It should be said right off the bad that I’m going to put everything about the fact this is a women’s match in Saudi Arabia aside, as I tried to watch it with an open mind this time, after watching it live for the first time in 2021. I couldn’t remember much about it, and after watching this match back not just once, but twice, I can see why I couldn’t recall a thing outside of Zelina Vega’s victory. For this being the first-ever Queen of the Ring (Queen’s Crown, whatever, that was also a pretty stupid name to begin with) tournament, the final match fell flat. This was also in poor Piper Niven’s “Doudrop” era, which was absolutely terrible, so I’m going to just refer to her at Niven here going forward to not have to relive too much of that.

This was the shortest match on the card at just under six minutes, but it feels like it goes on forever, and I thought that on both watch-throughs of it. I’m all for the little guy vs. big guy thing, but it’s just not believable with Vega for me. The match is entirely about the smaller Vega trying to take down the bigger Niven, but I just don’t find it believable. Usually I’m better at suspending my disbelief when it comes to professional wrestling, but this just didn’t do it for me. It could be because Niven had an answer for everything Vega threw at her up until the very end, and that final move, the Code Red by Vega, was really the only thing I liked about this match. She hit that perfectly, obviously with a bit of Niven’s help, though you couldn’t tell Niven helped at all.

The crowd didn’t help this match at all, and again, that’s not a knock at the Saudi crowds, as we’ve seen they can be loud for women’s matches, and were more alive for the other women’s match on this show. The crowd was pretty silent throughout the entire six minutes, up until Vega sat on the thrown with the crown and she got a moderate pop. She was also just so loud and vocal in the ring, which works when there’s enough crowd noise and helps a match be believable, but that wasn’t the case here.

Out of curiosity, I looked back at the women in the Queen’s Crown tournament that year, and, though it sounds terrible to say, I’m not entirely sure any combination of women would have led to a big crowd response at that point in history. The biggest name would have been Liv Morgan, who was a few years away from really breaking out into a main event star.

Crown Jewel 2021 was a pretty good show and while this match was by no means offensive, it just wasn’t great compared to the caliber of the other action on the card. Vega may be the first QotR, but sadly, she’s not a very memorable one.

Written by Daisy Ruth