WWE Royal Rumble 2018 review: What we learned, takeaways, future projections

Triple Threat Match for the WWE Universal Championship

Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Braun Strowman vs. Kane

What we learned: We learned here that there are no plans to take the WWE Universal Championship off of Brock Lesnar before WrestleMania 34. If they were going to do it, this was their best chance.

This match went exactly as I (and probably just about everyone else) thought it would go. With Brock Lesnar, Braun Strowman and Kane in the ring together, you know it’s not going to be pretty, and they got after it right away. Now, I’m not sure if they planned to be as stiff in the beginning as they were, but Strowman hit Lesnar with a HARD knee to the face before Kane came in with a chokeslam. Brock wasn’t down long and he fired back at Braun with a HARD punch to the head that looked very real. They had to cut the audio for a moment as Lesnar yelled at Strowman so I don’t think he was very happy. Made for good TV, though.

As for the rest of the match, it was full of hard-hitting action but the crowd just wasn’t into it. Tables played a big part here and they just didn’t seem to be working correctly. The one Lesnar crashed through in the ring early on didn’t have an issue, but once they went to the outside, things looked a little awkward. Strowman was the first to go through an announce table with an F5 from Lesnar, and there was a slight delay there. But Lesnar tipping the table over on him told a good story as Strowman had done the same to him months ago. Kane got the next F5 onto the other table and that looked really awkward as it didn’t budge at all initially. It collapsed a few seconds later but it didn’t have quite the impact.

Back inside after everyone had recovered, Strowman hit a couple of powerslams on Brock but Kane made the save. Back up, Lesnar threw Braun out and hit Kane with another F5 to pick up the win. This was decent enough and did feature some hard spots, minus that awkward botched table spot in the corner with Strowman, but it was pretty predictable.

What’s next: Kane was there solely to take this pin, but I did like seeing him in one more main title match. After 20 years, I think he earned that and looked good throughout this story.

As for Braun and Brock, I don’t know how they finish this up. Braun was yelling that he hadn’t been beaten but Brock just held up the title as the victor. There’s no way that Vince is going to pull the plug on Brock vs. Roman at this point, right? I would say that maybe we’d get Brock vs. Braun at Elimination Chamber but Strowman shouldn’t have to take a clean loss on his way to New Orleans for whatever he’s going to be doing. If they do decide to go with Lesnar vs. Strowman for the title at Elimination Chamber, someone else has to get involved to cost him the match and that has to lead to a match at WrestleMania. Perhaps they’ll give Braun some other gold in a program with The Miz for the Intercontinental Championship. It’s a stretch but it actually could be a very good program. There’s always the possibility of a Triple Threat with Brock, Braun and Roman at ‘Mania but I need a break from the multi-man matches for a while.