Ohhhh bollocks. So in case you missed it, I (biggest airquotes in the world) “won” the opportunity to compete against Oli for Pete’s Jam That Jampionship at the next major WWE show.
Unfortunately that major show is Crown bloody Jewel, bloody being an expletive AND a descriptor.
Crown Jewel is WWE’s first Saudi show since the Pandemic, and god how I’d secretly hoped that the pandemic had somehow made WWE’s contract with the Saudi regime evaporate, but no, no no, here we go again.
These shows, for a number of different reasons, SUCK. First, because they’re corporate deference to a regime that murders journalists and doesn’t have a definition of human rights in their dictionary, but also, these shows just suck.
They’re glorified house shows, but at least at house shows, nothing is booked to happen so all the babyfaces go over and people try to have an uncomplicated good time.
At these toilet brush, foul-smelling extravaganzas, not only are the cards mostly terrible, but they routinely come coupled with some flabbergastingly bad booking decisions.
There have only been five Saudi shows but even then this was a REALLY hard list to put together, that’s how uniformly arse these shows are.
I don’t want to watch Crown Jewel, but seeing as I have to, you all have to suffer with me.
I’m Adam, hailing from partsFUNknown and these are 10 Worst WWE Matches To Happen in Saudi Arabia
10. Shane McMahon vs. Dolph Ziggler – Crown Jewel 2018
Aka the match where a chub of bologna was crowned the Best Wrestler In The World, and like all true dads, he did it in his jeans.
The entire tournament was a bit topsy turvy, because lest we forget, a tournament to crown, and it bears repeated, the Best Wrestler in the World, in a tournament featuring Seth Rollins, Rey Mysterio, Kurt Angle and Randy Orton came down to Dolph Ziggler vs. The Miz, which is like a Best Film Ever Made tournament coming down to Mission Impossible 2 vs. Ice Age.
Like they’re both fine movies but… come on.
Miz suffered a bad case of kayfabe and had to forfeit the match, but Shane McMahon, who cares so much about your entertainment that he would repeatedly charge you to watch him wrestle, took off his jacket, put up his famously terrible dukes and beat Ziggler in 90 seconds.
And so, the best wrestler in the world was crowned amidst much rejoicing, one month to the day after the death of Jamal Khashoggi. F**k these shows, and it gets worse from here.
9. Tuwaiq Gauntlet – Super Showdown 2020
Man the Undertaker has had a ROUGH go of it under this Saudi deal, constantly thrown around like a snot-nosed kid bashing his favorite toy against the floor.
Who do you like, Vince asked the Saudis. We like the Undertaker, can he still wrestle? Urm, said Vince, looking over at Taker in his hospital bed, more machine now than man, kind of!!
These shows have all but eradicated the final vestigates of the Deadman’s precarious prestige.
The worst matches are yet to come, and I bet you can guess them, but lets briefly talk about the Tuwaiq trophy gauntlet, a match Tired Dave from Beyond the Grave won with a single bad looking chokeslam despite not being in it, then pissing off back to have a lie in a hammock without even taking the trophy with him.
The match that preceded Taker beating AJ Styles for no reason other than to build heat for him beating AJ Styles at WrestleMania, was real bad and boring too with R-Truth knocking off Bobby Lashley by tripping him over, Andrade by f**king accident, and then Erick Rowen by DQ, what a nailbiter.
Thanks for lasting over 20 goddamn minutes.
8. Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman – Crown Jewel 2018
So, in the wake of Roman Reigns vacating the title after revealing that his leukemia had returned, WWE advertised Lesnar vs. Strowman for the Universal Title.
For context, Brock had held the title for a year and a half, and fans were happy to have the title on weekly TV again.
Braun had just had his momentum crushed with a botched heel turn and being screwed by Brock out of his briefcase cash-in. Also, Strowman had already lost to Lesnar the year before.
Strowman wins in a lay-up right? Oh, you don’t know Saudi Arabia. It’s like Brock Lesnar’s paid by the hour in Saudi Arabia, WWE gets him in and out faster than Jim from American Pie.
Corbin clocks Strowman with the belt, Lesnar F5s him, Strowman kicks out. Another F5, another kickout, another F5 another kickout, f**king please let it end, another F5, another F5 and finally its over.
