Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: The broken road that leads Rascall Flats back to you and leads the rest of us to WrestleMania continued with MIck Foley getting fired two weeks before the biggest show of the year, the suggestion of a Hold Harmless agreement, and The Undertaker’s face realizing he’s going to get speared before the Undertaker’s body realizes it.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for March 27, 2017.
Worst: Nobody Talk Ever Again
This week’s Raw opening looks to build heat (or whatever they’re calling it … intrigue?) for the Raw Women’s Championship fatal four-way at WrestleMania by setting up Charlotte and Nia Jax vs. Sasha Banks and Bayley in a tag match. That’s the kind of thing you could like, jump right into and everyone would accept it. “There’s a fatal four-way on Sunday, so tonight they’re having a tag match.” Instead, we have to listen to three of the worst talkers on the show — corny Bayley, affected Sasha and Bob’s Burgers character Nia Jax — cut lengthy, stunted and downright weird promos on each other for several minutes. The best talker in the group by a mile is Charlotte, but she possesses a complete inability to organically roll with the punches of a live crowd, so that plus Philadelphia equals “Charlotte talking as loudly as possible and staring at the hard cam.”
So the segment starts with Bayley doing her “dude, bro, WrestleMania, childhood,” thing, which would work better if (1) she could sound believable delivering one of those terrible Roman Reigns-style TIME TO RECAP EVERYTHING book reports, and (2) we hadn’t spent the last two months making it impossible to like her. She’s interrupted by Charlotte, who speaks VERY LOUDLY while the crowd chants “what” and “CM Punk.” WWE Fan Nation does a great job of cutting out about 40 seconds of Punk chants over the Sasha tweet graphic. Sasha shows up and works out the blocking mid-promo like a kid in a middle school play. Then Nia wanders out to recap everything. It’s not great.
The only thing I liked about the open is that Sasha attacked Charlotte for mentioning that, you know, after weeks of interfering in Bayley’s matches, Sasha didn’t interfere to help in the one match in which that would’ve been legally allowed. She doesn’t have to pretend to care about Bayley anymore. Sasha should’ve been behind Bayley doing big exaggerated “NO, NO” gestures, sitcom-style, and when Bayley turned around she should’ve pretended she was scratching her temple.
Better: The Match
The actual tag match, again, would’ve been better without the preface. The character dynamics are there, and everything you’d need to accomplish in a long promo — Bayley being excited, Charlotte being angry and jealous, Charlotte knowing something’s up with Sasha, Sasha and Bayley’s iffy friendship, Nia being an unstoppable wild card — could be done physically and tell a better story quicker.
The best part here is the finish, in which the champion actually wins a match clean without their title on the line (!) and Bayley learning to dodge Charlotte’s Boot Of Transitional Doom. Also enjoyable is Nia Jax wrecking all three of them at once, which is kinda sorta what should be happening every time Nia Jax is on screen.
Best: Xavier Woods In This Commercial Is Me Watching New Day Segments
How y’all gonna spend months hyping ice cream and creating ice cream blueprints and revealing an ice cream delivery bike and come at me with Fla-Vor-Ice? Get the fuck outta here.
What We Did Inside The Purple Ropes This Week
I’ve probably said this before, but Austin Aries is the best thing the cruiserweight division has going for it right now. I say this as a guy who didn’t enjoy-to-strongly disliked most of Aries pre-WWE work, save for his bizarrely wonderful heel run in TNA. The guy sort of failed upward into a WrestleMania match, and he’s been busting his ass every time he steps through the ropes to justify it. He wrestles with this crazy sense of urgency that nobody else on the show besides Samoa Joe is doing, and during this match with Noam Dar’s 12-year old little brother he looks and feels and moves like he’s in a fight. He’s selling on offense, he’s keeping his intensity up between moves and he makes the timing of what he does feel as important as what he’s doing. That’s missing in a lot of WWE matches. Guys will just recover and then it’s time to hit their moves. Aries is switching it up so yeah, he wants to hit a discus forearm, but he might have to hit you with a straight knockout shot to the face first to set it up. And +1 to him for just hitting the pendulum elbow as offense instead of trying to turn it into a Mark Henry crowd taunt.
I’m also glad to see the terribly named LAST CHANCERY make its return. I’ve always wondered why everyone in WWE’s cruiserweight and women’s divisions get submission finishers all of a sudden, but if Neville’s tapping people out to the Rings of Saturn (because outer space), it makes sense to give his top rival a submission finisher so they can Benoit/Angle the hell out of them at WrestleMania. Really hoping that steals the show.
Steals the pre-show, whatever.
