WAZUUUUUP
Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: Vince McMahon wasn’t around to micromanage the show, so it was way better. Also, I will keep using “Sasha Banks killing Natalya” feature images as long as they keep booking it.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for August 26, 2019.
Best: Say Boss, Man
This week’s episode opens with a Sasha Banks promo explaining her absence and asking the only question WWE knows how to ask beyond, “I wanted to get your thoughts on what just happened,” which is a statement, not a question: Why [insert name here], why?
What results is a promo that references reports that she’d thrown a tantrum on the floor at WrestleMania and tried to quit, the weird nothingness of the four months between WrestleMania and her return, and all the aggressive name-calling Becky Lynch started doing building up to it. I like that Sasha owned all of the rumors, and turned them into on-screen fiction whether they were true or not. Now gumshoe wrestling fans who need to figure everything out will never really know what happened, unless they were there. So now it’s either purposeful — or retroactively purposeful — WWE storytelling. That’s how they basically own the entire history of professional wrestling, by the way.
As a side note, despite generally believing that Sasha Banks is a weak promo, I thought she did fine here. There’s only so much you can do with the pre-written, in-ring, show-opening recap promo. It’s what made a guy like Roman Reigns sound borderline illiterate for like three years. Plus, Becky Lynch’s tweeting about it has me on Team Sasha.
(As if the constant Natalya beatdowns didn’t already have me there.)
Natalya follows up on the momentum of getting beaten down and embarrassed two weeks ago and getting beaten down and embarrassed last week by getting beaten down and embarrassed this week. Easily the best use of her character since she was a serial farter.
Predictably, I loved the use of the escalated finisher. The cutthroat version of the Banks Statement rules. I think WWE should take a lesson from Japan (and John Cena) by giving more of their Superstars tiered finishing holds. It’s sorta like how Styles has the Styles Clash off the ropes, Bayley has the Belly-to-Bayley off the ropes, or Cena has the AA -> AA off the ropes -> rolling double AA. I like it when it’s more creative than, “off the ropes.” Sasha should start Minoru Suzuki’ing people over into the Banks Statement like Brian Kendrick did with the Captain’s Hook.
Best, Mostly: King Of The Ring Continues
While neither of this week’s King of the Ring matches were on par with Samoa Joe vs. Cesaro or anything Andrade’s doing, they were both perfectly cromulent wrestling matches that went over 10 minutes and built the foundation of a very watchable first hour.
The better of the two was Ricochet vs. Drew McIntyre. Your mileage may vary here depending on how willing you are to believe that Drew McIntyre is a low-level WWE Superstar who shouldn’t just instantly murder like 80% of the people he faces, especially the ones who are half his size. If you’re down with believing Ricochet should win a straight up one-on-one fight with this fucking colossus, please consider how believable you think it’d be for Candice LeRae to wrestle Adam Cole, or whatever. But anyway, yeah, Ric gets a hard fart victory and moves on to face Samoa Joe in round two. Drew McIntyre spends another week wondering why he’s not preferable to Baron Corbin.
And then there’s King Corbin. You should probably just get used to “King Corbin” now, and save yourself some grief.
Corbin — now officially wrestling in the Shawn Michaels tank top, which is barely better than the spandex dress shirt — tops The Miz, who I guess is extremely not interested in rebuilding any credibility or momentum after being swept by Shane McMahon. It’s Corbin’s best singles effort in a hot minute, and allows him to move on to round two and End Cedric Alexander’s Days.
Note: Miz might have won the match if Corbin had actually bumped for the Skull-crushing Finale instead of pulling a Reggie White.
It might’ve been good ring psychology to explain the kickout if he hadn’t sold it. Your next King of the Ring, everybody.
Best: Non-Tournament Tournament Action
The best match of the night for me, despite a very similar WHY ARE YOU USING THE BEST GUY ON THE SHOW AS ENHANCEMENT TALENT internal screaming like the kind I have over Drew McIntyre, was Cedric Alexander’s “momentum building” win over Cesaro. Ced deserves all this love and success he’s suddenly getting, even if he’s still somehow looking like the Armageddon to Buddy Murphy’s Deep Impact. If they don’t run Buddy vs. Cedric in an epic Raw vs. Smackdown battle at Survivor Series featuring cruiserweights who got removed from the cruiserweight show for some reason and left to linger in limbo for several months before suddenly being top stars on the brand, they’re missing out.
