BRM Reviews the 9/14/2015 Raw

[Big Red Machine]

Tonight is the “season premiere” of Raw, which, of course, means absolutely nothing. In fact, the “season premiere” is the only time they ever mention the word “season” in the TV context, but because this is WWE, they will surely have Michael Cole mention that tonight is the season premiere at least twenty times over the course of the show.
They have the Connor’s Cure logo on the ramp because apparently September is pediatric cancer awareness month. This in turn, reminded me that next month is breast cancer awareness month, which WWE makes insufferable enough on its own, but to have to now sit through six straight weeks of that? I don’t think I can do it.

OPENING SEGMENT- Triple H and Steph come out and tell us a bunch of sh*t we already know. This is the kind of “hype” that turns people off.
Then Hunter announced that Sting would wrestle on Raw tonight for the first time ever. That seems kind of like a waste for a go-home show. Also, Sting is going to be wrestling Big Show. That also seems like a waste. Steph then announces a tag title match right now. Then Hunter and Steph danced with The New Day because they cannot help but ruin everything.

WWE TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The New Day(c) vs. The Prime Time Players- 5.75/10
Byron talked about how, after they lost the tag titles, PTP went to the weight room and trained harder and all I could think was that if they had bothered to show any of that on the TV building up to this and let them cut promos about how they want to win the titles back, then maybe people would actually care about this match.
This is a tag team title match, so of course all that the announcers can talk about is Sting. Byron Saxton tried to steer the conversation back to the match at hand but JBL wasn’t having it. He is COMMITTED to providing terrible commentary.
Big E got on the apron and started to do stripper moves while Xavier played the trombone (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d type).
Every time Xavier plays that trombone, all I can think of is the late, great Larry Sweeney yell at the referee to disqualify Delirious for “illegal noise creation.”
Okay… that Pink Panther spot when they came back from commercial made me crack up. The match was pretty fun. After the match the Dudley Boys came out onto the stage to yell at The New Day.

Cole said that Nikki will break AJ’s record at midnight. That doesn’t make sense. You become the champion the moment you win the title, not at midnight the next day! And if you ARE going to go with this stupid midnight thing, why wouldn’t you not put Sting on this show and instead use this “biggest Divas match ever” as a chance to show how much change the Divas Revolution is creating by putting the women in the main event spot?

HUNTER, STEPH, & ROLLINS BACKSTAGE- they start by putting over Triple H’s dancing, because that was an effective use of time. Yes, I know it was only about ten seconds, but it was ten seconds that would have been better spent on just about everything else.
The end result of this segment was Hunter booking Cena vs. Sheamus.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS RIC FLAIR & CHARLOTTE-
So Flair cut a promo talking about how great the Divas Revolution was… and you know what… I almost believed him simply because IT DIDN’T SOUND LIKE HE WAS READING TALKING POINTS PREPARED BY THE PR DEPARTMENT! That being said, Ric cutting a promo after Charlotte’s just made Charlotte’s promo sound so much more wooden by comparison. Then they made Charlotte recite more terribly scripted lines. Uch.

PAIGE (w/Becky Lynch) vs. SASHA BANKS (w/Naomi & Tamina)- 4.75/10
The match was very good for the time it got. B.A.D. jumped the babyfaces after the match and beat them up.
Tamina’s hair looks utterly ridiculous.
Byron tells us that the three Diva trios are fighting over which one of them started the Divas Revolution. Why would anyone give a sh*t who started it?! What a stupid thing to fight over!

MIZ TV WITH SPECIAL GUEST, THE WYATT FAMILY- it wasn’t bad… but it wasn’t very interesting, either. At least it was a change from the usual “Wyatt Family cuts a cryptic promo on the Tron.”
Dean and Roman showed up at the end. Dean attacked Miz for no reason. Then the two teams had a staredown. You would think that Bray, who had JUST told us that he wanted Dean and Roman to “suffer” would have just have his guys attack him. Then Roman Reigns stood right in front of Bray and calmly talked about how he wanted to get revenge on Bray for taking out his cousin. Well if you want revenge so badly… JUST HIT HIM!
Roman announced that they had found a third partner. Roman finished his promo and the screen went black for a second while the Wyatts’ sound effect played and then all of a sudden we were looking at the announcers. WHY AREN’T WE LOOKING AT THE BIG CONFRONTATION GOING ON IN THE RING?! If the Wyatts teleported away, then SHOW US THAT! And also turn the damn lights back on.

Sting apparently gets his own special, extra-cool version of the match preview graphics for his matches.

CONNOR MCGREGOR ULTIMATE FIGHTER COMMERCIAL- I know it’s not wrestling, I just feel like commenting on it. This was really lame. How inept to you have to be to not get an awesome commercial out of CONNOR MCGREGOR!

JOHN CENA vs. SHEAMUS- 7.25/10
One or two spots didn’t look very good, but other than that a GREAT match.

RYBACK & KEVIN OWENS SEGMENT- GREAT!
At one point JBL felt the need to randomly yells over Ryback, saying something very fast that ended in “what else is going to happen?!”
I really liked their segment, and I hope that WWE will realize how much better the segment was because of mishap with Owens and the book and the way the two of them played off of that, and will realize that segments are better when the guys just go out there and react naturally to each other.

