Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: The Rock returned in a 70-minute segment that was enjoyed by all. AJ Styles made his Raw debut, Triple H is the new WWE World Heavyweight Champion and Bo Dallas defeated Flo Rida in a rap battle. A lot of things happened, so this week absolutely nothing will.
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Please scroll through for the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for February 1, 2016.
Worst: The Average Beast
Let’s start at the beginning and jump to the end, shall we?
This week’s show opens with Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman doing their thing, and getting interrupted by Dean Ambrose. Ambrose says he respects Brock but wanted to come out and look him in the eye and tell him he wants the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Taken by itself, it’s a nice moment of character development for Ambrose. It lets him look like a serious character, gets him out of Roman Reigns’ shadow for five seconds and justifies the “lunatic” thing they usually only express via sweaty rambling and sh*tty rebound clotheslines by having him compelled to stand in the ring with Brock Lesnar and talk sh*t.
Unfortunately, very few moments in WWE can be taken by themselves.
Ambrose has beef, but Lesnar doesn’t say word. The impression you (read: me) get is that Lesnar thinks Ambrose is a precious adorable baby for standing up to him so brashly, but he doesn’t take the threats seriously. He’s Brock Lesnar, why should he? That would work brilliantly, because you could have Lesnar go into the match with too much confidence and get caught off-guard by Ambrose’s wacky nonsense, or you could play up the thought that maybe Ambrose’s brashness has already taken Lesnar off his game. Lesnar didn’t immediately murder him, and there’s something there. At the end of the show, Lesnar pops in again to F-5 Ambrose, and the “thou shalt not intentionally provoke the Beast” thing comes up. Maybe Lesnar let Ambrose get into his head for a second and was out to correct his mistake? Maybe he just wanted to wait until Ambrose had a moment of glory to shut him down?
Instead of any of that, it becomes another example of WWE making Brock Lesnar just another guy.
When the Wyatt Family beat down Brock and relegated him to a B-story in the Royal Rumble, it was disappointing. On this week’s Raw they manage to nerf Ambrose AND Lesnar (and, by proxy, Paul Heyman) by having Triple H be the one to “correct the mistake.” Here:
The idea they have (I guess) is that Triple H set up this #1 contenders triple threat featuring a bunch of guys he hates so they’ll destroy each other, and eliminate at least two of three possible problems. It’s the blood rival he’s beaten but is still kinda intimidated by (Brock), the faux John Cena he’s been dealing with for half a year (Roman Reigns) and the wild card who stuck around too long and almost cost him the Royal Rumble (Ambrose). That’s fine. What’s not fine is having H cut Brock’s balls off by taking away his agency, and only compelling Brock to act against Ambrose when he says so. He shows up out of nowhere, asks Brock if he’s gone soft and kinda prods him into attacking. Brock Lesnar. Brock f*cking Lesnar, the guy who responded to losing the title at WrestleMania by almost destroying an arena and everyone in it. That guy needs the manipulative boss to pop in and call him names to make him beat up a guy who got in his face.
Don’t get me wrong, this is all purposeful stuff they’re doing, but purely from a fan perspective I hate it. I don’t want to see Brock Lesnar of all people getting puppet-mastered by an evil general manager. What worked so well during Brock’s title reign and even though the Undertaker matches is that Brock is external to WWE happenings and logic and overpowered as balls. He showed up and destroyed the two strongest characters of the modern era — WrestleMania Undertaker and Champion John Cena — like they were nothing. Now you’ve got him getting beaten up by Erick Rowan and being all “aw shucks” about a Rumble elimination, chuckling through a Dean Ambrose sh*t-talking and getting ordered around by the boss? Really?
If Lesnar is only further feuds because Triple H told him to, it takes away Brock’s agency. If Lesnar has no agency, his choices regarding Dean Ambrose don’t have the same impact. If Ambrose isn’t affecting Lesnar’s decisions and the whole thing’s moved forward by someone else, it takes away what makes Ambrose’s confrontation brave and cool.
