Jordan Huie here with a rundown of the card for WWE Crown Jewel 2019.
For the kickoff, we have…
A 20-Man Battle Royal, Where The Winner Faces AJ Styles For The United States Championship Later In The Night
In a rare instance, we have all twenty entrants listed in advance. Granted, there’s a non-zero chance that they change them at the last minute and/or add more at random. Nonetheless, the full list for now is right here:
Sunil Singh vs. Mojo Rawley vs. Erick Rowan vs. R-Truth vs. Sin Cara vs. The Brian Kendrick vs. Titus O’Neil vs. Tony Nese vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Shelton Benjamin vs. Apollo Crews vs. Buddy Murphy vs. Andrade vs. Drake Maverick vs. Eric Young vs. Luke Harper vs. Cedric Alexander vs. Heath Slater vs. Humberto Carrillo vs. No Way Jose
By the story on TV, obviously Humberto Carrillo is the favorite right now and barring someone else coming in at random, he most certainly will. It helps that all the otherwise most likely winners are all heel. Erick Rowan is the most likely final elimination. The final participants are probably gonna be Humberto, Rowan, Andrade, Buddy Murphy, Cedric Alexander… the likes of Sin Cara, maybe Tony Nese might also get showcased and make it a ways. R-Truth will probably last a while for funsies also.
This of course leads to…
WWE United States Championship: AJ Styles (c) vs. TBD
Yeah, I’d expect it to be Humberto, which would be a really fun rematch. He might even win! Who knows, really?
Mansoor vs. Cesaro
Mansoor spawning into existence exclusively during Saudi Arabian shows. The homegrown boy looking for his first singles victory on TV here against Cesaro, who will surely aid him to having a very good match before eating a fat L. The real proof of just how much the Crown Prince pays Vince McMahon is that he’s actually willing to have hometown favorites get the win in Saudi Arabia.
Lacey Evans vs. Natalya
Well, this is cool atleast. Way, way overdue, but cool that women are finally allowed on these now. It’s a big precedent for them and for the country, so I guess they can finally say they’ve done some level of good with this, even if ultimately it’s all gonna be PR.
But yeah. The two of them have actually had a lot of decent matches and, being honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the most motivated competitors on this show. Nattie will have to get the babyface win for the feel-good of it, I think.
Nine-Team Tag Team Turmoil For The WWE World Cup
The tandems for this one are as follows…
The New Day (Big E and Kofi Kingston), The Viking Raiders, Heavy Machinery, Lucha House Party (Lince Dorado, Gran Metalik, and/or Kalisto), Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder, The Revival, Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode, The B-Team & The O.C.
So this will either be very long or a rushed mess. Lotta teams in this. And honestly, putting it at nine when you have plenty other teams, it’s a little suspect to me. I could easily buy their being a secret tenth team. And if that’s gonna be anybody it’s proooobably AOP. Failing that, perhaps New Day win for a feel good and retroactively justify the title match against the Revival that they’re getting this Friday.
Braun Strowman vs. Tyson Fury
So this… should probably be pretty damn short. But who knows, maybe they’ll surprise us.
It’s sorta rare that they put over the WWE guy in these kinds of matches, atleast to my recollection. But I kinda can’t imagine Strowman not winning, given that he’s Braun and the story that they’ve told thus far. Plus unlike Cain Velasquez, nobody is talking about Fury like he’s gonna be back after this. So gotta have Braun over here.
Team Hogan (Roman Reigns, Rusev, Ricochet, Shorty G, and Ali) (w/ Hulk Hogan) vs. Team Flair (Randy Orton, King Corbin, Bobby Lashley, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Drew McIntyre) (w/ Ric Flair)
Yep, this’ll be a match.
Babyface side will win, feel fairly confident on that. Action should be good. Not a ton else I can think to say on this.
Falls Count Anywhere Match That Cannot Be Stopped For Any Reason For The WWE Universal Championship: Seth Rollins (c) vs. The Fiend
It’s unfortunate that we have the Fiend challenging for the world title on Halloween and I can’t really get any joy out of that whatsoever. Partly on how much they’ve already screwed this whole thing up at Hell In A Cell, and largely because… well yannow, WWE Crown Jewel and all.
Should be a cool match, and the Saudi crowd won’t revolt at anything they do so that’s nice. It’d almost be hilarious to me if they had the Fiend win here instead of HIAC, and… I mean, who knows? They’d need some kind of malarkey to have Rollins retain without decisively beating him, given the added stip.
WWE Championship: Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Cain Velasquez
This will be interesting. Cain funnily hasn’t showed much aptitude for wrestling like an MMA fighter. This is because what training he has done for pro wrestling has been in the lucha libre style. Cain actually impressed and surprised many with his debut in AAA. But that was with an athletic, high flying style, in a six-man tag match. WWE won’t let him do any of that here, they brought him here to be an MMA guy. This bout with Lesnar might as well be in a different universe.
Funnily enough, if the Fiend beats Rollins and takes the Universal title to SmackDown, the cleanest way to do things would be to have free agent Cain Velasquez win the WWE title and then sign with Raw to be with his buddy Rey. I am in no way predicting that happens and frankly if it does, I’ll be cackling considering he’s technically still in the midst of his wrestling training.
I opt out of watching Saudi Arabia shows, I’ve done so with all but the initial Greatest Royal Rumble for reasons that probably don’t need explaining here. But that being the case, you won’t be seeing my usual live recap here. I will have the basic results of the show after the fact however.
