Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: WWE Fastlane: End Of The Lane happened, and we have a new Universal Champion; a 50-year old man whose bloom had come off his rose 13 WrestleManias ago, competing to impress a child who doesn’t seem super impressed by it. Our champion is a dad nodding his head in a car to Grand Funk Railroad while his kids make embarrassed faces in the passenger seat. Also on the show, nothing else happened.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for March 5, 2017.
Best: It’s Art, You Don’t Need Friends
If turning on Chris Jericho during the Festival of Friendship didn’t make Kevin Owens the (kayfabe) worst person on Earth, this segment certainly did. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a falling out with a best friend, but the straight-forward phrasing of, “you were never my best friend,” was absolutely heartbreaking. And what I liked about it the most is that he was immediately like, “Sami Zayn was ACTUALLY my best friend,” reminding us that (1) everything he does in life is motivated by his inferiority complex for his former friend everyone just inherently likes, which Owens feels like he’s constantly got to work to earn, and (2) no matter what he says, the guilt of the horrible shit he’s done to people and the inability to go back and erase it is what propels him into reprehensible territory now.
I also really enjoyed Owens’ talking point that he was going to outsmart Goldberg and beat him at Fastlane, because even if it wasn’t necessarily the case, we were seeing the beginning of it and never got to see the rest. We don’t know what else Owens had planned, so we’re stuck half-believing that he’d “broken the code” so to speak and was going to shock the world with his thinking-man’s pro-graps acumen. Jericho “ruined that” for him, so now he gets an excuse that’s just believable enough to make us curious.
ALSO great — because Raw is really good when you focus on the wrestling, allow engaging characters to say and do shit they appear to mean and keep the pace brisk — is how all these stories during the opening tie together. Owens references Triple H pulling him aside and telling him the way things are, so of course Triple H’s OTHER portly ass-kicker Samoa Joe is going to be there to help Owens out in a fight. And what’s the loser babyface glue that sticks Joe and Owens together? Sami Zayn. So Owens and Joe jump Jericho, Zayn shows up to help, and we go so far as to break Teddy Long Memorial Tradition by setting up two separate singles matches instead of a tag. Bravo.
Best/Worst: Destined To Do One Side Of This Forever
The first of those two matches features NEVER AGAIN opponents Zayn and Owens. It’s good, because Zayn and Owens could put on something entertaining in complete silence and pitch-black darkness. And it’s necessary to rehab Owens, who needs a strong, violent and decisive victory after losing to Motorcycle Sweat Dad in 20 seconds at Fastlane. The only downside is that Sami Zayn continues to take these Ls, because nobody in the company is a better or more convincing loser than Sami Zayn. So it’s good, but it’s a shame that this one dude always has to do these jobs.
Best: Samoa Joe Has Played The Video Games
The second match is Samoa Joe vs. Chris Jericho, which succeeds in being smartly wrestled in video game terms and stiff as shit.
The match starts with Joe basically punching Jericho in the face for real — look at Jericho’s forehead for the rest of it — and Jericho responding by chopping Joe has hard as he can. The great thing about Joe’s stiffness is that it creates a sense of urgency in his opponents, and makes everything feel more like a desperate fight. And THAT works in WWE, because Joe’s main roster character is “The Destroyer,” a guy who is absolutely not fucking around and is here to kick your ass. Why would he get in the ring with Jericho and shoot a wristlock? He’s gonna punch him in the face. I think I appreciate stiffness in a wrestler when it feels purposeful, and not just like they’re a little dude without a lot else going on who doesn’t know you aren’t supposed to really hit each other.
I also really dug the ending, in which Samoa Joe uses the tried and true video game strategy of waiting until a 5-count, hitting your finisher on the outside and rolling back into the ring before 10. You can beat anybody on the hardest modes by doing this. If Joe wins a cage match by putting someone in the Tree of Woe before he climbs, you know he’s a true Millennial Genius.
Best: Suddenly, A Cruiserweight Division
Following the deathwish efforts of Gentleman Jack Gallagher at Fastlane, here are Neville and Rich Swann revolutionizing the WWE Cruiserweight Division by starting a match quickly, doing exciting moves and actually flying around doing cool shit instead of suicide diving once and grabbing a chinlock.
This was DOPE. This is what the cruiserweights should’ve been doing from the beginning. The idea has always been that the value of the cruiserweights is that they can do and are willing to do things the bigger Superstars can’t. That’s the whole point. So far, WWE’s had them doing suicide dives and rest holds to set up strike or submission finishers, which as you might’ve noticed is exactly like the heavyweights. And the tag teams. And the women. Here, Swann and Neville take advantage of the fact that they’re quick, spectacular athletes and pepper the match with a bunch of shit you don’t see everywhere else, from Swann’s swanndive off the top to the outside to that weird sequence on the apron where Neville makes Swann faceplant only to run him back around and javelin him into the LED board.
