Hello! It's the last Review of the long weekend of Wrestling. There's been ups, downs and then there was some of the shit they had on last night. There's a lot of talking points so I won't waste any of your time with some aimless rambling.
Actually, here's some aimless rambling. I don't expect the world from every episode of RAW and from the people involved. Believe it or not, seeing as I sit down and watch whether it's RAW, NXT, Impact at any time between 1 & 4am I actually want to be entertained. If you've been reading my Reviews for a while now you'll know- or at least I hope that I'm a pretty balanced reviewer. This stuff is especially relevant with the Divas segment later. I want them to succeed, I do.
Seth Rollins & Triple H Pre-Tape
This was good in a "sets up the main angle" sort of way as were the various "statue video packages" they showed throughout the night.
Brock Lesnar, Paul Heyman, Bo Dallas Segment
I loved this segment. Why on earth would Brock go back to the UFC when he just has to wrestle once every two or three months and the rest of the time do shit like this and have fun? It's never not fun to watch Brock kill someone, I just loved all of the Bo stuff and combine that with a truly shocking revelation that Paul Heyman is in fact a great promo just made this a great segment. One problem though, Heyman saying Santa isn't real. Of course he is, Del Rio nearly killed him.
New Day v Lucha Dragons
Speaking of segments that I loved. Given Brock's seemingly gone for a bit now New Day are by far and a way the best thing on the show, nobody comes close- not even the various returns we had last night.
Firstly, I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing Xavier Woods can't do. He can Wrestle, He can Sing, He's got his own YouTube Gaming Channel, He's an amazing shit-talker, He's getting a PhD and now as established he can play the Trombone. Why isn't this guy getting all of the pushes? All of them.
The actual match was pretty dodgy, this same thing happened in another match a while ago where the Lucha Dragons were- well doing Lucha and New Day had no idea how to sell it. BUT, I don't care. They had Xavier Woods playing a fucking Trombone while the other two sang a Heel version of "New York, New York". Xavier Woods is an incredible shit-talker, we've established that- but him playing the funeral march on the Trombone while Kofi and Big E hit their finish- THAT IS ABSOLUTE GENIUS.
Just when I was about to tweet that was just a perfect the Rockets hit, and "The Dudley Boyz" flashed up. This whole segment was just amazing, and also surprising because I thought Bubba had been murdered by a yet to be discovered person. On the whole this was just a near perfect segment, and in two nights the Tag Division instantly became one of the main talking points in WWE again.
Triple H, Stephanie & Seth Rollins Backstage Promo
This segment actually annoyed me, it completely spoiled the end segment- because the whole thing here was them telling us the crowd there is indeed a statue of Rollins.
Roman Reigns & Dean Ambrose v The Wyatts
The actual match was fine, it annoys me they're going to be stringing this out a bit of a while longer because Summerslam definitely felt like the blow-off- and it also means my Ambrose turning theory isn't dead yet so when it doesn't happen it'll re-annoy me.
With all that in mind, if they wanted to carry this on this was the best way to do it. It's very early days, but Strowman coming in seems like a perfect fit. He's a legitimate Strong-Man who's not billed- is 6'8. He's just a complete monster, his gimmick down in NXT for those of you that don't know was having freakishly large hands. I admit, this wasn't my first choice in terms of where these four guys go now- but I'm definitely intrigued. Especially when you consider Reigns & Ambrose will be getting a third member, and it won't be Sting as we discovered later.
Miz TV w/ PCB & Team Bella
Oh here we go. This segment completely 100% died. I'm not saying they set them up for failure, but with the exception of maybe Paige nobody in this segment (apart from Miz obviously) is good on the mic. When Charlotte started on Miz I knew exactly what was going to happen, and it did- Miz completely owned her. The only good line Charlotte had was calling Miz out for his shit figure-four. All of this after she said, and I went back today and re-watched it to confirm this. CHARLOTTE the DAUGHTER of RIC FLAIR said the FOUR HORSEMEN WERE THE GREATEST FACTION IN WWE HISTORY.
The thing is, I know exactly how they thought out the stuff when it was just PCB. They had Charlotte talk about her Dad because that's pretty much her gimmick, Paige talk about Womens Athletes because she's the Leader and Dunn and/or Vince heard Becky's accent and said "We'll make her the weird one" and she was talking about Dinosaurs and Cyborgs and it was all just awful.
Then it actually managed to get worse. The Bellas came out, and I genuinely don't remember one word they said. The only thing I remember from this bit of the segment was Miz ACTUALLY GOT A POP FOR TELLING 6 WOMEN- 3 OF WHICH WERE BABYFACES TO SHUT UP. I loved it immediately after because Miz was like, Oh you're cheering me gotta stop that and got his heat back immediately. So this could have gone better.
Team Bella v PCB
I'll preface what I'm about to say with this, I DO NOT in any way endorse a crowd going into business for themselves and putting themselves over.
Everything about this was Booty, Yeah I said Booty.
