h/t to Mr. Bliss for that subtitle.
Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: Bullet Club Wolfpac finally got together, Asuka defeated the Raw Women’s Champion, and Braun Strowman invited a formerly living man to “get these hands.”
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Here’s the Best and Worst of the first Raw of the year, January 8, 2018.
Best: Jason Jordan Understands How The Show Works
Hot take: Jason Jordan is the best written character on the show right now, and he isn’t a heel or an opportunistic “daddy’s boy,” he’s the only person in WWE who knows how wrestling shows work.
So, a lot’s been made on TV about Jordan repeatedly going to his dad to get opportunities he hasn’t earned. He gets a match with John Cena by being like, “c’mon, gimme a match against John Cena!” He gets a match with Roman Reigns by being like, “c’mon, gimme a match against Roman Reigns! I have aggression! I wanna make an impact!” Kurt Angle puts him in the matches, and Jason’s managed to fumble sideways and slightly upward into a Tag Team Championship run and like, 40 minutes of every Raw. While you can argue that he’s “crying to his daddy” or whatever, let’s be honest … that’s just how Raw works. If you want a match with someone, you “step up” and interrupt them and challenge them. If it doesn’t automatically happen, you go to the General Manager and say shit like, “I want an opportunity tonight!” That’s the only way anyone outside of a feud gets booked. It’s what everyone else organically does, but pretends is a normal thing.
Jordan’s been doing this thing lately where he’s interrupted Roman Reigns’ promos to either challenge him to stuff or buddy up with him, especially now that Jordan’s half of the tag champs and thinks he’s in The Shield. Roman and Seth look at him like he’s an unbelievable n00b, but how many stories on Raw from the past 10 years can you even name that didn’t involve someone interrupting to say, “actually, things are THIS way?” The only way feuds start these days is by being announced in the middle of the ring during a heated conversation, and the only way you get matches with people is by stepping up to challenge them, or going to the GM to “make it official.”
Watch how Jordan reacts to the Fist Pals in the opener. Notice how he’s like, “WE are the most dominant team!” Roman is like [eye roll] [eye roll] [eye roll], but what happens next? Sgt. Bálor’s Lonely Hearts Club Band shows up and is like, “we heard you say you were the most dominant team! PLEASE! Actually WE are the most dominant team!” Jordan smiles his ass off, because he knows how Raw works. If you want a marquee match, you have to walk out during the middle of someone’s opening monologue, start some shit and make some vague challenges until someone takes you up on it. Otherwise, are you even scheduled to compete? Are you gonna have to wait and see if Curt Hawkins makes an open challenge?
It continues through the interaction of the teams, too, with Jordan declaring that his crew is called THE CHAMPIONS CLUB. Finn is like, “???,” like he’s not calling his team ME CLUB. Jordan knows how Raw works. He won’t have a team with a cool name if he doesn’t stand in the middle of the ring and announce it. Now even if Seth and Roman don’t want to be in “the Champions Club,” that’s what they’re gonna be called every time they team up. Chances are, Shop’s already got a t-shirt design made. It’s three fists punching championships on the front with something like “WWE Superstar by choice, champion BY BLOOD!!!” across the back. And CHAMPIONS CLUB in a Bullet Club font, because they’ve already dropped the “the.”
The match it sets up is fun, too, because it follows some logical assumptions.
- (1) Bálor Club is an established, respected trio and fresh out of the box, meaning there’s no way they’re losing to
- (2) The Champions Club, who are champions, sure, but they aren’t The Shield
- (3) meaning that Jason Jordan’s ridiculous willingness to “help” and put himself in the way will backfire on them
And that’s how it goes. Champion’s Club is doing great until Jordan tries to help too much, accidentally distracts the referee so they miss a hot tag. Then Jordan’s too busy trying to help Rollins and leaves him open for a shotgun dropkick and the Cootie Gras. What Jordan doesn’t understand yet is the “winning matches” part of being a WWE Superstar, so he can easily orchestrate almost any situation he wants, he just doesn’t know how to close. Constantly inserting yourself and getting in everyone’s way works out great until you’re at the end of a match.