Speaking of Neville, he’s once again up against “Sometimes Food” Jack Gallagher. Gallagher is brilliant in small doses, and you’d have to be pretty coldhearted to not like a wrestler using an umbrella to accentuate his jumping balls to the face maneuver, so this was fun even if it was never in doubt. Still not a fan of the leg slap headbutt, but I’ve accepted that I’m in the minority there.
I like that Neville was able to win this without the Red Arrow, unlike their match at Fastlane. It shows that either Gallagher didn’t bring his A-game this week or Neville has adapted to the dude’s offense, and it makes Neville inevitably having to use the Arrow against Aries at Mania matter. WWE would be greatly benefited by a few rarer moves that only come out in big time situations. They don’t have to be Burning Hammer rare, I guess, but stuff like Cena’s Attitude Adjustment off the ropes can be a good hand to have when you’re putting together matches that matter.
Great stuff from the cruisers this week, but man, please ditch the purple after WrestleMania. It’s not doing anything for anybody. It’s wasting the production team’s time and making the wrestlers look like a different brand of action figures that don’t belong in the actual set.
Worst: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Booking
Sometimes WWE goes full Chicken Or Egg to book gimmick matches. Let’s say WWE wants to book Erick Rowan vs. Big Show in a “stairs match” so they can call their pay-per-view “Tables, Ladders, Chairs and Stairs.” I know that’s such a ridiculous joke that it would never happen in real life, but stay with me. Neither Rowan nor Show has ever been identified as “the guy who hits people with stairs.” The Dudleys use tables, the Hardys use ladders, Erick Rowan isn’t the stairs guy. But they need the match to happen, so randomly one of them will attack the other with stairs. Later, the one who got attacked will get revenge by ALSO using the stairs. Then, to settle this stairs-centric beef, it’s a STAIRS match! The booking only exists to substantiate the match, and the gimmick of the match is inorganic so it works in reverse. Like coming up with the end of your mystery and working backwards, but all the suspects have brain damage.
WrestleMania doesn’t have a ladder match on it, and it’s in six days. So, on Monday night, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson — two guys who don’t ever beat up dudes with ladders — attack Sheamus and Cesaro with ladders. If you’ve ever watched wrestling before, your first though is, “oh, they’re making it a ladder match.” Your second thought should be, “oh, because the Hardy Boys are showing up.”
Later in the episode, The Club is set to face Enzo Amore and Big Cass, because they are two of the three tag teams. Sheamus and Cesaro attack the Club with a ladder, then get in the ring and try to attack Cass and Enzo with a ladder for some reason. That leads to Cass attacking THEM with a ladder, which sets up the Club attacking him from behind and beating up everyone with a ladder. It took them until Tuesday afternoon to announce a ladder match, but hey, surprise surprise, it’s a ladder match now!
I have had an extremely potent pree-mo-nee-shion that WrestleMania will be Broken. I’ll also point out that Matt Hardy’s “broken” voice is just Baby Piggy from the Muppet Babies and you’ll never be able to unhear it. Brother Kermie, use your, IMAGI-NAYSHEON!
Whatever: The Big Show Over The Top Rope Challenge
To recap:
- Big Show isn’t wrestling Shaq at WrestleMania, which was supposed to be his big thing
- Braun Strowman is a third wheel in the Roman Reigns vs. Undertaker feud and isn’t doing anything else, despite being dope
- Show and Strowman had a shockingly great match on Raw a few weeks ago and could go one-on-one in a memorable hoss fight at Mania, but it would take some of (read: all of) the shine from Goldberg vs. Lesnar, and also …
- … they’re the only two guys available to win the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal
So we get a segment where Show defeats Raw’s least notable wrestlers — Jinder Mahal, the Shining Stars, Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel and poor Golden Truth — in an “over the top rope challenge” that doesn’t actually end when people get thrown over the top rope. Everyone gets back in the ring to eliminate Show once they’ve lost, and then Show just gets back in the ring and beats them up. It’s not even a match or a “challenge,” it’s just random wrestling happening to remind you a battle royal will occur. When it’s over, Strowman shows up and is like, “I could beat you up, but I WON’T,” and that’s supposed to cause … some kind of reaction in us. The best description I could come up with for the feeling is, “wishing Braun didn’t get every inch of the shaft during this WrestleMania booking.”
Best: First Do No Harmless
Here’s a clip of Triple H and Seth Rollins’ contract signing:
The actual clip is pretty much the same thing. This is one of those times when the story they’re going for on paper is a hell of a lot better than what’s being performed, but this week we’re at least closer to bridging that gap. From reading reviews of the show online, I think I liked this bit more than most people.
