The Best and Worst of WWE Raw for August 1, 2016

Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: A new era of Monday Night Raw began. Finn Bálor debuted, winning a fatal four-way and pinning Roman Reigns in the same night to get a shot at Seth Rollins for a brand new WWE Universal Championship at SummerSlam. Sasha Banks finally got her one-on-one WWE Women’s Championship match against Charlotte and won, giving us a result we’ve been waiting for for six months. Everything seemed happy, positive, and wrestling-focused.

That’ll definitely last, right?

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for August 1, 2016.

Worst: Whatever This Was

Sasha: Sweetheart, I am and champion!!
Charlotte: Sweetheart? SWEETHEART? Let me tell you something, sweetheart
Sasha: sweetheart
Charlotte: Sweetheart? Sweetheart
Sasha: your dad slept with a bunch of women
Charlotte: what happened to your sweet heart
[this goes on uninterrupted for 10 minutes]

Jericho: shut up shut up shut up shut up
Sasha: sweetheart listen I am and champion and that’s all you’ve gonna say about it!
Jericho: stupid idiot
[fanfare]

Enzo: MY NAME IS ENZO AMORE AND THE REST OF IT
Jericho: [makes a weird face]
Charlotte: [makes a weird face]
Sasha: [makes a weird face]
Enzo: ay sasher let’s have sex, badda boom
Sasha: [clearly repulsed] sure that sounds great
Enzo: how you doing
Sasha: how YOU doing
Enzo: how you doing
Sasha: how YOU doing
Enzo: how you doing
Sasha: how YOU doing
Enzo: how you doing
Sasha: how YOU doing
Enzo: how you doing
Sasha: how YOU doing
Enzo: how you doing
Sasha: how YOU doing
Enzo: how are you doing
[20 more minutes pass]

Enzo: hey chris jericho you’re like a shaved ice machine, i get the ice in the cone but it turns out i gotta put the flavor on separate, how you doin
Crowd: [cheers for some reason]
Enzo: [dances]
Jericho: what
Enzo: hey chris jericho, you’re like a fax machine, older people used to use you to communicate information but now if i send anything to your number it doesn’t go through, because it’s been unplugged for a long time, how you doin
Crowd: [cheers for some reason]
Enzo: [dances]
Jericho: what is happening
Enzo: hey chris jericho you’re like school on sunday, jesus is teachin’ arithmetic, how you doin
Jericho: I HATE YOU
Enzo: CUPPA HATERS, CUPPA HATERS, CUPPA HATERS
Crowd: [pees everywhere]
Charlotte: “sawft” like your dick is soft, am I right
Enzo: [is nuked]

Mick Foley: excuse me my name is Teddy Long and I’m here to make this a tag team match
Mick Foley: right here in whatever town we’re in
Charlotte: took you long enough
Jericho: yeah did we really have to stand in here arguing for 25 minutes
Sasha: sweetheart we would win of match!
Enzo: someone find cass, I can’t breathe

What we learned from this:

1. Sasha Banks is Roman Reigns. She’s awesome in the ring, has a great look and has all the tools to be the biggest star in the company if you’d just stop making her stand alone in the middle of the ring cutting recap promos and getting into catty insult fights with people who are better at it.

2. For the love of God, don’t get so confident in Enzo Amore that you think he’d be fine without Cass. Keep them together. Cass disguises Enzo’s weaknesses, and vice versa. If you leave Enzo out there doing his Enzo thing with someone who doesn’t know how to do it, you get him making penetration jokes to Sasha while she looks like she wants to throw up.

3. I’m sorry for complaining about shows starting with Stephanie McMahon promos.

Best: Kevin Owens

To reiterate a point I make any time it happens, WWE’s version of a “mixed tag team match” is one of the worst things in wrestling. No matter how you feel about intergender wrestling, the point of a tag team match is supposed to be two teams of two working together, not two concurrently operating singles matches. Making it so that the other team’s partner tags in when you tag your partner kills like 75% of the drama, and removes 100% of the teamwork. It’s just pointless. Do Jericho vs. Enzo and Sasha vs. Charlotte if you want, but don’t do them at the same time. And if you’re going to do a tag team match, just let them fight. I’m guessing Charlotte could take Enzo to the woodshed.

