The Raw Recap returns! After wallowing in their past during one of the strangest Wrestlemanias ever, can the WWE make a positive statement about their future in front of a surely excitable post-Mania crowd? WE'LL SEE.
"A Wrestlemania hangover? NO WAY! It's party time!" - Actual Michael Cole dialogue.
The bizarre decisions from Wrestlemania continue as the show begins with a disclaimer about the crowd, basically telling people "don't worry about the crowd they're a bunch of weirdos please ignore the boos Reigns will get".
Segment #1 - Vince McMahon promo
"How about that Wrestlemania huh?" - A mixed reaction.
"We have a new WWE Champion..." - UNCONTROLLABLE BOOS
"Shane jumped off that Cell..." - HUGE cheers, okay not entirely on board with this crowd yet. They did chant "No Chance in Hell" along with Vince's music so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Shane limps out to the stage and thanks the crowd for the reaction he got for nearly killing himself in front of his children. The crowd chants "You Still Got It!" and again I agree! Just like the old days he had a really bad match punctuated with a ridiculous bump that hurt the actual wrestlers on the roster who can't follow it! To get a fresh shitpost in on top of that old one, the reason Shane left the company in the first place because he fell out of line to run the business because he was bad at creative.
But never mind that, for basically no reason Vince decides to let Shane run Raw for the night. So maybe actual good stuff with happen, but don't worry it's all wrong because it's Shane doing it and the crowd are only enjoying it because they're weirdos. Your regularly scheduled programming will return next week.
Segment #2 - TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP - New Day Vs Sheamus and Wade Barrett
New Day cut their promo while Xavier wears a piece of Booty O cereal over his unicorn horn with is phallic even for them, I suspect the only reason they keep getting away with this is because it all goes over Vince's head.
League of Nations comes out and gets massive boos. Hey WWE, are you going to explain why the international crowd of weirdos still hate the boring foreign heel group?
The crowd doesn't mess around and immediately gets into waves and "We Are Awesome" chants, an actually awesome crowd would come up with their own stuff. The match itself was about as standard as these things get, New Day gets a quick comeback at the end and retains the titles.
New Day leaves and Sheamus starts cutting a promo about how dominant the League of Nations should be, there's something wrong and you're only as strong as your weakest link. Rusev and Del Rio grab Wade and Sheamus brogue kicks him. Then for some reason the Wyatts show up and beat up the rest of the League. JBL says the Wyatt Family are making a statement, not much of a statement after Sheamus just talked about how the League wasn't as strong as it should be and kicked out a member.
I hope this is only a squash as they move on to something else, as bad as the Rock/Cena stuff was at Wrestlemania I don't think that buried them as hard as an extended feud with the League of Nations would.
Vince is interviewed as he gets into his limo to leave the arena, he says he doesn't want to be here when the ship goes down because of Shane. Why did you put him in charge then? To make a point? At the expense of your own show? Christ, maybe the Roman "political hit" theory is true.
Segment #3 - Summer Rae Vs Sasha Banks
Summer Rae talks smack about Sasha, Sasha's music hits and she stands on the ramp with a "Really???" look on her face, swaggers down to the ring, grabs the mic and says "You seem to have forgotten Summer, I'm Sasha Banks, and I'm STILL THE BOSS" complete with a slap to the face. 100% perfect, more of this please.
It's a competitive match but Sasha makes quick work of Summer.
Segment #4 - Apollo Crews Vs Tyler Breeze
Poor Tyler, he escaped to the main roster and he's still having to make all the NXT stars look good. Tyler gets a few licks in but it's basically Apollo showing off all his cool moves and flips with a quick pin off the spinout powerbomb.
Segment #5 - Roman Reigns promo
Oh god, when they announced this segment was next I had the same feeling in my stomach as when Shane was standing on top of that Cell. The announcers remind us to ignore the crowd they're just booing the good guys because they're hipster jerks, I wonder if they're going to start giving that disclaimer on every Raw Reigns gets booed on...y'know...most of them.
Reigns mercifully keeps it short and calls out anyone who wants the championship. Jericho tries to get control of the crowd but they're not having it and simply chant "We are Idiots!"
Jericho says he buried AJ Styles and he wants a title shot, AJ Styles comes down to the ring and points at the title to a good reaction, Kevin Owens' music hits and gets a ROAR from the crowd, followed by Zayn, the crowd sings along with his music which is becoming one of the most infectious things in wrestling. Reigns stands in the middle of all four guys and laughs them off, Owens and Zayn immediately go into that punching spot they like as they can't help themselves, Jericho drops Styles over the top rope and Jericho gets speared to astounding boos.
Decent segment to establish challengers for Reigns, presenting him as a fighting champion but also a dismissive jerk to the indie favourites was probably the best they could do on this show.
Backstage Shane McMahon tells Reigns there's going to be a fatal four way no 1 contender's match between those four guys in the main event.
Segment #6 - Baron Corbin Vs Dolph Ziggler
"For those of you who don't know who I am...I don't care" Brilliant first line for Corbin on Raw.
Crowd's not sure how to react to Corbin, I mean he is from NXT which makes him objectively great, but he's also a big football guy which means he's objectively bad, WHAT'S A SMARK TO DO? They're also being distracted by something but I can't tell from the TV broadcast what it is.
The match ends with Corbin booting Ziggler over the barrier and both guys getting counted out, Corbin gets mad and hits the End of Days out on the floor.
