Segment #1 - Seth Rollins promo
Rollins comes out covered in Mark Henry sweat to an overwhelming hero's welcome. He looks like he's going to play it up at first but quickly slides back into his old role and says the fans have never supported him and he doesn't need them...and he actually manages to get a heel reaction from it! When I first saw Seth as Tyler Black in Ring of Honor he could barely cut a promo at all, it's ridiculous how much he's improved over the course of his WWE run. He's that rare talent who is already world class but just won't stop getting even better.
Reigns comes down the ramp, Rollins takes off his jacket and looks ready to fight but bails when Reigns comes into the ring. Shane O'Mac comes down, gets a pop for no reason as usual, panders to the crowd then proceeds to recite the script like he's reading it off an imaginary autocue. Shane makes Reigns Vs Rollins for the title at Money In The Bank, good to get that set up early, Reigns holds up the title and gets booed.
Sheamus is interviewed about his Money in the Bank qualifying match against Sami Zayn later on. Literally nothing to say about this so I'll go with "can you believe Sheamus was the WWE Champion six months ago???"
Segment #2 - MITB Qualifier - Sheamus Vs Sami Zayn
The crowd singing along with Zayn's music is one of my favourite parts of the show now and they keep cutting his entrances short, sad times. They also put the two gingers together in a qualifying match so they don't risk both of them getting in, bloody typical.
Zayn's great because he's such an emotional performer even when he's fighting guys way bigger than him he can fire up with lariats and Michinoku drivers and you still believe it. He gets a clean win off Sheamus in a short but pretty good match, the announcers make a big deal about how he won Money in the Bank last year but didn't even qualify this year, which is the only reason he was involved at all.
Apollo Crews is interviewed about his qualifying match with Jericho, an angry Sheamus attacks him from behind and throws him around the backstage area. Apollo's already starting to float, not even getting consistent squash matches on television so at least he's getting into some kind of real feud.
Segment #3 - The New Day Vs Social Outcasts
New Day celebrate Raw's "birthday" because it's the 1200th episode and taunt the front row and announcers with a cake spot. Then the mercifully still together but Rose-less Social Outcasts attack them from behind. I was worried Heath Slater was going to lose another batch of companions like a rock n' roll Doctor Who.
There's a commercial break between the attack and the start of the match which is odd as it's basically a squash with New Day going over after about two minutes. Heath takes a bump into the cake, which is fair enough but seemed to be done for its own sake (hey they rhymed!) It's like Vince said "DAMMIT, cake spots are the funniest and we haven't done one in ages...where's Cody when you need him".
Segment #4 - MITB Qualifier - Cesaro Vs The Miz
Mike "Money" Mizanin and Maryse cut a promo about how he survived the fatal four way match at Extreme Rules, how he's on the roll of his life and he's going to win the Money in the Bank contract too.
"Cesaro had the Miz tapping out but the referee didn't see it because of the CHAOS IN A FATAL FOUR WAY MATCH" You mean Maryse got dragged into the ring and distracted the referee? That seems worth mentioning!
Cesaro starts off the match with a huge flurry of offense, one problem with Cesaro is everything he does is so awesome it starts to become absurd that he hasn't already won...especially when he's in there with someone as "beatable" as The Miz. Miz manages to make a comeback by targeting Cesaro's shoulder...which he actually sells through the whole match even when he's back on offense and it actually affects how the match ends! Thanks Cesaro! Hope you uppercut a ladder in the MITB match.
Seth is interviewed backstage about his title match, he sees Stephanie and tries to greet her with a hug but she blows him off. Seth's relationship with the Authority was always so confusing I genuinely can't remember if they were getting along when he got hurt anyway.
Segment #5 - MITB Qualifier - Chris Jericho Vs Apollo Crews
Chris Jericho comes out with a major case of grump face and covered with tack holes, Apollo comes out smiley and jumping around and same as ever despite being attacked by Sheamus about an hour ago. I don't know whether to blame Apollo or the agents for this but this is absolutely absurd, why do angles if they're not going to mean anything. Then we cut to Sheamus watching the match on television, because for some reason he's really invested in some guy he attacked randomly in a hissy fit.
There wasn't that much to the match, the crowd mostly didn't care outside of some tepid duelling chants. The fact Apollo wasn't bothering to sell his attack from Sheamus and Jericho was visibly covered in wounds did Apollo no favours. There's an awkward spot near the end where Apollo kips up as Jericho goes for a lionsault and I think Crews was supposed to catch him but got kicked in the head instead. Whatever the finish was supposed to be, it probably wasn't an improvised Codebreaker out of nowhere.
This was bad, I'm genuinely baffled at what they were going for with it, the referee was talking to Apollo a lot during the match so it's possible Vince was going nuts on the headset. Jericho beats Apollo clean in a sloppy match where the beat up old man beat the star of tomorrow.
Another Darren Young and Bob Backlund promo airs, still don't get it.
Baron Corbin is interviewed by a nine year old girl. He gets heat with me because he says "he could care less" about what people think, which means he totally does care. Dolph Ziggler shows up and tries to be funny, Baron accepts another match for literally no reason...for NEXT WEEK. This feud has already gone on longer than it should of and now Corbin's 2-1 up why is this still going.
