Did Raw Suck This Week? 2/16/15

Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to another edition of Did Raw Suck This Week? After last weeks good show, I am fully expecting a steaming pile of shit to be dropped on our collective doorsteps tonight. Of course they may be nice and wait until Fast Lane to drop the dook, but I doubt it. So come with me, won't you? Come with me on a journey through the WWE Universe. Will Big Show disintegrate in the ring? Will Dusty Rhodes be wearing Polka Dots? Can we ever forget we all saw Seth Rollins' penis? These questions and more answered in the newest edition of Did Raw Suck!

Welcome to Raw! And We start with John Cena. Fuck it. I quit. Changing the Channel. Now I'm reviewing... Nash Bridges! That's right, Nash fucking Bridges! Deal with it. Just kidding, I'm still watching Raw... but why? Dr. Thuggy McJeanShorts starts out by hyping the crowd a little. Cena would have made an excellent carnival barker in a past life. Cena says he looks around tonight and he is amazed. Amazed that people would pay to come watch this? Me too. He then throws us to a replay of the Cena/Rusev confrontation from last week.

Cena gets serious and says Rusev may have crushed him before, but it won't happen again. He puts his opponent over, but says he's not unstoppable. He promises to beat Rusev this Sunday at Fast Lane. He's even going to tell us how he's going to do it... by taking the fight to him. John, you're a strategic genius! I would have run away and peed myself, but taking the fight to him is far more likely to get you a win. Good thinking.

Cena says he loves it when we boo or cheer. Don't tell them that, they'll just stop making noise altogether. Cena then basically says he always thought he could win his way, and is never turning heel. Ha ha, suck it internet fans... which is basically every fan at this point. Then came Rusev, telling him he's lost a step. Cena says he's bringing the aggression. I hope it's the ruthless kind. He then reminds us that it's for the United States title, which we had all but forgotten. Rusev kindly waits until Cena is done talking before having the director play his music.

Lana accuses Cena of spitting tired rhetoric, and appealing to stupid Americans. The crowd proves her wrong by chanting USA. You totally got her with that one, guys! She says Cena's cup is half full. I didn't think wrestlers wore cups, but given the likely steroid situation, I'd say she's being generous. She says Cena always comes back after a beating, but this time he won't. Apparently Rusev is going to kill him at Fast Lane. Is Cena Apollo Creed in this story? That would be awesome. Rusev promises to destroy Cena, and all he stands for. This is a good back and forth that does a fantastic job of selling the match. Cena then says fuck words, and attacks the mighty Russian. This time Cena gets the upperhand, but it plays out much like their brawl from last week. Cena screams that every man can be beaten as we go to commercial.

Fun opening segment that is a welcome break from the usual long winded Authority based opening. Both men did a good job of selling their match, and it didn't make me feel exhausted before the show really even started. All in all a very good opening segment.

Back from break and we get a replay of the opening segment, in case we forgot what happened during the commercial break. They then cut to Dean Ambrose doing an odd, newscast style segment, telling us that there will be a contract signing for the IC title, whether Barrett likes it or not. Back to the ring and Luke Harper is already inside. Ambrose comes down, and we have ourselves a match within the first 20 minutes. I'm liking this episode of Raw more and more.

The match is a good brawl, with both man getting to look tough, which is different than looking strong, but just as good if not better in the wrestling world. Ambrose is a wrestler who is amazing at getting his character across physically. In the ring he's not just hitting mechanical moves, he's hitting them the way his character would. Luke Harper pulls his weight pretty well too, and they give them a good length of time to have a solid match. It ends when Ambrose hits Dirty Deeds for the clean win.

The announcers tell us that Dusty Rhodes will be coming to Raw to try and help settle things between Goldust and Stardust. Which means they'll settle it, and then next week it will become unsettled through a forgotten rule. (Kids, if you didn't get that joke, ask your parents. They'll tell you that that was fucking hilarious.) They then run down what our night is going to look like before going to commercial.

Commercial note: Cripsy M&M's are back. Maybe there is a God...

