Did Raw Suck This Week?

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining me for the inaugural edition of Did Raw Suck This Week. I got settled in and flipped over to USA a little early today, so since I have nothing better to do we will start with my running thoughts during the last five minutes of NCIS.

There’s an old guy making a boat for some reason. He’s mad at another old guy for some reason. I imagine this would be easier to follow if I watched the show. I guess he’s mad about the other guy using his coffee mug? Is this a show about sailors? Secret agent sailors? Sounds awesome. Now he’s turned on by a dead chick, fucking ew. Necrophiliac secret agent sailors? Cable television is really pushing the envelope. OH DAMN! HE SHOT HIM IN THE THROAT! And he’s still alive? The fuck is this shit?

We begin Raw with a recap of the Authority leaving. You saw it last week, it was boring then too. Daniel Bryan coming out was a fun touch, but now I’m starting to review last week’s Raw. We flash forward to modern day where… we start with the laptop. This is not a good sign. I’d like to take a moment here and just acknowledge that, like most of you, I absolutely despise the anonymous Raw GM. I would rather have Johnny Ace back than hear that obnoxious e-mail noise one more time. Now that that’s out of the way… the laptop drones on about nothing for a minute until they get Cena’s music cued up. I never thought I would say this, but thank god Cena interrupted this segment. The savior walks down to the ring and proceeds to remind us of what we just saw in the recap video, as if we were Alzheimer’s patients. The GM then interrupts the one true lord and master… who was interrupting the GM. (Author’s note: I will not make and inception joke, I will not make an inception joke…) Cena ignores the beeping laptop GM and shuts the computer! They’re finally turning Cena face!

It looks like Cena’s going to talk some more, but he is interrupted by Seth Rollins and the New Stooges (patent pending). Is anyone going to get to finish a thought tonight? Rollins and Cena go back and forth on the mic, and this really isn’t doing it for me. I like Seth Rollins, but his mic work is super generic. We get a glance of serious Cena, who I love, but too quickly he goes back to talking in goofy voices and making jokes. He tells Seth Rollins to ask him nicely to reinstate the Authority. What the fuck is this, Oogieloves? This doesn’t make me hate Seth, it makes me feel sorry for him, and it sure as hell doesn’t make me want to see these two fight. The anonymous GM pops up again to book Cena and Rollins in a match at TLC, giving them the weakest, most rushed setup for a match in recent memory. They had to put Cena’s #1 contendership on the line just to make it halfway interesting. Cena beats up Rollins, Noble, and Mercury for cheap pops before Kane comes out to chokeslam him. Ryback comes out to attack Kane, which brings out Rowan, which brings out Big Show yadda yadda yadda. Eventually Ziggler comes out, and gets jumped immediately by Luke Harper. I’m sure we’re all dying to see them in another match. Cena gets a bit of an upperhand, but the numbers game is too much. The New Stooges lift him onto Rollins’s shoulders and he powerbombs Christ the redeemer though the table.

I hate these clusterfuck openings. Nothing has time to land. By the time one wrestler hits a move, we’re watching down the entrance ramp to see who else is coming. This segment was confused and ill paced. Seeing Cena put through a table at the end was a cool visual I have now seen a hundred times. They gave me no reason to want to see these men fight. The segment didn’t necessarily suck outright, but it was a snoozer for the first fifteen minutes, and too crazy to let anything have any impact in the last five.

We come back from commercial, and we get a tag team turmoil match. This also seemed rushed. I am sure part of it had to do with having two commercial breaks during the action of the match, but I can’t help but think this time would have been better spent if you gave it to two tag teams to build an interesting story, rather than shoving a bunch of tag teams at once to tell half assed stories. Aside from that the action was good, and it was given more time than a lot of these matches so it didn’t feel as rushed as some of them. Overall I give the match a thumbs up.

Next up we get a promo with the Miz and Damien Mizdow. I’m not sure Mizdow knows what a stunt double does, but I don’t care. The Miz does a very boring job of hitting on the talented Funkadactyl, while Mizdow saves the segment by miming, which has become a theme for their tag team run. Once that segment is over we see a limo pull up. Vince steps out and we get a pop going to commercial.

We come back and we get an interview of sorts with Erik Rowan. Really, he just stands there playing with a rubik’s cube while the interviewer mentions that Rowan has a very high IQ, makes wine, and plays classical guitar. He asks why Rowan is targeting the Big Show and Rowan replies “Because he’s a bully”. The words ham and handed spring to mind. We cut to Big Show walking down the entrance ramp. He says he IS a bully, and cuts his “I’m a heel now” promo. It’s short and sweet, but I just can’t get myself interested in Big Show heel turn number four thousand.

Rowan comes out and the two have a nice short brawl. There’s some decent back and forth, but it ends quickly when Big Show drops the stairs on Rowan for the DQ. This was short and to the point. Despite the “He’s a bully” motivation, it actually made me want to see these two at TLC. Thumbs up.

The next thing we get is an interview with Vince where all he does is plug his appearance on Stone Cold’s podcast. Shouldn’t the chairman of a publicly traded company be more interested about his TV show than an ex-employee’s podcast?

Next we get a recap of the evil Bella twins beating AJ unfairly. Guess what WWE Universe! YOU get to choose who AJ teams with tonight! That is, if you care enough to vote. If not WWE will just fudge the numbers, no biggie. I would probably be more down on this storyline, but compared to the divas storylines I’ve had to sit through for the past couple months, this is gold. Granted, it’s underwritten, but I’ll take underwritten before overwritten any day.

