WWE Crown Jewel 2018 review: What we learned, takeaways, future projections

WWE Universal Championship Match

Braun Strowman vs. Brock Lesnar

What we learned: I don’t even know where to begin with this monstrosity.

So I’m in the position here to actually be able to run down the entire match and that’s really sad. So Baron Corbin is out, and before the match starts, he drills Strowman with the Universal Championship. Lesnar picks up Braun for the first F5. 1-2-kickout. Okay, he picks him up again for a second F5. 1-2-kickout. This happens a third time and I actually begin to believe that Strowman might actually come back from this. Yeah, no.

Lesnar hits a fourth F5 but this one is actually out to the floor, and I will admit that this was pretty sweet. But Strowman gets back into the ring at nine as Lesnar is taking his gloves off. Strowman tries to get some offense in but runs into a fifth F5 and that’s that. Unbelievable.

There’s nothing to learn from this except that creative had no idea what to do when Roman Reigns left the company to battle leukemia. Apparently, they want Braun Strowman’s big moment to come on a bigger stage at a different time. So we’re now stuck with this whole thing again with Lesnar holding the WWE Universal Championship hostage. Great.

What’s next: The only thing we know right now is that Brock Lesnar will once again take on AJ Styles at Survivor Series. They put on a great match a year ago, and I’m sure this one will be good as well but that doesn’t save what happened at Crown Jewel. I don’t see Lesnar showing up for TLC in December or being a regular on Monday Night RAW so we just get to go through what we went through for more than a year. Terrible booking in my humble opinion. Should we just go ahead and give Braun Strowman the Royal Rumble win now? I assume that’s the plan, which leads to his big moment beating Brock at WrestleMania.