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And now, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for August 3, 2015.
Best: Rest In Peace, Rowdy Roddy
I went to Wrestle Fan Fest in San Francisco trying to meet The Great Muta. He was the reason I’d gotten into tape trading at age 9, a hobby that’d put me on every predator’s radar if I did it today. “Hi, I’m a 9-year old, I’m going to write to this pen pal address I found in a wrestling magazine and ask them to send me VHS copies of videos they own. I have no idea what’ll be on them, I just have to trust this wrestling fan stranger to send me the right thing.” Thank God it was a different time.
Muta had been my favorite wrestler for most of my teenage (and young adult) life. He makes infrequent stops in the United States, but this was the first time I’d seen an event announced where you could actually walk up to him, talk to him, take your picture with him and get him to sign a glossy sheet of paper. I flew from Cleveland to the Cow Palace to make it happen.
I got in on Saturday. On Friday, the convention had fallen apart. Nobody was being paid. Promoters were pulling their tables and talents and skipping town. There was supposed to be an MMA card on Saturday night, but it was canceled, and Don Frye tried to fight a security guard. It was an absolute disaster. I walked in with my Great Muta autograph card, handed it to the shifty-eyed gent at the ticket table and was told Muta, “might be here, but he might not.” His explanation was, “that’s the wrestling business!” I was told that I could hang on to the Muta card just in case, but if he never showed up I could bring it back and exchange it for someone who had.
I looked around at the talent that remained. Virgil was there. My photo of him made all the “Lonely Virgil” Tumblrs. Blue Meanie was there. The Tonga Kid. I nervously asked if anyone was guaranteed to be arriving later, and was quoted two names: Bill Goldberg, and Rowdy Roddy Piper. I placed my bets on Piper, and wandered around to make small talk with The Meanie.
Eventually Piper showed up, and I got in a long line to meet him. I’d grown up an NWA kid and had seen him and Greg Valentine beat each other to death with a chain, but he wasn’t important to me. I knew him most as the bad guy from Hulk Hogan’s cartoon, and from the Goonies R Good Enough video, and from movies. He came back to WCW and was an old man with a fake hip, locking himself in Alcatraz to train for a match against Hogan at a time when I’d rather see Dean Malenko wrestle Ultimo Dragon. He was part of “Age In The Cage.” He was doing bad sleeper holds in main events while Chris Benoit slummed it at the bottom of the card against Meng. He wasn’t important to me.
Piper was taking a long time with everyone, so the line was moving slowly. I nervously smiled through conversations with wrestling fans around me as we waited, and just before I was supposed to go up, I saw Fan Fest handlers bring over a kid in a wheelchair. The kid couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. Piper smiled as the kid was wheeled over and knelt to greet him. Piper hung out with the kid for about five minutes, laughing and speaking quietly. When it was time to part, Piper leaned in and kissed him on the forehead. He stood and waved as they disappeared into the hallway.
When it was time to go up, I didn’t know what to say. Here was this guy who got famous getting hit in the ear with a chain, smashing coconuts on Jimmy Snuka’s head, being confrontationally racist about Mr. T, basically being the world’s biggest prick … and he had it figured out. He knew the secret to life. He could turn it on and be the worst person you’d ever met, and he could turn it off. He didn’t “live the gimmick.” He was an actor. An artist. A gentle, affectionate, kind-hearted human being who’d come to a sh*tty wrestling fan convention in an empty Cow Palace and spend five minutes lovingly speaking to a kid who couldn’t speak back. He was the kind of guy who would kiss a kid on the forehead not because he wanted the kid to feel good, but because he wanted to. He wanted to take the love inside himself and impart a tiny piece of it onto everyone he met.
He shook my hand, asked me my name, asked me what I did for a living. I didn’t do anything at the time. I wrote, but I didn’t get paid for it. I’d written a book that nobody read, mostly to keep from killing myself. I asked him, “what’s the secret?”
Piper smiled and leaned in close. The quote isn’t verbatim, but in my one moment with Rowdy Roddy Piper between my birth and my death, he told me the secret. “Whatever God means to you, keep it in your heart. And keep your heart in the right place.”
We did the Piper point for a photo and he wished me well in my writing career. 8 years later, I run a wrestling portal for a popular entertainment site, and I’m writing about him passing away in his sleep.
I didn’t meet The Great Muta that day. I still haven’t. Muta’s important to me because of what he could do in the ring, and the times he did it, and how I felt watching him work. He did flips when nobody else did flips, and he spit mist in peoples’ eyes. He was a ninja, and he could kick Sting so hard it’d knock paint off his face. I’ve got like 20 tapes of Muta’s best matches and moments. I’m happy I didn’t meet him.
