Previously on The Best and Worst of Raw: The Secret-related tensions mounted as we built to a Night Full Of Champions. Charlotte won the Divas Championship, John Cena won the United States Championship and Sting won an ambulance ride to a Local Medical Facility. Plus, referee Rudy Charles got to hang out with his old friends, Brother Ray and Devon Deadly.
Also, WWE announced a huge main-event for Hell in a Cell, but neither of those guys is here.
Please enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for September 21, 2015.
Best: Let’s Start Raw With FIGHTING, YEAH
I spent a big chunk of The Best and Worst of Night Of Champions discussing my resurgent love for Roman Reigns, and that continued on Monday night. We opened the show with Roman basically saying, “hey, let’s fight,” and then everybody fighting. I turned on my TV 5 minutes late expecting to have not missed anything besides a Seth Rollins entrance or some Authority platitudes, and was pleasantly surprised. Next week I’ll make sure I don’t miss the first 5 minutes. See how that works?
One thing I like about the current Wyatts/Shield beef is the sense of urgency. The thing that works about the Wyatt Family is that they’re scary cultist swampbillies, sure, but they’re also an expert Trios team. The Rowan version was great, and the Braun Strowman version’s even better … with Strowman there, they’ve got a doomsday weapon they can tag in to regain control, and it’s up to the babyfaces to work together and diffuse it before it explodes and kills them all with standing chokes. Even the impromptu fights become these life or death struggles, because you’ve just gotta team up and keep hitting this dude until he flees or you’re toast.
I kinda wish they’d addressed the Chris Jericho thing instead from Sunday night — they didn’t really address Sting’s injury, either — but if they’re continuing to build and tie everything together, I’m into it. At Battleground we got Reigns vs. Wyatt, 1-on-1. At SummerSlam it was 2-on-2, and at Night of Champions it was 3-on-3. Maybe we’ll get Erick Rowan back and run the full-strength Wyatt Family against Reigns, Ambrose, Orton AND Jericho? Have the faces go up to even the feud out at 2-2, and blow it off with a 5-on-5 elimination match at Survivor Series. That’d be fun as hell, and would justify half a year of pay-per-view builds and stories.
(And you can have Jericho turn on them in the 5-on-5, and have it come down to all 5 Wyatts — including Adam Rose, I guess, since people were talking about that — against Ambrose and Reigns. Have Seth Rollins show up to be their extra man, and let The Shield eliminate all 5 Wyatts. Picture this in your brain and tell me it wouldn’t make you make weird screamy noises at your screen for an hour.)
(And then the Nexus reforms!)
(shut up)
Best: Corporate Kane Of Park, Park & Park LP
At Night Of Champions, Th’ Demon Kane returned and chokeslammed Seth Rollins. On Raw, Rollins wandered into The Authority’s office to find Th’ CORPORATE Kane, smiling and letting bygones be bygones without any memory of Night of Champions. If a big guy having a split personality where he’s simultaneously a Hellish monster and an oafish corporate dork seems familiar, don’t worry, we’re all on the same page:
Wow it's seems other families share the same problems my brother and I did!! Small world.
— Joseph Park (@JOSEPHPARK_esq) September 22, 2015
That acknowledged, smiling Corporate Kane cracked my ass up. There’s just something about him saying Triple H and Stephanie “have yet to arrive” that’s pitch-perfect enough to make me smile. I hope they stick with the split personality, and that they add a third so it’s a little more Mick Foley and a little less Chris, You Know, Abyss. Maybe have Rollins go to the dentist to check on a loose tooth and it be Kane as Isaac Yankem, with no recollection of having ever met Rollins before. If not that, bring back the fake Diesel.
Worst: Sin Cara’s Entire Life
Every second of Sin Cara’s life as a WWE character is an ordeal. If you think about it, he’s never had a good moment. He has two speeds: “f*cking up” and “not f*cking up.” Not f*cking up is as good as it gets. The backstage fallout video christens the Lucha Dragons the “Kings of Flight”, but that’s not it. Kalisto is the King of Flight. Sin Cara is the King of Falls.
