Monday Night Raw comes LIVE (citation needed) from London, England, and I wasn't there because I'm too poor...also I'm waiting for Reigns to stay champion for another year so I can go to a show without having to deal with crowds...so here's this week's Raw Recap LIVE from my bedroom!
Segment #1 - Ambrose Asylum with Shane McMahon
I know I shouldn't but I always feel like being generous to any Raw show that doesn't start with a 20 minute promo from an authority figure. So I was excited to see Dean Ambrose kick off the show with his new segment, then he calls out his guest Shane McMah...ACK, THEY TRICKED ME.
So Shane O'Mac is in charge for the third week in a row for no adequately explained reason. Dean Ambrose puts over how wild Shane McMahon's bump was at Wrestlemania because that's where the money is, put Ambrose in the ring with Shane so everyone knows who the REAL star is. Shane talks about how his era is all about the fans...so I guess we're supposed to forget about all that stuff about him taking over the company for future McMahon generations.
Kevin Owens comes out and gets in Shane's face. Sami Zayn comes out and gets his music cuts off which doesn't stop London from singing along with it anyway. Chris Jericho follows who perhaps gets the biggest pop of all because here in the UK we love drunk dads. Shane makes Jericho Vs Ambrose and Owens Vs Zayn for Payback (although he forgets to mention the show at first so I was confused about whether they were Raw matches or not), a huge brawl breaks out where Zayn and Ambrose attack each others opponents for some reason, then we come back from commercial with Zayn Vs Jericho.
Segment #2 - Sami Zayn Vs Chris Jericho
I don't even think WWE made any acknowledgement that this is a rematch from Smackdown, at least they've stopped rubbing salt into the wound. The match was a lot better than their Smackdown one anyway, if mostly due to the lack of distraction from the Owens/Ambrose clown show on commentary. Sami hits his tornado DDT on the outside, Jericho gets the ref between them back in the ring, manages to rake the eyes and hit the codebreaker for the win.
Mauro Ranallo (!!!) interviews AJ Styles, it's interrupted almost immediately by Gallows and Anderson (!!!!!!) and they all buddy up. Nothing against this segment on its own merits but it's one of those weird wrestling things, have Styles and these guys seriously not spoke or bumped into each other since they showed up on Raw last week?
Segment #3 - TAG TOURNAMENT SEMI FINAL: SAWFT Vs The Dudley Boyz
I wish WWE would make their minds up whether SAWFT's music is going to play during Enzo's pre-match speech or not. These guys are ridiculously over for dudes who have only been on the main roster for a couple of weeks and London ate up their shtick completely.
The crowd loves SAWFT so much all their Enzo chants seem to be distracting them from watching the actual match. Enzo pretty much gets beat down for the entirety of the beginning of the match, the Dudleys do a great job smack talking him and Enzo does a great job of being the scrappy small guy who won't stay down. Eventually he gets the hot tag to Cass who runs wild for about a minute, Bubba accidentally hits D-Von, eats a big boot and a Rocket Launcher for a surprisingly clean win for SAWFT.
Segment #4 - Roman Reigns and AJ Styles promo
I don't know whether to give credit to WWE for not muting the boos for Reigns on a taped episode or point out they were probably too loud for them to have a choice.
Roman Reigns comes out and OH MY GOD HE ACTUALLY USES THAT "I'M NOT A GOOD GUY I'M NOT A BAD GUY I'M THE GUY" LINE AGAIN THAT'S NOT A CATCHPHRASE JESUS CHRIST.
Roman talks about beating AJ Styles at Payback and also talks about the new era of WWE. As not great as his mic work is this could definitely work for a heel champion! The chosen by the old guard good looking bodybuilder WWE Champion holding down the fort against all the indie darlings.
AJ Styles comes out and says he thinks Roman is one heck of a champion which was possibly the only thing he could do or say to get booed in London. He says he's going to have the match of his life at Payback and walk out champion. Reigns gets booed the second he puts his the mic to his lips before he can even respond, he says he'd rather be respected with the title than liked without it. This wasn't badly scripted but neither of these guys are particularly comfortable reading scripts soooo...it was okay.
As AJ leaves the ring Anderson and Gallows beat down Reigns to THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE and AJ looks on confused. I know WWE were after the trademark but I can't believe how quickly and heavily they're pushing THESE GUYS ARE BULLET CLUB.
After commerical AJ comes up to Reigns backstage and says he had nothing to do with that. Reigns says he doesn't believe him and says BRING ALL YOUR FRIENDS ONE VERSUS ALL which I guess is his other crap non-catchphrase. Why didn't Roman just punch him?
Segment #5 - Baron Corbin Vs Fandango
Sorry I didn't watch it, I'm not sitting through a squash match with Dolph Ziggler on commentary. I skipped to the end and Dolph was knocked out on the floor and Corbin's music was playing so I guess he won.
Segment #6 - Miz TV with Cesaro
DEAR AMERICAN WRESTLERS: WE AREN'T THAT EMOTIONAL ABOUT THE ROYAL FAMILY, ESPECIALLY NOT THE AUDIENCE FOR WRESTLING, STOP KNOCKING THEM FOR HEAT.
So Miz goes for the low hanging fruit of heat and fails, but the crowd loves Cesaro anyway so he still gets a huge pop when he comes out. Cesaro looks rad in a suit but it does kind of make him look like a No 1 Henchman rather than a superstar. Miz does some lines from Taken, Cesaro does some lines from They Live, Miz says he'd love to fight Cesaro tonight but he's already scheduled for a match tonight...which is the same trick he pulled on Smackdown.
