Courtesy of WWE

WWE BASH IN BERLIN REVIEW

- Rob Crowther, Editor In Chief

WWE's marquee event, Bash in Berlin delivered a solid five card event in front of a capacity crowd in Berlin, Germany. The German audience gave the Superstars of WWE a stellar ovation, while the wrestlers themselves did most of their storytelling inside of the ring.

The opening match featured The WWE Champion Cody Rhodes against his friend and former Universal Champion, Kevin Owens. This babyface vs. babyface matchup featured some moments of conflict from Owens as expected, but ultimately Owens stuck to the script and played by the rules. After losing in a solid one on one match, Owens shook the hand of the WWE Champion, leaving something more to be desired here. Regardless, a pretty good match to open the show.

One thing I'd like to point out is the protection of Rhodes' finisher the Cross Rhodes, as seemingly more and more WWE Superstars are kicking out of the finisher multiple times per match. In fact, it took Rhodes approximately four Cross Rhodes throughout the match to put away Owens. Owens is not Roman Reigns at this point in time, and this is something I will pay attention to going forward.

Up next was the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship match as The Unholy Union defended against former champs Bianca Belair and Jade Cargil. This match felt like a bit of a reset for Belair and Cargil as they were former tag champs and have faced Unholy Union in the past. During our predictions panel podcast, we thought for certain we'd see a turn from Belair or Cargil, but this wasn't the case. Instead Cargil and Belair regained The WWE Women's Tag Team Championships, which was great to see, but seems to keep these titles as proverbial hot potato titles. Although clunky at times, all four ladies went all out in this one. I'm very interested to see where this title run goes for Jade and Bianca moving forward.

The much anticipated mixed tag match between The Terror Twins Damien Priest and Rhea Ripley against Liv Morgan and Dirty Dom gave fans some excitement, and even arguably the pop of the night. Despite interference from the rest of The Judgement Day Rhea was able to get her hands on Dominick Mysterio, throw him around, and choke him out, much to the delight of the fans in Berlin. Absolutely amazing facials and in ring prowess by Rhea who is operating on another level right now. Liv pulled out some unique offense as well including a modified crucifix bomb type roll up. Great to see Rhea and Priest get some revenge, but it begs the question, now what? As the old saying goes, always leave them wanting more.

CM Punk and Drew McIntyre kept their feud going with a strap match in which a competitor much touch all four corners to win the match. This was another very solid match between Drew and Punk bringing about some classic strap match tropes. In full transparency, strap matches are not among my favorites, but these two were able to tell a bit of a story here. Ultimately, Punk was able to win after multiple GTS attempts and touching all four corners with his stolen bracelet back around his wrist. This is another match that has potentially but a bow on one more feud.

The main event of the evening naturally saw The Ring General Gunther take on the fourteen time World Champion, Randy Orton in a straight up brawl. These two threw everything they had at each other and more. Orton made Gunther look like a million bucks, (which isn't hard to do) and finally passed out during a submission from The World Heavyweight Champion. Great performance by both competitors here, but I was very surprised to see a handshake from Gunther to the challenger Orton.

Bash in Berlin didn't feature too many fresh storytelling elements, but seemingly turned the page on a lot of the longterm stories going on in the world of the WWE. This PLE wasn't anywhere near the level of previous 2024 events, featuring no members of The Bloodline, but left the door open to set the table headed into Bad Blood and Survivor Series.