Pre-show notes:
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– I was at this show live, so please enjoy me complaining about how the only thing I can eat in the Frank Erwin Center is paper towels.
Please click through to enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE Raw (live from Austin, TX!) for July 22, 2013.
Worst: John Cena And Triple H, Champions Of The Little Guy
So, I think I need to focus-group how I’m feeling.
Since at least … what, 1998? I’ve been writing online about how WWE’s modus operandi is one thing, and what I enjoy about pro wrestling is another. Whether it’s the tried-and-true “stop pushing the steroid monsters and push cruiserweights” thing or “stop making the tag/Divas/IC/whatever division horrible,” WWE’s been in the business of making money by appealing to people who are not me, and I stick around through some combination of loving wrestling and hating myself.
Anyway, if you ask me which two characters currently express what’s “wrong” with wrestling, I’d say John Cena and Triple H. Cena’s a talented performer, but he’s such a t-shirt factory he can never change … if they tip too far in the wrong direction and lose the support of babies and fat girls they lose a crazy revenue stream. So Cena has to keep having the same match, overcoming the same odds, saying the same things, being as Basically John Cena as possible. He is the empty shell of a body-builder, piloted by the living, Krang-style embodiment of the WWE logo.
Triple H is a guy so good at making the right friends he ended up with a job he never earned, a career had by default, a legacy earnestly expressed by everyone paid to do so and a bunch of shitty t-shirts full of skulls and Latin. His most marketable skill is Telling You What You Want To Hear. He’s almost the perfect wrestler, because instead of being piloted by the WWE logo in Dimension X brain form, he’s piloted by a pulsating little ball of disingenuousness. He thinks getting blowjobs under the table at cookouts is hilarious. He thinks wearing a shirt with a rooster on it because rooster also means “cock” is THE TOPS. An absolute Wal-Mart Shirt of a man.
The problem I’m having is that the most muscular, WBF motherf**ker on the show and Muttley in a suit are combining efforts to get Daniel Bryan over with the fans. They’re all, “YOU DON’T GET IT, HE’S SMALL BUT WHO CARES, HE’S THE BEST GUY ON THE SHOW. YOU SHOULD CHEER HIM.” It’s working. Crowds love Daniel Bryan.
The problem here is that (1) Daniel Bryan was ALREADY becoming the best and most popular guy on the show by his own merits, and never needed people like Triple H and John Cena to back him on TV … they’re just jumping on the bandwagon to look like Cool Dudez. What he needed was for them to back him IN REAL LIFE when he was a 5-foot-nothing pale-as-Sheamus guy in tighty-whities busting his ass for a decade to get noticed. For them to back him in real life when he was getting fired for being “too violent” in a super violent gang attack. For them to step in and say “hey, no” when they were putting Alex Riley over him and giving him 18 second title losses and giving him “gay therapy LOL” tag gimmicks. Bryan turned every single part of that into gold by being the best f**king wrestler possible, and now that he’s being cheered too much to ignore y’all are showing up and saying “come on guys, why don’t you see how great he is?” F**k you.
The other problem is that (2) they are doing something I have been asking them to do for a decade and I don’t know how to handle it. This is where the focus-grouping comes in. My favorite wrestler is being called the best wrestler on the show by every other important wrestler in the company. The people in charge. I don’t know how to handle that suddenly, because I don’t feel like they MEAN it, I feel like they’re SAYING they mean it … but then it’s WRESTLING and NOBODY is telling “the truth” and everything is lies to get you to think or feel something decided-upon beforehand. Does that make sense at all? It’s like baseball fans selling out stadiums when their team makes the playoffs, but not going to a single game before late September. Those people are THE WORST, but they suddenly love what you love, and what you love is still GREAT, and you should just shut up and be happy that the thing you love is succeeding. But ugh, those people.
