Well, that happened.
It was the Road to WrestleMania and Raw proved yet again why it is the far inferior brand to Smackdown. We had strange booking decisions, few logical surprises and another absurdly brief main event involving Goldberg.
It felt more like a four-hour Monday Night Raw and not a valuable event on the way to WrestleMania 33. With all of this in mind, I present my list of the top five most surprising moments of the 2017 Fastlane:
#5 Filler matches
You know what I didn’t need to see on this Sunday night? An eight-minute unannounced match by Jinder Mahal, the jacked up jobber who rarely wins. It got even stranger as Rusev lost a ten-minute match to the beyond part-timer and 45-year old Big Show.
Did we really need to see the two foreign heels lose in long matches that had absolutely no build going into tonight? Since it really didn’t do any favors to any of the people involved, it certainly was a surprising moment that didn’t do anything more then add needless time to the already long night.
And don’t even get me started on the New Day’s ice cream segment. Sigh.
#4 Sasha Banks beats Nia Jax
We should have known that once Michael Cole mentioned Nia Jax’s pay-per-view streak that something fishy was going to happen. The match was kind of like I expected throughout its duration with Nia Jax controlling most of the offence. She did ward off Sasha’s submission but was then quickly pinned with a quick bridge for the surprising loss.
This is the sort of victory the WWE likes to give to the underdog face from time to time. However, since it seemed the WWE were building to a Fatal 4 Way Match at WrestleMania, this was a shock. Nia Jax needed a big victory to look strong going into the match, Sasha did not.
#3 Braun Strowman lost clean
Braun Strowman has been a rare bright spot on the Raw Brand in the last few months. He has been portrayed as an unstoppable monster and has shown a variety of creative offence in his matches. He is the sort of heel that Raw could really build their show around in the rest of 2017. Then they had him lose cleanly to Roman Reigns. Yeah.
Roman Reigns does get a bit of a bad rap with a lot of WWE fans. He puts on high-quality matches on a constant basis. But I think fans are sick of him always overcoming the odds and winning clean.
Once again Braun was the more impressive of the two in terms of his move set.
#2 Charlotte’s PPV streak ending at Fastlane
Whatever you think of Charlotte’s 16-0 PPV streak, it was an impressive stat. It seemed so logical that she would win the title at Fastlane, before finally losing that streak to Bayley at WrestleMania 33. It is the sort of big moment we have come to expect at the biggest show of the year. However, the WWE decided to end the streak at the pay-per-view before WrestleMania.
I am more than fine with Raw ending the hot potato game with the Raw Women’s Title but the way they decided to do it at Fastlane was strange and surprising, to say the least. Sasha and even Bayley, to an extent, acted as heels in cheating Charlotte out of a title win.
It is strange to see the heel having a legit complaint as to why the match wasn’t thrown out with the interference. It does lead to some interesting booking but it is a bizarre way to end the streak.
#1 Goldberg wins the Universal Title in 22 Seconds
I get that Goldberg is a larger than life figure but since none of his pay-per-view matches have lasted for more than a few minutes, it is still surprising to see the WWE give the Universal Title to a 50-year-old, who hasn’t wrestled for the company in over ten years. However, I think the larger and more surprising moment here was how the ending actually occurred.
It was certainly fun and expected to see Kevin Owens play the chicken heel and avoid Goldberg for many enjoyable minutes. But just as Kevin Owens was about to actually wrestle Goldberg, it was time for Chris Jericho to show up and cause a distraction.
Was it necessary for Goldberg to have a Jericho distraction to actually beat Kevin Owens? It didn’t seem too necessary to do so to set-up any future matches between Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens in the future.
This, of course, led to Goldberg beating Kevin Owens in twenty seconds. I know we have seen it before but it didn’t make it any less shocking. Kevin Owens had held the title for nearly six months and lost it to a guy who hasn’t wrestled a total of more than five minutes in the last ten years.
I guess to say it is surprising is an understatement. Who would have thought we would have two part timers wrestling for the Raw’s biggest title at WrestleMania 33? I don’t know if it is the smartest choice but it is certainly led to another surprising Goldberg moment at Fastlane.
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