Opener
Toronto, Ontario, Canada was pretty wild for Raw, folks! Shame they didn’t get even half as mental a show as they were! On that note, we begin. Roman Reigns came to the ring and as he was treading his champion treads we saw a tweet from Strowman that said Roman needs to come to the ring. Alone. So, that’s what we’re seeing now. Roman soaked in all the Boo’s and the cheers (more boos). Roman asked for Strowman. Strowman came out. Strowman said he’s gonna cash in at Hell in a Cell after a pretty heated exchange. Then Dolph Zigglington and Drew McIntyre came out. They too cut a great promo, where they talked about fighting the two of them as a team, Roman and Strowman agreed, Acting GM Baron Corbin came out to make it official and the agreed the match for HIAC!
Corbin stayed out as everyone else left, and made a match between him and Balor for right now. – seemingly because he had no time to prepare last week so he wants to make it even.
Finn Balor vs Baron Corbin
Corbin and Balor put on a pretty good performance but it was the story telling that made it special. Corbin hit Balor with a chair, got DQd and then he got on the Mic and said he “Forgot to say it was no DQ” and started the match again. Which was pretty funny. So the ref rang the bell again and hit the End of Days for the three count. Was pretty good for an opener, but the show didn’t hit the vibe of the audience just yet.
Backstage
Dana and Apollo were talking about.. stuff.. and then theyre interrupted by Titus, who says he got Dana a warm up match against Sasha Banks for right now. Apollo said to Titus that Dana has only had one match in the last 9 months (bless her. She’s not had it easy in the last couple of years what with her Emma storyline dying after Emma got hurt, being called up and used as Charlotte’s lacky, turning on Charlotte and getting Jobbed out, not being used on TV, her Fiancée choking to death, getting injured and now being used as cannon fodder against a lady who, quite frankly, doesn’t need a win. I like Dana and I want her to do well. I think she has true potential to be a top gal! She’s like a mixture of Chyna, Alundra Blayze and Beth Phoenix). Titus said that Dana’s got this though.
Dana Brooke w/Titus Worldwiiiide vs Sasha Banks w/ Bayley
Dana actually looked strong for about a quarter of the match, however that was only about 20 seconds. The match ended with Dana being put into the Banks Statement and tapping. After the match Apollo got in to comfort Dana as Titus looked on from the outside – Heel turn is coming and the force of Apollo and Dana could be a real dark horse that people could get behind! I’m excited for it!
Backstage
Dean Ambrose is backstage just standing, literally doing nothing like the absolute nut case that he is. When Jinder Mahal comes up and tries to calm him down with the power of “Shanty”. Ambrose closed his eyes when Jinder said to and Dean began describing all the brutality that he wishes he could dish out to Jinder and then opened his eyes and warned Jinder to get out of his face. It was a decent enough segment which actually made Dean look more unstable than usual and he did less crazy stuff! Maybe that’s the key?
Seth Rollins IC Title Open Challenge
Seth Rollins came out after this and held an open challenge for the IC Title. The challenge was accepted by Kevin Owens! KO vs The Architect! The Prize Fighter vs The Kingslayer! Kevin Steen vs Tyler Black! Man, I got into this one. This match was great! Not as great as I’d hoped for, but it was nothing short of an instant RAW classic! Owens took a loss this time after Rollins hit a Stomp on him. However, Kevin Owens sat in the ring afterwards and looked exhausted emotionally and physically, then he just said “I Quit” and walked out. This was weird. It felt like it could be a potential face turn to me. After signing a 5 year deal with them earlier this year, I can’t see him walking out any time soon. But for kayfabe, I loved this angle. This vibed so well with the crowd! They loved it and I loved it and that’s how it should be! Amazing booking and production!
Interview
McIntyre and Ziggler are backstage talking about how they’re going to get to the top. These two are great. This was just a really good promo. The show seems to be picking up some steam now.
B Team vs The Revival
Surprisingly The Revival won! As you know (if you read this weekly and if you don’t, here’s a bit of pointless trivia about me), The Revival are one of my favourite tag teams of the last 10 years so this win actually means a lot. They’re on their way to where they should have been on their very first night on RAW! These guys along with Blake & Murphy, AOP (who once again are nowehere to be seen) and #DIY made the NXT Tag Division something to truly behold. Winning match of the year from various polls including the official WWE one! A Shatter Machine ended it. They cut a promo and run down Bo and Curtis. Top Guys, out!
