How Much Gold Rush

It’s time for Clash of Champions, which of course brings us Clash in a Nutshell. The question we pose to you this time: how much of a Gold Rush do we get?

It’s a fair question, based on the tag line for this year’s show. It’s also fair, based on the chaos that hit the card just hours before the opening bell.

That chaos, of course, eliminated the Women’s Tag Team Championship match from the card. It also took Nikki Cross out as Bayley’s challenger for the SmackDown Women’s Championship.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the card is lacking for title matches. It does mean, however, that we won’t see every WWE championship defended on the card as promised.

We do have the Intercontinental ladder match. There’s an ambulance match, and cousin versus cousin, too.

So, it’s still a fair question to ask.:

Just how much of a gold rush do we get from this year’s Clash?

Let’s crack open this Nutshell and find out!

Best Match of the night:

How Much Gold Rush

I will give a 1A and a 1B.

1A: The Intercontinental Championship match. Ladder matches are usually awesome, and this one absolutely was.

1B: The ambulance match. Not for the wrestling, though the action and spots were solid.

This one was more about entertaining, and that’s OK. Some may not like the interference from three legends, but it worked in the scope of the story line.

Worst match of the night:

Vega and Asuka was too short and seemed a waste. Bayley and Asuka was too (maybe that’s why the Vega match was so short, though).

The Bayley match made sense at the end, however, thanks to the attack by Sasha Banks.

Crowd Chants of the Night:

We actually did get a (piped in) “This is awesome”.

Star of the Night

Sami Zayn, your new (or, as he said, still) Intercontinental Champion. Guess WWE wasn’t that unhappy with him after all.

Roman Reigns, for a strong heel performance. Also, Jimmy and Jey for getting it over.

Spot of the Night:

Honestly, too many to choose from.

Ladder match gave us several. So too did the ambulance match.

Jobber of the Night:

Another in the “non-traditional” way: Jey Uso.

Why? Because WWE had a job that needed to be done, and Uso did it.

He took a savage beating from Roman Reigns. More important, he put him over as the de facto top heel in WWE.

As Corey Graves said when the show went off the air: “If Roman Reigns will do that to his own cousin, imagine what he will do to anyone else”.

Holy Sh** Moment of the Night:

Probably should have seen Sasha coming, but I didn’t.

Banks came in and attacked Bayley at the end of the impromptu Bayley versus Asuka match.  The Boss was nursing the injuries, but still put a beating on her on again off again BFF.

Also, we had a WWE Legends-fest during the ambulance match. Those Legends whom Randy Orton took out over the summer came back to bite The Viper.

Botch of the night:

Going totally unexpected here, but the 2020 Roman Reigns heel turn proves a couple things.

One, WWE should have done it before (fans have hated Reigns for a while).

Two, imagine if they had ever actually turned John Cena. That turn could have been even bigger than Reigns, and I suspect this Reigns heel run will be very good.

LOL Moment of the night:

R-Truth, rocking the old man wig, as he re-claims his 24/7 Championship from Drew Gulak.

Noteworthy Moment:

I’d have a few of them here.

We opened the show knowing that we weren’t seeing a Women’s Tag Championship match. We also lost Nikki Cross as a challenger.

According to WWE, the champions and challenger were not cleared to compete. Whether that’s a convenient “out” for them, or all three have issues related to COVID remains to be seen.

Overall lowlights:

Now, they may have legit reasons for the changes, but it still does suck to have title matches removed or changed just hours before the show.

On one hand, disappointed we didn’t get the tag match for the women…though I wasn’t expecting much from it.

Overall highlights:

No Retribution.

Yes, that’s a highlight. After things have been heating up (comedic new names notwithstanding), I certainly expected them to involve themselves in a match or two on the show.

After the final bell:

This was an odd show to predict. Coming in, checking the opinions on social media, plenty were not looking forward to much from this show.

A lot of the show fit that expectation-matches that weren’t great or weren’t entertaining.

However, we had a couple that carried the card, so I’d say it was unexpectedly decent.

With the WWE draft coming in early October (10/9 and 10/12), it’s safe to say that a lot of the feuds that drove Clash of Champions are probably over, or close enough to it.

So, we started by wondering how much of a gold rush we would get. By the end of the night, we knew the answer.

So how much of a gold rush? Not all that much. We ended the night with one sort of new champion, in Sami Zayn, but he was kind of sort of a champion.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here.

 

 

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