The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 4/25/16: Make My Day

Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: Raw was in England, so not a lot happened. The Miz and Maryse got heat by calling a baby ugly. The finals of the number one contender tag team tournament were decided — spoiler alert, it was two NXT teams — and Sami Zayn lost. And … England?

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for April 25, 2016.

Worst: A Big Announcement At Payback!

A recap:

Stephanie: I run the company!
Vince: Yes, you are doing a great job!
[♫ here comes the money ♫]
Shane: up yours steph I run the company now thanks to CHINESE BLACKMAILS
Vince: gulp
Stephanie: I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU
Vince: I HATE YOU
Shane: well there’s nothing you can do
Vince: What if I said the blackmail wouldn’t work unless you defeated the Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell match at WrestleMania
Shane: it wouldn’t matter because that’s not how blackmail works
Vince: sorry, already said it
Shane: nooooo

[WrestleMania happens]
Shane: baby jab baby jab baby jab
Undertaker: whew this is too much for my old bones, gonna lie down on this table for a while and nap
Shane: [jumps off Hell in a Cell]
Undertaker: [moves slightly]
Shane: [TOTALLY DIES]

[Raw happens]
Shane: bye y’all it was great trying to run the company
Vince: HEY F*CK YOU, STOP TRYING TO STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT BY APOLOGIZING TO ME FOR DEFEATING YOU, YOU RUN THE COMPANY NOW
Shane: what
Everyone Else On Earth: what
Vince: what
Vince: anyway bye [leaves for a month]

[go-home Raw happens]
Shane: well I’ve been running the company for a month now, everything’s great, ratings are terrible and y’all are just sitting on your asses instead of cheering but god damn the bloggers are enjoying my content
Stephanie: I RETURN
Shane: shouldn’t you have been around this entire time
Stephanie: BAD NEWS SHANE, AT PAYBACK VINCE MCMAHON WILL MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT WHO IS RUNNING THE COMPANY
Shane: didn’t he already do that
Stephanie: …
Shane: like isn’t that why I’ve been running the show for a month and you guys vanished
Stephanie: …
Shane: … ?
Stephanie: TUNE IN TO PAYBACK TO FIND OUT
Shane: [continues running Raw]

Worst: The Crowd

I’m never sure whether quite crowds are an indictment of the town we’re in or the show we’re watching, but Monday’s Raw was full of okay-to-good wrestling that could’ve been elevated by anyone in the building giving a sh*t. The only time the crowd seems to come alive all night are during the talking segments, specifically Enzo and Cass and the Ambrose/Jericho confrontation. Otherwise it’s just 12,000 people hand-sitting. Sami Zayn does a moonsault off the security railing and pumps his fist and like 11% of the building is golf clapping.

As a guy who makes a living complaining about Raw, I don’t have a lot of room to talk. But it’s always strange to me when crowds START shows dead. I can understand if you’ve been there for a few hours and the show’s sucked, but when you’re on the verge of (or actually just straight-up) chanting “boring” during the opener, why are you even there? Why didn’t you stay home and watch TV? Did everyone in Hartford buy tickets to see John Cena and Randy Orton?

Best: The Actual Opener

The show opens with about 15 minutes of A.J. Styles vs. Sheamus, and, like I mentioned, it would’ve been a lot better if anyone watching had been into it. At least this match has Sheamus in it, which can explain why nobody wants to watch it. Sheamus is probably the best-ever pro wrestler we will never give a sh*t about. He’s SO GOOD, and some combination of vanilla yogurt and re-run television has made us think of him as actual living white noise.

I like Cole bringing up Sheamus working a similar style to Roman Reigns, and how Styles fighting a taller, more muscular guy who loves to punch and kick you in the face is great prep for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at Payback. I actually wish they’d hit that a little harder, and set it up as a reason for the match happening before it actually happened.

The match ends with a Phenomenal Forearm — just one of them! — to give Styles a clean victory. My wrestling brain is telling me they’ve spent the past however many weeks establishing the Forearm as one of A.J.’s finishes so they can have Reigns counter it with a Superman Punch at Payback. Orton’s at home somewhere writing, “PHENOMENAL FOREARM INTO RKO” on his spiral notebook and drawing hearts around it.

Best: Aiden English Is Singing Again

As a Hulu NXT fanboy, one of my favorite parts of Raw was the return of the DRAMA KING Aiden English. New Day drops a “party like it’s 1999” reference to honor Prince — I wish it had been Jericho, so he could’ve just said “DIAMONDS AND PEARLS, THAT ONE’S FOR YOU PRINCE” — and the Vaudevillains show up to correct it to 1899. Perfect. Also great: the Vaudevillains establish for maybe the first time ever that they aren’t time-traveling old-timey strongmen, they’re just into the values of the time, and are working to bring them back. Instant gimmick validation!