Back from break and Triple H is backstage with Kane. Big Show walks into the shot and bickers with The Big Red HR Rep, Triple H tries to break it up, but they just can't stop fighting. I hear old age makes people more cantankerous. Big Show tries to mock Kane by referencing May 19th, but screws up and says May 13th. Get your shit together Big Show. Trips tells them they better do their jobs tonight, or he's gonna go all crackatoa on their asses. (Another joke your parents will love)

We then get a creepy Bray Wyatt promo where he's twirling a nail in his hands. It's not long, but it's awesome Bray Wyatt shit. We get the creepy cut, and then we're backstage with Gold and Stardust. Dusty walks into the shot. Looks like he's been doing his crossfit. He tells Cody he needs to calm his shit, 'cause he's being super weird, and life is all about family daddy-o. Dusty actually does a good job here, showing he hasn't lost the gift of gab. It seems the Dust brothers have made up, but I've been watching wrestling too long to buy it.

Back from break and New Day is coming down to the ring. Smart, put them BEFORE the phoned in black history month segment. Vince is learning. Next come Stardust and Goldust. The match is fast paced, but it doesn't feel like there's much of a story. People are just robotically hitting moves. It ends when there's almost an accidental collision between the Dust brothers, and Kofi uses the distraction to hit the Trouble in Paradise for the win. After the match Cody tries to pick Goldust up, but he can't stand. He finally gets up and the brothers hug, before Cody hits the cross roads on Goldust. Just as I figured, the crowd is not all that interested. If they had done this leading into last year's Wrestlemania, it would have been much bigger.

Cut to backstage where Byron "Token" Saxton is interviewing Roman Reigns. He tries to cut a long form promo here, and it's not for him. The writing team needs to stick to the action movie style one liners. As a talker, Roman Reigns is just bad. He has very little charisma when he has to string real sentences together. Back to the ring, and out comes Daniel Bryan to watch the Roman Reigns/Kane match. He chants Yes with the fans as we fade to commercial.

Back from break and they show us a confrontation between Cody and his father that happened during the commercial break. Since they're showing the whole thing, couldn't they have just done this after the commercial? Anyway, Cody does a good job of being crazy here, and convincing me that Cody Rhodes is really gone, and Stardust is the guy I'm looking at. Back to the ring, and everyone is still chanting Yes, but the crowd has clearly gotten tired. They then show us Bryan accidentally kicking Roman in the face last week. They do a good job of muting the boos when Roman shoves Bryan. They then show the issue between Kane and Big Show from Smackdown. At this rate, the show is going to be half recaps.

The Roman Reigns/Kane match is actually much better than I expected. It's methodical and slow, but it lets them tell a story and not have every second full of action. Daniel Bryan being on commentary even makes THAT halfway good. The match ends when Roman spears Kane on the outside, and climbs into the ring to win by count out. Does WWE even WANT Roman Reigns to be a face? After the match, Daniel stands on the announce table and leads the crowd in a Yes chant. Roman doesn't like it, so Daniel continues the chant while dancing around the ring. How... bad ass?

Back from break, and we get an interview segment with Daniel backstage with Renee Young, and he says that if Roman can't handle the Yes chants, maybe he's not mentally tough enough to be WWE champion. We then get another incredibly short Bray Wyatt promo, and it's awesome. Cut from there to outside the Divas locker room where the Bellas have stolen Paige's ring gear, so she has to run around in a towel for no reason other than to have Paige run around in a towel and get the thirteen year olds all excited. She steals someone from Adam Rose's party bus, presumably to get her clothes, which look more like a fairy costume. This is fucking stupid. Someone needs to tell the writers that the Divas aren't fifteen. It's okay to give them adult dialogue and storylines, I think they can handle it.

