Thursday, March 28, 2024
EditorialAnalyzing One Of WWE's Worst Episodes of RAW Ever

Analyzing One Of WWE’s Worst Episodes of RAW Ever

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Vince McMahon said last night that this edition of RAW is something we’d never forget. In a sense, he was right. But for the wrong reasons.

Usually, I do not review individual episodes of Monday Night RAW, but I felt like this one deserved special attention? Why? Because it was, quite frankly, one of the worst episodes of RAW I’ve ever seen. I NEEDED to write an article on it.

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking in that WWE is routinely bad, and sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between when RAW is just bad and when it is inexplicably horrible.

Last night’s edition fell into a special category of bad for me because never before had it appeared to be blatantly evident that WWE is committing self-suicide. I also thought it would be interesting to point out the core issues that have attributed to WWE’s rapidly declining ratings. Let’s take it from the top.


More of the Same S%@#

The first indication that RAW is struggling mightily is that Vince McMahon opens the show. At this point, Vince is an old man who rambles incoherently and has his head shoved too far down his rear end to see what is wrong with his creation. However, he still sees himself as a big presence that can give RAW a jolt in viewership. When the situation is right, that can be the case. However, his presence does not fix the core problem.

Basically, Roman comes to RAW because he says he can and he is above what management has to say. Vince McMahon gets mad at him for a little while, and Roman just kind of mocks him. Then Daniel Bryan comes out to demand a rematch for the WWE Championship. Then Kofi says, “come at me bro!” Then Drew McIntyre says “WWE is too soft and Roman sucks.” From all of this, Vince deems himself to be a genius and declares a new “Wild Card” rule that will allow three superstars from one brand to crossover on the other brand each week. While they would quickly break this rule later in the night, I personally didn’t mind this.

One must understand that whenever WWE does the brand split, they entire into a cycle in which eventually superstars start appearing on opposing brands to the point where they just decide to re-unify the brands once again. I mean think about it. On Smackdown, a RAW tag team challenged for the Smackdown Tag Team Titles, and AJ Styles, who is competing for RAW’s top world title, gets a shot at Smackdown’s world title, and he didn’t even ask for it. The brands are already unified in a sense, but it is not official.

That is not the problem. The problem is that there were approximately 20 minutes wasted with nothing said. It is just a never-ending promo-palooza where superstars speak for the sake of speaking. No plot advancement, no character development and no endgame to all of this. This is merely filler in the form of promos. This is one of WWE’s major problems. They add too much content that serves no purpose.

So what does Vince do out of all of this? Well, Vince and WWE said not too long ago there will be no more automatic rematches for the sake of giving us fresh matchups. But that is quickly disregarded as we got not one, but two WrestleMania rematches for free on the same night.

Now as if enough people did not already come out to say nothing, AJ Styles comes out to a commercial break. He comes out, tells Vince he doesn’t know what he’s doing, Seth interrupts him to recap last week’s closing segment, and what does Vince do? Well, first he does the predictable next step in the typical face vs. face storyline trope. They put two competitors in a tag team match so we can wonder if two people who are supposed to be fighting each other for RAW’s top title can get along.

We have seen this story so many times that one could probably predict the next sequence of events, being that one of them will end up accidentally hitting the other, walking out, and costing them the match. Surprisingly, that is what happens. The biggest problem with these face/face storylines is because not only are the sequence of events often predictable, but the tag matches they are placed in holds no consequence. There are no stakes.

If Seth and AJ lose, so what? Do they lose that imaginary sense of “momentum”? This would have been more interesting if there was a stipulation that if either man betrayed the other, they forfeit the match. But no, it’s just a tag match. Who cares? Technically, AJ or Seth could have just blindsided the other to get an advantage. And worst of all, that match is a 20-minute snoozefest against the team of Bobby Lashley and……UGH…Baron Corbin.

So if you were keeping track, we spent 25 minutes with an old man getting interrupted to build up to a 20-minute tag team match that ended with the Universal Champion getting pinned by a man who dresses like an Olive Garden host. If you can look past all that, RAW was terrific to start!

Sami Zayn Is Literal Garbage

Sami Zayn is out once again to tell us all how terrible we are for daring to have an opinion on the content we watch each week. These promos from Sami are fine because he’s doing it well, but my concern was whether or not there was going to be a payoff for all of this. Otherwise, it makes no sense as to why Sami couldn’t have been doing this while he was injured, because he doesn’t seem to be wrestling much these days. Then, Braun Strowman comes out for seemingly no real reason, stares Sami down, and dumps him into a garbage truck. Amusing, right?

Who looks better out of all of this? Strowman has not been relevant for seemingly a year, and Sami is in a no better place than he was before he got hurt. Again, more pointless fodder that doesn’t make either guy look good coming out of it.


The Meandering Middle

These days, RAW wouldn’t be itself without a meandering middle portion, and it is there in spades. First, we have the Lucha House Party going up against three jobbers not important enough to have their names displayed. LHP has been here for Vince knows how long, and it’s looking like they’d be better served on WWE Main Event. There’s nothing to them, and they’re not exciting. If you’re going to be on RAW, you should have a purpose. So what was the purpose of this? Is LHP being built up for a tag title shot? It doesn’t seem likely. So why this?

