The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 10/12/15: Phoning It In

Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: Ru Ru and Hot Summer got engaged, but only officially when Rusev wins a championship. Surely nothing will happen in real life between last Monday night and today to ruin that! Plus, we enter week 600 of the “Corporate Kane and Demon Kane are the same guy” story, which involved a human resources evaluation and honestly not much else. A guy almost got dragged to hell, but somehow that’s less notable than the human resources evaluation. Also, The New Day is suddenly important! Score!

Please enjoy this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Raw, for the Oct. 12, 2015 episode.

Worst: Get To The Pooooint

Ambrose: “Welcome to MONDAY NIGHT RAW!”
Crowd: “woo”
Ambrose: “I’m not gonna bore you-”
Crowd: “WOO”
Ambrose: “anyway here’s randy orton”
Crowd: “what”

[Randy Orton enters]

Orton: “Dean, I wanted to come out here and tell you, face to face, man to man, that I was backstage and heard the Authority talking, and at Hell in a Cell there will be a tag-team match, a match featuring two teams of two, and on one of those sides will be Luke Harper and his partner Braun Strowman.” [pauses for reaction] [gets no reaction] [pauses] [pauses] “Now, opposing Luke Harper and Braun Strowman in this aforementioned tag team contest will be none other than yours truly, the Viper, Randy Orton. You see, Dean, when you were not even a pro wrestler I was a pro wrestler. And my partner will be you, Dean Ambrose.”
Crowd: [searches for noose emoji]
Ambrose: “Hey if you want to beat up the Wyatt Family, I want to beat up the Wyatt Family!”
Orton: “I do!”
Ambrose: “Well, good.”
Orton: “Did you hear the thing about the match I mentioned?”
Ambrose: “yes”
Orton: “cool”
Crowd: [beginning to animorph into tumbleweeds]
Orton: “We probably could’ve had this conversation backstage, huh”
Ambrose: “yeah”
Orton: “anyway, what’s up”
Ambrose: “not much, just opening Raw”
Orton: “k”
Crowd: [happily imagining themselves, the wrestlers engulfed in a cleansing fire]
Orton: “now whatta y’say if I say we say-”
[New Day interrupts]
Orton: “OH THANK GOD.”

Best: Out With The Old, In With The New Day

Sitting through an Ambrose/Orton conversation as a lead-in to the New Day is like those Christmas pranks where you give a kid an XBOX box full of religious knick-knacks and then when he’s pissed, you say, “okay, here’s your XBOX.” The New Day is our XBOX.

They put themselves over for standing tall over John Cena and the Dudley Boyz last week, dropped some terrible name puns and made me laugh out loud by saying beating up Dolph Ziggler was “doing the impossible.” They work in a Trillville reference, too, but the highlight is definitely when they make Randall Keith Orton feel human emotion, possibly for the first time in his adult life, by listing off all the heel groups he’s been a part of. Orton’s cheek quivering because he’s trying to hold back laughter, followed by him giving up and smiling ear to ear made me so happy. Plus, any promo that namedrops The Legacy in 2015 is an automatic A+. DiBiase Posse Parties for life! Hell, even Stardust liked it.

Best/Worst: The Match At The End Of The 20-Minute Conversation

The match itself wasn’t bad, but it was hindered by two (2) commercial breaks and too much forced intrigue. Orton just established that he and Ambrose are facing Harper and Strowman at Hell in a Cell, right? It’s Randy Orton and Dean Ambrose. Everything we’ve ever learned about those characters — including Ambrose saying he’s bad at following orders in the same promo the match was revealed — says they’re an “uneasy alliance.” If you go straight into the match and have them get in each others’ faces about sh*t that doesn’t matter, it works, right?

Instead of just doing that, we have them lose a match on Raw to set it up. Kofi shoves Orton into Ambrose, which knocks Ambrose down and disorients Orton long enough for Kofi (Orton’s true blood rival, lest we forget) to roll him up for three. It’s a good win for the New Day, and clean as hell to boot, but it’s not gonna do much to build that Wyatts tag. That seemed like the point of the segment, you know? The New Day’s just kinda arbitrarily feuding with everyone.

I don’t know. I watched three hours of Raw last night and all I can really remember is “I should buy candy bars.”