Early in this Night of Champions Kickoff rematch, Sin Cara goes for a springboard and eats sh*t. He gets beaten up for a while, forcing him into “not f*cking up” territory, and then he suicide dives face-first into the announce table. I don’t know. Can we bring back Hunico and Camacho and their little bikes? If you want to preserve the character for some reason, give Kalisto one of those swank half-and-half lucha masks. Watching Sin Cara collapse under the weight of his own inadequacy while Konnor and Viktor stomp him is the pits, and watching them do it while Neville, Kalisto and Stardust stand on the apron is like having 7, 8 and 9 up in the bottom of the 9th. PINCH HIT. PINCH RUN. PINCH EVERYTHING.
Best: Bo!, Or
Best: Kevin Owens Is One Step Ahead
Several little things are accomplished here:
1. Bo appears, which almost always gets a Best. Bo should already be the Cousin Oliver of the Wyatt Family and I don’t know why we’re pretending he shouldn’t.
2. Ryback is showing aggression again, which is CRUCIAL to his character working. Far too often, Ryback spends his matches walking around in circles, pumping his arms up and down and yelling things instead of destroying his opponents. You didn’t see Goldberg cut an awkward 10-minute promo about a book he liked before squashing Jerry Flynn, he just did it. Ryback should be an actual wrecking ball that swings in and leaves destruction in his wake. Why is he booked like such a dork? I don’t care about how he feels about a muscle tear, I want him to stack muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles and rip a guy in half at the waist.
3. Kevin Owens is more or less (finally) acting like NXT Kevin Owens. He wins the Intercontinental Championship, but he knows how wrestling works … he knows that Ryback will be his first challenger, because REMATCH CLAUSE, so he’s taking a proactive step to be out here on commentary and get in Ryback’s face. He waits for the pinfall, then runs in and throws a bunch of coward stomps while Ryback’s on the ground. When he’s in danger, he escapes and flees to safety. He’s not trying to injure him or “make an impact” or anything dumb, he just knows he’s wrestling a big, stupid, easily-hurt guy and can waltz into his head.
4. Owens shaking hands with JBL, giving a dismissive “yeah, also you” to Cole and big leaguing Byron Saxton (a guy he’s already f*cked with on NXT) was perfect.
5. The Miz should star in a WWE Studios Christmas film called The Rematch Claus. Dear WWE, when you’re done hiring me to spearhead a bunch of monthly Shield reunions, move me over to movies. After Miz learns a lesson about the true meaning of the less exciting day after Christmas, I’ll get to work on 12 Rounds 4, about Bull Dempsey trying to finish an entire box of Little Debbie Fudge Rounds in one sitting.
Best/Worst: Turn The Paige
Another week, another stressful, divisive Divas segment.
If you missed it (and can’t click the video because you’re at work, and don’t want your bosses to think you’re looking up the Submission Sorority), new Divas Champion Charlotte held a Charlabration to thank her dad and Team PCB for giving her the strength she needed to no-sell 13 minutes of leg work and win the title. Paige snatches the mic from her, says she alone is why Charlotte and the Divas Revolution have succeeded, buries basically every woman on the roster and bails. Nikki Bella shows up to follow that up with a “pie bom” of her own, and Charlotte wrestles Brie.
There’s a lot of good here. For starters, Paige was straight-up born to be an awful person. I mean, she’s Sweet Saraya’s daughter, she shouldn’t have spent a SECOND of her big leagues career being nice to people. Heel Paige is it. By running down the Divas division, she gave a lot of the wrestlers identities, or motivations. She called Becky Lynch the most irrelevant of the bunch, which is the closest Becky’s had to a character since she put on goggles. She turned a bunch of tired IWC talking points into heel rantings, brought Natalya back from the dead and (more or less) ended Divas Faction Warfare. It might keep going, especially if Paige, Natalya and Emma team up — fingers crossed — but we at least got a break from it, and were reminded that these are individuals who should have some reason to be wrestling these never-ending, vaguely inspirational team matches.
There’s a lot of bad, too. The IWC talking points she turned into heel rantings are mostly horrible, and are at best far beyond beating a dead horse. The “real reason” the Bella Twins are where they are is because they f*cked important guys in the company. Charlotte’s only here because of her dad. Team B.A.D. is flashy, but has no substance. I’m surprised she didn’t drop a “Sasha Banks is overrated” in there somewhere. This is awesome if you’re giving it to a heel and saying, “what she’s saying is obviously wrong,” but you aren’t really doing that. You’re making a lot of the people who throw those talking points out on the reg have a cool person on TV saying they’re right, without a context or point-A-to-B-to-C story to disprove them. Paige is saying what WWE thinks “we’re all thinking,” when the people thinking that are the ones making it harder to cultivate true change. It’s saying, “the women are the problem,” when the real answer is, “the people in charge of the women who are turning a necessary pro wrestling evolution into a spineless social media trend are the problem.” AKA what Paige might say in real life.
