RAW Review: 4th April

Well, wasn't last night just infinitely better than Wrestlemania? It's funny, and I was thinking about this quite a bit yesterday after I put my RAW Review up. I, as I'm sure most of everyone reading this would class myself as a really involved Wrestling Fan- in the sense that I actually care about certain people going over etc. and at Wrestlemania, with the exception of Brock/Ambrose my main issue with all of the matches weren't that the match was bad- just that the wrong person went over. Casual Fans don't really care about that, and it was them that this years Mania was aimed at- between the Free Month and all of the Mainstream Coverage they got. So with that in mind, I think everyone in WWE will have seen Mania as a success.

There's a lot of stuff to talk about for this Review, so I'm not going to delay any further and we'll just jump head first into this Review.

Shane & Vince McMahon Opening Segment
This wasn't really much. The bit just before Vince came out annoyed me, because they in so many more words basically said "Roman's gonna get booed to fuck, just ignore that- this crowd isn't a good representation of our 'usual' audience".

Anyway, the Vince and Shane segment wasn't much- it was fun to see Shane still after Wrestlemania. He might still hang around for a few more weeks, or he might not- if it were up to me Shane would be written off by being attacked Backstage to leave it open for a return once Shane's gone back to his Japanese PPV's or whatever.

New Day v The League of Nations (Sheamus & Barrett)- Tag Titles
This was of course quite likely Wade Barrett's last appearance in WWE. Granted as a fellow Brit I may have been pushing extra hard for Barrett to succeed, but I genuinely can't think of many more fucked up wrestlers in-terms of potential vs the push they actually got. Yes, injuries played a part- but the fact Barrett was never WWE Champion when Nexus were at their peak is mind-blowing to me.

New Day were their usual amazing selves in the Pre-Match stuff, between the last Booty'O and them putting over the Lion King. I'm still quite annoyed about what happened to New Day at Mania, but all we can do is move on quickly and just appreciate New Day and hope they keep going from strength to strength.

The match was decent, everyone involved in this match was a pretty fucking good worker- and these two teams have wrestled each other enough times both as part of teams and individually to know how to get the best out of each other. The finish wasn't quite what I expected, in the sense that I thought Barrett would just be pinned clean out of nowhere leading up to what happened after- but it still worked quite well for me.

We then had the Post-Match attack on Barrett to presumably write him off of TV, and it was all but confirmed when The Wyatts screen effect hit and they appeared and attacked the League of Nations. Obviously with Harper injured and Barrett leaving it's 3v3- but it does make me wonder how long they've had this feud planned for, because they teased it MONTHS ago when it would have been a 4v4. I will say I'm looking forward to it though, and I'm just praying that The Wyatts win.

Vince Backstage Promo
I must admit, a small part of me was expecting Vince's Limo to blow up.

Sasha Banks v Summer Rae
Any time I get to see Summer Rae on RAW I'm happy. I was putting over these two's history in NXT- even if Commentary wasn't and that enhanced the match for me. The match wasn't much, it was just a case of having Sasha go over relatively strong after obviously missing out at Wrestlemania via shenanigans. They probably would've had Becky wrestle as well at some point, but she'd completely fucked her eye up.

Apollo Crews v Tyler Breeze
I predicted an Apollo Crews call-up at the turn of the year on Twitter. He hasn't really progressed beyond the "nice guy" Babyface who smiles a lot in NXT. However, Crews is pretty much perfect for current WWE. He's absolutely built, and then he has the offence that can pop a crowd at a moments notice. I said at the turn of the year that Crews will have been called-up and have the proverbial Rocket on his back- and I still firmly believe that.

I'm interested to see the character development of Crews on the Main Roster and who his first feud's with- but for now I was just happy to see him and get the pay-off of one of my (quite a few) successful predictions from last night.

The match was nothing more than a showcase of what Crews can do, which was fine by me. It is a shame that Breeze was the one doing the job, but I suppose that's wrestling sometimes.