Michael Cole’s talking about how the only person who ever doubted Daniel Bryan was Daniel Bryan, ignoring the almost two years of constant “Daniel Bryan is a worthless nerd who has no future and the Internet derp derp” commentary. Brad Maddox, the tiniest baby-sized wrestler ever, is positioned as the guy explaining how Daniel Bryan sucks because he’s small. Triple H saunters in after calling CM Punk “skinny fat” and casually vurping the Summer of Punk to a close in a LOSS TO TRIPLE H to say he LOVES THE SMALL GUYS. Somewhere, Scott Steiner goes to a Dragon Gate USA show and starts talking excitedly about how much he loves matches featuring guys under 150 pounds.
I don’t know.
Worst: Good Lord, How Many Times Have We Seen This Match
Okay, so, the wrestling!
aw man
You know, I’m a fan of Alberto Del Rio, and I think there are few guys in WWE who can have good matches as regularly as Sheamus. On paper you’ve got two top-level stars having a good, sorta-long match to open Raw … in reality, you’ve got two guys who wrestled on, what, 65 consecutive pay-per-views? Guys who anchored a feud based on Sheamus stealing a Mexican guy’s car and eating Mexican food so he could shit in the car and have the shit be explicitly Mexican.
So yeah, Del Rio vs. Sheamus has that Kofi/Ziggler thing going for it where I’m less interested in watching them have a good match, and more interested in never, ever seeing them interact again.
Best: Selling On Offense!
I DID love the finish of the match, though, with Sheamus Sheamusing Up and trying to hit White Noise only to buckle under the weight of his ‘Face Off’ leg bruise and getting rolled up for the three. There are few things I love more than a guy remembering to sell on offense (and it’s the reason I hate guys like Rob Van Dam so much), so the biggest possible +1 to Sheamus for that. It feels like “if you get hurt, you’re hurt whether you’re winning or losing” should be one of those things they write on a plaque and hang over the door of a wrestling school, but what do I know?
Best: Booker T And Teddy Long Hate Each Other Because They’re Both Horrible
I’m interested in the Brad Maddox/Vickie Guerrero beef, but I’m MORE interested in watching a couple of fired characters gripe at each other as they circle the drain. Enter: Teddy Long and Booker T, fresh from being shit-canned over on Smackdown.
I loved every part of this. Teddy getting catty about Booker being lazy when he was legitimately injured, Teddy doing the “OH SO YOU RESPOND TO PROBLEMS WITH PHYSICAL AGGRESSION?” thing despite being the dude who has solved every problem of the past 10 years with a tag team match and once anchored a “white boy challenge.” Booker T having nothing left in the tank besides his “tell me you didn’t just say that” catchphrase and trying so hard to work it in. Also, Renee Young, who is a thousand times better at this job than anybody not named “Mean” or “Gene.”
And, uh, speaking of that
Worst: I Am Probably Never Going To Meet Renee Young
I am not going to bore you with the details of my sad attempts to get a high-five from my favorite non-wrestler in wrestling (because you’ll call me a Fat Nerd Parents Basement instead of sympathizing … I know you), but last night’s Raw was my second attempt this month to meet Renee Young at a WWE event and, sadly, my second failure.
I didn’t have Arda Ocal around to console me this time, either. If the rest of the report is just me staring at my feet and sighing heavily, I apologize.
Worst: Nobody’s Here Tonight, So Enjoy Michael McGillicutty Vs. The Prime Time Players!
So where the hell was everybody tonight?
The only appearance of the Wyatt Family we got was a video package aired during the lowering of Fandango’s entrance gate. Big Show was announced but never showed up. Randy Orton was supposed to answer my friend Lex Lybrand’s Bold Dorito’s question about how he doesn’t own pants but no-showed completely. Sure, he’s supposed to be injured, but he tweeted that you can’t listen to DIRT SHEETZ and that he’s fine. OH YOU DIRT SHEETZ AND YOUR RUMORZ. Even Curtis Axel was AWOL. I mean, Michael McGillicutty was there, wrestling Titus O’Neil, but Curtis Axel was nowhere to be found.