I met a man whose kindness when he didn’t think anyone was watching changed me as a person. I wasn’t moved by Piper’s matches, or by the nostalgia of wrestling’s biggest bad guy during one of its most popular periods, or by how great a movie They Live is. Hell Comes To Frogtown and beating up Frankie Williams in the Pit and changing the questions when they figure out the answers … it matters, but it isn’t real. It’s not real life. In real life, Roddy Piper took a few minutes to make me — and everyone in line at that awful convention — feel like our lives were important. I took his advice, you know? I put my idea of God into my heart, and I started trying to put it in the right place. I became a better person. A kinder person. A person who cared when people were being hurt or mistreated; a person who might try to make time for a stranger in need, whether it makes sense or not. Whether someone’s watching or not. I will never be the man Piper was, but the time he pointed with me made me want to try.
When I was five, I was in the hospital. I’ve got a lung thing that’ll eventually kill me. My mom knew I loved wrestling, but K-Mart didn’t sell NWA toys. NWA toys didn’t exist. To make me feel better, she bought me a pack of “thumb wrestlers.” Little, plastic, hollow WWF stars with holes in their butts so you could stick your thumb in and move them around. One of them was Piper. Using what I knew about WWF, I took an old wooden box and wrote “PIPER’S PIT” on the side in crayon. It wasn’t important, I guess, it was just what he did. He lived there, so if I had him, he had to have a place to live.
He’s gone, and now I can’t think of a more important person.
Rest in peace, Hot Rod. I’ll try to keep my heart in the right place.
Best: I Broke Wahoo’s Nose
So yeah, back to the wrestling show.
This week’s episode of Raw starts with Seth Rollins showing up in a parody John Cena shirt that says NEVER SHUTS UP on the front, YOU CAN’T SEE KNEE on the back and a thumbs down on the sleeve. I was hoping for a plain black tee with “I BROKE CENA’S NOSE” across the chest in iron-on letters, but this works. There’s a title vs. title match happening at SummerSlam now with a 100% chance of a jumping knee being countered into an STF to make Big Match John and his Brutus Beefcake face the Forever Champion, so let’s enjoy these small moments while we can.
Best: Goddamn Neville
Rollins issues an open challenge for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, but only for people who are shorter than 6-feet tall and weigh less than 200 pounds. They tease El Torito, but Neville answers instead. The match they have is dope and all, but a couple of things:
1. The best way to get Neville over isn’t to be like, “look at this comically small guy who is just slightly better than a loser tag team’s bull mascot.” I know you can’t have Tom Phillips popping a wide stance behind him at all times, but damn.
2. I really wanted to see Seth Rollins vs. El Torito for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
Neville and Rollins have great chemistry, and whoever put this match together deserves a raise. There’s a less-than-zero-percent chance Neville would win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, especially in the opening match of a Raw a few weeks before SummerSlam, but they put together some nearfalls so believable I can watch them on YouTube the next day and STILL buy them. Jump to the 1:25 mark in the video and watch that Pedigree counter. That’s probably the closest nearfall I’ve seen in WWE this year. That is BEAUTIFULLY executed. Everyone in the crowd gasps at a nearfall they wouldn’t have bought. That’s knowing how to do your job.
They follow it up with the Red Arrow, which means CURTAINS for whoever gets hit by it, and have Rollins only survive by chance. He doesn’t get his foot on the ropes, Neville’s just over-excited and hooks it too deep, and Rollins’ feet drape over. Neville’s confusion and exasperation give Rollins time to recover enough to dodge the second Arrow, and Neville takes the damn Marty Garner Pedigree for the loss.
Neville looks like a million bucks, and has now had both John Cena and Seth Rollins dead-to-rights with the Red Arrow. Rollins wins clean, but he still got lucky. Everybody looks strong, and nobody had to get DQ’d or distracted or rolled up. Wrestling could be awesome all the time if you just committed to the idea that people could look great in a loss and be hated for winning clean.
Worst: Nothing Is Happening In The Tag Team Division
The next match is the Lucha Dragons and Los Matadores against The New Day and The Ascension. It’s fun enough, Xavier Woods is entertaining at ringside and the Prime Time Players are on commentary again. It looks great on paper, but it’s the same thing we’ve been watching for weeks. Is it safe to say that nothing’s happening in the tag team division? Like, at all?
What are The New Day and The Prime Time Players even feuding over? I thought they were gonna do something with the Mega Dad last week, but that was just an excuse for a distraction finish. This week it’s business as usual, and while everybody’s entertaining and good at what they’re being asked to do, none of it matters. This accomplishes as much as a match graphic. They’re out here diving and hurting themselves to do the work of a damn stock photo.
