“You suck!” They all chant, as once again America’s greatest ever Olympian, Kurt Angle, enters the ring to start off RAW and list all the matches on the show . . . wait, that didn’t happen? Oh.
Instead of his usual listing of matches, Kurt came out to say how last week, Triple The Cerebral Paul Game H Levesque Assassin crossed the line when he punched him in the face. Well, yeah. Fair enough, Kurt.
The whole opening segment was something that this feud really needed to get the crowd excited. We’re going to see a match that if anyone had suggested 12 months ago, you would have called them insane.
But yes, it’s true, it’s damn true, we’re finally going to see Stephanie McMahon in action once again!
Okay, fine, that’s not what’s exciting the crowd, but seeing Rowsey give Steph a . . . Samoan drop? Well, anyway, some sort of move, made her finally look like a badass, and the two biggest dads in the world, Kurt and Trips having a scuffle was a real pop factory for the crowd.
Although the result is pretty much inevitable, I’m actually looking forward to seeing this match. I just hope they don’t give Stephanie too much offence against Ronda. Oh, who am I kidding? She’ll plant Ronda with a tombstone for a pinfall in 5 seconds, won’t she?
Next up was another Asuka vs Nia Jax match, but there was so much more to this by the end of the night. It was a pretty good match on the whole, with a very well done finish, in which Jax was unable to release herself from an armbar and eventually tapped out.
But it was after the match that things really started to get interesting. Jax remained in the ring and looked to be on the verge of tears (probably missing Oli), before leaving the ring.
Later in the show, there was a backstage segment where Alexa Bliss gave Nia a – to put it lightly – pretty insensitive pep-talk. This led to some genuinely brilliant acting from Nia, who was crying and obviously in a lot of distress.
I don’t know where this is heading, but it’s the most interested I have been in the women’s division since the mystery of ‘la luchadora’.
The Bar beat The Revival, lots of momentum for no-one, hooray!
John Cena is back and for some reason squashed Goldust, hooray!
Bayley beats Mandy Rose with a roll-up, hoor . . . but no, there’s more to this one!
Absolution started beating down Bayley after the finish, but out came Sasha Banks for the rescue. There was a lot of tension between the two even after the save, and Bayley even refused a hug from Banks before leaving the ring. Yes, you heard me, Bayley refused a hug.
“But she’s so cute and huggable!” you cry. But no, this is angry Bayley, who sulks like a 12-year-old who has been told they can’t go out wearing that low cut dress. But anyway, the feud has been furthered, so no real complaints.
I moaned in my preview about the Braun vs Elias feud, but I’m going to happily admit that I was wrong – this feud definitely had another week in it.
Yes, it was stupid, and yes, it was ridiculous, but it was one of my favorite RAW segments in a while just because of the comedy value.
It turns out that Elias can actually play every instrument in an orchestra, but unfortunately none of them hurt as much as a double bass. Their ‘Symphony of Destruction’ bout was a silly match, but nothing more or less than we should have expected.
There were two pieces of commentary gold, one from Coachman, and as always, one from Corey Graves. Coachman called the double bass: “the biggest guitar in the world”, which was just wonderful.
But my personal favorite was Corey’s reaction to Cole shouting, “Get out of there, Coach” when Braun was dragging Elias towards the announcers table. Graves responded, “No, get in there, Coach!”, which is just another piece of genius commentary from the only person keeping me from muting the announcers altogether.
Finn Balor and Seth Rollins beat the Miz and the Miztourage in a fun two-on-three handicap match. Although, I realize this was a way of getting the two into a triple threat at ‘Mania, it’s made the Miz look stupid two weeks in a row. Although, that probably means he’s retaining.
The tension between Finn and Seth is good though, and I’d be more than happy to see a feud between the two after the biggest show of the year.
For the second week in a row, RAW finished with a non-wrestling segment. Paul Heyman came out to address Roman’s accusations that Brock doesn’t respect WWE, and explained that Brock would be there next week to go face-to-face with the large hound.
My bet is that Brock no shows, as it looks like WWE are pretty keen on making him as big a heel as possible before he quits the promotion . . . again.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Bray Wyatt squashed Rhyno and said spooky stuff, and then Matt Hardy said spooky stuff, hooray!
Anyway, an ‘Ultimate Deletion’ match has been booked for ‘Mania, which hopefully means the broken universe is finally coming to WWE, giving life to Hardy’s already stale character.
Unlike Oli, I have no douchebag rating system, but all in all a pretty good show. Plenty of matches decided, and some really interesting storytelling in the women’s division. I give this show a solid 5 out of 8.
6 years ago by Andy Datson
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