The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 3/2/15: Give Viagra Jokes A Chance

Pre-show notes:

– It looks like I’ll be headed to WrestleMania 31 this year and its surrounding activities, so if you’re planning to be there as well, let’s high-five and do a thing. I’ll know more about where I’m actually being dragged around to in the coming weeks, so worst case scenario we’ll find each other at WrestleCon and laugh about how much we paid for photos with the Disco Inferno.

With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Shares, likes, comments and other social media things are appreciated.

Please click through for the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for March 2, 2015.

Best: Seth Rollins, Best Of The Best

The theme of this week’s column is praising the small victories.

Usually Raw’s opening segment is a 25-minute, slowly-spoken dialogue about how everybody feels about everything, capped off with the announcement of a match they could’ve announced in 30 seconds with a graphic. Guys just stand in the ring to be seen, say things to hear the sounds of their own voices and come and go via musical cue. It’s the safest, most throwaway moment of every show. You could skip the first half hour of Raw every week and miss nothing. What you did miss you’d see five or six times in MOMENTS AGO video packages throughout the night.

This week’s open didn’t make any grand strides towards solving those problems, but it felt a little fresher than usual. Seth Rollins has gotten a lot more comfortable on the microphone it seems, and while yeah, he still drones on and on and on about nothing most of the time, at least now he’s doing it with flair. He sounds less like a guy reading promos and more like a human being. It’s like at some point he figured out the big illusion of acting: if your audience is going to believe you’re a real person, you’ve got to believe it. “Seth Rollins” should in some ways be an extension of the man performing him, and you can make that happen by allowing those natural idiosyncrasies to sneak in. Rollins can be in there saying he can eat more than Mark Henry and if it comes from a real place of “I’m on top of my game” boastfulness, I’ll believe it. I believed Seth Rollins tonight. I wonder how much of that has to do with him working with Jon Stewart? You’d be surprised how much doing and learning about comedy can help you in every other facet of performance.

Of course, if you need to look believable it’s nice to have Roman Reigns around. He’s a beautiful mannequin you can bounce your humanity off of. Dude was transformed into a wooden icon by an evil sorcerer 1,000 years ago. Why do you think he’s always telling fairy tales?

In all seriousness, Roman wasn’t that bad either. I’d rather see the Shield guys beef with each other than the same old guys we’ve seen for decades, even if it veers into wacky main-event territory and the matches end via prop cinder blocks and ghost lanterns. Keeping Roman and Seth near each other is the best move WWE can make right now; it gives Roman someone comfortable and highly skilled to work with, but also reminds us of all the times Roman was 1/3 of the most wonderful thing in wrestling.

Supplemental Best for Seth’s “I FORGOT HOW HARD HE HITS” comments backstage, which made Roman look really something something.

Best: The Intercontinental Championship As The New Hardcore Title

This is surprising me as I’m typing it out, but I’m okay with the weird game of hot potato the WWE mid-card’s playing with the Intercontinental Championship. Like, it’s not going to make the belt more prestigious by treating it like Chuck Taylor’s 24/7 hardcore title, but it’s SOMETHING. The previous Intercontinental Championship story (for the past several years) has been “wear this belt to the ring before you lose matches.” That’s it. By giving it goofy momentum with people stealing it and retrieving it and threatening each other and superkicks out of nowhere, you’ve at least given it a hook.

R-Truth has always been secretly spectacular when you give him a microphone and don’t ask him to rap the one song he’s been rapping since 2008, so having him discuss spider awareness before sneaking up to the ring to steal the belt like he’s in a Tom & Jerry cartoon was great. Also great: Luke Harper as a magically occurring white guy who scares people because they’ve seen ‘The Walking Dead’ and think having a beard and not bathing is what zombies do.

Worst: Nobody Pay Attention To The Actual Match Happening

The problem, of course, is that the MATCHES aren’t getting any better. Dean Ambrose vs. Wade Barrett should be a thing to get excited about, you know? Instead, it’s so unimportant you can focus on Luke Harper literally standing still behind the announce table for half a minute and not miss anything. The finish, as always, is the IC Champion being distracted by nothing and losing.

