The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 1/21/19: Who’s That Lady?

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: Braun Strowman was removed from a Universal Championship match at the Royal Rumble because he broke a limousine, Finn Bálor won an opportunity to replace him, and Otis Dozovic got really weird in the background of a segment introducing the women’s Tag Team Championship.

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And now, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for January 21, 2019.

Worst: Vince McMahon Confuses King David With Super Mario

This week, Vince McMahon goes full Grandpa Simpson with a rambling story from “The Bible.” I put that in quotes because he might as well be paraphrasing The Bibble.

“So Finn Bálor vs. Brock Lesnar, I mean, I would suggest to you that the only way anyone could believe in this is if they believe in the old story of uh, David and Goliath, remember that one? This could truly be David and Goliath, y’see, let me refresh your memory, one day, David went out into the neighborhood, he ate every single mushroom he could possibly find, and then from there, thought ‘I’m gonna go up and challenge that big nasty, mean giant.’ And he did! And the giant Goliath beat the holy hell out of David, and he was never seen again, until he was reincarnated as Finn Bálor. If any of you people actually believe that uh, Finn can beat Brock, then you definitely all believe in fairy tales.”

“Hey pal, do you remember, quite frankly, the Biblical tale of Daniel and The Lion’s Den? Huh, huh, do you remember that, huh? Allow me to get QUITE FRANK and refresh your memory; as it goes, Daniel went outside in his gated community and gathered up all the rings he could find, and said, “dag nabbit, I’m going to go in that Lion’s Den!” But Daniel didn’t realize he would lose possession of all the rings he’d collected if a lion touched him, and then Daniel died, until he was reborn into this world as Bobby Lashley. There you have it, ladies and jenna-men, another of Aesop’s Fables!”

Between this and Ronda Rousey weirdly asking if she’d be forced to use her hair to wash Sasha Banks’ feet, it was a banner week for WWE not totally understanding Bible stories. Somewhere Matt Striker is super depressed he didn’t get to call this episode. “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. The extraordinary man who does EXTRA ordinary things is up next!” Buhwowwwwww, woooooooop

Best, Mostly: Team Littler Big

The greater point here is that 73-year old Vince McMahon, proprietor of both the WBF Body Stars and XFL and man who believes the Biblical tale of David and Goliath is about a little guy who got his ass kicked by a tough bully for eating too many vegetables, thinks Finn Bálor doesn’t stand a chance against Brock Lesnar at Royal Rumble. The quick answer here is, “Brock just wrestled Daniel Bryan, who is supposed to be about the same size if not littler than Finn, and almost lost, so Finn’s clearly got as much of a chance as anyone,” but instead Finn shows up and ends up wrestling Braun Strowman.

Strowman’s position is so unique right now, in that he’s ostensibly a “top guy” on Raw, but he’s got actual negative momentum. The combination of the aborted heel turn, injuries, and embarrassing losses to Lesnar have firmly established him as “just another guy” on the roster, and in a year he went from the undisputed hottest star in the company and possible New Hulk Hogan to being the fourth most important person in his own segment. Looks like Braun’s turned into Bray Wyatt after all!

The idea of the match, you’d imagine, is to show that Finn’s quickness, skill, and tenacity will allow him to compete at a high level and have a shot at defeating someone much bigger and stronger than him. Instead of using the match to do that, it’s basically just Finn getting his ass kicked until Lesnar interferes (twice) to end the match. It’s an interesting choice, as Finn never really seems like he’s in control of his own agency and only really gets to come back or thrive when one of the big guys makes a goofy mistake. It looks like his ability to compete is incidental. Accidental, maybe. Like, let’s hope Brock spends most of the Royal Rumble match standing with his forehead pressed against one of the ring posts so someone can dropkick him into it, you know?

