Raw is live from The University of Texas and Roman Reigns is being shoved down our throats again as he makes his way to the ring as a Raw “Mild Card”, as I refer to it because the rule is FAR from “Wild”. We are also told that Brock Lesnar will cash in the Money In The Bank briefcase tonight as per the request of Stephanie McMahon because she feels he disrespected the briefcase, the champions of WWE & the WWE Universe.
Shane McMahon shows up and hypes his match with Roman Reigns at Super Showdown, he says he’s gonna lock in the Triangle Choke & make Roman tap out for the first time in his career and not let go when he does tap because he makes his own rules. That’s Murder, Shane’O. Murder. Roman laughs and says he’d love to see Shane try to tap him out, because as soon as he tries to get him in the Triangle Choke, he will pick his “spoiled ass” up and “Boom” him through the mat. – That line made me laugh, I liked it. “Boom ya’ through this mat!” – awesome.
Roman says Shane doesn’t stand a chance and he only wins when he has help. So he says at Stomping Grounds in 2 weeks he will kick Drew McIntyre’s ass too! Drew appears and says he will decimate Roman in 2 weeks, but he & Shane are gonna destroy him right now. The Revival then attack Roman from behind, Drew and Shane hit the ring and The Usos run down to make the save and this turns into a pretty decent matchup!
3/5🌟
Roman Reigns & The Usos vs Drew McIntyre & The Revival
How good is Dash Wilder though? He’s excellent all round. Dawson in fantastic too, but Wilder is really unpredictable.
Yeah, I liked this match. It told a nice, lengthy story and interlaced 2 separate storylines and put it into one segment. It made sense too. Which was a bonus!
The Usos had some awesome back and forth with The Revival, it was really balanced for the most part. They were wallopping and slamming eachother all over the place. High spots were kept to a minimum which only made them more exciting when they actually did happen. The pace of the match felt like it should have too. It has 6 of the top wrestlers on the roster, so it would be a long old slogfest! Which is exactly what it was.
McIntyre ended up hitting his Claymore Kick on Reigns outside, Jimmy got a Shatter Machine & Jey got a Claymore too. Drew one for the team and then they all did their finishers on Roman Reigns. Shane hit a Spear on Reigns too. This actually worked really well too. It was 30 minutes of solid storytelling that didn’t feel constricted somehow. It felt a bit more free. This ended the segment.. also, the “Shane’s adopted!” chants might be my favourite of the week so far. Thanks for that, Austin crowd.
3.5/5🌟
Miz TV with Seth Rollins
Lance Armstrong & Matthew McConaughey are shown in the crowd with their kids. They all seem really pumped up for it.
Miz starts off with “well, alright alright alright..” – which killed me. Then he introduces Seth Rollins – he’s asked about Lesnar, Seth says he probably won’t show up and Heyman always lies. Miz says they both know the gravity of the MITB briefcase and Brock is dangerous with it, Rollins says he will win against Corbin at Super Showdown. – Lesnar shows up in a Limo backstage and we see it on the tron. He teases coming straight out to cash in, but he goes the other way. Nice way to keep people hooked. I definitely was. Not sure what is different this week, but I am enjoying it a lot more. Personally, I still want a little less talking, though. Rollins was really awkward again. It’s funny but it makes me cringe.
3/5 🌟
Lucha House Party vs Lars Sullivan hype
Lucha House Party came out for a match, but Lars “I’m a Xenophobic misogynist who thinks Rape is a grey area and that people who are disabled are weak but.. Sorry!” Sullivan came out to attack them, he got dropkicked a bunch of times. Then he screamed and that was it. We get to see him do this again on Friday at Super Showdown in Saudi Arabia.. where they obviously also have the internet.. that could be interesting.
1/5🌟
Backstage Segment
The IIconics were in the locker room laughing at Nikki Cross for looking sad. They call her a dog & then go into the best thing they’ve ever done. They do an air Eskimo kiss, Peyton Royce then calls Billie her ‘Wifey’ & says it’ll be.. “IICONIC!” Then they did the superhero pose into a sort of cartoonish exit. Absolutely killed me. Their comedic timing is just perfect. I love them. Nikki vs Peyton confirmed for later. Alexa confides on Nikki that no one likes her around there, Nikki says she doesn’t care what Alexa did before, she’s her friend. So Alexa says she will be in Nikki’s corner later.. odd couple. But strangely loveable.
3/5 🌟
Becky Lynch promo
She ran down her accomplishments of the year. She said she’s never been more content in her whole life, but she won’t stay that way because content fighters lose and she is pissed off now. She called out Lacey Evans. Who almost quoted The Joker in The Dark Knight with her “Dog chasing cars” line.. She says she will be ‘Becky No Belts’ soon enough because she can’t stand a woman like Becky Lynch representing her division. Then Charlotte Flair comes out and says she still beat Becky despite the assistance from Evans, she still won, then Lacey tells Charlotte to stop embarrassing herself, called her sweetheart and said she’s out here “struttin’ like a peacock” because she’s a “Daddy’s girl that needs attention” – I really like Lacey Evans’ character, Charlotte says she’s strutting because she’s over halfway to breaking her Dad’s 16 World Heavyweight Championship record. Which is hilarious. Flair got 16 Titles over the course of 20 years – Flair has gotten 9 Titles in just under 4 years.. let that sink in as to how she’s been booked – and yet Roman Reigns got all the hate for being pushed too much and too often. Ha! – Lacey tells her to go away unless she wants to be educated by a “Woman’s Right” and then just punches her anyway. It looked terrible. Charlotte looked stunned and angry. Charlotte composed herself and then a Ref just showed up and Charlotte Flair vs Lacey Evans is happening.
