Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: The tournament to crown a new WWE World Heavyweight Champion (Roman Reigns) began, and The Brothers of Destruction returned from their kidnapping and/or vacay to beat up Bray Wyatt for stealing chunks of their supernatural powers. Wrestling has lots of levels. Also on the show, Alberto Del Rio took a nap in the ring for almost 10 minutes and nobody noticed.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for November 16, 2015.
Worst Best: Kane And Undertaker Are Cutting The Best E-Fed Promo Ever
Raw’s been really good for the past few weeks, so I’m stick in that mindset that I should be looking for the good in the stuff I didn’t enjoy, and not complain so much that I end up taking the good stuff for granted. It’s a fine line. You don’t want to justify an hour of flaming garbage because the other two hours were good, but you also don’t want to get so obsessed with taking out the garbage that you forget to stop and smell the roses. The roses that surround the garbage. I don’t know how to write metaphors.
To stay it more simply, I’m feeling very In The Middle this week. I’m Malcolm. I see two 50-year olds in flame jumpers and cowboy dusters standing in Glacier lights, talking about how they’re going to literally drag a cult of swampbillies to Christian Hell, and I watch them do battle with a bunch of mystical druids who’ve been turned into sheep via VOODOO MAGICKS. It’s embarrassing as hell and exactly what I want at the same time. I think about how much I’d enjoy this if I saw it on Lucha Underground. Think about it. Imagine if LU had a fire demon, and his brother was a gunslinging cowboy zombie, and they’d discovered that the villain from Cape Fear had stolen enough of their magic to turn it against them. I’d be SO INTO THAT. Of course, Lucha has created an environment that encourages that kind of bullsh*t and makes it contextually appropriate (and cool, and not ironic) and WWE hasn’t, but … it’s the Brothers of Destruction having their summoned druids turned to animals. What kind of a-hole would I be to try and take that away from some 11-year old who’s losing his mind and DESPERATELY needs to read The Dark Tower?
Let’s put on our El Jefe thinking caps and see where this can go. Bray Wyatt set up a challenge for Kane and the Undertaker at Survivor Series, saying he’ll “choose two” to face them. We’ve been thinking it’s two of the Wyatt Family, right? Undertaker’s career is winding down and so is Kane’s, and we’re creeping up on WrestleMania season. Bray kidnapped them individually and “stole part of their soul,” and has now clearly established that while he hasn’t drained them completely, he’s drained enough to give him control over their bullsh*t supernatural energies. Right? So, what’s the answer? It’s Bray accepting the challenge himself, by himself, and turning Kane against the Undertaker. Kane will be his second, and we build to another Undertaker/Kane thing to give Kane the ridiculous goodbye he deserves. Where else could this be going? Bray choosing Harper and Rowan and being okay taking another loss? That’s probably 100 times more likely, but why spend a month establishing CORRUPTED MAGIC THEFT and never pay it off?
Best: Kevin Owens VS. Neville
Back when Neville was “Adrian” and rising up to take the NXT Championship away from Bo Dallas, he wasn’t my favorite. He’s great, obviously, but he wasn’t my dude. After he won the championship, he spent his entire run building and developing wrinkles in his character, setting up an honorable mean streak to play against Sami Zayn’s wide-eyed naïveté. By the time he lost, he put Sami over as not only a physical but a social and EMOTIONAL hero, and I was like, “wow, Neville is actually the best guy on the show.”
He’s starting to do the same thing in WWE. He showed up as Don’t Call Him Mighty Mouse in a purple Ranger cloak and he’s great, obviously, but he wasn’t my dude. I had to worry about Kevin Owens wrestling Cena, or Sasha Banks navigating the Divas Revolution, or Sami’s shoulder injury or whatever else. He was secondary to Stardust and TV’s Arrow in the only notable thing he’s gotten since being brought up. But every week he shows up on Raw and Smackdown and busts his ass. He rarely misses a move or messes up. He tore it up with King Barrett in round one on last week’s Smackdown, and did the same on Raw in round two against Kevin Owens. He’s in a much bigger pond now, but I’m still like, “wow, Neville is actually one of the best guys on the show.”
