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Luke Harper is back!
WWE Clash of Champions was a mostly predictable night of professional wrestling. You had many champions retain their titles, a controversial ending to the RAW Women’s Championship match, a shocking return and a truly horror style ending.
The WWE seems to be in an interesting place heading into the next WWE Draft and SmackDown’s debut on FOX. Let us hope they keep the momentum going as they get ready to compete against All Elite Wrestling in just a few weeks.
As I am still figuring out if I should be worried Bray Wyatt is going to lose at Hell in A Cell, I will try to distract myself and present my list of the top five most surprising moments of WWE Clash of Champions 2019:
#5. Very few title changes
Clash of Champions was a rare show that actually had all eleven WWE main roster titles defended. The WWE doesn’t always do the best job of building that many meaningful title feuds at the same time. The way they generally build feuds is with many frequent title changes. That didn’t happen on Sunday night in Charlotte.
Only two titles changed hands on Sunday night with the RAW and SmackDown Tag Team Championship finding new champions. A lot of the titles never seemed to be in much danger. AJ Styles destroyed Cedric Alexander. Bayley cheated to beat Charlotte Flair in under four minutes. Even R-Truth held onto his 24/7 Championship and that title changes hands literally all the time.
It is good to see the WWE give its Champions a chance to build their credibility with longer title reigns. Kofi Kingston has been a WWE Champion for over 160 days now. Who would have seen that coming at the beginning of the year?
See WWE Clash Of Champions Results, Highlights of event, & more on WWE Clash Of Champions Results page
#4. Robert Roode pins Seth Rollins clean
Robert Roode hasn’t exactly been a major part of the RAW brand this year. So, it was truly surprising to see him form a new tag team with perennial loser Dolph Ziggler and become the number one contender to the RAW Tag Team Titles just a few weeks ago. It certainly wasn’t the most obvious choice to fight Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman at Clash of Champions, but anything can happen with the right booking.
The announcers certainly sold repeatedly the story that Braun Strowman and Seth Rollins couldn’t get along in a meaningful enough way to retain their tag team titles. However for most of this tag match they actually did. The Tag Champions were running through their opponents. At least they were until Braun accidentally shoulder tackled Robert Roode into Seth Rollins. This distraction was quickly followed up by Roode executing his finisher on the WWE Universal Champion for the clean victory. To see Bobby Roode go from being a frequent WWE Main Event competitor to winning a Tag Title in a few weeks is a surprising sight.
#3 A confusing end to the RAW women's championship match
How long are refs knocked out by chair shots? It seems a side hit from Becky Lynch destroyed the referee on Sunday night. May he one day recover from this devastating attack.
The RAW Women’s Championship match was one of the better matches on the show. Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch are two of the better competitors in the WWE Women’s Division. It was on its way to being an excellent match until Sasha Banks started to cheat.
Sasha Banks had many attempts at cheating her way to victory, but was stopped every time. Then the referee was hit by the chair and knocked out for a long while. This allowed Banks and Lynch go up to the concession area and spill a lot of mustard everywhere. They had many minutes to brawl around the entire arena before getting back into the ring. Just as Becky Lynch was about to exact her revenge on Sasha Banks, several WWE officials arrived. Did it really take them minutes to finally get out to the ring?
We then learned that Becky Lynch was disqualified for hitting the ref with the chair. This was despite the fact WWE officials had many minutes to actually figure out what happened, but they still blamed Lynch despite many clear examples of Sasha Banks cheating. It was a bizarre ending to a very solid match.
#2 Luke Harper costs Roman Reigns his match
It seems that we would never see Luke Harper again in the WWE. All the online reports seemed to point to Luke Harper simply sitting out the reminder of his WWE contract. I guess that is why this was one of the most shocking moments of the Clash of the Champions pay-per-view.
The entire Roman-Rowan feud has been quite a mess. It has dragged on for many months with no real purpose or direction. The match on Sunday was going fine. The two wrestlers were going at a slow pace and were using a decent amount of weapons match as well. But with Rowan controlling a majority of the action it seemed to be setting up another classic comeback for The Big Dog. Then Luke Harper arrived.
It would certainly make sense for Harper to assist Rowan based on their shared history, but to see it so unexpectedly on Sunday and cost Roman Reigns a rare loss, was a truly surprising moment. I look forward to seeing where this angle goes next.
#1 Seth Rollins defeats Braun Strowman clean
Poor Braun Strowman.
Braun Strowman seems to have all the tools that WWE management would want in a main event superstar. He is a bigger then life star that is capable of incredible athleticism that is quite rare for someone his size. But for whatever reason, Strowman is not given the chance to lead the company in the main event scene.
This pattern continued on Sunday. He had a solid ten minute match with Seth Rollins. His Frog Splash off the top rope was quite impressive, but then Seth Rollins was able to hit multiple finishing moves and secure another victory.
It is hard to see how Braun can recover from so many clean losses in such important moments. Hopefully he can recover and win the Universal Championship one day.
WWE also saved the best surprise for last. The WWE has gotten pretty good at the post-credit style scene. The Fiend is really like a horror monster and always appears in such dramatic fashion. While I have worries about The Fiend being in a Universal Championship feud this early, I cannot deny his character has portrayed perfectly so far. I am excited to see what he does next.