So thank goodness Kevin Owens was out here on commentary to make this enjoyable. He’s really the only person who has earned an unnecessary hatred of Byron Saxton, and he does it better than anybody else. Plus, I really enjoy his deadpan analysis of whatever’s happening. “Hey uh, that Dana Brooke girls is here. She’s gonna do something. Oh, I guess not.” “I believe that is the end. And I’m right! I’m right, as usual.” He’s the Yang to Mauro’s Yin. Also great: Owens commenting on how he used to do the moves they’re using on the independents, and calling Big Cass “the dangerous one.”

ILU, pissed-off Canadian dad.

Worst: Raw Is Raw Again

This isn’t specifically inspired by the Golden Truth vs. Shining Stars match, but Raw is Raw again. When last week’s show was as good as it was, I eased out of my jaded Internet columnist persona for a second and tricked myself into believing that this was finally the change I’d been wanting to see, and that I could expect the “new era” of Raw to contain, you know, good episodes of Raw. I even joked that Raw had become what NXT would be if it was Raw, and Smackdown had become Raw Classic.

I guess they’re both Raw classic.

This week we get boring intro segments, bad comedy, distraction finishes, regurgitated match-ups we’ve seen a dozen times before, fun stuff being stamped out almost immediately and a Smackdown guy on Raw a week — one week — after the guarantee of roster exclusivity. Next week, Puff Daddy guest stars. Gonna ease back into this warm blanket of pessimism until the next time they’ve convinced me they’ve changed.

Best: R-Truth

I’m not a fan of tag team matches ending in phone mishaps after being a 3-minute commercial for an app, but I do appreciate the weird continuity happening with R-Truth. Pokemon GO is a game about seeing imaginary characters appearing on your phone in real life scenarios, so who better to fall in love with that game than the guy who spent years of his life hanging out with an invisible child? Truth appears to be playing the game on two levels, “seeing” Pokemon in the spaces they’re supposed to be without actually looking at his phone. So he’s like, wandering around grabbing at them. I hope the payoff is Primo covering Truth and getting Bubble Beam’d out of a lateral press by an actual Staryu.

Best: Bill Murray Vs. Melissa McCarthy

As a heads up, there’s a spoiler for the new Ghostbusters movie in this entry, so if for some reason you care about Ghostbusters spoilers and haven’t seen it, be aware.

So yeah, Finn Bálor vs. Seth Rollins in a battle of explanations and wordplay isn’t the kind of thing I get real excited about, but on paper (and just objectively), it hits a lot of the right notes and plays out as well as it can. The Raw crowd doesn’t really know Finn beyond him being a real dropkicky guy who somehow pinned Roman Reigns last week, so having him sorta walk through his history and why he’s important during a conversation with the talkiest and most exposition-heavy dude on the roster makes sense. Rollins and Bálor have interestingly parallel careers, and Rollins’ “I did everything you did first” point of view is valid and in great contrast to Bálor’s “you did everything first, but I’m doing it better.” Rollins being solely motivated by being the “first” at things makes so much sense for his character, and even explains why he turned on The Shield for seemingly no reason at the height of their power. He just wanted to be the first to do all the stuff, and guess what? He was.

Seth is refreshingly great on the mic here, which I was worried about. Sometimes he gets all up in his nose and talks for days, and pairing that with Bálor’s unfortunately cue-cardy delivery of pretty much everything could be a disasters. Instead, he stays casual for most of it and contextualizes Finn’s shorter conversational bursts. Finn gets the big line — the only thing Rollins is gonna have handed to him at SummerSlam is his ass — and it pops the crowd like it should. So it’s not the kind of segment I’m gonna get excited about and type about in capital letters, but it works.

Bálor vs. Rollins at SummerSlam is either going to be an all-time classic or the most self-indulgent indie match in PPV history, and there’s really no in-between. I like that either result will make sense for the characters. If Rollins wins, he’s the first-ever Universal Champion and continues his conquest of firsts. If Bálor wins, Rollins hates him forever, because he’ll never get to be the first that thing. I kinda hope Finn wins, because hey, he might be Melissa McCarthy, but Bill Murray’s in the new Ghostbusters too, and he dies.

Worst: The “Overhead Kick”

That’s my third favorite Finn Bálor move, behind “Spinning Head Touch” and the “Jumping Feet.”