The trick to making secondary divisions work — the tag team division, or the Divas division for that matter — is to establish that yes, there are a lot of talented people in them, but then giving them something to do. What’s the story in the Divas division right now? A bunch of talented women have been slotted into teams by Stephanie McMahon, and they’re having a bunch of matches. They’re trying to “end the dominance of Team Bella” or whatever, but how? By winning matches? They’ve done that. The Bellas have lost a lot. So is it over? Are we just getting three women at a time to stand in an interview area and say their team name? They’ve got to do something, and have motivations and goals. The tag division is the same way. You keep feeding them into pretty-good matches, but what’s the point? If it’s “winning the tag team championships,” how do we know where anyone is? How do we know how they rank? Is being on the winning side of an 8-man tag good or bad for that? How does it work? Why does everybody feel like they’re running on a hamster wheel?
Worst: The “Submission Sorority”
I love these three and will probably buy the t-shirt, but, uh, a couple of quick notes:
1. If you’re worried about people googling Chyna and finding porn, don’t ever google “submission sorority.” You aren’t gonna see Paige or Charlotte or Becky Lynch, but you’ll learn an awful lot about paddle insertion.
2. Just wanted to point out that the tall blonde super athlete who calls herself “genetically superior” is in a team you can abbreviate as “The SS.”
Wait, wrong image.
There we go.
Worst: Brie Bella Is Still In Way Over Her Head
If you need a laugh, Wrestling With Text has a beautiful GIF of Brie Bella pulling a strike on Charlotte, then trying to blast her with the Power Cosmic:
Oh, Brie. I love that Brie continues to find herself in these Divas Revolution matches when she’s very clearly the thing Divas have to revolt against. She’s trying hard, sure, but she’s also only there because she comes in a matching set with Nikki, and she’s nowhere near as good as Nikki. Not to throw out Brutus Beefcake’s name twice in one column, but she’s Beefcake to Nikki’s Hogan. Nikki’s action figure comes with Brie, you know? If you rank the 9 women in the Divas Revolution story, Nikki’s maybe the 5th best one, but there’s a big gap between fifth and Brie down in 8th. It’s fun to watch Becky Lynch throw her with an Exploder, though.
Brie would be a much better fit in the Eva Marie storyline happening in NXT right now. Send her down to Full Sail where Smarky Smark and the Funky-smelling Bunch can chant “you can’t wrestle” at her, then give her a chance to work a bunch of low stakes matches against hungry competition to “prove herself.” She doesn’t need to, I guess. She’s a TV star and 1/2 of a Celebreality Marketing Juggernaut or whatever, but if we’re telling kayfabe stories of worth and redemption, getting her out of the deep end of the pool for a minute might help her out. Let Nikki downgrade her to Sister Slave again and sub-in Foxy in these tag matches.
Worst: Rusev Is Caught In A Time Loop
Rusev and King Barrett have a lot in common. Whenever they aren’t in a story, they default back to their original settings and get squash wins over the same one or two guys they always squash. Barrett gets Zack Ryder or R-Truth. Rusev gets Mark Henry, who at this point might as well be an enormous mannequin. Rusev beats him up for the millionth time, and it starts to feel a lot like last summer. Ah well, at least he isn’t facing Jack Swagger again.
Best: Rap Game Miz’s Face
The best version of the Miz is the one who gets to let his real-life personality shine through, but not so much that it turns him into a crummy WWE Babyface. Mike Mizanin is a guy with an uncorrupted love of pro wrestling who believes that what WWE does is what wrestling is. He didn’t grow up watching Flair and Dusty bloody each other in southern arenas and he didn’t come up on the indies, working with and against guys who found their greatest influence in Japan, Mexico or Europe. He wants to stand on the turnbuckles and yell IF YA SMELL WHAT THE ROCK IS COOKIN’. After Cena, he’s the perfect WWE employee. If you let that personality show a little, he’s easy to love. Him putting over Piper’s Pit as the most important wrestling talk show segment of all time was perfect, because you know he really means it. He’s right. There wouldn’t be a Miz or a Miz TV without Rowdy Roddy. If you let it shine too much, though, he starts “acting” like a nice guy, and he’s not that good of an actor. He starts coming across as a jerk again, but one we’re supposed to cheer, and he doesn’t have powerful enough of a personality or a strong enough sense of urgency to make that feel important.
Anyway, Good Version of Miz welcomes Kevin Owens onto Miz TV, and they’re interrupted by Cesaro. It’s here that we enter a strange world where Kevin Owens and Cesaro aren’t really doing or saying anything interesting, and THE MIZ of all people is the highlight. All they’ve got is “I’m better than you at stuff” and “nuh uh” respectively, and Miz is just mugging his ass off between them, trying to goad them into a fight. When Owens insults him, Miz doesn’t shrug it off, he takes it personally. He plays to the crowd so he doesn’t hurt what they’re going for. He gets it, man. He just seems like the kind of guy who does what he’s told first, and brings what he knows to the game second.
I keep waiting for that moment where Cesaro’s gonna bring up that he beat Sami Zayn a bunch and Sami earned his respect, and for Owens to flip out about it. Give me that moment. Connect the dots.
