WWE Week in Review: Braun Strowman impresses, Battle Royal controversy

WWE SmackDown Live

SmackDown Live had a heartbreaking start to it as Daniel Bryan brought out Naomi, whose leg injury is much more severe than everyone thought and she has to relinquish her title. Bryan discusses how he’s had to do the same and you honestly hate to see these things happen. Naomi fought long and hard to get to where she is and it’s extremely unfortunate that she won’t be able to take the title back to her hometown for WrestleMania. She looked truly sad and it was sad to watch but business is still business and a new champ has to be crowned. Alexa Bliss was absolutely perfect as she smirked at Naomi and got so much heat for it. Perfect heel move. She says she was ready for her rematch anyway and that Bryan should just give her the title back but we’re getting a match instead and Alexa has to battle Becky Lynch to crown a new champ. Very strong opener despite the disappointing Naomi situation.

As for the match, it wasn’t the best match that we’ve gotten from these two and the commercial break certainly didn’t help matters. You don’t break up title matches with a break. You just don’t. But it was a good back and forth and Alexa Bliss became a two-time champion with a cheap win, which works perfectly given her persona, and Mickie James came down to celebrate. She tried to get in some shots on Becky but was run off and their feud clearly isn’t over. It will be very interesting to see how they move forward now that plans have had to change.

It’s then promo time as we get words from Ambrose, Kalisto and The Miz regarding tonight’s battle royal main event and they’re followed up by Natalya telling Renee Young that Nikki Bella is just a cheap ripoff of her. Moving on.

American Alpha essentially squashed Breezango or Fabreeze or whatever we’re calling this duo these days. Not much substance here but The Usos promo following the match was pretty solid and it’s the best one they’ve done in a while.

It’s time for more promos as AJ Styles, Dolph Ziggler, Mojo Rawley and Luke Harper get their two cents in about the battle royal, which is followed by Nikki getting her rebuttal in ahead of the Falls Count Anywhere Match with Natalya later in the evening and throws in a cheesy “broken Hart” line to finish.

At long last, the Nikki Bella vs. Natalya feud has seemingly come to a close. This is the match that these two should have had at Elimination Chamber and I thought it came off pretty well. There were a few botches here and there but I liked the pace and I liked the aggression that they showed, which was sorely lacking in their previous meeting. They got a lot of time to work and with this being the last match in the program, I was more than fine with it. We saw some weapons get involved and some table spots and Natalya’s suplex on the ramp was excellent. And it fed right into Nikki’s next feud. Once the action went backstage, and you knew it would, Nikki was once again thrown into Maryse before the action headed back to the ring. Only this time, Maryse didn’t just take it and came out to beat Nikki with a pipe, costing her the match and leading us right into that mixed tag we’ve all known was coming. This was a good finish to the feud and a good setup for the next one and gets a little help later on. I’m hoping that Natalya can now get herself into the title picture somehow.

Baron Corbin and Apollo Crews are up next on the promo train and I think we’ve covered all of the participants not named John Cena. Bray Wyatt then says that whomever wins the battle royal will simply be the sacrificial lamb at WrestleMania and reiterates that Randy Orton has the keys to the kingdom.

Now, I’m usually not a fan of battle royals (minus the Royal Rumble but that’s its own separate thing) but this one was pretty solid, perhaps because it was just 10 guys. It’s no surprise that Mojo went out first but for him to be included at all was a big step in his career. The weird Crews-Kalisto-Ziggler thing doesn’t look to be over and I guess they’re not going to keep Crews on the shelf and repackage him like I wished for last week. He eliminated Ziggler but not before Dolph had eliminated Kalisto. Not happy with his exit, Ziggler went back to the chair well and destroyed Kalisto with it, distracting Crews and allowing him to be tossed by Baron Corbin, who continued his own program with Dean Ambrose at the outset of the match. Ambrose had vowed to go after him and he did just that and this program is picking up more and more steam by the week.

Following the elimination of Crews, John Cena and AJ Styles renewed their rivalry and even in the short time they had with each other, it was still very good. Luke Harper, Ambrose and Corbin beat on each other and that left an opening for The Miz to once again mock Daniel Bryan and starts in with the corner dropkicks. But he’s tossed out suddenly by Cena, who also eliminated him from the Elimination Chamber and there’s the continuation of that with more to come.

Corbin was out next at the hands of Ambrose but The Lone Wolf gets a little revenge by pulling him to the floor for End of Days. The Miz sneaks back in and eliminates John Cena and you can just go ahead and officially book that for WrestleMania. So we’re down to AJ Styles, Luke Harper and Dean Ambrose, who hadn’t been officially eliminated. The three of them battle it out on the apron for a short time and Ambrose is the next to go, leaving Harper and Styles to battle for the title shot at WrestleMania. They tease some eliminations until both men are finally outside the ring and crash to the floor simultaneously. And yes, it’s quite obvious that Styles hit first but nobody’s perfect, okay? So just stop whining about it. Bryan comes out and says that since the refs didn’t see who really won, a match between Luke Harper and AJ Styles will take place next week to decide a winner. And I’m okay with that. There are five more episodes before WrestleMania and we need main events. It’s only going to make Luke Harper look better moving forward and I think the match is going to be fantastic.

Once again, SmackDown Live was superior to Monday Night RAW in just about every way. The blue brand’s tag team division is in a bit of trouble and lost that battle this week but outside of that, I thought this was another solid episode.