But no, Aiden English sings for the first time in years, and it makes my niche developmental homer heart happy. If you aren’t familiar with English’s old (wonderful, wonderful) gimmick, he would sing on his way to the ring and on his way out after victories, and people would throw roses at him. Here’s an example. Here’s another. The sing-off between him and Colin Cassady is one of the greatest comedy segments in NXT history. Singing Aiden English is on my short list of characters I miss the most, so if we can keep him singing as often as possible you’d be making me a very happy fan.

F*ck it, here’s one more. Long live the dahbble-you dahbble-yooooooou [pregnant pause] eeeeeeeeeee.

Worst: Not The Best Start

I hate to say it, but the Bullet Club debut match against the Usos was pretty terrible. I mean, the wrestling was perfectly cromulent, there’s just not much you can do with unmotivated Usos. It’s like trying to move a big couch down a flight of steps.

Anderson and Gallows pretty much have LACKEYS written across their foreheads, and that’s fine. They’re great hired goons, if that’s what you want them to be. Members of a Club. If you want them to be the “best tag team in the world,” having them slum it with sloth-ass Jimmy and Jey for a quarter-hour isn’t the way to do it. I don’t want to ask WWE to do the same thing they always do, but a squash of someone less notable might’ve been the way to go here. Kill Golden Truth or something. Magically Kill Damien Sandow and Fandango, I don’t know. The Usos only put on their working boots for 33% of marquee pay-per-view matches, so you’re already playing with a low percentage. This was five minutes too long, and I’m not even sure how long it was.

I didn’t hate the post-match stuff as much as everyone else — Roman beat them both up by himself, sure, but he took them on one at a time, and just sent them recovery-fleeing more than anything — but it still didn’t do anyone any favors. Roman’s getting booed for helping out his family (more on that later), and the bad-ass new guys who just won a boring match can’t win a 2-on-1 fight. Not the call I would’ve made.

Worst: Dolph Ziggler

Just when you think we can’t hate Dolph Ziggler anymore, he ruins a Damien Sandow match.

Sandow’s supposed to be wrestling Baron Corbin, who now has red lights instead of white so he’s more Vicky Christina Barcelona than a werewolf. Babyface Dolph Ziggler, who has failed twice at attacking Corbin head-on, jumps him from behind during his entrance. Hope that made you feel like a big man, Dolph. You’re the guy who doesn’t have the guts to tell Titus O’Neil to sit down and shut up during your stand-up.

Sandow should’ve just stayed in the ring through the commercial break and pretended he was still with The Miz.

Best: That WrestleMania Commercial

No matter what you thought of WrestleMania 32, this commercial makes it look, sound and feel like the most important and precious event in WWE history. WWE’s video team really outdoes themselves sometime, and I honestly think the company would be worse off if these special snowflake AV nerds weren’t around to spin sh*t into gold. You guys are the best. The BEST.

RIP Chyna

Then, of course, there’s the tribute to Chyna.

A lot of times on the internet you’ll see people go to the, “you didn’t like this person when they were alive, why are you being nice about them now that they’re dead” talking point. It’s a valid one. With Chyna, especially on this site, we only really got to talk about her when she was f*cking up. We didn’t get D-X Chyna or Intercontinental Champion Chyna or anything from her prime. We got reality show Chyna. We got the one who said and did weird things because she always seemed stuck between a wreck and an apology, someone who was clearly locked in a lifelong battle with demons even bigger and stronger than a wonder of the world. It was mostly, “Chyna’s doing something crazy again, we hope she’s okay.” Then, all of a sudden, she just wasn’t okay. Her story ended. Her story wasn’t supposed to end like that. It was supposed to end with redemption, and with the praise she’s getting in videos like this being heaped on her a little when she could actually stand there and hear it.

I think the response to that talking point is that death has a way of putting things into perspective for people, and cutting through the bullsh*t of life to truly get to the point. Did you live? Did you make a difference? Were you loved? It sounds like a lot, but the trick is that everyone lives. Everyone makes a difference by living. Everyone is loved, even if they don’t know it. Chyna influenced a generation of performers by being the only one of her kind. “Trailblazer” is probably a platitude, but Chyna did things and accomplished things and stepped through places nobody’d stepped through before. That matters, even in this ridiculous, hurtful, destructive, fictional-ass world of f*cked up, broken people. I don’t mean pro wrestling, I mean life. Life is pro wrestling and vice versa, and when we lose it, we notice. We go, “oh.” Stuff like concerning twerking videos and arguments on the radio stop being that big of a deal.

I don’t know. Death never makes sense. Remember that even when you’re at the bottom, when you’re at your worst and you’ve made your most unfortunate mistakes, the memories of the times you soared still linger at the very top.