We cut to the ring where Rosa Mendes is… dancing? She is also waiting for Fandango, who is standing at the top of the ramp in clothes that would make Perez Hilton tell him to butch it up a bit. It’s better than the crazy pants, so I’ll take it. Rosa is also a much better partner for him. I mean, she’s basically useless eye candy, but she’s better at it than Summer Rae. Fandango has a match with Jack Swagger, who curiously does not come down when they play his music. I wonder if something happened backstage! Surely enough, the magical titantron in the sky shows us that Jack Swagger is backstage crying over his injured manager, Beardy McRacist. Swagger clearly isn’t showing up, so Fandango demands that they announce his default victory. He poses in the ring as Rosa does a very good job of looking hot for him, which is a small touch, but it goes a long way to getting Fandango over as something more than a goof. Overall I like Fandango’s improvements, but it was a very weird segment.

Rusev is out next, and the announcers are very clear that they have no idea why, which is weird. He works for the company, and he’s been coming out to make speeches like this for the last few months. What’s confusing about that? Lana takes the mic, and makes some excellent points that the compassionate, racially tolerant crowd boos the shit out of her for. They lower a flag that Americans don’t recognize, and this turns them seven different shades of pissed. She recites some weird parody of the national anthem, before Swagger comes rushing out. I’m confused on whether Swagger is mad because Rusev isn’t from America, or because he thinks that Rusev attacked Zeb Colter. It really doesn’t matter, either way they’re brawling. The brawl makes Swagger look good, but this ends up being a well executed resurrection of a feud I didn’t want to see any more of.

Miz and Mizdow are the next to come down to the ring. Mizdow is awesome with his replica belts, and Miz takes a spot on commentary, which is sort of like putting dryer lint on a turd but I’ll delve into that more later. Mizdow has an uninteresting match against Michelangelo or Villano 4 or someone, winning with the figure four. One of the Uso’s comes out and attacks Miz for hitting on his wife earlier. It makes sense, but it seems really delayed. When we come back from commercial we find out Miz and Uso #1 are now going to have a match on Main Event, making this only the second most rushed match set up tonight.

In the ring, Bray Wyatt is sitting under a ladder cutting one of his faux biblical promos. I will admit to being biased and loving Bray Wyatt. His promo would sound ridiculous and stupid out of anyone else’s mouth, but his delivery makes it awesome. Ambrose runs down in the middle of it (gasp) and they brawl. They do a good job, but the fact that this is the third angry brawl I’ve seen tonight sort of waters it down. Ambrose ends it by smashing Bray’s rocking chair, which Bray sells like he just murdered Sister Abigail. Is the rocking chair like Bray’s urn? I like these two, but at this point it just seems like they’re fighting to fight, which would be fine at this stage in their feud if they had been given solid motivation for fighting in the first place.

We get a recap of the opening segment, which is even more clusterfucky in flash back form!

The Bellas come out for their match against AJ and *drumroll*...Naomi! I almost believe the voting was legitimate… almost. AJ makes Nikki tap to the black widow. This match sucked as much as you would usually expect from a divas match, but that disappoints me considering that I have come to expect much more from all four of these wrestlers.

Next we get a segment with Mick Foley dressed as Santa Claus, plugging WWEshop.com. Normally I hate these kind of segments, but it’s Mick playing Santa. How can you hate that?

After that is an interview with Paul Heyman from what looks like somewhere inside Vince McMahon’s wet dream. Heyman does a good job here of revelling in the fact that Brock Lesnar isn’t there. He spins it into a positive thing and does a good job of it. He does a good job of everything else too, because let’s face it, Paul Heyman.

Next is our six man tag main event. Pretty standard back and forth until Ryback lifts Luke Harper for a stalling suplex, which is incredibly impressive. He holds him there for a while which builds a lot of anticipation and makes me want to watch the impact even more and… they cut to commercial. Someone must have told Ryback, because we come back just as he lifts Harper for another one. I’m sure they were hoping they would come back with Harper already in the air and we would all totally believe that Ryback held him up there during the entire break. Each man gets a chance to shine in the second half of the match, with Ziggler and Cena each taking prolonged face beatdowns, and each getting their own hot tag. They do the Oprah sequence (You get a move! YOU get a move! Everybody gets a mooooove!) and Ziggler rolls up Harper for the win.

We have, surprise surprise, another all out brawl at the end, except that the good guys come out on top this time.

So, did it suck? Not really… I mean there was some good action, a couple of long matches, but everything seemed incredibly rushed. Aside from that, nothing really happened. The Miz and Uso #1 began a feud, but other than that is was just WWE going “Hey, now remember these guys are feuding. They’re having matches at TLC too.” None of the feuds were furthered or made more intense. They were just sort of there again.  They did a bad job of selling me on TLC, which was very clearly what they were trying to do with this episode. It wasn’t terrible. I wouldn’t be embarrassed if this was the week my friends chose to check out wrestling, but I wasn’t really excited as a viewer. Honestly, it got me more excited for Stone Cold’s podcast than it did TLC. Whatever gets your 9.99 though I guess. My biggest complaint is honestly the announce team. I have had a problem with it for a while now, and tonight was no exception. King is old and out of touch, JBL seems drunk most of the time, and Michael Cole seems to have stopped caring altogether. They ignore matches to take jabs at each other, and they do a terrible job of enhancing the stories being told.  At the end of the day, I guess I would be nice and give the show a 6/10. That’s my take for this week. Join me next week when I will be reviewing the Slammy awards. I am super excited. Until next time, remember to spread the virus.