Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: WWE SummerSlam 2016 happened, and now everyone’s either injured or hurt. I think Nikki Bella’s the only person who showed up and didn’t leave worse for wear. Now we’re on the road to KFC PRESENTS BACKLASH!
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for August 22, 2016.
Worst: Finn Bálor And The Curse Of Seth Rollins
Let’s set the right vibe for tonight’s Raw by opening by what basically sounds like a retirement announcement from the hot new star who won the first-ever Universal Championship on his WWE PPV debut and is now going to miss “at least six months” with a torn labrum because Seth Rollins threw him arm-first into the ringside barricade.
I don’t want to put any unnecessary blame on Rollins, but between this, blowing out his knee, breaking John Cena’s nose and retiring and almost killing Sting with a bucklebomb, I’m starting to wonder if we should wrap that dude in bubblewrap and limit him to headlocks and armdrags. But knowing this Bad Luck Schleprock motherf*cker he’d drag Heath Slater over and dislocate both of their arms.
It’s the billy goat’s curse for breaking up The Shield, I’m telling you.
Worst: “A Series Of Matches”
The solution to the now vacant Universal Championship is the most Raw and Commissioner Foley thing ever. As ol’ Dropkick Murphy is leaving, Seth Rollins shows up to nasally accept the belt as the “real winner” of the match. He’s interrupted by Sami Zayn, who is quickly interrupted by Chris Jericho, and pretty soon Kevin Owens, Roman Reigns and Enzo and Cass are out there, too. Instead of, I don’t know, looking at the rankings or standings and deciding what would be best and most fair for the championship, Foley and Stephanie McMahon are just like, “everyone in the ring, you’re in a series of matches tonight that will lead to a title opportunity next week.”
First of all, “a series of matches” is the vaguest thing ever. Isn’t every wrestling show ever a “series of matches?” I know we probably don’t have time to do a full tournament, but you’re just doing the first Universal Championship qualifier in reverse. Before, you were like, “we’re going to have fatal four-way matches to determine who gets to compete in a singles match for the Universal Championship.” Now you’re like, “we’re going to have four singles matches to determine who gets into a fatal four-way for the Universal Championship.” Killer creativity, guys.
Second of all, how hilariously unfair is it that you can just walk to the ring and get included in these qualifiers? What did Cass do to deserve this? He lost a tag match the night before. Sami Zayn and Neville won a lower-tier tag team pre-show match, and Roman Reigns didn’t even HAVE a match because he attacked and injured the champion with a chair. If you can get a title match by just walking to the ring, why isn’t the ring FILLED with guys? Why aren’t Darren Young and Titus O’Neil and Jinder Mahal and whoever else stomping out here to make an appearance and get a spot? They aren’t any less qualified than Enzo. And how sh*tty is it that Cesaro and Sheamus are nowhere to be found, because they’re currently locked in a best-of-7 series “for a championship opportunity?” If they’d just both walked to the ring at the top of this Raw they could’ve saved themselves a lot of work. Now they’re stuck in a story, which means they can’t exist outside of it and take advantage of these easy, lazily-tossed-around opportunities.
Worst: Please Do Not Pretend To Be Injured Right After An Actual Major Injury
So the first match ends up being Seth Rollins and Sami Zayn, with Kevin Owens lingering around long enough to distract Kevin Owens Obsessive Zayn and give Rollins an unfair advantage. Things are going really well until Sami does his “springboard backwards off the bottom rope into a leapfrog” bit, comes down hard and appears to blow out his ankle.
Now look, I don’t want to limit a wrestler’s ability to believably sell and tell a compelling story, but can we maybe not make it look like Sami Zayn hurt himself in the first match after announcing Finn Bálor is out for six months? Especially after Zayn actually hurt himself in his first marquee Raw match, especially when he’s in the ring with Seth Rollins.
I’ll give the match itself a supplementary Best for telling a great story, giving Sami a fair but unfortunate out for taking another clean loss and for making Seth Rollins look skilled and opportunistic, but I’m going to need my pro wrestling to be a little comically unbelievable at least long enough to deal with the string of suspensions, a devastating real-life injury and Randy Orton’s exploded face.
Best: BEST FRIENDS
The next qualifying match is Kevin Owens vs. Neville, because I guess Mick Foley doesn’t know the difference between Neville and Enzo and just told the littlest dude he could find to go out there and wrestle.
It ends with Chris Jericho showing up and distracting Neville long enough for Owens to get an unfair advantage and win, and while I vehemently hate WWE’s love affair with cornball distraction finishes, I’m giving it a Best because (1) I’m gonna feel like a jerk if I Worst everything, and (2) Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho continuing to be best-worst friends is my favorite thing in wrestling right now.
I think my favorite aspect of the friendship is that Jericho is, shockingly, a better friend to Owens than Owens is to him. I guess that’s not shocking if you talk to Sami Zayn, but you know what I mean.