They’re keeping Braun involved in this story, so it makes sense that he’d show up and get revenge on Brock for what happened at Crown Jewel, or whatever. Strowman can do all the heavy lifting (so to speak) and maybe get the title off Brock heading into WrestleMania, where he very much does not need it, or at least create a little drama that he might. When you have the owner of the company announcing “THIS MATCH SEEMS FAKE” in the opening segment of your go-home episode before your second or third biggest pay-per-view of the year, you’ve got to do something.

Quick followup question: Isn’t Vince McMahon The Character supposed to be listening to us, the fans? Wasn’t that the entire point of the “new era?” We aren’t even a month in and Vince is already booking matches he wants to see opposite of crowd response. Pay attention to your own internal logic, please!

Doin’ What It Pose 2Do

Up next, Apollo Crews and Bobby “Jonah” Lashley honor and show sympy to one of the great Raw segments of all time, the 2003 posedown between Triple H and Scott Steiner. Fantasy booking that is closer to a Pokémon battle than a match: Crews, Lashley, and Titus O’Neil teaming up in a six man tag against Seth Rollins, Elias, and Drew McIntyre.

Raw adhered strictly to a basic, easy-to-follow format, and I can’t decide whether that’s something I like (because it means they’re paying attention to structure and are still attempting to make shit make sequential sense) or don’t (because it’s so repetitive).

I’ll lay it out for you like this:

• Lesnar promo gets interrupted, sets up Strowman vs. Rollins with Lesnar at ringside interfering
• Lashley promo gets interrupted, sets up Lashley vs. Crews with Lio Rush at ringside interfering
• Seth Rollins promo gets interrupted by Drew McIntyre, sets up Rollins vs. McIntyre
• Elias promo gets interrupted by Baron Corbin, sets up Elias vs. Corbin
• Revival talking to Vince McMahon gets interrupted by Curt Hawkins, setting up a tag match for the Revival with Curt Hawkins as referee
• A Moment Of Bliss gets interrupted until everyone’s brawling

The only matches or fights that don’t start as interrupted promos on this single episode are the four (whew) tag team matches, which have a predictability of their own. So following last week’s attempt to be positive and say the show’s putting effort into constructive a cohesive plot — I won’t even say “narrative,” just a basic “if a + b = c, what’s the value of b” foundation — I’ll say I appreciate this week continuing that, and (GM motivations aside) everything at least appears to be moving from one point to another.

Lashley defeats Crews thanks to outside support (because he’s a bad guy now, which means he can’t win fights anymore), pretty clearly setting up a mid-Royal Rumble mini angle where Crews will probably eliminate Bob and get an IC title match in a week or two. That’s another positive for this episode; while it’s not the most exciting thing in the world, they’re at least providing some talking points heading into the Rumble match.

Those Four Tag Matches

Jinder Mahal and the Singh Brothers vs. Lucha House Party with a fuck finish where Gran Metalik was definitely supposed to get pulled off that pinfall attempt is the perfect kind of segment for modern Raw, where it technically “accomplishes” the act of wrestling, but is so free of structure and purpose that it’s almost an avant garde act of rebellion. It’s breaking down pro wrestling to its most basic elements; like a minimalist painting, except the red dot and solid line are three guys backflipping.

The most notable of the matches, probably for the wrong reasons, is The Revival getting one more shot at Bobby Roode and his weird son with, because jokes, Curt Hawkins as special guest referee. It’s set up in a backstage confrontation between Vince and The Revival, but I’m still about 75% creative forgot Curt Hawkins and Heath Slater aren’t the same guy.

So we get another “redheaded journeyman jobber gets put into a referee position against his will by an evil general manager,” our second in a month, to set up another instance of The Revival losing like losey losers. I don’t think I’ll ever understand what WWE wants to say with this story. At first, Lucha House Party just got preferential treatment in handicap matches and could break the rules at The Revival’s expense, with Renee and Cole loudly insisting that they just LOVE TO HAVE FUN and are ADVANCING THE SPORT. Then, after some news about the show being garbage got around the Internet, they had Seth Rollins cut a promo about how The Revival being cheated all the time instead of pushed as awesome tag wrestlers is one of the reasons the show is bad. Suddenly The Revival’s still getting cheated, but Renee is like, “maybe The Revival IS getting cheated?” And we’re all like [gesture meaning “fucking THIS“].