What I like about Raw recently is that the in-ring stuff is so good you can have a 10-minute match like Neville vs. Owens and have it not be the best match on the show. If you need to know how valuable this is, go back and read about ANY of the 1996 Raws I’ve been writing up. Giving WWE a narrative — a championship tournament featuring some of the best wrestlers in the company — has allowed these guys to put on great matches that actually matter, because they’re FOR something. There’s a reason for the wrestling. Vince McMahon says he doesn’t do “wrestling for wrestling’s sake,” but that’s almost exclusively what WWE’s been doing. Now there are clear-cut goals, and you can actively care about who’s wrestling who and the outcomes of the fights. It’s so much better. Is there a way to keep the tournament going forever?
Worst: It Is Taking Tyler Breeze Way Too Long To Beat R-Truth
Here’s another example where context becomes important. Tyler Breeze and R-Truth had a perfectly fine little wrestling match with Breeze going over clean. If this had happened on a Raw six months ago, I’d be alternately (1) squeeing over Tyler Breeze, and (2) saying that hey, at least it was wrestling and not 20 minutes of talking. Or a Twisted Tea Party.
So yeah, that’s a soft worst. I’m worried that the comfortably positive stasis Breeze has been in since being brought up is about to explode, and I want him to be okay. He’s beating R-Truth, but anybody can do that. He’s also jumping headfirst into JBL suddenly flipping out about his perceived lack of manliness, which is such dangerous ground it might as well be covered in frag mines. It’s the fragile masculinity equivalent of Bray Wyatt getting “Husky Harris” chants. You don’t even want to have the conversation, you just go NO, NO. NO. NO. Like you’re training a puppy.
Anyway, soft worst. I hope when the title tournament is over we can put some of the losers bracket back into stories. Breeze and Ziggler sorta got compartmentalized, so we’ll have to get back to it. Hey, remember when Jack Swagger showed up to feud with Alberto Del Rio and then vanished again?
Best: Replacing Michael Cole With A Fish Tank
One of my favorite things happening in WWE right now is Dean Ambrose dropping the wacky Lunatic Fringe stuff (for the most part) and just being an affable, weird, straight-up good pro wrestler. The crazy Dean Ambrose stuff should be in the way he speaks, moves and reacts. It should be him getting confrontational with Renee about small package science, or in those ridiculous rope rebound moves. It shouldn’t be him attacking Seth Rollins mannequins with screwdrivers, or losing matches via exploding TVs because he forgot to unplug them. There’s a way to do it that makes him seem enigmatic and fun, and a way that makes him look like an idiot. They’ve been doing the second version for too long.
Ambrose defeated Tyler Breeze in a great wrestling match, and now he’s doing the same with Ziggler, who needs opponents he can wrestle without a bunch of nonsense like the desert needs the f*cking rain. Ziggler has that Cesaro thing where we want to see him wrestle good, long matches, but he’s got a look and attitude that tricks WWE into thinking they should take him OUT of those and put him in romance angles and sh*t-based John Cena stories.
My favorite single moment from Raw (and the tournament so far) happened in this match. In the middle of a big exchange, Ambrose goes for a small package and gets two. They pop up and Ziggler hits a desperation superkick for another close two. BOTH of those were callbacks. Ambrose beat Breeze with a small package in round one, and Ziggler beat Miz with that same kick. A+. Plus plus.
Also, let’s give a little love to Ambrose’s Charlie Kelly-esque declaration of what he’s going to change when he becomes WWE World Heavyweight Champion. More wrestling, less talking! More pyro! REPLACING MICHAEL COLE WITH A FISH TANK. Let’s do all of these things. I want Byron Saxton and JBL arguing with a quiet container of fish for 3 hours.
Best: This Kid Is Really Excited To See The New Day
3 things:
1. That kid in the Ryback shirt at the beginning of the video is the best. That’s basically me whenever I hear Big E’s voice.
2. “When life gives you booty, make booty-ade.” I’m not sure what I love more, the fact that Big E’s grandpappy referred to things as “booty,” or the fact that “booty-ade” is being passed off as something positive. I do not want to drink something from the booty. Booty Sweat was bad enough.