The League of Nations comes down to the ring, Cesaro says he spoke to Shane McMahon and got the match changed to the League and Miz versus himself and The New Day...ripping off his suit to reveal his Booty-O vest. Wouldn't the League have had to walk past the New Day holding microphones waiting for their cue when they came out...ah who cares.
Segment #7 - League of Nations and The Miz Vs The New Day and Cesaro
I don't know what happened to the show here, random 8 man tag matches aren't exactly the most exciting thing but for some reason the energy of the show plummeted here. The announcers sounded like their blood sugar was running a little low, many now that Lawler's not on the team any more they ran out of Mountain Dew.
Things pick up when Cesaro gets the hot tag, and it really is a thing of beauty to get Cesaro running from pillar to post hitting uppercuts on everyone in sight. Everyone runs in and hits a big move on someone else, cllimaxing with Cesaro hitting the Neutraliser on Sheamus for the win. The good guys celebrate their win with the superstar guests of honour JAMES CORDEN'S PARENTS!!!!
Charlotte is interviewed by Mauro "Already better than the geeks they normally get to do this oh my god please fire Jojo" Ranallo about cheating against Natalya last week. Charlotte laughs it off, Natalya comes over and says Shane McMahon has given her a rematch at Payback...and Bret Hart will be in her corner.
I won't pretend I'm not kind of looking forward to seeing some Hart/Flair shenanigans at the Pay-Per-View, but it kind of sucks that it's going to overshadow the match...and the fact this is basically the only reason Natalya is getting this shot instead of Sasha.
Segment #8 - Natalya, Paige, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch Vs Naomi, Tamina, Summer Rae and Charlotte
Sounds like it was physically painful for Lillian Garcia to pronounce "Norwich" properly when Paige came out. Not sure why Emma isn't in this match considering she's feuding with Becky (I think?) and beat Paige on Smackdown last week, I guess she's not on this tour.
Not sure why they put two random 8-person tag matches in a row, these matches are impossible to care about when they just happen out of nowhere. Natalya gets the win for her team and that's basically all you need to know...and even that's debatable.
Segment #9 - TAG TOURNAMENT SEMI FINALS - Vaudevillains Vs The Usos
The Vaudevillains have this weird remix of their theme now, I guess if they're heels they don't want people clapping along with their entrance but it's jarring when they keep doing their old entrance that was synced up with their old music.
I'm a huge Usos apologist, I think their shtick is really fun and I hope the Bullet Club stuff and a bunch of new teams to work with puts some fire back in them. Even this match was a breath of fresh air compared to their recent performances even if the crowd wasn't that into it. The Usos are supposed to be injured from the Gallows and Anderson beatdown last week, so the Vaudevillains take advantage of that to get the win.
The finals are now SAWFT Vs The Vaudevillains in what has been a pretty decently booked tournament, letting two new teams rise to the top...and also letting one of the established tag teams get taken out by another brand new team who aren't even in the tournament.
They play a hype video for Apollo Crews, if there's anyone in the recent Raw call ups that Vince will "get" it's this guy.
Segment #10 - Apollo Crews Vs Heath Slater
If Heath wins Apollo has to join the Social Outcasts OH THE TENSION IT COULD GO EITHER WAY.
I don't think WWE has put this show together very well, they put the Bullet Club stuff way too early in the show and having two random 8-person matches followed by another tag match followed by THIS has pretty much sucked the life out of the crowd.
Same as the other matches for Apollo, he gets beaten down for a little bit, hits all his signature moves at the end of the match and wins. Movviiinnnggg on.
Segment #11 - Dean Ambrose Vs Kevin Owens
This reminds me of the good old days of UK exclusive Pay-Per-Views where WWE would try and make a good impression of international markets by putting on the best matches possible, so here's Owens Vs Ambrose because we know they'll put on a show.
Again though, something just took the crowd out of this show, they weren't completely silent but they weren't really into it either, there was even some random JBL chants during this (twats). Dean Ambrose gets a clean win on Owens with Dirty Deeds but...nobody really cares, which is a shame because it was a good match.
Afterwards Jericho hits the Codebreaker on Ambrose to close out the show...which is a weird decision also. Surprised they have enough faith in this barely started Ambrose/Jericho feud to close the show with it and put both guys over the much more interesting Owens/Zayn feud.
Closing Thoughts
Not a bad Raw but my god did the energy get sucked out of it about halfway through. You could genuinely take the exact same show and rearrange the order of the segments and I think it would have worked better. Just putting the Bullet Club stuff in between the two 8-person tags would have gone a lot better. Considering there was no real follow up to that on this show there's no reason that couldn't have been positioned later than it was.
WWE know that they're on a fresh start after basically hitting the reset button on the show after Wrestlemania so nothing is going to be SUPER HOT right now, so they're putting together a card for Payback that...actually sounds like a fun wrestling show with good matches, and a Chicago crowd will probably be all over that so fair enough.
One last thing though, the commentary for this show was EVEN WORSE than usual, which I didn't think was possible. I don't know if whether they were jetlagged, JBL gave up, Byron Saxton is just really that bad or a combination of all three but they went back and forth between stumbling through sound bites and their own clichés and sounding barely awake. God awful, WWE if you're serious about taking this show in a new direction please put an exclamation mark on it by getting a new announce team...get ANYONE.
RATING: A single thumb up, with a finger pointing forward
No comments:
Post a Comment