Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: WWE made everyone work a live Christmas Raw just to make some kendo sticks look like candy canes and allow John Cena to feast on the delicious life energies of Elias. This week: another holiday Raw!
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Here’s the Best and Worst of the first Raw of the year, January 1, 2018.
Best: Jason Jordan, Complex Daddy’s Boy
The Jason Jordan situation’s an interesting one. I like what they do with him this week, but it feels like a story that should’ve been instrumental to the character’s development before now, not suddenly happening to him now that he’s on top.
Let me try to back up and explain my thought process. So Kurt Angle opens the show explaining the rules of the women’s Royal Rumble match. It’s got 30 women in it, which makes all the “declaring for the Rumble” stuff even worse than before. There are 21 women on the Raw and Smackdown rosters. If you assume Charlotte and Alexa Bliss aren’t in the match, that’s 19 actually competing. If you factor in a batch of NXT women and a batch of legends and surprises, you just get 30. Do we need a segment on Smackdown where, I don’t know, Tamina is like, “I OFFICIALLY DECLARE MYSELF for the Royal Rumble?”
Anyway, WWE’s really into this opening segment lately where a general manager type makes an announcement, but then someone from an unrelated division (usually the tag) shows up and is like, “FINE SPEECH, but actually OUR THING is important now!” And then they go right into it like there was an actual transition. Cesaro and Sheamus want their Raw Tag Team Championship back, so they smartly interrupt Kurt and shit-talk Jordan so he’ll show up all hopped up on blue chips and give them a rematch. It ends up being one-on-one — Jordan vs. Cesaro — with Seth Rollins having to wander out and McMahonsplain to Jordan about how tag feuds work.
The actual structure of the match and the story they’re telling works, I think. Rollins tells Jordan he needs to chill and stop getting himself into unwinnable situations, and agrees to hang out at ringside and back him up. Near the end of the match, he’s proven right; Sheamus tries to interfere, and Jordan is saved because Rollins is there to intercept it. That causes a distraction of its own, and Jordan’s able to put Cesaro away with the backdrop-into-a-neckbreaker I’m calling DNA Impact until they give it a name themselves. Jordan celebrates like he’s won the lottery, and Rollins has to stand there with his arm in the air side-eying this kid who absolutely did not understand the lesson.
It’s not a perfect story, really, especially since Jordan’s already one-half of the tag champs and has a weird sub-genre of heat that doesn’t get the crowd behind him when he’s playing the athletic underdog like he’s trying to do here. But it works, because even if the timing isn’t perfect, it’s a story constructed around how these characters react and feel to things, and not necessarily What Happened To Them This Week, and Raw — and WWE as a whole — could use more of that. I’m telling you, the major difference between NXT and Raw is that NXT stops every now and then to say “why” and have an answer.
Worst: This Did Not Have To Go 11 Minutes
Match number two on the night is Bray Wyatt vs. Apollo Crews, and there are a few positives:
- Bray Wyatt being a wrestler sometimes who is good enough to win matches and does something besides talk shit, laugh and lose is a good idea
- creative isn’t doing poor Apollo Crews any favors, so at least he got to wrestle a little bit this week, as “being pretty good at wrestling” is all he’s got
- Bray countered a move into Sister Abigail and just did the move, instead of waiting for several seconds and taunting and kissing foreheads when his opponent should be like, moving slightly to escape the hold
- York Foundation Dana Brooke, who is still taking “statistics” via handwritten notes instead of like, a tablet or a small laptop or even her phone
As for the negatives, this got almost eleven minutes, and I don’t think anyone’s clamoring for 11 minutes of Bray Wyatt chinlocks right now. Giving matches time is all about giving them the time they need, not just arbitrarily handing out “stage time” or whatever. If you’ve got a good match that can get across everything you need in 5-7 minutes, don’t make it 10-15, you know? In the same way that if you’ve got something that needs 10-15, don’t give it 5.
After the match, Matt Hardy shows up again to do funny laughing, as the Woken Matt vs. Bray feud is basically this:
Best: The Miz Returns Next Week
oh thank God
Not gonna lie, this should be your Royal Rumble winner. I want him to show back up, win the Rumble, have everyone laughing at him because there’s no way he’s going to beat Brock Lesnar, and then reveal that if John Cena can be a free agent forever so can he, so he’s challenging for the WWE Championship. It’s the title belt he had at WrestleMania 27, and he wants to win it in the main event instead of defending it. That’d make Smackdown feel like shit because all signs have been pointing to Styles vs. Nakamura and everyone wants it, so Miz makes a deal: he’s push his guaranteed title shot against the WWE Champion back to Backlash if Shane agrees to give him Daniel Bryan.
Also in this ridiculous booking fantasy, Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel aren’t totally losers, maybe?
Best: Enzo Amore Is Turning 205 Live Into NXT Redemption
Somewhere in the middle of the show we find out that Enzo Amore is “in the ER with the flu” and won’t be able to defend his Cruiserweight Championship in a match they’ve been advertising for weeks and already had to push back once due to real life issues. He’s actually sick, so the timing is what it is.
