The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 12/17/18: A McMahon In Every Corner

Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: It was time for TLC: Tables, Ladders, But Mostly Chairs, which saw the crowning of a new Intercontinental Champion while everyone chanted, “this is boring,” and, “Becky.” Also, the reign of the general manager who was ruining the show with handicap matches came to an end in a handicap match.

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And now, here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for December 17, 2018.

Worst: The All-New All-Different™ Monday Night Raw®

So here it is in a nutshell: WWE’s master plan to turn around Raw’s disastrous creative failure and drooping ratings is to have the people we already know are in charge show up and tell us they’re in charge.

In 1999’s hottest angle, Vince McMahon brings out his son, daughter, and son-in-law (who, again, already run the shows and are the representative on-screen faces of three different brands) to tell us they’ve done a bad job, and that they’re gonna start listening to the fans more. The promise, if I’m understanding it correctly, is that now that Baron Corbin’s been removed as Raw’s authority figure (who Stephanie put in charge in the first place, but don’t mention that), the show can “right” itself and be more like the kind of wrestling show we want to watch.

After that promise is made, we get:

• two Baron Corbin segments, separated by a commercial break
• the announcement of a Baron Corbin match, which ends up a 5-on-1 no disqualification handicap match that is both (1) an example of the kind of shit we were blaming Corbin for doing and ruining the show, and (2) a complete rehash of a segment at TLC (with the announcers laugh-complimenting the show for being “fresh”)
• a singles match that goes for 10 minutes and ends in a no contest due to outside interference
• a few long promos that take 10 minutes to set up matches they could’ve just announced
• a “rival disguised as a henchman” bit we’ve seen a hundred times
• the promise of “new faces” and the hyping up of six new NXT call-ups while they run a fatal four-way tag team match involving a veritable graveyard of six former NXT champions (Bo Dallas, The Revival, Kalisto, the Authors of Pain) and the 205 Live GM that pisses his pants now
• an Elias vs. Bobby Lashley segment
• the equivalent of an “everybody into the pool” women’s battle royal to name a number one contender, done in the form of a gauntlet match that lasts for 53 minutes

I wish we could put the WWE writers in charge of a Game of Thrones reboot where instead of it being this world-spanning, intricate game of chess between nations and kingdoms and families, it’s just Tywin Lannister (Vince), Jaime Lannister (Shane), Cersei Lannister (Stephanie), and Robert Baratheon (Triple H) arguing with each other for 10 hours about why the Red Keep sucks so much.

Right now we’re in a scenario where they feel like they’ve got to “freshen up” the shows and change how Raw is presented, but we’re heading into a holiday week full of pre-tapes, so anything they might want to attempt is just going to be neutered by timing and pre-tapes nobody’s gonna watch anyway. It’s a no-win situation for them, and a never-win situation for us.

Plus, there are still so many unanswered questions. Is Paige just fired? Is Kurt Angle a wrestler again, and not a general manager, even though he was just put on a forced vacation from Stephanie and could’ve just been reinstated whenever? How are WE the authority? How in any understanding of kayfabe are we supposed to believe that the four most dishonest on-screen characters in WWE history are going to “listen to the fans” after we’ve spent 20 years watching all four of them not listen to the fans? Like, imagine if DC Comics was like, “okay, the Joker is just a good guy now, he’s going to be in charge of Batman, and he promises to do his best,” when two fucking issues ago he was beating Robin to death with a crowbar.

Just @ me next time.

Top 10 Comments Of The Week

DarO

I like Dean Ambrose promos, I just wish they didn’t lead to Dean Ambrose matches.

Clay Quartermain

I just realized all the McMahon’s are actually only here tonight to avoid R-Truth coming to Stanford

Baron Von Raschke

Tyler didn’t write Ambrose a ticket for that jacket he’s been wearing.

Mr. Bliss

The “Sponsored by Just For Men” logo over the Women’s match made me chuckle more than any 2018 Raw comedy spot.

cyniclone

The Truth face turn: Have them hang around the McMahons and Dunn when they’re planning out main-roster shows.
Vince: We could do Finn Balor-Dolph Zigg
*HONK*
Shane: I come out with my Saudi trop
*HONK*
Stephanie: A Women’s Revolution promo about how I
*HONK*
Vince: A BIG SHOW TUR
*HONK*
Triple H: A DX reuni
*HONK*
Dunn: And send Becky down to Main Eve
*HONK*
*Truth logo screen*
V/O: Smoking anything makes you book like garbage
*HONK*

AshBlue

Something new! Something fresh!
Ron Howard: “It wasn’t.”

