Fastlane, the final WWE pay-per-view event before next month’s Wrestlemania, left us with a clearer understanding of the card for the “The Greatest Spectacle in Sports Entertainment.”
As usual, the kickoff show match was pretty ho-hum. Breezango (Tyler Breeze and Fandango) teamed with Tye Dillinger to defeat Chad Gable, Shelton Benjamin, and Mojo Rawley. The match was pretty pointless, and it proved why it was only a kickoff show match.
What are the chances that the match that had the biggest crowd reactions would fall on Rusev Day?! The match between the Bulgarian Brute and Royal Rumble winner Shinsuke Nakamura had the crowd pumped, as these two seem to have the WWE Universe in the palms of their hands. Anything these two would have done would have been great, and the match was pure magic.
The United States Championship was up for grabs, and Randy Orton was focused on this match. Bobby Roode did a “glorious” job defending his title, but it proved to not be enough to keep the Viper from striking. With similar physiques and skill sets, these two made their match look like a choreographed dance. With Orton’s win, he joins the Grand Slam Champion club, a title that only 18 men have held in the WWE.
A Twitter war came to a head with the Women’s Tag match between Carmella and Natalya versus Naomi and Becky Lynch. The match itself was short, which is disappointing considering the amount of talent in the ring. And still, Carmella’s carrying around that Money In The Bank case… How much longer until she cashes that thing in?
We’ve seen The New Day and the Usos battle each other so many times before, but something seemed different during this Smackdown Tag Team title match. The New Day used their “speed line-up” with Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods against the twins Jimmy and Jey. Xavier Woods came out fierce, and both his words and actions emulated this. This is the best he’s performed, and he proved that no one should underestimate his talent and intensity. There were great acrobatics and fun, until… The Bludgeon Brothers (Luke Harper and Erick Rowan) rolled through the match and destroyed all, just like their former Wyatt brother Braun Strowman does. After the match of his life, Xavier Woods suffered a thoracic spine injury during the attack, and his future is unknown.
The Smackdown Women’s Title match was the most predictable of the night, securing the title with Charlotte Flair with a defeat over Ruby Riott. While Riott isn’t bad in the ring, she just isn’t ready to carry the title into Wrestlemania. With another predicted rumor, Asuka showed up after the match to declare her intentions for Wrestlemania. This privilege was awarded by winning the first ever Women’s Royal Rumble in January, and everyone had assumed she’d go after Alexa Bliss‘s RAW Women’s Title.
The 6-Pack Challenge for the WWE Championship was a rousing bout to feature the best of the Smackdown card, but a win by anyone other than AJ Styles would have caused a riot. The dream main event match is now set with AJ Styles versus Shinsuke Nakamura, and John Cena still doesn’t have a match at Wrestlemania. Smackdown Live Commissioner Shane McMahon provoked the feud between Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. And Baron Corbin and Dolph Ziggler were made to look like unnecessary stooges.
The road to Wrestlemania is finally being paved, and the card is coming together. What are you most looking forward to at “The Show of Shows?”
And Tomasso’s trick of using Lou’s journal entries (complete with legal-pad yellow line-paged backgrounds) adds another layer if identifiability on top. These are the elements that give it that ‘indie comics’ feel, and are what draws you in. Tomasso himself was a newspaper cartoonist (like Lou Rossi is in the book) and uses that as a good detail as well.
