RAW Review: 5th September

Hello! That's right, we've officially hit the two weeks in a row status for the Reviews! For those of you who watched RAW in its entirety last night, you'll know what's coming in this Review. I know it's the time of year where people are going back to school and all that stuff, so if you haven't watched RAW or just watched some of the highlights- I feel like pointing out that everything I discuss actually happened. I'm writing this sentence approximately 11 Hours after RAW ended, and I still can't get my head around the 3rd Hour of RAW last night. Anyway, I'll get there in this Review- but for now I'll start at the start. That's how these things work, right?

Stephanie McMahon & Mick Foley Backstage Segment
I don't know if it was just how I was feeling last night, because I felt really tired- but this segment did absolutely nothing for me. I've seen some people praising it, and to me it wasn't a bad segment by any means. However, Steph's acting did nothing for me and the segment made Mick look like a complete idiot. I don't know what Mick's character is anymore, it must be that of a complete idiot. While I don't think the angle will be Steph and Triple H were in on it together, how can Mick genuinely take Steph at her word? That really bothered me, but it's not worth getting worked up about. I stopped caring about the McMahon's god knows how long ago.

It does have to be said that this was infinitely better than the Stephanie/Heyman segment from last week. Upon reflection, I'm pretty certain they did this angle because of Heyman's contract stuff- so as a result of Heyman presumably wanting a better deal they decided to "punish" him by having to put over Stephanie.

Kevin Owens' Title Celebration
I really liked this segment on the whole. However, the one thing that annoyed me straight away was Kevin Owens wearing a suit. I get that Owens is the champion now, but to me it just looked so unnatural and phoney. Why the fuck was Kevin Owens wearing a suit?! I couldn't think of something less fitting of Kevin Owens than on his first RAW as champion he comes out wearing a suit.

Taking that out of the equation, as I've already said I liked this segment. Owens is great, I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. The stuff with Rollins was interesting to me, just because I was curious about how quickly they'd make him a full on babyface. I liked Seth's promo without loving it. He did a good job conveying the angle, and basically making it so the divide between Seth and Steph was evident. The thing with Seth is he's been so heel-ish, and such a good heel that they can't just fully turn him overnight. So overall this was a pretty good segment.

One thing I thought was worth pointing out, especially after floating my theory on how Finn Balor would've been booked last week was one specific part of Seth's promo. Seth said something to the effect of "Kevin Owens has been Triple H's guy since he showed up in NXT". That promo could be as much, if not more applicable to Finn Balor. I'm still 100% convinced that had Balor not been hurt, we'd have got a faction of Triple H, Finn, Gallows & Anderson probably starting at Clash of the Champions.

The backstage segment that followed with Mick & Steph where Steph threatened to fire Mick just annoyed me. But then Jericho showed up and made the whole segment better and mellowed me out. Which was a good thing given what we still had to come.

Bayley v Charlotte
Firstly, I have to ask, what happened to Dana's Clipboard? It just vanished. Given what happened with Sasha later on, I'm not sure where Bayley stands after this match. I could be wrong, but I was fairly certain they'd already booked Bayley/Charlotte for Clash of the Champions prior to last night. Which made the fact they had this match last night weird to me. I can only assume that they hadn't in fact booked it and this was their way of getting to that point. Ideally it'll be a Triple Threat where Bayley pins Charlotte, so the next night Sasha can turn on Bayley and say how she stole her Title etc. because Sasha needs to be a heel at this point. Just to allow Bayley to be the complete, undisputed top babyface of the division.

The actual match was pretty good I thought. It also really pleased me that they didn't do anything crazy, and simply went with a proper story to tell with the match. I think that Sasha/Charlotte match would've been a message to all of the women, to basically not do a load of crazy shit unnecessarily. Bayley got the win after a miscommunication with Charlotte, and the Dana/Charlotte split angle continues. It's amazing they've not dropped the angle considering they started it literally like a week after Dana aligned with Charlotte and nobody has cared about it at any point.

