Opener
Baron Corbin began Raw stood in the ring with McIntyre, Lashley and Lio Rush and decided to insult the audience for eating Thanksgiving dinners. Then he showed a video package of the assault on Braun Strowman last week that wrote Strowma off of TV so he can have elbow surgery, we all wish him a speedy recovery, Corbin said he got a camera crew to go to Birmingham, Alabama so Braun could send a message, his arm looks rough as Hell, but he said he will return and will make sure they all “Get these hands” – which got a huge pop. Corbin then said Strowman won’t be medically cleared for TLC, but the match is still on, so it looks like Corbin will be RAW GM, until the lights go out and Elias is on the stage. He then tells them that they all suck, played a little riff and made fun of them all, it was excellent, then played a song for Bobby Lashley called “Bobby Lashley sucks” in A minor and the whole audience started singing it with him. It was beautiful.
Bobby Lashley w/Lio Rush, Drew McIntyre and Baron Corbin vs Elias
This was a really good 15- 20 minute match. Elias nearly won after an Elbow Drop, but Lio Rush pulled the ref out, got DQ’d and then Corbin being Corbin, restarted it as No DQ. Then they all beat Elias down and set up the steps so Drew could do a reverse Alabama Slam to Elias onto them, looked savage, he got Claymored, hit with chairs, a spear and then he got pinned. Although things went sour for our Drifter, this was a great way to open the show.
Backstage
Corbin fires a production worker, then Alexa Bliss comes by to suck up to him a little, Alexa asked how she can help, so he puts her in charge of the whole women’s division. Fair enough, that could be great!
Video
Ambrose is getting 555Live 55work done by the physician and absolutely smashes the modern day Heel prom55o.
Lucha House Party vs The Revival (Lucha House Rules)
I don’t think WWE could bury Dash and Dawson any deeper if they tried. These Lucha House Rules suck. It’s straight up unfair. All 3 members can get involved whenever they like but the other team can’t, they use this tactic to get the win by doing all of their finishing moves onto one man and yet THEY are the Babyfaces? Please. Tis rhubarb.
Sales pitch
WWE stopped doing these stupid sales pitches when Enzo and Cass got broken up. But nope. Sasha Banks and Bayley are the poor souls tasked with this deal.
Lars Sullivan ad
Awesome compilation of Lars. Looming forward to his Main Roster debut.
Nia Jax promo
She gave one of the most awkward promos I’ve ever see. I was cringing for 90% of it and she marginally saved it at the end, but then Ronda Rousey came out, obliterated Nia and Tamina verbally and then challenged Nia to a Match tonight and even put the Title on the line, but Now refused and said she had a “Hot double date”. Then Tamina walked up behind Ronda to attack, but Natalya ran out to make the save only to be stopped by the Riott Squad who were hiding behind the barricade. That was inadvertently funny as hell and made me chuckle like Muttly for a minute or two. But Ronda made the save and scared away the Sqaud like a Lion chasing Vultures away from the corpse of it’s fallen kin. Super awkward. Who wrote this episode? Seriously.
Drake Maverick promo
More about him weeing himself at Survivor Series. Still angry that they did that to Drake. The character deserves better, he is ace.
AOP vs Roode and Gable for the WWE RAW Tag Team Championships
What the hell was going on here? It was like a children’s pantomime with Drake Maverick taking Roode’s robe and pretending to run off with it and do the “Glorious” taunt. Honestly, this episode so far is like a bloody child wrote it because Drake took it to the men’s room, got a camera to get him on the tron, put the robe in the toilet and literally pissed on it whilst whistling Bobby’s theme tune.. it was at this point I truly questioned what I was watching and found myself wondering what IMPACT and NJPW are up to at the moment.
Finn Balor Videomo thing
Talking about how hes going to stand up to Corbin. Sounds like there’s two sides of war beginning to brew. That could be interesting.
Backstage
Alexa Bliss walks up to Sasha Banks and Bayley to say that they can go and have a Q and A with the audience this evening. What a weird and terrible idea.
Ember Moon w/Curt Hawkins vs Alicia Fox w/ Jinder Mahal, Sunil Singh and Samir Singh
Ember won. Was a minute long. Meh.
No Way José vs Jinder Mahal w/ Singh Brothers
No Way José shows up on RAW out of the blue for the first time in months and months. He lost really quickly too. What a let down. Jinder wins.
Seth Rollins’ Intercontinental Championship Open Challenge
Last time this happened it was when Ziggler became champion, so to see this elevate someone new is going to be amaz…. oh, it’s Dolph Ziggler again.
Seth Rollins vs Dolph Ziggler for the WWE Intercontinental Championship
You know a match has happened way too often lately when just clicking the middle of your autocorrect can create the title of a match perfectly, championship and all. Usually these two bring the house down, but this was a different showing. It wasn’t that exciting and it seemed to drag on. Whoever booked and wrote this show, sucks at booking and writing a show. Seth Rollins won after a Falcon Arrow. That was it.
Alexa Bliss’ Open Forum with Sasha and Bayley
Charlie Carusso was ringside and ready to receive the questions from the audience. This was already awkward. No one wanted to see this. No one put their hands up at the start, then some did and the ‘This is awful’ chants began to ring out. This turned into a bitching match between Sasha and Alexa. Mickie James, Alice Fox and Dana Brooke attacked them from behind, but the Boss and Hug Connection managed to get the upper hand. What a waste of a segment. One person asked a question and it didn’t even get answers properly, the ironic part of all this is that backstage when Alexa informed Bayley and Banks of this open forum, Bayley said “this isn’t another one of those “This is your life things, you can forget it” and yet this tanked just as heavily! You don’t remind your audience of a terribly awkward and boring moment to then have yet another awkward boring moment, involving the same people. You just don’t do that, WWE. Even I know that and I have zero TV production experience! At this moment I’m realising that the only thing that would be able to bring this show to over 4🌟is either Gangrel shows up or Brock Lesnar vacates the Universal Championship. Neither of which were gonna happen. So here’s the main event.
Finn Balor vs Baron Corbin
I don’t think anyone cared about this match, but I really tried to. Finn stood up to Authority and was working hard to beat Corbin. Once he’d made it to almost beating him, Corbin made it a 2 on 1 handicap and brought in Drew McIntyre who quickly got the win. Then Bobby Lashley came out and they all hit their finishers on him. That was the end of Raw.
Conclusion
3.5/10🌟
This was the most boring, underwhelming, samey, trashiest episode of RAW I’ve seen in years. It was worse than terrible. I’d never let these people near my TV show legacy again if I were Vince McMahon! Give them something else to do. The matches, the promos, the commentary and everything else about this show just seemed empty somehow. Ambrose’s promo was the only good thing about this and the fact that I laughed when Nattie got attacked. Elias’ bits were good and to be fair, that match was good too. But the other 2 hours and 10 minutes was absolute pointless and momentum slaughtering garbage.
Performance of the Night: Ambrose. His promo skills have evolved into something that feels shoot. I love this version of Ambrose.
Annoyance of the Night: The constant boredom felt whilst watching was annoying, the consistent underutilisation of supremely talented guys and gals is annoying, the almost childlike style to the writing was annoying, the toilet humour was annoying, Bobby Lashley’s smug face is annoying, the repetition of matches was annoying too. Also, where the hell is Apollo Crews??
Ugh.
Thank you all so much for stopping by again if you’re a regular reader and if you’re not then thank you for taking the time out to have a little gander, 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
