Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: We experienced some Extreme Rules, the one night a year when SOME of the rules are EXTREME, and welcomed back (?) Brock Lesnar as Universal Champion.
Things to do: Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter. BUY THE SHIRT.
One more thing: Hit those share buttons! Spread the word about the column on Facebook, Twitter and whatever else you use. Be sure to leave us a comment in our comment section below as well. I know we always ask this, and that this part is copy and pasted in every week, but we appreciate it every week. It looks like things might be getting exciting again!
And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for July 15, 2019.
Jobbers Of The Week
Going up against The Viking Raiders in this week’s, “what’s a tag team division?” match are Vinny Gruner and Jackson James.
Gruner (the one who doesn’t look like Tom Holland) is better known as Long Island independent wrestler VsK, whose Twitter bio identifies him as, “one half of Massage Force.” Tom Holland over there — who really looks like he should be in the Massage Force, if we’re being honest — is Jack Tomlinson, a graduate of Curt Hawkins’ Create A Pro training center. He’s not the first wrestler to vlog in his spare time, but he might be the first wrestler with a Tik Tok account to make TV.
Fingers crossed that The Viking Raiders get some real tag team opponents soon before they’re consigned to the NXT Tag Team Graveyard forever. They both deserve so much better, “Erik” especially.
Also Competing In Matches That Didn’t Last 90 Seconds This Week
Mike Kanellis loses in three (3) seconds to Zack Ryder, because Raw’s in Long Island and that’s the only time they feel compelled to throw Zack a bone. Mike continues his on-screen cuckolding before and after the match to the point it makes me consider replacing all the Raw cruiserweight content with whatever they’ve done on 205 Live this week, since at least some of WWE’s programming doesn’t seem obsessed with shitting on their characters every time they’re on screen.
In more surprising news, Actual Wrestling Superstar Finn Bálor follows up disappearing from television for most of the past few months and only popping back up to lose an unannounced, pre-show-opening Intercontinental Championship match to Shinsuke Nakamura by getting his lunch eaten by Samoa Joe on Raw in a minute-25.
If you’re confused as to why this is happening, do the opposite of what Finn’s doing and join The Club. The current story is that he’s looking to take time off from WWE starting next month for whatever reason, so I guess we’re getting a head start on writing him out. The good news is that yowie wowie was the next step exciting.
It’s time for Bray Wyatt vs. Finn Bálor to finally happen!
No, not like that.
Best: Best Fiends
I don’t think they could’ve done a better job with Bray Wyatt’s return, aside from maybe doing it a week or two ago, but I guess they wanted to wait until after Extreme Rules and get the belt off Finn before moving forward. The distortion of Finn’s music and the slow power outage was great, and while I could’ve lived without Michael Cole’s dumb, “is that … ???” I thought Bray nailed it. The mask looks a lot better in the ring than in the Firefly Funhouse videos, probably because we don’t linger on closeups of it, and because it was probably designed to work with in-ring WWE show lighting. Tom Savini doesn’t half-ass this stuff.
If I can open myself up to a little Dave Meltzer-style “this is definitely the plan for what’s happening” speculation, I think the best idea would be to have Bálor bring the Demon King to SummerSlam a year after he brought it out to murk Baron Corbin and get murked himself. This would set up Wyatt as the new top supernatural force in WWE he should’ve been from day one. It might also compel Finn Bálor to up his “demon” game and get back to creatively varying the look to fit the context, instead of just rehashing the same basic design over and over. Plus, we can finally get rid of the hat of belts.
This Week In Avoiding The Commercial Breaks
I need the new executive directors of Raw and Smackdown to take over sooner rather than later, if only to rework or completely nix Vince McMahon’s “no wrestling during commercials” mandate. It’s making everything feel stupider than it needs to. Matches that aren’t intended to work around commercials go 90 seconds or less, and matches that do get 2-out-of-3 falls, elimination, or “stopped and re-started,” modifiers that transparently make their first halves meaningless.
Take, for example, The Usos and Ricochet vs. The Revival and Robert Roode. When we’re done with the commercial, the last few minutes are great. It’s the only part of the match that feels like a match. Before that we get the Revival losing clean to basic moves in 20 seconds, followed by Jimmy Uso losing to a fucking flapjack a couple of minutes later. What I’m getting at is that all this micromanagement robs your very talented performers of their ability to call and execute logical, enjoyable wrestling matches for the sake of pretending shit’s not happening during the Popeye’s ad. Just run the commercials sometimes. Jesus.
Then you’ve got a fatal four-way elimination match to name a new contender to the Raw Women’s Champion at SummerSlam in Canada. It’s Natalya, who is from Canada, against Naomi (not from Canada), Alexa Bliss (not from Canada), and Carmella (also not from Canada). You probably could’ve just said, “it’s Natalya, because Canada,” and moved on to the next thing.
The crowd turns on this pretty vehemently, to the point that Alexa Bliss complained about it on Twitter afterward, but I get where they’re coming from. Samoa Joe vs. Finn Bálor lasted 85 seconds, hometown boy Zack Ryder’s match lasted three, and then they got 10 minutes of Natalya. I’m not sure it was bad enough to necessitate a, “this is awful,” chant, but it wasn’t good enough to think someone might like it. I get that you want to support the women’s division and not shit on them all the time, but Raw and Smackdown themselves haven’t put much effort into anything this year, and a sudden dopey elimination match that would’ve dragged if it’d featured anyone and spotlighted the worst of the four might not be the hill to die on.
The more genuine complaint, I guess, would be that WWE creative (read: Vince McMahon) should put some sustained, quality focus on wrestlers and write unique, compelling stories for them instead of just throwing them out into the ring for random periods of time and expecting us to “react.” It’s why Nikki Cross could get the crowd back into it, here; she’s had an actual story going on, so fans can relate to it however they want and act accordingly. What have Natalya and Naomi done on TV this year besides shade other people’s friendships? What’s Carmella done besides be R-Truth’s familiar? Those might be things to consider before saying, “these are the best people right now,” and running multiple commercial breaks about it.
At the end of the night we get an “All-Star Battle Royal” which highlights a lot of the same issues. It’s supposed to be the top 10 challengers for the Universal Championship, but it includes guys like Sami Zayn (who has won maybe one match all year), Cesaro (who like Sami is also great in the ring, but not exactly a known winner), and random (but welcomed) folks like Big E.
Here’s Paul Heyman announcing it (above), and Brock Lesnar making more money than I’ll make this year to stand in place and kinda jog for a couple of minutes.
While it would’ve been cool and surprising to see them book Brock Lesnar vs. Big E or Brock Lesnar vs. Cesaro for SummerSlam — that one would play off some long-forgotten “Paul Heyman Guy” content from Cesaro — there were only two believable options from the beginning: Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins. You might say, “what about Braun Strowman or Bobby Lashley,” but they aren’t completely done feuding with each other. Plus, like with the commercial breaks mandate, we’re living in a, “no automatic rematch clause” WWE where they still don’t have any followup ideas besides, “automatic rematch,” so we have to give the champ a throwaway match like this on Raw or Smackdown to get him back into contention. It’s an extra step to accomplish the same thing. WWE’s really making their own jobs a lot harder.
Anyway, the battle royal is fun enough, but barely a battle royal. It’s set up like the Royal Rumble, honestly, with guys taking turns hitting signature spots in the middle of the ring. There’s very little of that classic, “struggling to avoid being eliminated” stuff I crave in my old school battles royal, but the times, they are a-changing. Rollins vs. Lesnar will be fine, especially if they actually have a real wrestling match instead of doing a five minute sprint centered around nut-shots. I wanna see Brock wrestle at least one more time before he’s done, please and thank you. Tell him you’ll throw in a lifetime subscription to Back Woodsman if he uses a hammerlock at any point.
Best/Worst: Alexander The Great
I want to make sure I point out the positives here first, as Raw (1) remembered that Cedric Alexander exists, (2) continued a story from last week by using what happened then to set up something happening now, and (3) gave Ced an actual surprising win, to hopefully set up more things down the line. Ced is the jam, and I want good things for him.