Best: Suitsaro

If you didn’t love Cesaro hitting Swiss Death on The Miz while wearing a suit, then turning to look at the camera with his sunglasses still on, you might not have a heart. He should just wrestle in the suit. I hope the payoff at Payback is Cesaro going for the swing on Miz, Maryse covering him again to prevent it, and Cesaro just swinging them both at the same time. Give him the IC title in the most dominant possible fashion, then let him keep it and tear down the house against the best opponents available until you’ve grown a brain and decided to give him the WWE Championship.

Worst: Apollo Crews vs. Stardust Isn’t As Good In Real Life As It Was In My Brain

Okay, what’s the deal with Apollo Crews? I don’t want to type this every week.

The guy is great. He’s GREAT. He’s got all the tools. You have to put a guy like that in actual storylines or engage him in actual feuds with other interesting wrestlers to make him a valuable part of your show. It’s like you bought an action figure and displayed it in its original packaging. Why don’t you take that motherf*cker out and play with it?

It’s frustrating to have to keep thinking this. You brought him onto the show for a reason, right? If it’s just to win the same match every week against and endless array of aimless, helpless opponents, at least piece together some kind of story around it. Give him a winning streak or something. Give him a goal that he’s working toward, like earning an Intercontinental Championship match or something. Bring up his failures in NXT and say he’s challenging himself by increasing the difficulty of his opponents to better himself. Say he’s a f*cking astronaut, I don’t care, just give him something other than, “he smiles a lot and is good at doing certain wrestling moves.” We like him. He’s great. Don’t make us tired of him before you’ve taken the second f*cking step.

Also yo, while we’re on the subject, can we do something with Stardust again? He’s the #1 most underrated guy in the entire company. He can do anything you want. Could you, I don’t know, want him to do something?

Worst: 3-Minute Losses To Natalya

Congratulations on beating Paige and getting that Becky Lynch feud going, Evil Emma. Tonight we need you to lose to Nattie in like three minutes so she looks like she can beat someone before she loses to Charlotte again. Sh*t’s like sending Princess Toadstool out to job to Birdo.

Best: Kevin Owens Is Dedicated To Making Sure Sami Zayn Doesn’t Have A Single Second Of Happiness

First of all, shoutout to WWE for making multiple video retrospectives on the Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn rivalry without actually explaining who they were or what they did or what happened during that whole “traveling together” decade. It sounds like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. That’s such a hard friendship and wrestling history to explain without compromising the realities of those former characters, and they’re doing a great job. I love that it didn’t start heating up until Zayn signed with NXT. Second of all, shoutout to so much of this actually acknowledging and using their NXT history. It’s a great shortcut to a feud that is so much bigger than NXT.

Third of all, Sami Zayn vs. Rusev is another match that would’ve been great if the crowd had cared at all. They tried to start a “boring” chant at one point, and I can’t think of anything less boring in my brain than Sami Zayn and Rusev. That’s like the first match I’m playing in a WWE video game. Sure, it’s not a perfect scenario … Sami’s been kind of a loser on the main roster and only wins with a flash rollup, the League of Nations disbanded without anyone mentioning it, Lana’s out there kinda looking like a Streets of Rage character instead of Lana Classic, and on and on. But it’s still very good wrestling featuring brutal kicks to the face and barrier moonsaults, and … I don’t know, I don’t know why more people in the building didn’t enjoy it. That’s why they took the Whale from you!

Of course, the best part is the post-match. Lana tries to go full WCW Woman and throw her shoes at Zayn, which was funny even before he responded by giving her the finger. You’d think I’d be upset at whitemeat babyface-ass Sami Zayn giving a lady the finger, but come on, she threw her shoes at him. Zayn’s brief moment of confidence is immediately erased by an attack from Kevin Owens, because of COURSE it is, and that’s how it should always be. Also of note: Owens did the same thing to Zayn that Ziggler did to Corbin, only Owens was smart enough to let him wrestle and get tired first.

I’m very excited for their match at Payback, especially if it ends in like four minutes via knockout.

Best: Chris Jericho Is The Best, You Stupid Idiot

God, I love pedantic heel Chris Jericho. This old man troll thing he’s doing is the greatest, especially since he appears to have lost his thesaurus and can’t call you anything but “stupid,” “idiot,” or a combination of the two. “Stop being such a stupid idiot, you stupid idiot!” It’s so lame that it’s transcendent. It goes from cool to uncool back around to cool again. Cruel Dad is cracking me the f*ck up, and I want to spend the rest of the week cutting promos like him. “WHY’D YOU CUT ME OFF IN YOUR STUPID CAR, YOU STUPID DRIVING IDIOT??”

