Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: An aging, teleporting mime has stolen Seth Rollins’ prized bronze statue and won’t give it back. Meanwhile, Dolph Ziggler’s girlfriend found out about a lady she hates sneaking into his locker room and creeping on him in the shower, so now she might break up with him. Xavier Woods knows how to play trombone, the Divas beat a clock and John Cena appeared when we’d almost made it through 3 hours without him to announce that he is completely right about everything and everybody else sucks and should shut up. The Authority agreed, and now Seth Rollins has two championship matches at Night Of Champions. At least we got some wrestling in there at the end.
Please enjoy this week’s Best and Worst of Raw.
Best/Worst: 15 People Have Already Made Thug Life Memes Out Of This Seth Rollins/Sheamus Confrontation
Seth Rollins is both the WWE World Heavyweight and United States Champions. At Night Of Champions, he’s defending both titles. One match is against John Cena, petulant overlord of WWE, and the other’s against Sting, an outer-promotional interloper who was granted a title shot despite stealing (and ultimately vandalizing) Authority property and having an 0-1 lifetime record. On Raw, Rollins says he’ll win both matches, but wants his statue back. Sting appears on the TitanTron with the statue to taunt him, teasing that he’ll destroy it if Rollins doesn’t find him first. He even says, “why’re you in the ring?” While this is happening, opportunistic heel Sheamus shows up to threaten him with a third championship match at Night Of Champions, only this one would be unexpected and happen when Rollins is at his weakest.
I just wanted to type that all out. Somehow Seth Rollins isn’t the face here, because he’s “annoying.” If you ever wanted to know why WWE heels sometimes seem rational and WWE babyfaces seem like insane, God-mode children, it’s because in WWE what you do doesn’t decide your alignment, how you act about it does. If you shoot a puppy, smirk about it and say, “that puppy had BAD BREATH,” you’re a face. If you return a library book on time and act smug about it, you’re a heel. WWE’s all about first impressions, and defining a person by what you’ve assumed about them without paying attention.
That said, I’m giving an otherwise run-of-the-mill Raw opening a half-Best for Rollins calling Sheamus “Ronald McDonald,” and Sheamus telling him to leave his family out of it. It’s safe to assume that as an Irish guy, Sheamus has a normal, non-burger-chain-mascot cousin or something named “Ronald McDonald,” but without clarification we’re left to assume that he’s shoot related to Ronald McDonald. That connects him by blood to the McDonaldland Gang. Keeping in mind that Sheamus has previously been linked by blood to The Muppets, WWE may have for real just connected McDonald’s mascots to The Muppets on the same family tree. Is this finally an explanation for why Ronald’s a human, but most of his friends are man-sized plushies?
Best: Sasha Baaaanks
Sasha: “Divas title shot?”
Clerk: “You’re gonna need a little more, honey.”
Sasha: *rips off part of her face*
Worst: This Was A Great Raw For People Who Don’t Care How Matches End
In a bit of good news for the Divas Revolution that for whatever reason is living or dying on the weekly whims of fans, the crowd started chanting “this is awesome” for Paige vs. Sasha. Unfortunately, they started chanting it right as Naomi and Tamina were getting in the ring to cause a distraction so Sasha could win with a cheap rollup.
I wanted to turn this into a, “there’s no happy medium for the Divas division, it’s either 15 minutes with a submission victory or 3 with a distraction rollup,” but this was the vibe all night. It’s frustrating when Raw is full of good wrestling, but the hacky, tired non-finishes make it all feel like a waste of time. If you don’t care how matches end and enjoy wrestling for the sake of wrestling, it was good to go.
