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WWE Clash at the Castle (2022) - Results & Afterthoughts

WWE Clash at the Castle (2022) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by the American promotion WWE. It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. The event took place on Saturday, September 3, 2022, at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, marking WWE's first major stadium event to take place in the United Kingdom (UK) since the 1992 SummerSlam and the company's first UK PPV overall since Insurrextion in 2003. The event's title is a reference to Cardiff Castle, which is situated near Principality Stadium.

Seven matches were contested at the event, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. In the main event, Roman Reigns defeated Drew McIntyre to retain the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. In other prominent matches, Seth "Freakin" Rollins defeated Matt Riddle, Gunther defeated Sheamus to retain the Intercontinental Championship, and in the opening bout, Damage Control (Bayley, Dakota Kai, and Iyo Sky) defeated Bianca Belair, Alexa Bliss, and Asuka in a six-woman tag team match. The event was also notable for the main roster debuts of NXT's Giovanni Vinci, who rejoined Gunther and Ludwig Kaiser to reform Imperium, and Solo Sikoa, one of Reigns' cousins and the younger brother of The Usos (Jey Uso and Jimmy Uso), thus officially joining The Bloodline stable.

Match Card & Results:

Image Credit goes to KevStif on DeviantArt

Kick-Off: Six-Man Tag Team Match

Madcap Moss and The Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford) defeated Austin Theory and Alpha Academy (Chad Gable and Otis) by pinfall

To be quite honest, I wasn't even aware that this show even had a preshow/kick-off match. When I hit the replay on Peacock, it started right with the 6-Woman tag team match. Given the talents involved, I doubt I missed much anyway.

Six-Woman Tag Team Match

Damage Control (Bayley, Dakota Kai, and Iyo Sky) defeated Bianca Belair, Alexa Bliss, and Asuka by pinfall

Since Dakota Kai and Iyo Sky failed to win the vacant WWE Women's Tag Team Championships in the finals of that tournament to Raquel Rodriguez and Aliyah, they HAD to win here if WWE was looking to give Damage Control any sort of momentum, especially since they are slotting Bayley in as the next possible challenger for Bianca Belair's RAW Women's Championship. I had absolutely no problem with Bianca eating the losing fall here as it sets that up perfectly.

I still don't get why Alexa Bliss was in this match as it just felt like she was just there just to fill as slot on this team instead of being a worthwhile contributor to the babyface offense. I don't watch WWE's weekly programming at all (outside of NXT 2.0), but someone call me ASAP whenever they decide to do a one-on-one match between Asuka and Iyo Sky in this company. I'm all for that whenever it happens. Speaking of Asuka, I hope and pray now that Triple H is in the driver's seat creatively that they can shed that cringe-worthy stereotype of Asuka's character off of these shows and get her back to being the force of nature that she was on NXT.

Singles Match for the WWE Intercontinental Championship

Gunther (c) (with Imperium (Ludwig Kaiser and Giovanni Vinci)) defeated Sheamus (with The Brawling Brutes (Ridge Holland and Butch)) by pinfall

While I thought this was one of the best Sheamus matches that I have seen in a VERY long time, I can't say that this was in the conversation of being one of the best WALTER outings. His matches on NXT UK and NXT were a lot better in my opinion, but I can't deny that Sheamus brought everything he had and then some. He doesn't need to be the one that wins that Intercontinental Championship off of WALTER. Save that accolade for someone else when it actually means something. Sheamus has more than enough accomplishments to his name and beating a veteran like Sheamus adds credibility. I was pleasantly surprised that WALTER went over here.

Thank god that WWE (namely Triple H) had the foresight and common sense to acknowledge that Giovanni Vinci was a former member of Imperium that was aligned with WALTER. It's not much but mere baby steps in terms of correcting the course with Vince's abysmal mishandling and booking of some of these NXT call-ups. Now if only Butch can revert back to being Pete Dunne...

Imperium reunited. Apparently, Giovanni Vinci and Ludwig Kaiser are showing up on WWE's internal memos as a tag team for the SmackDown! roster, so it seems like this is a call-up for Vinci instead of a one-off.

Singles Match for the WWE SmackDown Women's Championship

Liv Morgan (c) defeated Shayna Baszler by pinfall

I know that there's a lot of people who aren't sold onto Liv Morgan as SmackDown! Women's Champion, especially after how she's beaten Ronda Rousey on two separate occasions, but I'm liking her as this babyface underdog champion that has to fight from underneath to overcome the odds. With both Ronda and now Shayna Baszler, she's been thrown into these title matches where it has been laid out where these women are going to make short work of her, but she manages to sneak out a win. Liv is showing some growth in these matches too as she's came a long way from her days in the Riott Squad to today as she's standing on her own.

As for Shayna, I don't think loss hurts her either as it's been a regular occurence that she's fallen victim to these unorthodox pins and cradles from smaller opponents, such as her lengthy feud with Kairi Sane on NXT. I still have hopes for her and Ronda to join forces in some sort of a stable/tag team of shooters and strikers. We've seen Shayna win the Women's Tag Team titles on several occasions, so there's no rush to go back to that route as she definitely should be in the conversation in terms of singles challengers for either of the Women's Championships. I'm just saying that it would help Ronda in the long run if she had someone like Shayna to play off of and work with who is clearly more comfortable on the microphone than her.

