The road from “Saturday Night Live” fame to WrestleMania infamy is a short one — about 6 feet or so as it turns out. Colin Jost and Michael Che traveled each and every one of them in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, courtesy of a can’t-be-stopped, man-on-a-mission Braun Strowman, who almost singlehandedly ran through the entire field to become the sixth winner of WrestleMania’s signature melee.

The Monster Among Men was all business from the bell, and clearly had no patience for a feel-good story of any kind. Strowman put an end to not just one but several sentimental favorites. SmackDown LIVE mainstay Ali? Gone. A returning Harper? Adios. Last year’s winner Matt Hardy? Him too, as well as his brother Jeff.

Jost and Che, for their part, saw the writing on the wall early on and hid underneath the ring at the opening bell — though Jost, perhaps, wanted to avoid drawing undue attention to his Odell Beckham Jr. Browns jersey — and while they attempted to steal the win by ganging up on Strowman as he tended to the Hardys, their big play failed and they found themselves with nowhere to run.

They tried to get out of it. Jost brought in his therapist to try and talk Strowman down. You can guess what happened to him. Che, wearing wrestling headgear and a WrestleMania hoodie, tried to eliminate himself, only to be stopped on the apron by Strowman and decked to the outside. Jost, inexplicably, found himself with a fighting chance when Braun accidentally got himself tangled in the ropes, but The Monster Among Men overpowered the comedian, hoisted him onto his shoulders, and sent him flying over the ring into a crowd of onlookers to claim the win.

From WrestleMania 35, he’s Braun Strowman. Thank you, goodnight.

Credit: WWE.com

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For those of you who believe in miracles, the bad news first: Kofi Kingston did not win the WWE Championship. And if you were hoping for that outcome, that’s a somewhat dispiriting result on its face: The Dreadlocked Dynamo’s unexpected sprint to the Elimination Chamber technically only lasted five days — he was named to the match on Tuesday and went an hour in a Gauntlet Match to remind everyone why — but it felt like he had been fighting for the entire 11 years he’s been here, or maybe even longer.

On paper, he was a sentimental favorite, but that doesn’t seem to capture the respect and adoration the WWE Universe showered on him as a result of his week, his evening and his entire career; when the final pinfall was counted, you got the sense that if the WWE Universe could have entered the ring and borne his body to the locker room in magnificent defeat, they would have. Instead, The Dreadlocked Dynamo left under his own power with The New Day at his side, but moments earlier he jumped, he punched, he invited punishment to psych himself up and he even got the ceremonial Edge pose where he made a lunatic face and pressed it up against the edge of the Chamber. The man earned his moment and was more than ready for it; that Kofi didn’t win is in no way a knock on his performance. He went as big as he could, and then he went home.

The end result was, however, a rousing (if potentially begrudging) testimony to the man who walked into and out of the Chamber as WWE Champion, “The New” Daniel Bryan. If Kingston the WWE Universe’s sentimental favorite to leave with the title, the champion himself was the polar opposite for the competitors with which he shared the Chamber. Samoa Joe mottled Bryan’s chest with chops just seconds into the match, AJ Styles slapped him square across the face, and the only reason Randy Orton didn’t eat him alive was because he never really got the chance. That Bryan survived was a credit to his tenacity (Rowan was pre-emptively ejected from the match, leaving him stranded), his tolerance for pain and, yes, his in-ring skills, which have not diminished in the slightest because he stopped chanting “Yes.” Bryan won this one straight down the middle, biding his time and outlasting Kofi down the stretch. His eco-advocacy can be on the aggressive side, but the man can go.

The field thinned quickly, or quicker than the Women’s Elimination Chamber earlier in the night. Like the kaiju monster that inspires his theme song, Joe left chaos in his wake and was felled from above, courtesy of a Phenomenal Forearm from Styles. Jeff Hardy, far from obsolete, was dropped by a Running Knee from Bryan — though not before he landed a Swanton Bomb off the top of a Chamber pod to the lumbar of The Phenomenal One, who was draped face-down across a top turnbuckle. And Orton, who snatched AJ out of midair with an RKO to eliminate the two-time WWE Champion, was a little too impressed with himself and wandered right into a Trouble in Paradise from Kofi that took him out of contention and teed up the final battle with Bryan.

They fought. Goodness, did they fight. Sometimes they fought straight up — Kofi escaped the LeBell Lock via a good old-fashioned rope break, which surprisingly exists in an Elimination Chamber. Sometimes they fought dirty, slamming each other’s heads into a glass pane while slugging it out atop an empty pod. And in Kofi’s case, they fought risky; he attempted to follow up that hockey fight with a splash that carried him from the pod to the ring, where he had hoped a downed Bryan would be waiting. He wasn’t: The Beard dodged the maneuver, clambered to his feet and drilled Kingston with his Running Knee for the second time, sealing his victory and snapping Kofi’s dream of championship glory – at least for now.

“For now” being something of the operative words. As Big E and Xavier Woods rushed into the emptied-out Chamber to their brother’s side, the WWE Universe continued to show respect. “That’s for you,” Big E said to Kingston as he rose to his feet, and Kofi’s reaction before he finally walked back behind the curtain was one of respect returned, mutual gratification and seeming determination; the lasting impression of his latest attempt at the WWE Title was that it may not be his last. The night didn’t go his way, but it felt like a new day all the same.