Seriously, think about the finishes from Monday. The Divas match ends in a distraction rollup. Seth Rollins vs. Ryback ends in a distraction rollup. Miz vs. Cesaro ends in a double count-out. All of those matches had (or had the potential to have) great wrestling in them, and there’s a value to that — fans being entertained is the point, aside from all the grand, beautiful things I keep wanting pro wrestling to be — but damn, why does WWE keep treating Raw matches like expendable stepping stones to something better? You’re spending THREE HOURS every Monday building a universe. Why aren’t these matches all seen as opportunities? Why can’t everything contribute to the greater good, and not feel so much like, “this doesn’t matter, but we’re using it to get to something that does?” We aren’t in the territories anymore, man, this is a TV show. Do we need to sacrifice characters for months or even years at a time to achieve short-term goals?
Can you imagine if TV worked like that? Imagine if Breaking Bad had introduced Gus and had been like, “he’s a loser who runs a chicken restaurant” with no character growth or intrigue or story. Walt just showed up to his restaurant, ate his chicken and made him feel bad about himself for being such a loser. Then, in the next to the last episode of the season, Gus is like JUST KIDDING, DRUG DEALER and then in the next episode he’s dead. Why devote an entire season of episodes to a f*cking boring chicken franchise? Tell your stories with beginnings, middles and ends. F*ck, guys, it’s fiction. You control it. It doesn’t have to always feel like it’s helplessly flailing.
Best: Kevin Caribbean Cool
Backstage, Ryback is in the middle of cutting one of the crappiest promos you’ve ever heard.
“Seth Rollins on the other hand, he’s a weasel. He likes to whine and complain and … he always eck-scapes and get out ofs harm’s way. Always gets out of harm’s way. But make no mistake about it. He is a true thoroughbred in the prime of his career. He is the man. The man they call The Architect.”
Then he starts pantomiming wrestling moves and announcing them while death-staring off-screen. I’ve heard Jumpin’ Jeff Farmer cut better promos. The best part is that he’s clearly reading this off cue cards, and that this is the first time he’s actually read it. Like, he had no idea what he was gonna say, they just pushed him out there in his shirt-bib and said, “read the cards.”
Enter Kevin Owens, WWE’s most natural jerk. He’s eating an apple, because — and I’m only guessing here — he spits in the face of people who don’t want to be cool. I can’t wait for the followup promo. “KEVIN OWENS IS A LAIR. HE ALWAYS TELLS FALSES INSTEADS OF TRUTHS. INSTEAD OF TRUTHS. HOWEVER, KEVIN OWENS IS A MAN’S MAN, A PHYSICAL SPECIMENT THE LIKES OF WHICH NEITHER OF US HAVE EVER SEEN. THAT IS TRULY WHY THEY CALL HIM KEVIN OWENS.” And then Owens pops in eating an entire, uncut pizza, snorts through his nose and bails.
Worst: Konnor And Vintner
Michael Cole keeps calling Viktor “Vintner” during this match, because he couldn’t possibly give a f*ck. If John Cena didn’t have JOHN CENA written on his shirt, Cole would probably call him “Don.”
Ambrose and Reigns squash The Ascension — welcome to the Wasteland, guys — and get threatened by the Wyatts via the TitanTron. Braun Strowman kinda sounds like one of those people who wanted their identities hidden in Exposed! Pro Wrestling’s Greatest Secrets. Let’s ask the WWE Universe what they would’ve done differently:
This is the world you’re creating, WWE. One where when you don’t do distraction finishes, fans think, “is something wrong?”
Best: Ryback Giving The Intercontinental Championship To A Make-A-Wish Kid
My heart!
(Don’t give him the IC title though, you want him to win his fight.)
Best/Worst: A Good Match With A Bad Ending
As mentioned earlier, Raw had a lot of great wrestling it didn’t know what to do with.
Because nobody’s feuding with The Authority except Seth Rollins, they put him in two matches for the night: a tag team match with The New Day against John Cena and The Prime Time Players, and a “champion vs. champion” match with Ryback. If Seth Rollins was injured right now, these shows would be 20 minutes long. Anyway, Rollins wrestles Ryback and it’s one of the better singles matches of Ryback’s career. It tells a simple, effective story of a champion with a stamina surplus going up against a challenger that out-guns him in every category but stamina, so he’s gotta survive long enough for the challenger to run out of gas. Of course, that’s all thrown out when DISTRACTION ROLLUP PARTY happens, and Rollins is too distracted by a video of Sting to finish wrestling. He’s yelling “GIVE ME BACK MY STATUE” at the screen, because that’s how videos work. Ryback suckers him in, rolls him up in a small package and wins.
