RAW Review: 28th September

Hello! That's right, it's yet another RAW Review. I was actually getting annoyed a few nights ago that I missed one of these because I was ill and I wouldn't have done one every week for 2015, but then I remembered the Night after the Rumble didn't even happen- so YAY! Let's just get this in there early, last night's RAW wasn't very good. If Vince was panicking about the Ratings he definitely wasn't showing it with the show last night. That's not to say last night's RAW didn't have some good points though, and it was definitely of some value- at least to me. I generally hate people who say "everyone's allowed an opinion", it's such a cop out to me if you're in an argument over something. There is such a thing as a wrong opinion, I saw a Twitter Account (genuinely can't remember what one) call last night's RAW a "9/10". That's a wrong opinion.

John Cena's US Open Challenge
The good ol' days. It's weird that this RAW was so bad in all honesty, because there were some genuinely good segments on the show. Cena's Promo was really weird last night, I'm not necessarily saying it was bad- but he just seemed to be talking to himself. New Day are great, that isn't exactly breaking news to anyone at this point- and as usual all of their wacky shenanigans were one of, if not the highlight of RAW. The thing where they were "swimming", and I think Kofi said "y'all thought we couldn't swim" just had me howling in laughter.

John Cena v Xavier Woods
I genuinely think WWE are investing in more self-aware versions of characters now. See Big Show, his gimmick for a few weeks was he should retire and that he'd turn every week. Cena in this match was such a Heel. He was toying with Xavier Woods, there's no other word for it- basically screaming to the audience "HEY, I'M COMPLACENT". On top of that, he said he'd take out all three members of New Day by himself in his Promo- and then he bitched until Kofi and Big E got sent to the back. The match was just a means to an end, and should be only reviewed as such as opposed to a standalone match. The one problem the match did have was nobody knew what Xavier's finisher was, I'm pretty sure it's the Eat Defeat- but even I couldn't tell you with 100% certainty without googling it. So that took away from one of the false finishes, but as I said it was just a means to an end.

New Day v John Cena & The Dudleys
This match was fine. I don't know if it's because New Day are so great, and the crowd really wasn't into much last night- but the Dudleys have become an afterthought in basically a month. It's all about New Day, and much in the way of the Primetime Players (to a lesser extent) they just look so "meh" by comparison. Overall it was a decent match though, the finish was a bit weird to me because Xavier successfully managed to hold onto Bubba to stop him breaking up the 3 Count. XAVIER. The one thing that has to be said though, Big E did his Middle Rope Dive spot on Cena and he REALLY sold it. So great, they're actually putting over Big E strong.

The Authority, Rollins, Kane and Ashley Backstage
Kane's still great in his schizophrenic character. I really wish they could have done more with Ashley last night to put over "Demon Kane", or simply get Dr. Shelby in- which I genuinely think they may still do depending on if this Kane/Rollins stuff is a 1 PPV thing or if it's going over multiple ones. Also, Korporate Kane watches Total Divas. That's more horrifying than anything Demon Kane could ever do.

Reigns, Ambrose & Orton Backstage
I'm officially waving the white flag, I've got absolutely no clue how this is all going to play out. I don't know if Ambrose is going to turn, or if Orton is because of Ambrose- or they're just going to be a happy family. To be honest, I don't really care at this point.

I know it was my idea, so I may well be biased- but can anyone tell me Ambrose turning on Reigns back at Summerslam wouldn't have been better than this? Bray could have been feuding with Orton trying to get his evil side out- and with Orton being Orton he could have had a run in the Family and then Reigns and Ambrose could have been in the middle of a really heated "personal" feud.

Big Show v Mark Henry
This actually wasn't a complete waste to me, solely because I started thinking about Mark's Hall of Pain run- and these two collapsing the ring etc. Good times.

MizTV w/ Becky & Charlotte
Well, it was better than the last time they tried it. This segment had that going for it at least. This wasn't very good, I know this may shock some of you. I don't know if it's just me, but I really have trouble staying focused during Diva Promos. I just zone out, it's just white noise to me. Literally the only thing I took from this segment was Nikki uses WAY too many fillers, AND YOU KNOW WHAT that's been the case all along.

Team Bella v PCB
This match had way too much shit going on. You had the 6 Women in the match, with Team Bella trying all sorts of shenanigans. You then had Paige actually playing her role well as the sort of pissed off reluctant partner- and then Paige left, Nattie came down and tried to enter herself into the match, Paige then attacked Nattie from behind with Becky then arguing with Paige and all of that led to Charlotte being distracted and Nikki winning with the Rack Attack. I've probably missed some stuff out in all of that as well. I realise they've given up on giving the Women two matches, most likely because the Ratings are horrible because they haven't built anyone but still it's ridiculous. I said it last week as well, they had 3 shows worth of stuff happen in about 10 Minutes again. You could have had the Miz TV stuff and the brawl, PCB v Team Bella on another with Paige walking out, and then do NBC v Team Bella on another with Paige coming out and attacking Nattie.

Kane gives Seth Rollins Head. 
I liked this segment to be honest, Kane just knows exactly how to play his character and "hit all the right buttons" for it. There's nothing more topical than Se7en, so at least they got that reference in- and on the whole I liked it. I also thought the twist at this point would be Ashley from HR would in on the whole thing with Kane and she'd be some sort of Devil Woman who's managing Kane.