Jericho ends up facing Roman Reigns in the main event, and Owens shows up to return the favor from earlier in the night. The only problem is that Roman Reigns has the power of 65 Nevilles and thrives in the field of John Cenic Odds Overcomings, so he’s way harder to manipulate and beat. Despite doing his best and having a pissed-off Canadian dad in his corner, Jericho can’t close the deal and everybody ends up Superman Punched.
Normally I’d be more upset with Reigns getting ANOTHER title opportunity for no reason, seemingly moving past the United States Championship feud to do more important stuff and more or less beating two top-level heels by himself, but it is what it is. I wasn’t expecting them to not include Roman. I just hope they aren’t bold enough to have him like, spear Kevin Owens and win next week. That’s not a conversation I want to have with every wrestling fan ever.
Worst: Poor Rusev
As for Rusev, he’s stuck doing this crazy thing called “selling” in a match with Big Cass. One quick supplementary Best I’d like to note: I appreciate the creativity in the selling on this show. Usually selling in WWE is limited to the arm, leg, back or nothing whatsoever, and the qualifying matches on Raw featured people selling their eye (Roman Reigns), ankle (Sami Zayn) and ribs (Rusev). It’s not a big creative epiphany or anything, but it’s a pleasant change of pace. After the Styles/Cena match at SummerSlam, I’m hoping Cena gets super into joint manipulation and starts wrestling World Of Sport style on Smackdown.
Anyway, secret babyface Rusev has injured ribs from being beaten violently with a steel chair for trying to stand up for his wife, and now he’s out here competing in a championship qualifier with an injury because he’s what Jim Ross should be at the commentary table calling a “tough son of a bitch.”
Cass targets the ribs (which, I mean, I can’t blame him) and Rusev is forced to bail and bail until he takes the only thing I like less than a distraction finish, the purposeful heel count-out. In a CHAMPIONSHIP QUALIFIER. He’s already a champion though, so I suppose I understand.
And before I forget, +1 to wonderful, beautiful Ru Ru for kicking Enzo Amore in the head for no reason. That should probably happen more.
Best: At Least Dudleyville Isn’t As Covered In Blood As Viperville
I’m not sure what to make of the Dudley Boyz farewell. According to reports it’s totally legitimate and they’re actually free agents again, even though the recent story of the team had been D-Von causing a bunch of miscommunication and being a weak link. I think everyone assumed Bubba was going to turn on him here (or somewhere) and go Full Bully Ray for a bit, but … nope. They’re just saying goodbye.
I’ll save any tearful goodbyes for the Dudleys until we know this isn’t just a Mark Henry-style bait and switch or whatever, but I appreciate them going out getting trounced by The Club, and not ending it on that expectant “squash the hopeless team with no future and pose” thing they were doing with the Shining Stars. Because yo, they punched these dudes for buying them international flights to a vacation destination. I sat behind D-Von on a plane on the way to WrestleMania last year, I know he’s not above flying coach.
The Dudleys have never been my favorite team and I’m not gonna say modern WWE TV will be worse without them, but they’ve got a legitimate claim to legend status, and should get a lifetime of love for being one of the most confusing, diverse and successful tag teams ever. From stuttering in ECW to the WWE TLC matches to Japan and the f*cking Aces and Eights, who has done more for as long and been better at it, even when it was terrible?
Best: New Day, This Is Stupid
The best moment of the entire show is Karl Anderson rendering the New Day speechless by just walking up to them and saying THIS IS STUPID, YOU’RE STUPID, STOP BEING STUPID. New Day’s just like, “uh, well, uh, butts? Booties?” It’s GREAT. Although I gotta say, it’s a little stone-throwy in a glass house for a guy who spent the last month dressed as a doctor so he could put eggs in a jar and call them a dude’s balls to call someone else’s act stupid. It’s like when I get mad at Mauro Ranallo for shoehorning in terrible references nobody gets and being self-satisfied about it. Mauro is the Kanye West of announcers because he’s always GETTIN’ IT IN.
(That’s such a good joke.)
Watching his singles match with Anderson, I just wanted Big E to be in the Series Of Matches for the Universal Championship. I often miss NXT Big E Langston, where they seemed actively impressed by his strength, intensity and skill, and didn’t just market him as the especially loud guy whose clothes don’t fit who sometimes jumps through the ropes like a psychopath.
E gets a strong win over Anderson via the power of teamwork (and The Damned Numbers Game), and the next step for The Club HAS to be adding a third member. If Styles isn’t around to help them and Bálor is too injured to finish whatever they were teasing at SummerSlam, there are a lot of Bullet Club members to choose from. What’s Jeff Jarrett up to?
Best: Johnny Knockout, Sex Jobber
Stephanie McMahon recently announced that WWE would be working to integrate LBGT characters, so meet JOHNNY KNOCKOUT, the subtle, complex character with a delicately progressive reason for wanting to wrestle Braun Strowman:
The WWE Fan Nation video edits out … well, all of it, but yeah, John Knockout over here wants a wrestling match with Braun Strowman because he “likes big, sweaty mean.” If this bothers you at all, consider how much time you’ve spent on the Internet complaining about how Baron Corbin’s stomach looks.
