Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: The Royal Rumble happened, and we’re officially on the Road to WrestleMania. That means it’s time for popular old guys who want paychecks to show up and get the biggest ones, and for all those people who tore their shoulders between April and December to stay home and pay 10 bucks to watch WrestleMania on their computer. Also, AJ Styles is here, and it’s super weird.
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Please scroll through for the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for January 25, 2016.
Worst: Let’s Jump Ahead And Talk About Fast Lane, And Building A Raw Around A Concept You Aren’t Paying Off
So, Triple H is the WWE World Heavyweight Champion.
The ongoing theme at the top of the card — the Roman Reigns vs. The Authority story, specifically — is that WWE has created a protagonist who barely cares and pitting him against some of the dumbest villains in the history of popular fiction. It would take an entire column to break this down point-by-point, but I’ll hit some of the major ones again.
WWE isn’t real. Pro wrestling doesn’t always have to make perfect sense for it to work. However, when you’re telling a story, your story’s own internal logic has to work (or exist) to get you from point A to point B to point C. That’s how stories work. Beginnings, middles, ends. If you’re pro wrestling and you’re telling an ongoing story that continuously evolves and never ends you’ve got a little wiggle room, but you still have to create a universe, establish the rules of that universe and stick to them in some way shape or form for your story to be compelling to anyone looking for more than the most basic skeleton of call-and-response entertainment. It’s the difference in a real TV show and something like Teletubbies. That’s just sounds and colors and stupid sh*t occurring. Even absurd shows like Family Guy have a structure and clearly established expectations. Even most kids shows, even the most creatively insulting ones, make sense from beginning to end.
WWE’s caught in the “reality era,” which means even they don’t know what they are. They’re whatever you want them to be. It’s one of the reasons wrestling fans have never been able to come up with a consensus about what they want and expect from a wrestling show. It’s a 3-ring circus. In 2016 there’s only one circus in town, they get to define what a circus is independently of 100+ years of already existing circuses and how dare you call it a circus, real fans call it a circus. See how f*cking bizarre that reads?
The story at the top of the card is that The Authority doesn’t want Roman Reigns to be WWE World Heavyweight Champion because of his attitude. They originally wanted him to be their “golden boy” because he’s big and strong and handsome, but he’s kinda got the response patterns of a stupid child or a really intelligent dog so he’s impossible to work with. He’s insulted the McMahons, punched Vince in the face and ruthlessly attacked Triple H on multiple occasions. You’d think they’d get the belt off him, fire him and never mention it again. They can’t, because “it’s what’s best for business.” Now, back when WWE created this trope with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon, the rub was that McMahon hated Austin because he couldn’t control and mold him, but Austin was undeniably the biggest and most popular star in the company, so he couldn’t fire him. He had to keep him around, make money and walk a tightrope between antagonizing Austin and giving him enough opportunities to succeed to make for compelling television. With Reigns, there’s none of that. Average WWE fans seem to like him (because WWE created and marketed him to average WWE fans, something the Authority has openly admitted to and bragged about several times), but a lot of people don’t. He gets booed when he wins the Royal Rumble. He gets booed when he starts The Royal Rumble. John Cena exists and he’s not John Cena, try as he might, so there’s no hook to keeping him around. He’s not the biggest star. There’s no competition that could pay him enough and turn him into a star to threaten your company. There’s no downside. If you hate him, you can fire him or throw him in the doghouse and be done.
The idea is that Roman is supposed to be fighting this evil group of business types who want to keep him down and prevent him from getting opportunities, but that doesn’t happen. When he turns down The Authority, the response isn’t “f*ck you,” it’s “you’re in a title tournament, I hope nothing goes wrong!” He wins that, The Authority shows up to congratulate him, he beats them up. Sheamus cashes in Money in the Bank — a legal WWE thing that is not technically cheating, as opportunistic as it is — and takes Roman’s title. The Authority’s response within 24 hours is to give Roman another shot at the belt, at TLC. There, Roman loses via interference from the League of Nations — again, not technically cheating, as TLC matches are no disqualification — and Roman beats up Triple H in anger. The Authority’s response is to give him another shot at the title, with Mr. McMahon as the referee and the stipulation that if he loses, he’s fired. He wins and punches Mr. McMahon in the face. The Authority’s response is to put him in the Royal Rumble and make him defend his championship. Their response to assault is do your job. Roman enters the match, powders for most of it and ultimately loses to Triple H, who has entered as (1) an act of revenge, and (2) an act of desperation, because the Authority will do anything to get the title off Roman.