Roman Reigns, AJ Styles, Chris Jericho, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn Segment
I actually quite liked this segment. To me at least, the job of a Heel is to make sure the crowd want anyone who said Heel is wrestling to beat the fuck out of the Heel and win. Roman Reigns is a Heel, literally anyone could be pitted against Roman and they're the most over Babyface in the entire company. Even things like last night with Roman saying "He's not a Good Guy or a Bad Guy, he's THE guy". That to me just screams Heel. I could be wrong, but to me that line told me that the Roman Character has finally gotten self-aware.

The segment was good in setting the 4-Way up for later, and on the whole I just really liked it. Without a doubt the highlight being the fact that Owens and Zayn just can't be near each other without having to trade punches. I know a lot of people were expecting Owens/Zayn at Mania, but I can't wait for these two to wrestle each other at Payback- in a match that has a pretty good chance of stealing the show.

Baron Corbin v Dolph Ziggler
I think I said it in my Mania Review yesterday, if Baron Corbin can continue his development at the rate he has done- he can really be something special in the WWE. Everything about Baron Corbin is just a perfect Heel, and he looked absolutely great last night. After the whole count-out angle, I was expecting a Cesaro run-in. Feel free to disagree, but I think Cesaro would be a perfect first Main Roster feud for Corbin. They've got the Andre Battle Royal connection, and Cesaro fits perfectly with Corbin's whole Anti-Indy gimmick. It could still happen don't get me wrong, but just because I was expecting the run-in the segment Post-End of Days felt a bit weird to me.

The Miz v Zack Ryder- IC Title
I feel like this is the right time to say it, because I predicted Maryse interfering and Miz winning the IC Title. Someone brought this up last night, I wasn't on Reddit for the whole day yesterday because I knew r/SC would be on Suicide Watch after Mania and I just had no desire to see endless bitching with the occasional GIF. Apparently that FalconArrow bloke said something similar, but it wasn't exactly a hard prediction if you put some thought into it. Especially with Owens and Zayn busy, Ryder was never going to keep the IC Title for long. Ryder pushed Miz off to win the Title at Mania. Maryse was a very strong return rumour. It doesn't take a genius to connect the dots.

I liked the angle with Zack's Dad actually, although I'm not sure how Zack's Dad pushing Miz wasn't a DQ. The match was pretty good, and I'm actually really happy with the outcome. I've said it a few times recently, but The Miz has been absolutely amazing so far this year, whether it was with AJ, Sami or basically anyone he's worked with. Add Maryse into the mix as Miz's valet/manager, with their obvious chemistry and Miz can hopefully keep going from strength to strength.

Womens Championship Presentation Ceremony
This segment was never going to get over unless Bayley came out. The crowd wanted Bayley and only Bayley. Even when Charlotte tried putting over the crowd to try and get a pop the crowd just didn't give a fuck. In that sense, it was poor planning- and especially with how the segment went I wish Charlotte would've just gone off script and Heel'd it up on the Bayley not appearing front. They tried too hard to have Charlotte act like a Babyface before getting cocky, and in time when Charlotte gets more experience she'll know when it's best to just "tear up the script".

I'm quite annoyed that Charlotte's first feud with the new Womens Championship is seemingly going to be against Nattie. I really like her, but for me they needed to try and go from strength to strength with the Womens Championship and not change the winning formula of Charlotte against Becky and/or Sasha until they'd properly established the Title and what it would represent. I'm not saying Nattie's a bad choice, but we've had Charlotte beat Nattie god knows how many times in the last few months. I will admit, I very briefly thought Bret had shown up when Nattie's music hit- and all in all this segment just felt a bit disappointing.

Epico & Primo's Puerto Rico Vignette
I will say one thing positive about this, I did like Epico & Primo when they were just Epico & Primo. I thought while they were perhaps a bit bland they "got it" when it came to being a Heel- and they even managed to make Rosa a valuable part of an act on the show. That's not exactly easy. God knows what this gimmick's going to entail other than perhaps entering with a Puerto Rican flag tied around their neck like a Cape. I'm patiently awaiting their re-debut, I'll put it like that.