The Gilly/Titus O’Neil match was okay (or “great” if you’re judging it on the Titus O’Neil curve), but the show (and its FOUR Daniel Bryan matches) made it seem like a plane full of wrestlers had crashed somewhere and they didn’t want to tell us about it.
Oh, and regarding that Dorito’s contest, f**k Dorito’s. It’s a total work. They tell everybody who sends in a video that they’ve won and give them tickets, then pick a plant to film the scene with the Superstar. This week they had a random “University of Texas student” ask Fandango if he could beat him in a dance contest. We were sitting near another “contest winner” who had asked Rob Van Dam “how are you gonna come back.” Seriously. But hey, if you want free tickets to a Raw in your area, film yourself asking “triple h are you the game yes/no” for thirty seconds and send it to shitty Dorito’s.
Worst: Y’all Are All Over The Map With Ryback, Guys
I like heel Ryback a lot, but unless they’re going with a personality disorder gimmick, I don’t know what they’re trying to do.
One week, he’s an unstoppable monster. Then, he’s throwing a match because he got dropkicked in the leg by The Miz and getting Codebrokered (?) by Chris Jericho for being a wimp. Then he’s backstage hugging Vickie Guerrero to make her feel better about being fired. Now he’s “intimidating” Josh Mathews with speeches about SURVIVALS OF THE FITTEST, sending Jericho back to his temp music career with a beatdown and trying to put Daniel Bryan through a table after he’s won two matches, instantly contradicting his “I prey on the weak” thing.
I get it if you want him to be insincere or whatever, but Jesus, let him be consistent for more than two weeks.
Best: Smark Vs. Mark Merch Stands
I don’t know if you know this about me, but I own a lot of wrestling shirts. It’s … sort of a sickness. “Wearing whatever dorky thing you want” is a perk of adulthood, I guess, even if it comes with a “no girls will like you” chaser.
Anyway, I buy shirts when I go to shows. I was in section 37 and they had a table set up at 39, so I took a break around this point to check it out. It was the most hilariously WWE merch stand ever … they only had CM Punk, John Cena, Randy Orton and Sheamus shirts. That’s IT. Oh, and Rey Mysterio posters. AND SHEAMUS NECKLACES. If you are a 6-year old excitedly running to the WWE toys section of Target, this was the stand for you.
I thought I was gonna be out of luck, but later in the show I walked around the building and found the other merch stand, and OH MAN it was the SMARKIEST SHIT EVER. The new Daniel Bryan shirt, OLD Daniel Bryan shirts (they had the YES shirt, for God’s sake), the Jill Thompson CM Punk shirt (instead of the boring Best in the World one), the works. I now own a HOUNDS OF JUSTICE~ shirt courtesy of the smark merch table, and I appreciate it existing.
Worst: Nice Planning, Big E
Here’s a tip: if you hate a guy and want to jump him, don’t wait until he’s in the ring and his match is over to do it. If you’re slightly less obvious, you’ve got a better chance of beating him up. Did the Four Horsemen attack Dusty Rhodes in the parking lot and tie him to a truck to break his hand with a baseball bat, or did they stand in the gorilla position waiting for him to get the win so they could run out to their music?
As Worst As Worst Can Be: MizTV
Jesus f**king Christ what was this
The Miz — who appears to have been downgraded from “wrestler” to “host” again, a la his protege Alex Riley — hosted an episode of THE WORST THING THAT HAPPENS EVER MizTV featuring “the Divas,” aka the cast of Total Divas, aka “the models we hired and Natalya.”
He almost instantly started playing the LONGEST CLIP of ‘Total Divas’ while the crowd just sorta sat silently (everyone else) or mercilessly screamed hateful shit at him (me). Then he inexplicably “handed it over” to Jerry Lawler, who wandered into the ring long enough to get the weakest possible slap from “Eva Maria,” a woman who wants to “make a name for herself” and will probably never wrestle once. Then he left, Brie Bella’s boob fell out and that was it.
I don’t know how a segment could be three minutes long, stuffed with a two minute clip, and be as putrid and interminable as this. A guy with a flat brim sitting near me LOVED it, though, because (as he helpfully explained) “I like lookin’ at ’em.” Congratulations, everybody.
Best: THAT’S WHAT I Ooo (SOOO)
To contrast the fart stain that was MizTV, here’s an entire page of Bests. I ENJOYED MY LIVE RAW EXPERIENCE, I SWEAR.
Mark Henry continues to be the greatest, and if they’re gonna keep transitioning him into good guy territory they’d be smart to keep him exactly like this … a guy who doesn’t necessarily “do good,” but is so undeniably strong and awesome that you’d be stupid not to cheer for him. It’s what they had going with Ziggler before they tried to make him into The Miz.
I’m not normally a fan of the RIGHT HERE IN LOCAL CITY thing, but
1. WWE needs to learn from Chicago’s reactions to CM Punk and let wrestlers be from places, so wherever they go SOMEBODY is crazy over for being local, and
2. As an adopted Texan, I occasionally need something/somebody from here to be great so I have some ammo when acquaintances give me shit for living in Texas. “I live in the good part with all the bands and food trucks” doesn’t always cut it.
I’m ALSO a huge fan of what they’re doing with the Usos. It’s secretly the most brilliant character build they’ve got going on right now. Daniel Bryan and Bray Wyatt are these big, obviously great characters coming up, but the Usos have sorta wedged themselves into the collective consciousness of the WWE Universe (finally) and become a thing. They were over HUGE during the Superstars tapings, the bright shorts and face paint have given them a visual identity and that entrance is still so f**king thrown in the game it belongs on a team that deserves it. The Usos are finally catching up to it.
Pairing the Usos (who are proven Shield-killers) with Mark Henry (a proven EVERYBODY ELSE killer) is great. It’s a diverse, personality-strong trio who can benefit from working with one another … the Usos get a mouthpiece and an established guy who isn’t their dad’s buttcheeks, and Henry gets to be the “come in/clean house” monster who gets in his shit and tears the roof off the place without having to anchor a match for 15 minutes.
Also, here’s me the one time I got on camera, rocking an “Absolute” Ricky Starks shirt and taking pictures of The Shield because I’m the biggest mark.
You’re welcome for the helicopter, guys.
Best: Damien Sandow, King Of Cosplay (And Condescending Friendships)
There are a LOT of guys at WWE shows cosplaying as Damien Sandow these days, even in the one billion degree Texas heat, and I wholeheartedly approve of it. I would not personally cosplay at wrestling shows (even when I was a kid I saved the Rock n’ Roll Express leg bandanas for Halloween), but I think it’d be a fun thing for audiences to start doing en masse, especially if they do it as well as those random Japanese fans who dressed up as the Wyatt Family. Cosplay at shows, wrestling fans … we need to add “being cruel to ladies who cosplay” to the list of f**ked up problems wrestling fans have!
I didn’t get to hear Sandow’s commentary for the match live, and I’m actually really sad that it’s so over-the-top negative against Cody, but I guess that’s to be expected. Sandow offering Cody the “protector of the case” job on Smackdown is amazing, and I wish we got more Smackdown Sandow on Raw.
Also,
Best: Cody Rhodes’ Goldust Trunks
We tried to get a “we want Goldust” chant going, and maybe 40 people joined in, which made it a thousand times more successful than anything else we said all night. I couldn’t even get the people in my section to yell at the Miz about MizTV not being wrestling matches during MizTV. When it comes to getting a Goldust/Cody Rhodes match at Mania, I feel like Troy and Abed watching ‘Firefly.’ WE’RE GONNA GET THAT MATCH ON THE SHOW, BUDDY.
Face Cody is great, but there’s one major problem: the Cody’s Mustache chant. It’s the only Cody Rhodes chant the crowd knows, so they WANT to chant it, but it’s supposed to antagonize him … you’re not really chanting FOR him, you’re chanting ABOUT him, and that doesn’t help him. I think a good “Co-DY Co-DY” chant could do wonders. WWE crowds take their cue from Notable TV Crowds, so at some point in the future let’s buy out three entire sections across from the hard camera, organize a bunch of purposeful chants and change the direction of the company. Anybody got 20 grand?
Best: The Beast Verse The Best
I want the CM Punk/Paul Heyman beef to go on forever, please and thank you.
I wrote about it a lot last week, but CM Punk is at his best when he’s got a REASON to be at his best. In his feuds with Rey Mysterio and Jeff Hardy, he was awesome because he legitimately seemed like he hated them for being broken-down junkies occupying top spots. During the Summer of Punk, he was raging against the protectors of the glass ceiling … Vince, Cena and (ugh) Triple H. After that he started feuding with guys like Del Rio and Jericho and the fire sorta went out. Here, he’s being challenged as the “best talker in the company” by the ACTUAL best talker in the company, and it’s lit enough of a fire under his ass to make him sound EXCITED and READY TO FIGHT instead of just saying it.
Heyman got more heat as a picture on a screen than anybody sneak-attacking or cheap-shotting anybody on the show. Heyman is speaking the truth from a hateful, perverse point of view. He hates heroes. He thinks valiant actions are stupid. He’s in command of a killer and is pulling his strings to get revenge for some weird friendship betrayal … it’s clear enough that he’s the good guy that I can say “Heyman’s great at his job” without saying “Heyman deserves to win.” That’s the key. Punk needs to kick Lesnar’s ass. I don’t think he can, and neither does Heyman. That’s why him DOING it would be exciting. Like I said, I want this feud to go on forever. BEST FRIEND IN THE WORLD BROCK LESNAR T-SHIRTS AHOY.
One small Worst, though: Punk’s regional pronunciation of “versus.” There’s a second syllable in that word, bro.
Worst: Enjoy Getting Kicked In The Face For Real By A Weird Old Man, Wade
Okay, maybe not an entire page of Bests.
Best/Worst: You’ve Got To Stop Letting Zeb Colter Be Right
Remember when Zeb Colter would be all, “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE WHY YOUR CHILDREN CAN’T READ” or whatever, and you’d boo him because LOL Tea Party? I sorta miss that Zeb Colter. Now I hear him cutting these amazing promos about how Stephen F. Austin needs to go on Maury and I want to cheer him. That’s the OPPOSITE of what Zeb Colter should be accomplishing. He can’t be RIGHT. He can’t say “I think government spending is out of control!” He has to say “I think Obama is a shape-shifting alien.”
Also, I continue to be disappointed in the WWE crowd chanting “we the people” along with Cesaro and Swagger. The crowd doesn’t even LIKE them. The guy two rows in front of me in the camo hat with his girlfriend in the John Cena shirt kept yelling YOU WRESTLE LIKE A DIVAAAA and YOU’RE A PUSSY at Cesaro all night, but when he put his hand on his chest they yelled WE THE PEOPLE. Because they’re hitting cues. They aren’t responding to anything the wrestlers are doing in the ring, they’re just doing what they’re “supposed” to when they’re told. That stuff Mark Henry and Bray Wyatt say about puppets and sheep is so unbelievably true.
Worst: Sign Guy
Part of the problem is “Sign Guy.” You may know him as the guy in the plain red hat who holds up HILARIOUS SIGNS and also collects a WWE paycheck to be a “fan” in the front row and lead chants. When the crowd gets too quiet, Sign Guy stops checking his phone long enough to stand up, start clapping and chanting “CHRIS-TIAN CHRIS-TIAN” or whatever. Usually the crowd does it, because he’s at ringside and they can see him, and they start doing it, too.
