Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: Director of Operations Kane had a performance evaluation due to anonymous complaints filed against him with WWE’s Human Resources department. This is the major story on the flagship, primetime, 3-hour TV show of the biggest pro wrestling promotion in the world. Also, King Barrett is back! What a time to be alive.
Now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for October 5, 2015.
Best: All These Brock Lesnar Appearances Are The Same, But It’s Brock Lesnar, So Whatever
If you haven’t noticed, every non-PPV appearance from Brock Lesnar — save for that time he flipped out on everyone and F-5’d Michael Cole out of his shoes — is identical. He and Heyman show up, Lesnar stands still in the middle of the ring almost staring at the hard cam, and Heyman cuts a good-to-great promo about how Lesnar is literally Jesus Christ reborn in the body of a minotaur or whatever. Either the promo ends and Brock calmly leaves, or someone interrupts and gets thrown. Occasionally he gets kicked in the dick or someone puts a pen through his hand. No matter what, the formula is the same: Arrive, Speak, Briefly Interact, Repeat.
That said, it’s hard to get a better recurring (and sometimes objectively boring) wrestling segment. Lesnar is the most legit wrestler WWE’s had in eons, so all he’s gotta do on a show full of Rybacks and Dolph Zigglers is stand still and be cool. Heyman’s the best talker in the history of wrestling, so even if he doesn’t have much to say, he says it beautifully. Heyman could read old Paddington stories and make them sound like threats. There’s a joy in watching Lesnar interact with almost anyone, even people he’s tossed before. Watching him suplex Big Show is old hat, but it’s also a spectacular feat. It’s like watching Willie Mays sprint toward the center field wall and make an on-the-run, over-the-shoulder catch on the warning track. You see that clip your entire life so it feels like background noise, but then you pay attention for a second and your brain goes, “wow, that’s the best.”
Lesnar being mildly amused by everything that happens around him is great. He obliterated a 7-foot, 500-pound man in one of the most famous sports arenas in the world, and he’s like, “it’s fine, this is one stop on my metal-as-f*ck pro wres tour.” That guy (big) shows up and tries to shake his hand, and Brock’s all, pphhhhhhtttt. Show responds with some mild-ass negativity and Brock is like, NOPE, BRUTAL VIOLENCE. His actions, reactions and thought process doesn’t make any sense, but for once, that works: he’s Brock Lesnar, goddammit, we shouldn’t be able to comprehend why he does what he does. He just exists. He’s an inevitability. He’s a meteor crashing into Earth and killing the dinosaurs.
Best: (This Match Needs Seth Rollins)
“We’re cool wrestlers!” is something WWE doesn’t do enough.
I can’t speak for them creatively (even though I do, like, all the time), but WWE’s wrestling seems to exist to substantiate a product. You aren’t watching wrestling to see Randy Orton, for example, you’re watching Randy Orton and seeing wrestling. To break it down even further, you aren’t interested in Randy Orton at all … you’re interested in the idea of him. The brand. The song and the taunts and the talking points and the RKO. He’s a reference point. WWE created a show full of reference points and brand ideas, which is why it has become so dissimilar to an educated point of view’s perception of what “pro wrestling” is, and how pro wrestling works. It’s also why WWE remains so popular. They created a new definition of “wrestling fan,” branded it the “WWE Universe,” monetized it and taught an entire generation that if we aren’t it, we’re doing it wrong.
I really enjoy the show when the stress of the branding backs off a little and lets the wrestling breathe. That’s the difference in the obnoxious, deeply-scripted Roman Reigns we all turned on last year, and the relatively cool and inoffensive one we’re seeing now. Sure, it’s still a little embarrassing when she shows up as Also John Cena in a Susan G. Komen promotional speech, but it’s fine. Dean Ambrose is the same way. Dean Ambrose is cool. He’s weird and fun to watch and good at wrestling. The Dean Ambrose brand is cold boogers on a paper plate. The “Lunatic Fringe” is just as derpy as “The Juggernaut” or whatever, and watching him lose matches via ghost lanterns and exploding TV monitors is a f*cking ridiculous waste of time. Seeing Ambrose have fun, be weird and wrestle? That’s great.
