The Best and Worst of WWE Raw for June 5, 2017

Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: Extreme Rules happened, and was somehow a show with more rules than normal that didn’t understand most of its own rules. Join us next for WWE Great Balls Of Fire, a show held underwater and wrestled by squares.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for June 5, 2017.

Best/Worst: An Entire Bray Wyatt Angle In One Segment

If you haven’t been paying attention for the past three years, here’s how every single Bray Wyatt angle goes. We start with him cutting a long promo full of misplaced laughter and sharp inhales about how he’s a SPOOKY THING, and because of this, he will (starting right now) get serious and start destroying wrestlers/winning wrestling matches. It almost always features him calling himself an unstoppable terror God or something and, from time to time, displaying supernatural powers such as soul transfusion, teleportation, lightning manipulation or hypnotism. Then, without fail, he loses the wrestling match. Usually it’s just a straight-up loss. The difference between Bray Wyatt and Bo Dallas is dramatic lighting and a King Ezekiel wig. If you’d like this point more directly illustrated, please watch this savage compilation of all the times Bray said he was the shit and it turned out he was being literal.

At Extreme Rules, that trend continued. He said he was going to beat all the other guys and go on to face Brock Lesnar, because he is a SPOOKY THING and only spooky things can conquer a Beast, or whatever. He’s “steely knives.” He’s going to stab Brock with them. That kills beasts, right? Anyway, he lost, because of course he did. He was lying on the ground on the outside like a complete afterthought when the decision happened. The only time he had control of the match is when he was being helped by Samoa Joe.

So on Raw, of course Bray Wyatt starts us off by saying that he’s a SPOOKY THING, and because of this, he will, starting right now, get serious and start destroying wrestlers and winning wrestling matches. He’s going to punish everyone else from the Fatal Five-way, one by one, and prove that he’s as good and scary as he says he is. If you’re wondering how that worked out for him, Roman Reigns shows up and punches him once, causing him to flee up the ramp. Then Roman pins him clean. That brings the angle to a close. Turns out Bray couldn’t punish even one of those guys. But hey, before the episode is over, Seth Rollins calls him a “false prophet” and Bray interferes in his match with Samoa Joe, setting up Rollins vs. Wyatt. I’ll give you 100 guesses how that angle will go, and the first 99 are wrong.

To put it another way:

https://twitter.com/MrBrandonStroud/status/869355685091397632

The good news, and the reason it’s a Half-Best, is that the actual match that takes place is pretty good. It’s one of the better Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt one-on-one matches they’ve done, and probably would’ve been a lot better if we hadn’t already seen it so many times. The theme of tonight’s Raw is “…?” sponsored by “whoever turned in the script we’ve been using for the past year and said it was new.”

To help you understand what I’m talking about, the show also features:

Dean Ambrose demanding an Intercontinental Championship rematch against The Miz
Alexa Bliss trying to do another This Is Your Life segment
Goldust cutting another promo instead of wrestling, which he hasn’t done since he turned heel four Raw-branded shows ago
the announced match of Enzo and Cass vs. The Club, because Enzo/Cass/Club matches are starting to outnumber humans on the Earth
Seth Rollins vs. Samoa Joe, with Michael Cole calling it “a rivalry renewed!” despite the fact that the build to Payback was about Rollins vs. Joe, Payback had Rollins vs. Joe, the build to Extreme Rules featured Rollins vs. Joe, Rollins and Joe were in the match together at Extreme Rules and Rollins vs. Joe are wrestling tonight

Best: When Mom Gets You The White iPhone For Christmas When You Specifically Asked For The Rose Gold

Early in the night, Dean Ambrose interrupts The Drifter’s latest song and, as I mentioned above, demands an Intercontinental Championship rematch right here tonight. Real quick, somebody should put badly played acoustic guitar behind Bray Wyatt’s promos and see if they sound exactly like Elias Samson’s.

But yeah, Ambrose was screwed out of the Intercontinental Championship in a ridiculously specific, hard-to-win match he totally agreed to, and wants another shot. The Miz is like, “LOL, no, I have to do the white guy version of Jinder Mahal’s championship celebration,” which substitutes three balloons for fireworks and replaces the beautiful, culturally significant dance routine with a guy in a bear costume. General Manager Gentle Ben explains to Ambrose that Miz’s “people” arranged the celebration already, so he’s giving him the rest of the night off.