You know what the worst part of a finish like this is? That Ryback pinned the WWE World Heavyweight Champion AND the United States Champion in the middle of the ring on Raw, and it does nothing for him. It won’t earn him any special opportunities, and the only reason Rollins lost is because of interference from an unrelated (and uninterested) third party. Ryback only pawn in game of life.
Best: ALL OF THIS
1. Seth Rollins is wandering around backstage yelling STING GIVE ME BACK MY STATUE in an empty hallway, because that’s how hallways work. He’s interrupted by The New Day, who act as the world’s weirdest Greek chorus and tell him to stay positive, because they’re his tag team partners in the main event. In what would’ve been the greatest moment in the history of Raw had it not been topped 2 minutes later, Xavier Woods plays the Final Fantasy victory fanfare on the trombone. Holy sh*t. The only way this could be better is if they add a purple octopus to the team and start calling him “Uncle.” GIVE BIG E A BARRET GIMMICK IMMEDIATELY.
Wait, not Wade Barrett, Barret from … you know what, forget I mentioned it.
2. Rollins is confronted by Stone Cold podcast guests Edge & Christian, and Edge somehow remembers that whole “standing on my neck and threatening to paralyze me to blackmail John Cena into reinstating The Authority” thing despite it happening almost 9 months ago. That’s like being able to remember atoms forming at the dawn on time in a WWE character’s brain. Rollins cowers, because he’s got “a lot on his plate.”
3. The New Day sticks around and engages in a trombone vs. kazoo battle with Edge & Christian, which gets heated with E&C kazoo a “New Day sucks” chant. In response, Big E f*cking steals the kazoo and TRIES TO EAT IT.
FIVE STARS.
4. The Dudley Boyz show up and actually advance the current story of the tag team division, saying that they found out that next week, The Prime Time Players get a rematch for the Tag Team Championships, with the winners facing the Dudleys at Night Of Champions. That turns into a Dudley Boyz-themed New Days chant kazooing with a backup kazoo — thank God he didn’t have to use the one that’d been on the floor and in Epsilon’s mouth — and some outstanding New Day counter-taunting. “You ain’t got bars!” “You ain’t no musician, son!” “You ain’t got no pipes.”
SASSY GRANDPA PARTY ENGAGE
Best: Ru Ru’s Badass Bulgarian Track Jacket
Dolph Ziggler has never even CONSIDERED owning a piece of clothing that awesome.
Worst: And The Beat Goes On
You’re tired of my “Rusev’s the face” analysis, right? Even I’m tired of it.
Still, the segment starts with Summer Rae in the ring explaining that Rusev doesn’t deserved to get dragged into another ridiculously unnecessary love triangle — she’s right — and begs his forgiveness for kissing Dolph. She’s standing by her story that Dolph sexually harassed her, but she feels bad for being a party in letting it happen. Rusev, because he is secretly the babyface, accepts her apology and forgives her. Dolph Ziggler interrupts, and Rusev starts yelling at him for being out here interrupting promos instead of taking care of his injured girlfriend. Ziggler’s response is saying Rusev has a bikini wax (?) and repeatedly insisting that yeah, he’s taking care of his injured girlfriend, sexually. He wants us to know he had sex SO BAD. “YEAH I CHECKED ON HER TWO OR THREE TIMES!!” Rusev’s all, “you should take her flowers because she’s hurt,” and Ziggler’s response is, “DID YOU KNOW MY DICK WAS INSIDE HER, BECAUSE IT TOTES WAS, BIATCH.”
