WWE Week in Review: Undertaker returns for Fastlane fallout, Styles and Orton battle

Catch up on the week that was in WWE with reviews of Fastlane, Monday Night RAW, SmackDown Live, 205 Live and NXT.

It was a huge week in WWE as the WrestleMania and TakeOver pictures have become a bit more clear following the events of the WWE Fastlane pay-per-view, Monday Night RAW, SmackDown Live, 205 Live and NXT this past week.

So let’s not waste any time and jump right into the first of four consecutive nights of action with a quick review of WWE Fastlane.

WWE Fastlane

If you happened to miss my full review of WWE Fastlane a few days back, then allow me to give you the highlights. Actually, there were mostly lowlights on Sunday night, weren’t there?

The Samoa Joe vs. Sami Zayn match should have been better and should have been given more time. As we saw as the week progressed even further, Zayn is just out there now to take beatings and that’s about it. Sure, he got in a little bit of offense against Joe but was dominated for the majority of this match.

The tag team title match between Enzo & Cass and Gallows & Anderson didn’t do much for me either. Cass was in the actual match for about two minutes (if that) and while The Club did a good job of playing the heels, especially with the finish, this was a match that wouldn’t have been a highlight on RAW and that’s not what you want on a pay-per-view with title matches.

Despite it being a little slow, I did think that Nia Jax vs. Sasha Banks was executed quite nicely. Sasha proved that Nia could be beaten but Jax still looked very strong in defeat, giving both women momentum moving forward.

I honestly don’t even want to really get into the whole Rusev and Jinder Mahal thing again because I’m just going to get upset. Just awful.

Neville vs. Jack Gallagher was solid. I liked that they gave these two guys some time to work and once again, both competitors came out ahead. Neville kept his title, which was to be expected, but Gentleman Jack proved that he belongs at the top of the cruiserweight division and put on a very good showing. He’ll have that belt around his waist at some point. One of the few highlights of the show.

Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns stole the show and I didn’t think that would ever be a sentence that I’d write but it’s true. These two monsters put on a hell of a show and Braun finally took a clean loss, which was a little expected as Roman needed some momentum going into WrestleMania to face The Undertaker. But much like Nia Jax, Braun looked strong and didn’t really lose anything in defeat. Fantastic match.

Charlotte vs. Bayley wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either. Despite being the champion, I’m still not convinced that Bayley belongs at the top of the division. Perhaps it’s because she’s been matching up with Charlotte so much recently and looks bad in comparison but I still think she has some improvements to make. The ending went about as I expected with Sasha coming down to help Bayley win the match and look a little weak and the story works so at least they’ve got something working here.

And what can I really say about Kevin Owens vs. Goldberg? It’s hard to come up with some in-depth analysis in 22 seconds, don’t you think? I understand what they’re doing but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I know this isn’t the popular decision with the brass but Owens and Jericho deserve a bigger spotlight than Lesnar and Goldberg. Period. They’ve been the best thing on Monday nights for months now and will now be stuck in the middle of the card while the two part-timers headline the biggest show of the year. Atrocious.

Let’s move on to Monday Night RAW before I start ranting again.