The Real Birdman

“What if we just SAY things are going to change without actually doing anything?”

troi

Not sure if EC3 is coming to the main roster or a Tekken Tournament

Jushin Thunder Bieber

Oh no, not Heavy Machinery. I don’t want them to get lost in the shuffle and have it suddenly be “STEAKS AND WAITS!”

SuperCalofragilisticexpialidocious

5 minutes til the huge rating dip, think I’ll make a sandwich, it’ll be new and fresh

That’s It For This Week’s Raw

Sigh, fine, I’ll try to write some more. Special shout-out to Raw for airing this show on Christmas eve and giving me one Monday night off for the entire year.

How Well Each Of The New NXT Call-Ups Will Do, Power Ranked

1. Lacey Evans. A vaguely racist 1950s pin-up-style blonde housewife who thinks women should stay in the kitchen and cook for their men, but is also a Marine who loves The Troops? She might as well have sprung from Vince McMahon’s brain fully-formed. The only way you could get a more Vince friendly is if you gave Rob Terry hair extensions down to his butt.

2. EC3. A guy who used to be an NXT rookie (back when it was a game show) leaves, spends years learning how to be the best part of a terrible wrestling show, and returns more main roster-friendly than ever. Everyone else got wrestling highlights, EC3 got a beautifully filmed vignette about him always wearing his gear under his dress clothes. He’s gonna be fine. Put him in segments with Drake Maverick and Daniel Bryan immediately.

3. Lars Sullivan. He’s big and ugly, which will be great for him for a while. He’ll squash a bunch of local talent and Curt Hawkins types, then WWE will remember that WWE Superstars® need to be socially learned and movie star pretty and either job him out to the Intercontinental Champion or give him a funny dancing gimmick. He’s got it better than No Way Jose, at least.

4. Nikki Cross. She’s so, so good at everything, but Sanity’s already had one run of being called up and completely forgotten. She’ll be a good person for gauntlet matches and battle royals where you’ve already gone through Alicia Fox and Dana Brooke, but need someone else before you get to Sasha Banks. In a perfect world, Nikki Storm eventually exists again.

5. Otis Dozovic. He’s awesome, but he’s already cannonballing into a comedy gimmick. The kind of person Vince McMahon sees and says, “wouldn’t it be funny if he had bad breath, or WAIT, wouldn’t it be funny if he was a LADIES MAN?” Otis should be the new Dusty Rhodes, will probably end up as the funny dancing guy when Lars gets released.

6. Tucky. I love Tucky, but it’s wild that he made the main roster before Johnny Gargano, Tommaso Ciampa, Velveteen Dream, Adam Cole, Aleister Black, Keith Lee, Ray Rowe, and a million other guys. The good news is that the best NXT call-ups tend to be the guys who got the least development on the show (Braun Strowman, Elias, etc.), so maybe he’ll be a future WWE Champion.

Speaking Of Can’t Miss NXT Call-Ups Who Make Us Sad More Than They Make Us Happy

Aren’t we glad Shane McMahon is going to be on both shows now? All I want from 2019 is Sami Zayn having a long backstage conversation with The New Daniel Bryan about literally anything, and maybe Kevin Owens showing up at Tribute to the Troops to powerbomb Morgan Wallen off the stage.

Best: The ‘Topes Win A Game

If I’m handing out actual Bests for this episode, first and foremost we’ve got to say SEE YOU NEVER to Lucha House Rules. Oh no, the poor shithead luchadors have to wrestle fair matches from now on! I’m really kinda mad that Renee Young and Michael Cole get to pretend like they thought Lucha House Rules were a bad Baron Corbin idea and didn’t spend three weeks telling Graves he was a party pooper for not loving 3-on-1 handicap matches.

The good news is that now that they’re wrestling fair, normal tag team matches again, The Revival’s able to win. Hooray! Of course, that gives them a Raw Tag Team Championship match on a Christmas Eve pre-taped Raw, and you don’t need to read the spoilers to know how that’s turning out.

