The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 8/13/18: Fringe Benefits

Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: Ronda Rousey made her long-awaited in-ring debut on Raw by haphazardly yanking Alicia Fox around by the arm. Tyler Breeze tried to join The Shield, Paul Heyman did his best to earn a primetime Emmy, and Braun Strowman flipped over a small stage that was only constructed for Braun Strowman to flip over.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for August 13, 2018.

Best: Dean Ambrose’s Ultimate Glo-Up

This week’s most important development is the return of tHe LuNaTiC FrInGe 420 69 Dean Ambrose, who, for at least this one segment, is the Dean Ambrose we’ve been begging to see his entire post-Shield career. Aside from that couple of weeks of feuding with Triple H, I guess. Everything about this Ambrose is an improvement over the one we lost to injury nine months ago; he’s embracing his natural hairline instead of doing the wet spaghetti bangs, he’s absolutely jacked, and he shows up to help his friend and kick some ass instead of, I don’t know, rigging a hot dog cart with Nickelodeon slime explosives or whatever. Ambrose as a performer has always felt kneecapped by WWE’s need to have him be a Fun Lovin’ Criminal with the deductive reasoning and physical intensity of one of Bayley’s inflatable tube men.

Here, he looks like he’s taken that same step up Seth Rollins took earlier this year where he was like, “hey, I’m one of the best guys on this roster, I’m gonna start playing to my strengths, stop being a goober, and start burning it the hell down.” GOD did he need it, and Ambrose needed it probably fifty times more, and I can’t emphasize strongly enough how unbelievably into Jeans Ambrose turning a corner and being, at the very least, something approaching TV-PG Jon Moxley.

They couldn’t have telegraphed it any harder with those segments throughout the show, in which Drew McIntyre and weird straight-hair Dolph Ziggler harass Kurt Angle about Rollins’ whereabouts and how he’s a bad GM that didn’t make a contacted match official in time for SummerSlam. I guess Rollins can’t sign a contract between 11:15PM Monday night and like 4PM on Sunday? Regardless, Ziggler takes the mic at the end of the show and delivers a very Dolph Ziggler promo about how the fans abandoned him, which is actually a really good heel move because it’s promos like this that made most of us abandon him. He’s the best one! He just hasn’t had any opportunities! He’s the only good wrestler! The fans don’t understand! And so on. It’s what he seems to really believe, at least, and sets a great table for Rollins to show up and go, “LOL, u mad” before siccing his weird friend on them.

So does the Intercontinental Championship match at SummerSlam turn into a tag team match when everyone starts interfering? Do we Teddy Long championship matches at the second biggest pay-per-view of the year? Why am I even typing that, of course we can! Although if I’m booking this, I’m subverting the Teddy tag team trope and having it turn into a fatal fourway for the IC title, but maybe I don’t want the Fist Pals to stop fisting each other as soon as they’re all together again.

Speaking of “all together again,” when is Roman going to take that “okay, sorry for being kinda lame, I’m great now” step Rollins and apparently now Ambrose have taken? He’s such a goddamn great in-ring performer, but his character is still a Shield greatest hits package who couldn’t even make it to the Shield reunion show. He’s still stuck between doing good work and not having his work received well, so we might as well get him at least a mild change in gear, even if it’s barely noticeable, throw him a new entrance theme, and let him hang out with the only two dudes in the world he seems to have even passing affection for. Plus, who doesn’t want to see Brock Lesnar’s ticket out of WWE punched by the fucking Shield?

Worst: Mace, You Know Ain’t Nothin’ Changed But My Limp

Since Ambrose became the best version of Roman Reigns, I guess Reigns has to become the Ambrose.

He falls victim to the oldest trick in the book: getting sprayed in the eyes by Paul Heyman so USADA-approved Brock Lesnar can show up and beat him up without Roman being able to see it (?). I don’t know, I was kind of into this segment for the majority of it, through some combination of Heyman’s acting and Reigns at least momentarily not being a complete fool and believing Heyman would be on his side after one (1) pie-facing and one (1) week of tearful sit-down interviews.

I think the bear mace or whatever was a little too much for me, although I love the sentiment from our open discussion thread that Heyman was spraying deer piss in Roman’s eyes to lure out Brock Lesnar from the back, that he’d ordered it from one of Brock’s hunting magazines, and the appearance of The Backwoodsman a couple of weeks ago was foreshadowing.

It’s also really interesting to me that they’ve got Kurt Angle going out to the ring in the main event segment of Raw to say Brock Lesnar is the “worst champion ever,” when hey, he’s still the champion because nobody you’ve put up against him can beat him. It’s not like he cheats his ass off to beat people, he just suplex murders them. Randy Orton got elbowed into a brain hemorrhage, Cena got dumped on his head 16 times, Samoa Joe got beat, Braun Strowman got pinned, and Roman hasn’t succeeded in his 35 tries. That’s not on Brock, man. Although I guess it’s also interesting that while they were clearly building to the Ambrose reveal, they had Angle main-event the show with a contract signing and even went into an overrun for a segment that due to travel issues wasn’t happening. So maybe nobody’s thinking about anything and I should just point out which moves looked cool. You guys like cool-looking moves, right?