3. “Uce-OWWW!” There’s something beautiful about how The New Day can take content that would kill in front of smaller crowds and turn it into something “obnoxious” for WWE audiences to hate. Watch the people in the background when they’re doing this bit. It’s just people leaning back and rolling their eyes. When they start the New Day Rocks chant, there’s a pissed-off dude with a replica belt on his shoulder who COMES ALIVE to yell “SUCKS.” I can’t imagine walking a mile in that guy’s shoes.
Worst: I Didn’t Realize Ryback Was In This Match Until He Tagged In
New Day references Ryback in their pre-match promo and he’s standing out there the entire time, but I for real though this was a 2-on-2 tag team match for 75% of it. I don’t know if I blacked out or if my brain’s installed an anti-Ryback filter or what, but yeah, I saw him on the apron reaching for the hot tag and was like, “oh.” That’s probably not a good thing to admit when you recap the minutiae of Raw every week. “Whoops, I missed the enormous muscle guy.”
The “TOO MUCH WRESTLING IS HAPPENING” DQ finish bugs me, but at least it made sense this time. Ryback was tired of standing around waiting for a tag and watching his friend get beaten up, got cheap-shotted by Big E and was just like, “f*ck it, I’m killing everybody.” He gives the referee one of those “get the cat off the bed” underarm lifting gestures and gets disqualified, and we move straight into the post-match celebratory beatdown from the Grade-A Moron babyfaces who just lost on purpose.
I hope there’s a way to stretch this into a match at Survivor Series, because I want to see Ryback in tribal facepaint trying to do a Siva Tau without tearing his quads.
Best: Be The Man, Cesaro
It’s fun trying to figure out where this Triple H As Sean O’Haire angle is going. There are a few possibilities.
Option A) Someone listens to him and steps up to be the new Evil Corporate Champion. It’s probably going to be Reigns or Ambrose — probably Ambrose, as the last guy you’d expect to fall in line, asked at last minute — but I’d love the return of Boss Of The World brand Cesaro. I kinda wish he’d just said, “yeah, that’d be GREAT” and wrestled Reigns in full M. Bison cosplay.
Option B) Triple H gets tired of asking people and getting turned down, so he realizes that HE has to be The Man, because he is The Man. He probably ties it back to Ric Flair. H wins the WWE World Heavyweight Championship and “rules the Reality Era with an iron fist” or whatever until Rollins shows back up, gets butthurt about the constant efforts to replace him and finally earns that white gear by being WWE’s Big Hero. This scenario seems more likely than it should, because I assume Triple H’s natural state is “trying to figure out how to pin all these cool new guys.”
Option C) People realize it’s stupid to say you aren’t selling out while wearing WWE-branded gear and merch with your name and personalized logos on them, and everybody joins The Authority. Rollins returns in the summer a post-apocalyptic architectural vigilante in this new world homogenized and ruined by a totalitarian overlord.
Option D) Triple H accidentally ends up on Up Up Down Down and decides Xavier Woods should be The Man.
Best: There’s No Need To Pick Sides If Both Sides Are Great
Oh man, this is such a bad conversation.
Wrestling fandom (and fandom of all kinds, in every avenue of entertainment in 2015) isn’t about deciding things based on what happens on the show and drawing your own conclusions, it’s about being told what to think and picking sides. You either agree with the corporate mandate and are One Thing, or you don’t and you’re Another. It’s conformists vs. non-conformists, who are actually conformists because they’ve conformed with all the other non-conformists. You’re red or blue. Left or right.
The brilliant construction of this match is that it features two icons on polar opposite ends of a spectrum created and maintained by WWE to maximize profits.
One one side you’ve got Roman Reigns, the handsome guy related to The Rock who they decided to give Royal Rumble records and WrestleMania main events before he was ready for them. They just said, “this is the guy,” and expected us to run with it. He wasn’t created organically. He wasn’t demanded by fan support. He just fit the role of “popular superstar” and had his square ass stuffed into a round hole. Any honest assessment of Roman will tell you that he’s put together almost everything he needs to actually BE that popular superstar this year. His singles matches are usually good-to-great, he’s still not The Rock on the microphone but he’s getting better, and he’s stopped wearing those grey contacts that made him look like a poser.