Swann tries to finish Neville off with a Phoenix Splash (because that won him the pre-show match at Fastlane), but Neville’s about a billion times better than Noam Dar and avoids it twice. The second time Swann crashes and burns, so Nev tries to pin him. When that doesn’t work, he transitions directly into the Rings of Saturn, the move that Neville used to beat Swann for the championship, and taps him out. Swann’s “ah SHIT” look and head shake when he’s in the move really drives it home. Swann was looking for that move and probably had a great counter to avoid it, but knocked the wind out of himself with that missed splash and slipped up.
I loved (loved loved) this, and I hope this plus Neville/Gallagher continues to set up the division for success. And speaking of that …
Best: Kratos Vs. Aries
Two things:
1. It is always, always a Best when someone hits someone else in the face with a microphone and it makes that mic-strike noise. That’s one of the best possible noises.
2. Man, how lucky and fortunate is Austin Aries? For a second there his future was, “in a tag team with Roderick Strong again.” Then he got hurt, ended up doing commentary for the cruiserweights because Daniel Bryan and Mauro are both on Smackdown and was under-the-radar allowed to showcase his character, personality and charisma for months so WWE audiences could get to know him. Nobody else in the cruiserweight division has gotten that opportunity outside of a “get to know me” video package. So now when Aries is in the ring, the crowd is chanting AUS-TIN AR-IES. We know who he is. It’s hard to cheer for someone if you don’t know who they are, or if you haven’t been given a reason to be curious to learn.
Also, how crazy is it going to be if Finn Bálor, Seth Rollins, Shinsuke Nakamura and Hideo Itami all don’t get on the WrestleMania card but Austin Aries does? Funny how shit works out sometimes. GO FUNNY BANANA PACKAGE GUY GO!
Best: Rick Rude In The Hall Of Fame
When people ask me, “can you think of anybody who isn’t in the WWE Hall of Fame, but should be?” I always answer, “Rick Rude.” So I’m really glad to see him join the WCW-ass class of 2017. I think he’s the first person who got heat from the child version of me based solely on feelings of inadequacy and sexual confusion.
Fun note: With Rude’s induction, almost every member of the Dangerous Alliance is in the Hall of Fame. Rude, Steve Austin, Arn Anderson, Larry Zbyszko, even Michael Hayes and Madusa. Next year they need to induct the Midnight Express (for Bobby Eaton) and Paul Heyman to complete the set.
Worst: Hashtag Free Emma
Did we need 20+ weeks to say, “Emma’s gimmick is still Emma?” I hope 17 weeks from now she shows up on Raw as Emmy Omega only to notice a bubble in the crowd, reconsider and be like, “sorry everyone, I need 17 more weeks to learn how to dance.”
Seriously though, imagine if we’d waiting 8 months for Glacier to debut only for him to step out in the armor and be like, “actually my name is Ray Lloyd,” and took 8 more months to debut as one of the State Patrol.
Worst: Somebody Needs To Kick Enzo Amore In The Face
Enzo and Big Cass say they’re gonna bring a championship to Chicago like Jordan in ’91. Like Jordan in ’92. Like Jordan in ’93. Like Jordan in ’96. Like Jordan in ’97. Like Jordan in ’98. Enzo and Cass promos make me feel more like Jordan in ’09:
Best: Somebody Kicks Enzo Amore In The Face
Strangely (if you consider last second booking decisions with little effort “strange”), this week’s Raw features two setups for matches in extremely sparse and cramped divisions that decide who challenges for secondary titles at WrestleMania. The first is this Enzo and Cass vs. The Club match, when ends when Enzo’s erratic posturing accidentally pisses of Cesaro and causes a brawl. Eventually Cass is going to get tired of Enzo making him lose tag or win essentially 2-on-1 matches and put him in the ground, right?
Anyway, Enzo ends up with his head on Cesaro’s shoulder like the world’s most annoying Zaphod Beeblebrox, so Sheamus continues his quest to force Enzo’s face through the back of Enzo’s skull with a Brogue Kick. It’s great:
After the match, everyone’s arguing backstage so Commissioner Foley sets up Enzo and Cass vs. Sheamus and Cesaro for next week, with the winners going on to face Da Club at WrestleMania. Like the women’s match that gets the same setup, there’s a 100% chance they both end up in the Mania match. What else are they going to do? Host?
Worst: CM Punk Chants
It’s been three years, Chicago. Sometimes you’ve got to let those hard to reach chips go.
