Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Weekly Wraswslin' Wroundup (Raw)

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
Another lackluster Raw this week, with a lot of character reintroductions that aren't working and weird midcard feuds that aren't going anywhere. But at least they addressed the most pressing issue facing the WWE of late, the inability of The Clerb to do comedy.


But first, we have a loooooong talky bit about the Women's Division situation. First we have Charlotte/Dana drama. I'm not sure if Dana can play a face effectively, but they're clearly having Charlotte push Dana to an eventual breaking point, having swerved us on it once or twice before Then Sasha comes out to claim a title match at Clash of Champions, which brings out Bayley, who points out that, having pinned the champ, she should get the shot instead. This all goes around until Mick Foley makes a #1 contender's match and Dana Brooke slaps the shit out of Charlotte. So I guess the turn is tonight. And the #1 contender's match is now a show-opening triple threat.

The match is solid, although the first half is that classic "someone spends three minutes 'recovering' outside the ring while the other two fight" style of Triple Threat. Sasha wins by stacking up Bayley after breaking up Bayley's pin on Dana. Post-match, Dana's rebellion is short-lived.

STOP PUTTING THE SHINING STARS ON MY TEEVEE, RAW. They almost sell R-Truth a time-share for some reason before resume their thing with Enzo and Cass from last week. In more interviews, Kevin Owens is confident and Chris Jericho continues down his delightful road to complete fucking insanity.

New Improved Bo Dallas is still rhyming and still squashing Local Talent. This is followed by The Highlight Reel with Sami Zayn replacing Kevin Owens, much to Jerich's chagrin. They argue over the merits of a Kevin Owens friendship. Zayn calls Jericho "Kevin Owens' bitch", and Jericho responds with a punch and a Codebreaker. So I guess we know what these two are doing at Clash of Champions.

Cesaro-Sheamus V is up next. Cesaro is down 3-1, having won his first match in the series at a house show in London. We get some shitcam footage of a fairly dull submission reversal into a pin. Sheamus winning three straight makes the outcome of at a minimum the next two matches a foregone conclusion, and these matches are dull enough without the finishes being set in stone too. Shockingly, like the last two and a half matches, this one's about Cesaro's "injured" back. Cesaro wins with a rollup and a foot on the ropes. Cesaro needs to win the next two matches decisively.

Nia Jax' first real match is against Alicia Fox, and Fox fares even worse than Jax' previous opponents, getting speared into the timekeeper's area, leading to a match stoppage.

The New Day come out and shit all over Gallows' and Anderson' Old Day segment from last week, which is the best thing ever to come out of that segment. "They literally took your time and threw it into a dumpster fire." Thank you, Xavier Woods. That's so apt I will forgive the misuse of "literally".Gallows and Anderson are displeased, of course. It appears as if my long-standing message that GALLOWS AND ANDERSON AREN'T FUNNY has finally gotten through to WWE management.

In classic recent WWE tag team booking, this leads to yet another match between the teams that will be fighting for the title at Clash of Champions. After two weeks of The New Day getting the upper hand, the new, serious Clerb pins Xavier Woods with the Magic Killer after a perfectly fine match.

Jinder Mahal has a new, ethnically-insensitive heel gimmick. His entrance music is nice - Indian-tinged hip hop - but he's now "The Man Who Comes In Peace", says "Namaste" and "Shanti" a lot, and has a shitty short-arm neckbreaker as a finisher he uses to put away poor, long-suffering Jack Swagger. Then there's a backstage bit about Swagger's RAw contract ending soon, so something's going on there that I cannot give a shit and a half about.

Enzo and Epico have a singles match to further this time-waster of a mini-feud. Even Enzo can't quite muster up the enthusiasm for a good pre-match promo, which is a bad sign. Epico wins after MOAR SHENANIGANS, whee.

And finally, Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens. This is watchable almost entirely due to Owens' running trash talking, mostly shitting on Reigns for his whole "The Guy" catchphrase. Seth Rollins interferes, beating up Kevin Owens and giving Reigns a DQ win, which apparently means he's out of the match for some reason, but Foley restarts the match and yells at Rollins, and somehow the beat up Owens is standing while Reigns is acting wounded. The match keeps going and doesn't get any better. I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that we now know where Rusev is. The bad news is that he shows up for like three seconds to cost Reigns the match, presumably setting up a US Title match with Reigns at Clash. At least he's not in the UC title match, but the whole thing is kind of dumb.

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