Triple H is now the champ, and is openly stating that he will be the champ forever until people start listening to the Authority. So what’s the next move? To give Roman Reigns another shot at the title.
Raw opens with Vince and Stephanie McMahon congratulating themselves on a convoluted job well done and announcing that they’re making a #1 contender match for the main-event of Fast Lane. The winner of that match will go on to face Triple H at WrestleMania. The purpose of all of the matches on Raw is to “impress the Authority,” because they’re awarding spots in the match to people who catch their eye. The announce team drives this home all night. It’s not a nitpicking thing I’m singling out and obsessing over. They say Kevin Owens is competing hurt because he wants to impress The Authority. Dolph Ziggler and Kane, people with huge beefs against the Authority in theory, are competing to impress The Authority. It’s non-stop.
We get to the end of the night, and what happens? Stephanie announces that it’s a triple threat match featuring Roman Reigns (of course), Dean Ambrose (Roman’s best friend and another guy they hate), and Brock Lesnar, who wasn’t even on the damn show. You don’t have to convince me that Brock is impressive enough to get the match, but why set up “the match will be determined via performance on tonight’s Raw” if that has nothing to do with it? I get that the bad guys are liars, but “lying” and “unreliable narrator” are two different things. You’re setting up drama that’s intent is to be meaningless. You’re killing your own stories before you tell them.
As for Roman getting another goddamn shot, there’s a way to justify it. You could say that Roman’s got a rematch coming his way because he’s the former champion, and the best way to wrangle him through that and keep him from actually getting another shot is to put him in this #1 contender match against his brother and the toughest guy in the world. But to do that you’re technically changing the contract from “rematch” to “chance at a rematch,” which means you could just change it to “no rematch.” In theory, you would’ve written the contract to not have a rematch clause anyway, because you hate this dude and are literally manipulating the entirety of WWE’s most popular single match, the Royal Rumble, to get the belt off of him. Vince owns the company. Triple H and Stephanie are publicly announced members of the board of directors. If you want to retcon that and they aren’t, what, is the board of directors going to repeatedly make you give Roman chances, but not step in when you’re the acting boss of the promotion and putting yourself in Royal Rumbles with personal vendettas? Remember when Vince got removed from power for doing that kind of thing?
None of this makes sense. None of it works. It only works if you think of pro wrestling as a stupid thing you don’t care about. If pro wrestling isn’t real and is just mindless dumb entertainment, it’s Teletubbies. Roman Reigns is the baby in the sun. Sheamus is that stupid vacuum cleaner. It’s colors and sounds. A story that doesn’t believe itself can’t be told. You’re just Elder Cunningham making up sh*t to sell the Book of Mormon to Ugandans who don’t know any better.
The only possible way I can imagine this all coming around to making some semblance of sense is if The Authority is still just grooming Reigns to be their golden boy, and they’re trying to beat him into submission. That would explain why they take so much grief from him and keep him around, and why they seem to be overtly setting themselves up for failure every time they succeed. It’s the same self-defeating thing they were trying to do with Rollins, where they’d cheat their asses off to help him succeed, then undermine him as soon as he has. Chaotic Neutral isn’t best for business, guys.
Best: Kevin Owens, Asshole Babyface
WWE’s best stories are the ones they aren’t telling on purpose.
Take Kevin Owens for example. Objectively, he’s one of the worst people in the WWE Universe. He’s abrasively rude, mean-spirited and violent. He can’t leave well enough alone. He’s the kind of guy who’d sneak attack his best friend, take his championship and put him on the shelf for months, go up to the main roster and forget about him forever only to immediately go back down to developmental when the friend returns because he’s not mentioning Kevin Owens enough. Everyone kinda hates him, and he’s usually got between 4-6 feuds happening simultaneously.
