Opener
We began this week with Dogs of War coming to the ring and talking about The Shield and how Ambrose walked out last week. Drew and Dolph talked about their World Cup Qualifying singles matches against Ambrose and Rollins later, they have a funny little play off and then Reigns and Rollins come out and join the little quip exchange. Was okay, it lead into the first Qualifying match.
Seth Rollins vs Drew McIntyre WWE World Cup Qualifying Match.
Graves and Cole asked Renee about Ambrose to which she said she has no idea and that she isn’t one to keep tabs, she’s out there to do her job. That’s all. I loved that response.
This match was just straight up awesome. No two ways about it. The match ended as Ambrose made the save from Rollins being beaten up and screwed over by Ziggler and McIntyre. So Rollins managed to win via count Out and will be in the World Cup tournament.
Backstage
After the match, backstage The Shield are walking and talking when Rollins Says Ambrose is a lunatic and Dean got offended and asked Seth to repeat himself, Seth told him he was only kidding and he was sorry but Dean walked off in a bit of a huff and his Shield brothers looked pretty weirded out by it.
Ember Moon & Nia Jax vs Dana Brooke & Tamina
Tamina looks really good in the ring. The match was s little lacklustre, but the story was great. Nia and Tamina go at it in this one
Ronda Rousey promo
Interrupted by Bellas and the two traded some savage insults, Rousey even low blowing Nikki with a shot at her failed relationship with Cena. It got heated so security came out and Ronda beat them all up. Total and utter certified baddassery.
Backstage
Corbin finds a vacationing Kurt Angle dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and tells him he’s going against AOP tonight in a Handicap match.
Dean Ambrose vs Dolph Ziggler WWE World Cup Qualifying Match
Ambrose’s new smash mouth style is vicious and I absolutely love it. This was such a close match, these two work so well together. McIntyre tried to intervene but was thwarted by Rollins, Ambrose jumped on him from the top rope to the outside, Rollins tries to help him back up but Ambrose pushes him over, gets in the ring and says a huge superkick and gets the win. Dolph has qualified for the World Cup. After the match Ambrose barges past him, then Rollins chases him and asks what his problem was and out came Roman to mediate, then Crafty Corbin came out to set a rematch for the main event. Dogs vs Hounds. Ambrose just walked off.
Backstage
Braun warnes Drew and Dolph that if either of them screwed up then they’d get his hands. Braun is coming across quite annoying lately, only on the microphone though, in the ring he’s still a beast.
Finn Balor w/ Bayley vs Jinder Mahal w Sunil Singh, Alicia Fox and the returning Samir Singh – welcome back, Samir
Balor won pretty easily.. No celebration, filler match, boo. The first ever Universal Champion vs a man who only a year ago was World Champion working a 2 minute match. Seems fricking stupid to me. Both dudes have SO much to offer. Change the main event scene, WWE. Seriously.
Bobby Lashley w/ Lio Rush vs Tyler Breeze
Breeze got run down verbally by Rush and people are hating Lashley and Rush for it. Great Heel pairing. Lashley won easily too.
Promo
Trish Stratus and Lita came out to a massively positive reaction! Before they could say much Mickie and Bliss came out to mock the pair like the IIconics do with bad impressions and mocking their entrances and such like. Awesome promo from both Alexa and Mickie, Lita and Trish challenged them both to come to ring and fight them, but Mickie and Alexa bailed. Good segment.
Backstage
Riott Squad approach Bayley and call her a coward basically. They say she needs protecting all the time. Bayley looks hurt by what they said.
Kurt Angle vs AOP
Angle was dressed in the golden masked attire he wore last week during the Battle Royal. Corbin came to the ramp and sat down on a chair to watch the slaughter of a HOFer. “Angle” was squashed in a matter of all of 60 seconds. The mask was removed to reveal a random man. It wasn’t Kurt Angle at all! It was only bloody Gangrel! Gangrel got up and spat blood in Akam’s face, Impaler DDTs Rezar and Spears Akam, Drake Maverick gets in and takes his jacket off, he goes in for a punch and gets BITTEN on the face by Gangrel, Gangrel hits another Impaler on Maverick and stares up at Corbin with a deathly faraway stare**.
Kurt Angle then appeared behind Corbin and hit an Angle Slam on him on the stage. Nice little segment.
** I know its upsetting to read this, but I feel like it’s time to be truthful with you.. deep breath.. Unfortunately none of that stuff with Gangrel really happened. Okay? It was some random chap under the mask, probably called Colin or Keith or something like that. He looked like a Keith. This was in fact a whole trick by Kurt to get to Corbin.
Ruby Riott w/ Liv Morgan & Sarah Logan vs Natalya w/ Bayley & Sasha Banks, Welcome back, Boss.
Match ended in DQ as Logan saved Riott from tapping to a Sharp Shooter. Nattie’s party hugged after. Pointless, but possibly a story line. Also, anyone else have Ruby Riott as the next Miss Money in the Bank?
Elias Segment
Elias was in the ring with a lot of the Crowd walking with him. Apollo Crews interupts him and cuts an actually reallt good promo on Elias and said he’s sick of everyone passing him by and never getting a chance, so Elias tried attacking him but Crews kicked him in the head and Military Press Slammed Elias, holding him above his head for a long time. Interesting segment. I’m excited for this as the men involved deserve so much more.
The Shield vs Dogs of War
The friction amongst the teams during this was immense. Ambrose even went to Dirty Deeds Rollins after Rollins was pushed into Ambrose whilst he was pinning McIntyre.
The Shield guys managed to recover and get the win after Strowman was accidentally Claymored in the face. After the match Strowman powerslammed Ziggler and when he turned, McIntyre hit him with another Claymore, kicked his face right off. This time on purpose, then he bails from the ring and leaves Ziggler there too.
Conclusion
8/10 🌟
Nothing stupid happened which was a plus. RAW seemingly is picking up steam and consistency now. Very enjoyable and I’m genuinely excited for next week again. That’s almost 5 episodes in a row now.
Match of the Night: Ambrose vs Ziggler. Easily. It felt like there was some serious turmoil going on in the mix. Ambrose was out to prove himself after being out for so long and Ziggler out to prove himself because he was accused of being a weak link in the DOW 2 weeks in a row. So this felt like a race, a brutal and savage race. Plus the storyline development that occurred after it was especially pleasing.
Annoyance of the Night: Finn Balor and Jinder Mahal being in 2 minute matches when both were Brand champions. Balor may not have had a full 24 hours as Universal, but he was the longest reigning NXT Champion in history. He held it for a long ass time and it was epic! Just seems brainless to me that Brock is in the Triple Threat and Balor isn’t. He should be in the Main Event and Jinder may not have been popular but he has worked so hard to be where he is and he deserves a more prominent role or at least a less racist gimmick. Mustafa Ali has that very relief and he’s smashing it on 205 Live.
Thank you all so much for stopping by, I appreciate every single one of you, please feel free to comment, like and share and make sure to Too Sweet that follow button on the Twitter machine @KayfabeToday. Peace and love to one and all! ✌🏻💚
– CB