Tag Team Match

Edge and Rey Mysterio (with Dominik Mysterio) defeated The Judgment Day (Finn Bálor and Damian Priest) (with Rhea Ripley) by pinfall

This wasn't a bad match, but I was struggling to pay attention as I was honestly just waiting for whenever Edge was possibly going to turn on Rey Mysterio. When they won without any incident, I was actually surprised. Then Dominik of all people turned on Edge and Rey happened and I was like "Oh really now..."

Like I've been joking about on Twitter the last few days, I can't blame the guy for joining Judgment Day. After all of those weeks of Rhea Ripley kicking his ass and carrying him off camera over her shoulders like a cavewoman that captured her mate to seduce, find me a straight man that wouldn't give up the ghost and just go along with it. Rhea's clearly into being his "Papi" in more ways than one (at least in storyline anyway...). Dominik's probably going, "Dad will get over it. I gotta do me."

Singles Match

Seth "Freakin" Rollins defeated Matt Riddle by pinfall

After the "savage AF" shoot promo from Rollins on Monday Night RAW that set wrestling Twitter ablaze last week (at least until the Punk news got out), Riddle had to come out firing his guns from the hip. This was an insanely good match that I definitely wasn't expecting out of these two that I enjoyed from bell to bell. I would dare say that this was the match of the evening if the WALTER/Sheamus match and the main event weren't in the same conversation.

I'm just glad that WWE gave the UK fans something that was firing on all cylinders when it came to this PLE (Premium Live Event) that served as a strong reminder of how great of workers that both Seth Rollins and Matt Riddle are. It's easy to forget that given their goofy on-screen gimmicks, but both of these guys can really go. I really hope that they are eyeing Rollins challenging Roman Reigns for that Undisputed WWE Championship sooner more than later as his stock couldn't be any higher right now.

Singles Match for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship

Roman Reigns (c) defeated Drew McIntyre by pinfall

With this main event, you've either loved this match or hated it. Truth be told, I didn't watch this PLE live when it originally aired as I was taking advantage of the $3 movies for National Cinema Day in the United States by watching Spider-Man: No Way Home - More Fun Stuff Edition. When the film was over, I happened to glance at my Twitter feed and saw that a lot of my UK friends were clearly pissed off and I could totally see why after seeing this main event. Those people were ready to toss babies into the air if Drew McIntyre won here. I had feared that Roman was going to get stabbed in this building given the fact that (at least on my TV) the boos for him during his entrance were so loud that I could barely hear his entrance music playing. That was some next level heel heat right there.

With Roman Reigns being a little over a few days before he hits 1000 days as Undisputed Universal WWE Champion, I found it hard to believe that Roman would lose the title going into this match, even though a part of me wanted to see Drew win at least ONE of those belts. I liked the story of how this match kept you invested by keeping fans guessing whehter or not Drew was going to slay this dragon that has eluded him for so long. He ALMOST beat Roman at Survivor Series two years ago, but the tale of the tape here was that he was going to remedy that loss here. The rest of the Bloodline was disposed of on SmackDown! the previous night and left stateside, leaving Roman Reigns effectively alone to fend for himself. That was what everyone was led to believe anyway.

It should be noted that Karrion Kross and Scarlett were sitting on the front row watching the entire show play out, but they didn't get involved in any capacity. Austin Theory ran out and attempted to cash in his Money in the Bank contract, but Tyson Fury laid him from the front row.

Who did come to Roman's aid however was the younger cousin of Reigns, Solo Sikoa, making his main roster debut. I thought he could have benefited with a little more time down in NXT (same for Giovanni Vinci TBH), but if they are ready to call him up and align him with the rest of the Bloodline then more power to them.

Sikoa's interference allowed Roman to hit the Spear to retain the title, much to this UK crowd's chagrin, not that I can blame them.

The Tribal Chief goes home with the gold, leaving a heartbroken Drew McIntyre to be cheered up by Tyson Fury singing some songs in the ring as the PLE came to a close. I honestly didn't get why they were still recording after the match though as it made Drew look like a big geek that would lose that match and would go on to sing some songs with Fury.

Afterthoughts:

WWE was playing with everyone's emotions with that main event, even teasing that Drew was going to come out to his old Broken Dreams theme after he's been campaigning to have it back for a while now. Instead they used it for the vignette to hype up the main event. That was a nice touch, but sad that he still came out to his current music.

That being said though, I thought this was a solid PPV outing for the main roster from top to bottom. They definitely gave the UK fans their money's worth with the quality of this show. I think the biggest complaints out of this show will be decision to keep the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship(s) on Roman Reigns, but that's highly debatable at this point. Roman's clearly running out of credible challengers and threats, but WWE has kept the course with him reaching a particular milestone and they might as well go through with it before they take the straps off of him.

Even though the show aired live in my time zone at 1PM EST, I thought this was a show that seemed to breeze by without much clutter or unnecessary baggage, unlike a lot of WWE programming these days. WWE should consider doing more PPVs over there as the environment and live crowd there was much needed breath of fresh air in comparison to the fans here stateside. They really appreciated that WWE went out of their way to bring them the first PPV "across the pond" in 30 years and that really helped make this show feel special.

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