Last week, they finally win match, but by cheating themselves. Instead of the logical follow-through of the story — that the announce team might not approve of them cheating, but get that they’ve been screwed out of like half a dozen matches in a row and need to start fighting fire with fire if they’re going to compete — Michael Cole starts in about how The Revival are just cheaters who can’t win. This week, Hawkins keeps catching them trying to cheat over and over until they’re out of options, and Gable wins with a roll-up. Now The Revival are just whiners and are a bunch of lousy cheaters, and are getting what they … deserve? It’s come back around to “Lucha House Party loves to have fun, The Revival are the worst because they like wrestling, and who could possibly DO THAT?” It’s not even shades of grey, they’re just flopping back and forth.

It’s honestly pretty impossible to detach the “will they or won’t they” aspect of The Revival’s careers and All Elite Wrestling from what we see done to them on weekly WWE TV, so I’ll just give this a worst for General Malaise and for bringing back Zack Ryder. Who knows, maybe Baron Corbin can still book Ryder and Hawkins in a match against one another where the loser gets fired, and then Hawkins loses and just shows up again a couple of weeks later like nothing happened.

After that Heavy Machinery tries to not look into the future and see themselves as they squash The Ascension in their official (unofficial?) Raw debut. Otis and Tucky are delightful, but it’s hard to not see the former “most successful and dominant Tag Team Champions in NXT history” in there eating shit and not think the ceiling’s pretty low for tag teams on Raw.

Finally, at least in terms of the tag team matches, we got Ronda Rousey and her friend Ronda Rousey’s Mom against Sasha Banks and Bayley. It accomplishes the very basic pro wrestling need of making the challenger in an upcoming title match look strong before said title match, even though there isn’t a chance in hell of them winning, and I like that they went the simpler route of having Sasha tap out Natalya instead of “pinning the women’s champion.” The drama isn’t about “whether or not” Sasha can beat Ronda. Whether she can or can’t, we know she won’t, and that’s honestly more of a compelling motivator for the characters. It’s a lot like when John Cena or Roman Reigns were allowed to be their “personas” instead of their character. Every John Cena match for the past 10 years is peppered with a lot of, “Cena never loses” observations, which is all Cena’s imagined rep, because he loses all the time.

I think this would’ve been a lot better if two things were true:

• Rousey’s tag team partner was anyone other than Natalya, not counting Nia Jax and Tamina, and
• If they’d actually still had a runover and gotten 5-10 more minutes of the match

For the first time since axing the runover, it felt like something in that final slot on Raw needed more time. I wasn’t even sure how they were gonna take it home with a minute left, but suddenly Natalya was in the Banks Statement and quickly tapping out. Kinda wish they’d put this earlier in the show, given it more time, fleshed out the Rousey/Banks interactions a little more since we’ve gotten woefully little time of them together (and too much of that being Ronda Promo Time), and maybe cut something like Lucha House Party vs. 3MB 2000.

Best: Pick One Of These Two Guys

If we’re never getting a Kofi Kingston Royal Rumble win (and we should), I think this year’s match is down to Seth Rollins or Drew McIntyre. That’s not a very Inside Baseball predictions. TLC aside, Rollins was last year’s most reliable and exciting main roster performer. Drew McIntyre looks like he was made in a perfect pro wrestling factory and put together by elves or some shit. If you’re going with the person who “earned” it, it’s Rollins. If you’re going with the person who “deserves” it (or even “needs” it the most), you’ve got to go with McIntyre.