Yes, PAYDAY®. PAYDAY®: THE CANDY BAR WITH A DICK

Worst: Who’s On Phone, What’s On Second

If you missed Raw, all you really need to know is that The Authority was “running late” and had to conference-call in, leading to Kane leaning over a phone and doing a bad “Who’s On First?” routine for like three hours.

Since Corporate Kane is in charge, he observes the first rule of being a wrestler in charge of booking a show: he puts himself in the main event so he can go over the champion. It’s gonna be a lumberjack match against Seth Rollins. Rollins will complain about it, of course, because he’s the only wrestler in history to be good enough to be WWE World Heavyweight Champion despite being mentally unprepared to wrestle or win any match ever. The Authority finds out and grills Kane about it, but the reception is bad so they can’t understand him. It turns into multiple segments of, “Who’s in the main event against Seth Rollins?” “It’s me.” “I know it’s you, Kane, I’m asking you who’s in the main event against Seth Rollins!” If you laughed at me typing that dialogue once, you’re either 70, senile, or both.

To make Rollins seem even stupider, The Authority tells Kane that he isn’t allowed to compete in the main. He says he’ll find a suitable replacement. The second Rollins heard this, he should’ve said, “so, the Demon Kane, right,” and started preparing for Demon Kane. Instead, he’s out there in the ring all shocked as hell when it happens. I get the value of a “chickensh*t heel” who loses matches and backs down from fights but manages to maintain a championship. I do. What I don’t get is building your company around a guy who (in character) can’t mentally or physically handle any wrestling-related situation, and surrounding him with people whose motivations and goals are so wishy-washy that the entirety of a three-hour Raw becomes a quest for all the important wrestlers to avoid wrestling. The Authority can’t even make it to the show most weeks.

Worst: How Not To Do A Divas Revolution

This could get preachy as hell (again) (sorry), but I’ll just say this: it doesn’t make a lot of sense to show a Bayley vs. Sasha Banks video package, watch a crowd of people applaud her for it, listen to them chant “we want Sasha” between desperate gaps of silence and still build matches around distraction finishes and/or Naomi wiping her butthole on the top of Nikki Bella’s head. It just doesn’t make any damn sense. WWE is so deaf to its own artistic successes that they can’t think constructively and understand what works about one side of their product, and how it relates to the regular disaster happening on the other.

The hook now, I guess, is that Team Bella’s going to use Sasha Banks’ popularity as a way to sow seeds of jealousy in Team B.A.D. They did it with Team PCB and turned them into Catty Little Cats (™ Summer Rae). On one hand, I want to see Sasha on TV as the focus of a story. On the other, “bitches are crazy” and “bitches are jealous” are the only stories WWE knows how to tell with women. If you want a woman on Raw, she’s gotta be waist-deep in a jealousy angle. You want the wrestler to succeed, but one type of success bludgeons the other to death.

I’m hoping they think ahead a little and allow Team B.A.D. to become the babyfaces the Divas Revolution desperately needs. Paige, Becky Lynch and Charlotte were supposed to be the heroes at first, I guess, but they often come across as insincere for a variety of reasons. It ended up being the Bellas screaming JEALOUSY, being totally right, and the “revolutionary” hero team being torn apart by the first instance of trouble. Team B.A.D. is made up of people who are supposed to be heels, but Sasha’s the most instantly likable person on the entire roster, and their online friendship with The New Day has given them dimension. Let’s have the Bellas cry jealousy again, only for Naomi and Tamina to say, “yeah, we know, Sasha Banks rules, what are you, stupid?” and kick the piss out of the Bellas with their Glow Shoes.

Best: Brie Bella, The Diva Gravity Remembered

1. It’s hilarious that Brie can’t even sound like a human being trying to start a “we want Sasha” chant.

Like we’re not supposed to want to see her instead of everyone else.

Best: Namedropping Gary Albright On Raw

If we’re trying to stay positive and get those sweet Raw byline quotes, I appreciated JBL namedropping “Dr. Death” Steve Williams and “Pierre Abernathy’s Final Form” Gary Albright during the Dudleys/Ascension match. Reminiscing on the mid-’90s All Japan tag scene and The Holy Demon Army briefly took my mind off the hilarious, crippling reality of what happens to NXT stars when they get called up. Why can’t we get Konnor and Viktor into a jealousy angle?