Best: Can We Keep Renee?

One of the very best parts of the episode for me was Renee Young, who sat in on commentary for the entire episode thanks to Jonathan Coachman being “on assignment.” I really hope Coach’s assignment was standing in the unemployment line, because Young was an absolute breath of fresh air, and it’d be nice to hear a different kind of voice with a different set of opinions and priorities on my three-hour wrestling show. One of WWE’s worst character tropes is “third announcer everyone hates who is only really there to say stupid shit and get the information wrong, and is also a black guy for some reason that is probably definitely not racist” — see: Coach, Booker T, Byron Saxton, Percy Watson — so Renee being there eschews that, brings a new perspective, and completely changes the tone. The last thing I want to hear in 2018 is announcers yelling at each other. It only worked with Gorilla and Bobby back in the day because they clearly liked each other and were having fun. I don’t need three hours of Graves and Cole shitting on Coach, and Coach defending himself with some Mike Adamle-ass attempts at commentary.

Two observations:

• Young and Graves had amazing chemistry, especially when they’d disagree and kinda affably talk it out using the show’s characters, histories, and relationships as evidence. It felt like people who actually watch and enjoy the show on some level, who have favorites and points of view, but aren’t complete a-holes about it. This also really exposed how bad Cole is, because he went from lead announcer to the Byron pretty quickly.
• The only downside to Renee is that the show might be too long for her to call regularly, as even on a one-hour weekly NXT show she’d sometimes forget to keep announcing and just react to every move by yelling “OOOH!!!” She started doing that near the end of Raw, too. But again, I’ll take that over literally anything else WWE commentary’s been doing for the past x-amount of years.

Worst: When General Managers Are So Into Tropes They Just Do Them On Top Of Each Other

Per last night’s Raw, this is the hierarchy of command:

• Kurt Angle is the general manager of Raw
• Baron Corbin is the “constable,” which by definition is either a small town peace officer or the “governor of a royal castle”
• Stephanie McMahon is the commissioner
• Angle ranks higher than Corbin, but because Stephanie likes Corbin more than him (due to a shady romantic past, among other things), Corbin can call her on the phone and get her to overrule Kurt via off-screen segments we never see or hear
• Corbin is still an active wrestler, and can I guess book himself in matches, and also book his upcoming opponents into matches per Stephanie’s evil heel overlord decrees
• Angle insists he’s the one with the power to make matches, even though Corbin literally just made two matches, and then explains that he can’t UN-make matches, but he can add to them (?)

To simplify that, they’re doing an Evil Heel GM Manipulates Babyfaces They Hate into a Teddy Long Tag Team Match. If they’d worked in a challenger pinning a champion to get a championship match, a disqualification run-in after 20 minutes, and someone purposefully getting counted out and losing to avoid a loss they would’ve covered everything in one go.

Up first was Corbin vs. Tyler Breeze, which would’ve been awesome if it’d been happening on a TakeOver three years ago. Having given himself an easy duke, Corbin the announces that Finn Bálor will be in a handicap match against Kevin Owens and Jinder Mahal. Nothing screams heel more than purposely booking a Jinder Mahal match and still figuring out a way for Kevin Owens to be the least important person on-screen. Angle then adds BRAUN STROWMAN to the face side, completely throwing off the balance of power and capitalizing on Strowman’s love of beautiful tiny people. You know, I know they have to set up matches and then have them, but plus-infinity to the first wrestler who figures out you can just walk up to your co-workers backstage and start punching them and it’s totally legal instead of creating these weird power schemes that blow up in their face 75% of the time. Was that just Steve Austin?

You Don’t Care About This Six-Man Tag, The Crowd Doesn’t Care About This Six-Man Tag, The Company Doesn’t Care About This Six-Man Tag, The Wrestlers Don’t Even Seem To Care About This Six-Man Tag, So I’m Not Going To Write Three Paragraphs About It

I’ll just point out what an unbelievable pile of misused talent this is, and how the Authors of Pain must be kicking themselves for shit-canning Precious Paul Ellering and ending up Brodus Clays one and two in matches where they lose clean to Milquetoast Bobby Roode and the guy who fell down go boom.

Best: At Least The Revival Gets A Pay-Per-View Match

On the pre-show, I’m guessing, but it’s something.

The major announced match for this episode was the triple threat for the Raw Tag Team Championship between the champions, B-Team B-Team No No No, and the challengers: The Revival, and the spooky PS1 carnival horror game that is Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt. Amazingly, in a match containing a severely injured guy who’s about to retire, two jobbers in homemade t-shirts and the tag team who spent Raw 25’s main event getting emasculated by a bunch of old dudes, former WWE Champion Bray Wyatt takes the pin. And not even to the guy who hit the move on him! He gets Shatter Machined, and Axel dumps the Rev so he can take the pin.

To find some positives here, I always like when Bray and Bo wrestle, because they always seem to be working a little harder to help the other out. I’m also a fan of The Revival not taking a pin here, both because The Revival should be the top goddamn tag team on the show, and because them not losing means they get another shot at the belts at SummerSlam. THAT means we can finally put the belts on them without it being a big deal, refocus our tag team division around them, and maybe build to some interesting angles and entertaining matches built around, I don’t know, tag team wrestling. Smackdown’s killing it at tag teams right now. Raw should at least be making the effort.