The idea of a big smark-pleasing ladder match at WrestleMania featuring Ambrose, Barrett, Harper, Daniel Bryan and Dolph Ziggler (and Truth) is great on paper, but the reality is that WWE has no f*cking idea what to do with a secondary champion, so the end game is just one of those guys being drained of their power and slotted into this never-ending middle-of-the-road death slot. Daniel Bryan as Intercontinental Champion would be AMAZING. But do you really want to see him losing clean to every challenger to build pay-per-view feuds?

Worst: The Joke Is That Miz’s Dick Is Worthless

So many questions. Here are a few of them.

1. How do commercials work? Can a guy just waltz in and take the place of the commercial’s lead actor and say whatever he wants, and the commercial people are like, “well, we only had two minutes of film in the camera, we’ve got to edit this to make it work?” Were they just SUPER LUCKY that his taunting could also mean dick stuff?

2. Would Miz just show up and be in a commercial and not know what it was for, even if he was just doing it to mock Sandow? What on earth did he think he was filming? Did he think the commercial was for the Making Fun Of Damien Sandow Foundation? At some point wouldn’t he approach a producer or a cameraman or whatever and say, “so hey what’s this for, shampoo?” Also, don’t they have to get him to sign a bunch of shit to use him? Does Sandow just go around forging signatures?

3. Why would all these wrestlers come to the screening of Miz’s new commercial?

4. Why are there so many of them, and why are they packed shoulder-to-shoulder in a room to watch a commercial?

5. Is THIS how commercials work? What button did Sandow hit on the remote that made the commercial play, and why was there a numerical countdown before he’d hit anything? Does the TV just anticipate when you’re gonna play stuff?

6. Is “Niagara” really the best Viagra parody name they could come up with? Did they even TRY a second joke?

7. Why’s everybody laughing at Miz for being in a Viagra commercial, anyway? What are they, five years old? He wasn’t even IN the Viagra commercial, he had a bunch of unrelated footage edited in like he was Homer Simpson talking about Sweet Cans. I get that these are jokes for the stupidest people in the world, but really? Do we think the actors in the Viagra commercials go home all sad like, “man, I wish my dick worked.” Would they have laughed at Sandow for the same commercial? He was supposed to be in the sad dick parts too. I get a real “Peter Brady being cast as Benedict Arnold” vibe from this. It didn’t make sense for dumb middle schoolers in the 70s to think Peter was a traitor to America because he was forced to play one in a school play, either.

8. This segment could’ve been saved in one of two ways:

8a) The Miz furiously shame masturbating and everybody slowly walking away
8b) Everyone laughing, and Darren Young yelling I WOULDN’T F*CK HIM a little too loud as the laughter dies

Just terrible. I haven’t seen a masturbation joke this bad on Raw since the last time Hulk Hogan showed up and paused for applause.

Worst: The Announce Team

They’re always the worst, but there were two moments that stuck out:

– Michael Cole continuing his “correct people even though I have no idea what I’m talking about” gimmick by explaining the difference between “arachnophobia” and “anacrophobia.” The problem is that “anacrophobia” isn’t a thing, it’s acrophobia. Like “acrobat.” Heights, acrobat, get it? “HEY KING YOU KNOW WHO ELSE WAS ANACROPHOBIC?? FRODO!!! IT’S WHY HE COULDN’T FLY THE EAGLES TO MOUNT KILIMAN-JAIR-O!”

– At the end of Bray Wyatt’s promo, Bray sets a coffin on fire. JBL wonders aloud, “I wonder if the Undertaker’s in there?” Yes, JBL, Bray’s challenging the Undertaker for a match at WrestleMania by murdering him during the week and burning him to death in a coffin on Raw.

Worst: Gals!

Okay, three moments.

