How WWE Can Make The Crown Jewel Championship Matter

At Bad Blood, Triple H unveiled the Crown Jewel Championship belt, and in so doing announced that the November Crown Jewel PLE from Saudi Arabia would feature head-to-head matches between both the men’s and women’s world champions of each main roster brand. While the belt itself looks impressive, the response from fans has been underwhelming.

The concept ostensibly seems to revisit the brand warfare days of Survivor Series or the Bragging Rights PLE, each of which produced some good matches over the years but tended to fall flat from a storytelling perspective because of the lack of stakes. After all, no one’s title reigns were actually at risk, and by the nature of separate brands, talents typically didn’t continue their storylines past the one-off show at hand, making them almost feel like non-canon, house show-style events.

Is it possible, however, to make the Crown Jewel Championship mean something, both this year and on an ongoing basis—the foundation for a new WWE tradition? There is some potential.

Cody Rhodes Makes The Crown Jewel Championship Credible

Ask any casual fan who won the first two Royal Rumbles, and the odds are they won’t know. That’s because the victors were perennial mid-carder Jim Duggan and then Big John Studd, who never wrestled another PLE match after his Rumble win. In each of these cases, the Rumble finish was a crowd pleaser, but carried no consequences.

That narrative changed the following two years when Hulk Hogan became the first back-to-back Royal Rumble winner. Even though it would be another year before the Rumble had stakes—with the world title or a world title shot at WrestleMania henceforth on the line—Hogan winning elevated the match to be something the tip-top stars in the company cared about. It’s little wonder the Royal Rumble victory started feeling like one of the most prestigious things a wrestler could accomplish from that point on.

As the most recent back-to-back Royal Rumble winner, the most recent WrestleMania main event winner, and the reigning WWE Champion, Cody Rhodes is now the de facto face of WWE. As such, being the inaugural Crown Jewel Champion marks an opportunity to immediately lend credibility to that title. In contrast to Braun Strowman winning the Greatest Royal Rumble and its symbolic championship belt, then getting released a few short years later, only to return as a mid-carder, The American Nightmare is a bona fide marquee star. There’s no gamble around whether this victory will be an effective stepping stone for him. Rather, he’s the man who can make the championship.

Gunther Winning The Crown Jewel Championship Stands To Elevate Him

WWE finds itself in a win-win situation, in which either man who might win the Crown Jewel Championship already has marked credibility. Cody Rhodes could legitimize the title. There may, however, be even greater mutual potential in a Gunther victory.

Gunther has been one of WWE’s most consistent performers since arriving on the main roster and, particularly in terms of match quality, he has thrived as World Heavyweight Champion. Crown Jewel could mark a unique opportunity, though, for him to beat one of the few undeniably bigger stars than himself, without disrupting The American Nightmare’s WWE Championship reign.

A victory for Gunther and a closing shot of him holding the Crown Jewel Championship over his head, while defeated Rhodes lies on the mat, can sell the idea that he truly is WWE’s top champion and mark one of the final pieces in the puzzle of pushing him forward from world championship status to the kind of guy who could credibly main event a WrestleMania. Moreover, this victory, more so than Rhodes winning, could plant the seeds for WWE to revisit this feud with either world title on the line, properly, down the road.

Tiffany Stratton Cashes In

There’s only one Money in the Bank briefcase currently in play. Given Tiffany Stratton’s immense talent and potential, it looks as though there’s a good chance she will ultimately become a champion when she chooses to cash in.

Some folks online are getting a little carried away in prognosticating that she might cash in on both Liv Morgan and Nia Jax and win both their titles as well as the Crown Jewel one. The logistics are quite fuzzy on whether that would canonically make sense (could cash-ins really happen on two champions at once on a whim?). WWE can always fudge the rules, but if Stratton were to cash-in, it seems more feasible she would do so on one champion or the other post-match.

Another unconventional possibility, though, would be for Stratton to cash-in for the Crown Jewel Championship itself, either by turning the match for that title into a Triple Threat, or by claiming it off the winner immediately post-match. While, on paper, this choice wouldn’t make much sense, it would be a way of immediately establishing this prize in not just ceremonial, but rather is desirable enough for a Money in the Bank holder to think it was worth a cash-in.

The most likely scenario in which this solution would work would probably be if Morgan were to either win or be very close to it, only for Stratton to take that prize from here without rushing her brewing issue with Jax.

WWE Can Stage Classic Matches For The Crown Jewel Championship

Without getting too complicated around the booking, one of the most surefire ways to make the Crown Jewel Championship feel important would be for the matches for it to be great in and of themselves.

That doesn’t necessarily seem like a likely outcome on the women’s side. Liv Morgan has done outstanding character work and is a good in-ring performer. It nonetheless seems unlikely she can compensate enough to pull a great match out of Nia Jax (who has shown improvement bell-to-bell, but still isn’t someone anyone’s expecting match of the year candidates out of).

By contrast, on the men’s side of things, Cody Rhodes and Gunther are both talented enough, with enough investment from management that an instant classic does feel possible. If both these marquee stars go all out and have the time put on a classic, they could go a long way toward putting this championship on the map.

In the end, the Crown Jewel Championship probably isn’t going to become a profound part of WWE lore, though. There are opportunities to make it feel meaningful in the short term, or for it to at least be at the center some fun action in November.