Worst: Alicia Fox Interferes, Forgets To Interfere

Jump to about the 2:00 mark for the festivities. Alicia Fox — who shows up to the episode dressed like Napoleon fell out of a tree — slides into the ring to break up the pin. She puts her hand on Ember’s leg somewhere between the one and two count, but it’s so gentle that the referee keeps counting, and Ember doesn’t actually react and act like the pin’s been broken up until somewhere between two and three. So either Fox used a delayed death punch to break up the pin, or she can use Force Push, or maybe Ember Moon’s like Elmyra from Tiny Toons and there’s a huge delay between physical stimuli and those sensations reaching her brain.

This ends up the focus for me, which is kind of a shame considering the tribute speech to the Anvil is really nicely done, and I obviously enjoy Rousey plowing through an entire team of NPC security guys. My only two concerns are (1) is it weird that Rousey’s so OP that she can murk Triple H and you have to build up woman vs. woman angles involving her by feeding her like six dudes on top of it, and how is that ever going to translate to her being physically threatened by any one opponent in her division, and (2) who keeps making her hair look like she’s just had brain surgery? You can put her hair up (and square up) without it looking like somebody tried to make a crop circle in the shape of a football.

RIP To The Anvil

I’ve never been a huge Jim Neidhart fan — at least not the mid-90s version, as seen in almost any vintage Best and Worst column — but it’s really heartwarming to see the outpouring of affection and appreciation for the guy’s career following his passing. You never really realize how important some of these guys are to wrestling fans until they’re gone, and people start saying, “oh yeah, he was important to me because of” this and that.

To me, Anvil was a really unique sort of character. I grew up watching tag team wrestling where tag teams were kinda-sorta one guy split into two — The Road Warriors, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, the Midnight Express, and so on — and the Hart Foundation (along with the British Bulldogs) provided a look into how good tag team wrestling can be when the partners are opposites. Those two teams had a big strong guy and a smaller technician, and it changed the entire playing field for who’d be in the ring when, and why. Anvil’s personality was always more obvious than his wrestling skill, but Energized Hoss was an underrated thing to be back in the day, and without him, Bret probably would’ve never figured out how to add some personability to his character.

Rest in peace, big man. Heaven needed someone to get hungry and leave no man untested.

Best/Worst: Sasha Banks Vs. Ruby Riott Is Going To Be Great Under Different Circumstances

Sasha Banks and Ruby Riott are maybe the number one and number two people in the Raw women’s division you can count on to have good wrestling matches. That said, it’s a little disappointing that they’re wrestling in what amounts of the main event of Raw, but the match is truncated, distracted, and way too concerned with the vague presence of everyone at ringside instead of the women between the ropes. Ruby’s hand stomps are great and there’s nothing bad here, but man, I want to see them get a pay-per-view showcase match that doesn’t have to be about Riott Squad interference or Bayley’s weekly well-being checkups.

Worst: Finally, Here’s This Week’s Unbearable Bobby Lashley Segment

Meet “Ricky Roberts,” a suspiciously named local Greensboro musician who tries to express his rock ‘n’ roll (cough) by sucking up to Elias. Elias shows up to shill merch. Lashley shows up to interrupt them, trudge his way through a couple of lines of sassy dialogue like an alien trying to mimic human speech, and hits a spinebuster on a very tiny cowboy with a very Jeff Jarrett paper guitar. It’s not the worst thing Lashley’s ever done, but Lashley only ever seems to do the worst things, so who can even tell anymore?

To put it another way,

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Southern

Looked like dean picked up that weight Brock dropped

AddMayne

*cut to Roman recovering backstage, hooked up to a breathing machine*

Roman: damn

I wish I had someone to watch my back too. Well I’m happy for those guys, whoever they are

The Real Birdman

“Brock Lesnar is the worst champion of all time”
*Record scratch*

OMG that was perfect

Sinclair

That sucks for Bobby Roode. His only gimmick is “ENTRANCE”, and he’s not even getting an entrance this week.

aj522

Cole “How can you NOT call this attack cowardice?”

Crowd chants to Lesnar “One more time!”

The C Team (aka The Coolest Team, duh!)

All Reigns needs to do to win is have James Ellsworth come out in a Brock Lesnar mask

Joe Evenson

It would be better if the mace sprayed out of a giant cell phone.

cyniclone

That was Samoan for “Sure, the check is good, but you should wait seven days before you cash it”

RipNasty

Roman: “My father taught me a lot of things.”
Paul: “But Roman… I am your father.”

**Roman evolves into Heyman Reigns.

Harry Longabaugh

Don’t trust him, Roman! You can’t spell “diverticulitis” without LIES!

That’s it for this week. TIME FOR THE SUMMERFEST.

As a reminder, drop us a comment below, share the column (please) (c’mon man please), and be here this weekend for our NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn IV and WWE SummerSlam 2018 festivities. Bring your flat iron!