shows are always going to be against the backdrop of WWE working with a country with flagrant human rights abuses that many people seem to look the other way on because of money and sports. It's kinda hard to ignore when during every other segment, Michael Cole put over the rich history of Jeddah, which if you didn't know, is also a modern cosmopolitan city. I do know this now because it was mentioned multiple times throughout this show.
Keep in mind this was the same country that tortured and imprisoned women as recently as 2018 for driving, and women wrestlers were not allowed to appear on the shows until two years into their deal. Not exactly cosmopolitan.
With that said, the wrestling on the show was good, even great at times, and the crowd was generally hot for everything at all the right moments. WWE television is middling at most, but to their credit their premium live events, or whatever you want to call them, have usually delivered, as was the case with Night of Champions.
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