Clash of Champions 2016 Preview

Two weeks ago, Smackdown had their first single brand pay per view and now that it’s been a mere fourteen days, Raw gets to do the same because WWE has gone completely insane with their pay per view schedule. This time there’s an actual theme though as it’s Clash of Champions, because Night of Champions is just too old school so we need a show that hasn’t been put on in nearly twenty years. Let’s get to it.

Pre-Show: Nia Jax vs. Alicia Fox

As usual we’ll start with the pre-show as Nia Jax faces Alicia Fox after their “indecisive” match a few weeks back on Raw. By indecisive I mean the match where Jax squashed Fox like a steamroller runs over a cartoon pretending to be a judge and the match was stopped when Jax broke the barricade with Fox’s body as a cushion.

I’m glad they picked this one for the pre-show as there is no reason for this to go more than five minutes. Jax is going to become a big deal in the women’s division sooner than later and since Fox has a job and won a title about six years ago, the theory is there’s value in her losing here. This is probably the easiest pick on the show with Jax destroying her again, which kind of makes it a questionable pre-show match.

Raw Tag Team Titles: New Day vs. Anderson and Gallows

We’ll move on to one of the harder to call matches now as the New Day defends the Raw Tag Team Titles against Anderson and Gallows. These teams fought last month at Summerslam and the focus wound up on Jon Stewart because they have to do something else besides talk about the Tag Team Titles. They’ve made a hard course correction in recent weeks though as Anderson and Gallows have gone from stupid comedy with their lame retirement jokes to hardened tough guys, as they should have been from the first place.

On paper, this really should go to Anderson and Gallows, who are one of the only real teams to challenge for the belts at the moment. However, New Day is less than three months away from breaking Demolition’s record for the longest Tag Team Title reign in company history. You don’t get a chance to break a record like that very often (this would be the longest reign since Demolition in the late 1980s) and it would be a waste of time to not let New Day hang on until it’s broken. Therefore, Anderson and Gallows win because WWE likes to blow easy opportunities.

Cruiserweight Title: T.J. Perkins vs. Brian Kendrick

Sticking with the title theme, we have the Cruiserweight Champion TJ Perkins defending against Brian Kendrick. Now this is an interesting one as the fans are actually familiar with a former star like Kendrick and have never actually seen the champion unless they watched a different show. For the life of me I don’t know why Perkins didn’t stick his head out of the curtain and shout “BOO!” earlier this week. It would have been better than the whole NOT SHOWING UP ON THE SHOW WHERE THE DIVISION DEBUTED. I’ll take Perkins to retain here and give the fans a chance to be bored because they have no reason to care about this.

Sheamus vs. Cesaro

Speaking of a match a lot of people don’t care about, we have the grand finale of the best of seven series between Cesaro and Sheamus. This series has been about “establishing physical dominance” for a future championship opportunity. Now the problem is that hasn’t actually been defined, which means they could be fighting for the Raw World Title, the US Title or, dare I say, the Raw Tag Team Titles. Yeah would it really shock you to see Mick Foley say neither has really established dominance so they’ll just fight together from now on because they’re just so awesome?

I’ll go with Sheamus as they’re going to cripple him for good if he loses here. That would mean losing six out of nine matches and while Sheamus is known for his losses, that’s a bit more than anyone can absorb and bounce back from in so little time. Cesaro has more experiencing choking in big match scenarios though and should be fine either way, but my goodness I’m going to be glad for this to be over so we can move on to ANYTHING else.

Sami Zayn vs. Chris Jericho

We’ll get rid of the last non-title match as Sami Zayn faces Chris Jericho. This is something like a proxy feud as Zayn can’t fight Kevin Owens for the time being so he’s been put against Owens’ partner instead. On top of that it’s a case where there’s no reason for Jericho to go over, but that’s been the case so many times over the years and he seems to win those matches more often than not. Zayn has been floating around with nothing to do since winning his big match against Owens so he actually need to pull this off. I’ll go with Zayn and not be a bit surprised to be wrong.

US Title: Rusev vs. Roman Reigns

It’s back to the title matches with Rusev defending the US Title against Roman Reigns in a match that didn’t take place last month, likely due to time constraints. This is a really backwards feud as Rusev has been standing up for his wronged wife yet somehow he’s the villain in the whole thing. Ignore Reigns being treated like the good guy no matter how horrible he’s been because he’s the guy and you’re going to like it no matter how little it makes sense.

After his win over Owens on Monday, there’s really no reason that Reigns shouldn’t take the title here. Rusev isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire with the title and Reigns needs something to do at the moment because he’s not in the World Title scene (because beating the champ is really that worthless these days). As much as I want to say they’ll stretch this out another month, I think they’ll actually pull the trigger here and put the title on Reigns. They might as well do something with him and if there’s one thing WWE has made clear, it’s that they don’t mind pushing Reigns when people aren’t interested.

Raw Women’s Title: Bayley vs. Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte

In another match that is far bigger than it seems on paper, Charlotte is defending the Raw Women’s Title against Bayley and Sasha Banks. This feels like another preview to tide us over until we get to Wrestlemania XXXIII and the big Four Horsewomen match for one of the titles (still no reason to have two at once). However, the question is who has the title until then.

I think they’ll keep it on Charlotte here as Banks can barely stay upright long enough to defend the thing and Bayley hasn’t established herself on the main roster enough just yet. If nothing else they can set up Dana Brooke as the next challenger (though I have no idea why they would actually do that). Either way the match has the potential to steal the show like the women did at Wrestlemania XXXII so it should be a blast.

Raw World Title: Kevin Owens vs. Seth Rollins

That leaves us with the match that’s going on last between a challenger who wants to beat Stephanie McMahon (the star of the show) and a champion who looks like a lame duck less than a month after he won the title in the first place. That loss to Reigns on Monday has already damaged Owens and even if he beats Rollins (who will probably get a rematch anyway), he’s still just another guy who happens to have the belt. I’ll take Owens to retain here, likely thanks to HHH interfering because we need to have that feud extended even longer instead of just doing the match already.

Overall Clash of Champions looks a lot like Smackdown: not that interesting on paper but probably a lot better in its presented form. WWE has a tendency to be much better than advertised and while this feels like a pit stop on the way to……whatever they’re doing next on this brand, the show should be fun and we should get at least one title change out of it. If nothing else it should get rid of Sheamus vs. Cesaro for at least another month or two and that’s nothing but good.

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