12 WWE Clash Of Champions 2019 Impulse Reactions
Shock showings from The Fiend and Luke Harper steal the headlines from the clashing Champions.
WWE television has been superb of late. Well, Monday Night Raw has been superb. The King Of The Ring has provided valuable and valued stakes to major midcard matches that have gone over huge with live crowds, the Women's Championship scene has been enlivened by shocking Sasha Banks and Bayley heel turns and Even Seth Rollins has had an inoffensive month compared to some of the sh*tty programmes he's engaged in on screen and sh*tty Twitter feuds he's negotiated off.
SmackDown hasn't been great, but then the blue brand wasn't in half the bother the flagship was during the post-WrestleMania slump. It has struggled though - the King Of The Ring also aided the gang on Tuesdays, but the collapse of several significant stories since SummerSlam has been disheartening ahead of the show's big move to Fox in October.
Picking apart the two shows may seem pointless when assessing the quality of a pay-per-view, but television is, for now, the talk of the industry. SmackDown is on the move from USA ahead of NXT taking up a new slot with the Network. Raw will now be thrashed by Monday Night Football most weeks, but what if AEW's TNT vehicle also posts numbers that give WWE cause for concern?
As with this very intro, Clash Of Champions was somewhat shunted off to the side before airing, in spite of the solid foundations. What conversation would it generate in the aftermath?
12. Drew Gulak (c) Vs. Humberto Carrillo Vs. Lince Dorado
From his position on the Kickoff panel, Jonathan Coachman threw to this match with the sort of enthusiasm that betrayed how blindingly f*cking obvious it was that it would be the evening's opening match.
Fans didn't miss another mini-banger this time. Before the bell even rang, the company played a few production tricks to try and fill or mask many of the empty seats, but the wrestlers themselves seemed to slow their roles in a flabby midsection as commentators couldn't avoid mentioning the "WWE Universe still filing in".
Escaping the arm-bar portion of the match, Drew Gulak's divide and conquer strategy worked to a point until the three set about killing each other with the typical festival of high spots. Results there were mixed - a few slightly clumsy botches robbed a wild ending sequence of big pops as much as the half-empty arena, but Gulak's german suplex cover on Dorado after booting Humberto Carrillo to the floor at least played to how focussed he was on retaining the gold above all else.
A showpiece for a division that could be on its last legs, this was not.