Enzo and Nia Jax have apparently moved on from “gentle flirting under the mistletoe” to “emergency contact” status, I guess, so she bails on Raw and Alexa Bliss to bring him chicken soup in a Tupperware. I need an extended universe comic establishing how much chicken noodle soup they have available at Raw, and if Nia like, got someone to run out and buy her a Tupperware or if she brought some from home just in case. That’s not important.
What’s important is that they have to call an audible for Cedric Alexander this week to keep his momentum going, and they do that by (1) putting him in a tag team match against Drew Gulak and Ariya Daivari, and (2) teaming him with goddamn GOLDUST. Was Mustafa Ali also in the ER?
The good news here is that Goldust still rules, obviously, and even though they jettisoned his amazing heel turn and Goldust Classic run into outer space, they should be using him for something if they’re going to keep him around. I’m all for saying nuts to the 205 aspect of 205 live, or keep it a show about a specific cruiserweight division that can expand itself to be about other parts of/characters from WWE TV. If you’re gonna add Nia Jax and Goldust and you’re adding supernatural heavyweights to the tour, just go all-out and make it its own NXT Redemption-style sub-brand.
The highlight of the match for me was Goldust getting to the top rope, and even though all we could see was his butt, his body language said, “I should’ve thought this through before agreeing to Bam Bam moonsault onto a couple of tiny guys ANYWAY OFF I GO!”
Also fun: Drew Gulak reading a letter “from the desk of Enzo Amore.” I love that Enzo has to write out the full “my name is Enzo Amore and I’m a certified G and a bonafide stud” speech at the start of every letter, but like, chooses to handwrite it in instead of having it be part of the stationary header. Just paperclip a business card to it, man.
Worst: Asuka Has Tapped Out The Raw Women’s Champion!
While I wouldn’t go anywhere near calling Asuka vs. Alexa Bliss from Raw a bad match, it didn’t work for me.
Part of it is the crowd, who really wasn’t having much of anything last night. They were hitting the “what” chants a couple of minutes in, which is a bad sign for any crowd, and they were dead for everything that wasn’t the fifth or six Braun Strowman powerslam.
Another part of it is that like Crews vs. Wyatt, this got way too much time. Almost 15 minutes. I just don’t think that amount of time works for these characters, you know? Think about it. Alexa Bliss is the champion because of her cunning. She barely has offense. Nothing she does as a wrestling move convincingly looks like it should hurt Asuka. Alexa could punch her as hard as possible for real in the face and I’m guessing Asuka wouldn’t move. Pro wrestling has a way of leveling that, but Bliss the Character doesn’t really have any big time offense, and what she does isn’t in the league of someone like Ember Moon, who can really throw hands with you if push comes to punch. I like that the match was built around Alexa trying to dodge Asuka and figure out a new approach to taking her down, but that’s certainly not a match that needs 15 minutes, or Asuka taking heat for several minutes in the middle.
The third part of it is that it feels like an excuse to do Asuka vs. Alexa Bliss before the women’s Royal Rumble, so Asuka’s already the champion and therefore not the obvious, obvious pick to win it. Plus it avoids a lot of really hacky Ronda Rousey surprise booking. If you maybe open the show with Alexa getting trucked and losing her title, you’ve got another big-time entry into a match that rewards people for having a strategy. Gives you another possible winner, instead of an obvious one (Asuka) who’d only lose if it involved a really forced-feeling booking decision (like Rousey).
No more champions losing non-title matches in 2018, maybe? Maybe at least until the Royal Rumble? Haha, I love that “don’t do this finish again for few weeks” feels equally impossible to “never do it again.”
Best: Joeman
The best of the advertised matches this week was the Intercontinental Championship match between Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe, because duh, of course it was. These guys are good-to-great every time they step into the ring with one another, and even though they’re already pushing the limits of how many times they can fight in a row before shit stops working, I’m into it. Joe’s intensity forces Roman to be a more realistic in-ring performer, which is kinda sorta crucial to making him identifiable with fans. A hero is only as good as his villains, and right now Roman’s got a great fucking villain.
I thought the match stipulation of “if Roman gets disqualified he loses the Intercontinental Championship” provided some nicer drama than I was expecting. I think I was expecting another non-finish, but having Roman actually work hard to win the match under those stipulations instead of just doing whatever he wants and being rewarded for it was a good call. I wish we could go back in time and jump straight from Shield Roman Reigns to relatively taciturn secondary champion workhorse Roman without all the years self-aggrandizing bullshit between them.
It’s time to move Joe onto something else, though. He can only take so many losses in a row before we stop buying him as a threat. It’s why everyone who does the three months of non-stop wrestling rodeo with Dolph Ziggler comes out the other side looking worse than they came in. Once you’ve seen every conceivable angle a one-on-one match can take, move on.
