Thanks to Robert Blunt for the following WWE live event report from today’s show in Melbourne, Australia:
* Daniel Bryan defeated Luke Harper (12mins). B. Solid house show match.
* Women’s Tag Team Championship: Kabuki Warriors (c) defeated Fire & Desire & The Iiconics (10mins). C+. Fun stock standard tag that WWE does do well but they could’ve worked to sell an unexpected Iiconics win a bit better (titles on line at house shows ruins belief of anything other than the champs winning).
* Kofi Kingston defeated Randy Orton by DQ when The Revival interfered (Big E & Buddy Murphy made the save). (14mins). C-. Slow methodical match until the interference to set up the following 6 man tag. Due to Xavier Woods’ injury in Sydney, Buddy Murphy moves to this match and the Tag cage match between Bryan/Reigns and Rowan/Harper was separated into 2 singles matches.
* Kofi Kingston, Big E & Buddy Murphy defeated Randy Orton & The Revival (21mins). B+. Mostly comedic match with some strong action throughout.
* Intercontinental Championship: Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Mustafa Ali. (11mins). B+. Sami Zayn cut an anti-Melbourne promo prior to introducing Nakamura. Solid match though crowd didn’t give them much beyond Sami’s heel heat.
* SmackDown Women’s Championship: Bayley (c) defeated Charlotte (11mins). C+. As heel, Bayley got a fluke roll up and dirty pin with feet on the ropes, but I would’ve liked to see her billed stronger than she was, not getting much offense in prior to the roll up.
* Steel Cage: Roman Reigns defeated Erick Rowan (13mins). D-. Rowan’s work is badly exposed outside of tagging with Harper. Same with Reigns’ early time out of The Shield. There was talk that Reigns got injured in Sydney which may explain the shortness of the match. If that’s the case, they probably should’ve altered card/card order to give a higher quality main event to finish on.
The Rod Laver Arena was 3/4 full however upgraded tickets (prices at the tier below) were released a month out to boost sales.
Overall, an okay show but a disappointing main event. The initial card that was announced (listed below) looked a whole lot better prior to draft. Always expect a couple to change but not that dramatically.
First Card announced.
1. New Day (Big E/Xavier Woods) vs. The Revival
2. Aleister Black vs. Dolph Ziggler
3. Kairi Sane/Asuka vs. The Iiconics vs. Mandy Rose & Sonya DeVille
4. Kevin Owens vs. Elias
5. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Finn Balor
6. Buddy Murphy vs. Andrade
7. Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan
8. Kofi Kingston vs. Randy Orton
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