The opening six-man tag wasn’t a Shield classic or anything — Seth Rollins really brought the room together — but it was the kind of match I want to see when I watch Raw. It avoided most of the horrible tropes I complain about all the time. It had a clean finish, it made everyone except maybe poor Luke Harper look like superstars, and it protected its performers’ weaknesses. Braun Strowman is great in these matches because he feels like a weapon, and not like a bad developmental wrestler. Bray Wyatt is great because he’s not over-exposed, and we get to see all the stuff we might want to love about Bray without the 10 minutes of chinlocks and vague crowd-shouting that he has to do to fill singles matches. Ambrose, Reigns and Orton all get to cut the bullsh*t and have fun. It works. It works so well it makes me type fussy-ass paragraphs when they forget to do it.
I’ll never understand why they’re so afraid of clean finishes. Finishes are the end of wrestling matches. Wrestling matches are what your show is about. Saying they aren’t is like saying the NFL’s about the analysis and the sh*t between downs. Screwy finishes should be an anomaly … that’s why they’re screwy. You should be upset that you didn’t get a conclusive result. That’s why screwy finishes exist. They aren’t the norm, and I shouldn’t be in here expecting one every time you do a match. Don’t be afraid to tell your stories. Be brave. With this much money, history, TV time and talent, everyone you employ should be important. When you half-ass the creative to protect everyone, nobody is.
Except Brock Lesnar.
Brock Lesnar is important.
A Big Old Pile Of Worst
speaking of “forgetting to do it”
Sheamus faces Neville with King Barrett on commentary. Wade Barrett’s turned into the f*cking Black Racer of Raw. When he shows up, you know a segment’s about to die. Sheamus cuts a kinda funny promo running down Boston for being False Irishmen, and then Barrett’s like LOOK AT ME for 10 seconds until Neville gets distracted, takes one offensive move and loses.
It’s everything bad about WWE TV. Tired, predictable, lukewarm characters selling out their performance to tell a sh*tty story that makes everyone look worse. Who looks good here? Sheamus needed help to beat a guy 1/3 his size. Neville got distracted like a doofus and lost to one move. King Barrett is the saddest living human being. I’d probably be great heel heat if any of these characters resonated — especially the one with the GET A CHAMPIONSHIP FREE Haliburton — or did things that mattered.
This is why WWE needs some kind of general stats or ranking system, even if it’s totally kayfabed, to let us know what people are doing and where they’re going. Like, what’s Barrett’s end game here? He didn’t like Neville, so he teamed up with the guy who hates Neville most, and that guy turned on him. So he returned to beat them both up, and now … what? He keeps trying to beat them up? Does he get anything if he wins? Is he trying to make them quit? If he wins, does he get a shot at something? Is he moving toward any goals? What’s the point of circle-jerking wins and losses in this little toilet swirl below the secondary championships?
Worst: Stephanie McMahon, Neutering Machine
You know that thing they’re doing with Kane, where sometimes he’s this jolly middle-management guy and sometimes he’s a demon that crawls up out of floor holes and tries to drag you to Hell? That’s Stephanie McMahon’s character.
Sometimes she’s the easiest person in the world to like. She’s from wrestling royalty, you know? For better or worse. She can play an incredible heel, she can endear herself to us by headbanging to Seth Rollins’ music or she can, hypothetically speaking, get strapped to an Undertaker symbol and get saved in a Black Wedding. She’s great at her job. Then, sometimes, she flips it. She’ll dance with the New Day, and then two weeks later completely remove their balls for absolutely no reason to put herself over. She can make Seth Rollins seem like the most important person, then do two separate, nonconsecutive promo interruptions where she goes, “hey, actually you’re the worst, go f*ck yourself” and get cheered. It’s bipolar as hell. Literal Christian Hell. She can’t decide if she wants to be the villain or the hero, so she tries to be them both at the same time. It’s what Triple H does, without the iffy promise that he might one day get his ass kicked for it. If H acts like a dick to Daniel Bryan, Bryan might beat him up. If H shows ass to The Rock, the Rock’s going to put a boot to it. If Stephanie McMahon brutally emasculates Seth Rollins or The New Day, what happens? They just say “yes ma’am” and nothing happens. That’s … counterproductive at best. I know that’s not an outraged smark way to put it, but Stephanie McMahon’s character is counterproductive.
