WWE Stomping Grounds 2019 review: Highlights, takeaways and projections
By Luke Norris
Highlights, takeaways and what’s next for the Superstars of WWE following Sunday night’s Stomping Grounds pay-per-view event.
WWE held the first-ever Stomping Grounds pay-per-view event on Sunday night and while there was a bit of questionable booking thrown in there (yes, more Shane McMahon nonsense and silliness at the end), it was a better show than initially expected given the card. Even the matches that didn’t have the best build exceeded expectations and just about everyone looked great in the ring.
As we suspected would happen, the triple threat match for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship was relegated to the Kickoff Show and it was once again a shame. I give a lot of credit to the live crowd at the Tacoma Dome (pretty much all night, actually) for being invested in this matchup and actually paying attention, as many crowds don’t. Tony Nese, Drew Gulak and Akira Tozawa put on a very fun show and gave us the first of two title changes on the night, as Gulak pinned Tozawa to walk out with the gold, which should lead to another one-on-one match with Nese.
Let’s get to the main card, starting with the Raw Women’s Championship Match.
Raw Women’s Championship Match
Becky Lynch (c) vs. Lacey Evans
I thought this was a nice choice to open the main card. The live crowd was into the cruiserweight bout and this kept the momentum going. While this match showed some of Lacey Evans’ inexperience (and Becky Lynch was audibly calling the match), she still managed to overcome some of that with the strength of her character.
Evans’ skillset is a bit limited but the brutality when she gets that her attitude going is very good and very entertaining. This has been a nice push to get her noticed but it was the right move not putting the belt on her. This was a fun back-and-forth affair and The Man got the win with the Dis-arm-her. It was a good start to the show.
What’s next: Well, I initially thought that this might be the end of things between Lynch and Evans but then we all saw what happened at the end of the night. Evans doesn’t deserve another title shot but there isn’t a ton of time to build up a new challenger between now and Extreme Rules so we’ll see what happens there. More on these two in a bit.