Cesaro, Tyson Kidd and Natalya take on The Usos and Naomi in a mixed six-person tag team match*. When Cole explains the rules, he says “the men wrestle the men, the gals wrestle the gals.” “Gals?” Who the shit says “gals?” Are we wrestling in a turn of the century saloon? The men wrestle the men and THE DAMES STICK TO THE DAMES, SEE?

The actual match continues my streak of watching Uso matches and then immediately forgetting them. I can’t remember anything they did. My brain turns on when Naomi tags in, which allows me to remember the goofy-ass finish: Natalya does an up-and-over and hurts her ankle again, causing her to tag out. She gets tagged back in and is all WHAT, HOW COULD YOU DO THAT, MY ANKLE even though yo, you hurt your ankle last week, and if your ankle isn’t good enough to wrestle on maybe you shouldn’t have wrestled? Naomi rolls her up and gets the win, because a distracted Diva could be pinned by a stiff breeze and an errant tumbleweed. Just awful.

As a reminder, just because you’re doing Cesaro and Tyson Kidd vs. The Usos in a tag titles match doesn’t mean they have to exclusively wrestle each other over and over again to build it. They can wrestle other teams. We’ll remember they went on an ill-fated dinner date, trust me.

*A supplemental Best to the Usos, though, for reading the column and realizing an entrance meant to intimidate your opponents is pointless if you always enter first.

Best: Stephanie McMahon, Professional John Cena Wrangler

Sometimes the Bests and Worsts in these columns can be muddled and facetious, so I want to clarify that when I give Stephanie McMahon a Best for being a boss (and a baws) and shutting down John Cena’s fussy temper tantrum I am giving her the Best Possible Best.

Here’s the thing: John Cena is used to getting what he wants. He’s popular with children because he’s the Ultimate Child. Why do you think he’s always dressed like that? He’s the perfect adult version of an upset, raging toddler. He’s able to hold his breath longer and stomp his feet louder than any child could and get what he wants, every time. He can’t be punished. He can’t be grounded. He says I WANT THIS and if you tell him no, he calls you names and threatens you. You have to give in. He’ll “never give up” because he doesn’t (or can’t) have an adult’s perspective. He’s Veruca Salt in the body of a 37-year old body builder.

Think about his motivations. He says he wants something and his boss tells him no, so he calls her a bitch. She still tells him no, and he’s so mad that his rage bubbles over and he violently attacks the next person he sees. He’s mad because he’s not getting what he wants for the first time in 15 years. When people are calling him “old,” they don’t mean he’s an old man … they mean he’s getting older, which if you’ve ever watched an episode of ‘Rugrats’ is the worst thing that can happen to a little kid. You’re not daddy’s little princes any more. It’s time to learn how to make your bed and wipe your own ass.

Stephanie and Triple H aren’t bad guys because they’re evil bosses like Vince was, they’re PARENTS. Parents are the ultimate bad guys now. They make this decisions about what’s best for everyone that seem selfish and withholding. They seem mean, then say they aren’t. We’re seeing the story from the child’s perspective, with the Special Precious Baby (Cena) suddenly losing his parents’ attention because of new additions to the family. Why do you think Cena’s always ranting about how NXT guys aren’t gonna show up and take his spot? He’s worried that when the new baby comes, his parents won’t love him anymore.

Stephanie McMahon as the angry mom who loves her son but knows he’s being a little brat is the best. She’s keeping it together in front of all these people, but when they get home so help her God she’s going to light his ass up. And wait until his FATHER gets home.

The more I type it, the more it makes sense. Triple H used to be the John Cena character. He was raised as a pageant child, then rebelled when he met some cool friends. He raged against all the “grown up” characters on the show, pointed to his dick a bunch, spray painted stuff. Made jokes about how “cock” meant both chicken and penis. He then “grew up,” cut his hair and became the adult. Now he’s got these kids of his own and these rose-colored memories of how good he was when he was their age, and how everybody loved and praised him for being such a good boy.