Why should I in any way have cared about this match? They kept the one "Diva" off the show that the crowd were desperate to see in Sasha and they thought it would go well? Don't tell me they kept her off because she'd worked the last two nights because Owens was on the show. I'm not going to say the "Divas Revolution" is dead, it's on life support- but it's not dead. The problem is, IT'S NOT A REVOLUTION.
revolution
rɛvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/
noun
- 1.a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system."the country has had a socialist revolution"
synonyms:
- rebellion, revolt, insurrection, mutiny, uprising, riot, rioting, rising,insurgence, insurgency, coup, overthrow, seizure of power, regime change; More
In the last two nights we've had Brie pin Tamina, get Pinned by Becky and Alicia Fox pin Paige. You know who's not been mentioned? THE FUCKING CHAMPION OR SASHA BANKS! They're deliberately booking the Divas to make them as forgettable as possible, last night was just the result of nothing changing for two months (roughly) that the "New Girls" have been up. There's not one reason to invest in any of the 9, so why should the crowd give a fuck about their match?
It was a pointless 6-Person after a pointless 9-Person after a string of pointless 6-Persons and Tag Matches. You know what hasn't happened? A FUCKING STORYLINE. I was half-serious about Charlotte turning on Paige because I knew it wouldn't happen, but at least that would have given the crowd a reason to get emotionally invested which there simply isn't at the moment.
THEN, Oh this is where I did get annoyed. Nikki, NOT BRIE- NIKKI came on Twitter and started burying the fans CALLING THEM SEXIST and going off about how great her Title run's been. I can stomach Nikki getting the record, I'd resigned myself to that fact MONTHS ago, but don't try and tell me her run's been good- it's been the most forgettable and irrelevant run I can think of in at least 5 Years. At least with Ambrose's US run it became a running joke on TV that he'd never defend it. Then Paige came on and said something along the lines of how we "helped create change" and then we did our best to disrespect them. No, NXT and Triple H created a Womens Division with clear storylines and strong female characters. They were then called up and made totally irrelevant within the course of two months.
This weekend was like the breaking point, we started it off with Bayley and Sasha who not only had a great fucking match- there was a proper emotional connection with the crowd and they reciprocated by being as loud as anything for them. Sunday was just such an irrelevant match, but they got time on a PPV so some people may have been trying to defend it. Last Night was where it all came crashing down.
Stardust/Barrett/Neville Segment
I don't know if this means we're getting a Triple Threat at Night of Champions and Barrett's turning Babyface or they just killed Barrett and we're getting a singles with Stardust and Neville which'll just be stupid seeing as they wrestled multiple singles matches to build to the Amell stuff. Either way this segment was pretty forgettable.
Jon Stewart/Ric Flair/John Cena Promo
I loved this segment. Stewart's explanation was exactly what I thought it would be- and as I said in the Summerslam Review, IT MADE PERFECT SENSE! The Flair stuff was cool, and then Cena came out and was great. These last two nights are as close to Cena being a Heel that we're ever going to get, although given what happened in the last segment Cena may be stewing for a few weeks and on the verge of snapping. I'm not saying he will flip the switch, but given how he worked the last two nights he's definitely going to go close to the Middle. The AA to Stewart was presumably a way to write Stewart off TV and to get Cena "out of the building" for the last segment and it all worked and it was all great.
Ryback, Randy Orton, Dolph Ziggler & Cesaro v Kevin Owen, Sheamus, Big Show & Rusev
It's almost become the gimmick of some of these guys involved to have the House Showiest, House Show match ever. But that doesn't mean the matches can't be fun. For the most part this was quite fun and we had at least two more Big Show turns. I'm pretty sure this is Big Show's gimmick now, and I actually quite like it. His gimmick is now that he gives no fucks and he turns every week. IT'S ENTERTAINING!
The aftermath was strange, I'm not sure if they did this to write Big Show off TV, or they're starting a feud of Big Show vs Everyone. Either way it was quite strange.
Bray Wyatt Promo
This was a cool way to introduce Strowman and actually give him a name rather than the commentators referring him to "that guy" all night and it was cool in the usual Bray way. I'm also curious to see if they do anything with the Black Sheep stuff and Abigail was brought up again.
Seth Rollins gets his Statue
It's like I said earlier, the fact they acknowledged the statue does exist to the audience before this segment meant there was no chance the statue was in the box. In that respect they completely blew the angle. However, THIS WAS SUCH A COOL MOMENT. STING WAS IN THE BOX! STING! I was expecting Kane- but this was better without a shadow of a doubt. I also don't think many people have mentioned this, the way Triple H sold the Sting reveal was just amazing. The way he slowly backed away all the while still keeping his arms up gesturing to where the Statue was meant to be was just great. I have an issue with Sting re-picking a fight with The Authority after he shook hands with Triple H at Mania, but it supports my theory that the Sledgehammer shot within storyline gave him a concussion and he didn't know what he was doing.
This RAW if you'd condensed it into two hours and got rid of the Divas segment would have been top draw. Unfortunately we got a few really strung out segments and the Divas stuff just died, it was actually more entertaining when Paige and Nikki came on after and started burying the fans.
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