What I honestly liked about this segment is how it played up Ambrose’s history of stupid subterfuge, and had Miz rightfully paranoid about when Ambrose was gonna sneak back into the building and dress up as something. We’ve seen him hide in trunks, hide in giant Christmas presents, dress up as a member of the ring crew, and so on.

At first, Miz gets suspicious of Sir Loves-a-Lot, the bear who loves to love, and beats him up. It turns out he’s just some guy, and/or a future NXT star, because they’re pretty interchangeable these days. After that, someone wheels another giant Dean Ambrose-sized Christmas present to the ring. Miz tackles it, attacks it with a steel chair and jumps on it a bunch. Maryse freaks out because it’s a grandfather clock she ordered for him. Grandfather clocks are the worst present, by the way, as established by the Y2K episode of King of the Hill.

With Miz feeling completely paranoid and left alone in the ring, Dean Ambrose reveals that it was in fact the THIRD place you should’ve looked: behind the camera. Ambrose is the camera man and hits Dirty Deeds on Miz. Miz jumping on an enormous present got more of a pop than Ambrose hitting Dirty Deeds on him, but it is what it is. It’s a good segment, but I’m disappointed Ambrose wasn’t hiding in one of the balloons, or in Miz’s jacket pocket or something.

Best: The Miz, Just To Say It Again

Miz dragging the “you deserve it” chant for not meaning anything if the crowd chants it for everyone is the BEST. It’s not Kevin Owens ethering the NXT Full Sail crowd, but it’s in the ballpark. Miz rules.

The Kurt Angle Texting Mystery Continues

I really hope this was just Graves showing him how to use Bumble. “So I should swipe right on this girl to say I like her? Is that bestiality sex?” “No, she has to match you back first.”

Worst: Why Is Goldust Still Not Wrestling?

Like I said, the guy turned heel four Raw-branded shows ago and they still haven’t done his match with R-Truth. They just had a pay-per-view with a Noam Dar match on it for God’s sakes, they couldn’t have cut a few minutes from the 29 minute main event and let Goldust squash his old tag team partner for a few? Or cut the Drifter singing a song so he could do something? Anything? Even be mentioned?

I’m hoping the timing of this is just weird because they’re going to team him up with Miz and his former obsession Maryse, and that’s what the whole “the biggest names in Hollywood will be glittered with gold” stuff is about. I’m down for that, especially if it gets Goldust Classic in the Intercontinental Championship picture, where he absolutely 100% fucking belongs.

Worst: You’re Focusing On The Wrong Guy

I know I’m (rightfully) a bit of a TJP hater, but Mustafa Ali is objectively about a dozen times better than him at every single part of being a wrestler. Watch this shortened version of the already short match and tell me which of the two you’d rather see. If you say TJP, you’re crazy.

After the match, Neville shows up to (hopefully) gently wrap up the Neville/TJP alliance by attacking him from behind and agreeing to a Cruiserweight Championship match on Tuesday’s 205 Live. You know, if WWE is into promoting wrestling in India and has a new Middle-Eastern show they should consider putting the cruiserweight strap on the extremely great and underrated Pakistani-American guy? Move Neville to the UK show so he can wrestle Tyler Bate and Pete Dunne and maybe Aleister Black one more time and never slum it with these Raw cruiserweight jokers again.

Best: Shake It Up

At Extreme Rules, Kalisto and Apollo Crews worked hard to have a fun, entertaining match with what they were given and managed to move the Titus Brand story forward with the finish. On Raw, we more or less pretend like that match never happened, and go back to the last Raw, which was about Titus pinning Kalisto with a handful of tights. This week he tries it again, but Kalisto reverses, grabs a handful of tights of his own, and gets the win. The announce team declares that Turnabout Is Fair Play, and I’m happy they at least had Kalisto do it as an immediate response to Titus instead of waiting a week.