Worst: The Women’s Division Isn’t Getting Better
Over the past several weeks, the most disappointing parts of Raw have been Bayley losing her NXT character in the mist and replacing it with a smug, entitled, classic WWE babyface. She keeps doing these bits where she’s acting ethically conflicted, but keeps going back to, “who cares, I’m the champion!” First it was Stephanie McMahon trying to manipulate her in one direction, then Mick Foley enabling her in the other. And then Stephanie comes out to berate Mick Foley and manipulate her at the same time. And then Sasha’s here because she’s a cheater and a babyface, and then Charlotte and Dana Brooke show up because they’re cheaters and heels, and Sasha’s like, “who cares if Charlotte didn’t cheat, she probably would’ve!” And somehow that’s enough justification for all of this, and at some point while my face is in my hands I hear that Sasha’s wrestling Bayley here tonight for a chance to join a Bayley vs. Charlotte match at WrestleMania.
If your first thought wasn’t, “Sasha Banks has pinned the Women’s Champion!” you haven’t been paying attention.
Sasha and Bayley wrestle the most delicate, safe match they’ve ever had, because it’s a month from WrestleMania and nobody wants to get hurt. This hurts Bayley more than Sasha for me, because in addition to losing her character, Bayley’s matches seem to be getting worse. At Fastlane she couldn’t seem to hit a move correctly to save her life, and here she’s tumbling through shit like she’s on her second NXT appearance. This was Billie Kay vs. Liv Morgan, not Sasha Banks vs. Bayley.
Sasha ends up grabbing Bayley in the Bank Statement, so Dana and Charlotte try to distract the referee and break it up. And sure, the idea is that Charlotte wants to keep Sasha out of the match because she’s got a better chance of beating Bayley one-on-one, but after weeks of Sasha cheating to help Bayley win, it comes across less like a preventative measure and more like Charlotte trying to help Bayley cheat to win. When did Bayley become Kevin Owens? After the match, Charlotte attacks Sasha and poses with the Women’s Championship and, more importantly, the WrestleMania sign for the video package.
Just terrible, again, when it doesn’t have to be. Get some character consistency, remember that some of these people are supposed to be likable — at least give me one — and get Stephanie the hell away from everything.
Worst: New Day Still Doesn’t Have Anything To Do
They wrestle the Shining Stars, who are “Raw Superstars” in the way the dancing guy is a “member” of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and continue to half make love to their ice cream delivery bicycle that doesn’t actually have ice cream in it yet. I don’t know. Big E seemed less like he was tripping balls tonight, which was disappointing.
Best: Tozawa With A Mouthpiece In Is Still A Better English Promo Than Most Of The Cruiserweights
Aside from Tozawa doing something other than that same sequence of missed kicks to set up the snap German, there isn’t much to say about the two minutes we get of Tozawa vs. Ariya Daivari. It’s the cruiserweight match you were expecting when you were pleasantly surprised by Swann vs. Neville.
After the match, Tozawa cuts a short promo calling out Brian Kendrick, and Kendrick shows up in his wrestling gear for some reason to say, “be careful what you wish for!” On 205 Live, Tozawa will learn Kendrick’s next lesson: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush! I think that’s Sun Tzu.
Best: Death To Sweat Dad
The funniest part of Brock Lesnar F-5’ing Bill Goldberg is Goldberg holding the title on his shoulder almost the entire time, like he’s a display mannequin. Remember when CM Punk hit John Laurinaitis with a Go 2 Sleep and Big Johnny had that bored look on his face? Same thing. It’s like playing with human-sized action figures.
Congratulations to Goldberg for taking his first bump since 2004, though. I’m not sure Bill’s physically able to take the 15-minute bloody beating Lesnar needs to give him at WrestleMania — or that he’s physically able to go more than the 1:46 of total singles wrestling time it took him to become Universal Champion in one sitting — but at least they’re making an effort to make Brock look like a viable opponent again.
Very ready to fast forward to this getting booed in Orlando.
Best Worst: Triple H Revisionist History
Seth Rollins and Triple H had a whole WrestleMania program planned until Samoa Joe bent Seth’s leg in half and put him on the shelf, so now they’re in a kind of holding pattern, trying to keep people interested in a confrontation without being able to actually do a lot of confronting. We see a Seth Rollins rehab video, one of an increasingly large collection, followed by Triple H being all, “here’s what I said last week, in case you missed it.”
The best (worst) part is Triple H’s argument that Seth Rollins called himself “The Man,” and that you can’t just give yourself a nickname. It’s a Best because H is the heel and a total liar and full of shit, but a Worst because I’m worried not enough people are gonna pick up on that. Like, first of all, Rollins was under the thumb of the Authority for like a year-plus, and y’all are absolutely the ones who gave him all his dumb nicknames. Second of all, how funny is it that Triple H is like, “I was called The Game, the King of Kings, the Cerebral Assassin, and I didn’t make those up, other people called me that!” It’s about as believable as when he said he “ruled the Attitude Era with an iron fist.” Triple H was never “the man,” even when he thought he was, and that’s the crux of his entire functioning wrestling character.
