WWE Fastlane (March 11, 2018) -- Results & Afterthoughts

Fastlane (2018) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event and WWE Network event produced by WWE for the SmackDown brand. It took place on March 11, 2018, at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. It was the fourth event under the Fastlane chronology. The 2018 event was the final SmackDown-exclusive pay-per-view and subsequently the final brand-exclusive pay-per-view under the second brand split as following WrestleMania 34, all WWE pay-per-views will be dual-branded, featuring wrestlers from both the Raw and SmackDown brands.

Shinsuke Nakamura def. Rusev

I caught the tail end of this one, but from what I saw it was better than what I was expecting going in to say that they booked this match at the last minute. I hope whenever they do the next Superstar Shake-Up post-WrestleMania they do something with Rusev, Aiden English, and Lana. They need to quit squandering a potential main event player they have sitting on the sidelines here. As for Nakamura, it was a no brainer to give him the win here as he has to look strong going into WrestleMania. It just seems like they are biding their time on his time to shine before WrestleMania, where they (hopefully) make him look like a rockstar in his first WrestleMania match.

United States Championship Match - Randy Orton def. Bobby Roode (c) to become new champion and become the latest entry in WWE's ongoing list of Grand Slam Champions

There were some good moments in this match and a lot of slow bits too. Call me cynical but Orton and Roode just don't click well. They were teasing the RKO reversal from the top rope almost the entire match as even the crowd was ready to see it coming the multiple times that Roode kept going from off the top rope. I kept saying to myself, "Roode's going to get RKO'd out of the air..." I just knew it was going to happen as Roode isn't known for high flying offense and mostly kept his arsenal ground based.

I can't be mad at WWE taking the belt off Roode as that run was a flash in the pan anyway. Orton has more name value going into WrestleMania so I can understand why they went with Roode dropping the title to Orton here. Either they are going to have Orton drop it back to Roode at 'Mania or (groan) drop it to Jinder Mahal...

Carmella and Natalya def. Naomi and Becky Lynch

Nothing really to write home about this match other than the shock I had at Carmella picking up the win. They must be setting up the Money in the Bank winner to fail whenever she cashes in as WWE's mantra is usually to job out the MITB holder until they cash in for their big win. If they are setting up Asuka to win the title from Charlotte then Carmella can definitely count that out if she thinks she has a chance to cash in on Charlotte.

SmackDown! Tag Team Championship Match - The Usos (c) vs. The New Day ends in no contest after the Bludgeon Bros. (Luke Harper & Erick Rowan) laid waste to both teams

Going into this match I had little to no enthusiasm to see this match, despite the fact I knew that this would have been arguably the sleeper hit of the evening. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against New Day and the Usos' in-ring talents. I'm just sick of seeing them feud. Their promos for this match have been great, but I don't want to see the Usos drop the titles to anyone until or after preferably WrestleMania. This has been the best run of their careers and no need to waste that push on dropping the belts to the New Day for the millionth time.

Seeing the former Wyatt Family members lay waste to the opposition here was the best thing I've seen from any portion of WWE's tag team division in months. Superb booking here. If they can find a way to shoe in Haas and Benjamin... err Gable & Benjamin into the mix too and have a Fatal 4 Way for the SmackDown! Tag Team Championships that's NOT on the damn preshow for WrestleMania then you can call me a happy camper.

SmackDown! Women's Championship Match - Charlotte Flair (c) def. Ruby Riott (w/ Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan); Asuka challenges her post-match for WrestleMania

I hate to knock both ladies here as this wasn't a bad match by any means, but good Lord Charlotte is a far cry from her father in terms of ring psychology. These matches where she takes the bulk of the abuse in the match and barely working her opponent's legs only to win off the Figure Eight drives me nuts. After the Alabama Slam/Modified Electric Chair Slam into the corner, it would've made more sense to win off a Natural Selection than slapping in the submission. I mean, c'mon she was working Ruby's head more than her legs in this match so that just made me throw my hands up in terms of psychology here.