It’s just so frustrating that WWE’s two concurrent mission statements are “WWE is the best” and “everyone who works for WWE is embarrassing.”
Best/Worst: What Happens When You Don’t Invest In A Story Beyond “The Matches Are Better”
Paige vs. Natalya was a good match. They wrestled, did some cool moves, told a story and worked to a (surprisingly) clean finish. The only problem is that the Boston crowd dead-eye stared at them the entire time, like they didn’t know what was happening.
I tried to figure out what it was (besides “the Boston crowd sucked”), and I think it, like so much does, goes back to creative. Natalya’s a good wrestler, right? What can you tell me about her character besides the stuff on Total Divas? None of that has to do with her wrestling. Paige is a good wrestler, too, and her only real character development over the past year has been “I’m jealous of people, apparently” and “I’m the anti-Diva, which I’ll explain by doing everything a Diva would except tan.”
To make it worse, Paige is in the middle of a story where she’s breaking up Team PCB, but they’re not even breaking up. They keep teaming, and backstage interviewers are like, “uh, what’s up, you guys,” and nobody can explain it. Natalya returned from the abyss to question Paige about it and tried to take her place in a match, but they threw hands and now they’re wrestling. So you’ve got two ill-defined characters without any established alignment having a good wrestling match to settle a tangential score from a bigger issue nobody’s directly addressing. O… kay?
So that’s where we are. To put it as succinctly as I can, the Divas Revolution will never be more than a marketing hashtag until they realize “good wrestling” has to be accompanied with “good characters” and “stories that make sense, and are preferably not just about boyfriends and jealousy.”
Best: THAT WAS THREE
I was honestly super into this little Kevin Owens/Sin Cara match, because it was fresh. It was Sin Cara, so I mean you take what you can get, but we don’t see Kevin Owens wrestle Sin Cara six times a month. Owens got a quick win with a pop-up powerbomb, which still needs a name that doesn’t make it sound like a local cosmetics boutique.
My favorite part is Owens bantering with the referee and Kalisto the entire time. Him getting a one count and yelling, “that was three,” is the kind of heel magic you pay him for. He goes for another cover, gets another one, and says, “that was three, too.” Him arbitrarily yelling that Kalisto looks stupid made me happy, as well.
Worst: You’re Doing This NOW?
After he wins, Owens tries to powerbomb Kalisto on the ring apron, which is NXT for “career-ending injury.” He’s interrupted by Ryback, friend of the Little Guys, and flees.
Earlier in the night, Ryback got a pre-taped promo vignette full of clips of him killing dudes and screaming at the camera, and it’s dope. Why did you wait until after he’d won and lost the Intercontinental title to protect him a little and make him seem like a badass? Why’d you tell him to stand in the middle of the ring orally fart his way through a book report about The Secret? This guy’s a SPECIMEN. He’s an unreal human being. Why have him get into arguments about self-help approaches instead of ripping people in half?
Worst: The Kane Event
1. I’m in such a weird spot with Kane, where I realize the content is entertaining but I absolutely do not want to see it. Anybody else gotten there? They’re only a few weeks into it and they’re already stretching the bounds of believability — in a multiple personality disorder story involving demons, yes, I know — where Kane has to somehow wander to the back to change clothes. His leg heals and gets hurt again seemingly at random, he can go from crutches to a walking boot in two days, they introduce handcuffs to create drama and then break the handcuffs half a minute later … it’s just ridiculous, in a way that doesn’t make it cooler.
2. I like that the Dudley Boyz’ greatest weakness is tables. They try to bring one into the ring to put Rollins through it, so he dropkicks it into their faces. Somehow this earns HIM a DQ, even though he’s just defending himself against a weapon attack (and how is this worse than throwing someone into the barricade or the stairs?) and the Dudleys are KNOCKED OUT. They stay out for the entirety of the post-match attack, from that one table to the face.
3. I hope you guys are reconsidering your “Brock Lesnar is a horrible champion, he’s not even on the show” talking points as Seth Rollins enters his sixth month of looking like a complete and total helpless putz in the face of anyone, wrestler or otherwise, who stands in his way. Seth Rollins could wander in the path of a dog walker and lose fights to like six different dogs.
The only way Kane main-eventing in 2015 is acceptable is if this is his last run, and it ends with him and the Undertaker wrestling at WrestleMania 32 and being swallowed up into the earth by the actual devil.