I think I just figured out WWE’s entire theme. Holy shit.

Best: Curtis Axel’s Been In WWE Since 2007 And This Is The First Time He’s Ever Been Over

Speaking of new babies, look at this face:

Joe Hennig has been in WWE since 2007. He’s been a kid in Mr. Perfect’s shadow in developmental. He’s been given the name “Michael McGillicutty.” He’s been put on a condescending wrestling show and asked to improv promos off the top of his head and said stupid shit about breastfeeding and swimming pools. He’s been stuck in tag teams with David Otunga. He got paired with Paul Heyman and immediately slapped to the ground by Triple H. He’s always been portrayed as a loser. A nobody. Ted DiBiase Jr. with a different famous last name, except it’s one he can’t use. He’s turned into a total joke who couldn’t even make it to the ring for the Royal Rumble, then bragged about not being eliminated. They dressed him like Hulk Hogan. It’s all a joke.

The crowd chanted “Axel Mania” and got behind him last night. It’s not any more important to him than Fandango’ing was for Fandango. The chants are ironic, I guess, but it doesn’t matter. Look at his face. For the first time in his entire wrestling career, the son of Mr. Perfect got to stand in the middle of a WWE arena and hear people chanting his name. It makes my heart swell up, I don’t know how to explain it.

If it never happens for him again, he got it once, and that’s more than most people ever get.

Best: Cranky, Self-Serving Heel John Cena, Or
Worst: The Crowd Reacting To ‘John Cena’ And Not Anything John Cena’s Doing

Axel does a bunch of Hulk Hogan taunts until YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW John Cena gets mad and wrecks him. It’s the kind of match Cena should be having with a guy like Axel at this point in their careers, and I love Cena as this sour mid-carder who still assumes he’s the best and can back it up, but nobody seems to want him anymore.

I’m sad that the crowd doesn’t always go along with the stories Cena’s trying to tell. They’re cheering and doing the “let’s go Cena” thing independent of what he’s doing in the ring. They don’t care what John Cena does, they care that John Cena. It’s that theory that people who go to WWE live events don’t want to see matches or stories, they want to hear entrance themes, see wrestlers in person and see finishing moves. It’s like watching people play video games on YouTube. You don’t want the experience, you want the idea of the experience. You want to vaguely share a community with strangers.

Of course, the crowd’s the crowd. They’ve been taught to react a certain way. When you push the “pick a side” thing and turn everybody into stans or haters, you don’t allow growth. If a person you hate gets better but you’ve chosen to hate them, growing to like them makes you “wrong.” If a person you love fails, pointing out that failure means you’ve betrayed your fandom. It’s left or right, and falling somewhere in the center means you haven’t committed.

Worst: We’re On The Road To WrestleMania (19)!

Hey, remember Triple H vs. Booker T at WrestleMania 19? It’s back, in business meeting form!

If we’re continuing the “Triple H is the disgruntled, aging dad” idea, him holding 20-year old grudges against his competitor’s star employee is pretty funny. This feud is so weird. It gets great when Sting’s around, the settles into these 20 minute pools of self-congratulatory stalling when he’s gone. I guess there’s only so much you can do with “a baseball-playing drum major mime from 1997 showed up and he’s f*cking up my business for some reason.”

Poor Booker, though. He’s never going to get his heat back, is he? He is to Triple H as Jim Ross is to Vince McMahon.

Best: Alundra Blayze

I’m very happy to see Madusa will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Every member of the Dangerous Alliance deserves a spot in the hall. Rick Rude should already be in there, especially if we’re pretending like bad real-world stuff never happened. Can we sneak in the Midnight Express one year? There needs to be an entire wing devoted to Bobby Eaton’s punches. Wait, hell, put PAUL E. DANGEROUSLY in there before anybody. Who cares if he’s still active?