The plan for the longest time has been Triple H vs. Seth Rollins at WrestleMania, but Samoa Joe showed up and more or less broke Seth’s leg with a SLEEPER because he’s the shit. The match was in doubt for a few weeks and it was announced that Rollins was going to miss his second consecutive WrestleMania, but he showed up in response to Mick Foley’s public emasculation with a fancy new KINGSLAYER shirt and threw hands at his boss. That fight ended with Triple H getting the upper hand, because of course it did, and hurting Rollins more.
Last week, H agreed to have the match if they made it “HOLD HARMLESS,” aka the Dean Ambrose Suicide Dive match. What that means is the match will be non-sanctioned, and that if Rollins agrees to wrestle without being medically cleared, he waves all his rights to sue or hold WWE accountable. The suggestion is that if he loses or gets hurt worse, which H is intending, his career’s pretty much over both physically and professionally.
The contract signing is built around Triple H’s hubris, assuming that because he’s Triple H and Seth is this whimpery little one-legged passion ferret, he’s going to hurt Rollins again and win easily. H is basically saying, “hey, I don’t WANT to kill you for real, but if you’re begging for it I can try to do it.” He has zero percent (0%) belief that he will lose. Rollins doesn’t seem to think he can win either, but he’s desperate for redemption, desperate for a shot at the WrestleMania he missed last year, and desperate to prove that he exists and is somebody without Triple H lording over and controlling him.
I think it’s a really good story. Rollins realizing that he’s been a whiny shithead for the past couple of years and turning his limp face turn into an actual quest to find himself and achieve some kind of personal and professional validation is legitimately compelling. The Triple H In Charge And Burying Folks image hurts the story a little because it makes it too much about that, but taken in a vacuum, the story makes total sense and feels like the most important thing in the world. Don’t believe me? Watch the ace WWE production team cut out all the bullshit and make the story look like Austin vs. Rock at WrestleMania 17.
One day WWE’s going to realize the disconnect between how they tell stories and how their production team pieces together the nonsense and half-starts to tell a BETTER story, and just put those brilliant motherfuckers in charge of telling the stories in the first place.
But yeah, H is like, “if you touch me for any reason the match is off,” then kicks the table into Rollins’ leg. Ultimate dick move. H tries to do his “angrily unbutton my cuffs” walk-around, but Rollins manages to fight him off not once, but twice with one leg. Rollins is the “one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest,” and H insists that no one-legged man ever has won, but hey, this is WWE. Brother should remember that time his wife helped a one-legged man win an ass-kicking contest against the biggest ass-kicker in the world.
I really hope they deliver at Mania, and by “deliver” I mean I hope Dean Ambrose loses to Baron Corbin, Roman Reigns loses to the Undertaker and everybody gets their heat back when the Shield remembers “hold harmless” means anything goes, reunites to put away the boss they’ve always hated and fist-bump the Old Seth Rollins back into the crew. Manly tears will be shed.
Best: Thunder Only Happens When It’s Reigning
Throughout the show (including the opening graphics) we get spooky footage of a spooky 52-year old in leather pants and a spandex tanktop walking through an extremely spooky graveyard, promising to dig a grave for Roman Reigns in his yard, the graveyard, but also in his yard, the ring. It makes sense if you’re very tough. We also get shots of the Undertaker that make him look like a bad PS2 render of the Undertaker, or like, an Instagram model who is like, “watch me use makeup to transform into WWE’s Undertaker!”
Or like, a bank robber who bought an Undertaker mask to rob in.
Anyway, Roman Reigns shows up and cuts what might be the best promo of his entire life by just being himself, in the kayfabe definition of self: entitled, confident, a little dissociative and constantly ready to dick-measure. He’s interrupted by another Undertaker promo, and then Undertaker teleports in from the graveyard to scare him with THUNDER HANDS. Like, he raises his hands and thunder happens, and when he lowers them, the thunder dies out and the lights dim. I kept wishing Roman would just run at him and lay him out with a shoulder to the gunt while he was posing, but it’s still pretty good.
Part of me wants Roman to lose to set up that Shield Redemption bit in Triple H/Rollins, but most of me wants him to just light up the Undertaker and leave him in a bloody pile, retire him and move forward as the most hated dude in the history of pro wrestling. Let Roman go full The Rock, because for real, he’s almost there.
