The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 6/11/18: Bank Foreclosures

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: The early momentum from qualifying matches during this Money in the Bank build got tossed down a garbage shoot by one of the worst episodes we’d seen in a while. Will this week’s show be even worse? TUNE IN TO FIND OUT. PLEASE DON’T STOP WATCHING THE BAD WRESTLING, I NEED THIS JOB.

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Here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for June 11, 2018. Sorry in advance.

Worst, Then Best, Then Maybe Best Again?: We Wanna Holler The Loud Funny Way

Have you ever clicked one of those Dank Memes Of The Week compilation videos on YouTube? You know how you’ll be watching and laughing at a parkour fail or the latest interpretation of Steamed Hams or whatever, and then you get hit with a vine where the only joke is that somebody turns up the volume really loud at the end? That was this week’s opening to Raw. The opening women’s match was a great parkour fail, the main event was a great Steamed Hams, and there was two hours of your eardrums getting blown out in the middle.

There’s a ladder match pay-per-view coming up, so this week’s show begins with Vince McMahon making his interchangeable action figures stand on ladders and scream at each other for 10 minutes. A promo full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It’s basically the Stimpy promo from the end of the Ren & Stimpy wrestling episode. If Braun Strowman had started screaming about how much he likes “Darren,” I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Taking a step back to try to find some positives here, we’ve got:

• Baron Corbin finally letting those hard to reach chips go and shaving his head, which combined with him dressing like an adult instead of a mannequin at a True Religion takes 20 years off his face, instantly. He showed up looking like General Manager Kurt Angle’s Pokemon evolution.
• A good opening match to follow it, which we could’ve set up by just opening the show with everybody wrestling
• What I believe is some understated foreshadowing, which we’ll get to in a second

First of all, my only complaint about Corbin ditching the skullet is that he didn’t lose it in a match. I feel like if you’re a pro wrestler with bad hair, the only reason to KEEP the bad hair is so you can put it on the line in a stipulation match and draw some money. Get some constructive use out of your horrible look, you know? It’s why Icarus’ hair looked like that for most of his Chikara run. Having Corbin shave it off instead of losing it gives him agency and keeps him from being embarrassed again by a loss like during his Money in the Bank briefcase cash-in, but I also kinda feel robbed not getting to see, like, Kalisto or whoever shave him bald.

Second of all, as mentioned, the opening segment leads into the first of two fatal-fourway Money in the Bank … I guess we can’t call them “qualifiers,” but “matches involving the people from Money in the Bank.” Like last week, they’re hurt a little by the fact that they’re FOR nothing and happening for no reason beyond “building momentum,” but like a lot of the qualifiers, the in-ring work made up for the creative failings.

The opener is the best match of the night for me, because the secret to getting a great Raw women’s match is twofold: put Sasha Banks in there, and let her continually try to kill herself. It’s what made those Charlotte Flair matches so good, and the Bayley NXT matches, and pretty much any great Sasha match. She feels lucid and dangerous in the ring, both to herself and others, and the fact that she still regularly competes and doesn’t miss a year at a time for injuries makes it feel good instead of cringeworthy. She’s very John Cena in that regard. You could shoot that dude in the face with a shotgun at minute three and he’d wrestle 15 more minutes with his bare skull exposed. Sasha’s unexpected flip over the buckle to the floor where she basically powerbombed herself was vintage Sasha, and you’re a fool if you didn’t pop for Ember Moon steamrolling her into the guardrail. Moon picked up Austin Aries’ title of Best Diver In WWE with that bullet tope. They just look so much better than the floating dives through the middle ropes. Over and under both look better than through.

Here’s where the “maybe I’m looking too much into this” discussion starts.

I think they’re doing this on purpose.

The two bits of content from the women’s portion of the opening fusspot convention were (1) Natalya once again inorganically reminding us of her “best friend” Ronda Rousey, and (2) Alexa Bliss using “being injured” as an excuse, then being outed as not remembering which part of her body she pretended to injure last week. I think these two things are connected, and that they’re both happening to set up Natalya turning on Ronda at Money in the Bank.

Think about it. Last week, Natalya “blows out” her knee while wrestling Jax and takes an easy, unearned loss. That draws Ronda into the ring, where Nia can sorta linger around her and emotionally manipulate her. Everything about Natalya promos and character work screams “phony,” and I think they know that, so if they have her suddenly LOVE Ronda Rousey and constantly talk about her, they’re doing it for a reason. Now this week they’ve got Natalya taping up the wrong knee and limping on the wrong side, following a promo where one of the heels has it pointed out that they can’t remember which limb they injured. How is that an accident? If that’s not on purpose, WWE seriously and accidentally employs the laziest writers and producers in the world.

It would honestly go a long way to explaining the Nia Jax angle retroactively. Think about it. Ronda Rousey shows up on Raw and is immediately thrust into the spotlight. She acts humble and wants to start at the bottom, but she runs afoul of Stephanie McMahon. Now suddenly Ronda’s being challenged at the NBC Upfronts by the Raw Women’s Champion, and set into motion a contract signing where Stephanie played way too nice and tried to moderate a fight between them. There’s no reason for Jax to challenge Rousey, then have the entire angle be built around Jax thinking Rousey’s not ready to challenge her. There has to be a hook, right?

