Segment #1 - Shane and Vince McMahon promo
Shane McMahon is the most bafflingly popular thing since Symphony of the Night, Shane gets another huge pop and somehow doesn't lose it when he starts talking. This whole thing is the worst kind of pandering "worked shoot" stuff that has made wrestling increasingly less tolerable over the past 20 years. Shane says he will put a stop to "backstage politics", ooooooo, I've heard of that! How exactly are you going to do that Shane 'O? Make sure everyone agrees on everything and noone has any power but you? What kind of totalitarian communist operation is he planning on running?
Vince comes out and everyone chants "asshole" at him, because remembering that 1999 happened is the only reason anyone is into that (we also get our first CM Punk chant). Vince cuts a promo and sends four security guys to escort Shane out of the ring, for some reason they go in the ring one at a time and Shane beats up all four of them. I can't even remember the last time an actual wrestler didn't get overpowered by security guards but they've got nothing on Shane's crap dance punches.
Segment #2 - Neville Vs Kevin Owens
"That's all you got mate?"
Michael Cole: "Kevin Owens there, mocking the Englishman Neville with the word "mate""
For the love of god replace this announce team.
The guys have a fine match and both of them do fancy flip moves to pop the crowd. Owens get the win off holding the tights, then attacks Neville after the match as he's complaining to the referee. Then Sami Zayn's music hits and he fights off Owens. It's looking like they're building up a bunch of challengers for Owens to do another big ladder match for the title...which doesn't really seem like it's worth calling Zayn up for but the crowd loved it so whatever.
Backstage Dolph reminds Stephanie about how he put her out of power once, weird how the writers remember that now but they completely forgot about that after a week at the time.
Segment #3 - Brie Bella Vs Summer Rae
I can't think of any reason why you would book this match unless you wanted them to kill each other. Lana costs Brie the match then hits the X Factor on her, I guess she's debuting soon...hopefully not at Wrestlemania.
Segment #4 - Dean Ambrose and Triple H promo
It's good to see Dean Ambrose finally getting to do proper promos but he's got to decide whether he wants to be funny Mankind or Cactus Jack because hopping back and forth is doing him no favours. Overall this was a hell of a lot better than their confrontation last week, Ambrose says he'll win the title on Saturday, Triple H says he won't, Triple H puts Ambrose in a match against Bray Wyatt later tonight.
Segment #5 - Dolph Ziggler Vs Rusev, Sheamus and Wade Barrett
So this match is happening because Dolph tweeted about Shane winning at Wrestlemania and putting the Authority out of power like he did at Survivor Series, then deleting it on request (like a true hero), then they paste the tweet on the screen and Michael Cole reads it out anyway.
Michael Cole - "The League of Nations are starting to gel as a team and really build some chemistry!" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Ziggler gets beat down most of the match, eliminates Barrett but then Rusev and Sheamus double team him for the win. League of Nations aren't doing much, Ziggler hasn't done much in months and none of this has anything to do with the Shane match or...uh, anything else, so I'm not sure what the point of it was.
They play a video package showing off how cool Shane McMahon is, it's basically him jumping off stuff and looking extremely tired.
Segment #6 - Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch Vs Tamina and Naomi
It's a rematch of the PPV match from a few weeks ago but this time Banks and Lynch make short work of Tamina and Naomi. Sasha gets the win and Charlotte attacks both her Wrestlemania opponents from behind.
Backstage R-Truth and Goldust talk about exploding butts and Mark Henry steals their pizza.
Segment #7 - TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP: AJ Styles and Chris Jericho Vs New Day
The Chicago loved everyone involved here (especially AJ) and was super into this. New Day hit the double team Big Ending on AJ Styles, Jericho's been watching his New Japan tapes and tackles Kofi onto the pinfall to save the match. AJ hits his springboard reverse DDT perfectly for the first time in his WWE career and the crowd goes wild for it, and even nails his springboard 450 splash for I think the first time. New Day wins after Big E takes out AJ on the outside and hits Jericho with the Big Ending.
Best tag match in WWE in a long long time, great false finishes and exchanges, but it mostly due to the novelty of having the crowd care about BOTH teams for once.
After the match AJ helps Jericho up to applause from the crowd, Jericho nails him with three Code Breakers, shoves the Y2AJ shirt down his throat and gets genuine heat for it. This has been Jericho's best run in WWE since 2012.
Segment #8 - Tyler Breeze Vs Kalisto
I don't know what Tyler did backstage to annoy someone, he hasn't been given enough to do to really screw anything up yet. He got his full entrance televised this week though so things are at least looking a little up.
These guys have a fine match with lots of Kalisto flipping and flopping but the crowd was still reeling from the Jericho/Styles angle before so it didn't get much energy.
Jojo interviews Kalisto about his upcoming Wrestlemania debut, Ryback comes up and cuts a really horrible promo about not believing why people believe in little guys when he's a big guy. I'm not feeling Ryback's repackage at all, all they've done is strip him of the personality he genuinely had.
Segment #9 - Ryback Vs Curtis Axel
Social Outcasts get the best reception they've ever gotten from the Chicago crowd. And I'll say getting rid of the singlet was a good call on Ryback, god DAMN this dude is huge. Ryback does his new running knee and mocks CM Punk riling the crowd up. Just like last week Ryback pounds Curtis Axel into the dirt, hits Shellshock for the win then walks away.
Backstage Stephanie warns Vince of the unstoppable vengeful GOD that is Shane McMahon. You can't possibly tell me the storyline for this is going to turn into Vince seriously doubting whether the UNDERTAKER can beat Shane McMahon.
Segment #10 - Dean Ambrose Vs Bray Wyatt
This was the best Wyatt's looked in months, he has great chemistry with Ambrose and they had about the best ten minute no finish match you can have until the rest of the Wyatts show up for the DQ and beat down Ambrose.
Triple H comes down to pick the bones of Ambrose, Wyatt gets in his face and rubs his fingers across the WWE title, laughs and then leaves. This is all to give time for Ambrose to recover so he catches Triple H with Dirty Deeds by surprise and the crowd goes wild.
Closing Thoughts
Best Raw of 2016 so far by a LONG way, decent promos, good wrestling and intrigue being built towards matches. WWE also seemed on top of things for the first time in a while, they knew they were dealing with a volatile smarky Chicago crowd and they played up to that throughout the whole show. They were smart enough to not let Roman Reigns drown for once.
The Shane McMahon stuff is doing nothing for me but I seem to be the only person in the world who feels that way so I can't really knock it too much for that. Honestly the only big complaint I can make about the show as a whole that's not nitpicking individual segments is the announcers are HORRIBLE and I'm noticing it more and more each passing week. Michael Cole has no credibility, JBL doesn't seem to know what he wants to be each week and Byron Saxton is consistently awful all round. Plus Cole and JBL goofing around with each other while knocking Byron like its high school makes for awful television too.
But anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this show, last week's felt like it was 5 hours long whereas this didn't drag at all, I'm looking forward to Roadblock and Wrestlemania feels like less and less of a trainwreck the closer we get to it. SUCCESS.
THUMBS UP
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