Cesaro’s the goddamn best. I don’t know another way to say it. I know he’s Swiss and has braces or whatever and that instantly disqualifies him from ever being important to Vince McMahon, but it’s honestly tiring to still have to be writing “why isn’t Cesaro a bigger deal” this deep into his WWE career. Are we waiting for the braces to come off? Are we waiting for cruiserweight Sheamus to come back? Do we just value his skills as a performer and how they enhance the abilities of everyone around him over celebrating and decorating the man for having them?
As a side note, this match would’ve been way better if the crowd had been into it at all. They spent most of the night watching Raw like I did, except they weren’t being beaten into nihilistic depression by having to listen to the announce team scream at each other about stupid bullshit for three hours. Send Graves and Renee to friendship counseling. Miss you, Vic Joseph.
Worst: Tunnel Vision Bayley
Anybody think it was weird that they had Bayley wrestling on Raw and didn’t have her interact with Sasha Banks at all? Does WWE remember they’re Good Friends Better Enemies, or whatever? Shouldn’t Bayley have something to say about Sasha Banks dragging the Women’s Tag Team Championship in the show-opening promo and saying she didn’t care about them at all, despite her and Bayley doing a series of, “this has been our dream all along,” promos on multiple brands? Remember when they went to NXT and promised they’d defend the titles there, and then forgot? Do we … do we want to mention anything these characters have done that didn’t happen in the past three weeks? I miss when Bayley was a character that seemed like she cared about things.
Anyway, Bayley has a match against an Alexa Bliss-less Nikki Cross. Cross apparently has Roman Reigns’ lawyer and got Sanity’s music in the divorce. I was hoping for more from this, but I guess Bayley’s got to “build momentum” heading into her loss to Charlotte Flair at Clash of Champions, and the Women’s Tag Team Championship doesn’t matter unless Bliss is there. It was fine. I could’ve lived without Cross getting pinned like three minutes in with Bayley’s secondary finisher like she’s getting eliminated in a Survivor Series match.
Worst: A Tag Team Turmoil Match Booked By A Child With Crayons
Hoo boy, this match. There’s a lot to talk about here, so I’ll break it down fall by fall.
- Up first was The Viking Raiders vs. The B-Team, which might as well have been one of the Viking Raiders’ weekly jobbers squashes. In fact, it might’ve been; according to those reports about how smoothly Raw went backstage this week, the only thing they mention being changed was the Raiders getting added to the gauntlet instead of defeating nobodies. Instead, they defeat nobodies with names. Congratulations on your lateral movement!
- When that’s over, the second team is The O.C. (don’t call them that). Because WWE has already booked itself into a corner three teams into an eight-team gauntlet, the fall ends with a double disqualification and both teams are eliminated. So we establish that the threatening O.C. can’t even win one fall in the match, and the Viking Raiders completely fall apart if they’ve got to wrestle anyone more challenging than your local promotion’s fourth best guy.
- The next team is Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode, who have never teamed before. I’m assuming somebody saw Roode and Eric Young teaming up on main event and went, “wow, Roode should be in a TAG TEAM,” but didn’t realize they’d teamed for years and thought Young was expendable. So here’s Dolph Ziggler, with everything his character’s done since returning instantly removed and forgiven because he’s doing something new.
- The team that has never tagged before but has somehow earned a spot in a number one contender tag team gauntlet ends up knocking out four actual teams in a row to win the match. This includes two teams who anyone should easily defeat (Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins, and the Lucha House Party), one you’d expect more from (Heavy Machinery), and one who should be fucking ashamed of themselves (The Revival).
- Seriously, The Revival can’t win one fall in a tag team turmoil match in a division where the best team is the one trying it out for the first time. Jesus Christ. BRB, gonna go watch the original TakeOver Toronto and eat an entire pint of ice cream.
- Now the Raw Tag Team Championship match at Clash of Champions is a team of randomly assembled singles stars challenging another team of randomly assembled singles stars who are fighting each other for a more important championship later in the night. It’s the top guy on the show and the biggest, strongest monster in the company versus the guy who never wins and his partner, a guy who is never on the show. CAN YOU FEEL THE HEAT?
