10 WWE Clash Of Champions 2017 Impulse Reactions

5. Lumbering

Daniel Bryan Shane McMahon
WWE.com

There's been cautious optimism about WWE's recent proliferation of Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live!'s rosters with new females as a precursor for the first ever Women's Royal Rumble in 2018. The latest call-ups haven't been half as prepared as Bayley, Asuka et al were for their main stage bow, but the Rumble match is a numbers game, and quantity over quality are what Absolution and The Riott Squad promise and provide.

However, if this lopsided Lumberjack effort was in any way designed to give Vince McMahon a visual of the upstart stars scrapping over an elusive WrestleMania title shot, hopes of the revolutionary Rumble may now be circling the drain.

Already problematic due to the needless anti-Charlotte agenda loosely pursued by the six blue brand heels, the fragile arc cracked completely when Ruby Riott's gang at the existing also-rans began brawling with each other just for the hell of it anyway. To make matters worse, the brawling looked hokey and contrived, with the prevailing narrative about all women hating one another offering up an unpleasant callback to the Divas division's darkest days.

Charlotte and Natalya conspired to have (another) lousy match amongst all this nonsense too. In victory, 'The Queen' looked an idiot. And as for the biggest loser...

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Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett