The Best and Worst of WWE Raw for March 7, 2016

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: We celebrated our Best Leap Day Raw Ever with the Dean Ambrose vs. Triple H feud getting a little too good, Stephanie McMahon spitting hot fire, and Natalya revealing that she keeps in shape for not wrestling by eating Subway sandwiches. Also, the Undertaker showed up to do absolutely nothing. We’re Roadblocking this weekend.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for March 7, 2016. EEEEE!

Best: This Feud Is About What Happens When Your Dad Is An Evil Rich Guy From A Cartoon

This week’s show opens with Dancin’ Joey Tribbiani addressing last week’s Undertaker non-statement and his dad’s threats. There’s something wonderfully refreshing about how Vince and Shane interact. There’s no melisma, it’s just one note hit as hard as possible. “You’re a son of a bitch.” “Yeah, well, you’re a BASTARD!” First dude to say the other has bad breath gets punched in the mouth.

There’s also something great about how extreme Vince’s reaction to this whole thing has been, considering that we still barely know what’s going on. Shane showed up and revealed that he’d helped Vince on a bum business deal back in the day, and had been biding his time to step back and and take control over part (?) of WWE. Vince had to gulp a bunch and admit to Stephanie that it was true, but also apparently can get mad at Shane and punish him for having him over a barrel? I’m not totally sure I understand it, but in two weeks we went from “Shane hasn’t been here in over half a decade” to “Shane is in a Hell in a Cell match against The Undertaker at WrestleMania with the fate of the entire company hanging in the balance and promises everything will change, and Vince is sarcastically using Undertaker gongs to piss off local crowds and stomping baby pictures of Shane.” It’s SO MUCH. It went from 0 to 100 in one segment, and now we’re doing like, 350. The booking in this feud is Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s The Running Man.

Worst: Shane McMahon’s Little Brother Punches

Vince sends security after Shane to throw him out — because again, you can get out of a disadvantageous business scenario by sending goons after the guys with leverage? I really feel like I’m missing a huge part of this — and Shane dismantles them with his new Muay Thai knees and SIGNATURE BABY PUNCHES.

Shane McMahon is dope. The video package they did for him on Monday explains why. That said, he’s got some of the worst punches in the history of wrestling and the more he does them, the less seriously I can take him. Remember when he beat up Randy Orton and Legacy with phantom baby punches? I’m not sure I’m technically skilled enough to explain it, but there’s a reason pro wrestling punches have big gestures attached to them. By taking longer than it would to for-real punch somebody, you’re giving the guy you’re punching time to react, sell it appropriately and give the audience time to see him selling it appropriately. If you throw a bunch of super quick jabs and aren’t really connecting (because it’s pro wrestling), the guy getting punched will probably have no idea in those quarter-seconds between punches how to sell them. That disconnect between strike and sell is going to be obvious to everyone, and everything suffers. See also: Steve Blackman hitting people really fast with his sticks. It looks cool, but how the hell are you supposed to sell that?

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that Shane McMahon’s punches are the Dean Ambrose dives of punches. He needs to learn the value of a good elbow strike. Forearms and knees (read: thighs) look a lot better than punches and kicks most of the time because punches and kicks are real easy to f*ck up, and you’re making real contact with a part of your body that shouldn’t be caving in your opponent’s skull.

Best: LET’S GOOOO

There are two truly great segments on this week’s Raw, and this is one of them.

Kevin Owens wrestles Neville, which is the perfect match to run as an opener in Chicago. Listen to the crowd’s response when Neville hits a f*cking Phoenix Splash (RIP Hayabusa) off the second rope and gets a crazy close nearfall. The match is going well until Kevin Owens, worst person in the world, rolls up Neville while he’s trying to step through the ropes and pins him with a handful of tights. Neville complains to the referee, so Owens gets BACK in the ring and hits him from behind. Again, worst person in the world.

Owens tries to apron powerbomb Neville out of existence, only to be interrupted by the happiest of all entrance themes. This is the part where you yell YES and stand up, and don’t sit down for like 15 minutes.

Usually I hate the musical interruption bit, but it works here. Owens hates Sami Zayn so much, and practically his entire career as a successful wrestler has been built in and around Sami’s shadow. Even when he’s out of it, he can’t be fine. It’s like he’s got an eating disorder, and even though he’s years beyond it, he still sees himself at his worst when he looks in the mirror. Nothing is ever, ever okay. His initials are the opposite of OK is what I’m saying. Sami showing up isn’t an inconvenience like most of these run-ins, it’s Owens’ worst nightmare. Being on the main roster is the only place he’s been safe from Sami’s sh*t, and then Sami showed up and eliminated him from the Royal Rumble. Now Owens is trying to make a statement and get a match at WrestleMania, and Sami’s showing up to ruin it AGAIN. It’s so, so perfect.

And aside from all that, it’s f*cking exciting. Sami runs down and they immediately start punching each other in the face, and the fight spills into the ring. When Owens is able to get his bearings and realize what’s happening, he decides to run — because of COURSE he does — and runs into Neville’s foot. Sami clotheslines him over the top rope, and the world’s most unconfident confident man has to scoot backwards up the ramp on his butt in the shadow of the spectacularly affable dude he hates the most. Love this.

Note: I’m worried WWE’s going to add a bunch of people to Owens/Zayn for Mania instead of giving them a show-stealing Intercontinental title match, so here’s my pitch: add Neville, Big E, Bo Dallas and Finn Bálor to the match and answer once and for all, “who is the greatest NXT Champion of all time?” The best part is that it gives you a reason to run Seth Rollins vs. any of these guys in the summer.

Best: Summer Rae Is 2-0 On Raw In 2016

Just wanted to say how much I enjoy that before I write up the rest of it.

Worst: The Music Distraction Done Wrong

I don’t know if WWE is f*cking with me or what, but the followup to the awesome Owens/Zayn/Neville segment is a greatest hits of things that send me into fussy paragraph mode:

1. Divas matches ending in 90 seconds
2. Divas matches ending in distraction rollups
3. The musical interruption, which shouldn’t work this well outside of an Owens/Zayn “destined to do this forever” scenario
4. Brie Bella doing almost anything
5. the denim outfit Ziggler romance storyline version of Lana

I think the only part of this I enjoyed besides The Winter Of Summer continuing is the fact that Lana took off her shoes before she wrestled, which I sadly know is less “I learned to wrestle from Rusev” and more “I can’t do a facebuster wearing heels.” You know what’s a great idea for a Mania feud? Booking Brie Bella to carry a character-based feud against a lady who has never wrestled.

Best/Worst: “Ziggler Knocked Down By Ziggler!”

How sad are the League of Nations? I mean, honestly. They’re in a 3-on-1 handicap match against a guy they’ve all beaten multiple times individually and not only does one of them get eliminated, they need a 2-on-1 attack to win a 3-on-1 match. A lot of that is intentional writing to make me want to boo them, but there’s too much evidence on this show of why “making crowds boo because they don’t get what they want” and “making crowds boo because of bad decision-making” is an outdated model. “Getting a reaction” doens’t work as evidence of success when you’ve got people on the show getting actual reactions. That’s my problem with the League.

Look at the Owens vs. Neville match and the Sami Zayn run-in. Look at the New Day vs. Y2AJ match, and the post-match stuff (which we’ll get to). Watch how much the crowd wants Dean Ambrose to kick Triple H’s ass. WWE is succeeding right now on levels we’ve been BEGGING them to succeed at for what feels like YEARS, which makes stuff like the League of Nations stand out even more. Here are four heels who all have tremendous upsides — Del Rio is lucha royalty and a legitimate badass, Sheamus is giant and marketable and capable of great matches, King Barrett’s one of the best talkers in the company and Rusev’s one of the easiest-to-like heels I’ve ever seen, especially when properly paired with Lana and/or tweeting about Bloodsport — and nobody gives a sh*t about anything they’re doing. Nobody cares. I doubt there are even 4-year olds who are like, “oh no, what will the LEAGUE OF NATIONS do next??” 4-year olds know these guys are clown shoes. They’ve been booked like Putties since their formation, and it’s managed to dull the colors of every single dude in the group.

It’s to the point that 3 of them vs. Dolph Ziggler seems like a fair fight. That’s the biggest insult I can give them.

Real quick, I want to do my weekly “why are the backstage fallout videos better than anything we get on the show” paragraph.

On TV, the interaction between Dolph Ziggler and Stephanie McMahon seems like bad improv. They’re mad at each other and indignant about stuff without a lot of context, and Dolph can mention things like Survivor Series 2014 and have it brushed aside like it’s nothing. Because ultimately, it was nothing. Dolph Ziggler was a conquering hero on a team with John Cena where Cena FAILED, and Sting had to make a magical, last-second WWE debut to help him end the reign of The Authority. Then Cena ruined everything a few weeks later to protect an old rival he’d been friends with for like an hour. It wasn’t great.

The backstage fallout videos take a step back and remove the pressure of SAY EXACTLY WHAT WE WROTE FOR YOU TO SAY ON TV, and they’re always, always better. Here, Ziggler gets to speak passionately about the situation and apply it to things he cares about in real life, and while he’s still a little too into the “I’m entertaining which means I should be champion and this FAKE FIGHTING COMPANY DOESN’T UNDERSTAND” stuff I don’t love, he sounds like he means what he says. That goes a long way for me. I can not agree with you and still love what you’re saying because you say it with conviction. I wish there was a way to get this Ziggler on TV, talking about something other than how he’s being held back in real life. At least here he’s tying it into his onscreen history.

No more phony insincere guy. Let him be real, let him be the real-life dick he almost always seems to be, and let us like him because he’s so authentic about it. He’s not Sami Zayn, he’s not John Cena, he’s not Roman Reigns. He’s not an average nice guy, and he can’t be the sassy babyface who says funny things to make the crowd laugh. He’s not the toughest guy in the world. He’s his own thing, and if we ever, ever figure that out, we’ll be a lot better off.

Best: Boss Counters

There isn’t much to the Banksy vs. Team B.A.D. tag — Charlotte attacks Becky and Sasha after the match to further their beef for the triple threat at WrestleMania — but I wanted to make sure I Bested Sasha Banks countering a bulldog into a wrist-clutch bulldog where she runs up the ropes, backflips over Naomi, uses the wrist for stability and goes straight into the Banks Statement. Lana and Brie Bella’s clumsy catfight antics look a little more antiquated every time Sasha pulls off something like that.

I’m excited for the WrestleMania match, and I hope they give it the time and love it needs to really surprise a lot of people who haven’t been paying attention.

Best: Kalisto Isn’t Wrestling Alberto Del Rio Again

Look, I’m as frustrated at seeing Tyler Breeze as a full-on jobber as the next guy, but at least this week he got an entrance and a pretty good little match before losing, right? That’s something?

My favorite part of the match (besides it not involving Alberto Del Rio in any way) is that lady with the orange hair in the second row. Keep your eye on her when Kalisto does the handstand into the backflip headscissors. Everyone is kinda sitting on their hands, but she starts going WEEEEEE and hopping up and down pumping her fist. She spends the rest of the match taking non-stop pictures, or happily filming the ceiling, depending on how you look at it. I wish everybody had those kinds of reactions to Tyler Breeze vs. Kalisto matches.

(I also wish Breeze would go back to NXT and be Baron Corbin’s friend in a We Hate Indie Stars posse.)

Best: CRUEL DAD

If you bought a Y2AJ t-shirt on Monday afternoon, don’t feel bad. You didn’t spend $20 to support a non-existent tag team, you spent $20 to celebrate how forever dope this match and segment were.

Chris Jericho and AJ Styles take on The New Day for the Tag Team Championship, and it is so good. I’ve seen a lot of good matches on Raw over the past few years, but I haven’t seen one this HOT in a while. Everybody’s firing on all cylinders here, and the Chicago crowd going ape for everything AJ does is beautiful. This is the AJ Styles we’ve wanted since he debuted in WWE. If you had any doubts about this guy having turned into one of the indisputable best performers on the planet over the past few years, sh*t, here you go. You don’t need a NJPW World subscription. You should get one, but here’s a look at what you’ve been missing. I love that AJ in WWE means he can do the Stylin’ DDT without having to pause in the middle. I also love the reaction it gets from WWE crowds. That sh*t was next-level years ago, and I’m glad it’s finally going U.S. mainstream. It’s like when Sami Zayn started diving through turnbuckles on NXT.

Anyway, the match is not only great, but it has a clean ending that puts over everyone involved. Styles gets a great nearfall with a Lionsault/springboard 450 combo, and things build and build until Jericho’s in the ring with Big E. E goes for the Big Ending, but Jericho slips out of it and shoves him into the post. Jericho goes for a Codebreaker, but Big E puts on the brakes, counters that INTO a Big Ending and pins Jericho clean. Separated from all the cool post-match stuff, New Day defended their championships over two big stars and they did it straight-up. That’s awesome.

I called the post-match stuff in the open thread, but it’s the right call. If you missed it, Jericho handles the polite, “you had a good match” post-match clapping from the Chicago crowd by kneeing Styles in the face. He hits him with three Codebreakers and the crowd hates it, which is one of the first times in a while I can remember a crowd booing a heel for being a heel, and not just for telling them to shut up, telling them they can’t have something they want or being a bad babyface.

That’s what happens when the face is actually over as a face. Weird, right? WWE puts so much effort into 2-D’ing the f*ck out of their babyfaces they make it impossible for anyone who isn’t six or stupid to like them. Now look at what they’re doing with Styles, and what they’ve been doing for the past few weeks with Ambrose. It’s like night and day. Whoever told WWE to go in this direction deserves a raise. Was it you, H?

I loved this entire thing. I’m going to go back and watch it again. Going forward, Chris Jericho is Cruel Dad.

Best: The Pizza Angle Has An End Game

I didn’t have much to say about the Mark Henry notices R-Truth has a pizza, Truth tries to give the pizza to Goldust, Goldust turns it down and Henry steals the abandoned pizza segment (besides the fact that it had great structure) until I saw what happened after Raw went off the air and realized the pie comes full circle. Henry ends up helping Truth and Goldust fight off a bunch of heels and tries to bribe Braun Strowman with a slice. I’m a jaded a-hole, but don’t ever let me get to the point where I can’t see the joy in The World’s Strongest Man and Sister Abigail’s Black Sheep getting into a slapfight over pizza preferences.

Worst: Ryback Cannot Stop Talking

Here’s how the backstage segment between Kalisto and Ryback went down:

Jojo: Hey Kalisto, great win tonight!
Kalisto: Thanks! I like to honor guys like Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero.
Jojo: That’s cool!
Ryback: EXCUSE ME THE BIG GUY HERE, LISTEN, KALISTO NO DISRESPECT TO YOU EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE LITERALLY THE SIZE OF A GUMMY BEAR BUT I AM THE BIG GUY, THAT MEANS I AM EXTREMELY BIG AND MUSCULAR, AND NO DISRESPECT MEANT TO YOU BUT BEING THIS LARGE AND MUSCULAR HERETOFORE REFERRED TO AS “BIG” MEANS I SHOULD HAVE A MATCH AT WRESTLEMANIA AND YOU SHOULDN’T. NOBODY THINKS IT’S BELIEVABLE THAT LITTLE GUYS CAN BEAT UP BIG GUYS. MOVIES SUCH AS IRON MAN IRON MAN 2 IRON MAN 3 CAPTAIN AMERICA CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR THOR THOR THE DARK WORLD THE INCREDIBLE HULK THE REGULAR HULK THE VARIOUS SPIDER-MANS AND GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY AND ALSO PROBABLY AVENGERS AND AVENGERS 2 HAVE SHOWN PEOPLE THAT SUPER HEROES ARE BIG GUYS, I MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE ANT MAN, WHICH IS ALSO A MARVEL FILM. HERE ARE SOME ACTORS I CAN NAME. BRADLEY COOPER. RYAN REYNOLDS. THAT’S IT. COMPARED TO THOSE GUYS, HANG ON, ROBERT DOWNEY JR., COMPARED TO THOSE GUYS INCLUDING DOWNEY JR. I AM STILL BIG. THEREFORE, JOJO, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT I DO NOT HAVE A MATCH AT WRESTLEMANIA.
Kalisto: [left 5 minutes ago]
Jojo: [is in a coma]
Ryback: YOU GUYS SHOULD REALLY READ THIS GREAT BOOK CALLED THE SECRET, I FIRST READ IT BACK IN 2006 WHEN-

It’s exhausting. I think roughly 45 minutes of hour 3 were devoted to Ryback’s backstage soliloquy.