So again, good because Triple H is very good at being a slimeball and giving us reasons to boo him, and bad because as a culture, we’re into just believing whatever people say if we like them more than the other guy.
Worst: Of Men And Yards
Finally this week we have Braun Strowman promising to “finish what he started” against Roman Reigns on Sunday, which was … uh, losing to him. He shows up and makes some threats, but then the Undertaker’s Dong interrupts him. Taker shows up and they have a staredown, and the crowd is like YESSSSS, so of course Braun bails and completely disappears. And then he’s replaced by Roman Reigns. Because THAT is what the crowd wants.
So Roman and Undertaker look at each other for a while, Roman points out that he is now the BIGGEST DOG IN THE YARD, and reminds us that the largeness of a dog relative to the yard inhabited and the ownership of said yard based on dog-largeness is the most important thing a tough person can discuss. Undertaker chokeslams him, and WWE Fan Nation refers to Undertaker’s entrance, the staredown AND the chokeslam all as “chilling.” Sure?
Look, all I can think here is that if they don’t pull the trigger on a Roman Reigns heel turn during a WrestleMania match with the Undertaker, they are fucking absurd. There’s never going to be a time when people side with Roman Reigns less, I think. Reigns vs. Bryan had more apologists than a Reigns/Undertaker WrestleMania match is going to have, especially since Taker is one bad shower fall from hip obliteration. Plus, Braun Strowman just kinda gets left in the dust. What’re they gonna do, make it a triple threat so Roman can “beat the Undertaker” without Taker actually having to lose? Does Strowman build to this by losing to Roman a few more times on Raw between now and then? Could Taker even be in the ring with Strowman, honestly? That guy’s Lenny from Of Mice And Men. Lenny from A Monster Among Men, I guess. If he throws Taker at the ground, Taker’s gonna burst like a bag of marbles. Roman you can count on to carry him through a harmless WWE-style match, but then that’s super boring, and nobody’ll like the result. How much fun would this be if Taker had never lost at Mania, and he was going up against (1) the most unbeatable, unlikable dickhead in the company and (2) the impossible human monster everyone is starting to love? It’d be such a no-win situation for him, and the drama plus the three-way stipulation would have the heat off the charts.
The former Everywhere Champion in the second half of his career who’d go on to lose to Goldberg in 80 seconds needed it, though, I guess!
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Night
Taylor Swish
Michael Cole: “The Big Dog against the Original Big Dog from Hell!”
Titus O’Neill: “You mean Cerberus?”
Vince McMahon: “You’re fired”
Titus O’Neill: “Hallelujah!”
Pdragon
“Smackdown is, and will forever be my home” – the apparently exiled from home Undertaker
LUNI_TUNZ
I watched just enough TNA in my lifetime, that every time they say “The monster,” I think they’re going to follow it up with “Abyss.”
Brute Farce
“Huk, huk, huk… bbbllllaaaAAAAARRGGHHHH…” … my cat
Mr. Bliss
Charlotte and Dana are cosplaying Danny and Sandy from Grease. I like it.
The Real Birdman
Bayley’s current gimmick is The Reddit Shrug
Redshirt
I can’t help but picture Triple H ending every Bayley segment by putting on “Cat’s in the Cradle” and crying at the end softly singing to himself:
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me, she’d grown up just like me.
My girl was just like me.
Aerial Jesus
Brock Lesnar looks like a living breathing sausage that survived a nuclear holocaust
NotACrook
“Bill, just a heads up, they might chant ‘CM Punk’ while you’re out there”
“What does that mean?”
Spitty
‘Kommen Tator’ has definitely come out of the NXT name generator at some point
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading, as always. Be sure to drop down into our comments section to aimlessly argue with strangers about what they thought about fake fighting, and click those social media share buttons to spread the column around. It helps more than you think. Also, a huge thank you to the 120 backers (!) who helped us raise 133% of our Indiegogo film post-production fundraiser goal. You the real MVP.
Currently expected for WrestleMania:
- Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship
- Bray Wyatt vs. Snake Arsonist for the WWE Championship
- Bayley vs. Charlotte vs. Sasha Banks (vs. Nia Jax eventually) for the Raw Women’s Championship
- Kevin Owens vs. Chris Jericho for the United States Championship
- The Club losing the Raw Tag Team Championship to somebody
- New Day being extremely depressing
- Undertaker and Roman Reigns getting into a dispute about yard maintenance
- A musical performance from whoever Diddy’s trying to get over this year
- AJ Styles backflipping to sell a child’s jab that misses him by like half a foot
- UNBRIDLED OPTIMISM
See you next week.
♫ welcome to myyyy house ♫
