Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: WWE Payback 2016 happened, and now everything’s different. Charlotte retained the WWE Women’s Championship. Kalisto retained the United States Championship. The Miz retained the Intercontinental Championship. Roman Reigns retained the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. It was such a crazy night, you guys!
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for May 2, 2016.
Worst: I’m Just Gonna Keep Recapping McMahon Segments Like This If Everyone’s Okay With It
Stephanie: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new era of Monday Night Raw! As a heads up, Raws in the new era open with 25 minutes of McMahons talking amongst themselves
Crowd: [is dead before they’ve found their seats]
Stephanie: hey Shane I hate your guts but I love you
Shane: what did you just say, I was napping
Stephanie: You got any ideas for the night?
Shane: you know what Steph why don’t we hear YOUR ideas for the show
Stephanie: isn’t it great how neither of us has ideas for the show and we’re 10 minutes into the live broadcast
Shane: I’m wearing a college girl’s pajamas!
Stephanie: …
Shane: hey what happened to Triple H, isn’t he supposed to be running the company too, did he die?
Stephanie: who
After about 85 minutes of two bored, passive-aggressive 40-year olds pretty frequently referred to as “children” killing each other (and our enthusiasm) with kindness, his lordship Kevin Owens shows up and is all, “HEY, HERE’S AN IDEA, HOW ABOUT YOU DO A WRESTLING SHOW AND HAVE IT MAKE SENSE.” He demands a rematch for the Intercontinental Championship because he (1) lost it in a 7-person ladder match at WrestleMania and (2) people keep getting in his business, and the McMahons say, “yes, that’s fine, except you have to fight for it again, because REASONS.” No amount of Owens saying THERE IS PRECEDENT AND I’M BEING TREATED DIFFERENTLY FROM OTHERS gets through to them, and suddenly he’s out here fighting Cheesecake Factory Cesaro for a shot at a thing he should already have a shot at. So … Raw!
Best: Uppercut Sign Guy
My favorite part in the opening match happens at the 0:35 mark in the WWE Fan Nation video. A Psycho Crusher knocks Owens to the outside, so Cesaro gets all guns-hands about it and rolls out to sprint around the ring and European Uppercut him into the barricade. It’s f*cking outstanding, and Cesaro continues the momentum into the crowd to celebrate. As he’s heading back, WWE Super Fan slash psychological trick Sign Guy tries to high five him. When he thinks he isn’t going to get it, he switches to a fist bump. Cesaro just kinda swings his arm up and knocks Sign Guy’s hand out of the way, and Sign Guy sells it like a vampire being exposed to sunlight. Sign Guy seems like the type where if you punched him, he’d fall and explode into 100 tiny Sign Guys.
Best: But Yeah, The Match
It’s a Cesaro vs. Kevin Owens opener. You know it’s good.
I love the Bullfrog Splash so much that it makes me mad when people stop it. Owens goes for it like twice before he actually connects with it (from the apron to the floor), and both times I’m actively rooting for Cesaro to fail.
Best: SAMI
The finish to the Cesaro/Miz match at Payback made it look like we were setting up for a fatal fourway thing at Extreme Rules, and Raw reenforces that. Miz gets involved in the finish and ruins things, and that leads to Miz and Owens double-teaming Cesaro. Sami Zayn runs out to make the save, because Zayn and Cesaro are forever bonded by Good Show Respect Matches, and we get a SPECTACULAR moment of Sami holding the Intercontinental Championship and getting an entire arena of people into the idea of Sami Zayn as IC Champion by just standing there. It’s great. He’s got this big smile on his face, and the crowd starts doing “yes” chants until he holds it over his head. We talk a lot about Sami Zayn being the New Daniel Bryan or whatever, and this is one of those moments that makes it make sense. It’s hard to find an extremely unique guy who is the best possible wrestler but also personable enough of a character to read like an “everyman,” and Zayn’s the closest non-Bryan option. He loses a lot, but you know in your heart that one day he’s gonna win. That makes a thousand losses worth suffering through.
What: Fandangold, Et Al
Let’s recap.
Several weeks ago, a pansexual Oscar statue with electricity-induced Tourettes decided that he wanted to be tag team partners with a brain damaged, aging rapper who’s been performing one song for a decade, is openly afraid of heights and spiders and is both controlled by and resistant to an omnipresent, invisible child. Surprisingly, it didn’t work out. R-Truth was mean to Goldust until Goldust gave up trying to be his friend, and then the tables turned. Truth decided he wanted to be partners with Goldust, but Goldust (now hurt by Truth’s terrible attitude) refused. At some point they both realized they wanted to be partners with each other, but couldn’t admit it. That led to them teaming up with an ersatz Canadian Zoolander and a confrontational ballroom dancer who speaks like a Pokémon. It’s the Dolph Ziggler/Lana/Rusev/Summer Rae story, but with costume and prop-based comedy replacing the shower harassment sex.