The Miztourage jumps Team Championship Haver after the match, but to properly talk about that, we’ve gotta first touch on …
Best: I Miz You
After seven weeks away filming The Marine 6: Close Quarters — a prequel to next summer’s The Marine 7: Zero Dimes — our precious Michael Miz is back with a stern message for Roman Reigns re: the Intercontinental Championship. He wants it. It’s great to have him back, and even better to have him returning as a serious threat instead of, I don’t know, a guy who can’t win a 5-on-3 handicap match and gets scared by garbage monsters. Really the only downside is the loss of Miz’s Pidgeotto hair to Hollywood, as he’s now rocking the Alex Riley. Miz, Cena and Randy Orton are all trying to have the Alex Riley hair lately, did I miss a memo?
Later, Miz goes to Kurt Angle’s office and demands an Intercontinental Championship match with Roman Reigns on the 25th Anniversary Raw, which he gets because he’s Kurt Angle’s son … [checks notes] sorry, I meant to say, “because that’s how Raw works.”
Worst: They’re All Gonna Laugh At You
All right, the Woken Matt laughing has officially hit its expiration date.
Do something else. Anything else. Please do not tell me you decided to connect the most popular, grassroots, ridiculous universe of backyard wrestlers with elaborate lore with your company’s magical cultist swampbilly who can teleport and turn into a ghost lady and the only idea you had for a month of them feuding is, “they laugh at each other!”
Out Of Nowhere: We Don’t Lower The Bar, We ARE The Bar
Sheamus and Cesaro have a “long awaited” Raw Tag Team Championship rematch they’ve been waiting for for like two weeks at the Royal Rumble. I’m guessing Raw is taking Smackdown’s advice to “remember you have tag teams” and is doing the, “challengers beat the number one contender and get added to the match.” That’s the only way Smackdown builds feuds anymore. Every time someone is number one contender for anything, Jason Jordan should be hovering around them trying to pin them.
But yeah, The Bar gets randomly paired up with the only face team in the entire division now, Titus Worldwide, and loses. Sheamus tries to Brogue Kick Apollo Crews, Apollo dodges, and Titus rolls up Sheamus for three. Secretary Dana Brooke helps by patting Apollo on the shoulder when he falls out of the ring. IT’S A WELL-OILED MACHINE.
But yeah, I get it. The Revival are heels, Heath Slater and Rhyno are jobbers and also doing a weird “toughen up” story, Titus Worldwide are happy smiley faces and your other two teams are either you (The Bar) or the champions (a heel teaming with a frustrated face). What else can you do? I just wish they’d given Titus Worldwide a win or two before throwing them on Raw and saying, “here’s the next challenger, probably!”
Best/Worst: Sonya DeVille Has Her Hair Down For The Staredown
From the December 25 edition of the Best and Worst of Raw:
On the December 11 edition of Raw, Absolution won a six-woman tag team match against Sasha Banks, Bayley and Mickie James. On the next week’s show, December 18, Absolution lost a six-woman tag team match against Sasha Banks, Bayley and Mickie James because they wouldn’t stop kicking Sasha’s ass and the referee threw it out. On this week’s show, Absolution wins a six-woman tag team match against Sasha Banks, Bayley and Mickie James.
This week we go in a radical new direction by having Sasha Banks and Bayley with Mickie James in their corner take on Sonya DeVille and Mandy Rose, with Paige in theirs.
As a positive, I guess the only good thing to come out of Paige’s recent health scare is Mandy and Sonya getting more ring time together, which I think could really help them. They both seem to know what they’re doing, they just need to settle into identities of their own, and not just be the Pokémon Red versions of Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan.
Worst: Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
WWE’s camera work has been really obnoxious lately. They’ve started doing this thing where a camera zooms in on someone tight when they’re on the ropes or whatever, and that means nobody in the arena, wrestlers included, can see what’s happening outside the shot. So at War Games you had guys fighting on the top of the cage, looking for a superplex, and by way of insane Wayne’s World close-up jumped from everyone else in the match down to everyone lined up ready to receive plex.
Here, Asuka’s posing on the ropes and the announce team can’t see Nia Jax coming until she’s already pulling Asuka down. I mean, I guess the announce team is supposed to be glued to their monitors watching the USA Network live feed instead of like, looking up slightly at the wrestling happening in front of them, but regardless, that “out of sight out of mind” camera move needs to chill.