As for the post-match angle that saw Asuka immediately come down to point at the WrestleMania sign, I wasn't surprised in the least. Out of all of the women on the main roster who have been spared Asuka's wrath, it's Charlotte who has somehow dodged the bullet to cross paths with the Empress of Tomorrow until now. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that they were going to have Charlotte drop the title to Ruby when they were building her up for this pending match. The only thing that would have stopped this match becoming reality would be some freak accident/injury between now and WrestleMania in April. Besides, out of the two reigning champions on RAW and SmackDown!, everyone knows that

WWE Championship Match - AJ Styles (c) def. John Cena, Kevin Owens, Baron Corbin, Sami Zayn, and Dolph Ziggler to retain

This match wasn't bad, but it was very telling that AJ Styles was going to retain because he out of the mix for the bulk of the match. When I noticed that, it was very telling that they were going with the safest means possible to avoid any possible injury from the Phenomenal One here. You knew Baron Corbin wasn't winning this and Dolph Ziggler sure as hell wasn't going to win it, especially when John Cena's in the damn thing too. Owens and Zayn were there just to play off their bromance that's been the focus of SmackDown! Live for the last few months (and main reason I haven't cared to watch honestly...)

WWE Fastlane (March 5, 2017) -- Results & Afterthoughts

Fastlane (2017) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event and WWE Network event produced by WWE for the Raw brand. It took place on March 5, 2017 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This was the third event in the Fastlane chronology, and the first to be brand exclusive.

Ten matches were contested at the event with one match on the pre-show. In the main event, Goldberg defeated Kevin Owens to win the WWE Universal Championship, becoming the only person to win the WWE Universal Championship, WWE's World Heavyweight Championship and the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. On the undercard, Roman Reigns defeated Braun Strowman, ending Strowman's undefeated streak, Bayley retained the Raw Women's Championship against Charlotte Flair, thus ending Flair's pay-per-view singles match undefeated streak, Neville retained the WWE Cruiserweight Championship against Gentleman Jack Gallagher and Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson retained the Raw Tag Team Championship against Enzo Amore and Big Cass.

Akira Tozawa and Rich Swann def. Noam Dar and The Brian Kendrick

Don't ask me about the preshow as I didn't bother to watch.

Samoa Joe def. Sami Zayn

I don't want to shit on Samoa Joe but it's hard for me to care about him on the main roster for the same reasons I wasn't too crazy about him on NXT - he's just coasting on what worked for him over the last decade in TNA/Impact Wrestling. The average WWE fan is either too jaded or aren't aware of that fact so this stuff is new territory for them. For me after following Joe's career for a long time, it's more of been-there, done that.

RAW Tag Team Chammpionship Match - Gallows & Anderson (c) def. Enzo & Cass

While I was a little surprised that they didn't hand Enzo and Cass the win here, I can't be mad at the result. Gallows and Anderson have finally started to pick up a bit of steam since winning the tag team gold and I would like to see them hold the titles for a good while before losing them to Enzo and Cass. They have to be careful with this as Enzo and Cass have lost so many of these tag team title opportunities that it's hard to get behind these guys. It's starting to look like they are the tag team equivalent of Dolph Ziggler where they can never win when it matters the most.

As for this match, it wasn't nothing to write home about if you seen any other Enzo and Cass match. Enzo gets beaten up and bullied by the heels for 90% of the match until the hot tag to Cass, who cleans house upon arrival, and it ends with some crazy clusterfuck finish after Enzo and Cass' double team spot.

Sasha Banks def. Nia Jax

Goddamn, this was a sloppy match. Like I said on Twitter during the show live, I'll give them both credit for some creative spots here as they were definitely trying to make this special but the execution was off far too much for me to really get into it. I could tell Nia has finally been studying some of Awesome Kong's matches as that Accordion Stretch on Sasha was definitely a nod from her playbook. That move to the front guillotine choke was a nice touch too, but you can tell Nia botched the Samoa Drop counter and that's why Sasha called an audible to go into the Sleeper Hold from her back.

Can someone please tell Nia to stop the whining/shouting during her matches? It sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Ugh, I'm totally not looking forward to her being led around by the other 3 Horsewomen at WrestleMania in that what is looking like a potential Fatal Four Way match.

Cesaro def. Jinder Mahal

I think Solomonster said it best on his post-Fastlane podcast: "Mahal is a walking, talking neon sign Wellness Policy violation." I'm guessing WWE is just keeping him around on payroll until they do the post-WM call-ups and firings. Cesaro was selling his back throughout this match, so that contributed to him not doing his more flashier offense. As a result, this match was pretty boring. It was pretty cool to see him bust out that 619 again and even use the Swiss Uppercut as his finish, that's all I could really give them props for in this match as it was clearly filler.

