WWE Clash At The Castle 2022: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to another edition of Wrestling Inc.'s retro reviews, where we take notable wrestling shows from the past and apply our universally celebrated loved/hated format! Usually we put these out before the current WWE or AEW event we're basing in on, but this time around, we're coming on the heels of WWE Clash in Paris, and doing so by looking at the very first show in what can be considered WWE's "Clash" series of international PLEs: Clash at the Castle 2022, from Cardiff, Wales.

Yes, it's another show from 2022; this retrospective actually comes three years, almost to the day, after Clash 2022, and much as we found with AEW last month, it's insane how different the WWE landscape is now than it was then. On September 3, 2022, WWE's new creative regime was still just barely getting its feet wet, as Vince McMahon's abrupt "retirement" in July had handed the reigns of the company over to Paul "Triple H" Levesque, who took over just in time for SummerSlam. Clash 2022 came immediately after that first show from the new creative, and it was a big swing — the first event of its kind, an international showcase, headlined by UK-born top babyface Drew McIntyre trying to topple the seemingly teflon WWE Champion, Roman Reigns. There were other interesting things to watch in Wales that night (the first PLE match for the newly-formed Damage CTRL trio, the build to the Dominik Mysterio heel turn, and the reality-bending Seth Rollins vs. Matt Riddle storyline) but we were mostly watching out to see whether Levesque (unlike, perhaps, McMahon) would book a massive "hometown" win for McIntyre, and too a lesser extent, Sheamus in the Intercontinental title match lower on the card.

Whatever tests WWE passed or failed in Cardiff is a matter of personal opinion, but we are certainly going to talk about all of the above, and more. Three years on (minus a day), here are three things we hated and three things we loved about WWE Clash the Castle 2022.

Take one look at WWE's women division. Take a look at established stars like Becky Lynch, IYO SKY, and Rhea Ripley. Take a look at rising stars like Tiffany Stratton, Stephanie Vaquer, and Blake Monroe. Take one look at how strong WWE's division is now, in the big '25. Now, keep that image in your brain, and look back to WWE's women's division in 2022. It is insane how much of a difference three years can make.

Clash at the Castle 2022 had some incredible moments, from Roman Reigns' show-down with hometown hero Drew McIntyre to Dominik Mysterio's heel turn against Edge and Rey Mysterio, or the debut of Solo Sikoa. GUNTHER and Sheamus also made their mark with a technical masterclass. However, despite having some of the best wrestlers — male or female — in their division, WWE's women failed to make as big of an impact at Clash 2022.

Now, I'm not saying that these matches were bad. Bianca Belair, Alexa Bliss, and Asuka's match against the forces of Damage CTRL's Bayley, SKY, and Dakota Kai was fun to watch (although any match with performers like Belair, Bayley, Asuka, and SKY is guaranteed to be a good match). Liv Morgan's match against Shayna Baszler was an experiment: an attempt to get the scrappy underdog Morgan over by putting her against an opponent known for her ruthless in-ring mastery. However, when you compare these matches to the rest of the card, they quickly blend into the background. To be honest, I forgot that Morgan and Baszler even competed for Morgan's "WWE SmackDown" Women's Championship.

Unfortunately, WWE's women occupied the lower end of Clash at the Castle 2022's quality spectrum, and not for any fault of their own. Despite the quantity of storyline heading into the match — Belair's feud with Bayley features some of both women's best work, and Morgan's match-up with Ronda Rousey associate Baszler made sense — it just failed to have the gripping quality the rest of the card had. There wasn't enough meat on the bones of these matches for us to sink our teeth into. Belair's team-up with Bliss and Asuka was cute, but there was nothing really there to up the stakes; it was simply a number's game, at the end of the day. It was simply a vehicle to get more Belair and Bayley content, and what would have been a better singles match was clouded by the extra moving parts of Bliss, Asuka, SKY, and Kai. It wasn't bad, it just could have been distilled further. Morgan's feud with Baszler was half-baked at best, and it was clear it was just to tide her over until she could face Rousey again. The matches themselves weren't bad, but again, there was just no stakes with them: nothing to make me care about the match other than seeing my faves win.

Did these shallow women's matches suck in the moment? Yeah. However, looking on it retrospectively, we can appreciate just how far this women's division has come.

Written by Angeline Phu

Ah, Matthew Riddle, personally one of the least palatable people who unfortunately saw a lot of potential squandered by bad decision-making. Except, whereas normally one could attribute the blame in that regard towards hot and cold booking or just someone in the company feeling he wasn't worth it, it genuinely was down to the man himself. 