Anyway, yeah, Madusa. If you aren’t familiar with her work as Alundra Blayze, start with this column about her 1994 match with Bull Nakano and branch out from there. She’s a soldier for both sides in the war to legitimize women’s wrestling. She’d put on these dangerous clinics with joshi’s greatest villains, and then she’d wrestle garbage valet vs. valet matches against Colonel Rob Parker. She’d be a silent valet in a sparkly ballgown, then she’d be in a bikini contest, then she’d get caught in a Scorpion Crosslock and have her spine bent at a 90 degree angle in the middle. She’s one of those people who represents not only “women’s wrestling,” but every aspect of it, for better or worse.

I wrote a little about the Belt Incident in the Best and Worst of Nitro report. I don’t think a video package is ever going to explain it the way it needs to be explained. In retconned WWE history, Madusa dropped the belt in the garbage, ignited the Monday Night Wars and chilled Vince on the idea of women’s wrestling. He got his feelings hurt about what happened and decreed that women could only be managers and valets, and things didn’t pick back up again until Trish Stratus was Rosie the Riveter or whatever. There’s so much more to it than that. You have to consider that Madusa was an actor on a TV show, and that Eric Bischoff’s the guy who orchestrated the title trashing. You also have to think about how this wasn’t the first black mark on WWF women’s wrestling, and how they’d routinely vacate the title or simply forget about it for years at a time. Not to mention the fact that WWF struck the first blow in the “bring the other company’s title onto our TV” game with Ric Flair and the Big Gold, but then you have to explore the hows and whys of that. The truth in these situations is that wrestling’s often a petty, f*cked-up business that takes advantage of the people who love it, and that at some point you’ve got to grow the f*ck up, step the f*ck back and say “hey, sorry, let’s try this again.”

I’m glad they’re trying Madusa again. And I hope Colonel Parker inducts her.

Best: Pepe On Raw!

My favorite thing about Alundra Blayze’s Hall of Fame induction video is that it got a lot of awesome people on WWE TV in 2015. Bull Nakano! Luna Vachon! Sherri Martel!

Also, Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichaels’ dog:

Mongo’s dog dressed like a bandito! If you’re a regular reader of the Nitro column (and you should be), you’ll know that an ex-football star’s cosplaying chihuahua is my favorite thing about pro wrestling in the 90s. Forget ECW. Forget the Attitude Era. Give me a confused puppy dressed like Santa Claus.

Best: Jon Stewart For Permanent General Manager

Who knew that bringing on a celebrity who is likable, good at public speaking and a shoot fan of the show could result in something great?

I can’t say enough about how awesome Jon Stewart was last night. The feud with Seth Rollins could be a puff crossover thing that helps nobody and desperately flails at converting a mainstream audience to your niche-ass fake fighting show, but it wasn’t. It advanced the story. It evoked history and remembered it correctly. I feel like I’m going to type the entire thing in italics. How many people remember that Dean Ambrose had the Money in the Bank match won until Kane showed up, pulled him off the ladder and tombstoned him, allowing Seth to climb up and grab the briefcase? I’m not sure I remembered that and I write 10,000 words about the show every week. But JON BY GOD STEWART remembers, and he’s not afraid to bring it up to prove that Seth Rollins hasn’t truly “earned” any of this. That’s AWESOME.

I wish Stewart would stick around. I think WWE could benefit by casting actual actors and comedians in the NPC roles, and not asking wrestlers to fill them all. Dario Cueto on Lucha Underground is a great example of how well that can work. The guy’s an actor, but when he’s Dario Cueto he’s 100% Dario Cueto. There’s no falseness to his performance. You don’t have to worry about him getting himself over or burying anybody or any weird wrestling etiquette. He’s there to do a job, and he does it brilliantly. Having a general manager who is a trained performer and not an athlete, and not in constant danger of f*cking up a promo or getting physically involved in wrestling matches could be a much needed new take on the most tired of WWE tropes.