I’m giving the segment a Best, however, because Titus O’Neil now wants Akira Tozawa to join his crew, and the best thing that could happen to the Raw tag team division right now is Tozawa and Apollo Crews with Titus as their manager. I want Sheamus and Cesaro vs. Crews and Tozawa for 20 minutes right the hell now. And honestly? I wouldn’t mind Kalisto coming around as well and joining the crew, just for the hilarious image of 9-foot tall non-wrestling Titus O’Neil in a suit commanding a bunch of human fidget spinners.

Worst: Remember When Heath Slater And Rhyno Were A Real Tag Team

… and not rarely-occurring jobbers? That’s the difference between Raw and Smackdown, guys. It’s like Raw has no idea what Smackdown even does, or what they’ve done with the characters since they were last on Raw. And I don’t think Rhyno’s actually done a wrestling move since the brand split.

It’s nice to see Cesaro and Sheamus get a dominant win, especially after the finish to that cage match at Extreme Rules and the two months of losing they did before it, but can’t we do this with some Local Talent and not the first-ever Smackdown Tag Team Champions?

Best: Cass-er Soze

Over the past few weeks, a mystery has been unfolding. Enzo Amore keeps getting attacked backstage, and no one knows who did it. We originally thought it was the Revival sneaking back onto the show to beat him up, but they claim they’re innocent, as Enzo is pro wrestling tilapia and nobody should care about him. It’s a solid alibi. This week, we watch Enzo flirt with Charly Caruso like she’s a trombone stuffed with KFC Georgia Gold, which is an absolute nightmare to get through, and find out that now CASS has been attacked. And a gold chain has been left on the scene!

So now the full list of suspects includes:

Big Cass, who protests too much about being blamed for Enzo’s attacks and may be setting this up to cause a misdirection
Enzo himself, because nothing Enzo ever does makes sense
The Revival, because wrestlers are liars
Mr. T, who is angry at them for their casual disrespect of mothers
Razor Ramon

Worst: Realest Guy In The Dungeon Of Doom

Enzo and Cass have a scheduled match with The Club, so Enzo’s forced to find another tag team partner on the fly. He finds The Big Show, because I guess he can only team with 7-footers and Kane’s busy running for mayor. The idea of an Enzo and Big Show team isn’t bad, but oh man, Big Show’s Cass impersonation is bad. So bad it makes current Enzo Amore promos sound like OLD Enzo Amore promos.

And of course Enshow squashes The Club, because King Maxel and Vanguard-1 could team up and kick the shit out of The Club right now. The payoff is another backstage segment of Cass being weirdly possessive of Enzo, claiming that maybe Big Show beat him up so he could tag with Enzo against The Club.

Yeah dude, I’m sure the 45-year old multiple-time Heavyweight Champion couldn’t get into a Club tag without three weeks of sneaking around backstage attacking Raw’s worst tag teams. Show gets invited to go out partying with Enzo and Cass but turns it down, because he’s married and already reached his chicken fucking quota 20 years ago when he splitroasted Hulk Hogan at Halloween Havoc.

Best: Alexa Bliss Has A Posse (Kind Of)

Alexa Bliss suggests to Kurt Angle that she do a segment called ALEXA BLISS THIS IS MY LIFE, and Angle rightfully tells her that last week’s bit was one of the worst segments in the history of Raw. I knew they dumped that shit on her on purpose to see if she could get through it. I wish WWE didn’t like, make their stars walk on hot coals on live television, but whatever. It turns out she’s going to have to face Nia Jax for the Raw Women’s Championship like she promised. She tries to get Mickie James and Dana Brooke to help her, but they say no dice.

But when the match starts, Mickie and Dana wander out anyway to … gloat, I guess? Watch Bliss get her comeuppance? But hey, guess what? Alexa Bliss and The Miz are the only smart people who watch Raw when they aren’t on it, so Bliss starts punching them until they punch her back. That’s good enough to get her DQ’d AND make her look like she was “standing up for herself,” which she clearly wasn’t, but can now claim. Plus, she gets out of the Nia match because she gave her a minute of a championship match and Nia lost.

Bayley died on the way back to her home planet.

Best: Joe vs. The Volcano

(Yes, that’s a reference to the greatest throwaway Paul Heyman promo ever.)

