WWE King and Queen of the Ring 2024 

 

May 25, 2024 

 

We’re in Saudi. Try not to report anything the government don’t like, or you’ll get beheaded. Hosts are the usual scrubs.  

 

 

WWE World Women’s Championship 

Becky Lynch (c) vs. Liv Morgan  

Lynch won this in a battle royal last month. If only there was some sort of tournament where they could have given the winner the belt? Becks is wearing a suit to wrestle in. It must be fucking roasting. If I had to wrestle in a suit I’d probably pass out. This whole match is bad. You know it’s bad when comms are saying “didn’t get all of it”. They have zero chemistry. Liv is about as convincing as she has been her entire career. She’s been in this promotion for TEN YEARS now.  

 

There’s one good spot in this match. One. Becky throws a decent punch at one point. Liv adds nothing until the Rings of Saturn. She should reinvent herself as a mat grappler. Dirty Dom comes down here to throw a chair in and Liv can’t even slide the chair out of the ring without fucking it up. Becks takes a DDT on the chair and Oblivion finishes. New champion. They stunk up the joint here.  

 

WWE Intercontinental Championship 

Sami Zayn (c) vs. Bronson Reed vs. Chad Gable  

Zayn and Gable is the money match following Gable’s heel turn. Not sure why Reed is included.  

WWE realising they could just put Sami on these shows without pushing some terrible Saudi wrestler has dramatically improved the cards. The crowd are rabid for Zayn and that massively helps the match. Triple threat matches can get very disconnected and they’re tough to get right. You usually need at least two great wrestlers in there. This is, in their defence, perfectly decent and a huge improvement on the opener.  

 

They allow everyone to shine in their own way. Gable with the grappling, Reed with the power and Sami holding it all together. Gable and Reed would be a decent tag team. Gable and Otis have a nice little story where Otis is finally fed up with Gable for being a jackwad. This leaves Sami to finish Reed with the Helluva Kick. This was pretty decent and the story wasn’t bad either. Otis is over, baby. ***1/4 

 

Queen of the Ring Final 

Lyra Valkyria vs. Nia Jax 

Nia Jax? NIA JAX?? There are so many good wrestlers in this promotion. What the fuck is she doing in the final? I would have taken literally anyone else in the bracket in this match.  

I like the idea of Lyra playing the underdog and lucking her way into the final but that would only work if the opponent was a star here. Wrestling Nia won’t do anything for her. Wrestling Biana or Jade would be huge for her.  

Corey decides to say he doesn’t know much about Lyra. She’s worked for the same company as you for FIVE YEARS, Corey, you fucking hack. I don’t expect you to get stuff right about people from other companies because WWE, but she’s been here since before Covid.  

 

Lyra tries hard here but there’s only so much you can get out of Nia. Basically because she can’t bump and can’t sell. So, she has to completely dominate the match. Every time. Which wouldn’t be the end of the world if she had that ‘Vader-like’ presence and style, but she doesn’t have that either.  

 

The match isn’t badly put together but the execution just isn’t there. Not on Lyra’s part, who does a good job, but with Nia and her extreme limitations. At least the finish looks cool. Lyra trying to get a powerbomb out of the corner and Nia just sitting on her. And now we have another issue; Nia is going to get a title shot, presumably at Bayley, at Summerslam. 

 

Backstage: Byron gets a word with Becky Lynch, who rambles all over the place and says she’s getting a re-match on Monday because she had a clause in her contract. 

 

King of the Ring Final 

Gunther vs. Randy Orton 

Midcard Jey Uso ruined the potential Gunther-Dragunov semi, sadly. What a complete waste of air he is. Imagine if they’d done Uso vs. Tama as the final? Haha.  

Old man Orton looks calm. He’s not scared of Gunther. Not like a lot of the boys he chops to pieces. Orton comes from the era of big lads too, so he looks the same size at Gunther. Another downside to WALTER dropping the poundage. His sheer girth intimidated people before. For a ‘monster heel’, he’s smaller than Orton.  

