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WWE Raw
Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: Ronda Rousey broke Stephanie McMahon’s arm again, Kurt Angle shaded TNA on the same episode he brought in Bobby Lashley, and Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens had to fight for a roster spot a week before a Superstar Shake-Up™.
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Here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for April 16, 2018.
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Mickie James Bethesda glitch. I love it.
Smackdown as Tag Team Wrestling and a Bryan/AJ/Nak/Miz led main event scene sounds like an amazing show. Plus a Charlotte/Becky/Naomi/Asuka(?) women’s division? They don’t need a mid card.
They’ve only got two hours anyway, fuck a midcard.
“She looks like a glitch fro…” Naw… NWJose has the “glitch fro.”
Oh good…the incredibly worthless Baron Corbin is here.
I’m going to be bummed out if Joe’s role in the WWE is “get beaten up by lesser wrestlers to make them look strong”
Sonya and Ronda as a real feud would be nice. Better than just having Sonya look like a chump because both of them know MMA but Rousey is the one WWE is all in on. Also, sacrificing Sonya to save Natalya? I am justifiably rankled.
It’s been said many times, but referring to Rousey as the “baddest woman on the planet” over and over isn’t going to do her any favors in the long run.
It’s weird that they think anyone’s buying it when everyone can at least vaguely decribe 2 women who are definitely badder than her. That’s even without mentioning the actual baddest woman on the planet, Cyborg Santos.
It’s like when Darren Young was calling himself “Mr. No Days Off”. At some point that’s going to demonstrably be not true.
Mike Tyson was called the “baddest man on the planet” long after Buster Douglas knocked him out. Just because you lose a fight or two doesn’t mean you’re not still an asskicker.
I’m probably in the minority here, but I’m hoping for a DB/Miz sequence in their first match where they go “It” Kicks vs. “Yes” Kicks a la Jackie Chan vs. that flexible European dude in “Who Am I?” Comedic shin rubs required.
and twisted earrings, oh and someone getting beat up with thier shirt, i swear the only way to beat Jackie Chan is naked in room filled with nothing because everything is a weapon to him
I would totally pop for them trading Yes/It kicks back and forth with Miz selling his ass off and Bryan completely no-selling…like…
[Yes kick]
Miz: AHHHHH! [bends over clutching chest]
[It kick]
[YES KICK]
Miz: OH GOD! OHHHH GOD! [complains to the ref]
[It kick]
[YES KICK]
[Miz dies]
@hobbitcore
Hell yes! It’s been bugging me for months that anyone sells the IT Kicks. They’ve always looked soft as fuck
+1
+1 Bruh you should’ve saved the “Who am I?” reference for the smackdown thread. *Big Clap*
Thanks for BESTing Mickie’s sell of the Eclipse. It was truly magnificent. Mad respect for Mickie.
Same. She is like Rusev with his selling of RKOs
1. I’m glad Rousey is in a mid-card feud. Given her starpower, I kind of expected they’d have her challenging for the title or being the women’s main event in perpetuity, even if her skills weren’t yet at that level.
2. If Natalya’s a face again, shouldn’t they be scaling back the giant shoulderpads and cat ears? Wasn’t that part of the whole delusional heel gimmick?
3. It always should’ve been Deville with Logan and Riott in the Riott Squad. At least they all sort of have a rebel/outcast/nasty vibe, as opposed to Liv Morgan, a conventionally pretty blonde who looks like she wandered in from a different set.
4. I love Breezango, but I don’t really get what that was. Was it just a brief spotlight because they’re new? Part of a real push? Part of tearing the Bar down so they can split up or re-boot?
5. Anyone else notice that Reigns seemed utterly bored with his own promo before Joe cut in? Like, “I know I only get to talk for 20 seconds, and I’m saying the same thing as the last four Raws, so let’s get it over with…”
Agreed on the Rousey stuff. She seemed like the level of “star” that they’d try to shove right into bigger spots, taking away from the stories already being told about the championships. This way she can kinda work up her credibility as a transitional star more before doing big things.
The Breezango win was exactly what you said, a brief moment to shine as a way to introduce them to the Raw audience. From the way commentary was produced, that whole episode seemed to be structured under the assumption that many people were watching who have never seen Smackdown and have no idea who the people from Smackdown are. So Breezango gets one big (but still cheap and fluky) win over Raw’s top team so that you have a reason to care about them, and by next week they will be forgotten again.
RE: #1, totally agree. This is the first time since her debut that it looks like her line about wanting to be treated like anyone else wasn’t a massive load of crap.
DeVille, Logan, and Ruby would be a legit team. And full of people who can actually wrestle. I like it. Merge the groups! Purge the blondes.
I don’t get the “Smackdown lost everyone” jokes. They basically lost Kevin, Sami and a ton of stuff they weren’t doing anything worthwhile with. Aside from Kevin and Sami, I’d trade just about all of those people combined just to get Miz.
AJ, Nak, Miz, Bryan, New Day, Uso’s, Charlotte, Becky, Naomi, the IIconics, Bludgies, Rusev Day… that’s a hell of a start. Like, you could carve a strong 2-hour show out of just those people every week, and that’s without even adding whoever they’ll get back tonight.