Randy Orton’s character motivations still don’t make a lot of sense — if he’s against The Authority and beating them up every other week, why’s he helping them win matches? If he’s helping them win matches, why is he also helping them lose fights? What’s he getting out of this? — but I’ll allow it for the novelty of seeing Jon Stewart kick somebody in the balls. I swear, if you told me in 2006 that the taller guy from Do It For Her on Wrestling Society X would be in a major cross-promotional WrestleMania feud with the host of ‘The Daily Show’ I’d probably kick you in the dick myself.

Best: Seriously, Jon Stewart

My favorite part of Stewart’s interaction with the Raw creeps is that he seems like such a regular person. He never stops being the Jon Stewart character. He shows up and speaks confidently about what he knows — Seth Rollins broke up the Shield and is a bum forever — but cowers when a physical confrontation starts. I know that feeling. You want to explain to these irrational people what they’re doing wrong, but they won’t hear it, because in their world problems are solved by threats and punching. When Orton’s music interrupts and he’s got a chance, he kicks Rollins between the legs and bails. No extreme terror, no theatrics, just a boot to the junk and a quick escape.

Backstage, he’s not suddenly confident again. He realizes he’s in way over his head and is standing around in a large, unprotected hallway where wrestlers rush up and attack interviewees like 90% of the time, so he politely excuses himself. It’s so good. I wish more celebrity Raw interactions were celebrities actually interacting, and not “pretending to be rasslers” for a laugh. Stewart should be in Orton’s corer at WrestleMania, but he shouldn’t get in and try to Snoop Dogg clothesline anybody.

A supplemental Best for Renee’s hair, because yo.

Worst: WE’RE ALL OLD PALS

There is nothing I hate more in pro wrestling than the idea that every wrestler who lives past 50 is suddenly friends with every other wrestler. Old age doesn’t make you a gentle sweetheart who looks back on everything you’ve done fondly. There is no goddamn reason why Arn Anderson should be sitting here talking about how he’s gone up and down the road with Sting and how much he respects him. You don’t spend 15 years jumping a dude from behind and luring him onto your team just to turn on him and WAR GAMESING HIM just to be like “oh yeah he’s great.” Especially not Arn, who is supposed to be the King of Kayfabe.

It’s far less offensive than Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan being pals onscreen, or Flair and Dusty Rhodes, or The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Still though, I just want ONE of these legends to be the same person they were when we loved or hated them.

Best: Small Progress Is Still Progress

So, tonight’s when we Hashtag Give Divas A Chance.

The results weren’t spectacular, but they were … something. You have to ask for small victories at this point. The match wasn’t especially long, but it felt like a regular match. They did wrestling moves instead of just taunting each other and going straight to the finish. That’s something. They got a match hype graphic and they both got entrances. The match started and they went to commercial as soon as possible. The idea is to treat the Divas like you treat everybody else on Raw, right? Well then shit, this is about as good as it gets.

I think it’s a good start, though. You can’t just go from 0 to 100 right away. You have to condition a crowd to expect progressively better and better stuff from the Divas, and eventually you’ll be in the right place. You don’t want to zap their sexuality and treat them like Everybody Else, because pro wrestlers aren’t really supposed to be “everybody else.” Especially not WWE stars. That’s the issue with Daniel Bryan. They’ve got to be SUPER. Tall, broad, muscular, busty, tan, whatever. Unrealistic hair. Hairless bodies. They’re fictionalized versions of people from the bottom up. I get frustrated when the women get over-sexualized sometimes, but “make the people watching attracted to the wrestlers” is part of it. That’s entertainment. It’s not an excuse or necessarily the way it should be, but it’s appealing to the broader strokes of humanity.

The key, I think, is to just keep moving forward. Give girls watching someone to live through vicariously, even if they’re problematic or gross or whatever. Let a little girl go YEAH NIKKI BELLA the same way I might go YEAH BROCK LESNAR when the massive, unrealistic, impossible example of masculinity rips John Cena a new one. Celebrate it without degrading it, you know? If Brock’s ring entrance was him spreading his legs and jostling around his bulge before he walked down the ramp it’d f*ck you up, right?

