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Juggling through four or five championship matches can prove to be a lot of work for creative, but once Clash of Champions arrives, they need to focus on many more. This year, the event was bigger than ever before and saw ten top WWE championships defended during a long night.
In an event filled with mixed bookings, some high spots, and some surprises, there were a few major questions which were raised by fans at the end of the night.
While it’s always good to keep the fans guessing on what’s going to come next, there were some spots which raised many worrying questions for the WWE Superstars involved.
In this article, we will look at 5 of the biggest questions fans have from the company and what they could mean for the Superstars and the storylines going forward.
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#1 Will Cedric’s loss kill his momentum?
During the Clash of Champions Kickoff Show, Cedric Alexander faced AJ Styles for the United States Championship in what was arguably the biggest match of his career. Just six days after pinning The Phenomenal One in a tag team match, Alexander earned his big opportunity.
While fans were expecting a good long match between the two talented and athletic men, they were treated to the second shortest match on the card which lasted less than five minutes.
Styles cut off all the offense Alexander could offer and delivered the Phenomenal Forearm. The United States Champion put Alexander away with a Styles Clash in a one-sided championship victory.
After the match, The O.C. joined their leader for a three-on-one attack against Alexander. With this, we may have seen the end of Alexander’s quest to win the United States Championship.
What once seemed like a big match which could result in a huge title change now feels like an afterthought where Alexander was simply a filler to ensure that the US Championship remained on the card.
Is this the end of the road for Alexander's short push and will he return to the lower card in the coming weeks? Maybe the beat down will allow him to come back stronger and possibly align himself with two more men to take on The O.C.?
#2 Was Sami Zayn the highlight during Nakamura vs The Miz?
This was a storyline that felt a little too rushed at a time when WWE struggled to find something for Shinsuke Nakamura to do at Clash of Champions.
The Miz stepped into the feud and became the challenger to Nakamura’s Intercontinental Championship. With Sami Zayn at ringside proving to be a fitting mouthpiece for Nakamura, it felt like little could go wrong in this star-studded feud.
However, creative managed to bungle another feud involving Nakamura, as there was little in-ring chemistry between The Artist and The A-lister. The match dragged on and Zayn had most of the spotlight for the bout, which made the champion and challenger look redundant.
The Miz continued his big-match losing spree, while Nakamura continued to deliver half-hearted performances, as fans wondered whether WWE is using the two men to their full potential or not.
Zayn, on the other hand, proved to be the Lio Rush to Nakamura’s Bobby Lashley, where the mouthpiece received much more of the spotlight than the champion himself.
#3 Was this the best Bayley and Charlotte could deliver?
As one of the biggest matches of the night between two of WWE’s most talented and popular female superstars competing for the SmackDown Women’s Championship, one would expect a match with memorable spots.
Instead, WWE gave us the shortest match of the night where both women had no time to shine and Bayley pulled off a heist by pulling Flair into the exposed turnbuckle, scoring a quick pinfall victory.
Even though the match was basically set up to put Bayley’s new character on display, WWE could have done much more to make the match a more eventful and memorable affair.
In a pay-per-view where the creatives had time to give Roman Reigns and Rowan twenty minutes to carry a non-title match, they could have given the women some extra time to bring the match to an interesting point before allowing Bayley to pull off the heist.
#4 Was Rowan vs Roman really that important?
With Erick Rowan revealing that he schemed and masterminded numerous attacks on Roman Reigns in the months leading into Clash of Champions, Roman was ready to exact revenge.
The only non-title match of the night was scheduled high up on the card and took place right before the main event. Surprisingly, it was twenty minutes long and at times felt like a useless stretch just to make the battle seem more convincing.
After the match, we finally learned why Rowan always played second fiddle to other top superstars, and why the company chose him to lose to The Rock at WrestleMania in record time.
Rowan got his massive opportunity, but the 20-minute PPV bout was too much for him to carry on his massive shoulders. The main storyline seemed to keep Roman as the underdog top superstar of the company who was only taken out with the help of the returning Luke Harper.
At the end of the night, one wonders whether Rowan vs Roman was that important a match to have right before the main-event. Additionally, should it have stretched on for such a long time on a card when many other championship matches could have done with some more time?
#5 What’s next for Braun Strowman?
Braun Strowman walked into Clash of Champions with a RAW Tag Team belt on one shoulder, and a world of opportunities on another. However, he walked out of the event losing both of his matches.
As the one-match wonder, The Fiend, sets his eyes on the Universal Championship, we wonder what’s next for The Monster Among Men after a Universal Championship match loss against Seth Rollins.
WWE did all they could to make Strowman look as strong as possible, and give us the best match of his career. However, that was not enough to cover up his two losses for the night which may once again water him down to the mid-cards.
Every time Strowman is presented with a huge opportunity, he either loses it himself or the creatives book the match against him. Keeping that in mind, Strowman fans will now wonder what’s next for the big man, who has lost almost all major opportunities he has been presented with to date.