Regardless, the pre-match promo Rollins cuts about wanting to win the Royal Rumble is maybe the best promo he’s ever cut, as he’s clear and impactful and avoids the nasal droning a lot of his segments end up involving. I think it has more to do with why the match gets a “this is awesome” chant than anything actually happening in the ring, because it’s the clearest and best executed moment of illustrating to the live crowd why they should be cheering for one guy and booing the other. We get so caught up in trying to fix character motivations and alignments and continuity and logic that we forget the great inner truth of pro wrestling: if the crowd has a reason to boo one guy and cheer the other, no matter what those reasons are or whether or not we agree on them, the rest of the shit has an easier time falling into place.

Anyway, it sure beats the hell out of e-fed-ass Dean Ambrose cutting a promo nobody’s listening to or believes in front of some fencing.

And Now To Honor The Memory Of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Here’s Lacey Evans

Finally, since I seriously can’t think of something to say about Another Goddamn Elias vs. Baron Corbin match besides “maybe the fact that Elias called out Corbin on still wrestling in dress clothes means Corbin can get some real gear again at the Rumble,” we have Un Moment de Félicité with Alexa Bliss.

It’s this year’s “SEE YOU THIS SUNDAY FOR THE ROYAL RUMBLE” segment, in that it starts as an interview and interrupts itself so many times it turns into a big brawl involving everyone. Its two big accomplishments are (1) announcing that Alexa Bliss is finally getting back into the ring and will compete in the Royal Rumble, which is good news from her, and (2) establish an immediately fun dichotomy between little emotional manipulator Alexa Bliss and her taller, more muscular, more extreme self, Lacey Evans. Evans is out here dressed like an office couch went to the Kentucky Derby and condescendingly talking at a Big Cass pace for maximum effect.

It’s pretty clear that nobody from Raw is winning the women’s Royal Rumble, as their women’s division is only slightly comparably better than their tag division, but the character interactions should be fun. I’d still prefer to see this 1992 style, though, with people cutting 30 second promos in front of green screens of their logo or whatever. Is that the most beloved WWE production quirk they’re never bringing back?

DOES EC3 Weigh His Food?

It’s really important. Hopefully we find out next week.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

The Real Birdman

Hey Sasha! Hit her with that sweetheart line! Ha Ha! My girl!

Mr. Bliss

Sasha half heartedly doing the flailing arms tube men dance is every man whose girlfriend decides they’re doing a couple’s costume for halloween.

We finally learned who cut CM’s mic during the pipe bomb promo, makes sense that an acoustic musician would hate Punk.

Taylor Swish

I want to see John Cone, Lil Naitch, and the rest of the refs waiting backstage for Hawkins with crow bars

AddMayne

it’s like the writers saw that everyone knew Roode was gonna turn on Gable, so they decided to do the complete opposite of the logical plot decision out of spite

Daniel Valentin

Otis is like if you put Earthquake in the dryer too long but with eight sheets of softener: shrunk, but so nimble!

Harry Longabaugh

If you’re going to call up Velveteen, do it tonight. Vince can call it his “I Have A Dream” speech.

JayBone2

LIO: Get off! GET OFF!
VINCE: I AM!

NotACrook

welcome to the best episode of Drunk History yet

HighEnergyForever

The difference between me and Brock Lesnar is that Brock is being paid to sneer at tonight’s episode of Monday Night Raw.

muchsarcasm

WWE Takeover: Genesis results:

Dolph Ziggler defeats Braun Strowman by cutting his hair.
Big E defeats special guest Chris Jericho when Xavier Woods blows his horn.

That’s it for this week’s Raw; another improvement over the end of 2018, but still pretty far from linking a constructively built wrestling program to exciting ideas or interesting shows. I’m mostly mad Apollo hasn’t hit Bobby Lashley with an enzuigiri to the butt yet.

Thanks for reading, as always. You can help us out by dropping a comment below to let us know what you thought of the show, and by sharing the column on social media. If you’re always skipping this section and never sharing, don’t be mad in a couple of years when the only Raw reports you can find online are a list of moves they did followed by the time and a star rating.

See you this Sunday for Royal Rumble (which is always fun, even if the show is bad) and on Saturday for NXT TakeOver, which is never, ever bad.