Speaking Of Pre-Tapes

Stephanie McMahon, inventor of women and achoo cheempean of women’s wrestling, answers Ronda Rousey’s weirdly specific “champions should have to defend their championships the night after pay-per-views whether they’re hurt or not” talking point and open challenge by making an eight-woman gauntlet match for the number one contendership. While the opening segment suggested Vince, Shane, Stephanie, and HHH would be running every show, it’s not much of a surprise that the only people who made decisions on Raw were Shane and Stephanie.

That gives us an almost hour-long gauntlet match, which would be a good idea if the women’s rosters were consolidated and Raw’s roster didn’t include Dana Brooke, Alicia Fox, the background members of The Riott Squad and, most egregiously, Natalya. Someone watched that tables match at TLC on Sunday and thought, “you know, this would be so much better if it was 40 minutes longer and Bayley and Sasha Banks took losses during it.”

As a positive, it looks like we’re getting the long teased Natalya vs. Ronda Rousey Raw Women’s Championship match out of the way on a Christmas pre-tape, and not wasting Rousey vs. Sasha Banks on an episode nobody’s going to watch. If Rousey vs. Banks ever even happens. Like the Revival match you don’t need to read spoilers to know how that’s going to end, so Natalya can go back to being a cry-faced Koopa Troopa and Rousey can keep making hatefully misinformed statements and demands about who is and isn’t a true champion in a sport she’s been involved in for less than a year.

Worst: Incontinent

Bless precious Tyler Breeze (sans beard stubble, which is to Breeze like hair is to Samson) for getting a few minutes to actually wrestle on Raw, but this match’s fate was sealed when Ambrose showed up with a suspiciously tall, Seth Rollins-shaped guy in his gas mask posse. Seth Rollins’ body shape is too easily identifiable for him to wear disguises, especially when they’re just his old Shield gear plus Psycho Mantis cosplay.

Breeze’s inclusion here spotlights a very real problem with Raw’s “new faces” initiative: Raw crowds already don’t know enough about probably 60% of the “faces” on Raw’s roster because you haven’t put any effort into giving them important moments or character growth, so just throwing them out there and saying “here’s a fresh guy” isn’t going to help the show or the performer. If you actually build these characters and teach the audience why they should cheer or boo them, they’ll have a longer shelf life than if they’re just interchangeable wrestler bodies in different costumes. Breeze deserves better. Compare how the Raw announce team talks about him to how the NXT announce team talked about him on Wednesday. That shit goes deeper than “Raw’s different.” It’s on YOU, the company, to make it work for the audience watching your shows. We — some of us, at least — are ready to fawn over most of these characters because your yellow brand for diehards does the best work your promotion’s ever done, and it’s been doing it for years.

What Else?

I’m not sure what they think they’re doing with Drew McIntyre. He got pinned by Dolph Ziggler two weeks ago because of outside interference, got his revenge, then got pinned by Finn Bálor via outside interference. Not to hit you with heartbreaking spoilers, but he doesn’t win next week either, and even loses the post-match beatdown when he tries to get his heat back. To Dolph Ziggler.

Can you guys SEE Drew McIntyre? Again, why is this hard? Just make him cool and do exciting things. He’s a pre-wrapped Christmas gift from God to sit at the top of your promotion. He’s got everything you could ever want from a performer. Stop dicking around and trying to fuck him up. See also: Braun Strowman heading into another loss to Brock Lesnar at the Royal Rumble. What are you all doing, seriously? Pull the trigger on some of these guys before EVERYBODY is Dolph Ziggler.

Anyway, Here’s The Good News

• Smackdown airs on Tuesday nights
• 205 Live, NXT, and its boring friend NXT UK all air on Wednesday nights
• WWE Network is doing a lot of cool original programming and documentaries and stuff
• Raw is only 156 hours a year of WWE’s programming, plus the roughly 18 hours it adds by being half of 12 co-branded pay-per-views

And the best news of all: next week’s Raw happens on Christmas eve, so spend time with your family and give yourself the gift of forgetting it exists. Monday Night Raw is dead; long live Monday Night Raw.