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WWE Raw
Beasty-WHAT now?
Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: WWE BIG ASS EAT BALLS happened, and … well, nothing’s different. All the champions retained and Roman Reigns lost, but didn’t really lose at all.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for July 10, 2017.
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Just a comment to say how much I enjoy and look forward to these write ups.
And “Pretty sure at some point Dean Ambrose wished on a Djinn to bind his fate to The Miz’s and we’re just sitting through the forever-binding.” I see your Witcher reference and am all the way here for it.
Stephanie is too obvious. I say it ends up being Dixie Carter for whatever stupid reason.
I dunno, man. I think it’s one thing to have her show up on a Kurt Angle documentary and another for her to actually show up on Raw. If she does, WWE will have to actively acknowledge live on the USA Network that TNA/GFW exists and she used to run the place (into the ground, hey-ohhhhh). I know over the last couple years WWE’s become far less isolationist than they used to be but it’s a big jump from “Hey these guys used to wrestle in New Japan” to “the former boss of our closest American competitor is here to shake things up”. They did that with Heyman and Bischoff but that was mostly Vince swinging around a gigantic victory boner after he bought out WCW and ECW. GFW is still a thing, and only getting more popular, and I doubt Vince wants to acknowledge their existence on his programming.
But then again it looks like they’re going full steam ahead with the Broken Hardys so who the fuck knows these days.
Gold Dust needs to fight Miz, the whole actor thing would be great. It would be like a Joan Crawford vs betty davis. at some point they’d have to team up to have a great championship run but to still hate eachother.
Hollywood Wars.
Not to hate on Bo and Curtis but a Goldust/Miz tag team would be like, a thousand times better than the Miztourage.
I’d have Goldust as a member of this stable. Let’s not call them the Miztourage though, let’s call them Hollywood Inc. Add Big Cass as Miz’s personal muscle and you give him a heel role with capable promo support too.
Yeah SteelyDanzig I’ve been trying to get that tag team off the ground as well! I’d want him to be part of the stable, but I’m worried Goldy would get lost in the shuffle when he needs a legit title push to close out his run. Maybe he and Miz feud over who is the boss of the stable, winner gets the title and Bo/Axel in the divorce. Or they can split custody.
Although if Miztourage with Goldust in the mix control the IC and tag titles, defend them all freebird rules, I would legit swoon.
LIVE REPORT:
Main Event matches taped were Mickie James vs. Emma and TJP vs. Lince Dorado.
Cass was booed HARD and LOUD throughout his entire segment. I’m not sure how it sounded on TV, but the Houston crowd did not care for Cass last night.
Balor/Samson was really good. Crowd was into it.
I didn’t care about the Hardys 20 years ago and I certainly don’t care about them now. Pretty sure I was the only one cheering when The Revival showed up.
The Joe/Bork Laser/Roman segment was fantastic. Crowd loved every second of it.
A great part of being at the show live was not having to hear Booker T try to speak English. Houston loves him, of course.
I almost wish Roman had like waved in the background with his dumb smirk to totally kill that moment.
If he’d done that and later in the night Ambrose had hit Rollins with a chair I might have actually respected them a bit more for fulfilling the roles they kind of want to embody. Roman is the guy who can get away with anything, even trying to kill somebody with an ambulance, so being a smirking dickhead in a very important segment, yet still getting a #1 contenders match is right up his alley. Dean is supposed to be a pissed off lunatic who still hates Rollins and that would have been the perfect time to clobber him.
“WHY DID BAYLEY GET THE PINK
Uhhhh…because Alexa buried the shit out of her and we might need to get her out of that grave?
That, for starters.
Pin…ugh…
Well Sasha does love her.
lol how is a surprise roll-up pin in a tag match “getting her out of that grave”? It doesn’t help anyone in the match, especially Bayley.
keep running up that hill man
At least she doesn’t look like an ineffective goober for once. Compared to all the other shit she had to go through to put Alexa Pissbreak over, that’s a lot.
You’re letting your Bliss hate make you say really dumb things. I doubt Alexa has the pull backstage to bury anyone.
FFS Bayley was never buried. She hasn’t been booked well, but she’s on TV most nights. Taking a loss to the champ is not a burial. I wouldn’t even say Mickie, Dana or Emma are buried, but they’re a hell of a lot closer than Bayley.
You’ve really picked an interesting hill to die on.
As a constant Dolph Ziggler heckler myself, I respect the hell out of @Dave M J ‘s commitment
If you have hate in your heart, let it out.
To be fair to Dave M J I think most of his points on this post were more about brainstorming ways to make Bayley look good again and not the usual Bliss hate. He was actually pretty complimentary about her GBoF match.
I thought after the phone call it was Dixie, but Steph makes way too much sense now. Why the hell would he care about his job if he was sleeping with Dixie? Plus, there’s a good backstory of her being overly critical of Mick Foley for no reason, to get him to quit (or did she fire him, I honestly can’t remember?) so she could put in Angle.