Worst: Speaking Of NXT Stars

Here are three of them (well, 2 1/2) in a match with ECW’s Sheamus. That never stops being funny to say. Is there any phrase in wrestling more “Yahoo Serious” right now than “ECW’s Sheamus?”

Anyway, Sheamus and King Barrett take on The Bálor Club — shut up, it’s canon to me — and it’s what you’d expect. Nothing really happens, then somebody gets distracted and loses the match. This time it’s Barrett hitting Neville with a cheapshot Bullhammer Elbow from the outside. I’m not even sure why they put a clip of it on WWE Fan Nation. Unbelievably, Sheamus is still Mr. Money in the Bank. Can you believe they didn’t give that to Kofi Kingston? Can you imagine how much better The New Day would fit into that “feuding with everybody” niche if they were tag champs AND using the Freebird Rule to tease title changes in every direction? But nope, Sheamus needs it so he can carry around gallons of whole milk, which he pours into bags of Wonderbread and shakes up to make his lunch.

Sorry, that’s what Sheamus is doing when I picture him in my head. I should probably see a psychiatrist.

Best? Worst? Roman Reigns Gets Hung Out To Dry

We’re getting close enough to WrestleMania to start getting worried about Roman Reigns again, right?

On Monday they had him cut one of those terrible, tightly-scripted “recap” promos that never work, where a WWE babyface stands in the middle of the ring and tries to affably catch everyone up on the stories. They’re almost impossible to do well, especially if you’re Roman Reigns, a guy who just spent a few months recovering from the nightmare of too-scripted promos. ESPECIALLY in Chicago. What’s the guy supposed to do? He’s doing a pretty good job and dealing with the “what” and “boring” chants as best he can, but the content he’s supposed to deliver is “boring,” and the decision to have him do it is “what.”

The match with Strowman was another odd choice. You’re gonna do a straight-up, one-on-one match that Roman WINS to build intrigue for Roman vs. a guy who’s supposed to be protected by an unstoppable monster Roman just beat? Really? By COUNT-OUT, even? It “protects” Braun, I guess, but it doesn’t really do anything for anyone. It’s just wrestling happening. That’s the problem I have with so much of this … it’s not that anything they’re doing is bad or even especially stupid, it’s just nothing designed to get wrestling fans excited about wrestling shows. Couldn’t Roman vs. Braun be a thing? Why are we doing it here? Why does BRAUN STROWMAN need interference from Luke Harper? What does Bray even do if we’ve established that Roman can beat him and all of his crazy sheep dudes at once? Introduce more crazy sheep dudes?

Bray Wyatt stories feel too much like Game of Thrones right now. They’re interesting to watch and beautifully shot, but you get the feeling they’re just walking around in circles in gardens having passive-aggressive conversations because they’re saving money for a dragons vs. ice zombies battle that’s never gonna happen. And then somebody you like gets killed off.

Best: Everything But The John Cena Of It All

The in-ring highlight of this episode is absolutely the United States Championship match between Cena and Dolph Ziggler. It’s a “make up game” of sorts after The New Day ruined things for Dolph last week, and his horrible romantic rectangle angle got wrecked by a real-life engagement. More on that later.

The match was a lot of fun, and the best use of Ziggler all year. I don’t think he’s ever going to succeed as a guy we all like. He’s not that kind of a personality. He’s the kind of guy we like because he bumps like a psycho, takes shortcuts because he’s an unforgivable prick and acts like he’s a way bigger deal than he is. You know how The Miz seems like a super-nice guy pretending to be a jerk? Ziggler has always seemed like a jerk pretending to be a super-nice guy. I like him a lot more raking Cena in the eyes to get a nearfall than I do watching him give big “here’s how it is” promos where he tries and fails to get the audience on his side.

Anyway, the only negative of the match is how Cena it got at times. That sounds like an incredibly “internet” way to look at it, but it’s true … John Cena’s one of the undisputed best wrestlers in the world and a strong candidate for one of the best ever, but he does so much goddamn John Cena sh*t that it’s ignorant to pretend he doesn’t. Stopping a match in the middle to address a wedding proposal in the crowd was nice and cute, but also absolutely not what a champion should be doing in the middle of a high-stakes championship match. It shows how much Cena feels threatened by Ziggler that he can take a damn aside and yell pleasantries at strangers, you know? Doesn’t mean he’s awful for doing it, it’s just JOHN CENA. Then there’s the finish, which is Cena withstanding a finisher spam just to hop up like nothing’s wrong and hit his finish (once!) for the win. He lies down afterwards to sell, but while it’s happening he’s just like, “doot doot doot, time to win the match.” It doesn’t make him “bad at wrestling,” it’s just JOHN CENA. Same as him taking a second rope DDT early in the match and being totally fine with it — the unpleasant side effects you get from taking a drug to make your wrestling show better.