On the other side you’ve got Cesaro, the handsome guy related to nobody in particular that WWE signed a couple of times but never really had plans for, and hasn’t gotten sh*t. He got a United States title run early on because every foreign guy gets that, and he got a short run with the tag titles, which is as low as you can get in WWE while still succeeding. He’s THE GUY. He’s the best wrestler on the show, he’s inhumanly strong, he’s got every interpretation of indie street cred imaginable and he’s more or less manufactured to be a worldwide sensation. He isn’t the guy they picked, though, so they can beat him to death and beat him to death and beat him to death and still count on his fans showing up to support him. It’s the Daniel Bryan model. Oh, you like this guy? Let’s made him a loser. Let’s put him in a loser tag team. Let’s make him yodel. LOOK, HE’S YODELING. Any honest assessment of Cesaro will tell you that while he’s f*cking great, he’s also missing some of those weird intangibles WWE loves … he’s not a guy you put on a poster to draw someone’s attention, he’s not a great promo, he’s always a little too aware of the wrestling he’s doing instead of getting lost in the moment and “telling a story,” whatever. He’s as good as a wrestler can be, but he’s not perfect.
Running them against one another as extremes causes the social reaction WWE craves. I made a Roman Reigns joke on Twitter — in good nature, because I’ve been digging the guy for months — and got multiple responses about how I needed to “empty my diaper.” One guy is QUEEN. His opponent is QUEEN. Both must SLAY QUEEN. The Internet and fans of everything became “stans” as a badge of honor, aimlessly and pointlessly going to war over every little thing to praise their favorites and forgetting that their namesake was so obsessed with a celebrity he stuffed his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk of his car and drove off a bridge.
So what’s the honest assessment of the match?
It was f*cking DOPE.
It was absolutely one of the best Raw matches of the year, and it wasn’t just Cesaro’s doing. Roman held his own, and gave as well as he took. If you want an illustration of how much Roman has improved in 2015, watch the Fastlane match against Bryan and then watch this. Fastlane wasn’t a bad match either, but this is night and day. Cesaro’s exceptional at delivering engaging, exciting offense, and Roman excels at being tough enough to just lean into that sh*t and make it look great. As a guy a little too deep on the “Cesaro” side of the spectrum, I’m sad that he lost — and that we’re marching toward the inevitable Reigns vs. Ambrose climax we expected from the start without any surprises — but if he’s going to lose, he should lose like this.
The end result is that anyone who watched this match with a functioning pair of eyeballs and an operable brain should come away from it respecting the abilities of both men, and know that BOTH of them deserve to be huge stars. There can be 2. There can be 10. We don’t need to stuff ourselves into trunks and plunge into rivers. Let’s get heated and fired up and sh*tty about our wrestling preferences forever, but never forget to take a step back and give credit where credit’s due.
So Which One Of These Jerks Is Turning?
You know what I’d do? The NXT Samoa Joe turn. Everyone expects Reigns to turn on Ambrose or Ambrose to turn on Reigns in the finals, right? I’d skip that entirely. Have Triple H get in Ambrose’s face about being “The Man” and have Ambrose turn him down, because Roman’s his brother. Have Roman get a win in a fair but kinda opportunistic way — take advantage of an injury, maybe, or catch Ambrose with a cheap shot when he’s not looking — and save the turn for the next night on Raw. Give Dean a minute to stew on it. Have him realize that yeah, he’s the guy in the Shield WITHOUT a WWE World Heavyweight Championship run, and he’s sick of being the idiot in the background. Give him a real reason to turn, and not just “I’m a bad guy now because we need bad guys.”
More on that when we get to the Divas contract signing.
Worst: We Don’t Have Time For The Nick Bockwinkel Video, But Here’s The Ascension, So
Let’s also not forget to skip a tribute to one of the greatest wrestlers ever to muddle through the Dudley Boyz’ latest infomercial for Dudley Boyz t-shirts featuring the literal ham sandwiches that are The Ascension.