STING CLIPS- they chose one featuring Hogan. I didn’t think they would do that.

STARDUST (w/The Ascension) vs. NEVILLE (w/the Lucha Dragons)- you know what. I’m giving this a DUD! There was no count-out or anything. The Ascension just dragged Stardust back a few feet and apparently that ended the match.

NIKKI BELLA VIDEO PACKAGE- well… that stunk.

Becky and Paige got beat up earlier but now they are totally fine and out here with Charlotte? Then what was the point of having them get beaten up?
WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: Nikki Bella(c) (w/Brie Bella & Alicia Fox) vs. Charlotte (w/Becky Lynch & Paige)- 6.5/10
I don’t dislike the Dusty Finish here. It lets Nikki escape with the record in a heelish way, and sets up a big match on PPV (instead of on free TV) with a stip that builds off of the finish of this match.
But this was the wrong time to do it.
This was BY FAR the biggest match they’ve had in the Divas Revolution era. It had weeks and weeks of build and an actual storyline behind it, with the babyface poster-woman for the new prototypical WWE Diva going after the title for the first time. This was the big test for the Divas Revolution: Would they give this match the time and spot necessary to make it really mean something?
And what did they do? They gave it eleven minutes and an over-booked finish.
Like I said before: Under any other circumstances, this would have been a great finish to build to the PPV. But because of the circumstances surrounding it, the only correct way for this match to end was Charlotte winning clean, then hugging her father and being carried off on Paige and Becky’s shoulders. And instead we got a Dusty Finish, and Stephanie McMahon’s music playing at the end.


CESARO vs. RUSEV (w/Summer Rae)- 4/10
One of these days, someone really needs to start a “RUSEV MATCHKA!” chant.
Dolph came out to try to give Summer a present, thus distracting Rusev, resulting in him getting pinned. Remember a few months ago before this angle started when Rusev was actually a badass? Also, it seemed to me to be completely impossible for the referee to have been able to tell if Rusev’s shoulders were actually down for the pin because Cesaro’s leg was in the way.
After the match, Dolph- the babyface- sucker-kicked Rusev… so I guess the idea is that we will all by the PPV to see the heel get his revenge. That’s some backwards-ass sh*t right there.

So… it turns out Summer did keep the keep the gift. Rusev is understandably unhappy. I was almost certain that when Summer opened the box, she would get squirted in the face with something. It’s not that I think that would have been better. It’s just that’s the type of low-brow crap I expect from WWE.

STING vs. BIG SHOW (w/the Authority)- no rating. They go for about two minutes (with Sting taking no bumps) before Rollins runs in for the DQ. No one the announcers mentioned this, but this was Sting’s first WWE in. Sting gets double-teamed until Cena makes the save. Then the ghost of Teddy Long posses Triple H and he books a tag team match, playa!

JOHN CENA & STING vs. SETH ROLLINS & BIG SHOW- 5/10
I really wasn’t a fan of Rollins getting beaten instead of Big Show, but I see their point in doing it, and there is no denying that the fans went nuts for it.

A decent go-home show from WWE.

Final "season premiere” count:
Michael Cole- 13, JBL- 2, Seth Rollins- 1, for 16 total (plus two more for the “season premiere of Miz TV).

[NWK2000]

When you were explaining that you were expecting Summer to be squirted in the face with something, I somehow misread it to the point where I imagined that the present was just a picture of Dolph's face, which actually would've been great.

[Big Red Machine]

Some interesting and important points from the Observer/F4W guys about the finish to the Divas match:
1. They did the same finish with Nikki and Paige on a PPV a few months back and rather than call for a DQ, they restarted that match.
2. Basically the same thing happened in the main event... and they restarted that match as well.

[cero2k]

Some interesting and important points from the Observer/F4W guys about the finish to the Divas match:
1. They did the same finish with Nikki and Paige on a PPV a few months back and rather than call for a DQ, they restarted that match.
2. Basically the same thing happened in the main event... and they restarted that match as well.

it's one of the things that i've heard a lot of people complain, that not only did they just do a DQ (which makes no sense since Brie never attacked Charlotte), but out of all the times that the Bellas have cheated, today was the day Steph had to 'uphold the integrity of the divas revolution'

[Big Red Machine]

Some interesting and important points from the Observer/F4W guys about the finish to the Divas match:
1. They did the same finish with Nikki and Paige on a PPV a few months back and rather than call for a DQ, they restarted that match.
2. Basically the same thing happened in the main event... and they restarted that match as well.

it's one of the things that i've heard a lot of people complain, that not only did they just do a DQ (which makes no sense since Brie never attacked Charlotte), but out of all the times that the Bellas have cheated, today was the day Steph had to 'uphold the integrity of the divas revolution'

I've heard people defend this by saying "Steph is a heel and the original angle was that she was pals with the Bellas and thus no one wanted to team with Paige," but the way they started the Divas Revolution shoots that in the foot.