Ambrose is great here, too, because Ambrose is amazing outside of the whole “never winning important wrestling matches” and “having terrible offense” thing. He’s so close to being the perfect “It” guy. Deemphasize the gentle diving pushes and recovery lariats — let him only do one a month, or just break it out at the end of pay-per-view matches as a nearfall — give him a few moves that actually connect with impact, and keep him as the overly frank guy who says what we’re thinking instead of the guy who fills logo’d wagons with weapons he never actually uses. You’re SO CLOSE. Bon Jovi hair! Stupid idiot Bon Jovi hair!

+1 to Jericho for knowing the Walls of Jericho will hurt so much more if applied on a table, then getting into an argument about it with the queen of table submissions:

https://twitter.com/RealPaigeWWE/status/724782202584748032

In case you’ve never seen it, Jericho’s not being heel Jericho there, that tag is actually the greatest match in Raw history. It was my favorite WWE match ever until … well, you know.

Best: Alberto Del Rio Hates Roman Reigns

This point might be lost in how much fun it is to boo Roman Reigns for literally anything, including shaking hands with sick children and getting beaten up by three dudes or whatever, but Reigns and Alberto Del Rio are AWESOME together. I wrote about it a little back when they had that fire emoji match at Survivor Series. Roman is great at taking legitimate punishment, and Del Rio is honestly only good when he’s legitimately beating the crap out of someone. It’s a perfect combination. It’s like Del Rio vs. Sheamus if Sheamus wasn’t a mannequin made out of tapioca pudding.

For more on this:

The post-match stuff is interesting as well, even if it telegraphs Payback so hard it hits Samuel Morse with a Magic Killer.

Earlier in the night, Anderson and Gallows show up on the stage to clap for A.J. Styles. Later, backstage, they assure Styles that they aren’t trying to do any weird dirty work for him, they’re just friends, and that their friendship will last forever. In wrestling terms, “our friendship will last forever” means, “I am going to punch you in the back of your head no later than Sunday.” Anderson and Gallows get too violent with the Usos and get R-U-N-N-O-F-T by Roman, which sets up their interference in the main. They use MUSICAL INTERRUPTION, but it’s not very effective. Roman recovers and spears Del Rio for the win.

So Anderson and Gallows jump Roman, and Styles has to run out and stop them. That causes a woozy Reigns (who would’ve done this anyway, even if he’d been perfectly fine) to attack Styles. THAT causes Gallows, Anderson and Styles to all attack Roman, and we end the show with the former Bullet Club dudes looking aligned against Roman and his family.

As booking goes, it’s solid. It’s A to B to C to D, with “D” being “the obvious swerve at Payback.” Sometimes you’ve got to go the obvious route to make a thing work. You have to tell the story you started telling to its completion. What that swerve is, of course, remains to be seen. I’m calling “it looks like it’s gonna be Styles controlling the Club, we’re gonna think it’s secretly Finn Balor because of the marketing, but then SETH ROLLINS,” because that’s the thing I want the most. Evil Styles, Evil Balor, or even Roman trading in the Usos for betting cronies would be okay. I just like that we’re doing stuff, and that little to none of it involves The Authority. Let’s keep that going.

See you on Sunday for Backlash, or whatever!

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Aerial Jesus

That brief moment when any musical note triggers ITS FINN BALOR in your brain

Mr Grift

I hope this angle ends with a vignette where Primo and Epico watch the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight and they just turn to the camera and go, “You know what, never mind. Things are pretty messed up here right now.”

HHH: So we need to rebrand the Bullet Club guys. Thoughts?
Vince: Hell pal, this’ll be easy. What is another word for club?
Kevin Dunn: Gang?
Vince: And what does a bullet do?
Kevin Dunn: They go bang?
Vince: That is it. I give you, THE GANG BANG.
HHH: Did you learn NOTHING from The Submission Sorority?

Beige Lunatics

“GO BACK TO HARVARD!”
-Baron Corbin

TheGunslinger

Jericho: That’s $750 a boot.
Ambrose: About what?

HeyYo!

Vince: I had started Titus’ career. Then one night when we were on stage paying tribute to Daniel Bryan…
Titus: FINISHED IT!!!

HighEnergyForever

HBO hyped it to hell, but it was Lana that finally got me into Vinyl.

AshBlue

I think the secret to a great PPV might be to just skip the whole thing entirely until the production crew come out with a slo-mo recap montage and watch that instead.

Clay Quartermain

Roman leans over and whispers ” its you they’re booing”

seabass44

Costume Maker: Hey congratulations on the first match. What’ll it be?
Gallows: (Pulls out N64 memory card) Load my create-a-wrestler from Wrestlemania 2000.

Thanks, everybody. See you this weekend for additional Raw!