Best: Go Full Donnie Darko With Adam Rose Please
Via the Best and Worst of NXT 9/16:
If you haven’t seen it yet, Adam Rose is a “party pooper.” If you’re wondering what a party-pooping gimmick entails, so far it’s:
1. wear glasses
2. say “poop” a lotThat’s it. [Tyler] Breeze and Rose are supposed to wrestle, so Rose cuts a pre-match promo. “I’m not going to party anymore! I’m a party POOPER! I’m going to POOP on your party, because you POOPED on mine! Tyler Breeze, I will also POOP on your party, because all parties need POOP!” It’s like a third grader with a book of Mad Libs wrote it. It’s literally nothing, and all I can think is how much more effective this would be if they’d let him say “sh*t.”
This week, the character gets a vignette on Raw with a weird closeup and a SHADOW BUNNY when he leaves. If we’re skipping the “lol he said poop” joke and moving straight into Rose being a psychotic cultural vigilante who has to hurt people to make sure they don’t have fun, I’m ALL IN. I’m even more in if he gets Dark Rosebuds. Just like, 12 goth kids and uptight white dudes in business clothes somberly carrying him around the ring while like he’s dead. Do it in total silence. Let’s appeal to that “I might actually try to kill somebody” demographic wrestling hasn’t pandered to since the 90s.
Worst: Nikki Bella
Two things about Nikki Bella.
It hurts my fillings when she tries to pronounce words. Listen to her say “ratchet.” Ranch-id? Did she have any idea what she was trying to say? Supposably they write out these promos beforehand, she could linerally just read it off a cue card. Listening to her get through more than three consecutive sentences as the girl you wish you hadn’t started a conversation with at a party toe-ly makes me want to cut myself with bob wire.
Aside from that, watch her try to get heel heat with a Yankees hat. Ignoring that she very clearly hasn’t watched baseball this season (and that she and Brie both live in cities with pro baseball teams, and are from Arizona), she doesn’t even let it work for her. She’s like, “the Red Sox suck, not like the YANKEES, WHO ARE GREAT.” The crowd boos, and chant “YANKEES SUCK.” Instead of letting that work and moving on, she goes, “yeah but not like the RED SOX!” It’s like, sh*t Nikki, can you not even let the crowd have the last word on the heel heat you JUST GAVE THEM?
Best: They’re Chanting We Want Sasha Because We’re In Boston, And Also Because We’re On Planet Earth Where Everybody Watching This Show Wants to See Sasha
Anyway, Sasha Banks. SASHA BAAAANKS.
With the New Day getting Steph’d, it was up to Team B.A.D. to save the night. They totally did. Toe-ly. It starts when they drive into the arena in Sasha’s NXT Escalade and almost run the Bellas over, which would’ve been spectacular. Sasha laughs in Nikki’s face, snatches her Yankees hat away and throws it into the parking lot. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted. When Nikki tries to interrupt her hometown howdy, Sasha drops Why You F*cking Lying on her. It’s beautiful. Sasha’s so on-point right now she could’ve just made fart sounds with her armpit and it would’ve felt like great TV.
As for the match, it’s more of what we’ve come to expect … Sasha snatching her sh*tty contemporaries bald and tapping them out. I’m okay with the reality that the entire NXT Women’s Division run and Divas Revolution have been a collected, long-con exercise in getting us to love Sasha and hate everyone else. The goal is for Sasha to rise up and single-handedly change everything by herself, since everyone else is acting like a catty, illiterate weirdo. GET ‘EM, BOSS.
Best: Rusev Is An Honest Man Doing The Right Thing
“I gave him my heart. He gave me a fish.”
First of all, a lovey video package featuring Dolph Ziggler getting his throat crushed with a sparkly pink filter over it is an automatic best. I’m not that jaded.
Second of all, this segment was the opposite of how I feel about Kane. I know the Kane stuff’s pretty good, but I don’t want to see it. I know this Rusev and Summer Rae stuff is hot garbage, but I really need to see it. A violent but oddly forthright Bulgarian dude having weird interpersonal issues with his fragile secretary girlfriend is my reality show.