Best: Another Week Of The Same Two Jobber Squashes

Last week, Nia Jax and Braun Strowman got quick, effective matches against enhancement talent. There are few things in wrestling I love more than a good jobber squash. This week, they both get the same matches against interchangeable opponents. I’m a little worried they’re gonna do what they usually do, where they schedule in a few jobber squashes for a new or recharged talent and then forget to do the next step, and just keep doing jobber squashes forever until (1) we’re tired of them and (2) we aren’t convinced they can beat anybody worth a damn, but for now, let’s celebrate the thorough destruction of “local talent.”

Up first is Braun Strowman taking on “Evan Anderholm,” who is the El Generico to Corey Hollis’ Sami Zayn. The pre-match interview features a hilarious bit where Evan says he agreed to wrestle Braun because they’re paying him a thousand dollars, and if he wins, he’ll get five thousand dollars. That’s so honestly depressing, and kind of a good deal. I’d let Braun breathe on me in a corner for a minute and then throw me on my face once for a thousand bucks.

Updated Braun Strowman Jobber Power Rankings

1. James Ellsworth
2. Evan Anderholm
3. whatever they call John Skyler next week

The better of the two matches is Nia Jax vs. pro wrestling’s Fefe Dobson, Ariel Monroe. Nia is starting to approach that Dump Matsumoto level of not giving a sh*t and just throwing ladies on the ground and dropping elbows on their faces, and Monroe has exactly the right combination of spunk and hopelessness. More no-selling stiff forearm shots and dragging people around by their mohawks, please and thank you. This version of Nia Jax RULES.

One thing, though: it’s cool to have wrestler-sized Byron Saxton in there interviewing Braun Strowman’s opponents to make them look even more doomed, but should he be in there towering over Nia? I know Nia’s not absurdly tall, but y’all are making Tom Phillips sit on a stool to make the dudes look bigger. Maybe don’t have the interviewer making Nia look smaller?

Also, +1 to keeping Nia’s promos short and sweet. She’s not a bad talker, but her speaking voice is not her friend.

Best/Worst: Poor Mark Henry

It just makes me sad. I hope the story goes somewhere, and isn’t just a one-episode excuse to rationalize Rusev having another United States title match against one of the five opponents he always wrestles. What, were R-Truth, Zack Ryder and Jack Swagger all busy?

And just to say it, Rusev is great and Lana looks amazing, but how was this not an excuse to bring out Kurt Angle? I don’t expect them to sign a guy they released for being too much of a danger to himself like a decade ago just to put over a midcard angle in the middle of a Raw, but it was such a layup. “The Olympics are rigged! No American can win a gold medal! THERE IS NOBODY WHO CAN WIN THE UNITED STATES CHAMPIONSHIP FROM ME, ESPECIALLY NOT ANY GOLD MEDAL AMERICAN ATHLETES!” And then Roman Reigns shows up? Come on, y’all.

Of course, Roman vs. Rusev is going to be great, and who knows, maybe Rusev will beat him to set up a Kurt appearance somewhere down the road. I never thought “Roman losing” was an option, but he’s been pretty dog-housed over the past few weeks, so it could happen. I like him keeping things simple and punching people in the face to express himself, even if that Superman Punch and animatic causes half the audience to instinctively start booing.

What: Titus O’Neil vs. Darren Young

Still not totally sure what to make of this. Two former tag team partners who are established babyfaces have a match, and the announce team does that weird thing where they insist that it’s happening to “prove to Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley” that they were good draft picks, or something. What does that do? Why is that happening?

Anyway, they’re both babyfaces, but Young went a little crazy against The Miz at SummerSlam, so he’s got a tiny bit of heel leaning. So in this match, Titus cheats to beat him. Dot dot dot question mark. After the match, Backlund’s in the back yelling at Titus about cheating, and honorable dad of the year Titus is like, “YOU CAN’T WIN IF YOU DON’T CHEAT.” Then he tells a 66-year old man that if he doesn’t calm down he’s gonna “knock his old ass out.” Rusev is a great judge of character, by the way. This ends with Young cheapshotting Titus and screaming at him.