The match is an angle, but WWE still manage to stretch it out for over 3 boring, anger-inducing minutes, in a move that was probably designed to protect Braun, but ended up just having us watching him get his arse planted again and again and again. Awful, I hate this. I hate all of this.
7. Brock Lesnar vs. Cain Velasquez – Crown Jewel 2019
On the premiere episode of SmackDown on Fox, WWE booked Brock Lesnar to beat Kofi Kingston in one move so that they could have enough time to run an angle with the debuting Cain Velasquez.
Oh wow, said WWE, in all caps and comic sans, the epic rematch between Lesnar and Velasquez, for the WWE Championship, at Crown Jewel, how exciting!!
At Crown Jewel, Rey Mysterio brought his other son down to the ring, big fight feel, and the big fight was two boring cuddles, one kick, and then done in 90s seconds, with Velasquez tapping out the Kimura, not even on f**king camera!
You know what’s good about wrestling being fake, it’s that you can plan exciting things and then make exciting things happen.
This match was the first and only one to feature Cain Velasquez before the company went on to release him six months later. Bloody hell, thanks for coming.
The show was partially sold on this 90s seconds, at least Tyson Fury vs. Braun Strowman went a little longer, it wasn’t a lot better but at least it was… a thing. This was nothing. Sorry, Kofi.
6. Shane McMahon vs. Roman Reigns – Super Showdown 2019
The Best Wrestler In The World vs. The Big Dog. A sellout no matter which arena you book it. Crikey moses, this match though. 10 minutes that felt like 20.
Also, Shane McMahon DOMINATES Roman Reigns, with his crappy little punches like he’s a cat batting a bit of paper around a table.
Sure, it’s down to McIntyre interference, but so much of this match is Shane, drenched in sweat looking like Paulie from the Sopranos after he’s been chased by dogs through a rainstorm, pink to the point of kidney failure, praying to his dad that his heart won’t explode, holding Roman Reigns in endless rest holds while the crowd dies and dies and dies.
Look at him, look at him trying to do MMA on Roman. It’s like a CEO paying his fitness instructor to just let him beat him up for 10 minutes because he’s in a mid-life crisis.
And then, at the end of it, Shane McMahon wins!! He beats Roman!! After constantly beating The Miz for months on end, he knocks off the big pup too.
Goddamn, it would be funny if it wasn’t so head in your hands boring, which it is. It really really is. And it’s only the third worst match at Super Showdown 2019. What’s the second? That would be…
5. Lars Sullivan vs. Lucha House Party – Super Showdown 2019
I hate everyone and everything. But especially this match. But ESPECIALLY Bart.
Lars Sullivan debuted on the main roster in April 2019 and proceeded to have only one notable feud, a woeful series of matches against Lucha House Party, a stable made up of Kalisto, Gran Metalik and Lince Dorado, and the tagline for that stable might have well been ‘f**k you, cruiserweight classic’.
Before Sullivan got injured in that feud, benching him for over a year, they had this match at Super Showdown 2019 and to call it the drizzling s**ts would be to give IBS a bad name.
A three-on-one handicap match wherein the babyfaces cheat in order to gang up on the monster heel, ending the match in a DQ.
Just let that booking sink in for a little bit, what’s the point, what’s the f**king point of ANY OF THAT.
The five minutes that led up to one of the worst finishes on a major WWE show would be a grim omen for the kind of wrestling that would take place a year later because the match occurs to absolute silence, broken only by LHP’s ill-fated attempts to get a Lucha chant going.
It’s genuinely painful to watch as Sullivan manhandles the babyfaces, literally the only thing of interest is Corey Graves on commentary describing Lars as ‘something Hannibal Lecter dreamed up in a lab’ because that’s NOT WHO HANNIBAL LECTER IS.
To which Michael Cole responded ‘good point’. Jesus wept.
4. Brock Lesnar vs. Ricochet – Super Showdown 2020
How can a promotion waste Ricochet? HOW do you screw that up, one of the most imaginative, and awe-inspiring high-flyers, not only of his generation, but all time, how do you bollocks up someone that talented THIS bad.