With that out of the way, it should be clear why this writer didn't enjoy seeing Riddle not only wrestling on PLE in a role that literally anybody else that was less problematic could have been in, but doing so as the supposed babyface in his feud with Seth Rollins. 

This was a Riddle that had not long been estranged from the one redeeming quality about him in 2022, Randy Orton, and was being presented as the good guy – allow one to double check his notes – in a feud where he had just been called out for being a bad husband and father. It feels like there should probably be a good guy in the good guy role, but that is just an opinion and it didn't change the fact that this was the route they went for and it all wound up being for naught anyway. 

At least this time around, Rollins got the win, but just having to sit and endure a manufactured underdog story with the underdog in question being an ostensibly repulsive person made it a hard watch. Was the action terrible? Certainly not. Rollins is an excellent worker, one of the best on the planet, and Riddle was hardly awful in the ring. But the story felt forced, the protagonist wasn't compelling, and it was an all around waste of time in the long run.

Written by Max Everett

A match that falls under the category of "I'm going to need a cigarette or something after watching that," Gunther vs. Sheamus from WWE's Clash at the Castle 2022 is as brutal as WWE has ever been.

Like all of these trips down memory lane that we take here at Wrestling Inc., context is important for this match. While SummerSlam was the first Premium Live Event to take place since Vince McMahon was forced to retire, Clash at the Castle was the first PLE that truly felt like a Triple H production. A much more stripped back match card with six bouts in total, each of them being unique in their own way to allow them the chance to stand out in front of such a large audience. Commentary not being as overbearing as it had been for many years, and most importantly, a place for "The Ring General" to do his thing.

Had McMahon stayed in a job for a couple of extra months, Gunther would have gone back to being WALTER and would probably have been AEW World Champion by now. However, Triple H was always a fan of the big Austrian, with his matches on various NXT TakeOver events being the highlight of any given night, and if there was one thing that "The Game" was going to do when he got the pen, it was to book Gunther as an unstoppable force of nature. This is effectively Ground Zero of that push. Gunther couldn't have asked for a better opponent for this card in hindsight as Sheamus had finally graduated to the level of underappreciated workhorse by 2022, and with a European crowd more than happy to see something with a little more meat on the bone than a traditional WWE PLE match, this was always going to succeed.

The match truly feels like a struggle. Within a few minutes, Sheamus' chest is already starting to blister and the champion is asserting his dominance in the only way he knows how; by beating the snot out of his opponent. Every time Sheamus tries to find an opening, Gunther cuts him off excellently, with "The Celtic Warrior's" Ten Beats of the Bodhran being the one move he is constantly trying to hit as he knows that the only way he can get himself back into the match is through sheer brute force. Once he does eventually hit it, it's the champion who is desperately trying to create distance to catch his breath, as even in these early stages of his run as WWE Intercontinental Champion, Gunther can dish out punishment, but he hates taking it.

However, Gunther was the one to finally break Sheamus down enough to get the victory in a match that thoroughly deserves its status as a modern classic. Gunther was off to the races as a dominant champion, Sheamus solidified himself as one tough S.O.B in less than 20 minutes, and the Triple H era of WWE was only going to get better.

Written by Sam Palmer

Dominik Mysterio shocked the world with his heel turn at Clash at the Castle 2022, and now, three years later, I can confidently say that this single move saved Mysterio's career.

Okay, that's not a controversial or original statement by any means. Everybody knows how great heel Dominik Mysterio is. Looking back on this moment now, though, with the knowledge of Mysterio's prolific heel run, is special nonetheless — perhaps this moment gets better with age, now that we know how things turned out for Mysterio.

It wasn't like this heel turn came out of nowhere. Back then, we could feel the tension brewing between Mysterio Jr. and Mysterio Sr., but the implosion of the Mysterio bloodline was incredibly satisfying nonetheless. Rey's frantic pleas with Dominik and Dominik's moment of supposed acquiescence made the clothesline Dominik delivered to Rey all the more devastating. To have Edge (now known as Cope) in the ring for this pivotal moment in Dominik's career — baby's first heel turn — was a great touch. This was literally a bird leaving the nest moment. This moment was Dominik step out of the house his father built in order to set off to find his own. This moment literally changed history for both Rey and Dominik.

