6 Ups And 5 Downs From WWE Crown Jewel 2023
UPS…
6. Sami Gets The Duke
By the end of this weekend, no one is going to remember intimate details of the Crown Jewel kickoff show match between Sami Zayn and JD McDonagh. But that wasn’t the point of the bout, as everyone saw later.
Zayn’s stated purpose as a solo act is to bring down the Judgment Day, no matter how long it takes. He vowed to end the purple-clad group, so why not start with the guy who’s been a hanger-on to the stable for the past several months?
It goes without saying that Zayn and McDonagh are probably incapable of having a bad match, though there was a near-disaster on an attempted monkey flip early on where JD went crashing into the ropes awkwardly. Thankfully, he recovered and they strung together a pretty basic opener that warmed the fans up and let Sami get his first pelt.
As an added bonus, Zayn put McDonagh away with the Blue Thunder Bomb, a rarity these days, but a smart move to try to establish it as a potential killshot. Perfectly fine wrestling and a perfectly acceptable kickoff show match that established Sami’s modus operandi for later in the show.