To throw this segment a positive as well, I like that if they’re doing a stop-gap Asuka vs. Nia Jax feud to kill time before Asuka’s title win, they’re keep it simple. It’s an easy to follow story. Asuka defeated Alexa Bliss. Alexa manipulates Nia Jax into doing her dirty work again, promising the big dream match between them at WrestleMania in exchange for Nia attacking and squashing Asuka. Now Asuka’s going to kick Nia to death again next week, and the fourth part of the story is, I assume, “Alexa Bliss running for her life.”
Again, getting the title off Bliss before the women’s Rumble is the best call, because nothing involving Asuka can also involve losses right now. If Asuka’s in the Mixed Match Challenge, Asuka wins. If Asuka’s in a Royal Rumble, Asuka wins, unless there’s some bullshit. So if you take Asuka out and sub Bliss in, the winner’s up in the air and you create a little intrigue.
Also On This Week’s Show
Samoa Joe squashes Rhyno to continue Rhyno’s weird plan to toughen up Heath Slater by making him watch a bunch of Rhyno losses. After the match, Joe and an absolutely enthused Charly Caruso awkwardly work John Cena into conversation so Joe can randomly threaten to eliminate Cena from the Royal Rumble. The start of Joe vs. Cena for WrestleMania, maybe?
In “unfortunate for the booking” news, Enzo Amore got busted open by a kick and had his ankle crushed by a Cedric Alexander drive, prematurely ending their Cruiserweight Championship match on a count-out. You’d think maybe the finish was Enzo losing on purpose all along, but I hope it was an audible to cover for the injury, or else Cedric looks like he doesn’t understand how title matches work.
I was enjoying this until the finish, so maybe fate will stop trying to prevent the Cruiserweight Championship from being defended. Seriously, they had to re-do the first qualifying match because of what happened with Rich Swann, adding another week to the booking. Then Enzo got sick, and they had to postpone it again. Now Enzo gets hurt — whether you’re thinking a legitimate ankle injury or just him bleeding too much to be on TV — and you have to do it AGAIN.
Finally, Here’s Braun Strowman Trying To Kill People With A Grappling Hook
Yes folks, the highlight of this week’s Raw in a walk is Braun Strowman settling the beef between Brock Lesnar and Kane by (1) brandishing a fucking grappling hook, (2) successfully throwing the grappling hook to the top of a lighting truss, and (3) pulling said truss down on everybody. It’s not Braun flipping an ambulance, but it’s pretty close to my followup fantasy booking of, “Braun follows you to the ER and flips the entire hospital.”
Not much to say about this otherwise — Heyman’s promo is good, as always, but he hasn’t had anything to say in months — but if we’re doing this Universal Championship feud for the next few weeks, can we get some attempted absurdist manslaughter on EVERY episode?
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
The Real Birdman
What happens if Seth & Finn both go for sling blades on each other? Is a perpetual motion device invented?
AddMayne
“They were quite the young bucks back then. One could say they were the true omegas of New Japan Pro Wrestling. Cody Rhodes.”
Harry Longabaugh
“Alexa? Translate from Japanese for me.”
Big Baby Yeezus
Nia Jax has spammed enough XP to reach Braun Strowman levels of intelligence and self-awareness
Clay Quartermain
if that’s Trish on the phone, then we know why Mickie dressed up tonight
Harry Longabaugh
“If I care about someone, I don’t want to hurt their feelings. That’s why I won’t tell Murphy that there’s no chance of him making the main roster.”
Ja Gi Kyung-Moon
Samoa Joe brutalized the Big Dog, and now he’s trying to kill a Rhyno.
Guys, I think Samoa Joe is an Ace Ventura villain.
Mr. Bliss
Before Jericho left for NJPW, he taught Braun how to bring the walls down
Baron Von Raschke
Old School would also have the Champion defend their title at least once every 30 days, Paul….but we’ve gotten away from that, too.
shockabra
I know it’s Old School to grapple but this can’t be what Heyman envisioned…
That’s it for this week’s column, fans! Drop us a comment in our comments section below, share the column on social media to help us out, and join us here again next week … same bat time, same bat channel.
The end. (?)
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