Best: “Flukes Don’t Happen When You Fight For Your Dreams!”
Worst: Everything Falls Apart
I appreciate an outside-the-box approach, but man, who decided a hot Raw full of great matches should be main-evented by Alberto Del Rio and a Divas Championship contract signing?
Alberto vs. Kalisto was, in a walk, the worst of the night’s tournament matches. Kalisto is great, but Del Rio’s increasingly dead behind the eyes from being stuck in a condescending angle he obviously hates but LOVES getting paid for, and that “Del Rio vs. popular luchador” match idea has never played as well in practice as on paper. Do you remember any really great Del Rio/Rey Mysterio matches, or do you just remember guys being held in armbars for too long after matches? Have any of the Del Rio/Sin Cara matches been memorable for reasons OTHER than Sin Cara hurting himself? Kalisto can bump like a freak and flip around all he wants … if Del Rio can’t remember the counters and sleepwalks through the setups, what’s going to happen?
Basically every Alberto match since his return has been a tiresome exercise in getting his opponents into the corner for his double-stomp. It’s getting brutal. I get that in kayfabe a guy in the Tree of Woe is gonna want to try to pull himself up, and that Del Rio is capitalizing on that, but how many steps do we need to take to get there? It takes him longer to set up that move than it does to wrestle the rest of the match. The last fourth of any Del Rio return match is his opponent cautiously climbing the buckles for a moonsault and staring at his own feet until Del Rio can run up and kick them from behind.
If Roman Reigns wants to be my favorite wrestler, here it is in one move: at Survivor Series, have Del Rio get him into the Tree of Woe. Del Rio goes up for the stomp, and Reigns grabs the bottom rope with both hands while he’s upside down. Unless Del Rio wants to jump off slightly and dropkick backwards, he’s not hitting that move. Stop trying to convince me that every WWE Superstar is gonna go into a match with Del Rio thinking, “it’s probably okay if I hold myself halfway up for 20 seconds.”
A supplemental Worst goes to Berto for accidentally unmasking Kalisto in plain view of the hard cam, then having to sorta punch him in the top of the head until he could get it back on. Kalisto’s been tagging with Sin Cara so long he probably never thought he’d have to WRESTLE him.
Best/Worst: Oh Boy
And finally, this.
Instead of getting outraged, let’s do that “take a step back” thing and look at what was good about the segment, and what wasn’t.
On the good side, the Divas are main-eventing Raw with a promo — that’s progress, I guess — and are trying to give a 4-month old dead story a pulse. The problem with the Divas Revolution is that none of the Divas actually had characters, they just all have Final Fantasy X-2 Dresspheres. “I’m the steampunk one!” “I’m dressed like a sexy baseball player!” “I’m Ric Flair, but a girl!” Their only motivations were unexplainable team allegiances and interpersonal jealousy about EVERYTHING ALWAYS.
Here, we FINALLY get characters with motivations. We tie it back to NXT — FCW too, if we’re being accurate — and say that Paige and Charlotte were in the same group at tryouts. Paige had Charlotte’s back, because they both know what it’s like to grow up in the business and be overshadowed by your family. When Charlotte’s brother died, Paige comforted her … but ever since Paige got brought up and won the Divas Championship from AJ Lee, she’s changed. She’s become bitter and selfish, which happens to you on the main roster. Paige thinks that’s bullsh*t because she’s always just been herself — also accurate, if you consider the evidence — and that Charlotte is a big entitled crybaby. Charlotte drops the bomb that she wouldn’t even BE a wrestler if Reid hadn’t died, because she’s here to fulfill his dreams and do all the stuff he can’t. That’s big. That’s Dewey Cox big. Paige uses HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING by referencing Reid negatively, and it’s SUPER EFFECTIVE. She gets actual heat for it, and Charlotte jumps her and tries to beat her ass. It’s the first instance of a Diva getting actual heel heat for actual heel reasons beyond Twin Magic and distraction rollups in ages, and gives Charlotte a noble character arc and some desperately needed fire.
