At the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia, the WWE presented a fully packed card in front of 70,309 spectators. In the Main Event the Undertaker met Triple H, but Shawn Michaels and Kane also played a big role. Daniel Bryan and The Miz also faced each other in a match for the number 1 challenger for the WWE Championship, while AJ Styles defended the title against Samoa Joe.
Winner and continue SmackDown Tag Team Champions: The New Day. Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods played the match for the champions, the tempo was high and the atmosphere was good at the beginning of the show. A match without long-term effect, which was perfect as an opener. Meanwhile, the problem with the blue day division persists: Although there are many high-class teams, the division seems to be without a plan at least since the injury of Rowan, so that the New Day might hold the titles for a while.
Winner: Charlotte Flair via disqualification after Lynch freed herself from Figure Eight with her title. Typical WWE-Heel-Booking at the end, that the so far strong push of the Irishwoman weakens unnecessarily. Flair should continue to have a strong effect, Lynch should not give up the belt yet, so as usual the dirty agents have to be there. The feud between the two Horsewomen thus definitely continues.
Winner: John Cena & Bobby Lashley, after Cena Elias had handled Elias with an AA and the Lightning Fist, his “Sixth Move of Doom”. The most obvious result of the evening. Owens and Elias had their highlight at Raw, where they pulled more heat than any other heel (Reigns deliberately excluded) in recent years. Interestingly, the match was almost completely played by Lashley, Cena only came in at the end and took no bumps, but rewound his repertoire and made the crowd pleaser clear. The reason for this is the shooting of the movie “Project X”, because of which he wasn’t allowed to risk an injury.
Winners: The IIconics, where Peyton Rouyce pinned Naomi while Billie Kay sent Asuka to the barricade outside. Despite home advantage the biggest surprise of the evening, because Naomi seems always relevant because of her popularity, while the IIconics have been booted catastrophically for months. The two Australians and their compatriots were given the Feel Good moment here, but the feud will certainly continue and the Faces will win the Rubber Match.
Winner and still WWE Champion: AJ Styles per Calf Crusher after Samoa Joe “injured” his knee in this No DQ match, where tables and chairs were used cheerfully. It remains that Samoa Joe – similar to Shinsuke Nakamura before him – can’t win the title and after the clean win for Styles this could end due to the strong promos and segments Joe’s actually heavily booted feud.
SmackDown threatens more and more to lose any competition in this division as well, although you actually have a lot of talent in the roster. Styles continues to be overpoweringly portrayed, but after Joe it becomes difficult to find a serious challenger.
Winners: Ronda Rousey & The Bella Twins, in which Rousey forced Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan to knock off in parallel in the arm bar. In the run-up, Nikki Bella had speculated about a turn to build the title match between her and Rousey at Evolution. Instead, only cautious differences were indicated when Nikki wanted to start the match.
The challenge here is to make the match halfway thrilling – which won’t happen, as Rousey seems invincible – without depicting the bells too negatively, as you have invested too much in the twins with Total Divas and Total Bells. Meanwhile, the Riott Squad members were only supporting actresses, who won zero here and are likely to lose relevance again.
Page 1: Becky Lynch loses, Styles and Rousey continue to be champions
Page 2: The Shield crack Strowman, the Undertaker loses