Good stuff in spite of the inevitabilities. If Cena’s taking time off after Hell in a Cell, I hope the second leg of his United States title run ends the way it should: with someone stepping up and beating him, preferably without a lot of bullsh*t, on Raw. That’s how you make the belt John Cena held matter, and not just matter because John Cena holds it.

Best: Meanwhile, The Intercontinental Champion Is Doing Okay For Once

I could watch Kevin Owens and Kalisto wrestle all day. I love Owens not taking him seriously, doing condescending “loo-CHA” chants and getting heads-of-steam just to slide out of the ring with a clubbing forearm. I also like that despite Owens winning, he gets moment-to-moment comeuppance for that attitude … watch him when he whips Kalisto into the ropes. Most guys will know Kalisto’s gonna bounce off the ropes and come back at them with a kick, so they’ll prep for it. Owens remembers that wrestling’s supposed to happen the entire time you’re in the ring, not just as the moves are happening, so he preps for a move of his OWN. He gets ready like he’s gonna toss Kalisto, so when the kick comes, it actually looks like it catches him off guard. That’s a tiny thing a lot of wrestlers forget to do, and I love it. It’s also why I hate the “jumping nothing” guys do when they’re springing off the ropes into strikes and counters. At least pretend like you were going for something we can identify, guys. By watching the matches you’d think Alberto Del Rio’s finisher was jumping off the second rope into a standing position beside them, with the back of his hand against his cheek.

I’m not sure anything will ever top Owens trying to enlist Renee Young as his tag-team parter to face the Lucha Dragons, but we can keep trying.

Worst: That Botch, Though

Jump to the 1:40 mark in the video. Kalisto goes from an inside-out springboard dragonrana, one of the most ridiculously impressive and dangerous looking things I’ve ever seen, and Owens just kinda stands there. Kalisto goes for the headscissors and lands it perfectly, but … nothing. I don’t know if he was supposed to catch him and powerbomb him or what, but it looked bad, and is made worse by the fact that that would’ve been the coolest sh*t ever.

One day WWE’s gonna realize they’ve got to hire more than one luchador at a time if they want cruiserweight wrestling to work. You can’t sign Rey and have him wrestle Chavo on loop for a decade. You can’t sign Mistico and have him get sh*t-kicked by Alberto every week. You can’t waste Kalisto’s youth and impossible talent in Ascension matches and attempts at grand lucha spots with guys Owens. You’ve gotta give Rey Mysterio his Psicosis, you know? But you also have to give him his Juventud Guerrera, his Super Calo and his Ultimo Dragon.

(Not saying Owens can’t work lucha or doesn’t know how to take moves, it’s just a lot cooler to have a whole underground of lucha and not just one exciting guy slumming it with Sin Cara in a lucha libre Goofus & Gallant.)

Best: I Will, But Only For The Sign

Thanks, @DouglyMeyer! Sorry you didn’t have more opportunities to hold it up.

Worst: Press Is More Important Than The Universe You’ve Created, Or
Best: Summer Rae

On Monday, news broke that Lana and Rusev had gotten engaged in real life. Instead of rolling with it and letting us assume that WWE Superstars and Divas have personal lives that are separate from those you see on TV, especially in the age of shows like Table For 3 and WWE 24 on their own network, WWE decided to acknowledge it IN KAYFABE and use it as a self-destruct for the entire angle.

Now, I’m happy if this is the end of things and we don’t have to worry about who’s sneaking into the showers and sexually harassing who, and who’s giving apology for sexual assault and possibly an affair earrings to who, and Lana in hashtag airbrushed denim everything. If the end result is Lana and Rusev getting back together on TV and being the thing that made us like them both in the first place, cool, we win. At the same time, damn, how much time did we invest in this? How many segments, how many pay-per-view matches, how many non-finishes to protect an end game we’re never gonna reach? All we have now is a final illogical twist of the knife, Rusev getting destroyed by Ryback and a pretty obviously condescending Dot Com poll.