This week, Goldust faces Tyler Breeze one-on-one, and the match is built around Goldie and Truth trying to distract each other with their partner’s signature taunts. It’s like someone went in and swapped movesets in the video game and played a match to laugh at. Breeze wins, miraculously — it’s his first win since the beginning of January — and now the story goes … somewhere. All I’m asking is one cutaway to Stardust watching from backstage and muttering, “I really dodged a bullet there.”
Actually, two things: can we team up Breeze and Fandango at the end of this and call them the Windjammers?
Best: The Vaude Actual Villains
1. All I can hear when Aiden English speaks is Sam the Eagle from The Muppet Show. Trust me, that’s a compliment. It’s especially fun if you pretend Simon Gotch is Rowlf and imagine them singing this on Raw.
2. The Vaudevillains put Enzo Amore on the (almost permanent) shelf at Payback, so as, you know, villains, they do the right thing here: gloat about it. English says that pro wrestling is a tough business where tough things happen, and Gotch calls Enzo the “realest guy in the emergency room.” A-f*cking-plus. The Vaudevillains are my jam, I don’t care what Hannibal Buress thinks. He didn’t like ‘Subconscious’ either.
3. Also great is Colin Cassady, who (like in NXT) can and should benefit from Enzo’s injury absence. Big Cass is great and has a lot of things you can’t teach (apparently), but Enzo’s personality is huge and sorta overshadows the team sometimes. It’s not about what they’re doing, it’s about what Enzo’s saying, or how he’s saying it. With Enzo set to the side for a moment, we can develop a direct appreciation for all the sh*t Cass is great at, so when Enzo comes back, the team is even easier to love. The NXT injury turned Enzo Amore’s Microphone and the Tall Guy into Enzo and Cass, and now the Payback injury could turn Enzo and Cass into the main roster’s most beloved tag team. I’d be down for that.
(You know, until American Alpha shows up and nerfs everybody again.)
The only thing here I’m not into is the Dudley Boyz cutting babyface promos where they insult the heels and put themselves over as the “baddest tag team on the planet” in that slowly spoken way where you know it’s a “yeah, agree with me” and not a “we’re full of it.” It’s a minor complaint, I just don’t want them to be one of those Big Show and Kane utilitarian tweener acts who just fill whatever role you need in a cycle.
Best: Big Cass Though
There were a lot of multi-person matches on this week’s show. An 8-man tag, a 6-man tag, a battle royal … even the Intercontinental Championship contender match ended up being about four guys. The tag team argument pile turns into an “impromptu” 8-man tag, because Shane and Stephanie McMahon I guess still haven’t shared their ideas for what was supposed to happen on their first Raw. Just once I want a GM to show up in the Raw open and be like, “So hey, I don’t have anything planned for tonight, so if you’re in the back and you want to yell at somebody about something, can you come down to the ring and do that now? We need to see if it’s going somewhere.”
The New Day and Cass end up teaming against the Dudleys and the Vaudevillains, and the entire affair is built around making Colin Cassady look like a 7-foot tall stack of money. Watch that video clip, it’s all about a fired-up Cass throwing Stinger Splashes, booting people off the apron into the waiting suplexes of Big E, and avoiding a 3-D to Gunn Stinger the sh*t out of D-Von. It’s great. I hope they keep a focus on him and make him look like the Next Big Thing, because if Enzo ends up too concussed to wrestle again, a turned-up, spotlit Colin Cassady with the world’s best New Jersey mouthpiece is going to be something else.
Worst: Enough With The Puerto Rico
Are you even wrestlers anymore? I keep expecting to see Glacier doing karate in the background.
Best: Emma Michinoku
The crowd didn’t seem to know what to make of Emma vs. Becky Lynch, but I might’ve super loved it.
Emma’s the dopest right now. Her character work is great because she’s allowed to show personality without it being “pink snake sock” personality, and her wrestling (which has always been good) has gotten even better. She hits harder, she has better ring awareness and she’s great at telling a story. As great as Asuka is against anyone, the reason those Asuka/Emma matches have been so good is because Emma’s fun and occasionally brutal enough to hang with her.
Also, yo, Emma just won a match on Raw with a f*cking Michinoku Driver. Or, you know, a “modified Blue Thunder Bomb” if you’re Michael Cole. I never get tired of him calling Dragonscrew Legwhips “leg lace takedowns.” It’s the “back leg front kick” of the 2010s. Becky Lynch is the Sami Zayn of the women’s division in pretty much every definition of that, even in hair color, and if she’s gotta keep losing, let’s hope it’s to propel Emma into some high profile Sasha Banks matches so we don’t have to wait all summer for The Boss to have something to do.