I’m not sure JK (who really needs a “KO” style shirt) tops chinless Pidgeotto James Ellsworth as Strowman’s best jobber, but it’s close. They should bring him back next week as Nia Jax’s jobber, have him say he likes beautiful, powerful women, then scream I’M THREE-DIMENSIONAL into the microphone.
Worst: Titus O’Neil Makes It A Loss
Congratulations, Kalisto, you’re off the hook for worst WWE promo of the year.
This is how the promo STARTS.
“Now last night you all, I mean earlier tonight you guys hurl, heard that the New Day, talking about winning the WWE Tag Team Champions, being BECOMING the WWE Tag Team Champions, last summer, right here in Brooklyn. Now what you all forget, sometimes, is that going into that match, that the Prime Time Players were your tag team champions, buh, going in.”
If you missed it, here’s a clip:
By the time Bob Backlund shows up like a runaway elderly freight train to get bodyslammed, Titus has already dug everyone involved a hole so big they couldn’t climb out of it with a f*cking helicopter. Titus should just quit, go to TNA and change his name to “BARNABUS FLEX” or whatever space gladiator name they’d give him.
Best: The Miz Gives My Upcoming Movie An Unintentional Wrestling Reference
During the spring, I made a movie called Seven Hill City, which is currently in post-production. It stars a very talented young actor named Matthew James. A few weeks after we wrapped filming, he messaged me with, “do you know a pro wrestler named The Miz?” I was like, “uhhh.”
So yeah, here’s the star of a movie I made playing The Miz’s assistant in a Domino’s Pizza commercial, co-starring a monkey. I am so excited about this you guys. Also, Miz would totally want to order the highest quality of the low-quality pizzas. They should do a followup where he makes one of my female leads bring him Mr. Hero.
Best: Hey, We Want Some This Lady
SummerSlam was a total sh*t-show, apparently. Finn is hurt and out for six months, Randy Orton got his head caved in so hard the voices got out, and now Sasha Banks is going on the DL to deal with nagging injuries. Raw opens with the new champion being stripped of the title and two straight heel victories. They’ve gotta give us SOMETHING to be happy about, don’t they?
Hey. We’d like some Bayley.
Two nights after her emotional goodbye in front of 15,000-plus at WWE’s Actually Good Show, Mick Foley brings out Bayley as the new challenger to Charlotte’s WWE Women’s Championship. This is her official WWE TV debut, and it’s crazy that it’s happening in the Barclays Center, where I guess every important Bayley moment is gonna happen going forward.
She gets a short promo with Mick, makes Charlotte make a bunch of concerned faces and gets her first main roster win over Dana Brooke. It’s weird seeing Bayley, the world’s biggest pro wrestling underdog, getting instantly slotted into a Women’s Championship match on her first night on the show. At first that made me kinda sad — the trials and tribulations of Bayley and watching her growth over like three years is what endeared her to us so strongly — but it’s nice to know that the growth and development of NXT can just carry over onto Raw. There’s no reason for her to start at the bottom and struggle against Dana, right? She was just going toe-to-toe with Asuka.
So yeah, this is all exciting and bittersweet and I’m excited to see Bayley catch on with a mainstream audience the way she did with any kid or good-hearted adult smart enough to watch NXT on the reg.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
Spitty
“D-Von get the tables”
*D-Von pulls out a series of charts detailing the financial crisis which Peurto Rico finds itself in.*
Redshirt
(earlier today)
Stephanie: “Look, I’ll give Daddy one line to write on tonight’s show so he feels like he’s contributing. What’s the worst he can do with one line?”
Wendell Baugh
Mick Foley: I sacrifice my Sasha Banks and my Finn Balor in order to summon Bayley! In attack mode!
ScooterMcGooch
Correction: #BayleysOutForHarambe
SHough610
Kevin Dunn: “Hey Vince, Bálor’s hurt, gonna be out a few months.”
Vince: “Damn it! :looks over at Cesaro: Cesaro! Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Cesaro: “I think I am, boss.”
:Cesaro starts to loosen his cuffs:
Vince: “Good! Go tell Roman his punishment is over!”
The Real Birdman
Lana still wearing her wedding dress, Rusev still wearing his cummerbund
Rodeo
“There will be repercussions. If Brock agrees to them.”
Mickenbock
Did Titus’ tongue have a match with Seth?
shb23
::John Cena, backstage::
“Wait, why didn’t his limb damage reset when Zayn built up his Finisher gauge?”
Yukon Cornelius
More important than a title’s appearance is NOT F*CKING INJURING THE INAUGURAL CHAMPION OF SAID TITLE. You really let us down tonight, Seth.
-Brooklyn
Thanks for reading, everybody. Be sure to click the share buttons below, and be back here next week when Seth Rollins accidentally breaks his own eyeglasses and is unable to read, despite being alone and surrounded by books.