I don’t know. If this ends with Young finally harnessing the power of CRAZY BACKLUND HANDS and eating Titus’ lunch to finally, symbolically sever his past as a tag team star and become his own man, that could work. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of confusing jerks shouting at each other. If I wanted to see that, I’d watch politics, am I right folks

Best/Worst: RIP Big E’s Balls

Now that New Day has WWE’s observed-whether-it’s-accurate-or-not “longest reigning tag team champions in history” and they’ve no-sold a Wyatt Family pulp cultist vignette beatdown, it’s time for someone to actually step up and beat the sh*t out of these guys. The Club without AJ Styles is about as exciting as piece of plain white toast resting on top of a closed jar of Miracle Whip, but if they can crush New Day’s balls until they take something seriously and stop laughing to themselves about butts, I’m all for it.

My only complaint is that it’s status quo Raw. We’re building to a New Day vs. The Club match by having New Day wrestle The Club and having the challengers lose via a distraction rollup (that they caused themselves), to set up a post-match beatdown that necessitates another match. Can New Day defeat a team we just saw them easily defeat? Pay extra money to find out!

Worst: More Of The Same

Cesaro wrestles Sheamus and pins him clean. After the match, a fight breaks out at ringside because Sheamus is upset about losing. This is to set up Cesaro vs. Sheamus. Which we just saw, which ended clean. What happens after the next one, does a brawl break out?

Worst: MAKE BRANDON SAD, THE TV SHOW

Remember a couple of weeks ago when Mick Foley was announced as the Raw General Manager, and I wrote a long thing about Commissioner Foley being my least favorite authority figure and the guy who made me actively chose to root against heels over faces?

After Cesaro and Sheamus do their thing, Heath Slater shows up in the ring with JINDER MAHAL. If you’re new to the column, 3MB is right behind the Nexus and the Shield on my list of long-gone WWE things I’m always trying to resuscitate. I genuinely adored them. Remember when Jinder Mahal played air guitar just so he could slap John Cena in the face? I F*CKIN’ DO.

Image (6) jinder-vs-cena.gif for post 329547

I’m getting off-topic. Yeah, no, 2/3 of 3MB shows up in the ring on Raw, and Commissioner Foley almost INSTANTLY shows up to pit them against one another for a Raw contract. Mahal hits one kick on Slater and pins him. So not only do we not get 2MB, we get helpless-ass Heath Slater getting humiliated again to put over JINDER? What, is the WWE Universe gonna be like, THIS GUY WE’VE ALWAYS HATED SOLD OUT HIS FRIEND WHO NEVER WINS, LET’S FEEL LITERALLY ANY WAY ABOUT HIM?

Stop being Commissioner Foley, General Manager Foley.

Best-ish: Rollins vs. Zayn

Seth Rollins takes on Sami Zayn in the main event and it’s good, but not quite as good as you’d expect. Maybe it’s the context of Raw. Zayn is a very situational wrestler, and tends to time his best and most memorable performances so they happen on the bigger shows. Like, compare all the matches he had before Battleground with the one he had AT it.

I do appreciate that Rollins keeps winning these big matches clean, though. They probably should’ve done that when he was WWE World Heavyweight Champion and main-eventing all the shows instead of making him look like a goober all the time, but what can you do?

Best: From Outta Nowhere

The very worst Brock Lesnar appearances are the ones where he’s paid a lot of money to stand still while Paul Heyman talks near him. Sometimes the Heyman promos are legendary, but most of the time they tread the same ground and beat you over the head with the same points about how Brock is the conqueror and yadda yadda. So I deeply enjoyed WWE playing with that trope, keeping that tight close-up of Brock’s disinterested face so Randy Orton’s RKO “from out of nowhere” actually looked like it came from out of nowhere. That’s choice.

And that’s it. The end result of this is still a Randy Orton match, but maybe Lesnar vs. Orton will be hot fire like I’ve always wanted it to be, and Orton will finally stop being Salieri and move past Wolfgang Amadeus John Cena as Smackdown’s top guy.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Full Nelson Reilly

That’s [Stephanie’s] normal voice. She actually hasn’t used a live mic since 2001.

AshBlue

Smackdown needs to be longer than 2 hours if Randy Orton is going to have to respond to all of this.

Frank Ducks

If Brock Lesnar really showed us his form of entertainment; SummerSlam would be 3 hours of him killing dear with a bazooka, followed by an hour of him doing power-cleans and drinking beer.

Aerial Jesus