At Super Showdown 2020, which is probably one of the most baffling pay-per-views WWE have ever produced, WWE booked Ricochet to challenge Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship and everyone around the world thought one thing.
Ricky’s not going to win, but it’ll be super fun to see what kind of Cirque du Soleil flippies he can pull over with a base as strong as Brock Lesnar. Oh, how wrong we were.
Brock Lesnar, doing what he does best in Saudi which is turn up, win, and piss off immediately, BURIED Ricochet.
The word buried is overused in wrestling journalism, often used to create undue emotion around a fairly standard loss. Not so here, this is a burial.
Ricochet does not get ONE move of offence on Lesnar, and is destroyed to such an extent that he looks really bad at wrestling, greatly diminishing his future starpower and THAT is what a burial truly is.
Horrific booking. Why not just have a match? You’re both there! Just have a f**king match. Maddening, and speaking of rage…
3. Goldberg vs. The Fiend – Super Showdown 2020
I mean… what do you even say about this that hasn’t been said in a thousand ways, in a thousand songs, all of which have the same lyrics, which is just grown adults sobbing into their hands, wondering why they pay their monthly subscription to the stupidest wrestling company in the world.
What else can you say about a match where the unstoppable final boss you’ve been building for half a year, even booking that terrible Hell in a Cell finish to showcase his unstoppability, just so that he beefs it when confronted with the world’s most redundant gimmick and gets fed his own giant clownshoes the month before WrestleMania.
Please what is the point? Please? Even without the worst booking decision of the year, the match is bad.
Spears, mandible claws, and a botched jackhammer.
That’s your lot, that’s your main event, and somehow, someway, it’s not Goldberg’s worst Saudi Arabia match. That would be…
2. Goldberg vs. The Undertaker – Super Showdown 2019
There are sentimental reasons keeping it off the top spot, but really this should be number one.
It is one of the worst matches of all time. It’s a match so bad that even WWE have included it in documentaries that THEY HAVE MADE, talking about how truly, overwhelmingly awful it is.
The type of bad where it transcends just lack of heat, lack of logic and crosses over into the very worst place, where it’s simply f**king dangerous.
Genuinely really dangerous wrestling, and no wrestling fan in their right mind wants to see that.
Goldberg concusses himself then nearly breaks The Undertaker’s neck.
It’s not hyperbolic to say that this was a few rotations away from being The Phenom’s last match, and ending his career in the most horrific way possible.
Undertaker hates it, Goldberg hates it so much he needed to eat Ziggler at SummerSlam as a form of redemption, even WWE hates it. But me personally, there’s one match I hate just that little bit more…
1. DX vs. Brothers of Destruction – Crown Jewel 2018
They brought Shawn Michaels out of retirement for this.
No look, I know, I KNOW that wrestlers retire and unretire and it’s not a big deal, but HBK had one of the few perfect retirements in professional wrestling, something actually inspirational.
He went out after the main event of mania, still reasonably physically fit, with plenty of dream matches still technically possible, but no, the stipulation was honored.
Wrestling is just storytelling at the end of the day, at least that’s the part of it I care the most about, and Shawn Michaels actually managed to have a story with a beginning, middle and end, and then there’s this.
This grotty little epilogue, paid for by bad people, where he broke retirement for a terrible, terrible match. Leave the memories alone.
No one came out of this looking good. Not the geriatric rebels DX who looked like they’d gone to their first leather bar to support their sons’ band and had to hide the fact they hated it there.
Not Kane who gets his bloody mask knocked off at one point, and not Taker, once again frustrated in his quest to have one more classic before he hung up his hat.
Like, I’m not made of stone, Taker tagging in to square up to HBK is a legit nostalgic moment, but Christ that’s five minutes into a match that is HALF AN HOUR LONG.
Shawn gets you still got it chants that slowly, over the course of the match, fade to grim silence, and if that doesn’t sum up the ugly, dark side of nostalgia that bleeds all over these cash-grab shows, what does.
See you all at Crown Jewel everyone!!!
To make sure you stay updated with all the latest wrestling news, add WrestleTalk.com to your Google Discover feed and follow us on Twitter!
Comments.
Loading comments…