Bo Dallas v Kyle Roberts
This just seemed weird to me. I like Bo, I'll start by saying that. Had his heel run in NXT been on the Network I think he'd be looked at as one of the guys where everyone says "they need to do more with this guy". With that said, given how long he's been getting completely buried- I just couldn't take him seriously in this new "aggressive" role he's playing. It wasn't helped by the fact he's still wearing his Social Outcasts singlet and his whole look is that of a Mid-90s jobber. I'll see how this plays out, that's as far as I'm going to go at this stage. I do Bolieve in Bo though.

Seth Rollins v Chris Jericho
As is the case with the vast majority of these types of pairings, would it surprise anyone when I say that this match was good? You've got Chris Jericho who's having one of, if not the best run of his career and Seth Rollins who's pretty close to his peak at the moment from an in-ring perspective. Had this been anything other than a good match it would've been noteworthy. Seth won to the surprise of nobody and we moved on.

The one thing I will say, I was expecting Triple H to do a run-in at various points in the match- or to at least come out. I realise there's basically 3 weeks until Clash of the Champions and probably just over 2 months or so until they do Seth/Triple H at Survivor Series- but Seth hitting the Pedigree in-front of Triple H would've really helped the angle along after last week. With that said, WHERE THE FUCK WAS TRIPLE H LAST NIGHT?! They've just done an angle where Triple H effectively gave the Championship of the Universe to Kevin Owens, and then he doesn't even show up the following week. The stupidity of that is mind-blowing.

Sheamus v Cesaro- Match 3 of the Best of 7 Series
I really liked this, just because it was a bit different to the first two matches- in that they went out for probably at most 6 Minutes and they did well in that timeframe telling what is in effect the story of the series. The Cesaro injury angle is interesting to me, just because I'm not sure what they can do with it now to be honest. The next match is tomorrow, and in the space of less than 2 days and a transatlantic flight in the meantime we're supposed to believe that Cesaro can now beat Sheamus. Unless they just have Sheamus beat Cesaro in England tomorrow which would be fucking hilarious.

I can only assume Cesaro gets a "fluke" win tomorrow and then builds from there.

The Shining Stars v Enzo & Cass
I realise they have to build feuds for Clash of the Champions, and they need a Pre-Show match which is what this will end up being I'm pretty sure. However, The Shining Stars now have a victory over Enzo & Cass. The Shining Stars now have a victory over Enzo & Cass. Let that sink in. With that said, Enzo & Cass deserved to lose after their promo before the match. I hated it. Byron also had a good line here when Graves said something along the lines of "I don't know why the fans are so upset about getting an invitation to Puerto Rico" and Saxton said "I don't have any vacation days". Byron was the best part of this segment.

Nia Jax v Ann Esposito
This is when RAW started to go off the rails. It didn't completely fall off at this segment, but this started it on its way. It was just the standard Nia Jax squash, although they did give us a bit of story behind this one at least with the jobber being Alicia Fox's friend. More later.

Gallows & Anderson, New Day & The Old Day "thing"
I was there live for the Titus O'Neil promo the other week, so that may play into what I'm about to say. This wasn't the worst segment of the year to me, for the simple fact that there was coherent sentences. However, god this segment was awful. Like, genuinely awful. I can't do justice to just how awful this segment was, and I can't in good conscience tell you to watch it to see how bad it is. So basically, I'll just let this segment die and be forgotten until The Sammy's in December.

Gallows & Anderson were up there in-terms of the most anticipated/hyped debuts when they came in last April. In the space of around 4-5 months they're doing bad comedy segments in front of a completely dead crowd. They might be having some fun doing it, but it's genuinely painful to watch.

Also, when the "Old Day" came out I thought they'd hired a dance troupe so New Day could make them young again through the Power of Positivity and/or Booty O's. I say that because I thought they were like 14 or 15 years old. That obviously wasn't the case given the fact New Day killed them, but still- it caught me off guard a bit.

Darren Young v Jinder Mahal
After that completely horrendous segment, we went to Darren Young vs Jinder Mahal. Darren Young vs Jinder Mahal. I'll let you fill the gaps in when it comes to my thoughts on the match. Titus tried to help Jinder win, he failed, and then after the match we had another Titus/Darren brawl. This one wasn't a complete waste, just because I'm pretty sure Titus accidentally tripped over himself in the middle of the brawl which I found hilarious.