Best: AJ’s Back And It’s Fine As Long As They Don’t Start Calling Them Frenemies
Worst: Whoops They’re Frenemies Already

Anyway, enough of my musings on human sexuality. Let’s talk about AJ Lee!

She’s back, because #GiveDivasAChance was like the Warning Beacons of Gondor for her. If you want to Give Divas A Chance at WrestleMania, giving the Bellas a tag match against AJ and Paige is a pretty solid way to do it. WWE will want to add “lumberjills” around the ring or whatever to get Rosa Mendes a WrestleMania payday, but f*ck that. Give the women who’ve been obviously busting their asses to get this spot the spot. You shouldn’t put Los Matadores around the ring for Reigns/Lesnar just to get them extra money, so don’t toss Eva Marie at ringside in a negligee. Give them a match. Let them wrestle it. If it’s 8-10, that’s fine. If the Divas Championship isn’t involved, whatever. If you’re gonna change the game, change the game. Don’t be afraid to cut some of the flotsam and jetsam that keeps people from taking it seriously.

And never say the word “frenemy” again. Any version of it.

(And don’t let Michael Cole read that Lord of the Rings reference.)

Best: Flame Emoji Flame Emoji Flame Emoji

Good lord, Paul Heyman.

I often write about how I think Paul Heyman’s the best promo man in wrestling history, and this is why. For a while now he’s been stuck as “the guy who says Brock Lesnar’s name funny,” because there’s not a lot you can say or do when your one wrestler’s AWOL for 9 out of 10 shows. Heyman usually gets trotted out to say things and it’s fine, but it’s not memorable. He put Roman Reigns over like a motherf*cker on the snowed-out Raw, then sorta took it back with his bad “YOU’RE BETTER THAN HULK HOGAN AND BRET HART AND STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN AND EVERYBODY” thing a few weeks later.

The problem is the lack of passion. Heyman as a character is often asked to be a dispassionate, wormy lawyer type, but he’s Paul Heyman. He’s the proprietor of Extreme. His shoot middle initial and last name are E and Dangerously. That’s not the correct usage of shoot BUT WORK WITH ME HERE. He’s the guy who’d show up in a leather jacket and a baseball cap to get pissed off about wrestling not being what wrestling should be in an era of guys in business suits worrying about ratings wars. He’s the match that repeatedly lit the ECW fire, and forgetting that is the worst thing you can do.

Letting him stand in the ring with a series of broken microphones to piss him off and some loudmouth fans to try to break his confrontation turned him Super Saiyan, and I can’t thank happenstance enough for it. Heyman managed to get over the Reigns/Lesnar story without ever sounding like he was selling out — the problem with his NOBODY COULD EVER BEAT YOU ROMAN thing — and there was fire in his belly. Paul Heyman should get pissed off more often. He should scream until his hands are shaking and lava’s pouring out of his mouth, because that’s what he does, dammit, and he does it better than anyone.

Maybe Madusa getting into the Hall of Fame before him is what did it. I hope he inducts her, actually, and that he blasts her in the face with a giant cellphone before her speech starts.

Best: Please Be Careful With His Fragile Baby Neck

Luke Harper vs. Daniel Bryan was short, but it was brutal. Every time Bryan gets dropped on his head now I fear for the worst, and it’s adding a real, palpable sense of danger to his matches. In a way, the neck injury’s helped him become more sympathetic. Before, the guy could beat Evolution by himself. He’d line up The Shield in the corners and just run around dropkicking them to death. Now, Luke Harper hits a half nelson suplex on him and the last year of imagining A World Without Daniel Bryan flashes before my eyes. The injury turned me into a mark again in the best kind of way.

I also really like the simple storytelling of Harper having the advantage for almost the entire match because of his size and strength, but losing because he thought it’d be a good idea to lock a submission onto the Submission Wrestling Guy. He Border City Stretches Bryan until Bryan can wiggle around and turn it into a Yes Lock, and that’s all she wrote. Good, simple, effective storytelling. Bryan’s the best at that.