Best: Of Course WWE Puts The Club Together On WWE TV Three Days Before Wrestle Kingdom
This week’s best decision is finally, finally pairing up Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows with Finn Bálor. The Club have been jokes since they arrived, peaking somewhere around being “ball doctors,” and Finn has been wading in the shallow end of WWE Creative since he won the Universal Championship and got hurt. It’s such an obvious, fantastic lay-up to put these two commodities that aren’t doing anything together in the hopes that now maybe they will. Or, you know, at least they’ll sell you a shit-ton of t-shirts.
Another good decision is having Bálor Club (or whatever they’re gonna call them) trounce the heels. I love Elias and the Miztourage more than most, but if the Biz Cliz is getting together on WWE TV finally, they should work together as a cohesive unit and absolutely nuke anyone on Raw who isn’t wrestling in tactical vests.
Now put the Usos in the group, too. And put some Trapper Keeper pants on TM-61 and tell them to do nothing but superkicks.
Best: Braun Strowman Saying ‘Get These Hands’
Strowman’s in the middle of squashing Rhyno — kinda wish they’d had an actual match, but whatever — when Heath Slater gets on the apron. Instead of running over and knocking him over, Braun goes to the floor, grabs a microphone and, as you’ll see in the video, says the following:
“LOOK YOU GOT TWO OPTIONS, YOU CHEERLEADER, YOU’RE EITHER GONNA STAND ON THE FLOOR AND SHUT YOUR MOUTH OR YOU’RE GONNA GET IN THE RING AND GET THESE HANDS LIKE YOUR PARTNER.”
LOL. Booker’s deadpan, “did he say ‘these hands,'” made it even better. Next week I want Braun Strowman to reveal that he wishes Heath Slater would, because he maintains a very popular Etsy account and Tumblr page and is about to spill some tea on the Raw roster. Or team him up with both Billie Kay and Peyton Royce in the Mixed Match Challenge as a trios team and let them improv for 20 minutes.
Love you, Braun. Glad you didn’t have to talk to Kane very much this week.
Worst: That’s Gotta Stop Being Kane
The main event segment, and God bless Paul Heyman for trying, is a pull-apart brawl between Brock Lesnar and Kane.
There’s not much they can do, I guess. They’ve booked themselves into this hole where Kane’s the point of a pay-per-view main event, but (1) the Universal Champion’s never on the show, (2) the Universal Champion’s not getting beaten by anybody, especially not someone with the current sad everything of Kane, and (3) you can’t put Kane with the other guy in the match, either, because every time you do it kills that guy’s heat a little more. So you’re stuck having Braun show up and powerslam around this hilarious looking steak-faced codger, or you have him lie in wait for Brock Lesnar only to have the crowd not buy the brawl, because come on, and allow Brock to sell Kane’s offense like it looks.
Like this:
So is the story that Kane sucks, and we all know it, and now Brock knows it? I really wish there was a way to acknowledge how unbearably ready Braun Strowman is for the Universal Championship without having to book the match you can not have another conclusive ending for around another guy randomly being there to take the pin.
All in all, though, not a terrible Raw. It’s going to take them a minute to get back on their feet after that disastrous Survivor Series build wrecked everything they were building and the Christmas season made everything feel like standing water. If we move forward with The Club, give Asuka the Women’s Championship before the Rumble, keep the undercard stories telling ANY kind of story instead of standing in place and make this Rumble match the final hurrah for Main Eventer Kane, we’re in a good place.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
SHough610
The only danger Kane presents to Brock Lesnar is if Brock pulls a muscle laughing at Kane.
The Real Birdman
“How I am to supposed to have sex with chicken soup?” – Enzo
If Renee Young doesn’t hit Samoa Joe with a chair and cost Roman the match then wrestling is fake
Ja Gi Kyung-Moon
Gulak & Daivari: We’ll only fight Cedric Alexander if he can find a tag team partner!
Daniel Bryan: *Backstage visiting some friends, stops mid-sentence and runs full bore toward gorilla.*
Harry Longabaugh
Joe’s going to get DQ’d for the emotional scars he’s inflicting on Roman’s sense of self worth.
Don’t know about anyone else, but so far this is MOTY for me.
Baron Von Raschke
Jason Jordan: Belive that!
RAW to Break
Roman Reigns: Does it really sound that bad when I say that, Seth?
PinsAndPlates
You’ll delete two friends. And they’ll delete two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on…
Clay Quartermain
If Jordan really wants the heel heat from these comments, he should act like this is the first time he’s ever won a tag title
MagSeven
Heath Slater has orphans.
That’s it for this week’s show.
sorry for ruining everything, sorry, sorry
Thanks for being here for the first Best and Worst of Raw of the year. Let’s hope it’s a good one. Without any fear.
Share the column on your social media jazz using the handy-dandy social media share buttons, and drop down into our comments to tell us what you thought of the show. Thanks for reading, and here’s to another 364 days of Braun Strowman handing out These Hands.
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