WWE’s Clash of Champions pay-per-view is coming up this weekend, which means it’s time for another look at the superstars who were unfortunately left off the card (as far as it’s currently being advertised). For whatever reason, these men and women from Monday Night Raw weren’t deemed important enough to justify finding a spot for on the event. Some of those might be justified while others are just baffling. Let’s take a look at who will be sitting this show out:
Cruiserweight Division
There simply isn’t room for everybody else in the cruiserweight division to be included on the card, which is perfectly fine. T.J. Perkins will be defending his newly won Cruiserweight Championship against Brian Kendrick and that’s all we need to be able to give a bit of the spotlight to those folk without overshadowing the main roster, which has had much more build to most of the audience checking out the event. Akira Tozawa, Cedric Alexander, Gran Metalik, Rich Swann, Jack Gallagher, Johnny Gargano, Noam Dar, Tommaso Ciampa, Lince Dorado and the rest will all have their time to shine (unlike the overlooked stars who don’t appear to be in the division). For now, we’ll just have to wait to see more out of them—or, better yet, rewatch the Cruiserweight Classic matches, as those were awesome.
Braun Strowman
Braun Strowman has been squashing men left and right on virtually every week, moving on up the food chain of the roster. Quick matches on a pay-per-view are kind of cheap if they’re advertised ahead of time and expected to be a decent contest, but if you’ve built up a reputation of having one-sided fights that only last a minute or so, nobody would be upset if another thing like that happened on the pre-show or randomly interspersed throughout the card to act like a commercial break. That is why Nia Jax is going to destroy Alicia Fox on the kickoff, so why not apply the same thing to Strowman? I know I’d much rather see Strowman defeat a local jobber than watch an ad for KFC or anything else WWE is likely to waste our time with, what about you?
Enzo Amore & Big Cass / The Shining Stars
Somehow, for some reason, The Shining Stars have been given two wins over Enzo and Cass. I would definitely disagree with trying to push them at the expense of the most popular tag team in the company right now save for The New Day, but I’m not the one calling the shots, and that’s the situation we’re in right now.
At the very least, these wins should amount to something, and if there isn’t a match on the card between these two tag teams, that’s wasteful. This should be a victory for Enzo and Cass to pop the crowd as a quick buffer match or something along those lines. Seeing as how they were still involved with each other during tonight’s episode of Raw, it seems like a foregone conclusion that they’ll go at it in some fashion, even though it hasn’t been announced yet.
The Lower Card
Jinder Mahal scored a surprising win over Jack Swagger, which acted as the catalyst for The All American American’s switch to SmackDown. Is anything going to come out of that for Mahal? I highly doubt it will be factored into this event, but stranger things have happened.
Darren Young and Titus O’Neil have been feuding forever, but there hasn’t been any true resolution to the feud. While I doubt you’d find a ton of people in the audience who really cares about this program, that doesn’t mean it should just fade away. At least having one more match where Young gets a definitive win over O’Neil should do it.
Neville’s amounted to basically nothing since the draft, where he was momentarily made out to be a big deal. Why not have him go up against Bo Dallas and beat him or at least start a feud with him, since he’s apparently being rewarded with a push despite his arrest for public intoxication. I’d write up a rhyme and end it with how I don’t bo-lieve in Bo, but it hurts my brain too much to think of how he’s being prioritized right now.
Do you think these men and women or any others should be booked on the card? How would you utilize them? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