Begrudging Best: All Right, Let’s Get Excited About This Schmozz Ladder Match

Like I said before, I’m going to go into this ladder match with high hopes. It’s full of guys I love fighting over a belt I love in theory, and it could (and should) be the best part of the show. Bad News Barrett as the Stannis Baratheon of the Intercontinental Championship makes me happy, I have to admit.

And while I’m thinking about it, I guess that makes Ziggler House Targaryen, because of the hair and his old championship lineage. He had a couple of World Title runs stolen from him due to injury, so that’s close enough. Bryan’s the Starks, because who in Game of Thrones knows more about neck injuries than the Starks? Dean Ambrose is House Bolton and Luke Harper’s the Wildlings. This all makes way too much sense.

Worst: 6 Matches In 3 Hours, 3 End In Distractions And 2 In Distraction Roll-Ups

Just wanted to point that out. What was there was mostly good, and for once the backstage and in-ring talking segments were pretty solid (The Miz’s suggested and Triple H’s actual masturbatory stuff aside), but the finishes are still whack as f*ck. Keeping that trend going, the main event is pretty good until Roman Reigns loses via SLIGHT TRIPPING and a surprise rollup that asks him to lie there on his shoulders with his feet over his head for like 10 seconds while the referee gets into position. A rollup only works if it’s this instantaneous flash. WWE rollups are so damn slow and endless.

Best: THE JUGGERNAUT

That said, the post-match stuff was GREAT. Roman Reigns going full OOOOOWAHHHHH and wrecking the entire Authority by himself worked for once, because it felt so emphatic. He didn’t just walk around punching guys until they scattered, he took them OUT. The spear on Rollins coming off the ropes was particularly great, as was him clearing the top rope like Bobby Goddamn Lashley and crashing into everybody. I hope the Usos watched that backstage and were like, “whoa, how’d he go over the top rope without clipping it with his entire lower body??” Dude should hold a seminar.

The ROMAN LOOKED REALLY STRONG joke is there, but at this point he has to. He has to look like a special kind of strong nobody else is allowed to be, because if we’ve had Brock Lesnar kill our most overpowered characters for a year — WrestleMania Undertaker and Champion John Cena — the guy who finally takes him out has to be THE MAN. THE BIG DOG. THE JUGGERDOG. He’s gotta be able to clear the top rope by five feet and punch the damn arena floor so hard it makes 10,000 people fall down.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Night

Heisandow

Vince finally granting Alundra Blayze the highest honor that can be bestowed on a WWE Diva: The announce team saying they are sexually attracted to you.

LBCS

Wade Barrett should consider tossing his title in the garbage

Purjanger

HHH: Jon Stewart cuts a live promo surprisingly well.
Reigns: Anybody could talk good if they had The Rock as their cousin.
Stephanie: That’s you, Roman.

SHough610

Vince got Jon Stewart when Kevin Dunn informed him Johnny Carson has been dead for ten years.

Downbound

Jamie Noble

Senior Cruiserweight Correspondent

Art Salmons

Look HHH, you already singlehandedly defeated WCW, who unconditionally surrendered their federation when you drove a tank at them. Isn’t that enough?

Paul Heyman’s Faux-nytail

HHH: I WAITED UNTIL MARCH TO FIRE YOU BOOKER. JUST KIDDING YOU’RE NOT FIRED.

#BlackHistoryMonth

LUNI_TUNZ

John Cena: “If this match starts, you will not walk out of this ring… you’ll roll out under the ropes, and then briskly walk to the back, at a time to be determined later.”

TheGunslinger

Ambrose: Cena, I got an idea on how you can get Rusev to give you a rematch at WM. First, get some zip ties. Then, get a clipboard…

Coltsman8989

Bad News Barrett is basically William H. Macy’s character from Boogie Nights at this point.

×