We’ve already taken care of the superstars missing from Clash of Champions 2017, but who are the lucky few who will not only perform, but likely steal the show in some capacity?
Whether it’s in a scripted or non-kayfabe sense by factoring in everything from wins and losses, how much of an emphasis they’re given on the show, their momentum for the next TV episode, match performances and everything between, here’s my shortlist for who I think will be stealing the show at Clash of Champions.
AJ Styles
At this point, there’s absolutely no way Styles won this title just to have the match against Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series, then drop it back to Jinder Mahal, who hasn’t been utilized anywhere near as much as of late.
Dropping The Singh Brothers temporarily makes it even less believable that Mahal will walk out with the title and with the Royal Rumble coming up, all signs just point to Styles retaining the championship and holding the belt until WrestleMania where he’ll drop it to Shinsuke Nakamura.
Assuming that happens, Styles will main event this pay-per-view and be victorious as the top dog on SmackDown, although there’s always a chance the Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn saga takes priority over this as the true main event. We’ll see. In any fashion, place your bets on Styles retaining.
Shared Glory: Charlotte Flair / The Riott Squad
This is kind of an odd situation where I don’t feel like one side of this will be particularly higher up on the totem pole than the other, as they’ll be fighting for the same amount of spotlight.
Let’s put it this way: in a match that features every woman on the brand save for Nikki Bella and Becky Lynch, these four women are the only ones who will come out looking good.
Naomi, Carmella, Tamina and Lana are just ringside for the hell of it and will get their asses kicked by The Riott Squad in some fashion—or, at the very least, just brawl with them to give them something to do.
Natalya is there to lose the match to Charlotte and finish their storyline up. She’s not winning the title, as she has no connection to The Riott Squad and Flair is the bigger priority.
If Flair were to drop the belt, it would make more sense for Ruby Riott to win, not Natalya, but since Riott isn’t in the match, this is Flair’s victory, meaning she leaves with the title and the win.
However, I just can’t see this going down in a way where Charlotte stands tall, posing with her title and everybody else snickers. Instead, I’m imagining she gets the glory of the win, but it’s The Riott Squad who make a statement by being the only ones left standing at the end of the segment.
Baron Corbin
Any time there’s a Triple Threat or Fatal 4-Way or something along those lines, I always get suspicious that one of the primary reasons it was booked was to have someone be the fall-guy.
That doesn’t always happen, and there are even instances where the person I thought WWE specifically tried to avoid looking bad was the one taking the pin (ie, Roman Reigns at SummerSlam).
In this scenario, I definitely feel like that’s the reason Dolph Ziggler has been put between Baron Corbin and Bobby Roode, as there weren’t any sprinklings of a feud between he and Corbin ahead of time, nor did it seem like his program with Roode needed to continue.
My guess is we’ll see Roode come close to winning the title, only for Corbin to somehow steal a victory away from him by pinning Ziggler. That way, Corbin retains the title and gets to gloat about how he was successful in holding onto his championship while everybody watching knows that it was Roode who should have left with the belt instead, allowing their feud to continue into the Royal Rumble season without Ziggler.
Shared Glory: Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn / Shane McMahon / Daniel Bryan
What’s strange about this match is how there are four people who stand out as the most important, yet two of those aren’t even competing in the match.
Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura are there just for the sake of having Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn fight on the card. If either one of them got replaced, it wouldn’t matter.
At most, Orton turns heel on Nakamura and they start a program that will last until Fastlane, but that still doesn’t compare to the importance Owens, Zayn, Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan bring to this match.
Obviously, the onus is on Owens and Zayn to be victorious in order to keep their jobs and the addition of that stipulation immediately made me concoct scenarios in how they would be able to do that.
Bryan seems much more sympathetic to their cause than McMahon, so there’s a good chance he interferes in some fashion that leads to a tainted, but in the record books victory for the heels, even if he isn’t intentionally trying to help them out, but just offset Shane’s biased refereeing in the interest of fairness.
There needs to be some kind of conflict between the two referees, right? And if that happens, it benefits Owens and Zayn much more than the babyfaces.
If anything remotely close to that happens, we’ll be talking about Owens, Zayn, McMahon and Bryan and how it all panned out—not Nakamura or Orton, who will just be the glue that holds the match together and prevent it from just being a talking segment.
However, even if they lose, we’re still not going to be talking about Orton or Nakamura, as the topic will then be “What happens next with Owens and Zayn now that McMahon and Bryan have left them go?”
This segment revolves around those four, not the babyface tag team.
The New Day
Theoretically, in a Fatal 4-Way, each team has a 25% chance of walking away victorious, but I can’t help but feel like that isn’t the same here.
I would rule out Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin as well as Rusev and Aiden English for sure, even though stranger things have happened and a surprise title win for either of them is not the craziest booking decision WWE would have made even this past year.
Basically, this becomes a 50/50 shot in my mind, with The Usos and The New Day being the only candidates to leave as champions.
My gut feeling points to The New Day since they’re still the bigger entity and we’re heading into WrestleMania season starting very soon, so this could be the perfect opportunity to transition the titles onto them without doing another pure Usos vs. New Day feud that we’ve seen enough matches for.
I don’t think any other titles are switching hands, so if any new champions are crowned, my money is on Big E, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods getting their belts back.
Mojo Rawley
To a much lesser extent than everybody else, but still enough to mention, Mojo Rawley absolutely has to win his match against Zack Ryder. Being on the pre-show kills it of being super important to the overall picture, but as far as his own little bubble, this is crucial.
The Bludgeon Brothers
Sadly, for Rowan and Harper, even though they’ll get a tip of the cap by winning their match against Breezango, this is likely going to be inserted in a bathroom break position and very few people will ultimately care about it. Still, it’s something, right?
Those are my picks, but who do you think will end up being the primary focal points? Drop your predictions in the comments below!