Best: Destined To Do This Forever, And Not Always In A Good Way, But Fine, We’ll Take It
In the night’s pre-main-event-promo main event, Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens have their fifth televised one-on-one match since their feud ended forever last summer. You know how we do. The rub here is that Sami Zayn realizes he ain’t got shit to do at Mania and the ladder match is for the tag teams, so he’s throwing his name in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal and promises to win it to honor the legacy of the late (or whatever) Commissioner Foley. Stephanie McMahon shows up because she has an anti-happiness radar and makes him “earn” it, because Foley might be gone but she’s gonna keep that story going for another eight months. Sami has to beat Owens in a no disqualification match if he wants to be in a battle royal Curtis Axel gets into by doing nothing.
The match, as always, is good. Zayn and Owens could put on Glow outfits and just do monkey flips and one-legged dropkicks to each other for five minutes and it’d be better than anything else on Raw. Owens is 4-0 in the first of those four one-on-one matches, too, so there’s a bit of drama about whether or not Sami will win, especially if you forget that Jericho hasn’t been on the show yet and Zayn getting a Raw-centric bottle episode story six days before WrestleMania for a shot to be on the pre-show just to lose wouldn’t make any sense.
The match happens, and boop, Samoa Joe shows up. That’s clearly Stephanie’s plan to F with Sami. He grabs a chair, but before he can do anything, Chris Jericho interrupts. Jericho jumps Joe from behind and beats him down — enjoy getting that receipt at Mania, my dude — but gets punched in the face by Owens. That gives Zayn a chance to hit the most powerful move in WWE, the Distraction Roll-up and not get on the Mania card (more or less) and bring their post-rivalry rivalry to 4-1. Making progress!
What: This Again
Here’s a complete recap of the Goldberg/Lesnar feud up until now:
- Brock Lesnar and Bill Goldberg started feuding over a video game, a la Rocky Balboa
- Goldberg beat Lesnar with one spear and one Jackhammer and made him look like a total loser
- Before the Royal Rumble, Paul Heyman cut a bunch of long promos about how Lesnar was going to get revenge
- Goldberg eliminated Lesnar from the Royal Rumble and made him look like a total loser
- Before WrestleMania, Paul Heyman cut a bunch of long promos about how Lesnar was going to get revenge
- Lesnar F-5’d Goldberg once! (Hooray!)
- Goldberg effortlessly speared Lesnar on the go-home Raw and made him look like a total loser
So, like I feel like I’ve already typed way too many times, unless WrestleMania is 25 minutes of Lesnar punching Goldberg in the face until his head rolls off into the audience and makes a crowd of blood-covered children scream, Lesnar is professionally toast and this is the weirdest push for a six month-old video game ever.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Night
Mikeybot
Right in the diverticulitis!
Werner Herzog
Head Booker HHH: “In kayfabe, Rollins leg is still injured. So logically, HHH should go over at Wrestlemania.”
Scriptwriter HHH: “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s run it up the flagpole.”
Director of Marketing HHH: “That’s definitely good for business. I’m in.”
CEO HHH: “All right, as long as we’re all in unison. HHH gets the win. Make sure he gets a badass entrance thing too.”
Baron Von Raschke
BAYLEY HAS PINNED THE ….oh…wait.
Iggins
“This Sunday, at the last ultimate thrill ride of final thrilling wrestemania rides that thrill, and are also ultimate. Ultimately, it will be thrilling. The ride. Thrill Kill? This Sunday: the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny. Enjoy the rideslmania.”
AJ Dusman
Wrestlemania…where HHH needs a Hold Harmless agreement to wrestle Seth Rollins, but Undertaker just threatened to bury a man alive.
TheBazz
“A Mary Poppins-like dive from Gallagher!” Poppins, of course, was infamous for her devastating flying senton.
Frank Ducks
If “LunchMoney Lewis” doesn’t at least run into Pancake Patterson in the hallway, I want my $9.99 back.
Redshirt
Mom: “Can you help me in 10 minutes?”
Me: “Sure.”
Mom: “You’re watching this? We can turn it on downstairs.”
Me: “No, thanks. That’s okay.”
Mom: “You could be missing something important.”
Me: “Trust me. I won’t.”
AddMayne, Joke Conspiracy Victim
nice of Alicia to do some babysitting on the side along with wrestling
JacksSmirkingRevenge
Breaking: The Undertaker has just started his WrestleMania entrance
That’s it for this … year of programming. Join us this Sunday for WrestleMania, both in the actual building and on the Internet, and be here throughout the week for WrestleMania-themed writing, skimmable listacles and at least one Instagram photo of me making a worker fist beside Wolfgang, or whoever they end up sending to Axxess.
Be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of the show, and hit those share buttons to spread the column around. Thanks again, and enjoy the ultimate thrill ride. WWE presents Top Thrill Dragster, this Sunday!