The best segment of the night goes to Samoa Joe and Paul Heyman, because of course it does. Joe makes his motivations for WWE Tutti Frutti clear: he wants to kick Brock Lesnar’s ass and take everything Brock has. He wants the cushy schedule where he can show up and wrestle whenever he wants, instead of having to travel and wrestle every night. He wants Brock’s reputation. He wants the Universal Championship, and he wants Paul Heyman running his errands. That alone is great, but then Paul Heyman himself shows up, and they kick it to 11.

Heyman mentions that he worries for a living because he’s a Jew — I’m still trying to figure out what that noise the crowd made when he said “jew” meant, or more accurately I’m absolutely not trying to think about it — and that he said he wanted Brock to face Finn Bálor because it’d be a good story. Brock having to wrestle Joe would be a “worst case scenario” because Joe isn’t afraid of him. Heyman does more to put over Joe than anyone’s done in WWE yet in one promo, and Joe takes his character to the next level by more or less turning Brock Lesnar face without Brock even being there.

They shake hands, and Joe decides to calmly (and terrifyingly) get in Heyman’s face. He quietly tells him what he’s going to do to him and what he needs to tell Brock about it, then follows through with his threats. There’s something wonderfully bad ass about the dude deciding to talk directly to his opponent’s advocate an inch from his face and then beating the shit out of him without feeling the need to do it on a microphone. He doesn’t need to brag. His actions are going to speak for him. That rules.

Later, backstage, Brock Lesnar realizes he’d Better Call Paul, and we find out two things: (1) Paul Heyman has the old-timey phone ringtone, which is perfect, and (2) Lesnar is in Paul’s phone as BROCK, all caps, no last name. I wish when he’d shown the phone to the medic that Brock’s name had a bunch of angry face emojis after it, and that when Brock calls Paul this picture pops up on his phone:

Heyman suggests that Lesnar should come to Raw next week and not just show up, but “unleash the beast.” Here are my top three suggestions for what that means:

1. Brock and Samoa Joe are gonna do one of those dope Lensar pull-aparts where somebody bleeds
2. Brock Lesnar is going to pull down his Jimmy John’s shorts on national television
3. Brock Lesnar fights special Raw guest host Bruce Willis

And with that, we move into the night’s not-entirely-fresh main event of Samoa Joe versus Seth Rollins. It’s got a really good pace to it and is pretty action-packed, which are the two best things Seth Rollins can be doing with his matches right now, but ends with Rollins stupidly being distracted by Bray Wyatt’s teleportation graphics.

Like a lot of my frustrations with Raw stuff right now, every time they take a step in the right direction, they take two steps back and backflip onto their head. If you’re building up Samoa Joe to be a believable opponent for Brock Lesnar, does he need to only be beating Seth Rollins thanks to somebody else’s help? Is that really the story you want to tell? Again? Especially after Rollins beat him at Payback.

That’s Raw. It’s the leftovers from Extreme Rules, which was a feast if you had to eat it in the car and kept spilling shit on yourself. Join us on Tuesday night for Smackdown, which will feel like having a cold bucket of water dumped on your head after the previous two nights.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Designated Piledriver

Watch next week as Samoa Joe takes a bite from a Jimmy John’s sandwich and throws it in the trash!

The Real Birdman

Missed opportunity not having the caller id read: BRRRROCK LESNAAAAARRRR

“Kurt, it’s Snapchat, it’ll disappear, I promise”

TheBrokenMSol

Good call, Enzo. After weeks of sneak attacks, you found the one guy who will neeeeever sneak attack you.

Aerial Jesus

I feel like whenever there is a backstage sneak attack, Kevin Owens should automatically be the #1 suspect regardless of the circumstances

AJ Dusman

After Joe and Heyman promos, Seth Rollins sounds like a broken Speak and Spell.

Baron Von Raschke

Man, Joe usually doesn’t call his spots that loud.

Joe needs to come out and complain about Regal for five minutes and how much better he is treated on RAW than he was on NXT.

addn2x

Graves: ‘I don’t know what Ambrose is capable of’.

Well, you can tick ‘believable offense’ off the list Corey.

Ryse

I hope every week Elias keeps talking about irrelevant things that inspired his song until he says “And this song was inspired by Bray Wyatt’s latest feud.”

Harry Longabaugh