The segment ends with Ziggler, the guy who interrupted an apology, throwing a microphone at Rusev so he could kick him in the face. No physical provocation from the heel, or even a challenge. The heel is straight-up forgiving his girlfriend for infidelity, hugging her and getting cheap-shotted by a deadbeat boyfriend who’s the face because we’re supposed to already like him. Even the crowd doesn’t know what to make of it. They only really cheer when Dolph’s music plays, because they’re conditioned to react to sudden instances of loud music.
We all want this to be over, right?
Best: Nobody Has Ever Deserved To Go Through A Table More Than Los Matadores
In the most unexpected moments of the week, Los Matadores decide to go full rudo by beating up El Torito. Nothing deserves the swift hand of justice like putting your hands on Torito, especially when he’s your familiar, but … well, I mean, I guess it makes more sense for bullfighters to be hurting bulls than celebrating them, right?
I’m not the world’s biggest Dudley Boyz fan, but I was 100% on their side for heading back to the ring and destroying these creeps. Also, now we’ve got a chance to turn El Torito into “Bully Ray.” Los Matadores should get Rosa Mendes as their manager, and Torito should become obsessed with putting her through a table. Let’s just redo entire episodes of Impact through passive-aggressive valet segments.
Another Sheamus vs. Randy Orton Match
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. CM Punk’s in MMA instead of pro wrestling and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while Michael Cole tells us Randy Orton created separation to build momentum against Sheamus, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the WWE Universe is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my NXT and my Divas Revolution and my Kevin Owens vs. Cesaro match and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!
I don’t want you to protest. If Cena wins, I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to tweet @WWE because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to tweet. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Bulgarians and the love triangles. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and Randy Orton vs. Sheamus. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
Best/Worst: Ray Jackson And Chong Li’s Lovechild
At least this week’s Sheamus/Orton ended with Orton being choked to death. Silver linings, I guess.
The downside is that the “who will be the third member of The Shield at Night Of Champions” mystery stops being a mystery and becomes an “oh” with a bunch of dots after it. The Wyatt Family attacking Randy Orton to send a message to people who agree to help out Reigns and Ambrose makes “Randy Orton will help Reigns and Ambrose” a little obvious, but there’s always a chance Night Of Champions will feature a Randy Orton vs. Sheamus match.
Hell, there’s a like 5% chance it’ll feature TWO Randy Orton vs. Sheamus matches.
Worst: How Hard Of A Bullsh*t Chant Can I Start For This
The Miz wrestles Cesaro, and it ends when Big Show wanders out and chases Miz away. That causes a double count-out, and Show makes sure to find Cesaro on his way out and knock him out. Maybe I should’ve saved the Network speech for this. Which WWE creative type was like, “you know what’d be a good use of Cesaro’s fragile push and popularity? Having him be a NPC that gets beaten up during our infinite prolonging of The Miz vs. Big Show.”
Again, one of WWE’s biggest problems is that they far too often make the story of a wrestler struggling until they find success feel like the story of a wrestling promotion making a string of bad decisions and saying “look, it was on purpose” if it ever works.
Worst: The Bella Twins’ Greatest Crime Is Against The English Language
I swear, the worst thing about the Bellas is how they can’t make it through a sentence without devolving into The Californians. “Can you fill it? I can fill it! Nikki Bella’s name will be rinn in the history books! At Night Of Champions, we’re supposably having a bob wire match! Tune in to Toll Divas for more information!”
As for the segment itself, I dunno. I’m happy someone interrupted Nikki’s hip-hop hand gestures while she was talking about how “bottles will be poppin’,” but so much of this is disappointing. Everybody knows Charlotte likes to party? Well, uh, I know her dad liked to party. All we really know about Charlotte from NXT is that she likes gymnastics and she likes to wrestle, and that she advises a Flair be involved if you’re having sex. Maybe that’s partying? I don’t party, I don’t know what partying is. Of course, this is all an excuse for Charlotte to announce that we’re having her Divas Championship match on Raw instead of at Night Of Champions via an off-screen petition and cheap-shot the Bellas, because babyfaces.