Then, we have more 50/50 booking as Ricochet defeats Robert Roode in a rematch from last week. This match at least serves a purpose in that last week, Roode (inexplicably) defeated a Money In The Bank competitor, so naturally, it would make sense to put Ricochet’s spot up for grabs. Problem is when you already have given away a finish for the same two competitors the week before, you know the opposite will happen the next week. Plus, WWE has watered down Ricochet unbelievably. The difference between him and his NXT version is essentially night and day. Since being added to the main roster, they added cartoony sound effects to his theme song, and watered him down his true abilities to a great degree. Now you may see why I hope Velveteen Dream doesn’t get called up any time soon.

We also got the RAW Tag Team Champions looking like a joke, getting effectively squashed by The Viking Whatever We’re Calling Them This Weekers. You have to think at this point that Ryder and Hawkins were given the titles out of pure pity for how relatively lousy both of their careers had been at that point. So if you’re keeping count, yes, the RAW Tag Team Champions and the Universal Champion has been pinned on the same night.

Also, Samoa Joe tells Rey Mysterio’s son, Dominick, that he will enjoy defeating Rey at Money In The Bank. You’d think to put some heat behind this lifeless feud, they’d have Joe at least physically provocate or attack Dominick. Or maybe even have a segment with him lying on the floor unconscious with Joe standing on top if you think it’s too traumatic. Instead, just talk. Again, nothing for me to work with here.

I won’t even bother elaborating much on the Wyatt segment and the filler of No Way Jose, and Lars Sullivan (who becomes the 4th Smackdown guy on RAW) attacking a conga line. Scary. All of these were merely par for the course, but there is one thing I’d like to highlight. That would be the abomination of what I saw with the Revival.

Remember when The Usos came to RAW, and they were backstage with The Revival, and we imagined about the great rivalry we could have if WWE just got out the way and let them do what they do? We have segments of The Revival naked in the showers and rubbing their crotch over “Ucey Hot”?

WWE is not exactly making it subtle that they want to bury The Revival, but these segments aren’t even funny. It’s just disturbing and pretty childish that this is what they had in store for two of the top tag teams employed by WWE. It’s pathetic and quite nauseating. When I first saw it, never before have I been at a loss for words. If WWE is trying to make an example out of The Revival to show what happens when you reportedly turn down contract extensions or tease signing with other promotions (I’m not even sure if they did), this is what happens? This is right up there with Cesaro’s yodeling. Everyone involved in this travesty should be ashamed of themselves.

There’s also Becky’s tiff with Lacey Evans continuing with more brawling after Lacey quickly dispatches with another jobber. This was fine to me. Lacey got to showcase more of her skills, and Becky gets a little bit of retribution on her own. It was just painful to see how useless Naomi, Natalya and Dana Brooke are here. Goodness.


The Rematches

Finally, we have our series of rematches, the first of which being Roman Reigns and Drew McIntyre. This match was about as by-the-numbers as it gets, as it is no different from their WrestleMania match in terms of quality. It is 15 minutes long, and it is perfectly acceptable. In other words, it can get boring. And all of this is to build up to what? An Elias and Shane McMahon run-in. Then, The Miz comes out, presumably to save Roman, but he’s actually just out there to settle his own personal beef, and Elias gets to beat up Roman anyway. I’m sure this makes six Smackdown stars ending up on RAW, double of what the original Wild Card rule entailed.

Drew McIntyre has been a huge disappointment on television, as he never seems to get definitive wins these days despite being built like a Greek God. He consistently falls short in big moments and can never seemingly get to enforce his will. I really didn’t think a loss would hurt Roman here. But all of this was just to build to two matches in one segment. It’s fine, but a lot of it is bland and dull.

Finally, we have our main event, which features Kofi Kingston defending the WWE Championship against Daniel Bryan. That’s right, Smackdown’s world title is being defended in the main event of RAW, probably as a desperate attempt to salvage the plummeting ratings.

Kofi and Daniel can do no wrong, and it is a rock solid main event, but their WrestleMania variation of this match is leaps and bounds better. It seems like this was just put here to effectively end their feud. It did seem kind of lazy to give away a WrestleMania rematch for free, however. If they wanted these two to go at it again, I do think that it should have been saved for another future PPV. This was the best part of the show by far, but this came way to freaking late as the train already crashed on this one. This match was the equivalent of trying to put a band-aid on internal bleeding.


Conclusion:

Perhaps you have seen worse editions (and there probably is), and maybe I’m being a mere prisoner of the moment of how bad the show was, but from my viewing perspective, RAW was one of the most poorly thought out and pitifully executed shows in recent memory. If it wasn’t for a decent main event, I’d dare arguably call it one of the 5 worst editions ever. Why? A combination of monotonous, lazy promo interruption segments, a chunk of the show not advancing anything, and Vince McMahon both figuratively and literally displaying how out of touch he is with reality.

This may be a random rant, and perhaps I can be portrayed as an angry Internet fan who can never be satisfied. Kofi, Seth, and Becky are champions after all. So what should I be mad about, right? All I expect is a show that at least ATTEMPTS to either make sense or be entertaining and the effort was simply not present. Perhaps my expectations are too high.

What did you think of RAW? Am I unjustified in my critique? Much ado about nothing?

 

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