Segment #7 - INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP - Zack Ryder Vs The Miz
Ryder gets a pretty tepid reaction considering it's this crowd, but they chant "You Deserve It!" at him anyway. Ryder talks about how Wrestlemania was the greatest night of his life, he shows a picture of Scott Hall letting him hold his Intercontinental Championship, then as he swaps it for a modern picture of Scott Halls holding HIS Intercontinental Championship the camera cuts to a cardboard cut out of Colt Cabana for some reason. He also thanks his dad who's still more jacked than he is.
The criminally underrated Miz comes out and so far has been the only heel to gain control of this crowd. He challenges Ryder to a supposedly spontaneous Intercontinental title match which explains why they muted Lillian's mic when she accidentally announces this as one as Ryder came down to the ring.
These guys have what is easily the best match of the night so far, I know both these guys are good but Miz jobs so much and Ryder performs so infrequently that there's still part of my brain that's surprised. Miz punks out Ryder's dad and gets pushed down, then his real life wife Maryse comes out of the crowd and slaps Ryder's dad, Zack is distracted and eats a Skull Crushing Finale to lose the title.
I suspected Ryder would lose the title tonight but I didn't think it'd be to the Miz, who's won so many midcard title belts now he's probably takes swims in his vault of them.
Kevin Owens is interviewed, it's looking like he's just going to forget about the Intercontinental title.
A promo for the Vaudevillains is aired, who are debuting!!!!!!!
On Smackdown......
Segment #8 - Women's Championship Presentation
Lita is in the ring with the entire women's division to present the new belt to Charlotte, Becky looks really beat up and has a nasty gash on her face. Charlotte comes down to the ring and the crowd immediately starts chanting for Bayley, Michael Cole quickly interjects that "Bayley is not here". Charlotte seems genuinely tickled by the support for Bayley and almost fell apart in her promo because of the crowd.
Charlotte manages to get it together and starts talking about how much more she's accomplished than all the other women. Everyone sulks off apart from Natalya who challenges her to another match, Charlotte refuses so Natalya puts her in the sharpshooter, Ric Flair puts her out of the ring. Crowd expected a debut and didn't get one, then I think they expected Bret when Natalya's own siren went off, they got neither and they weren't happy about it.
AJ Styles is interviewed about the fatal four way.
A promo airs for the Colons who are debuting a new gimmick.
Segment #9 - TABLES MATCH - The Usos Vs The Dudley Boyz
Something goes wrong with the Usos mic during their entrance, WWE must be anxious right now and ready to mute the audio whenever Samoans are involved. Shane McMahon supposedly put this match together which seems like a waste of this angle, the whole point was the Dudleys' wanted nothing to do with tables, throwing them straight into the tables match the night after their first match with no build is bad storytelling.
The crowd certainly lost interest in the match early and they go firmly into random chants mode. They chant for "Jordan Jordan Gable Gable" so Michael Cole claims "they're chanting get the tables!" Seriously?
The Usos both splash themselves through two tables and the bell is rung for some reason even though that doesn't count. D-Von throws Uso 2 through another table and then they actually win, with Bubba screaming "NOW YOU RING THE BELL! NOW WE WON!"
Sami Zayn is interviewed about the fatal four way, you can still hear Bubba screaming at the ringside area on the arena audio. Amazing. Kevin Owens attacks Sami from behind and powerbombs him through a table which I imagine will take him out of the match. Um, if you're going to do an angle with tables...maybe don't do it directly after the TABLES MATCH?????
Segment #10 - SAWFT and Dudleys promo
The Dudleys are still out at ringside raving and ranting at people, the crowd were expecting SAWFT to show up at some point all night so distracting them with the backstage promo was a good call. Enzo goes on a long rant on the Dudleys and they get all their lines in with the crowd chanting along on every syllable. Great debut for them and the Dudleys are perfect first opponents.
It's confirmed Sami Zayn is out of the fatal four way and will be replaced by someone else.
Segment #11 - NO 1 CONTENDERS MATCH - Kevin Owens Vs AJ Styles Vs Chris Jericho Vs Cesaro
Lillian announces Zayn will be replaced by Cesaro, Cesaro shows up on the ramp in a suit and breaks out that Rock tech by tearing it off to reveal his ring gear.
As Raw main events go this is pretty much perfect. Everyone got their stuff in, everyone looked great, it didn't throw main event angles away on television for no reason, and it advanced storylines. Owens took Zayn out of the match for their feud with opened the door for Cesaro who looked like superman throughout and Jericho failed to beat AJ at a crucial point. Styles wins which was a surprising choice considering Cesaro's return and him still being 2-2 with Jericho, but Styles/Reigns is an interesting match for the first title defence.
And who would have guessed it, this "weird" crowd stayed invested in the entire thing throughout because it was actually good, funny how that works.
Closing Thoughts
Considering the trainwreck of baffling decisions that was Wrestlemania this was enjoyably simple, good debuts, a good Intercontinental title match and a strong main event. The crowd this year was kind of tiresome, half the time they were chanting stuff just for the sake of being the "post-Mania crowd" and there wasn't a lot of funny chants or genuinely great reactions. But again, it did at least add to the main event.
Then again I feel any praise for the show has to come with the asterisk of all those "ignore the crowd" disclaimers because that was truly bizarre. It's hard to use this show as any indicator of things to come, they kept Reigns off it for the most part on purpose and uncharacteristically piled all the internet favourites into the main event.
God, who starts their wrestling show with the announcers saying directly into the camera IGNORE THE CROWD THEY WILL CHANT STUFF WE DON'T CARE ABOUT AND ISN'T NORMAL.
That's so weird.
RATING: I'm British so I'm afraid I can't trust my international thumbs, normal service will return next week.
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