Except Vince hired Angle, not Stephanie.
Braun Strowman will absolutely interfere next week and make SS and 4-way
That could be an amazing 4-way.
I thought Cass’s promo was pretty damn good.
You know who wasn’t? Brock? Joe blew them both out of the water. Roman wasn’t really bad – he was just assigned a really weird role that involved a lot of standing around and watching two other guys maybe fight. (also, can Heyman stop with the weird Samoan shit? It doesn’t seem to be resonating with anybody and it just feels uncomfortable)
A weird thing about that segment is that while they haven’t fully turned Roman, that sure read like they making sure we understand Brock is a face.
YAY THE REVIVAL ARE BACK. It’s somebody on RAW that I’ll actually root for. BOO- the other person on RAW I can root for just got done with the fucking Hardyz and now sweet Dear Dash and Dawson have to be in matches where Cole tries to sell the glory of that stupid fucking bucklesmash spot. I’m just not sure how a guy saying words funny makes up for garbage matches.
Putting Dixie in that Angle video is NBA twitter levels of petty and I love it. The actual Angle angle- you’re just left hoping it’s nothing horrible. I’m terrified remembering his and Stephanie’s previous stuff. This isn’t them having an affair- right? Please don’t let it be that.
If the Seth/Dean stuff is a prelude to turning Dean heel- my goodness he needs it so bad. Super worried it’s not though. (although if it’s setting up some tag stuff with Axel and Bo get some shine- that’s cool).
Yeah Heyman did some even worse Samoan stuff during Brock-Roman 1, saying they were like one generation removed from cannibalism and stuff like that. I wish he would chill out on that cause his other promo work is fantastic and that just distracts and is awkward. Like if this was ECW, ok, but WWE-PG doesn’t seem the place for that sort of stuff.
I would like to reject the notion that racist crap would have been OK in ECW. Accepted by that audience maybe, but that wouldn’t make it OK.
Fair enough, I just meant it used to be an (inexcusable but prevalent) way of getting heat back in the day.
That “I dealt with the problem you couldn’t deal with, and you’re never around to [deal with]” about Braun to Angle and Lesnar respectively was brilliant, and if we could get more Reigns in that vein he could be salvaged. Normally the guy in the title hunt only needs the title as motivation, but Reigns needs some character work to bring his game up. Roman Reigns problem solver would be very clear. But I’ve always thought he should be a straight up mercenary like Joe is, hell it’s what the Shield were and he kept all the regalia in the divorce. You’d think he inherited the business. If the Shield split the business then their areas of expertise are Rollins, “In business for myself only” Ambrose, “Dirty Deeds Done Cheap”, and Reigns, “Impossible tasks made Possible”.
I love that gravity was mentioned in the same breath as Tozawa’s legit Meteor attack the Senton Bomb. I need a Miz Goldust feud with Hollywood and the IC championship on the line.
Samoa Joe deserves a raise.
I love watching Sasha merc Alexa.
Now if you’ll excuse me…I’ll Fade away and Classify myself…as Obsolete.
Romans Reigns as a dog the bounty hunter character? Why not hes got the clothes, he just needs some drug addled big breasted manager.
I wonder if Sunny would do it?
Agreed on the Somoa Joe needing a raise. Maybe a shiny belt would do him well also…
A’s Son, if you got Reigns in your veins we might have to get you to detox straight away before Strowman finds you and rips them all out. Belay Day!
I know I’m late on this @Munkee, but honestly Sunny’s breasts aren’t big enough. I don’t know, Maybe we can get ODB?
I really hope it isn’t Stephanie coming back. Not that the product is great now but it has been terrific not having any evil authority figures around for a change, and Shane being the only McMahon on TV in either brand has been nice as well.
Guys, guys, what if it’s Paige on the other end of the line? (Just for shits and grins – we all know it’s SKML.)
What if Angle is having an affair with Queen Sharmel?
*Gasp* nooooo! Though Booker and Angle were my faves back in the day, so if they threw down again, 15 year old me would be ecstatic.
I like to believe that, one day, Dean Ambrose will not look like a goober, like that time he made HHH beat a title shot into him. Sadly, today is not that fucking day.
Guess Big Show forgot that he was mad at Angle and quit the show.
Say what you will about Bray v Seth, at least Wyatt hit Sister Abigail with urgency this time out. It always looks better that way, though I doubt any will ever top the one he did to a running Rey Mysterio.
Also, fantastic write-up again Brandon.
