WWE Week in Review: Goldberg vs. Owens is set, Cena vs. Orton one more time

WWE SmackDown Live

It’s go-home show time on SmackDown Live and a hot Seattle crowd welcomes hometown hero Daniel Bryan to open the final show before Elimination Chamber, which was the only real way they could’ve opened the show to avoid the live audience hijack things. And Bryan naturally plays things up like he does but he’s soon joined by The Miz and they go through their usual back and forth with the GM getting in a nice dig about Miz not being able to wrestle. Fun stuff as always between these two. Baron Corbin shows up to talk some smack, which is really difficult to watch given his facial hair situation right now. Dean Ambrose arrives to join in the insult party and is soon followed by AJ Styles, who may be more over in Seattle than even Daniel Bryan. Okay, maybe not but it’s pretty close. With the chamber just a few days away, getting these four participants in the ring together was the natural way to go. Bray and Cena aren’t out here but we already know that they’ll cross paths later on in the main event match. But instead of an unorganized melee, Bryan actually books a four-way match that starts immediately.

I thought this was a really entertaining match. Multi-person matches are always difficult to pull off but these guys did it well. Everyone got their chance to shine and in the first surprise win of the night, Baron Corbin came out on top by pinning AJ Styles, easily the biggest victory of his career. And I was okay with it. There’s absolutely zero chance of Corbin leaving Elimination Chamber with the title but they’re still trying to build him as a main-event player and having him pick up the win here was the right move. Very good opener.

We get a Luke Harper solo promo next, which is something we really haven’t seen that much of in the past. He’s still got the creepy vibe going and says he’ll take out Randy Orton at Elimination Chamber. That match is all set for Sunday.

The promo train continues as we get a split-screen segment with Nikki Bella and Natalya and I thought this was okay. It wasn’t the best one that either one of them has done but it served its purpose without any physicality, which we knew we’d get from the announced dual contract signing we get later on. The two traded insults for a while before Nikki got up and left. Not bad, not bad.

I thought they might save Dolph Ziggler vs. Apollo Crews for the pay-per-view but we’re getting it here instead. After a couple of quick wins recently, Ziggler took a quick loss here but continued his new pattern of blasting people with chairs after the match as he let Crews have it. The crowd chanting “one more time” lets you know how much nobody is behind Apollo right now and it’s hard to be. I really like his athleticism but have thought since his debut that he should have stayed in NXT a bit longer. It’s just stale right now and Kalisto helping out doesn’t actually help anything. And yes, it is time for my weekly obligatory plea for Kalisto to go to the cruiserweight division. So we’re getting a 2-on-1 handicap match on Sunday. Meh.

The dual contract signing for Alexa Bliss vs. Naomi and Mickie James vs. Becky Lynch is up next and I really enjoyed this segment. I thought Mickie was amazing and her experience level really came into play here. Lynch was strong in her comeback and Alexa Bliss just keeps getting better and better. Her forgetting that Naomi was even in the ring was a really strong moment for her, even if it did make it seem that Naomi is the least important woman in the ring, even with two pinfall victories over the champ in recent weeks. Naomi is improving on the mic but just isn’t quite at the level of the other three. The obligatory brouhaha ensued and the babyfaces come out on top. I’m looking forward to both of these matches on Sunday. I think Becky vs. Mickie has a real chance to steal the show.

With not a lot of time to build for this pay-per-view, they threw together a 12-man tag match with all of the teams involved in this Sunday’s title match at Elimination Chamber. I don’t know if it’s just me but I was really hoping that American Alpha’s title reign would feel a bit more important. The division has been a little stale since Orton and Bray lost the belts but at least this was a decent match. And in another shocker, The Ascension picked up the pinfall victory here. Yes, you read that correctly. Hoping for a good match on Sunday.

For the first time ever, we’ve got John Cena facing Randy Orton on SmackDown. I’m not quite sure how that’s possible but here we are. And that’s really not a dig as I’ve always been a big fan of this rivalry and it wouldn’t have bothered me one bit had these two gone at it at WrestleMania. I think this match was put on to show that this match will not happen in Orlando and we actually haven’t seen it in a while. And as I expected, the two put on a good show with pay-per-view-type near falls and ref bumps and everything. Bray was sitting at ringside and got involved when the ref went out, which brought Luke Harper into the mix and following a very cool staredown, Harper leveled Wyatt and Cena hit an AA on Orton for the 1-2-3 to close the show.

I thought this was a good go-home episode. Storylines were furthered and feuds heated up and it was everything it needed to be. And there were a few surprise victories in there, which is never a bad thing.