The Phantom Rant: Some Crown Jewel Thoughts & Blood and Guts

Greetings conversationalists all across the world wide web. It is I, The one and only “Phantom Lord” Joseph Davis and this is The Phantom Rant. As always I am coming to you from New York City and Crown Jewel is drawing near and the only question I have is…why? Well I know the why. Money. Lots and lots of money is involved. There’s a lot I could say, but this is a family website. I’ll say this about Crown Jewel. It’s a stupid event and I wish we just had a regular old King of the Ring in it’s place. I’d rather see someone crowned King than this stupid champion vs. champion match that we all ready know who is going to win.

The most annoying thing about Crown Jewel was the Saudi’s announcing that they were moving the event…to a smaller arena. At first the WWE was all “hey, that’s news to us” since they only found out after seeing a social media post stating the event was being moved. There are so many screwy things going on with this show. The least of which is it being a potential target for a terrorist attack. I really hope when the Saudi deal is up in 2027 (at least I think is in 2027) and I hope the WWE takes it as a learning opportunity and never does it again.

I often wonder what Triple H is thinking with some of his recent decisions. Yeah, I know he’s only a cog in that machine. He has suits above him in TKO that make decisions for him and he has to go along with them. Like keeping the title on Roman is probably not a Triple H decision. But everything else we see sure as hell is. Like the Money in the Bank winners. Penta won…which was good. He’s the hottest guy on the roster so it makes sense for him to win. But when it came to the Women’s MITB winner, Tiffany Stratton winning made no sense to me. Now she’s got the briefcase and for what? Just so she can eventually turn on Chelsea Green in her eventual Mean Girl’s moment to win the title?

What’s really annoying me is The Judgment Day. I really hate the direction they are in right now. The other day while watching them once again interfere in a Liv Morgan match…I came to the conclusion that the group as a whole are the new Impact Players from ECW. Liv Morgan is Justin Credible. I’m not sure who would be the Lance Storm of the group. But Dominik Mysterio is without a doubt the new Jason. Either way I can not STAND them. Every match with them is the same. Liv is about to lose only for everyone in the group to run in and cause a distraction leading to her getting a sneaky win. It’s the same thing with them every week and it just gets annoying to watch. I mean from a heel standpoint they’re fine. But it’s just the same old thing over and over.

As I said in the last column, I thought Roxy should have won the Women’s MITB. The specter of her possibly cashing in on Liv every week would have made for some fun television. At least over on Smackdown, Chelsea Green is killing it at WWE Women’s Champion. It’s a good thing they struck when the iron was hot with her. I hope she wins the convoluted Women’s Crown Jewel championship. If anyone deserves that thing it’s her.

As for the men’s Crown Jewel. As much as I love Sami Zayn and everything he’s done this year…if anyone thinks he has snowball’s chance in hell of winning against Roman Reigns, you could not be more hopelessly wrong. I mean it would be a great moment if Sami won. But it’s just not going to happen. Of course stranger things have happened so who knows at this point.

The other matches on the show are throwaway’s to be honest. Orton vs. Rhodes as a Last Man Standing match should be interesting, but nothing I’d go out of my way to see. They could have thrown it on a random Smackdown for all I cared. The other announced match is The Vision defending the tag titles against Penta and Je’Von Evans which makes no sense…but so does the tag team division over on RAW. Honestly there should just be one set of tag team champions for both shows. It works for the Women’s division and even less thought is put into those matches than the men’s tag teams. I don’t see Penta and Je’Von winning so I wouldn’t put much thought into caring about this match. What will be interesting is will Penta cash in on the Roman/Sami match? I assume there will be a chaotic ending to the match that would set up for a perfect cash in opportunity. Sami is more likely to be cashed in on than Roman.

I would love to see Penta over on Smackdown. The potential for so many good matches is over there. He seems to have run his course over on RAW in my view. Smackdown has the better world title picture…so he would fit right in. RAW is at the behest of Roman and his schedule. Sure he’ll show up for a promo, but he’s not actually wrestling and defending the title. Funny how the Men’s and Women’s World Championship over on RAW have the same problem. Champions who don’t defend their titles.

I hope Crown Jewel goes off without a hitch. There’s a lot of outside factors that could happen and I really hope they don’t.

In other news, AEW had Blood and Guts on Wednesday night and do yourself a favor. Go watch the Women’s Blood and Guts match. It was absolutely insane. The MVP of the match was Megan Bayne who tapped a 0.9 on the Mutoh Scale. The ring was covered in her blood and it looked like a murder scene in spots.

The Men’s Blood and Guts match was more psychological than gorey. Still the women blew them away like I think they did last year. Those AEW Women are crazy. But the men’s match I thought did set up nicely for the Will Ospreay vs. Kyle Fletcher AEW World title match on November 14th at Full Gear. It also set up for a potential Ospreay vs. Adam Copeland match. Cope has said this coming year is his last wrestling so I’d love to see him get that final World Title. Will it be at the expense of Will Ospreay…I don’t know. It’s just a potential match I see in the near future.

I guess on that note I am done for this week. As usual if you want to leave me any feedback you can do so down below, over on Twitter or e-mail me at phantomlordnyc@gmail.com