Nia Jax & Alicia Fox Backstage Segment
This RAW had completely gone off the rails at this point, but there's a moment in this segment that may be the funniest thing I've ever seen. Alicia's crazy again, and she starts being crazy in front of Nia and throwing stuff around, she grabs a box, swings her arm around and hits Nia right in the face with said box. It was absolutely comedy gold, topped off by Alicia being on the verge of apologising for a split second after said box made contact with Nia. This was just absolutely amazing.

Braun Strowman v Sin Cara
Sin Cara's going to be one of the "established" guys in the Cruiserweight Division I'm pretty sure, but he's still Sin Cara. Why they decided that Sin Cara couldn't take a pin last night is beyond me. But they didn't, Braun won via count-out and we moved on with our lives. At least there was an explanation of sorts for this match after Braun ripped the mask off of Americo last week.

Sasha Banks delivers "bad news"
I always look through Reddit and Twitter before I do these Reviews, just to sort of see if I've missed something or there's a subtle thing I've missed because I'm watching form 1-4am every week. Most of the comments I saw on Reddit were basically "We got worked by Sasha in this segment". Did you really?

I watched this segment, and at no point did I ever believe Sasha was actually going to retire. Firstly, if she was going to retire they'd have milked the fuck out of it. There would've been a specific hashtag, she'd have been either the last segment or the 2nd/3rd hour lead-in and generally it would've been treated as a much bigger deal. Plus, it's Sasha fucking Banks. She's cried more times than I can remember- if she were actually retiring you'd have known like a minute into this segment. On top of that, the first bit of Sasha's promo (I know Meltzer's said this as well) was the most disingenuous and generally fake promo I think I've ever heard. Plus, the fact she brought up Moolah in the context of there being a women's revolution made me feel a bit sick.

Basically, I wasn't "worked" by this segment at any point- and to be blunt Sasha just isn't that good on the mic in this current role. I called the "it's bad news for Charlotte" line before she said it, she killed Dana Brooke and apparently she's got her Title rematch at Clash of the Champions from outta nowhere. I've already given my booking idea for Sasha/Charlotte/Bayley so I won't repeat it, and that's all that can really be said. If you were genuinely worked by this promo and not trying to get imaginary internet points like I suspect a few were on Reddit get in contact with me either in the comments or on Twitter. I genuinely want to understand how/why you were.

Kevin Owens v Sami Zayn
As with the Rollins/Jericho match, but maxed out because it's Owens and Zayn- of course it was going to be a good match. It annoyed me that they actually did this match, but I was so beyond caring by this point of the show I couldn't get worked up by it. The match was fine, aside from Triple H getting involved we had the predictable finish of Sami's leg costing him the match. Owens won and everything was fine.

Then Roman Reigns (and Mick Foley) came out. I'll say right now that I don't think Roman's going to be in the Title match at Clash of the Champions. To me, it's basically the same as the angle they did with Dolph on Smackdown a few weeks ago where he wrestled AJ in that they're basically killing a week. I know Rusev did that tweet where he said he was on Honeymoon for 23 days, but to me that's probably a red herring. Basically, for the first RAW specific PPV I can't imagine them having Roman as one of their biggest stars in the same match as Rollins and Owens. Also, if Rusev is on honeymoon for 23 days in kinda kills the whole "every title will be defended" gimmick for Clash of the Champions doesn't it?

If you take out the 30-40 minute period with the Nia Jax, Darren Young and Braun Strowman matches plus the New Day stuff this was actually a decent RAW. However, you can't, and as a result I would like to declare Smackdown the winner of this week. I think this is the last RAW before Monday Night Football comes back as well, so god help RAW next week. They might step their game up in-terms of the product- but if anyone was debating whether to watch RAW live next week or not that period of the show will have killed any chance there was of them choosing RAW. Especially coming off the back of Backlash on Sunday, Smackdown has a genuine chance of beating RAW in the ratings next week in my opinion.

Speaking of Backlash, the Backlash Predictions and Review will be up over the weekend on top of the Smackdown Review tomorrow so keep an eye out for all of those. Thanks for reading as always, let's just hope Smackdown is better than RAW tonight- because if it's not the Review tomorrow will be something else.