10 WWE Fastlane 2018 Impulse Reactions
Stars And Stripes
The build-up to Fastlane was anything other than a rip-roaring freewheeling adventure the title promised. Save for the game efforts of AJ Styles bell-to-bell, SmackDown Live! has been diabolical for months, with the blue brand's banal battles fittingly putting a bullet in the current era of single-show pay-per-views.
In early-2018, WWE announced that supercards would be super-sized to include matches from both shows. Many ruefully compared this to 2007, when the company last abandoned the split show philosophy, just as many will probably compare Clash Of Champions and this very show to Bad Blood 2003 and No Mercy 2005 as rational arguments for the change.
The show wasn't so much a fast lane as an overtaking one - the company just about got where they needed to go in time for WrestleMania's hastening approach, but several stars were cut up in the process and at least one ended up in the hard shoulder. Marginally better than receiving the cold one, but will it ever actually be Rusev Day?
Still, better off done and dusted than still to come, eh? WWE would do well to obliterate all pay-per-views between Royal Rumble and WrestleMania if truth were told, even in cases such as this where the event marginally over-delivered on middling expectations. Pour one out for Fastlane as the last of the single-brand era, then. Better that than drink-driving on the Road To WrestleMania anyway, the creative team are already writing like they've had enough...
10. Mixed Emotions
'The King Of Strong Style' could only share a throne with the WWE Champion himself when it came to sartorial choices on the show (more on that later), but a fiery opener with Rusev proved that Shinsuke Nakamura was finally willing to earn his stripes.
Questions have been raised of Nakamura's validity atop the card despite assured displays dotted throughout his NXT and WWE runs thus far. It's an imperfect resumé no doubt, but he seems to be hitting form at just the right time after surviving risky booking against cult favourite Rusev as a follow-up to his dramatic Royal Rumble triumph.
The audience was predictably divided on the night, with 'Rusev Day' chants battling ones for Shinsuke's surname despite Aiden English's transparent heeling on the locals in his introductory effort. The buzz carried the contest through an indifferent middle third before 'The Bulgarian Brute' hoofed the WrestleMania contender inside out countering the Kinshasa.
From then, Nakamura's often-indifferent babyface selling was exquisite. Rebounding from the vicious strike, he fired back and literally slipped out of Rusev's grasp to nail variants of his finisher to the back and front of his opponent's ample dome. 'Rusev Day' is still frustratingly on hold, but in every sense and at just the right time, Shinsuke's looking good.