At the same time, Owens’ character makes sense. It’s actually got a core of nobility to it. He’s a guy who loves pro wrestling and excels at it, but has a severe inferiority complex because he looks like this, and everybody else looks like that. He wasn’t born with the physical gifts of guys like John Cena or Finn Balor, but he’s so f*cking pig-headed and determined that he’s able to not only rise to their level, but go toe-to-toe with (and sometimes defeat) them. As the Cena feud proved, he’s hustle and loyalty without the respect.
WWE’s version of “respect” is replaced by a dedication to his family. Everything he does is for them. He’s on Raw all bandaged up and hobbling around from the Last Man Standing match at the Royal Rumble, fighting for an opportunity at Fast Lane because getting these opportunities and being the best is important to him. When The Authority did the “one versus all” match against Roman, Owens was the first to step up. And he almost won! What was the Authority’s response? Nothing. What did they do when he defeated Dolph Ziggler despite being obviously injured as hell on Raw? Nothing. They gave the match to two popular guys and a part-timer who didn’t even compete. Remember when Owens traded temporarily allegiance to Seth Rollins in exchange for a WrestleMania match?
Owens is the guy Roman Reigns is trying to be. He cares about his family. He’s willing to tough it out and compete no matter what, because he’s got more guts than brains. He’s an acerbic badass who doesn’t make many friends. He’s the everyman. He’s working hard to reach the brass ring, but his sh*tty bosses are pulling it away from him every time. They don’t think he’s got the right look. Hell, he’s Reigns AND Daniel Bryan.
That moment where we realize it, he realizes it and it all comes together is going to be the BEST. And I hope Sami Zayn shows up to ruin it for him.
Best: Bo Rida Or Die
Here’s where the show peaked. Here’s where pro wrestling peaked. Popular music may have peaked as well.
As you may know, my least favorite regularly recurring celebrity guest character in the WWE Universe is Flo Rida. If you aren’t familiar with his work, imagine if Pitbull was Abobo from Double Dragon and had the hip hop skillset of Ted Mosby on bourbon. Imagine if the Black Eyed Peas were one dude and they said, “hey, our music’s too good, take it down a notch.”
Whenever Flo is on the show, he gets to beat up wrestlers. In WWE, being famous for something unrelated to wrestling makes you instantly more important than all but like 5 guys in the company. If you’re on a CW show or play in a sh*tty bro-country band, you can just show up to the arena and humiliate the mid-carder of your choice. If you’re more famous than that, you get to beat up Big Show. Flo Rida has repeatedly targeted Heath Slater, making him an enemy of the Best and Worst of Raw state.
On Raw, we finally got the payoff. Again, by accident.
The show was in Miami, so Flo Rida was there. His husband James recently died so he’s in the front row and ready to have some fun. The Social Outcasts show up, Slater recognizes his blood rival in the crowd and invites him into the ring for a battle. A battle rap. With BO DALLAS. Flo Rida ain’t even on Heath’s level. He’s gonna let his little homies ride on you bitch-made ass Bad Boy bitches.
Now, before last night I would not have imagined we’d live in a world where V.K. Wallstreet’s dorkiest son would murk Flo Rida in a battle rap in Flo Rida’s hometown, but here we are. Flo Rida takes the most spectacular L in rap battle history to MR. NXT, a guy who is objectively the least cool person in a group containing Curtis Axel. Bo drops bows on him and it’s f*cking magical. Flo Rida has the flow of a stopped-up toilet and can’t seem to remember half his lines, which is made even better by the fact that this is pro wrestling and he knew it was happening and had time to practice. He didn’t even get his Ric Flair “woo” right. Dude got beat at what he does for a living in his hometown by a guy so white his diaper underoos blend into his skin.
The Match Doesn’t Even Matter, Heath Won The Feud
Flo Rida’s weak bars bring out the Dudley Boyz for a match. Both Dudleys are better rappers than Flo Rida.
The match tries to get Flo’s heat back by having him once again put his hands on Slater and get involved, but it doesn’t even matter anymore. Heath Slater won and Flo Rida exploded like a dead Mega Man.