In case you weren’t aware, Hawkins and Ryder currently have maybe the worst gimmick I’ve ever seen right now: the GRATITUDE ERA, in which they talk happily about how they don’t care if they win or lose wrestling matches because they’re getting paid to come to wrestling shows and sell t-shirts and have nice lives in real life. Uh, cool?
Has it really gotten so bad that the best idea for characters you can come up with is guys who grew up dreaming of becoming pro wrestlers and are now adult men with a wrestling action figure podcast who are thrilled to be getting paid by a wrestling company to barely wrestle? That’s bleak. I’m happy for you in your real lives, but if your characters openly don’t give a shit about their careers, why should we?
Worst: When You Randomly Spawn In The Cutscene
My least favorite part of the entire show might’ve been this shot from the end of the Street Profits’ “suck up to New Orleans using out-of-season references” Greek (geek) chorus bit. They’re supposed to be noticing Braun Strowman walking by, but instead of filming this anywhere where we could be naturally walking, they just pan over to reveal him standing quietly by some crates, waiting for his cue. It’s like he lagged through the wall. It’s SO WEIRD.
How did a show with this level of production film this shot? Was it on purpose? is Braun Strowman a ghost? Do the Street Profits not have any peripheral vision? Why couldn’t you at least let Braun know to start walking forward before the camera stops on him? Why did he walk into the corner and turn around and stand still and look up at the ceiling until he was noticed? Where was he going? WHAT IS HE DOING?
Worst: Coward Heels Who Can’t Win Fights
Finally, we have the United States Championship match between Braun and AJ Styles. Initially a lot of us thought that they might put the United States Championship on Braun as an excuse to consolidate some matches and do a “winner take all” thing at Clash of Champions, but nope, it’s just another WCW Monday Nitro-ass main event where guys aimlessly wrestle for a few minutes until a disqualification run-in.
They actually manage to complicate that by having the referee get bumped, causing him to miss AJ Styles introducing a chair and getting help from two other guys. When Braun recovers and single-handedly fights them all off, Styles pulls an Eddie Guerrero and pretends to be hurt, incriminating a chair-wielding Braun and getting him DQ’d. Instead of like, letting this breathe and letting us wonder what the ramifications might be, Braun immediately gets his heat back by, again, single-handedly destroying three supposedly threatening, championship-level heels like it’s nothing.
I don’t know who this is supposed to help. Feel free to compare the crowd from last week’s main event to the crowd from this week’s to see who should be running this show every week.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
LUNI_TUNZ
Dominic: “I want to tell my kids that I teamed with their grandfather, my father… but he’s dead, so you’re my next best choice.”
The Real Birdman
Samoa Joe & McIntyre feel like they’re vying for least effective monster heel
AshBlue
Team Guys You Don’t Want to Find in Your Mom’s Kitchen
Son Of Tony Zane
You can take the Man out of the 3 Man Band, but you can’t take the 3 Man Band out of the Man.
Harry Longabaugh
Like a good Scotch, over the past five years Drew has aged into something stronger, more complex and appreciated by a 70 year old billionaire.
Baron’s time with Lacey Evans has reaffirmed his belief in the unalienable right to bare arms.
Pdragon619
Can Ziggler and Roode co-exit?
Mr. Bliss
Rey: “So we’re saying I can’t retire because my son isn’t good enough to take my place?”
Vince: “This is the most personal story I have ever written and I trust you to tell it well.”
McnastyTheHutt
The new trailer for the Dark Crystal looks amazing!! Ooooohhh…..wait….that was just Sasha Banks…never mind.
AJ Dusman
Just wait until Vince’s good friend Donald Trump finds out Seth Rollins is marrying a Man.
Ziggler is wearing a towel so you can tell where his body stops and Roodes begins
That’s it for this week’s Raw. Definitely not my favorite episode.
Thanks for reading, though, as always. We appreciate you. If you enjoyed this week’s column at all, drop a comment down below and give it a share on social media. Make sure you’re here this weekend for WWE’s NXT UK TakeOver: Cardiff and no other shows as far as we can tell. Nope, they always had this date! See you then!