No, literally, nothing was ever the same after this move. Like I said, before this moment, Dominik lived in Rey's shadow. He was nothing more than Rey's son, a bland, untoasted babyface who had nothing to him but his father's legacy. When he stepped out of that shadow — when he left the nest — he began to develop a personality. We got the opportunity to watch this personality develop; we literally got to see Dominik grow up in the ring, much like Rey and Edge did as Dominik grew up outside and around it. We have to understand: this heel turn could have gone up in smoke. Dominik could have floundered as he was developing his heel persona. He could have failed to rile up the crowd, connecting with them in his own villainous way. It's easy to be mean, but to be downright dastardly — downright "Dirty" — is a notably bigger ask. This heel turn, like anything else in wrestling, was a risk. This was an experiment for Dominik Mysterio, and with two NXT North American Championships and one ongoing Intercontinental Championship under his belt, I think we can say that it was a great success.

Rewatching Mysterio's heel turn is like looking back in a time capsule, or rewatching an old movie. We know what happens — we know how successful Mysterio's heel run has been, and we can only imagine how successful it will continue to be — but there a certain positive feeling that blooms in the mind when you go back and watch this first step, this pivotal moment. You can enjoy the moment arguably more than you did when you first experienced it; you know how the story will go, so you can put your hands up and enjoy the ride.

Written by Angeline Phu

Roman Reigns' historic title run could be characterized by the sheer volume of upper echelon talent that took their shot at the "Tribal Chief" and missed, and though it eventually ended with Cody Rhodes there were certainly some times that it was argued that someone else could have beaten him. 

The first time this truly reared its head came heading into, during, and after Clash at the Castle, Drew McIntyre's return to the UK – the first PLE in the UK for quite some time – felt primed for him to accomplish the goal of winning a WWE World title in front of a live audience. A few years have passed since then and it's hard to imagine a world where Rhodes didn't beat Reigns, and it's not like one could credibly say the creative decision came at the detriment of their commercial position. But watching it back again, in the moment and with the benefit of hindsight, the way everything was worked felt like the right decision.

The match itself was as great as one would have expected it to be, considering it was McIntyre and Reigns, and it wasn't hampered down with the predictable interference from the Usos or Paul Heyman – because at the time, that was The Bloodline in its entirety. The sole interference came right at the end of the bout, handing Reigns the eventual victory to completely suck the atmosphere out of the Principality Stadium. And of course, it came at the hands of the debuting Solo Sikoa, who has since gone on to become the (recently-dethroned) United States Champion and earnestly one of this writer's favorite characters on weekly TV. The bout had been built around the idea that Reigns would be alone, and the action played into that story with McIntyre getting the upper hand in the honorable contest. 

So naturally, what is a villain to do but out-source? And when you have a family as big as the Anoa'i dynasty and a fresh-faced baby Uso in your developmental territory, it's certainly a good decision to call on him. All in all, the main event had a great match, a bold finish that marked a significant moment in the arc of Reigns' as Undisputed WWE Champion and for Sikoa as the "Tribal Enforcer" and would-be "Next Tribal Chief." And it still stands the test of – albeit very limited – time.

Written by Max Everett

I think Clash at the Castle 2022 is something of a hidden gem, though I admittedly enjoyed Morgan vs. Baszler and even Riddle vs. Rollins more than I suspect many did. But for all that I had fun looking back on this show three years later, closing things out with Tyson Fury singing with Drew McIntyre in the ring to make the Cardiff crowd feel better about the loss has aged worse than milk.

There are three things about the Fury thing that really don't work for me (other than the fact that it's, you know, Tyson Fury). The first, obviously, is that this never goes anywhere and is completely pointless; to my knowledge it remains Fury's most recent WWE appearance. The second is that you can't even escape it by turning off the show after the main event, because in the middle of the main event, Austin Theory runs down to cash in his MITB briefcase (lol remember when he had that) but Fury punches him out and then stares down then-champion Roman Reigns. Again, none of this goes anywhere whatsoever and it all ended up being a complete waste of time, Austin Theory perhaps most so.

Those are both reasons to dislike Fury's appearance that both come from a backward-facing perspective. The third reason, though, is something I remember feeling in the moment, which was: Man, just turn the cameras off before this part, what are we doing? I understand that you want to pacify the crowd and send everyone home as happy as possible (still a questionable choice of means but I get the intent) but that's what dark segments are for. To the extent that anyone needed to see McIntyre and Fury sing together, it was really just that audience in Cardiff; for everyone else watching the broadcast, it took the sting out of Roman escaping with the title yet again because of yet another Bloodline member, and it made WWE seem legitimately afraid of the potential backlash to McIntyre getting screwed over in the UK. Which, given how early this event came in the tenure of the new creative regime, they probably were, but you don't SHOW IT. As it turned out, Triple H not having the balls to end Clash at the Castle with a psychotic Welsh crowd screaming for Reigns' blood was something of a harbinger of the spineless booking that has come to define the three years of his tenure so far.

Written by Miles Schneiderman