Best/Worst: Cool Dad Takes The Camaro Out For A Spin
AJ Styles’ Raw debut was good, but not great. Chris Jericho has not yet accepted the fact that he looks and kinda moves like Dr. Robotnik and shouldn’t still be having fast-paced junior heavyweight matches with the best wrestlers in the world. He should’ve realized that somewhere around the CM Punk feud.
This is one of those matches that had to happen, though, so I’m giving it a Blurst. I don’t know what to call the sh*t in the middle. AJ is a ready-made star, and I love it. I love that there’s no weird dues-paying learning curve for him, and that he gets to step into the show as one of the best wrestlers in the world. It’s a very NXT way to debut a guy on the WWE roster, and something they don’t do enough. I guess they don’t trust their audience to accept that other wrestling promotions may exist and be good, and that you don’t need 3-5 years of Cesaro-esque stop-and-go failure to earn a top spot.
The match wasn’t bad, but like I said, it had to happen. Styles vs. Jericho is something we all wanted to see in 2005, and in 2008, and maybe even in 2011. To me, this is sorta like when Lionheart Chris Jericho wrestled Bobby Eaton on Nitro in 1996. If you fast-forwarded Jericho a few years and rewound Eaton back a few, it’d be one of the best matches ever. That’s not how time works, though, and sometimes the best wrestlers in the world intersect at the wrong time. Sometimes Jericho’s not there yet, and Eaton’s way past it. Sometimes AJ Styles gets a WWE job at the exact moment when WWE audiences say, “we’re not totally buying this, Chris.”
Best: The Promise Of Heel Jericho
I liked the post-match handshake stuff, because it’s the first time Jericho’s had an edge in years. He’s at his best when he’s an obnoxious narcissist, and at his worst when he’s an obnoxious narcissist begging for cheers. The man’s too old to be using his TV time to say sh*t like “rooty tooty booty” and do cartwheel umpire ejections. As good as he is, he’s not The Rock. He doesn’t have international megastar popularity to justify that sh*t. He looks like an old luchador in speedos. He needs to put the suit on, bring back the tights and make us boo him with 10th grade vocabulary words.
Not sure where to put it, but I kinda loved Jericho assuming AJ Styles, 18-year veteran and 38-year old father of 5, was a kid. “C’MON, KID!” I want a segment where Jericho and Vince McMahon sit on a porch somewhere popping Centrum Silver, loudly complaining about how much better TV was when Jackie Gleason could threaten to beat his wife for laughs.
Total Divas Segregation
Total Divas is back, which means the women’s division is now carefully divided into two groups: the cast of Total Divas, and “wrestling.” It’s not really a condemnation or anything, just an observation.
Best: The first Divas match of the night is Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks. In a continuing of the wonderful “Becky Lynch stories make sense” trope, this is happening because of Sasha’s involvement after the Becky vs. Charlotte match at the Royal Rumble. Sasha showed up, powdered Becky, pretended to be Charlotte’s friend and then jumped her from behind to massive cheers. Sasha’s accidentally anarchic because she’s fresh and cool. Here, Sasha and Becky have a perfectly fine match until Charlotte interferes and attacks them both. See how that follows everything up? Now you’ve (assumedly) got your Fast Lane Divas Championship match: Charlotte vs. Becky vs. Sasha. That allows you to do Charlotte vs. Sasha without spoiling the one-on-one match, which should (and probably will) happen at WrestleMania. For the Women’s Championship. Maybe Sasha throws the Icing By Claire’s title in the garbage.
Worst: The second Divas match is the Total Divas match, built loosely around the idea that Paige and Natalya are friends because “Total Divas,” and Paige and Alicia Fox are enemies because “Total Divas.” The key to any Total Divas match is that all the stories relate to Total Divas, even though the show is taped several months in advance and all the resolutions to those problems have already been filmed. Wrestling has to pretend it’s happening six months ago to suit reality show storylines. That might be fine if those stories were engaging, but the biggest story here is “Alicia unfollowed Paige on social media, and they were supposed to be FRIENDS!” If you’re still fighting over that six months later, you have serious problems. The match is about two minutes long, and is so forgettable that when I was writing up my Raw results I put Natalya on both teams.
Accepting women’s wrestling in WWE would be way easier if you couldn’t see WWE fighting its own progress every week.