WWE’s insistance that there are only a few character types and you can switch anybody you want into and out of those roles on a whim is so damn frustrating. Stop training us to think only one story can matter at a time, and that only The Authority’s decisions matter.
Worst: Only The Authority’s Decisions Matter
Roman: hey bro check out this lighted box with the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in it
Ambrose: yeah this seems like the perfect spot for casual conversation
Roman: pop the top on those room temp wooders bitch[Stephanie McMahon enters]
Stephanie: Hey are y’all broken up yet?
Roman: what, pfft, no
Ambrose: no
Stephanie: You definitely will be soon!
Ambrose: no we won’t
Stephanie: Yes you will. I wrote the script.
Ambrose: o rly
Roman: pfft pfft
Stephanie: Also tonight I am punishing you for standing in my office alone having a casual conversation by putting you in a REGULAR MATCH against opponents you can EASILY BEAT
Roman: snicker snicker
Stephanie: United you will stand but divided you will fall![long pause]
Stephanie: now let’s all stand quietly in my office until this camera turns off
Best/Worst: Color Commentary And PPV Match Announcements Killing Drama
I don’t want to go too far with the “this is how they SHOULD have done it” stuff, because that’s not constructive, and it’s (usually) not funny. At the same time, I get mad that they run Kalisto vs. Rusev and I can’t get hype for it. I can’t even remain hype for it.
Part of the problem is that I’ve got to write about these shows every week and I’ve seen how the sausage is made. Let’s say Alberto Del Rio is getting another shot at the United States Championship at Fast Lane. Because, you know, he is. Say you missed the Royal Rumble being the logical end point of the feud — they had 3 matches, Kalisto won 2 of them, thereby winning the series and proving he’s the better man — and are such a slave to the “rematch clause” you’ve got to run the same matches over and over. Kalisto’s got a match on Raw against Rusev. Rusev is on Del Rio’s team. Why announce the Fast Lane match and have Del Rio on commentary already? It’s not a creative approach to a wrestling feud, and it kinda makes us feel like we’re fast forwarding through Rusev/Kalisto in real-time. Rusev’s just a filler prop to get to a match we’ve already seen three times in the past month. Rusev and Kalisto are both great at what they do and could really tear it up, but they don’t, because why would they? This isn’t the part that matters.
The optimist in me wishes all the parts mattered, so when we got to the big tentpoles of the fandom (i.e. the pay-per-views) we could have these rich conversations about who’s doing what and why, and how it all ties together. Instead, we are directly instructed to see Raw and Smackdown as vague, hours-long story-building sessions that gives too much time to badly written conversations (on commentary or in the ring) and too little to the stuff that might actually convert casual fans into regulars. That’s not even me being a blind smark or whatever, I’m talking stuff like “unique characters,” “interesting stories” and “entertaining action.” Basic sh*t. Not asking Raw to become The Temple over here, but damn, a bigger, slightly stupider version of Full Sail would be nice.
+1 to Rusev for the world’s most unrealistic sell of that headscissors off the announce table. He went full “GET INTO 619 POSITION AT ALL COSTS” diving into the barrier.
Worst: The Rookie Redneck
A long time ago, someone wise wrote:
WWE’s insistance that there are only a few character types and you can switch anybody you want into and out of those roles on a whim is so damn frustrating.
This edition of MizTV is a perfect example. From the Royal Rumble until Monday, AJ Styles was treated as an incoming star. He was a former IWGP Champion, just like Brock Lesnar, and he’s good enough on a WWE stage to pin Chris Jericho clean. On Monday, that narrative changed from “cool new star” to “remember Daniel Bryan,” and that’s the worst. We look back on Bryan with vegan beer goggles or whatever, but so much of Bryan’s career was WWE not being able to handle that he was weird and different, and feeling like they had to address it every f*cking second. He’s a nerd! He’s a vegan! He’s small! He’s got a goat-face! They told him he’d never make it! He’s a B+ player! Just non-stop. And yeah, that ended up giving him a lot of support from the fans, but the only reason it worked is because he’s AWESOME and deserves the support. It was an anomaly. You can say they built up an underdog mystique for him and cashed in on it, but to me it always felt like he was succeeding in spite of it.
