6 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Clash At The Castle: Scotland (Results & Review)

2. Missing The Moment

As a fan, sometimes you have to give stories time to breathe, even if you’re excitedly anticipating the next developments and feel like it’s taking too long to get there. But then, there are times when it’s pretty obvious that the writers miss the mark and overshoot, thinking they have more runway than they actually do.

Case in point, the Intercontinental Championship feud between Sami Zayn and Chad Gable has been steaming toward Alpha Academy finally disintegrating (whether via Gable ditching them or Otis turning on Chad). The mid-match melodrama has been off the charts, but it’s all been in service of delivering this eventual payoff.

The problem is that Clash at the Castle was the perfect time to pull the trigger, and instead we got another placeholder of a match, with tension between Otis and Gable growing and Chad once again getting thwarted and losing yet another title match. The Creed Brothers, long expected to join Gable as a new heel stable, were nowhere to be seen.

The question has to be asked: What are they waiting for? And why should the Creeds want to align with a mentor who can’t get the job done? Even if Julius and Brutus Creed destroy Otis on Raw Monday night, there’s the open issue of them not being there to help Gable win the IC title when it mattered (who’s to say Chad will get another shot anytime soon?).

The story might be fine once it finally gets moving again, but booking this match and this result without an actual development – just more “rising tension” – was a big mistake and major annoyance.