Worst/Best: WE CARE A LOT ABOUT A PLANT
The worst here is for Stephanie McMahon. I’ve made this point a thousand times, but Stephanie is and continues to be the most uneven, unfocused performer on the show. She’s occasionally the very best ever at her job. She’s a great promo, she’s powerful, she’s got a great presence. She’s wrestling royalty, and she deserves to be. Occasionally, her appearances just seem to be about how an NPC General Manager character is the coolest and smartest and best character, and how everyone you’re actually trying to get crowd reactions for or make money employing are just secondary, unimportant jerks. Stephanie is either so good or so bad at being a heel — possibly both, simultaneously — that she goes way too far with it without ever pulling back and giving her opponent something to come back with. That’s important in live performance, whether it’s music, live comedy, whatever … you can’t just be everything and do everything and say everything and leave the other person on stage standing there with their figurative dick in their hand. If Stephanie goes on a talk show and gets insulted, and her response is just, “you aren’t allowed to have a talk show anymore, bye,” what does that do? It doesn’t hurt her at all. It doesn’t do anything for the guy that insulted her but make him look ineffective and stupid for doing so. It doesn’t make the crowd happy, and it doesn’t even make them mad or sad … it’s like watching a performance evaluation at work. It’s like watching an inevitability. Why would anyone try to be cool and dynamic and stand up for themselves if the end goal is always, “we won, sorry, do what we say?” It’s the horrible afterthought of the Evil GM. When you’ve seen the Authority removed from power and given it back, removed from power and given it back, over and over, why do you give a f*ck about ANYTHING they do or anyone trying to keep that cycle going? Even the comeuppance of her getting speared at WrestleMania is an afterthought. She doesn’t care. It didn’t change anything, and she’s fine with it. So … ?
Anyway, the best here is Dean Ambrose making us care about the life of a potted plant.
If you’re like me, you got real concerned when Ambrose was down on the floor and Chris Jericho was staring at his Ambrose Asylum plant. Ambrose named the plant “Mitch,” and while it is a shoot potted plant, human nature insists that if we personify something, we’re gonna care about it more. It’s why we give pets names and treat them like people, and why all those Pixar movies about X acting like humans when humans aren’t around make us cry. We’re attached to the plight of the human condition, and we’ve spent thousands of years of art trying to explain it. Here, we get weirdly sad when Chris Jericho destroys a plant with a name. Sorta like when he destroyed a trombone with a name. Why do you hate personified inanimate objects, Chris Jericho?
RIP Mitch, 2016-2016. You were a better Mitch than that guy in the Spirit Squad, and you were a better plant than Sign Guy.
Best: BATTLE ROYAL
First, a quick video recap of how I feel about battles royal:
This one’s to name a new number one contender to the United States Championship, featuring Kalisto in a suit and a mask — the best possible luchador look — on color commentary. Ryback’s supposed to be in this, but he asked to be taken off TV and went home. Really committing to that CM Punk impersonation, aren’t we?
Like any good battle royal, this week’s ties together a lot of undercard stories like the breakup of the League of Nations, the unlikely and inconsistent rising and re-rising of Zack Ryder, and the beef betwixt Dolph Ziggler and his superior, Baron Corbin. Corbin gets eliminated and takes out his frustrations on Ziggler, beating him up just to roll him back in and get him eliminated. I love that he got a guy from the League of Nations to do the elimination, because they were the stupid idiots who jumped Roman Reigns in the Royal Rumble and then didn’t f*cking eliminate him.
The match comes down to Zack Ryder and the three ex-Lads, and I love how easily WWE can just say ZACK RYDER and trick us into thinking it’s a thing. I don’t know if they’re ever going to do anything with him, but that weird spurt of hope I got after WrestleMania and the crowd reactions during the battle royal on Monday make it feel like it’s worth doing. He outlasts Sheamus and Alberto Del Rio (thank God), but ultimately gets dumped out by Rusev. On the bright side, Rusev’s getting another United States Championship match, and Rusev vs. Kalisto could be great. On the less bright side, Rusev’s probably getting a second run with the U.S. title as a much worse character. He’s not a fake Russian, the dynamic with Lana’s FUBAR, he’s got no momentum and he just spent five months as the third most important guy in the company’s worst collection of hapless bad guys. Maybe this’ll get him on the right track again. Maybe they just need Kalisto to lost the title to someone John Cena feels comfortable trouncing on Memorial Day. Who knows?