Back from break and we have a match between Paige and Summer Rae. Summer is already in the ring, and Paige comes out, but she's wearing a sparkly pink outfit! HAHAHA, isn't that... pointless and juvenile. Also the costume is a skirt, so I can only assume she stole that woman's underwear too. That's very not hygienic Paige. She's taking the supposed embarrassment in stride, so that's sort of a cool face move. The match is better than I expected from Paige, and light years better than I was expecting from Summer. It ends when Summer taps to the PTO. After the match, the Bella mannequins come out and make fun of her as if they were in middle school. Paige counters by saying that she doesn't need an outfit to make her look good. She then promises to win the diva's title back before her music plays.

Back from break, and it's time for Seth Rollins versus Dolph Ziggler. Beforehand we get a speech from Seth. He says honoring the past is a waste of time when the future is standing in front of you. He cuts a really good promo here, which makes me think WWE may just gloss over his recent public issues. He teases cashing in his money in the bank briefcase, and complains that he should be in the main event at Wrestlemania. Seth has grown by leaps and bounds on the mic.

Dolph rudely starts his entrance in the middle of Seth's promo. Kind of sad when Dolph Ziggler doesn't have the manners Rusev does. He comes out with a microphone and takes some digs at Seth, saying maybe he had a bad Valentine's day. Low blow dude, seriously no need for that. They go back and forth a little bit, with Dolph getting to once again show his mic skill. This might be one of the favorite non wrestling segments in recent weeks. Well done by both men.

The match is as good as you would expect, but they take a slower pace with it, which I appreciate from these guys. It would have been easy to have a super fast ROH style match,but they both showed they can slow down and sell and let character shine through. Every indy guy who thinks doing a bunch of flippy shit will get them a job should watch this match over and over. The match ends when Ziggler hits the zig zag, and the New stooges come down to break up the pin. Ryback and Rowan then come down to beat on team authority. Mercury and Noble get Seth to safe ground, while sacrificing themselves to Ryback and Rowan. Looks like they are not stopping the Seth Rollins push just yet. On a side note, Ziggler needs a haircut. He's looking sort of poodley.

Back from break and Triple H is on his way out to the ring. We get a replay of the entire Sting saga, which has been ridiculously boring and melodramatic so far. The crowd chants "We want Sting" and I chant back "No you don't". Triple H says he ain't afraid of no Sting! In fact he laughs at the very idea. He says all Sting is is parlor tricks, and he is 100% right. Well said Triple H. He cuts a decent promo, but is interrupted by Ric Flair, which gets a huge reaction, both with the crowd and in my house.

Ric says he came out because he respects Triple H, and wants to say he loves him. Ric seems like he's not all there anymore... though that could just be him being crazy Ric. He warns Trips not to take Sting lightly, which would have been good advice twenty years ago. Hunter says he knows who Sting is, and he doesn't need a history lesson. They spend some time putting Sting over, before Triple H says he would have run him out of the WWE. Trips says Sting made this personal, and Flair tells him he needs to relax. This is a very good exchange that puts over both Sting and Triple H. That being said, I am still incredibly not excited for this.

Flair Tells Triple H he better not see him sitting on his ass again like last Monday. This pisses off Hunter so much that he shoves the Nature Boy and starts shouting at him that Sting is going to get his ass kicked. Interesting segment that shows Sting getting to Triple H. This is the best segment they've done so far, so kudos. The announcers plug John Cena's appearance on Parks and Recreation, before giving us a recap of his fight with Rusev. I believe they have officially filled their extra hour with recaps now. Can't say I blame them. Writing three hours of wrestling wasn't working.

Back from break and we're getting Darren Young teamed up with a jobber so meaningless they don't even announce his name before the Ascension comes out. Poor Darren Young. The Ascension beat down on them for a while before Titus O'Neill comes out and cleans house with Darren. Have we seen a reunion of the Primetime Players?! God I hope so. I'm not being sarcastic, I like them. Deal with it. Next we get a segment where Miz is colluding with Wade Barrett to do something sinister to Damien Sandow before the commercial.