Watching Raw live is basically like watching somebody play WWE 13 anyway, so having even the crowd response be carefully monitored and controlled is awful. Watching Sign Guy give signals to the other “fans” in choice seats to get them doing what he’s doing makes me feel like an idiot for going to the live shows. I know I sound like I’m beating a dead horse, but I encourage everybody with even a passing interest in WWE to go to an NXT taping. That crowd doesn’t have a Sign Guy in it to f**k it up, and is the perfect mixture of independent wrestling crowd and WWE crowd. They enjoy a snarky chant, but they’re smart enough to know when to indulge and when to shut up and appreciate the wrestling. They’re small enough to interact with the wrestlers, but large enough to sound like a million people. It’s perfect.
On second thought, do not watch NXT or attend NXT shows and let me have my Austin in the Texas of pro wrestling.
Best: ROH! ROH! ROH!
And speaking of an oasis, I hope you enjoyed the last hour of last night’s Raw, wherein Daniel Bryan swoops in, loads the show up onto his back and carries it like a motherf**king boss.
Cesaro vs. Bryan, aka match two in a four match Daniel Bryan marathon (including the post-show match where Bryan, Henry and Cena took on The Shield … more on that later). This is probably the best match we’re gonna get on Raw TV this year, and stands alongside Cesaro/Zayn 2-out-of-3 Falls (which should air sometime in mid-to-late August) as one of the indisputable best matches of the year. Absolutely incredible.
Cesaro is the real deal, and nobody in the crowd seems to know it. They see him and Jack Swagger as the same guy. The difference between Cesaro and Swagger is the difference between the Cesaro and Swagger MATCHES, and a great example of why guys should get everything they can out of WWE developmental, but also spend some time wrestling AWAY from it and put what works in and out of it together. That’s why guys like Bryan, Cesaro, Ambrose, Rollins and Punk have spent the last few years slowly redefining the definition of a “good” WWE match in 2013. They know what works with a small crowd, and know what works with a big crowd well enough to hit the sweet spot in-between.
You know that big long thing I wrote about where Daniel Bryan’s going, who’s backing him and who had the integrity to back him before the crowd caught on? It doesn’t matter when Bryan’s in the ring. All of that shit disappears. At the end of the day he’s just an exceptional f**king pro wrestler and I’m happy that anybody (and everybody) notices. He was the Best in the World 7 years ago, and he’s the Best in the World now. End of story.
Don’t believe me?
Best: SUPER SMALL PACKAGE
Nothing makes me mark out harder than a D-Bry small package, and he won the Cesaro match with the BEST SMALL PACKAGE IN HISTORY. I use “best ever” a lot because my body is 80% hyperbole, but there has absolutely never been a small package greater than that one. It left the previous champion (the one Danielson pulled on Nigel McGuinness in Cleveland where he crawled under the ring, came up on the other side, snuck back into the ring and small packaged him to death for the victory) in the dust.
If Daniel Bryan starts small packaging people out of nowhere like it’s the goddamn Diamond Cutter I’m going to lose my mind.
Best: Enjoy That Daniel Bryan Match? HERE, HAVE ANOTHER GREAT ONE
I was expecting this to be Show (or Kane, even, for max pathos) (hey NXT, name a guy “Max Pathos”), but I was happy when it was Ryback, because (1) Ryback rules, and (2) Ryback vs. Bryan is always good.
A lot of folks messaged me during the show to ask me if I was having a heart attack or religious experience because I got to see Bryan kick ass in the ring for an hour, and the answer is … complex. The easy answer is F**K YEAH I DID because Bryan’s my favorite wrestler and getting to see him wrestle at least two good-as-balls matches in a row (three if you count him Marsing Jack Swagger, four if you count him being a key part of the “go home happy” beatdown) is my idea of wrestling heaven.
The harder answer is that Bryan is my favorite wrestler BECAUSE I’ve seen him kick ass in the ring for an hour. I used to see it all the time. Before you had to pay 90 bucks to meet him at Axxess or whatever you could pay 10 bucks and watch him f**k up Shingo or Takeshi Morishima or Roderick Strong or Samoa Joe or whoever for an hour, meet him for free and have him practically beg you to buy his merch. That’s not a “look at how cool Brandon” is thing, that’s an explanatory plea for you to support your goddamn local independent wrestlers, because some of them are killing themselves for an hour down the street from you for less than the price of a decent lunch and you should help them enough to make them keep doing it. Because guess what? Those guys you don’t care about are the guys you’re gonna love on Raw in 10 years.