2.5/5 🌟- made me laugh and kept me entertained.
Charlotte Flair vs Lacey Evans
Charlotte gives Lacey one hell of a wedgie at the start.. she’s always doing that too. There were so many botches at the start which will not help Evans’ push. But this went the distance! Shame it ended so abruptly. They’d just gotten into the swing of it all too! Becky attacked Flair, caused a DQ & then hit the Pumphandle Uranagi which she has dubbed The Man-handle Slam. That was that. Cool move but.. meh.
2/5🌟 just let the match play out! The DQ finish ruined a match everyone was finally invested in. Rocky start but the ladies prevailed, until the sudden end. It was just pointless.
Rey Mysterio Relinquishes The US Championship
Rey talks proudly about his career, his bloodline & his son, who is now training in the WWE PC I presume. He was interupted by Samoa Joe who is never anything short of mesmerising on the microphone and he basically told Rey that he never beat him because his shoulders weren’t down. Rey shut him up and told him he was relinquishing the belt to Samoa Joe. Mysterio says he’ll be back for it soon, then Joe attacks him from behind and chokes him out. Then leaves with the belt. Joe! Joe! Joe! Joe!
3.5/5 🌟 Samoa Joe is an animal and should be booked as such. He feels like he is real. Like he’s this evil, sadistic man who would do anything to get what he wants. This was the best way to handle this. I hope Rey heals fast and we can get this feud back on! Summerslam maybe?
Braun Strowman vs Bobby Lashley in a…. an Arm Wrestling Match? 🤦🏻♂️
Just as this was shaping up to be an okay episode of RAW, we have this to watch. Who in the ever-living hell thought this would be a good idea? Seriously. This was stale before it even got going. Lashley attacked Strowman after he lost to him, then he threw chalk powder into his face and Powerslams him. Doing Braun’s move on him.
0.5/5🌟 pointless. Kind of stuff Vince Russo would have dreamt up. I seriously don’t understand why this took up airtime over a match between oh, I don’t know, Robert Roode vs Eric Young? Or EC3 vs Cedric Alexander or something. Anything but this bull. The .5 was for the intensity of Lashley. He looked mental.
24/7 Championship Shenanigans
We saw the YouTube video of Jinder winning the 24/7 Title and then losing it 3 seconds later. Truth and Carmella were on the golf course trying to relax when Jinder attacked and he won the title. Truth rolled him up immediately to recapture the gold. 3 time 24/7 champion now, R-Truth. Then Carmella drove away on the golf caddy and truth was trailing by hanging off the back of it. Utterly ridiculous & I loved every single second of it. – Then we cut to backstage where Mella is looking for Truth. Drake Maverick & EC3 are tailing her Elmer Fudd style because they think following her will lead them to Truth. – Loved. It. It’s just the PG version of a Hardcore Belt. It’s excellent & you won’t change my mind on that.
4/5🌟
Nikki Cross w/ Alexa Bliss vs Peyton Royce w/ Billie Kay
I can’t tell if Alexa is working us all. She’s the resident Regina George of WWE. I don’t feel comfortable trusting her with Nikki Cross. Nikki is one of my favourites to watch & I don’t think she’d be pleased if a double-cross was to occur. Nikki’s crazy..
Well.. the match was about Peyton being able to walk all over Cross. Which she did for 75% of the match, even splitting Nikki’s mouth open a bit. But when Bliss had her coffee delivered, as you do, Royce got upset and got a flick of the coffee in her face. She then kicked the coffee out of Bliss’ hand and Billie pushed her into it ass first. She was wearing white jeans too and she just sat there.. didn’t move for the whole match. Then Nikki managed to get a savage Whiplash Neckbreaker from the top rope onto Peyton Royce for a 3 count! She got out to celebrate with Bliss but Bliss had a face like hellacious thunder and she turned it into Billie Kay, dropkicks and a DDT. She then celebrated with her new friend, Nikki Cross. New Tag Team Championships?? I hope so!
3.5/5 🌟
Brock Lesnar Cashes In
Rollins comes out to tell Lesnar that he’s a husk of what he used to be and if he had any balls at all he would come out and cash in now. Corbin appeared instead and he told Seth to be prepared for him on Friday otherwise he will retire him like he did Kurt Angle, but instead, Rollins attacked Corbin and the two went at it, Lesnar’s music hit, he was faking, Corbin hit the End of Days and then Lesnar did come out, beat the holy hell out of Rollins with a chair and F5’s to the floor and suplexes and stuff. His back was cut open by the chair shots. Then he didn’t actually cash in at all. Surprise surprise. He just said “Friday” to Heyman… if all of this was done to make us think they weren’t going to waste the briefcase, they failed. It was all just a set up for Saudi Arabia’s bullshit show.