Worst: I’m Honestly Not Sure Who’s Going To Win This
King Barrett vs. Zack Ryder is the Phillies vs. Rockies of WWE. I have little to no interest in watching these last-place motherf*ckers meander their way through a mid-season game.
You know things are bad when you’re a WWE jobber with personality who is capable of great working great matches and I don’t get excited every time you’re on screen. Brad Maddox showed up in that pull-apart with Lesnar and the Undertaker a few weeks ago and I’m still texting people about it.
Best: Fire Emoji Fire Emoji Fire Emoji Paul Heyman Fire Emoji Fire Emoji Fire Emoji
Quick, guess whether or not I loved a promo where Brock Lesnar throws steps into the ring so he can stand on them like he’s a gold medalist in the f*cking Olympics while Paul Heyman puts over a match as the biggest of all time and screams the Last Rites in Latin. Take a wild f*cking guess.
This makes me so happy. Brock has zero reason to be standing on the steps. The only real build for Brock/Undertaker at SummerSlam is a bad match with an important finish from a year and a half ago leading to a bad finish to a bad match at Battleground, and it’ll be paid off by (as best we can assume) a pretty bad match at SummerSlam. But here’s Paul Heyman convincing us in one 5-minute speech that everything that’s happened is of LIFE OR DEATH IMPORTANCE, and that Lesnar will answer a spooky sneak attack with BRUTAL DISMEMBERMENT. He’s the microphone GOAT, and Brock Lesnar’s the goat for everything else.
Best: Paige Vs. Naomi, Compared To What Paige Vs. Naomi Would’ve Been 6 Months Ago
Paige vs. Naomi was solid, and ended with Paige tapping her out to the PTO. It wasn’t especially memorable or spectacular and has played out like a lot of the Divas Revolution matches, but take a moment to consider what this would’ve looked like in February. Paige would’ve hit her spots in the first 20 seconds, someone would’ve provided a distraction, Naomi would’ve jumped and put her ass in Paige’s face and it would’ve been over. We’d have about 40 seconds of content to get over an entire division’s worth of characters and stories. Now, we’ve got time to have an actual match, and we continue to train WWE audiences to see women’s matches as matches, and not as novelty breaks. Sometimes they’ll be exceptional, sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they’ll be boring, but they’ll be matches.
I’m hoping “Team B.A.D.” is a placeholder for something better for Sasha. This is going to sound like I’m comparing them because they’re wrestling factions featuring people of color, but it reminds me a lot of The Rock in the Nation of Domination. It might not be that severe, but when she’s onscreen I just kinda want the other people to leave. Tamina’s not even convincing when she’s in the ring against Tough Enough contestants.
Best: One Of Those Fun, Totally Meaningless Raw Main Events
The main event is Randy Orton as not Seth Rollins teaming with Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose against Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper and Sheamus. The match was fun, but felt very much like it was happening at a house show. There were a lot of little developments, though, like Roman Reigns ditching his milky-gray contacts for the much (x 1000) better brown eyes, and Sheamus being invited into the Wyatt Family’s promo darkroom. Orton found The Shield’s backstage hangout spot, too, so maybe we’re finally drawing up a blueprint for WWE backstage areas. Also of note: Luke Harper temporarily forgot how to wrestle. I don’t know why. Dude looked like Brie in there tonight. I guess we all have off days.
Sheamus loses the match, of course, because Mr. Money in the Bank’s primary role is to lose matches until becoming World Champion for nothing. And … that’s it. That’s the show. Cool? Cool. Hope you had fun watching the wrestling, see you next week, bye
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
Mr. Royal Rumble, TheCensoredMSol
“And who can ever forget the time Roddy Piper headlined the very first WrestleMania in a tag team match against Mr. T and his partner?”
Redshirt
John Cena will stay a face but at least his nose finally turned.
Juby14
We all knew that Justin Gabriel was the Bunny but I never would’ve guessed Neville was El Torito.
seabass44
Seth should have a new catchphrase shirt every week.
Front: IF YA SMELLLLLLLL
Back: nevermind
Heisandow
With their skin tones, if Paige, Charlotte, and Becky walk next to each other in the right order they look like Candy Corn.
Slumdog_prince
Divas matches are getting interrupted by commercial breaks. PROGRESS!
Sammy Davis Jr.
Brie gets on my nerves. Probably why her husband doesn’t have any.
Lester
Are they called the Cesaro Section because they get cut out of the broadcast?
squidchips
Team TAP = The Scooby Doobies
Team BAD = The Yogi Yahooeys
Team Bella = The Really Rottens
Fixing Kayfabe
With everyone dying lately it makes me sad that there isn’t a way for people en masse to pour out their love & respect & admiration for a person while they are still living.