More importantly, support wrestling. Let WWE know how f**king great this was. Tout them, tweet them, whatever they want. Send them hand-written letters. Tell them you want THIS. Tell them that The Miz being dressed like a couch and introing Hawaiian Tropic models is not what you want to see. Be the change you want to see in the world, or at least be the change you want to see in Impact Wrestling.
Thank you so much for being as good as you are, D-Bry. And thank you, WWE, for employing enough guys who are good enough to rise to his level. Zero complaints on this.
Best: The Champ Is (Situationally) Here!
AND SPEAKING OF ZERO COMPLAINTS, HERE COMES JOHN CENA
Face vs. Face builds are weird, and I know this is gonna lead to Bryan doing a forced “I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME OUT AND HELP ME” thing while Cena makes barfy sad faces and says he was just doing what he thought was right, but for now, Cena gets a Best for keeping his ass in the back until the match was over and things were legitimately starting to get out of hand.
Worst: Sssh, Don’t Let Us Know Vince Is Here
We didn’t get this in the arena. I assume they didn’t want us to know Vince was there and ruin that smooth transition between Daniel Bryan’s gauntlet wonders and the dark match. I only knew it was happening because I was sitting next to the production guys and watched it on their Public Access computer programs.
Brad Maddox is an awesome GM, right? Last week’s show was spectacular, this week’s show had its ugly parts but ended with glorious fire and next week’s show already has a tables match and a Kane/Bryan match, which will no doubt feature a Wyatts run-in and get Bray Wyatt and Daniel Bryan in the same place at the same time. F**k off with your passive-aggressive character work, Vince, Jon Snow is the best GM you’ve had since the guy with the scooter.
Best/Worst: And Now, A Fourth Daniel Bryan Match
The show ended with a Mark Henry/John Cena/Daniel Bryan vs. The Shield match. That sounds like basically the greatest thing, right? Besides Cena, I guess. But nope, be happy this was on TV. If you want to see it, imagine John Cena doing all of his signature moves to the Shield guys and then running away like they’d been swatted by a newspaper. All to set up a bunch of YES chants for Bryan, even though we’d been YESSING for like 45 minutes.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Night
Caz
I’d like to believe the dark match segment is just D-Bry in the ring singing Madeline Kahn’s “I’m So Tired” song from Blazing Saddles.
Tactileneck Expert
I SPIT ON THE MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTION OF THE MEAN! THE MEDIAN IS A FAR MORE ACCURATE MEASURE!!
Downbound
Sorry Mark Henry, Seth Rollins’ wig is already split.
Raven
Dolph should start answering all questions with “dolphinately”.
PT
We’ve determined you aren’t installing the WWE App because you are too stupid to install it. Here’s a condescending instructional video.
Dagotron
Here’s how you install an app… Let me go back… An app is a program on your phone… Let me go back… A phone is used to make calls… Let me go back… Calls are a way of talking to other people… Let me go back… Talking is when you make sounds with your mouth… Let me go back… [Randy Orton promo]
X Bone
Triple H is going to kill the guy who changed “Triple H” to “Daniel Bryan” on his teleprompter
LBCS
You have a choice of two trains to get onto one of the trains leaves Chicago at 8:20 travelling at 70 mph and the other train leaves from Cleveland at 7:45 going 72 mph at what time do the McMahons come and stop both trains?
jont
If nothing else the Wyatt Family has proven that Erick Rowan is waaaaay better at iMovie than Seth Rollins was.
raymc99
If you German a Swiss guy pretending to be American does that make him Norwegian
See you all next week. Well, except for Renee. See most of you next week. :(