1/5🌟 The 1 point was for Rollins’ delivery in his callout. He looked and sounded like champion. It was awesome. But MAJOR disappointment on the narrative of the whole thing and mainly the briefcase and yearly push for a deserving up and comer being wasted on Brock Lesnar and Saudi Arabia. It’s almost stomach churning.
Backstage
Becky Lynch is with Seth Rollins & the EMTs and they’re going to the Ambulance. Nice to see them doing things together on Camera.
Firefly Funhouse
A very special episode. Bray is talking about exercise. He introduces us to a new puppet “Huskus The Pig Boy” – a play on Husky Harris (Bray’s first character on WWE TV in the original Nexus) and he is eating chocolate and not taking good care of himself according to Bray. Bray is looking ripped as hell! He then teaches Huskus that in the future he will be a genius and people will say he has the whole world in his hands and winks at the screen. Then.. YOWIE WOWIE! A Vince McMahon puppet with devil horns came in and said he is about to fire them if they don’t get their act together, so Bray then goes into an 80s inspired workout video called “Do The Muscle Man Dance” I had to watch it 5 times as my 4 year old is obsessed with Bray Wyatt now. It was insane, so funny and so off the scale in terms of anything ever done before that I just fell in love with it. The line where we saw The Fiend was “erase your mind”. It was creepy, but we’ll placed. We all want to see him in a match now though. Desperately.
5/5 🌟 for utter madness alone. Every week is different and this week was something I never thought I’d see. Ever. But I loved it. I just think we need to see him either target someone or just see him appear soon.
HHH & Randy Orton Face To Face
NXT chants broke out immediately, Randy Orton was out before Trips could speak though.
They had a respectful display and said they were going to Super Showdown to win. Then Randy said that HHH needs to do him a favour, before the match on Friday he needs to get his balls from Steph’s purse. They both laugh and HHH says okay and gets back in the ring, he says that he will do that, but they’re so big that it becomes a burden carrying them around and Randy wouldn’t know about that because he’s never had any. Randy laughs and the segments ends. This was really quite interesting because it looked like Orton went off-script and was challenging Triple H to do the same and he accepted. This kind of thing is really refreshing.
3/5🌟
Ricochet vs Cesaro III
I’m all for this program. I don’t think they could ever put on a bad performance.
These two tore the house down. There were some things in this match that I had never seen before. I loved every minute of it and they got about 15 of them so that’s saying something! There were flips and dips and flops and chops and all the bone-crunching, jaw-dropping smashmouth shots that you imagine. It blew me away. Still.. I wanted more! Ricochet won the match with a roll-up again and then got attacked by Cesaro after. Cesaro went for a table, but R-truth was laying on it and was hiding from everyone. Truth is then set upon by the barely seen talent, Cedric Alexander did a Tope Con Hilo that nearly murdered Eric Young & Truth was almost taken out by Drake Maverick until Carmella superkicked him and they left.. Cesaro leaves the Heel and Ricochet stays the Babyface, but now he’s a victorious Babyface who has been attacked. I think he may be on his way to a strong push. They were the Main Event of the evening too.
4.5/5🌟 dropping a .5 because I want more! A 30 minute Iron Man Match would do just nicely.
Undertaker Returns
Taker returned and took his usual 23,765,408 days to get to the ring and when he got there he talked about Hell and souls and all the Undertaker type stuff – he basically just hyped the match for Super Showdown. He spoke for 1 minute and then Raw went off air with him still in the ring talking. I’m guessing he ran over.
1/5🌟 1 minute of talking about magic and demons and whatnot is not a “return to Raw” as was advertised.
Conclusion
43.5/80🌟
Overall Score: 54.375%
So this was an average Raw. Ricochet and Cesaro were outstanding and Firefly Funhouse is always great! The women’s match was really good & even the start was good. But it’s still too talky and the matches need to be given more time to tell their stories. 54% is nowhere near a good show though. It’s consistently below 65% which is where a good show would be, but 85%+ would be where they should be in terms of stellar performances and standout programming of a TV Show with potentially the most diverse and extensively superior talent pool in the business. How it’s always so low is beyond me.
Superstar of the Night:
This week Bray Wyatt missed the cut, because this week I want to give it to Cesaro. He absolutely nailed his performance and his timing allowed Ricochet to safely execute some of the most mesmerising moves I’ve ever seen! He sold like a diamond, his style meshed so well with Ricochet’s & they really owned that main event spot! I hope to see this again, but in a 30 Minute Ironman match at Stomping Grounds or something. Just 30 minutes of World Class wrestling. I think that would be considered for match of the century if they got the chance to do it. But it’s WWE so chances are it’s already been pitched by someone and shot down by Vince because it doesn’t involve men shaving eachother or urine.