Best/Worst: Our Annual Stressful Conversation About The Rock
Hey, it’s that time of year again where we welcome all the people who heard this column talked sh*t about The Rock and felt it necessary to defend the world’s most beloved popular man in the comments section of a wrestling blog. Hi, people I’ll never talk to again after Thursday!
I’m going to keep this as diplomatic as I can, so stay with me.
After a few years of this, I’ve come to the understanding that The Rock is not for me. I don’t mean I don’t like him, I mean he’s not intended for me. You’d think I’d have figured that out a few seconds into WrestleMania 27 or whatever, but sometimes my brain takes the long way around. Here’s the thing: The Rock is maybe the most charismatic, engaging dude on the entire Earth, wrestling or otherwise. It’s what’s made him the world’s biggest movie star. He’s legitimately one of the most important (and maybe best) WWE Superstars in history, certainly of the modern era, and the fact that he keeps coming back to do wrestling stuff when he really doesn’t have to is a credit to his true-hearted love of the business. The Rock showing up is good for everyone because it gets more eyes on the product, sells more tickets, gets people talking, and so on. I’m not blind to any of this. The guy’s an entertainment icon because he deserves to be.
At the same time, The Rock is not for me. He’s Peter Pan from those GEICO commercials. He swoops in at the reunion, uncomfortably insults everybody, and sings. He’s a Blink-182 song. “Your husband does sodomy! You’re a bitch!” And, like a Blink-182 song, he’s from 20 years ago.
The Rock is a relic from an era of wrestling I didn’t really enjoy. I was never on the WWF side of the Attitude Era, and I’ve kinda spent 16 years between 2000 and today trying to grow up. As it stands, I don’t have any great nostalgia for most of the WWF-exclusive acts of the day — I like guys like Stone Cold and Foley because I connected to them first in WCW, and never get as bonkers over people like The Rock and The Undertaker because they weren’t “my” guys. It’s been a matter of preference for like 20 years, but it always, always becomes a judgmental conversation about who thinks they’re doing wrestling fandom “right” and why you’re a bitch of a feminist of an SJW or a pussy or a something something for thinking whatever you think. The “look at my dick, suck my dick, f*ck you” attitude of WWF wrestling fans in 1999 does not age well, and people who hold that as their idea of what wrestling is and only surface when someone from that era returns to do a 1999 retread makes this whole operation a f*cking chore.
So, the Rock isn’t for me. I’ve gotten preachy about it in the past, but that’s the honest truth of it. The guy’s brilliant and engaging and the best showman pro wrestling’s ever had in a walk, and every time he shows up it makes me want to go ass-first into a garbage disposal.
Rock’s appearance on Monday was everything good and bad about him, all at once, wrapped up in what I’m assuming is a eight-ball. Rock drove his car into the arena like a guy on drugs and then walked around the backstage area like a guy on drugs, interacting with various people and doing what the Rock does. He got Miz to park his car — poor Miz — had a legitimately funny bit with the Big Show about the finish of the 2000 Royal Rumble, shook hands with Rick Ross (who I assume was leaving the show due to secondhand embarrassment after the Flo Rida thing) and enthusiastically yammered about how he nailed Lana. For the Rock to work, he has to constantly reassure us of his heterosexuality. I’m talking the character now, not the real life guy. “The Rock” is always like HEY LILIAN YOU WANT TO DO ME RIGHT, HEY LANA REMEMBER WHEN WE HAD INTERCOURSE because so much of his other content is about penises and sticking stuff up other guys’ asses. It’s a delicate ecosystem of conflicting fragility and aggressive bullsh*t.
After like 2 1/2 hours of greeting random people with the wide-eyed, rambling confidence of Finn the Human, Rock makes his way down to the ring. There he meets some cosplaying fans and does some extended improv with them, because I’m guessing the booking sheet blocked off an entire hour for Rock to be Rock. Once things actually get going, The New Day interrupt. I have been trained to be wary of anyone I like interacting with Rock on TV, because whether you like him or not, The Rock brings with him a damning lesson about popularity. He’s the most popular guy in the world, right? Think of him as the most popular guy in your high school. Whether he’s a cool guy or a d-bag, his popularity overrides anyone’s opinion of him. He can say or do anything, and because he’s the most popular one, he “wins.” New Day could throw him under a bus and make him look like a fool, but he can say “llama penis” and everyone will throw up their hands in rapture and pass out. The Rock being The Rock is more important than anything he says or does. It gets easier when you remember that. Cena benched him harder than anyone with that “notes written on your hand” burn, and people still took Rock’s side. JOHN CENA spitting ABSOLUTE TRUTH wasn’t enough to shake Rock for more than a few seconds. What hope does literally anyone else doing anything else have?