Elias Performance
Elias comes out and jams with us, cuts a viscious promo on Toronto like only Elias can. Just as I was thinking it’s a shame Elias isn’t used in the ring properly at the moment, we hear a familiar tune playing out of the tron! That’s right! Finally it’s Gangrel! He made his way to the r… nope. Actually now I mention it, it wasn’t Gangrel. But it WAS Trish frickin’ Stratus*! The verbal trade off between them is absolutely magical. Elias starts by insulting Toronto’s sports team and said they’ll never see the world title, Trish says Elias has that in common with them (Low blow, Trish. He will be champion. Just you wait.) So then Elias says he can’t wait for her pillow fight match with Alexa Bliss at Evolution, Trish responds with telling him to walk away, Elias said he knows why she’s really out there, she, just like thousands of other women, wants to walk with Elias. But he says that he sadly doesn’t date women in their 60s (I was howling at this point!). Then Trish slaps the mildly misogynistic taste right out of Elias’ mouth! – Not where I’d put someone as naturally over and talented as Elias, but it worked. It was good.
Ronda Rousey then came out with Nattie. Yet another Raw where Rousey isn’t wrestling, I see. The Champion who’s “Not Brock Lesnar” has only had ONE match on Raw, whereas people like Ember Moon and The Riott Squad who have been in yo-yo like booking for the last month are kept back to give their ‘Champion’ the spotlight. Boo! Bliss and Foxy came out next and introduced Mickie James for a nostalgia pop because Trish was also there.
Natalya Neidhart w/ Trish Stratus & Ronda Rousey (Looks like something you’d see in WWE 2K!) Vs Alicia Fox w/ Alexa Bliss & Mickie James
Nattie made short work of Foxy. She beat her in about 2 minutes and her team had a group hug at the end. This whole segment felt very last minute and kind of rushed. This could have been really good if given the time. But then how would they manage to fit their 1,768,234th ad break in or Vince’s super important ‘Make Big Man Look Strong’ handicap squash match? Priorities, priorities.
After the match the Bellas announce that next week they return to RAW for a match! Which is pretty good! They are against the Riott Sqaud too, so they’ll probably job out the Squad and diminish their momentum in favour of part timers.
Backstage
Corbin wants a masseuse. Bobby Lashley shows up and mocks him and asks Corbin why he called him in. He said he has a match for him and it’s next, he forgot the name of his opponent in amongst KO quitting and everything else, but it’s next. This segment was actually really funny. They work well together in terms of talking.
Bobby Lashley vs The Ascension
Yep. The aforementioned Two on One Handicap match. Heel move, GM. Good choice. Shame about the match though. Lashley squashed them and as I previously said, this was super annoying as the time could have been better placed on the women or giving Elias a REAL match
Dean Ambrose vs Jinder Mahal
Ambrose looked really strong! He’s got a new attitude about him and it just works so much better! Less is more with the Lunatic it seems. He won very quickly after a Dirty Deeds. His new moveset is great too!
Roman Reigns & Braun Strowman vs Drew McIntyre & Dolph Ziggler
This was weird. The match focused primarily on a hot tag sequence from Roman to Braun – Roman got absolutely laid out throughout this match. But he finally manages to to hit the tag and then Braun just.. did nothing. He just stood there. Ziggler and McIntyre didn’t move for a moment, then they just started beating Roman down more until a DQ happened. So Roman won by DQ, then Strowman came in and they all beat him down together! Is this a Braun Heel turn?? The fans didn’t know how to react, including myself, which was pretty smart on WWE’s part. But then Ambrose ran out and got beat up, Rollins followed and met the same fate. Powerslams for all and RAW went off the air to Braun raising the hands of Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler after they had just laid out The Shield. What a sight.
Conclusion
7.5/10 🌟
This week was good but confusing. Some of it seemed really last minute and it wasn’t the best start either. I’m not really sure what to make of the main event. Braun can work as either Heel or Face, it wouldn’t matter. He never ‘turned’ Face to begin with. He was just a walking GIF machine and everyone fell in love with him.
Maybe I’ll see this as part 1 of 2 and next week will offer a much fuller story. Because right now I’m not so sure of what to take from it. We did get the announcement of The Revival vs B Team for the Tag Titles so that’ll be cool! Also HBK is back! Bellas are back too! Should be a good one!
Match of the Night: Seth Rollins vs Kevin Owens for the Intercontinental Championship – Great match. Nostalgic for any ROH fans like myself. Yeah, was just a really cool match with a shocking twist at the end with Owens walking out saying that he quits!
Performance of the Night: I’m gonna go with Kevin Owens again. I thought he smashed this whole segment from promo to pinfall and everything else after.
That’s it for this week. Like, subscribe and share if you can. Thanks for taking the time to read my RAW REVIEW this week. As always, Peace and love to you all. I hope you have an awesome week
– CB