 

They get away with working ‘smart’ here. It’s a sluggish match but the crowd are all fired up for it based on their characters. Gunther goes after something several times and gives up immediately. Like Randy has a code word for ‘no, not that’ and fires it off every time. Or he’s suddenly become indecisive.  

 

The match is fine but it’s a prime demonstration of how WWE used to undermine Indie stars when they signed for the fed. Gunther looks like nothing special here. No aura. No special vibes. He’s just a guy wrestling Orton. That said, the match is good. It’s two talented wrestlers beating each other up. The initial sluggishness feels like intentional ‘building’.  

 

The ending is a catastrophe. Orton, and his bad knee, get the RKO, which Gunther takes a horrible bump for. Gunther is supposed to attack the knee to get out of the pin. It doesn’t come across properly and the Gunther wins with a roll up, where Orton’s shoulders weren’t down. Or even close to being down.  

This was a middling affair, with long sluggish parts but it then got good and then they fucked the finish up. But hey, if it means Gunther knocks off Priest at Summerslam it was worth it. ***

 

WWE Universal Championship 

Cody Rhodes (c) vs. Logan Paul 

Cody’s entrance music is so good because of him muttering about his family at the start. All wrestler entrance music should have the worker muttering about themselves at the start.  

They get some local jabronie to ring announcer for the main event. He’s crap. “Good job” says Michael Cole, not wanting to get beheaded by the regime. Cody cannot control his worst instincts here and wants to do silly little counters with Logan. He’s all “I want to keep up with this guy”. Just stick to your strengths, brrrrother.  

 

It’s like when Hulk Hogan faced a technical guy and did that one tiny bit of counter wrestling he knew. It looks shit, and no one cares. The aim of this match seems to be to make Cody look like shit. They have some plant at ringside with a Prime bottle and another plant with Logan’s brass knucks. I hate it when they include “fans” in angles. Cole pipes up and calls Logan a “loser”. Oh, shit, that’s fighting talk. This little bitch is making Michael Cole look tough. What the fuck is that about?  

 

Logan’s issues here include a load of goofy shite but him going the Buckshot Lariat (and missing) right after escaping a Figure Four and complaining of potentially getting a broken leg is just crap. A lot of their work is loose and sloppy and it’s unforgiveable. As the leader in the match, Rhodes should know better but he’s allowing Logan’s worst tendencies. They should have worked all this out pre-match. Cody needs to learn an important phrase; “that doesn’t work for me, brother”.  

 

Cody’s stupidity extends to hitting a Cody Cutter on the announce table. He’s taking all of that bump. The best part of this match is how they pan the camera around Logan before he dives through the table. Having the camera pan around him on the buckles is just cool. I don’t make the rules.  

 

They do some more dopey stuff, culminating in a ref bump. Cody breaks out the Kudo Driver, because why the fuck not at this point. Logan goes after the knucks and the jabronie ring announcer stops him. Cody hits a bunch of Crossroad’s to retain. This was fucking awful. All of the worst WWE tropey nonsense in the same place. Aided by them doing stupid BASICS and then layering on more and more bullshit on top of it. I’ve always liked Logan Paul, but this is handily his worst match.  

 

The 411: 

Most of the Saudi shows have existed on the premise that effort is not required. The WWE roll into town, take the oil money and roll out again. Putting on mediocre shows, filled with gimmicky crap. This show was surprisingly short on gimmicks and yet maintained the standard of Saudi shows; middling. Nothing on this show felt special, or important. Hell, the opener was a title change and it didn’t feel important. Most of the show was badly wrestled, badly produced and badly thought out. Two exceptions; the Zayn triple-threat was actually pretty good and Gunther vs Orton survived a dull start to make something of itself. Overall though, the show felt unimportant and forgettable.  

 

My wrap up on Backlash was that the WWE had put on a poor show but the crowd was good. Same again here. It astounds me they have a locker room filled with exceptional talent and they can’t put on good shows. The Triple H era may get big decisions right, but it’s producing the same weak standard of work the company has always produced. This felt overly slick, plastic and fake. Night two of Wrestlemania feels a very, very long time ago.