The Dudleys v The Usos- Tables Match
I think the end to this match can, in quite a few ways sum up the feud between these two teams. In short, it was a complete botch. If you skipped it, which I wouldn't really blame you for doing- basically The Usos went to Splash The Dudleys through respective Tables as they did last night and the Dudleys moved out of the way sending them crashing through Tables. The key point being, The Dudleys moved- they didn't actually put them through a Table. SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE TOLD THE TIMEKEEPER THAT. It completely took away from an otherwise alright- albeit nothing special match.

Enzo Amore & Big Cass' Debut
This was another one of my Predictions that came off, in that I predicted we'd get Enzo & Cass/The Dudleys rather than Enzo & Cass going right after the Tag Titles. I thought it hadn't happened when they went to the Ad Break after The Dudleys had won- but thankfully they were still out there when they came back.

My one worry when it comes to Enzo & Cass, the Night after Mania crowd is basically the smarkiest crowd of the year. You can pretty much guarantee 95+% of the Crowd knew who they were and Enzo's whole "My name is..." speech. That's great, but once Enzo's in-front of a Flat Crowd in the 3rd Hour of RAW in Dayton, Ohio- if the crowd doesn't respond to him and Cass- they've lost all of their appeal. I would hope Enzo's charisma in particular could get them over for the "casual" audience, but its far from a guarantee. Much in the way of The Vaudevillains' Smackdown debut, I'm just not sure how it'll translate to the bigger arenas and not in-front of the die-hard crowds.

With all that said, I did love this segment- and it was probably the highlight of the night.

Kevin Owens attacks Sami Zayn Backstage
I realise this was before the Enzo & Cass angle, but it made more sense to Review those two segments together. I liked this angle a lot, it's obviously in preparation for an Owens/Zayn Payback match- and obviously it facilitated Cesaro's return. In short, this was just a really good angle- and hopefully the rest of the build will match it. They can pretty much give Zayn and Owens anything and they'd make it work.

AJ Styles v Chris Jericho v Cesaro v Kevin Owens- #1 Contender Fatal 4-Way
I suppose I'll start with Cesaro's return. It was absolutely great. Everything about Cesaro's return just worked. I was wondering where they were going with the whole Suit thing, but they literally had Cesaro do the Superman thing of ripping the suit off and transitioning into his "battle" mode. I just loved it. I'm not exactly sure what Cesaro does after tonight, as I said earlier if I had to guess it would be Corbin. However, basically all I want out of Cesaro's return is for him to get the treatment he deserves as a sort of Dean Ambrose level Wrestler where they're not quite in the Main Event picture- but they're still Main Eventing and can face-off against some of the biggest names. For instance, I'm dying to see a Cesaro/Brock match- that hopefully wouldn't be a squash.

Next we move on to the winner, and that was of course AJ Styles. I'm not certain of anything in the WWE after Wrestlemania and Styles losing to Jericho. However, if I had to make a prediction for Roman/Styles at this stage- I'd say Gallows and Anderson crash the Main Event and take out AJ and/or Roman. I'll be interested to see how they build the match after tonight, and basically how Roman acts toward AJ. In short, there's absolutely zero chance AJ does win the Title at Fast Lane- however in my opinion there's also very little chance that Roman just outright beats AJ.

Owens has Zayn for Payback, and I'm definitely interested to see where Jericho goes now. Had Ryder still had the Belt I'd have probably guessed that. Now, I'm not so sure.

Overall I really enjoyed this RAW. However, the sheer volume of Adverts last night was absolutely ridiculous. I said it on Twitter as well, imagine if you'd watched Wrestlemania- and as I've already brought up you didn't really care who won and then decided to watch RAW. You would have gotten about 5 Minutes of Wrestling followed by 5 Minutes of Adverts for basically 3 Hours straight. If that was my first impression of RAW, I wouldn't be coming back next week.

Thanks for reading as always, we're coming toward the end of Wrestlemania Week on here- with there only being one more post tomorrow which'll be "Booking Wrestlemania 33". I did it last year as well, it's basically me predicting the Wrestlemania card a year out and then we can look back on how wrong I was this time next year. In the meantime thanks for reading, and let's just look forward to hopefully a good few months now we've got people like Cesaro back, with Cena, Rollins, Orton etc. not far behind.