Back from break and out comes the Miz with Damien Sandow, who he immediately berates and tells to stay in the background. We get a match with Damien Sandow and Wade Barrett. JBL gets a 50 Shades of Grey joke in, because PG, and Miz stops the match right away to demand that Sandow come buff his shoe, giving Barrett the upper hand. The crowd reaction to all of this definitely tells me they should have pulled the trigger on this feud already. It's fading quick. The match ends when Miz distracts Sandow and Barrett hits the bull hammer for the win.

After the match, Dean Ambrose comes down and attacks Barrett. He zip ties his hands around the ring post, and refuses to let him go until he signs the contract for the IC title match. This is genius. Ambrose grabs Barrett's hand and forces it to sign. Barrett yells that that's not legal... and it's not. That won't hold up in court. We get another short, creepy Bray Wyatt Promo. I much prefer these in one bigger chunk, but they're still good this way.

Another break, and out come the Uso's. I was amazed to discover that the WWE still has a tag team championship. Learn something new every day. The next match is a mixed tag match with the Uso #1 and the talented Funkadactyl versus Tyson Kidd, and Natalya. The match is good, but the announcers spend way too much of it talking about their personal lives. I don't care! Talk about the god damn match! Tyson keeps tagging out like a coward, which is great. Both because it develops his douchey character, but it means we get more of Nattie and Naomi, which I could watch all day. It ends in one of those weird roll up exchanges, but Naomi gets a three count on Nattie. The match is good, but I wish it was longer. After the match, Tyson gets on Nattie's case for losing. I love what they are doing with him.

The announcers plug the Network and Fast Lane, before giving us a replay of the ending to the Reigns/Kane match. We get a shot of Daniel Bryan walking down the hallway before Roman Reigns comes down to the ring, just like Bryan did before HIS match. They're doing a good job of building this feud, I just wish they had the balls to turn one of them full heel. I hate face v. face matches.

Back from break, and it's time for Daniel Bryan versus the Big Show. At one point, JBL compares this to Jack and the beanstalk, if the beanstalk fought back, completely ignoring that there was a giant at the top of the beanstalk that Big Show very easily could have been compared to. The match is a good David v. Goliath match, but as I've said before, Big show is hard to watch. He's very slow, and Daniel Bryan basically has to wrestle himself. During the match, Roman Reigns starts signing autographs, which pisses Daniel Bryan off for some reason. He later starts throwing t-shirts to the crowd, none of which makes much sense. The match ends When Roman Reigns runs in and punches Big Show, because he accidentally speared him earlier.

Daniel Bryan gets pissed and hits Roman with a dropkick. Roman Reigns comes back and gives him his receipt, before tossing him to the outside. They glare at each other for a bit before Bryan gets in the ring and they brawl on the mat. They go to the outside where Roman Reigns eventually gets the upper hand. The refs pull them apart, and they cool off. They shake hands, but then attack each other again. They brawl into the crowd, and back to the ring. They do a good job of making it convincingly chaotic. Eventually they get more refs and manage to separate the wrestlers.

So... did it suck? NO! Holy shit! Two good episodes of Raw in a row! It's a Road to Wrestlemania miracle! Seriously though, I have noticed a trend. The more the Authority stays out of things, and lets Seth Rollins be their poster child, the more I enjoy Raw. When there's 20-30 minutes of Stephanie McMahon being unproductive, I start to get pissed off. This show let the new guys shine, took the focus off the Authority, and put it all on the wrestlers. This was mostly a well booked show, minus a few odd hiccups that I can ignore. The wrestling was plentiful and mostly quite good, while the segments ranged from great to watchable.

MVP: Tough one, but I had to go with Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns here. They took their storyline and in the span of two weeks turned it into a face v. face blood feud. The crowd is definitely into it now, as am I.

Worst in show: The writing team's attitude toward the divas. I'm going to rant about this more on the podcast, but I absolutely hate how the writers write for the Divas. It's like they haven't spoken to a female since they were thirteen. It makes me angry, because the current crop of divas has some real potential, and the upcoming class is incredible.

Alright folks, that's all for now. Make sure to catch the Podcast later, and I'm sorry for not starting my review of the Bible when I said I would. I got no time this weekend, but I will be posting the first installment on Wednesday.