So you’ve got Natalya, queen of the Smackdown Welcoming Committee and weird gatekeeper to the WWE vision of women’s wrestling, showing up on Raw to be Rousey’s best friend. Jax acts like a massive heel one week and it seems too obvious, and then the next week she’s wrestling Natalya, “accidentally” injuring and fridging her, and pretending that she’s still Rousey’s friend. It was in direct contradiction to the previous week. Now this week Natalya’s once again reminding us about Rousey and can’t remember which leg she injured, and Raw’s booking a “confrontation” segment about how Rousey can beat up Jax one-on-one as easily as she says. If they aren’t doing this to blatantly telegraph Stephanie getting into Natalya and Nia’s heads as “veterans” and using them to extract some humiliating revenge on Rousey, what’s the point?

If you remove that swerve from the possibilities, none of this is for a reason. You’re setting up a title match off-screen, then building it up with a “face-to-face confrontation,” which is less effective when you did one last week, and one the week before, and one the week before at a press event. Natalya’s existence right now is to be Boner from Growing Pains, just showing up to say how great Mike Seaver is, and Stephanie McMahon’s gung ho about how much she actually loves Ronda Rousey. Rousey’s being tricked into getting arrogant about the situation, and her hubris is gonna lead to her downfall. Otherwise, what, you’re showing how easily Rousey can put Jax in an armbar, when you’re six days from a match built around the idea that Rousey can’t put Jax in an armbar? Only a few weeks after Asuka put Jax in an armbar?

This is me giving WWE credit. If you guys aren’t doing this and are whiffing every single character’s personalities and motivations, I don’t even fucking know.

The counterpoint to that argument, I guess, is that the main event is just the four Raw guys from the Money in the Bank ladder match doing a 20-minute match with a bunch of ladders and ladders spots in it for free on Raw six days before the pay-per-view. If they can do it here and not think it’s important to “save” or “set up” anything, maybe Natalya just forgot which leg was injured, and everyone else did too, and they accidentally lampshaded it due to chaos theory. Stranger things have happened.

That said, at least Raw was bookended by two exciting fatal fourway matches, adding up to about 40 minutes of good-to-great wrestling on the wrestling show. There’s nothing surprising about it, and the matches are still (again) happening for no reason, but at least the people we like to watch work got in some good work. Trying to find the silver linings here and not immediately jump to a worst-case conclusion. Uh, for once.

Using the transitive properties of wrestling booking, Rousey going up so blatantly on Jax before Money in the Bank signals her getting “comeuppance” in the form of some Machiavellian heel stuff, and Braun Strowman being dominant as hell in the men’s fourway sets him up to be the clear favorite, because he’s not winning. Right? Have I figured this out, or am I looking for content where content hasn’t been created?

Everything Else On The Show

Nothing of note happened outside of the two fatal fourways, so let’s just pile it all up, shall we? TURN UP YOUR VOLUME.

The best of the throwaway “middle of the show dregs” segment was Seth Rollins confronting Elias and breaking his prized John Mayer airbrushed guitar, which is objectively hilarious on paper. Why did John Mayer give a pro wrestler a guitar that looks like a t-shirt at a county fair? But it doesn’t really work for me, because (1) Seth Rollins didn’t wrestle anything, and because (2) it’s one of WWE’s favorite tropes: introducing a beloved, treasured object that’s supposedly incredibly important to a wrestler, then jumping straight to the payoff of that object.

It’s why you don’t hear about the Honky Tonk Man’s family heirloom guitar until the Road Dogg’s about to break it, and you don’t see D-X’s beloved tour bus until Stone Cold’s about to destroy it, and you don’t know about Randy Orton’s personalized race car until Kofi Kingston shows up to throw paint on it. They aren’t very good at setting up future stories, so they do part one and part 100 in the same episode. Hey look, Baron Corbin has this set of cufflinks his grandpa gave him after the Korean War, I hope nobody shows up and eats oh no Curt Hawkins just ate Baron Corbin’s grandpa’s cufflinks, what does this mean for Extreme Rules, etc.

Roman Reigns vs. Jinder Mahal was announced for the show, and while that wouldn’t have been any great shakes, it would’ve at least leaned into one of Roman’s strengths: having good matches when nobody’s paying attention. And Jinder’s not great in the ring, but he’s serviceable if somebody’s holding his hand. He can give you two and a half stars, or whatever. Instead of doing that, though, we jumped to a worst-case scenario: replacing the match with a Roman Reigns vs. Jinder Mahal PROMO — dear God, no — leading into a bait-and-switch, paid off with a minute-long Sunil Singh squash and a post-match attack to set up the match we were already supposed to see. And Jinder can’t even do his finish clean. He stands there for like 10 seconds trying to figure out which wrist to grab in the Cobra Clutch.