I didn’t watch GBOF but watching the video package they did for Strowman/Reigns makes it seem like this was a double turn. Reigns gets outsmarted in a match so he snaps, attacks the guy who won, slams him in an ambulance and leaves him for dead. After all that, Strowman walked away from the ‘carnage’. No lie that moment where he says ‘leave me alone’ as he’s hobbling away on his own power was total face work. I now want Strowman to overcome Roman so much now. To me it’s like watching Austin/Hart WM 13 (to a certain degree, nothing will ever top that double turn for me)
Samoa Joe telling Brock to ‘Look at him when he’s talking to him’ was the kind of urgency severely lacking on this show and was damn amazing
Joe does credible anger like nobody else. He actually gets mad at stuff that would make you mad, not whatever weird insults to your ego Vince thinks should drive people into rage.
Yeah if someone did a bunch of schoolyard dick jokes he wouldn’t bat an eye, but if they said he didn’t deserve to have a shot he would calmly, but with great fury, strike them down.
Similarly, Brock getting in Joe’s face pointing at the belt was some real nice intensity. I want them to be opponents forever. Joe vs Bork beating each other up kind of pretend/kind of real for the rest of their days sounds GREAT.
With Bray Wyatt winning two matches in as many nights my first thought was “wow I wonder who they are building him up to lose to next?”
*opens envelope*
well oops it’s Seth Rollins again womp womp
That Elias Samson joke at the end is fantastic.
I think it’d be interesting if it was Steph, like while “recovering” from that bump through the table she realizes that her and HHH have actually been horrible people, so she turns to new babyface GM and old friend Kurt Angle for advice, they form a bond and start, naturally cause this is the WWE, boning and whatnot. Angle comes clean, he and Hunter fight with Steph being in Angle’s corner for a bit before turning on him. Then Angle fights Rusev and we all live happily ever after.
So Joe won a #1 contenders battle and wants a rematch, fair, Brock is champ, fair, Roman (unless I’m missing something) swanned out after losing the five-way and said, “I’m Roman, I don’t care, I deserve a title shot anyway” then Strowman kicked his ass to set up an ambulance match which Roman lost. So of course now he’s in what will probably be a 3 or 4 way match for the title. Did I miss anything important or is this just Roman as usual? Joe kind of clearly laid it out yesterday how much more deserving he is, using his words and facts and all those things Reigns kind of forgets exist sometimes.
Plot twist Kurt Angles secret lover is Dario Cueto
Yessss!
Glad to see the booger incident made the writeup. That was one of the weirdest and hilarious things that’s happened on Raw in a while.
Joe and Brock were the best part of the show, with the possible exception of the Revival returning. There is no better team for the Hardys to feud with at this point in their career, and if they can bring back the Broken Universe in the process so much the better.
My only gripe about the HOT FIRE segment with Kurt, Roman, Brock, Heyman, and Joe is that Kurt’s update on the condition of BELOVED HEROIC BABYFACE Braun Strowman was “I have no update”. I need to know if our valiant hero is alright!
I’m kind of glad they didn’t update Strowman, let us guess at what he’s up to and let the legend build a bit before he shows up and wrecks everyone.
The saddest thing about 205 Live/Cruiser segments is that Alicia is the third best thing about them.
Things one and two being Neville and Mustafa Ali.
There’s another rumour/theory that the Angle thing is actually him having an illegitimate son who’s a WWE Superstar, and it’s either Jason Jordan or Chad Gable. And I say. instead of one of them, why not BOTH? What if they’re half-brothers and Gable already knew the connection, but Jordan didn’t, and that’s why in NXT Gable was so weirdly obsessive about being Jordan’s tag team partner? It wasn’t a weird stalker thing like it seemed, but just a guy wanting to get to know his LITERAL Brother From Another Mother! It also explains why Corey Graves is Angle’s confidant in this because he has an NXT history where he could have learned this already, as opposed to some affair with Stephanie. Do it! Do it, WWE! And then bring back Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas to be all “We were more of a pair of sons to Kurt than either of you will EVER be!” yadda yadda yadda, Epic Tag Team Match (playa) which Kurt is somehow made the special referee of and is torn about where his loyalties lie!
Or it’ll just be a dumb mistress reveal. Whatever.
I thought about this being a thing, but Gable’s age throws me a little. Kurt would’ve been 18 when Chad was born
Y’know what I like best about the Brock, Joe, Roman program? It’s about three dudes wanting to fight for a title. It’s not about The Authority, or The Corporation or whatever. It’s “LOOK AT THESE ANGRY TOUGH MEN! THEY ARE REALLY MAD AT EACH OTHER AND WANT TO FIGHT.” It’s a refreshing change for WWE.
So isThe Club new thing calling other neeeeerds? I kinda dug it.
I think the Cass/Enzo breakup is great for generating heat, because even I was sad that WWE keeps killing the idea of friendship. But I don’t think Creative considered the aftermath of it, because yeah, maybe Cass can wrestle on his own because he’s SEVEN FOOT TALL even if he’s dull, but Enzo has no shot in hell even though he’s great on mic.
But mostly, RAW needs to break up its three hour deluge with some humor, like SmackDown does with the Fashion Files. It’s so joyless.
It’s gotta be Hornswaggle.