The Big Show def. Rusev (w/ Lana)

If you thought the match before this was boring, then this one was just as bad and felt like it was even longer as filler. From the look on Big Show's face, I thought they were going to have him come out and job out Rusev immediately but nope. I have to admit that I hate how Rusev (along with Lana too) have fallen off the radar (or rather the ladder) so quickly over the past year. One would think that Rusev would be groomed into being a potential main eventer by this point, but nope. He's still reduced to doing stupid midcard shit like this. No offense to Big Show, but there's plenty of other useless fodder on the RAW talent pool that they could feed to him if they need to job out on a throwaway PPV like this.

Now that it looks like that Shaq match isn't happening, you would think that WWE would want to give Show a credible opponent on the roster to have him bow out against on what could be possibly his last WrestleMania to improvise, but nope, they don't establish nothing here - even more so with that lackluster finish to this match.

Cruiserweight Championship Match - Neville (c) def. Jack Gallagher

I have to say that it was hilarious that the cruiserweights had to save this show at this point. Neville and Gallagher killed it here as I would have been happy with either man walking away with the win here. Austin Aries had the funniest comment on commentary for the entire evening when referring to that he has the best "package" in the WWE in reference to his comeback package promoting this upcoming in-ring return. I'm guessing that they will be lining him up to square off against Neville at WrestleMania. Now that definitely won't be a piss break match. I'm sure Aries and Neville will knock that one out of the park if they are given enough time to shine.

Roman Reigns def. Braun Strowman

I think the match itself was the best thing on this entire show if I'm perfectly honest, BUT the finish was fucking stupid. At the same time, this match shouldn't have happened in the first damn place. All of these months of building up Braun Strowman and they couldn't give him a clean win over the Golden Boy to legitimize his status as major player. No matter how many ways you look at possible finishes/outcomes for this match, it just irons the fact out harder that WWE shouldn't have booked this match to begin with as there was no way to make both of these guys (who both need to look strong going into WM) look strong for WrestleMania right around the corner.

RAW Women's Championship Match - Bayley (c) def. Charlotte

Despite the fact that most people will be making fun of Bayley's botch out of the corner for a while (FYI ALL of the Horsewomen have been botching spots since NXT, so don't try to act like that's something new...), this was a pretty solid match between Bayley and Charlotte. Previously, I thought that these two women didn't mesh well since their days on NXT now that they've had a chance to gel together better on the main roster, this match wasn't a clusterfuck in the least.

Much like the Reigns/Strowman match, I was fine with this match until the finish. Sasha Banks' interference made it look like Bayley and Sasha were the heels that needed to cheat for Bayley to retain and it made Charlotte's "streak" ending look insignificant. Sure, WWE were the ones that made a bigger deal out of her undefeated PPV streak than fans did, but it was weird to see it end without any impact or significance made of it. I thought they would have ended it at WrestleMania instead of on one of these throwaway brand exclusive PPVs. It would have been easy to just have Bayley retain via disqualification with Charlotte's streak intact, but much like the rest of this show, I have absolutely no idea what the hell WWE Creative were thinking here tonight.

WWE Universal Championship Match - Goldberg def. Kevin Owens (c)

21 seconds... That's the total time for this entire match. Owens milked it by walking around the ring until finally stepping back in, only to get distracted by Chris Jericho's music. This allowed Goldberg to hit him with one of the weakest looking spears I've seen him hit outside of that one on The Undertaker at Royal Rumble. I honestly can't say that I'm surprised at the result but there were a lot of people thinking that WWE would actually let Goldberg lose to Owens here. Nah, the main event for WrestleMania means a lot more if it's actually for the title instead of two part-timers fighting over nothing. On top of that, let's be honest here. Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Owens wouldn't be closing out that card anyway no matter how many ways you slice it with Goldberg and Brock Lesnar on that card anyway.

Closing Thoughts

Simply put, this show was horrible. There were a lot of glimmers of hope for something great (Nia v. Sasha, Roman vs. Braun, Neville v. Gallagher, Bayley v. Charlotte) but blundered by creative in terms of finishes ruined this show from top to bottom. With WrestleMania right around the corner, WWE are going to have to be really creative if they hope to salvage this mess before April 2nd rolls around. After this show, I honestly don't see much of a reason to care about WrestleMania at this point.

Plus with RAW in Chicago tonight, I can't see myself sitting through three hours of CM Punk chants, knowing he's not going to come out.