What happens then is that we’re right back where we started. The only characters women get on TV are “catty, jealous bitch” or “nice one who doesn’t complain and points at people when she walks to the ring.” The only story WWE tells with women is, “somebody’s jealous.” It ignores a lot of really easy, obvious wrestling tropes like competition, reputation, interactions based around stuff that actually happens in-universe, etc. They just always go to jealous, because women be trippin’, and the lowest common denominator can’t accept anything more ambitious than the status quo.
So, to recap, Paige as a heel is a great decision and she’s great at it. The women need something more than empty team battles, and they got it. The women need a better, more worthwhile hook than jealousy, and they didn’t get it. So you’ve got motivation and things actually happening, but they work towards reestablishing the same tired stuff we needed to Revolt against in the first place. We’re taking baby steps, but in the wrong direction. Sideways baby steps, maybe.
This all would’ve been better if Paige had just punched Charlotte in the back of the head when she called Becky Lynch her “protein sister.”
Worst: Brie Bella Selling The Figure-8
Jump to the 1:55 mark to watch Brie sell the Figure-8 like she’s John Laurinaitis selling a GTS. She puts no effort into escaping, kinda lies back and throws a tantrum like she’s a disobedient kid on Supernanny and then PASSES OUT. She’s in so much instant pain from a bridging figure-four that she sells it like a knockout punch. A knockout where you have to slap the mat on your way down. I have no idea what Brie Bella’s doing. I think she did a better job selling a fear of Kane. The difference between Nikki and Brie Bella is the difference between Charlotte and David Flair.
Worst: The Phantom Brogue Kick
Sheamus missing a Brogue Kick by like a foot was the best part of this match, unless you count Mark Henry finally figuring out after 20 years that he could try being strong during matches. Mark being a non-threatening extra is super sad, and I hope that they put some effort into giving him one last run at SOMETHING before he retires to make him relevant again. I don’t want him going into the Hall of Fame with one of those “oh, okay” Nikolai Volkoff sympathy inductions.
Sheamus is white noise right now, and that’s not a joke about his move. He’s a Magic Eye picture without a hidden schooner. He’s a whoopie cushion without any air in it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more ice cold wrestler, and I’ve seen Glacier.
Best: Ru Day Rocks
The thing you need to take away from this match is that Rusev, Summer Rae and The New Day are a match made in Heaven. If you’re wondering why Woods, Kingston and Big E would team up with Rusev after he spent a year camel clutching them to prove America’s inferiority, these tweets will explain. Good Guy Rusev invited them over for dinner to eat chicken and yogurt to make fun of cold fish Lana.
This may be the most magical Xavier Woods’ trombone has ever been. Summer Rae gives him a slide assist in an accidentally sexual moment for any band geeks in the WWE Universe, and then the motherf*cker plays Rusev’s entrance theme. On the trombone. While Rusev beats people up. I’m happy WWE Fan Nation figured out that people want to see whatever dumb stuff The New Day did and have started to edit their match clips to showcase it. They should’ve devoted an entire clip to Woods on the outside yelling I AM NOT A BABY over and over.
One quick note, though: Woods had an enormous chunk of wood pulled “from his buttocks” after Night of Champions, which he announces and follows with “PAUSE.” If you listen to Joe Budden or have seen that one episode of The Boondocks, you know that “pause” is the more socially acceptable way to say “no homo.” Less of that, more Final Fantasy music on trombone, please.
Best: Hey, Natalya Still Exists!
Look everyone, it’s Natalya! And she’s doing a Michael Elgin gimmick! HASHTAG BIG NATTIE!