To recap the entire story as it stands, Lana is a Russian lady who loved Vladimir Putin so much she convinced her client, a Bulgarian guy named Alexander Rusev, to cut it out with the Bulgaria and support Russia. He did, and it brought him so much success and acclaim that he became the United States Champion and the Hero of the Russian Federation. Lana started getting too interested in her growing popularity, however, and it caused a rift to form. Rusev lost to John Cena a few increasingly embarrassing times and got madder and madder about it until Lana ditched him. In the same damn episode, she decided to shack up with notoriously awful-with-women Dolph Ziggler, a shacking-up they expressed via unbelievable kindergarten kiss-flirting. Enraged, Rusev spiraled down further and further until Summer Rae scooped him up out of the darkness and gave him a reason to believe again. Rusev’s injuries healed, he turned Summer into an ersatz Lana and crushed Ziggler’s windpipe. After that, Rusev and Summer talked a lot of sh*t but mostly minded their own business, only for Lana (who claimed she’d moved on and found freedom, and wasn’t interested in Rusev anymore) to repeatedly interfere and attack them. As soon as Ziggler got back, the story became that Summer was either secretly f*cking or being sexually harassed by Ziggler, depending on who you believe, and then whoops, Lana broke her wrist. She disappeared from TV, Summer apologized to Ru Ru and eventually proposed to him. He said yes, but only if he could win a championship first. Now, suddenly, Rusev is engaged to the lady he’s been insulting for months, who left him to have personal freedom.

Does that sound like a story somebody wrote and planned, or does it sound like a writer going “sh*t, we forgot to do something with Rusev and Ziggler, oh f*ck we’ve only got 20 minutes until air, what do we do” for six months?

The only saving grace is that Summer Rae is an excellent promo, and managed to properly drag Rusev for getting engaged behind her back after pseudo turning down HER proposal and letting her find out about it online. I’ve read people saying this turned Rusev face because Summer’s “tone was heelish,” but f*ck that, she’s right. Rusev got back with his emotionally abusive soulmate and totally sold Hot Summer out, and I can’t believe the end result of this entire garbage story is “Summer Rae is a terrible person, but personally justified in this situation.” That’s a scenic f*cking route to a point that doesn’t accomplish anything, ain’t it?

Ah, well. Have Lana show up at Hell in a Cell and tell Rusev to crush somebody, then have them get married under a giant photo of Putin. All’s well that ends well.

Worst: Really?

Here’s the night’s second jealousy-based Divas match involving the Bellas, in which jealousy causes a distraction for the loss. Michael Cole yelling “____ has pinned the Divas Champion!” is as common as “builds momentum” and “creates separation.”

It’s pretty sad to watch Charlotte job to a Brie Bella transitional move. Bayley spent two years trying to get powerful enough to beat Charlotte, maybe she should’ve tried hitting her with the worst dropkick! At least now we know Team PCB/NBC is jealous and distracted by their own jealousness, and that Natalya and Paige are feuding over a role in a team one of them isn’t on and the other left on purpose!

Worst: And Now, The Undertaker Vs. Yokozuna In A Casket Match

As mentioned, Seth Rollins is the top-ranked wrestler in WWE. He holds the most prestigious championship in wrestling. He is upset about being put in any wrestling match ever, and when he’s forced to wrestle anyway, he loses. When it’s time for him to defend the belt in big matches, he either wins or survives via no contest thanks to retired comedian interference, random injuries to 56-year olds or dick-kicking, teleporting zombies. He spent most of the summer earning, then crying about the loss of a statue.

He’s wrestling Kane, the 48-year old Butch Patrick of WWE middle-management who is easy to beat for everyone except the world champion. Kane gets knocked out by The Big Show and beaten up by almost all of the lumberjacks, but is still able to easily hit his signature moves on and pin the champion.

This is exciting, because ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Next week on Raw, Seth Rollins picks a fight with a newborn baby, gets scared when the newborn baby gurgles in response, then loses to the f*cking newborn baby.

Best: The New Day Rocking Out To Seth Rollins’ Music

At least I can count on you guys.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Night

tenillusions

In episode 1165, when Xavier Woods plays Dolph Ziggler’s theme song on his trombone, he strikes the F# chord twice, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a “magic” trombone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

The Real Birdman