With AJ Styles, here’s a quick list of things you might not want to constantly mention:
1. his height
2. his accent
TNA never said “oh wow look how little and sh*tty AJ Styles is, I can’t believe he’s hanging in there against Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe!” They just let him wrestle good matches because he wrestles good matches. New Japan never said, “can you believe this redneck goober is having a good match with Okada? I CAN’T BELIEVE IT THIS IS SO CRAZY.” They just let him wrestle good matches because he wrestles good matches. When WWE brought him in for the Rumble, they let him be AJ Styles. He’s good at this, and they managed to grab him when he’s the best he’s ever been. Now, two weeks later, you’ve got him on Miz TV getting the “you’re short and you’re a hillbilly and nobody likes you and there’s no way you can succeed” gimmick? What the f*ck?
AJ Styles is not Daniel Bryan. Every guy like this is not Daniel Bryan. You can tell more than one story. You can be okay with this guy as he is, because people like him. He’s already a thing. You don’t have to take a successful 18-year veteran loved by most of the non-WWE wrestling world (and a pretty sizable chunk of the WWE world), break him down and build him back up. NXT didn’t bring in Samoa Joe and say, “can you believe how fat this guy is? He’s over the hill!” They didn’t mention how fat Kevin Owens is constantly either, but I guess here we are. Sometimes it is in your best interest to not give the WWE Universe talking points to deride your talent, even if you’ve got the heels saying it. It’s why heels never mentioned Hulk Hogan being bald. You don’t have to nuke your own thing.
To put it another way, I am willing to pull the phrase “rookie redneck” out of JBL’s mouth with a pair of pliers if necessary.
The Middle Of The Show Lightning Round
This week’s show felt very safe and not a lot happened, so I’m going to burn through like an hour and a half of it right now.
Worst: The Usos vs. the Social Outcasts. Bo Dallas couldn’t be there because his grandfather is ill, which kept us from watching Bo get a different kind of ill. The match itself is fine, but it’s the definition of filler, and the Usos still don’t have any moves beyond “kick,” “jump” and “fall.” Plus, they’ve managed to turn the Shawn Michaels/Shelton Benjamin Gold Rush Tournament finish into something involving Curtis Axel that can’t even pop the crowd.
Best: Lilian Garcia announced the Usos as “Grammy Award-winning.” Great job, Lilian. You’re the best announcer in the history of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia.
Worst: The announce team burying Lilian for it and showing replays. Just like the AJ Styles thing, maybe don’t repeatedly point out all the ways your audience can notice you’re terrible?
Best: Ric Flair as a crazy old man. I can’t get enough of it. He gets on the apron to help Charlotte cheat, and when Alicia Fox tries to stop him he tries to kick her in the face. Senile drunkard Ric Flair has no chill. Plus:
I’ll also give this match a Worst both for “Brie Mode” and the lady who walks out under it, and for “____ just pinned the Divas Champion!” as WWE’s storyline constant. Charlotte losing a match when her cheating backfires isn’t a bad idea, but isn’t totally necessary or appropriate for Chaotic Neutral Brie Bella.
Actually, I’ll give Brie another Worst for not being able to realistically emote under any circumstances. Remember when she smiled her way through an interview about her husband having to possibly retire and never get to do the thing he loves again? Watch her smile her way through an interview about how her twin sister can’t leave the house for three months and may never wrestle again. “I am so sad! Brie Mode!” Brie Bella acts like A.C. Slater reads sports scores.