Having said that, I also need to point out the bad. Remember when Roman Reigns pinned Drew McIntyre pretty easily at WrestleMania, then lost a match to Shane McMahon because of Drew McIntyre’s interference, and followed it up by pinning Drew McIntyre but not Shane? Well, Cedric Alexander tried to help Roman Reigns defeat Shane McMahon but couldn’t, and got pinned by him. So what’s the next step? Cedric Alexander pinning Drew McIntyre. It’s honestly kind of insane that they’re booking a 49-year old visibly dying sweathog of a man as the Best in the World while this 6-foot-5, perfect specimen of a professional wrestler hangs around to take all the losses. Wake the fuck up, somebody.
Best: Whatever It Drakes
https://twitter.com/MrBrandonStroud/status/1150956821437456385
I don’t want to tell a man where he can and can’t have sex with his own wife, but you’ve gotta think Drake Maverick was asking for this to happen by having his honeymoon in a hotel near the arena where Raw’s happening, and trying to have sex with her while Raw was on. Also, did anyone else think it was funny that they went directly from Drake getting pinned in his underpants to Roman Reigns winning an ESPY for beating leukemia? The tonal shifts are out of control tonight.
Regardless, this is pretty fun, and the 24/7 Championship division is already just two guys. My suggestion: a six-hour “falls count anywhere” iron man match for the 24/7 Championship at WrestleMania that’s just Drake Maverick vs. R-Truth, where it starts at the top of the kickoff show and goes until the main event. If you leave the Raymond James Stadium grounds, you automatically forfeit. The loser is never allowed to win the championship again.
Note: yes, my fantasy booking has Drake Maverick carrying Renee Michelle out of the arena at the end of the night, An Officer and a Gentleman-style. “Tell them I’m going to the back seat of my car with the woman I love, and I won’t be back for 10 minutes!”
Also On This Episode
You’ve got to love the extremely on-point gimmick of the NXT Tag Team Champions being called up to Raw, never wrestling, and just sitting in the back watching TV for three hours. They should have a watch party every night with The Ascension, Curt Hawkins, Buddy Murphy, the Authors of Pain, American Alpha, and everybody else.
Kalisto won’t be at the Watch Party, because he’s busy taking a submission loss to AJ Styles and the Good Brothers, who I guess are now the Bad Brothers. Lucha House Party should at least feel good about how they managed to split Lars Sullivan into two people, like the Slime Eyes from Link’s Awakening.
And since I neglected to mention it above, +1 to Ricochet’s sell of the Phenomenal Phorearm, which was less believable than The Undertaker being able to shoot lightning, but just as enjoyable.
Every time Dolph Ziggler talks:
Plus, to quote Pdragon619 in our open thread:
But Miz has always loved fortune and fame, how is that becoming what he hates?
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
JayBone2
HEYMAN: BROCK SEASON!
VINCE: ROMAN SEASON!
HEYMAN: BROCK SEASON!
VINCE: ROMAN SEASON!
HHH: ROLLINS SEASON!
(Vince and Heyman shoot HHH)
HHH: YOURE DESPICABLE!
AJ Dusman
When Baron Corbin heard there would be nine other people involved with this, he automatically added 20% gratuity to their bill.
BeatoPuente
”Mate, you are making me, my wife, and our cameraman uncomfortable.”
AwkwardL0ser
Joe may as well have a rocking chair and a lantern at this point ??
troi
Raw better come back with Bray in a cardigan aghast and asking Finn what happened.
Son of Tony Zane
This may be the first wrestling match Brock’s watched in a long time.
AshBlue
Cedric Alexander, the Street Profits and No Way Jose all together backstage look like GQ, Rolling Stone, and Mad Magazine having a convention.
The Voice of Raisin
“Please, put anyone besides Lacey Evans in the Raw women’s title picture.”
A finger on the Monkey’s Paw curls down towards the palm.
TheGunslinger
*Finn pulls the mask of the Fiend*
Finn: It was Cedric Alexander all along
Cedric: And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for these terrible writers.
Brute Farce
It seems the crowd is playing along with AEW’s “librarian gimmick.”
you will FLIP for this outro
That’s it for Raw. Thanks for reading about it. At least it was .. slightly less terrible than last week? Heyman can’t finish setting up his office fast enough. Drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show, and give us a share on social to help us out. You’re appreciated.
