It was an event that had been surrounded in controversy and some thought it might not even happen, but WWE did put on Crown Jewel as scheduled on Friday. The event opened with the WWE return of Hulk Hogan, as reported by the Inquisitr , but things only became much weirder and more intense as the night went on. A new WWE Universal Champion was crowned, DX made their return, and the winner of the World Cup was not even someone in the tournament.
Hogan came out as the host of Crown Jewel and let all the fans in Saudi Arabia know that they were in for a great event. From there, the WWE World Cup tournament started with Rey Mysterio taking on Randy Orton in the opening match.
The tournament went on through the night with SmackDown Live stars facing off and Monday Night Raw stars battling on the other side of the bracket.
The Miz defeated Jeff Hardy which eventually led to Miz taking out Rey Mysterio to advance to the finals. On the red side, Seth Rollins defeated Bobby Lashley and Dolph Ziggler defeated Kurt Angle to advance, and that ended with Ziggler defeating Rollins to go to the finals.
Later in the night, The Miz and Dolph Ziggler faced off in the finals of the WWE World Cup, but Miz suffered an ankle “injury” early on and couldn’t continue. Instead of forfeiting the match for SmackDown Live , Shane McMahon inserted himself into the bout and ended up defeating Ziggler to become the “Best in the World.”
SHANE. O. MAC. = BEST. IN. THE. WORLD. #WWEWorldCup #WWECrownJewel @shanemcmahon pic.twitter.com/P0QDMs9aeB
— WWE (@WWE) November 2, 2018
Yes, someone who wasn’t even in the tournament at any point is the person who won it.
The next match had Braun Strowman taking on Brock Lesnar for the WWE Universal Championship which had been vacated by Roman Reigns. Before the match even started, Raw general manager Baron Corbin attacked Strowman and hit him in the back of the head with the title.
After that, the bell rang and Lesnar hit Strowman with an F-5, but the “Monster Among Men” kicked out. Actually, Strowman kicked out of four F-5’s before finally staying down for the pin after the fifth one. Brock Lesnar became the WWE Universal Champion once again.
The damage was done early by @BaronCorbinWWE to @BraunStrowman, and now @BrockLesnar is once again YOUR #UniversalChampion ! #WWECrownJewel pic.twitter.com/auCfYG8vQC
— WWE (@WWE) November 2, 2018
The main event of the night saw the return of D-Generation X and Shawn Michaels’ first match in almost a decade as they took on the Brothers of Destruction. The match really wasn’t too bad at all and it included some broken announce tables and flashes back to the past.
It was a back-and-forth match which ended with Shawn Michaels hitting Sweet Chin Music on The Undertaker to get him out of the way. HBK hit it on Kane too and it led to Triple H hitting the Pedigree to pin Kane for the win.
MISSION COMPLETE for #DX ! #WWECrownJewel @TripleH @ShawnMichaels pic.twitter.com/jQNUlN0aO7
— WWE Universe (@WWEUniverse) November 2, 2018
Here are all the results from tonight’s WWE Crown Jewel :
- Kickoff Match – United States Championship: Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Rusev
- Rey Mysterio defeated Randy Orton – WWE World Cup
- The Miz defeated Jeff Hardy – WWE World Cup
- Seth Rollins defeated Bobby Lashley – WWE World Cup
- Dolph Ziggler defeated Kurt Angle – WWE World Cup
- SmackDown Tag Team Championship: The Bar defeated The New Day
- The Miz defeated Rey Mysterio – WWE World Cup
- Dolph Ziggler defeated Seth Rollins – WWE World Cup
- WWE Championship: AJ Styles defeated Samoa Joe
- WWE Universal Championship: Brock Lesnar defeated Braun Strowman
- Shane McMahon defeated Dolph Ziggler – WWE World Cup Finals
- DX defeated Brothers of Destruction
Despite all of the problems in the past couple of weeks, WWE went ahead with Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia. As you can tell from the full recap and all the results, it was a rather strange event with plenty of weird occurrences. It will be interesting to see where WWE goes with Shane McMahon as the World Cup winner, Brock Lesnar as Universal Champion, and DX as we approach Survivor Series later this month.