Segment #6 - Big Cass Vs Bubba Ray Dudley
Big Cass comes out alone, then stops on the ramp to call out Enzo, who gets a nice pop as he runs around the set throwing his mic around. They milk their opening promo a little too much, Enzo sometimes waits for the crowd too much, Cass still looks slightly terrified.
This feud's got an uphill battle considering Cass has been beating up the Dudleys by himself without Enzo's help the past few weeks anyway. There's not much to the match, Cass doesn't feel ready for prime time as far as his singles matches go. Enzo gets a few licks on D-Von, Cass beats Bubba.
Segment #7 - State of the Women's Championship Address
It's fine when someone is being interviewed or addressing the public for whatever reason, but I cannot stand it when performers go down to the ring to act out a high school play in front of a crowd for no reason. Charlotte is getting better at promos, and Ric Flair is an all time great, but that doesn't mean either of them are good actors.
The Flairs give their life stories, then Charlotte tells Flair to get out of her ring and tears into her dad. It gets better as it goes along when Ric turns on the waterworks and Charlotte starts to get into her groove. Charlotte says Ric is dead to her, forces him to leave the ring and even sings the Na Na Na song. This was cartoonish and came out of nowhere, but the Flairs put their all into it and got something out of this, Charlotte needed to get away from Ric at some point and there were worse ways to do it than this I suppose.
Segment #8 - MITB Qualifier - Dolph Ziggler Vs Dean Ambrose
This is one of those weird situations where you know the match is probably going to be pretty good but...who cares, the finish is obvious, we know exactly how this will go, we'll forget by the time the show ends. Ziggler might be able to put on a show on a good day but having zero momentum is a hard hurdle to overcome.
It's a decent little match, Dean Ambrose beats Dolph as clean as you can get with Dirty Deeds with few near falls in between. Ambrose is my personal pick for winning the actual ladder match too.
Renee tries to get a word with Ric Flair as he leaves the arena but he's sad.
The Shining Stars cut a promo and I've seen better green screen effects in Byte Control.
Segment #9 - MITB Qualifier - AJ Styles Vs Kevin Owens
Before the match AJ cuts a promo on Roman Reigns and says he's one of the better men he's ever been in the ring with (and gets booed). AJ says could have had Reigns beat if it wasn't for dudes getting involved in the match. Notch lookalikes Anderson and Gallows are offended by that comment and come out to say that AJ has changed. AJ says that he wants to stay friends but professionally they need to separate. Fans want to see Bullet Club so that gets him booed too, should have thought this out more WWE!
There's a commercial break, WWE announce a Cesaro Vs Miz Intercontinental title match for Smackdown because Cesaro beat the champion, nice! Also Kalisto's US title rematch is on Smackdown this week too, I fear that might just to be to get his rematch out of the way before Cena comes back.
Kevin Owens finally hits the ring and he must have been waiting in the Gorilla position for about ten minutes while all this was going on. As much as I love seeing these guys work together it seems odd they keep throwing this away on Raw. There's a great spot early on where AJ misses his leapfrog dropkick and Owens sarcastically applauds him and then eats it anyway. Owens is getting better at getting his entertaining dickishness in without making his opponents look bad.
Another match where I couldn't stop thinking about how the "New Era" needs to include a new announce team, there was a point in the second half of the match where they weren't even trying to call moves.
*move* "oOOOOOOOOOOO!" "how did he kick out of that!" *awkward silence*
Owens powerbombs AJ onto the steel steps, which isn't a DQ for some reason but it leads into the finish. AJ tries to make another comeback but Owens finishes him off with a Pop Up Powerbomb. A great main event for Raw, and the announcer got one thing right and kept talking about how beat up AJ must be from Extreme Rules so he didn't get hurt by Owens beating him (mostly) clean. I'm still picking Ambrose but if WWE aren't going to use the briefcase to transition him directly into a Shield feud then Owens is my second choice.
Closing Thoughts
Solid matches kept this show's head above water, you can only expect so much from these "qualifier" episodes. Hey, at least it wasn't a Beat the Clock Challenge. Nothing was astounding but it's nice to see Rollins back, AJ and Kevin Owens had a pretty good match and Apollo Vs Jericho was the only segment that flat out didn't work at all.
I hope we get some interesting developments in Reigns Vs Rollins and The Club situation going forward because the show is going to need that for intrigue going into Money in the Bank. Building the MITB participants out of established feuds is a smart move but it doesn't hide the fact we all know we're going to be getting a lot of meaningless tag matches in the coming weeks.
Also Cena's back next week! I sincerely hope they haven't just put the US title on Rusev so he can lose it back to Cena again but on the other hand I have zero issue with them making Cena the US champ again so whatever. Cena is at his best when he's with fresh guys and I'm genuinely excited to see who he's going to be working with!
All in all, fine Raw, it's established The Club aren't a thing, Rollins is back and the No 1 Contender, Cena's coming back, Charlotte's on her own and most of the Money in the Bank participants are now known, so there's a lot of pieces in place for the coming weeks. But for the love of god, find something for New Day to do already.
RATING: HEADLOCK MASTER
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