So New Day shows up and does their thing, standing up for Byron Saxton in an awesome moment and telling Rock to “watch the product.” They’re great, but llama penis, and then Rock and the Usos beat them up. It is what it is. If you loved every second of it, that’s awesome. You’re supposed to. It had a ton of enthusiasm and energy behind it, and hell, Raw booked Consequences Creed into a segment with the f*cking Rock. That’s cool. ‘Dammit’ was a really good song.
I’d like to see The New Day vs. the Usos and The Rock at WrestleMania, even, for a lot of reasons. Rock has always been a little more generous in the ring than on the microphone, and actual wrestling would get closer to that “getting over by interacting with The Rock” stuff people believe. Plus, it’d get Rock on the show in a role meant for a legendary part-timer, and not in one of those major important spots you’d hope WWE would utilize for someone who’s there every week, busting their ass every day to maybe one day be as cool and important as the legendary part-timers. It should be a self-sustaining system, right?
Anyway, The Rock is great. I hate The Rock.
Worst: Truncated Hour 3 (That Was Probably Already Truncated)
The Rock took forever and burned up all the energy the crowd had to offer, so the rest of the show is kinda dead in the water. We got the Total Divas tag match, which lasted about 90 seconds, followed by The Miz vs. Kalisto. That was over quickly, too, with a cool but kinda sloppy Salida del Sol counter to the Skull-crushing Finale. It was fine, but at this point even the guys in the ring didn’t care. I’ll give Kalisto a pass here because he shouldn’t even be walking after Beach-Breaking himself at Royal Rumble.
Best/Worst: And Now, Smackdown
That all sets up the main event, which I’m assuming is a Traditional Smackdown Match in honor of The Rock’s appearance. It’s Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose teaming up against Sheamus and Rusev. They should’ve turned on the blue lights and everything. The match is good, and also kinda makes you feel like you’re painting a fence.
After the match, Ambrose and Reigns actually try to get some heat going by 2-man Shield powerbombing Rusev through the announce table. The crowd’s like YEAH OKAY THIS IS COOL for like two seconds, until Stephanie McMahon’s music interrupts. They were almost 10 minutes into the overrun, but I wish they’d let that settle for a second. Steph makes the Fast Lane main-event — again, two guys The Authority doesn’t want to give title shots to and an unstoppable monster who wasn’t even on the show — and that brings us around to the beginning. Please scroll back up and read through the report in its entirety again. I’ll wait.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
Mr Grift
Lesnar must have impressed them by having the good sense to skip this Raw all together.
MachoBeard
How will Reigns & Ambrose be able to overcome Rusev & Sheamus with Alberto del Rio in their corner? More importantly, how will Rusev & Sheamus overcome King Barrett being there, too?
Lester
“HEY RUSEV I F*CKED YOUR FIANCE LALALALALOW”
“Also don’t bully, kids.
The Khaki
Triple H: “I think I just found my guy.”
PhilBallins
Plan B is like the antithesis of family
The Real Birdman
You guys asked for a DB and got your wish
jamrorange
“Guys…just be cool to my cousin alright…my mom’s been all over me about it.”
Redshirt
The Rock just destroyed a career (Miz), a life (Big Show), a marriage (Lana) and kayfabe in about 10 minutes.
JonSte13
R-Truth hanging around Goldust may be the closest a black guy gets to an Oscar this year.
TheBazz
I hope AJ never actually hits the Styles Clash, and then he faces Hideo Itami and the match is nothing but them failing to hit the Clash and the GTS for twenty minutes.
That’s it for this week. Whew. Thanks for reading, everybody. Click these share buttons to keep me in business, and join me again next week as THE ROAD TO FAST LANE continues.