Also, can you just formally petition The Authority now? The Dudley Boyz did it, too. Is that what faces have been doing wrong all along? Could Daniel Bryan have gotten all the title matches and fair opportunities he wanted, they were just pissed at him for not doing the leg-work? Is that why they hated Roman Reigns but kept putting him in big matches? Is John Cena just the kingsh*t of filling out forms?
Worst: An Interruption By That Banana You Can Win At The Fair
In case you missed it, Vampiro hopped the security railing to accompany Seth Rollins to the ring for his Cero Miedo match against Pentagon Jr.
It’s actually just a random dude who decided to strut to the ring beside Rollins and get kicked out, because one of humanity’s weirdest and least helpful impulses is running onto the field at sporting events. It goes against my vegan white knight pussy pacifism and fair play gimmick, but I for real wish we still lived in a time where people who jumped the rail at wrestling shows or tried to get in the ring would get a foot put through the side of their head. Rollins should’ve treated that dude like Brock Lesnar treated J&J Security’s car.
Best? A Main Event!
There were good things about the main event. It was nice to see some of the non-main-event guys get a formal main-event slot. The New Day is spectacular at all times, and Woods finding new ways to work in the trombone makes every match an event. The Prime Time Players are great, too, and we now live in a world where the hot tag is so synonymous with Titus O’Neil that JOHN CENA’s giving it to him.
There are a lot of problems, though. The tag team champions are losing clean, again, and I can’t figure out why people who get caught on the roll-through by John Cena just lie motionless in his harms while he pulls a Hernandez and smirks about them like they’re nothing. If Cena did it quickly, I could justify his opponent getting “caught,” but man, you were on offense. The only thing that happened to you between seconds 2 and 30 was a roll.
Also, this suplex becomes a conversation piece when you look at where Cena’s posting, and remember that Big E was dancing during it:
John Cena cares that much about you not having cancer.
Worst: Sting’s A Dick
We still don’t know how Sting was able to remove the Seth Rollins statue from safe-keeping in The Authority’s office, replace it inside the box with himself and remain undetected for two hours. That’s the major question. Aside from that, I guess we should be asking who’s driving the garbage truck? Sid, maybe?
I’m sad that I’m not the kind of wrestling fan who can watch Sting steal a guy’s statue and crush it in a compactor and feel like I’m on the right side of an argument. I hate it. I mean, looking back, I can’t imagine 1989 Sting doing this to somebody, or even 1997 Sting, because he was always such a dipsh*t babyface who cared so much about things like trust and dignity that he hid in the rafters for a year and went Brandon Lee for 20 because his friends didn’t believe him in a War Games. Now he’s just … goth Sheamus. I wish this kind of stuff made me vicariously happy. I wish I wasn’t an adult, and that I wouldn’t be super pissed if some old mime stole my sh*t and broke it.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Night
Harry Longabaugh
If he wrestles all three, Rollins with have matches with Red, White and BRAPADOO!
EtsukoMita_IsDyingInside
THE FORKKNIFE POWERBOMB FROM RYBACK
the sidewinder
…Ambrose and Reigns probably shouldn’t be coming through the crowd anymore given the last few weeks.
Juby14
Roman and Dean didn’t run out because Orton likes his coffee steaming hot
Thrillhouse
Is Summer wearing a bra like a shirt? I wish there was a way they’d work her being a candy company heiress into her backstory.
Gratliff
Aldo Montoya’s meaner than I remember
Full Nelson Reilly
Everyone knows Charlotte, Ric Flair’s daughter, likes to party because her father, Ric Flair, likes to party. “WOOOOOO! I don’t have my own persona! WOOOOOOO!”
Art Salmons
OK Boys, I just put up this week’s show outline. Everybody check what their job is.
Orton: ‘A really long match!”
Sheamus: “Me too!”
Rollins: Two matches!! Sweet!”
Owens: “It just says “Eats an apple….”
King Jaffe Joffer
I’m irrationally upset Seth didn’t wear his white gear to match the New Day. How you gonna do them like that?
HighEnergyForever
Worst season finale ever.
Thanks, everybody, see you next week.
As A Reminder:
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