Worst: Big Show vs. the Wyatts. I’ve started actually leaving the room and listening to Wyatt Family segments like they’re on the radio. This was, of course, a rematch of the classic Stairs Match between Show and Erick Rowan, so you can imagine how excited the crowd was. The post-match beatdown was well done, but it sorta relies on us having sympathy for Show, who has turned so many times in 2016 alone we aren’t sure where he stands. Also, big ups to Roman Reigns and The Family for letting Show bail them out on Smackdown and still choosing to hang out in the back having casual conversations near decorative belts while Show gets beat to death on Raw. They are the worst friends ever.
Worst: Tyler Breeze should make his next seasonal residence “NXT” and get the hell away from these shows.
Best: Mark Henry gets a video package for Black History Month, and as sad as Mark’s been lately, I’m glad he’s getting some love. Mark Henry at his best, portrayed in the right context, is one of the best WWE performers of the modern era. Unfortunately, the context they like most for him is “jovial jobber with a sexual past who only gets matches and in-flight magazine covers when we need to remind the media that we’ve had a couple of black champions.”
I want to see a video like this for the other 85% of Mark’s WWE career, which includes getting frightened by penises, having sex with his sister, fathering a severed hand, emasculating Clark Duke in a hot tub and being told he smells bad.
Best? Goldust is literally in the toilet. I wanted to write a bit about how this is symbolic of how WWE treats the Rhodes family, but “Dog, you got doo-doo on your foot” may be Raw’s “Come at the King, you best not miss.” Maybe I’m biased (and I definitely am), but if you can start a segment squatting over an unflushed toilet and make it delightful, you’re on some next level sh*t. Pun intended.
I still think if they team up, they should forget “Golden Truth” and call themselves “Gold-R.”
Best: That Same Match We Always Enjoy
I feel like Dolph Ziggler and Kevin Owens have wrestled each other a thousand times in the last few months, but I’m okay with it because it’s always the same version of “kinda good.” That sounds like a backhanded compliment as best, but I actually really enjoy it. Every match has the same few problems — Ziggler’s exaggerated selling works but seems ridiculous compared to everything else on the show, they’re not really fighting for anything, they always seem like they’re holding back a little and the announce team treats a 2-time World Champion beating Kevin Owens as a “major upset” — but they also maintain a lot of the good.
Ziggler’s great at taking a beating, even if his response to it gets a little comical, and Owens is great at laying one in. Owens is the current reigning king of the in-ring sh*t-talk, and his response to losing matches is almost always brilliant. His feud with Michael Cole’s face continues after this one, when a defeated Owens pulls himself up against the announce table just to throw Cole’s papers. I’m not sure if either of these guys needs to beat the other at this point or if they’ve been 50/50’d into oblivion, but I’ll take a well-wrestled, entertaining meaningless match over a BAD meaningless match any day of the week. Plus, you just read about a bunch of those.
This is a random observation, but I wish Ziggler would develop the Zig Zag into a cleaner counter so he could get some “from outta nowhere” RKO heat out of it. Instead of going up and over on a pop-up powerbomb, landing, jumping backwards and Zig Zagging, can he figure out how to go up and over and Zig Zag on the way down? Would that Sling Blade the move up too much?
Best/Worst: Banksy
(That’s Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks, if you’re wondering.)
1. First of all, a major Worst to the Alabama crowd for the “what” chant. They did “what” for EVERYBODY. I’m not gonna get preachy about what you are and aren’t supposed to do as wrestling fans … well, I’m not gonna get preachy about it again, so I’ll just say WWE should have security guards roaming the crowd during shows, and if they catch you chanting “what” they should be able to pull you out of your seat and throw you down a flight of stairs.
2. Second of all, oh man are these promos bad. Sasha’s never been a promo ace, but she’s never worse than when she has to deliver one of those slow, cookie-cutter WWE promos about how she will be the NEXT pause Divas pause Champion. Of N pause X pause T! Pause pause pause. Honestly though, Sasha’s promo sounded like Hard Times compared to Naomi, who has been around for 6 years and can’t say a full sentence on the microphone without sounding like the words are gonna crawl out of her mouth in the form of Ghoulies and attack her.