It’s getting hard to type paragraphs about how y’all know what you’re doing when you stuff the show with three hours of seeming like you have no goddamn clue what you’re doing. Can we pay off this feud on Main Event or something?

The worst bit of the week might’ve been (get this) the Bobby Lashley vs. Sami Zayn segment, which I’m pretty sure is directly calling me out now by following up three weeks of the worst angle this side of a House of Horrors with an NXT season 1 obstacle course. The only way this could feel more personal is if Cena and Orton had a 30-minute Iron Man Match where they watch an entire episode of Lucha Underground and laugh about how nobody watches it. And then Tetsuya Naito shows up with a “loves to have fun” gimmick and causes one of them to lose via a distraction roll-up. And then everyone gets disqualified, somehow.

I think it’s almost maniacal how Sami Zayn’s reasons to hate Bobby Lashley have been “he says he loves his sisters but I bet he doesn’t,” “he says he was in the army but I bet he wasn’t,” and “he says he’s a good athlete but I bet he isn’t.”

Here’s No Way Jose beating Curt Hawkins in 29 seconds after a failed distraction roll-up via conga line. It’s like somebody walked up to me with a literal turd in a gift wrapped box and said, “I’ll give you this if you can come up with a paragraph of jokes about it.” I wanted to be a lawyer when I was growing up, you know. Yep. Law school. But trying to come up with something to say about Curt Hawkins getting pop-up punched in a tutu is also a good job for an adult.

The B-Team won another match against one of Raw’s two jobber teams, Heath Slater and Rhyno, to set up their Tag Team Championship match at Money in the Bank. My only talking point here is that if Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel are going to use a backdrop into a neckbreaker as their finish, Axel needs to start actually doing a neckbreaker for his half instead of gently grazing his opponent’s head with his fingertips while Bo Dallas does a backdrop.

Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler (aka Rebrand McIntyre) win another match against Raw’s other jobber team, Breezango, to set up their … breakup? Whatever they’re doing. WWE doesn’t seem to know how to book tag team feuds for people who aren’t challenging for titles, so we get two minutes of perfectly acceptable wrestling to set up three minutes of perfectly unacceptable promo. “Dolph Ziggler talking more” is now how this team gets over. I really enjoyed that month or so of Ziggler not cutting promos about how he’s actually the best wrestler and everyone knows it. Don’t regress! Keep moving forward with your stuff! Do new things!

Finally we have Bayley vs. Ruby Riott, which should’ve been really good, but felt like they were having an empty arena match. That they were practicing an empty arena match. The crowd was so quiet for this you could hear Bayley’s hair grow. Plus, how perfect is it that Raw featured two women’s matches, and both of the finishes were set up with “throw the opponent shoulder-first into the post” spots? It’s how Sasha Banks gets taken out of the fatal fourway, and it’s how Bayley gets set up for the Riott Kick. You guys have scripts for these shows, right? If two of the finishes on the same show for the same division are exactly the same, maybe have them not be? I feel like an insane person this week. “Pay attention to your own show” shouldn’t be advice. Neither should “if you have different people agenting different matches, have them compare notes and talk to each other to make sure they’re not doing the same stuff.”

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Harry Longabaugh

Is there anyway that an unbeatable monster like Braun can lose on Sunday?

Well, it’s like Reigns on your wedding day…

Amaterasu’s Son

“And at that moment, Kevin conquered his fear. And he flew.”

Aerial Jesus

These comic book movies coming out nowadays are the Zayn/Lashley of comic book movies

AwkwardLoser

Spelling error caused me to type Monkey in the Bank and it’s all I can think about now

Was Baron Corbin becoming shaved entirely because he looks like a store brand Drew McIntyre? He does look so much better TBH he looked like Ed Hardy’s take on Ben Franklin…yes that was two jokes I had queued up sue me I can’t use em anymore!

Mr. Bliss

Kevin Owens united 3 men together with his lies, he founded the Bullshit Club.

Even Curt Hawkins doesn’t know what Curt Hawkins entrance music sounds like

AddMayne

Braun: I’ll take you all, I’M HARDCORE

Z-Pak Chopra

Man, all those makeup and prosthetics to looks almost exactly like Stephanie McMahon.

Mr. WrestleMania, nushney

“Thank you for comin’ down to the Broken Skull Ranch. We’ll see you up the road.”

Endy_Mion

Ronda: Little Rock, look what I did to the Rock’s Little Cousin!
Crowd: What!
Rousey: I’m making a reference to the fact your town in called Little Rock, and my opponent is related to a guy called The Rock
Crowd: Ten Ten Ten Ten
Ronda: Yes, it will only take me ten seconds to put in an armbar
Crowd: CM Puuunk
Ronda: Come on, my last MMA match wasn’t that bad was it?

Wolfman92

“Ronda come Sunday…I’ll make you look like Ellsworth”

Leave the memories alone.

That’s it for this week’s show. Sorry again. Drop a comment and share the column if you’re a pal. Be sure to join us tomorrow for the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live, this Sunday for the Best and Worst of WWE Money in the Bank, and this Saturday for NXT Thank Goodness We Aren’t A WWE Show.