He gets a quick match with Curtis Axel, and while the Social Outcasts continue to be precious adorable babies — I’m gonna be doing Axel’s weird EEEEE! chopping taunt for the rest of my life — it’s not as impactful or impressive as the match against Adam Rose. I think he just talked me into cryogenic sleep.

Best: Dean Ambrose Vs. Triple H Is Still The WrestleMania Feud We Need

I feel like there’s probably a zero percent chance of Dean Ambrose being anything but a damsel in distress for Roman Reigns at Roadblock, but man, every week it looks more and more like Ambrose/Triple H is the feud we’ve been needing all year. Maybe since WrestleMania 30’s afterglow ended with Daniel Bryan going into semi and then permanent retirement.

Win or lose, Ambrose is doing the best big leagues mic and character work of his career, and Triple H is doing everything he can to make the dude look like a million bucks. If Ambrose loses clean and that’s that, he’s proven to anyone with eyeballs and a brain that he can succeed at the very top of the card, and connect with audiences in a way Roman and even Rollins haven’t really been able to. That’s his Shield hook. Rollins is the ace wrestler, Roman has the look, Ambrose knows how to make a crowd forget their bullsh*t and pay attention. As good as this has been, I keep wondering what the hell Roman’s even going to do when he gets back. Unless he undergoes a major character transformation or does something undeniably cool and huge, Ambrose is out here during every minute of his absence doing a better job at being “Roman Reigns.”

The microphone confrontation with Triple H works because again, Ambrose is unhinged enough to want to respond to all of H’s cocky chatter with punching. He’s not affected by it, because he knows H is using it like a force field. Ambrose wrestles Bray Wyatt in the main, and it ends up turning into another excuse for Triple H to sic a heel squad on Ambrose to soften him up. We saw it with the League of Nation, and now with the Wyatts. There’s even a great moment where WWE teases a Wyatt/H confrontation and proves they can instantly rehabilitate almost anyone if they want. The fact that they can and choose not to is probably the most confusing part.

Anyway, H gets all CONFIDENT EVIL OVERLORD on Ambrose again, and Ambrose once again surprises him. This time it’s a Dirty Deeds that knocks H the f*ck out, and I can’t say enough about how much I love H’s sell. It’s a thing of beauty. No D-Von Dudley quivering, no flipping backwards onto his head, he just goes straight down and stays there. It gets over Dirty Deeds as a move that can instantly knock you out, and lets dorks like me make huge thematic leaps and say things like, “that was Cactus Jack’s finish so of COURSE Triple H is weak to it.” The show goes off the air with Ambrose holding the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, and … damn, that seems right, doesn’t it?

Surprise us, Roadblock. Shake things up. I’m begging you.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

pdragon

You see this is actually pretty good stuff. Instead of just completely focusing on one storyline and one storyline only you have a whole group of guys all eyeing the title. Reigns, Ambrose, Lesnar, and now Wyatt. It was that mentality, the idea that you could have more than two people in the upper card at once, that was one of the better aspects of the Attitude Era. Forget blood and swearing, THAT is something you can bring back to make the product better.

PatsShredShack

I wish just once JBL would explain exactly WHY it would be a problem for Dean Ambrose to be WWE champion. Especially since we’ve already had a man with IED, a man who assaults women, a man who went AWOL from the army, and someone who went around beating up geriatric old men for fun. Along with a bunch of people who AREN’T Randy Orton.

TheGunslinger

Cole: Could Saturday night be Ambroise’s night? Will he become WWE Champion? If so, will he replace me with a fish tank?

Cami

I hope Ryback challenges Kalisto to a hair vs mask match at Wrestlemania.

HighEnergyForever

“It’s always been a dream of mine to defend a title on the Wrestlemania pre show.”
-Kalisto

Amaterasu’s Son

“If you treated your wrestling program like Fast Food treats your body, it would be Monday Night Raw.”

Ryse

AJ: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal.
Y2J: Mine is an evil laugh! Now die! *codebreaker*

renogruber

“Brie is having a terrible month”.
You said career wrong.

Lester

WWE took the best technical wrestler on the planet and made it so the only way we can see him is by watching a reality show on the E! Network.
There is only one hell: the one we live in now.

Smooth Jimmy Apollo