Granted, when Smackdown’s brain trust of a writing staff has us in the middle of a Randy Orton vs. Big Cass main event feud in a month, I may feel differently.
What are you talking about? Most of the jokes last night were about how Smackdown WON by kicking out all their losers. Textbook definition of “addition by subtraction”.
I’m talking about the column itself that we’re all commenting on. “I know it’ll even out a lot once we’ve gotten through night two of the shake-up, but Raw didn’t just get some of Smackdown’s top stars, it got Smackdown”
Miztourage on their way to a tag team match involving Roode/Lashley: “We’ve got a meeting with the Bobs in a couple minutes.”
I’ve been fantasy booking trios belts for the better part of 3 years and have no idea why they won’t pull the trigger on them
They usually don’t even have time to fit in their most over singles and tag team acts, why add a whole new division for them to completely bungle?
There’d be no added division. I’d just add a belt to the Raw tag titles and make them trios. Now you’d have Raw trios and SDL tags going forward
Plus you get the added benefit of adding 2 more people into a story/match that normally wouldn’t be. And since WWE has a combined 400 wrestlers at this point, I think it’d be a solid move
I’d add the extra belt to the Smackdown tag titles instead, decouple both from their brands leaving the WWE Tag Team Championship and the WWE Trios Championship, float both between brands and call it a day. I can see the need for seperate world, secondary and womens titles, but tag? Jeez, no. WWE barely have enough and they love breaking tag teams up anyway, because I guess you can’t be a singles star and in a tag team at the same time.
Ugh. So glad I turned it off. I’m always better off just reading Brandon’s rant.
Ember’s gotta stop that tongue-wagging thing, unless she has a face full of Bliss.
“Wyatt/Hardy’s new finisher better be called Twisted Sister or I’m not gonna take it anymore”
Birdman, you are a genius.
I give half the credit to Dee Snyder
I kind of love/am amused by how these write-ups are pretty consistently like 20-40% things Brandon has already said on Twitter. That’s not sarcasm and definitely not criticism. Like who’s going to fault someone who has to write thousands of words a week for “plagiarizing” themself. I just find it amusing. It’s like a word search in the morning paper.
Re: Trios Tournament…I totally agree about all the great potential teams but I think something that could be equally compelling–and what is actually maybe the most compelling thing about the Lucha Underground trios division–is the possibilities as far as teams of three random-ish guys thrown together or even three people who hate each other a la Unlikely Trio (who I am SO SAD will never reunite now that Angelico has parted ways with LU).
Re: Samoa Joe…I LOVE Joe…easily one of my top five wrestlers in the world right now…but I honestly don’t understand why Roman didn’t interrupt Joe’s tirade about “not getting the job done” by saying “dude, you got beat by ONE F-5” and dropping the mic and leaving.
Re: Natalya…am I the only one who thinks Natalya is pretty great? I like her character work and I really like her in-ring work. I feel like I’m back in the arena for Raw when EVERYONE was chanting for Goldberg and I was literally the only person screaming “BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” I hate when that happens.
Ha. That’s a good point. It’s weird to hear Joe going on about how Reigns can’t finish the job against Lesnar when Joe didn’t fare much better, albeit in fewer matches.
If Reigns was that quick on the mic or even appeared to be that quick, then nobody would’ve had a problem with him winning at Mania.
That’s definitely not true. He was hot fire on the mic for weeks leading up to Mania but no one gave a damn.
And am I the only one who misses “The Inspirational” Bo Dallas who turns evil when frustrated?
I wish they would take advantage of the split and reshape his character into something similar.
I always wanted him to have a submission finish. And the entire time he’d yell at his opponent “Don’t give up! I bolieve in you!”
Someone needs to make that happen.
I’m hoping this is the start of an actual killer push for Mojo. His “killer instinct” promo on Zack Ryder was amazingly good and, as he said in the WWE.COM video, he has size, strength and speed to go with said instinct.
Giving him some strong wins will rehab him nicely for a run in the upper mid-card (possibly leading into main-events).
Thank you! I was looking for that “Best of Bothers Worlds” video. I like it, I just wish I could hear the superstars singing.
Good writeup but unfortunately I need to give it minus one million points for comparing Ziggler to Tana in any context ever
Joe’s theme doesn’t get enough love, makes me like him 87% more
“She’s great without that finish, but with that finish she’s next-level.”
I hate to turn into Dave-always-ripping-Alexa here, but Ember really isn’t that great and she is absolutely nothing without the cool finish (which, like Rey Mysterio before her, will get less and less cool the more and more we see it). She’s female Randy Orton, expect even worse on the stick. I’ve been waiting two years to see the Ember Moon everyone told me about and I haven’t seen it.
I think you’re good on the “not turning into me-wanting-Alexa-to-get-shot-into-an-asteroid” front.
Start worrying when you blame Ember for matches/feuds she’s not involved in being mediocre/bad.
“It’s also pretty safe to safe to say that one or more of the people on the face team are heading to Smackdown.”
Nah.