Natalya makes a grand return on the night Paige asked where she’d been, so maybe Natalya works like Beetlejuice. She looks great and had the beginnings of a good match with Naomi, but it quickly turns into the old stalwart, the distraction finish. Natalya tries to throw hands at Sasha Banks, tonight’s winner of the participation award, and gets assed in the face for the loss. Two notes:
1. My initial reaction was, “why bring Natalya back and give her a speech about how she’s cool and strong if you’re just gonna feed her another loss,” but maybe that’s part of the story. She showed up to tell Paige she understood her complaints, but that she was wrong, and was the only one standing in the way of her success. Then she goes out and loses to Team B.A.D. like a chump? That has to be a setup for Natalya to say, “no, actually you’re right, let’s get pissed off and choke out everybody we see.” Paige, Natalya and Emma as jaded, unappreciated shooters is a thing I’d like to see.
2. Why can’t anybody say “Naomi?” Since she showed up in NXT and ran into Matt Striker, she’s been “Naomi” (like it’s spelled) and “Ny-omi.” Natalya calls her Ny-omi here, and it’s like, don’t you guys travel together? Don’t you watch the shows? Has Trinity been around long enough to send out a memo? Let’s all get on the same page.
Worst: Cesaro Should Start Wearing A Cesaro Armband
Cesaro wrestled Big Show, which is unfortunate, because Show’s heading into Madison Square Garden to face Brock Lesnar on the LITERALLY GO TO HELL TOUR and needs a strong win. Cesaro gets in some offense, including suplexing Show into the ring, but it ends like it always does. Show no-sells the suplex, punches Cesaro in the face once and pins him. That’s it. That’s your Swiss superman. That’s your tall, handsome, infinite strength Malenko who speaks five languages and has all the love and street cred you’d ever want built-in.
It was a bad night to be Tyson Kidd, I guess.
Best: The Endings Aren’t A Mystery, But These Are The Best Matches In The Company
This week’s main event is Seth Rollins REMATCH CLAUSING John Cena, and there are only two things you need to know: it was good, like always, and unless there’s an absolutely ridiculous reason otherwise, John Cena wins. Big ups to WWE for taking credit for Jon Stewart’s Emmy win because they used WWE footage in his nomination video, by the way. I hope next week we get a DID YOU KNOW that says WWE Superstar Jon Stewart has more Emmy wins than the NHL and Major League Soccer combined.
The important thing (in quotes) is what happens after the match:
Cornball Best: The Seth Rollins Go To Hell Tour
That Demon Kane shows up via the Ultimate Warrior Memorial Hole In The Ring to drag Seth Rollins to literal Christian Hell. In the Bible, it says that Hell is directly under a WWE ring. Once you set it up and put on the apron skirts, Hell appears. It’s also where little people have court? I don’t know. The point here is that Seth Rollins is now dead, and …
… well, okay, he’s not dead, he was just scared a lot. It seems like being “dragged to Hell” has extremely low stakes. What happens? Is Kane just really good at beating people up in tight spaces? If you held WrestleMania in an air conditioning vent, would he be a 16-time World Champion? Doe she just pull you down and show you spooky stuff to scare you? Is it like one of those awesome haunted houses at the county fair? Did Kane spend all afternoon rigging dummies to spring up and scream?
Anyway, that’s how Raw ends. Not with a bang, but with Seth Rollins getting a Red Light Special. All through the night.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
SaberDragon
NoC Recap: Last night, in the Sting match, the role of Lex Luger was played by Sting’s body
Aces
That damn Sin Cara mask is more cursed than the IC title.
ScottC
The man that gravity remembered, Sin Cara!
Billy Boy
It would be amazing if they came back from commercial and one of Los Matadores was wearing Sin Cara’s mask over theirs and standing there like nothing happened.
troi
HHH: “Seth, Kane died 30yrs ago.”
PhilBallins
FIRST OFF, F*CK YOUR DAD AND THE CLIQUE YOU CLAIM
Kevin Nash Booked This
Is there a single person on the planet besides Vince McMahon who would rather watch Lesnar/Show instead of Lesnar/Cesaro?
It f*cking sucks that that ONE person is the guy who gets to make the decision.
The Real Birdman
I hope they both roll out from under the ring, beaten and bloody, only for Hornswoggle to emerge screaming “This is MY HOUSE”
AshBlue
That smoke billowing up in the ring is symbolic of the smoke they blow up our asses every week.
TheRealDonEast
Cee Lo Green: “Well, there you have it, that’s our story, Seth’s dead. Good night.”
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