Now on the bad side, the presentation of this was … not perfect. You can’t just spring these character histories on us out of nowhere, when Charlotte’s spent years now as the cold-blooded “superior athlete” and Paige has been battling against WWE trope to reinvent the company’s perceptions of women’s wrestling. They’re good characters and good stories, but you haven’t done the work. Because of that, it’s hard for us to accept any of it at face value, and we look past it to things like “Charlotte has the weirdest speaking voice” and “why won’t she stop crying.” We whiff too much of the important stuff because you haven’t set it up or earned it. The Charlotte/Paige feud was about Team Jealousy a week ago and Paige turning on them twice, and now it’s about how she’s disrespecting a dead kid? That’s jarring. That’s a tonal shift you can’t just instantly roll with.
To reiterate a point I’ve typed a lot, the “Brandon Stroud” gimmick people like to criticize says that I’m easily offended by everything and have to Mansplain and/or Dismissively White Knight everything mildly offensive from atop my high horse. The point those people miss is that I’m actually super into people being awful and going way too far. I love heels being horrible people. I want them to be racist, sexist, belligerent, offensive and cruel. They’re the bad guys. The problem I have is when they do that and get cheered for it, and never get comeuppance. That’s not to say bad guys can’t be awful and win to build drama and suspense, they just shouldn’t be happily patted on the back for being the worst fictional representations of us. If someone calls a lady a fat bitch and gets their ass kicked, go for it. If someone calls a lady a fat bitch and everyone laughs and says it’s great because she is a fat bitch, that’s … weird? Is that the word? It seems stupider and meaner than it has to be. I want to have enough disconnect to “like” a heel for being good at their job and loving the show without necessarily liking what they do.
Pro wrestling is our best avenue for delivering stories of good versus evil, and my enduring issue with WWE is that they never seem to understand what’s “good” or what’s “evil.” They equate “popular” with good and “complex” with evil. Wrestling not understanding this sometimes is what makes it its most embarrassing, but when it gets it, it really gets it, and it’s the best. Wrestling is, in itself, good and evil. It’s an organic, living thing that can change and grow and move with the times. I have to accept that “the times” doesn’t always vibe with what I like, but I’ve spent my entire life figuring out what I like, so I’m gonna try to yell it in that direction.
As it stands, I’m into this. The segment was intensely bad at times, but the core goals are there: Charlotte’s devoted her life to something beautiful and real, Paige doesn’t mind throwing it back in her face in the meanest way possible, and they’re gonna punch each other about it. It’s not totally where it needs to be yet, but it’s content, and it beats the hell out of “Charlotte is Ric Flair’s daughter” and “some say Paige started the Divas Revolution.” If they build from this and continue breaking some rules, I think it’ll work. If they take it back because it made people mad at a heel, they’re missing the point of wrestling.
Also, Becky is totally turning on Charlotte, isn’t she? It’s all about who has your back.
Best: Top 10-ish Comments Of The Week
xSlobberKnockerx
WWE’s rationale: “Let’s capitalize on the Cesaro craze with a new breakfast cereal, Cesar-O’s. The best tasting, most visually appealing cereal in the aisle. And then suddenly pull/replace it with Roman Reigns’n Bran. It’s just Raisin Bran. Wet Bran. Ooh-wah.”
Mr. Royal Rumble, TheCensoredMSol
25 Years of Undertaker, 0 years of public speaking classes.
Del Rio’s new finisher: The Coup De Blah.
HollywoodLanceCharmstrong
Anyone else enjoying Triple H playing the role of Arthur Slugworth on tonight’s Raw?
Harry Longabaugh
This comment section is like Cesaro: No matter how refreshing, he can’t seem to get to the top.
TechFall
Tune in to Raw and see a fat kid and an old man trade ghost stories
Heisandow
If we’re replacing Cole with a fishtank, make sure it’s got some goldfish in it. That’d improve the announce team’s collective memory.
The Real Birdman
I can’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t have their own personal stamp for a contract signing
jalora
My second child was born by Cesaro Section. It involved the Doctor grabbing my wife by the ankles and spinning her around the room until the baby flew out.
Thanks, everybody. See you this Sunday for Survivor Series!