Worst: “Nattie Hart”
STOP CALLING HER THAT.
Best: Shoutout To Slamboree ’99
Hey look, Asya’s on Raw a week after Chyna.
I’m happy that they not only acknowledged and explained Charles Robinson’s connection to the Flairs, but did so via WWE Network footage of him becoming the Little Nature Boy. If Natalya can suddenly be “Nattie Hart” and claim she’s the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be, we can say Charlotte’s in the Four Horsemen and has her own personal referee. Why the hell not?
What we eventually get to here is that Charlotte’s facing Natalya in a submission match at Extreme Rules. This is set up and hyped by Ric Flair bowing up to Natalya (which is hilarious), getting toppled over like a mannequin and put in the Sharpshooter. Natalya now has possession of his Hall of Fame ring and his “this is your last match and you’re definitely not going to TNA to do hardcore matches” WrestleMania 24 rolex. They should go old school and put the in a bag above the ring. Don’t ban Flair from ringside, put him in a shark cage and raise it up.
Best: Something To Talk About
Wrestling is great when it says, “here’s the good guy, here’s the bad guy, cheer this one and boo this one.” It’s the kind of wrestling I’m always obnoxiously cheerleading for, and why I want every face to be Sami Zayn and Bayley and every heel to be … I don’t know, 1980s Ric Flair. At the same time, especially as a guy who writes about wrestling every week, the “shades of gray” presentation can really work when they actually shade some sh*t gray, and don’t just f*ck up everyone’s alignments and make everyone terrible.
Last night’s main event is a great example. The Bullet Club (or whatever we’re calling them) pull off a clean win over Roman Reigns and the Usos, who SERIOUSLY need to adopt the Samoan Swat Team name. During the post-match, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows hold Reigns down so Styles can blast him in the face with a chair. Styles isn’t as into being a violent heel as his friends, though, and because he doesn’t really have a reason to chair Roman beyond some casual disrespect, he chooses not to. It’s what a good babyface would do. Anderson and Gallows begrudgingly go along with it and decide to punch Roman a little more. The Usos see this all happening and assume Roman’s getting 3-on-1 chair’d, so they slide in with a chair of their own and attack Styles.
Now, a good babyface doesn’t want to chair a helpless opponent, but he’s not just gonna stand there and get attacked with weapons without attacking back. He takes a chair to the Usos, and that’s when Roman looks up and starts to notice what’s happening. All he sees are his cousins getting attacked with weapons, so he takes out his frustrations on what he assumes is a fully heeled out AJ Styles. He f*cking WHOMPS him, too, beating him around the ring and running powerbombing him through the announce table.
It’s great, especially in that nobody really “turned” and nobody’s really heel or face, they’re just different levels of biased and confused. Anderson and Gallows want to hurt Reigns because he’s making sh*t hard for their friend, and … well, because he’s Roman Reigns. Styles likes his friends, but he’s nicer than them and thinks they’re taking it a little too far. The Usos are basically Andy and Ollie Pesto from Bob’s Burgers, but they want to help their cousin. Roman has been punched in the face a bunch and when it stops, he sees his family getting attacked. All of this makes sense from different points of view, and THAT is the “shades of gray” that works. The shades of gray that lets us pick a side and say, “I think ___ was in the right, because ____.” Something to talk about.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
Harry Longabaugh
“Hey, AJ. It’s Roman. I just watched the Raw replay and it turns out my asshole cousins kinda deserved it. Guess I’m trying to say that I’m sorry. Last night I was ‘a bad guy.’ Hope we can still be friends. Too sweet, right?”
Mr. Royal Rumble, TheCensoredMSol
BLUE THUNDER BOMB!!! THROUGH A TABLE!!!
pdragon
Natty totally should have elbow dropped Ric’s jacket there for extra emphasis.
Z-Pak Chopra
“Ric Flair, you paid..” I’M GONNA HAVE TO STOP YOU THERE
Gratliff
A fine reenactment of Conan’s run
Shemale Fiesta
Becky’s shorts are my favorite Castlevania level
Redshirt
Since this is a talking promo, I somehow want Cesaro to come out in wrestling trunks and unrip on a suit
Heisandow
For all future Gorgeous Truth matches Tyler Breeze’s boots will be designed by Little Jimmy Choo
Lester
Triple H: “Damn, Pops, what have you done to Tyler Breeze? He was a main eventer in NXT!”
Vince: “I just wanted to destroy something beautiful.”
The Real Birdman
“What is the one quality that you possess, that makes you think that you can walk out here and come into the ring and run Monday Night Raw?”
“PASSIVE. AGGRESSION.”
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