Credit: WWE.com

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Full list of Royal Rumble Match participants and eliminations

Credit: WWE.com

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LOS ANGELES — With a Universal Title opportunity and grudge match against Acting General Manager Baron Corbin riding on the result, Braun Strowman was unquestionably the Superstar whose fortunes were most entwined with the outcome of the Men’s 5-on-5 Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match. Given all that, it was only fitting that The Monster Among Men almost singlehandedly won the contest with four straight eliminations — a feat that was doubly impressive due to the gritty performance by Team SmackDown … and some pointed tensions within Strowman’s own squad.

Strowman had made his distaste for all his teammates — Finn Bálor excluded — clear before the bell rang, and the feeling was clearly than mutual, especially between himself and Drew McIntyre. The Scottish Psychopath threatened to seize control of the match from the opening moments when he tagged himself in and scored a surprise elimination of Samoa Joe (the only Team Raw elimination not recorded by Strowman). That set off a chain of events that culminated in a brief throwdown between Strowman and McIntyre.
Shane McMahon elbow drops Braun Strowman through announce table: Survivor Series 2018 (WWE Network Exclusive)

Team SmackDown responded in opportunistic, and impressive, fashion. Rey Mysterio ousted Bálor after a dizzying back-and-forth. And the legendary luchador did his best to hold “The Almighty” Bobby Lashley at bay. The Miz called a surprisingly crisp game as Team Captain. Shane McMahon put his death-defying bonafides to good use with a Leap of Faith that took out both Strowman and the announce table, as well as a Coast-to-Coast that helped send Raw’s Dolph Ziggler to the showers.

It seemed, for a moment, like SmackDown had a puncher’s chance to outlast the red brand … at least until Strowman re-entered the picture. The Monster Among Men clotheslined McMahon clean out of the air on a second Coast-to-Coast attempt (this one to Lashley) and stormed back with near-immediate eliminations of Jeff Hardy, Mysterio and Miz. That left Shane, spent and sucking wind, as the last man standing for Team SmackDown. The SmackDown Commissioner refused to drop his hands, but even Shane knew he was destined to go down fighting. Strowman scooped him up for a Running Powerslam and put the match away in monstrous fashion, giving Raw a 4-0 advantage over SmackDown in the Survivor Series standings and effectively sealing the WWE fall classic for Team Red.

With that win, Strowman now has free rein to tee off on Corbin, but the Acting General Manager of Raw — who had been animatedly patrolling the outside as Team Captain —struck first, blindsiding Strowman before retreating up the ramp alongside Lashley and McIntyre. Their shared mocking of The Monster Among Men’s signature roar indicates that there might be a couple more people that Braun Strowman has to go through before he gets to Corbin. If Survivor Series was any indication, that won’t be a problem.

Credit: WWE.com

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The Charismatic Enigma continued to show the ruthless side that has awakened inside him after his brutal Hell in a Cell Match against Randy Orton, ramming Miz’s face repeatedly into the turnbuckles. However, Hardy’s high-risk offense gave The Awesome One an opening to take control of the bout and ground the high-flyer.

Hardy once again took to the skies, however, as he stunned Miz with Whisper in the Wind, then used the ringside barricade to propel himself onto a dazed A-Lister at ringside. Back in the ring, The Miz showed just how low he would go to advance, rolling Hardy up and attempting to put his feet on the ropes for leverage during the pin, but the official caught Miz in the act and stopped the count.

Hardy attempted to take advantage of the situation and put The Awesome One away, but The Miz swiftly countered and planted The Charismatic Enigma into the mat with the Skull-Crushing Finale to secure his place in the WWE World Cup Semifinal. The A-Lister will meet Rey Mysterio, who will certainly still be reeling after a brutal post-match attack by Randy Orton following their opening-round battle. Did The Viper’s brutality open the door for The Miz to move one step closer to becoming the best in the world?

Credit: WWE.com

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That Jeff Hardy and Randy Orton’s Hell in a Cell Match ended the way it did is less than surprising: Hardy’s rivalry with Orton had become far too stomach-churning to conclude with something as quaint as an RKO and a pinfall, and The Charismatic Enigma has been in search of a blaze of glory inside Hell in a Cell for some time now. He found one.

For Hardy, competing inside Hell in a Cell was one of the last few milestones he’d yearned to achieve in WWE, though he fought like a Superstar stepping into his eighth dance in the cage rather than his first. With the psychological advantage he usually possesses rendered obsolete, Orton had no choice but to battle Jeff with pure brutality: After wearing Hardy down with lashes from his own belt, The Viper produced a toolbox from under the ring, pulled out a screwdriver and threaded it through Hardy’s earlobe, twisting the tool around and around in a sickening display until The Charismatic Enigma finally beat him away with a low blow.

Revitalized by Orton’s savagery, Hardy saw red. The Charismatic Enigma propped a chair on Orton’s chest and executed a pinpoint Swanton — aggravating The Viper’s already-wounded back — before erecting a sinister setup involving two ladders (a short one and a tall one) and a table. After propping Orton up on the table, Hardy scaled the smaller ladder, seemingly planning a leapfrog. Then, he audibled onto the taller one, seemingly planning a Swanton. Then, Hardy left the ladders entirely, suspending himself from the Cell roof like monkey bars, dropping for what appeared to be some kind of splash on The Apex Predator.

Only Orton moved. And Hardy crashed and burned, shattering the table in his attempt to put Orton away. Much to the referee’s horror, Orton made the cover and insisted on defeating his opponent with a 1-2-3, and the official counted the pinfall, if only to get The Apex Predator out of the ring so EMTs could strap Hardy to a stretcher and wheel him away. It was the result Orton wanted for sure, and, perhaps, the one Jeff Hardy wanted as well. After all, he said would take Randy Orton to hell with him. He didn’t say anything about coming out.

Credit: WWE.com

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