3. 17th of all, nice Kanye/Wiz reference.
4. Team B.A.D.’s breakup is so half-assed it’s the Zack Gowen of team breakups. Naomi and Tamina show up, tell Sasha everything’s fine and say they’re cool with her going solo. Then they stick around to help her cheat. I’m with you so far. The ref doesn’t call a DQ on Tamina holding Becky Lynch’s arms (because I guess he assumes Becky’s gonna duck and Naomi’s gonna hit Tamina), so Sasha has to leave the ring and confront them about it. That’s when they turn on HER. Because splitting up the team is fine, going your own way to reach your dreams is fine, but compromise our ability to arbitrarily cheat on your behalf and you’re dead to us. It’s all an excuse to get Sasha and Becky paired up again, and Team BAE lives.
Between that and the BFF snap with Charlotte at the Royal Rumble, it’s like Sasha’s fast forwarding through her entire NXT career. Next week she’s gonna be in a 2-out-of-3 falls match with Bayley where the second fall is an ironman match.
Worst: “Please Welcome My Guest, Chris Jericho”
No.
(+1 to Jericho for finally working in a Glenn Frey tribute, though. Most Of Us Are Sad about it. I want Jericho to come out on the other side of this Mid-Life Crisis character as the only guy around old enough and with enough perspective to realize life’s passing us by. I also want an episode of Ride Along where he drives his kids around in a mini-van and cranks The Long Run while they roll their eyes.)
Best: Kiddy Omega
We’ve already touched on this week’s Smackdown main-event — Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose have got to be tired of teaming up to face mid-card heels every damn week — so I’ll point out what might’ve been the best part of the show.
The New Day cut a promo about booties or whatever before the main, and it’s not their best work. Stuff like “The People’s Booty” isn’t funny, as much as I want it to be. Booty is an adjective, guys, when you use it as a noun it just ends up being a play on words that doesn’t actually play on any of the words. LOOK AT ME, I’M BREAKING DOWN THE ONE PART OF THE SHOW I LOVE, I AM GOOD AT MY JOB.
But yeah, no, the promo saves itself somewhere in the middle when they point out a kid in the audience, and we see this:
Yes, that’s a kid in a Bullet Club shirt doing the New Day hip swivel. The best part is that New Day compliments him for his moves, but reminds him that they will still fight him. Three grown-ass men are in a wrestling ring telling a child that loves them (and puro!) they’re gonna beat his ass if he doesn’t behave. They will fight him OUT OF LOVE.
I wish that when Roman’s music had hit, they’d cut to him in the crowd in a Chaos shirt, throwing violent hip-thrusts. Full-on double-arm pump hip thrusts. For Gedo.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
B-Low
Roman is so NOT over that BIRMINGHAM ALABAMA is cheering for 3 gyrating black men in neon clothes over him
Sammy Davis Jr.
Reigns could re-institute a poll tax and this crowd still wouldn’t fully support him
Mr. Royal Rumble, TheCensoredMSol
Some say Brie Bella ended the Divas Revolution.
wwespn
If Bray Wyatt debuts an actual Sister Abigail, Brock Lesnar should debut a female sidekick named Sue Plex.
Stalemate Associate
Of all the lies Michael Cole tells on a weekly basis “Titus O’Niel is FUN TO WATCH” is the most egregious.
StreetSpirit
“This is me in the Nexus, do you see?
This is me in 3MB, do you see?
This is me in Slater Gator, do you see?”
JonSte13
Cole: How do you stop the Wyatt Family?
WWE Universe: Uh, when’s the next PPV?
The Real Birdman
Wyatts kidnap Show and steal his soul. Immediately turn on each other only to reunite minutes later
jamrorange
How many necks has Brie broken to get to the middle?
TheGunslinger
HHH: Vince, PETA is here again.
Vince: What do they want now?
HHH: Something about a dead horse.
Thanks for reading, everybody. See you next week! Don’t forget to share the column, and to vote for us in the thing!