What trips me up is how honest Rusev always seems. He’s supposed to be the heel. The idea is that he’s being mean to these girls and he’s still in love with his ex, and he tries to beat up wrestlers you like, so you boo him. In practice, he’s got a good reason for everything he does, and aside from those few weeks after the breakup where he got stalkery and didn’t handle it well, he’s been upfront with how he feels about everything. Here, he tells Summer that when things first started, he didn’t like her at all. Her face there is AMAZING. But hey, they stuck together and he’s really starting to dig her, so he appreciates the work she’s put in.
She then tries to PROPOSE MARRIAGE TO HIM FOR SOME REASON. He says he’ll marry her, but only after he’s proven himself and won WWE gold. He wants them to work together to make this happen. The idea is that she’s trying to give herself to him and he’s more concerned about using her to further his career. In practice, he’s just … kinda being a good dude? He just told her his feelings for her have gone from petty to serious, and no part of him wanting to prove himself and get his sh*t together and live his dreams before entering a committed relationship should get him booed. He’s telling her how it is. He’s not manipulating her into dressing like Lana. She chose that, and has openly said so. He isn’t intimidating her to make her submissive, she’s into it. They’re both into it. It’s a consensual situation, based on all the evidence we’ve been given. Summer appears to be cheating on him, but he’s giving her another shot. I know y’all hate it when I do my RUSEV IS THE HERO gag, but sh*t, if he’s not the hero, he’s the show’s only grown-up.
Worst: Come On, Man
There’s no reason Big E shouldn’t have gone over here. Big E winning would’ve tied together so many mid-card stories. It would’ve validated New Day as a team in the face of Stephanie’s YOU’RE ALL SH*TTY IDIOTS routine, it would’ve made Big E seem like a threat, you could’ve used the New Day to make it not totally fair if Cena wants to save face, you JUST had them beat up Ziggler and drag him out to set up Big E’s first championship challenger AND you just had Rusev say he needs to wear WWE gold before he can get married. You could’ve played Rusev against his new buddies in the New Day. You could’ve played on the history between Ziggler and E, and point out that Ziggler basically brought the man to the main roster. You could’ve run Ziggler vs. Rusev for the U.S. title after that, and substantiated your past several months of bad storytelling. So many opportunities.
Instead, you main-evented with the bad kind of Cena singles match: the one where he clearly feels he’s above his opponent, gives them a bunch of meaningless offense early on and then just pounce-murders them for the easy win. Sometimes three at a time, just so he can feel good about the amount of odds he overcame. I … didn’t enjoy this very much.
Best?: The New Day? For Real? Maybe?
The good news is that the post-match stuff was great, with New Day coming together as Actual Heels and beating up Cena. Ziggler runs out for the save and f*cks it up, because he’s Dolph Ziggler and can’t do anything right. The Dudleys show up to be conquering heroes, and THEY get beaten up. The show goes off the air with The New Day standing tall, and that’s pretty cool.
The rub is making sure we go somewhere from here. There’s a chance that we’ve brought the New Day up from comedy heels to a serious threat based on Stephanie lighting a fire under their asses, which isn’t how I would’ve gone about it, but if it gets us somewhere good, so be it. There’s a chance that these guys will be rewarded for spinning a terrible gimmick into gold and becoming the best part of the show every week, and that we’ll lace together their relationship with Team B.A.D. and build a network of successful, dynamic and three-dimensional people of color who get to wrestle good matches and be involved in important stories independent of which color they are. There’s a chance that the guard’s gonna change, and former NXT Champion Big E is one of the crucial cogs.
There’s also a chance that this will be resolved on Smackdown when The New Day loses a tag match to Cena and the Dudleys or whatever, and they immediately go back to being tromboney jerks while Cena feuds with Ziggler. That’s the heavy weight of watching an exciting moment on WWE TV … they’ve pushed forward and pulled back, pushed forward and pulled back, pushed forward and pulled back so many times that they can pull the trigger on something, and still have it be weeks before you realize they’ve fired. If something works and changes, you’re always like, “well, when do we go back to how it was?” It’s just been how it was for so damn long, you know? Babyface Randy Orton didn’t change it, The Nexus didn’t change it, Punk didn’t change it, Bryan didn’t change it. It’s just … it.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Stephanie doesn’t order them into a handicap match to punish them for making an impact, which is what The Authority’s always telling people they have to do.
Reminders:
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