Braun Strowman & Luke Harper v The Primetime Players
THIS WAS THE MATCH OF THE YEAR. For those of you who don't know I'm in England- and someone decided it was a good idea to unplug something last night meaning I along with tonnes of other people in seemingly everywhere but the US missed nearly all this match. Granted, that's not the end of the world- and it's good to see the Primetime Players really back to where they should be at this stage. That's not a racist thing, or a homophobic thing- they put the Belts on them with no build and they flopped all because Titus is a nice dad. I'm not saying they won't be in the mix again, but them actually building to winning them winning the Belts next time would be appreciated. The signal literally came back just before Strowman tagged in and choked out Titus, and I've got no desire to watch anything from last night's show again. So I can only assume Steve Austin, The Rock, CM Punk. Hulk Hogan in Blackface, Savio Vega, The Blue Meanie and Kurrgan all did run-ins.

Neville v Stardust
I have this image in my head of Vince walking into the Creative Meetings every week and they're putting RAW together and then for a Match Vince suddenly pipes up with "Stardust is like a Villain from one of them damn Comics, We need a Hero to put up against him- why not Neville that's fresh and exciting right?". It also seems as though The Ascension are gone from the Stardust Entourage, so that was a good run for them- and I genuinely think they'll be released pretty soon along with people like Cameron and unfortunately not Rosa because she's pregnant and they won't want the potential bad press for laying off someone who's pregnant.

Barrett's back, it means absolutely nothing- because they'll fuck him up like they always do. At least for this week though, I have hope.

Kane's Evaluation
Here's how I would have booked this. Ashley is in Triple H and Stephanie's office to do the Evaluation in-front of the the people who are actually in charge of hiring and firing. They do the Video Package stuff with both guys in there, and then Ashley declares Kane fit for purpose leaving Stephanie in particular horrified. Kane leaves all happy and smiley and Rollins attacks him from behind and does the Chair around the Ankle spot and they go to an Ad Break with Kane being put in the back of an Ambulance. Other side of the Ad Break Rollins comes out and says he's got rid of Kane and all of that stuff, and then they do Demon Kane coming out of the Ambulance and we get what we got.

Instead Rollins was just rambling presumably while Kane was getting his "Corporate Gear" off and putting his Mask on etc. when they could have avoided all of that just by having it as a Pre-Tape. The segment on the whole was fine, but Rollins' sneak attack on Corporate Kane was awful because he either forgot to hook the arms- or Kane moved his arms. Either way the set-up took too long and just made the whole thing look really fake.

Bray Wyatt Promo
This was fine in the usual Bray Wyatt Spooky Promo way, and there wasn't much else to it. Other than the fact Bray said he'd be doing the match alone.

Randy Orton v Bo Dallas
This was actually quite a fun match. It wasn't ever going to be anything with substance, but Orton knows what he's doing and they just had a fun House Show squash match.

Rusev v Kevin Owens
This match as with the Cena/Woods match was just a means to an end. They didn't really get going before they did the spot with Rusev being thrown into Ryback and the shit hit the fan. I'm assuming this is setting up a 4-Way for Hell in a Cell, which isn't a bad thing because it means Rusev and Dolph don't have to wrestle each other in a Singles Match for another PPV.

Paul Heyman & Big Show Promo
In a vacuum this would have been an AMAZING segment. Big Show was great last night, and in a way I hope he does actually retire after Brock destroys him because I've actually found the last month or so of Show actually entertaining. Paul Heyman is, well Paul Heyman- he's always going to be great. It's funny about how Heyman's Promo was about Big Show being motivated now he's facing Brock- and then Big Show came in and cut his best promo in YEARS. The problem for this segment was simply what show it was on. I just couldn't care about anything on the show at this point. If this had followed the Cena/New Day stuff or opened the show I would have loved this segment.

Bray Wyatt v Roman Reigns
I know Bray's a Heel, but the whole build of the entire episode was both guys had agreed to a "truly" 1-on-1 match and they were going to settle it last night. So why they felt the need for Bray to come out with the Family solely so Roman could get into Bray's head before he would send them to the back I don't really know.

Much in the way of the segment that this match followed, in a vacuum it was really good- but I just couldn't bring myself to care about it. I actually didn't mind the finish, because they were never going to settle it in a RAW two or three weeks away from a PPV in fucking Buffalo. The brawl after was actually really good, one way to prevent crowd invaders is I suppose to brawl into the crowd I guess. Then a few things happened that actually annoyed me. Bray LITERALLY threw a guy into Roman and that could not have been a good bump for the guy to take and then he did his tackle of sorts through the Barricade and then Roman did a Jumping Spear on Bray putting both guys through the Announce Desk. Don't get me wrong, they were three really good spots- but on this show in-front of the crowd they were in-front of I genuinely wanted them to try less.

Last night's RAW was actually pretty weird, there weren't any obviously horrible segments- but there were just tonnes of segments seemingly designed to kill interest in the show. But like the good little soldiers we are, we'll be back next week and hoping for a better show. I suppose I can't really complain about wanting another show like last weeks RAW because they did a horrible Rating, but it would have been nice.

Thanks for reading as always, the Impact Reviews are back this week after last week's missed one. Trust me when I say, there really wasn't much I could say about last weeks show other than Bram jokes. Then we're heading to MSG this weekend, and the Review for that will be up on Sunday in what'll prove to be a really busy day for me between the MSG Show/Review, Fulham playing and then Bound for Glory. In the meantime, thanks again for reading and let's forget this RAW happened- it shouldn't be that hard.