BRM Reviews the 11/23/2015 Raw (awful)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- Everything was good, I guess. Rusev returned and jumped Rusev from behind. Is he part of the Authority now? That seems like an odd fit. Hunter announces that Roman will get his rematch at TLC in a TLC match, which makes sense because it’s a match the Authority can have people interfere in.
Also, they announced the main event for tonight, which will be Roman vs. Rusev (w/Sheamus).

THE DUDLEY BOYS vs. LUKE HARPER & BRAY WYATT (w/the Wyatt Family)- 4.25/10
The Dudleys got beaten up after the match as well.

BECKY LYNCH vs. SASHA BANKS (w/Naomi & Tamina)- 3.75/10
They hit each other with some stuff, then went into the finishing sequence. The match went four minutes and six seconds. LONG LIVE THE DIVAS REVOLUTION!

PAIGE PROMO- she somehow got the director to cut into the feed for her while Cole was trying to talk so that she could complain. Cole started talking, and she could apparently hear him perfectly even though the monitor behind her was not tuned in to Raw, and it didn’t seem like there was another monitor around she was listening to because then we would have heard Cole’s voice doubled.
Paige claims that Charlotte cheated last night because Charlotte’s arm was underneath the rope during the finish last night.

NEW DAY PROMO- they were riding My Little Ponies, while Biggie was dressed up in a child’s cowboy outfit. Both my mother and brother chose this moment to walk into the room. This is the sort of sh*t that makes most wrestling fans fear coming out of the closet.
Remember when these guys were entertaining and funny? And do you know the exact moment when that stopped? That’s right. It was the moment they started TRYING to be funny.
As if I couldn’t hate this any more, Kofi decided to break kayfabe my saying “this is me saying this. Not my character.”
They announce they are going to have an open challenge for the tag titles. It would have been great if they could have done this without being an embarrassment to the business. Both the Lucha Dragons and the Usos came out to accept the challenge. If you wanted to set these guys up as challengers, why didn’t they just use last night’s elimination tag team match to set it up? You know… make the results of the matches on the PPVs that are the driving force of the WWE Network actually matter?
And, of course, the New Day “cancelled” their open challenge and got beaten up for it, so all of this was just a huge waste of time. It’s lucky I have a haircut scheduled for tomorrow, because I need one after the amount of hair I pulled out during this segment.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS CHARLOTTE- okay

MARK HENRY vs. NEVILLE- DUD!
Neville took some offense and then beat Mark with one kick and the Red Arrow. Mark kicked out at 3.1. Mark teased beating Neville up at the end of the match, but instead shook his hand. The thing that utterly infuriates me (aside from the fact that Mark lost so quickly) is that if you had given these guys the time they wasted with the New Day segment, they would have put on a great match.

STARDUST AND TITUS O’NEIL MAKE ME WANT TO KILL MYSELF- Stardust is cutting a Stardust promo when Titus randomly wandered into the screen. They said some stuff, of which I only understood about six words. Apparently tonight will see Goldust & PTP vs. Cosmic Wasteland. This was terrible.

COSMIC WASTELAND vs. GOLDUST & THE PRIME TIME PLAYERS- 2.25/10
This match might well have gotten more time that Becky vs. Sasha and Neville vs. Mark Henry combined.

ZEB & DEL RIO PROMO- SOOOOOOOOOO BORING!
They declared that “the borders of Mexamerica are closed forever.” For some reason they think people will give a sh*t about any of this. IT’S A F*CKING MADE UP COUNTRY! If Zeb had started preaching the virtues of France or Russia or Canada or Japan or any other REAL country, Swagger’s promo would have been GREAT! Instead, it was just another boring part of a completely idiotic angle.

WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: Charlotte(c) vs. Paige- 6.75/10
They went a good fifteen minutes to a double-count-out, then Paige beat Charlotte up a bit and locked in the PTO… except that she had to do it on the table for some weird reason. If they really wanted to do something refreshing, they’d give these women a street fight.

HEATH SLATER TRIES TO SING- he got interrupted by Ryback. Slater gave him the El Kabong, but Ryback shrugged it off and beat Heath up. This was a waste of time.

DEAN AMBROSE & DOLPH ZIGGLER vs. KEVIN OWENS & TYLER BREEZE (w/Summer Rae)- 5/10
Owens and Breeze as a team is the sort of thing that just shouldn’t be possible. There is no way they wouldn’t despise each other and wind up with Owens turning babyface.
Breeze loses again because he’s a total jobber. It would have made a lot more sense to have Breeze pin Dolph again because of interference by Summer… or if you are building towards Owens vs. Ambrose anyway and you REALLY want to have the babyfaces win, have Ambrose pin Owens for the third time in a month to build up a title match (which you could have Owens win by cheating in order to build to a rematch at the Rumble which would give you a great excuse not have both Owens and Ambrose- two guys the fans will doubtlessly cheer over Roman- in the rumble).

JBL, EL TORITO, & MARK HENRY ARGUE ABOUT WHAT FOOD THEY WILL EAT- this led to Mark henry having a dream sequence about JBL and Torito as a tag team. It was all done to plug Arby’s. I understand the need to plug your sponsors, but could they not come up with a way to do it that would manage to both not be idiotic and not completely clash with the presentation of the rest of the show? This sucked.

ROMAN REIGNS vs. RUSEV (w/Sheamus)- 7.5/10
Cole says that Rusev and Sheamus have “formed a loose alliance over the past couple of months.” When did this happen? I remember them being booked on the same team in tag matches once or twice, but that hardly counts as an “alliance” and it certainly wasn’t something that they “formed” if WWE just booked them together. Maybe you could spin it that way if they had asked to team together, but we never once saw that happen.
Because he doesn’t want to have any credibility at all, JBL claims that the referee is “overstepping his bounds” by ejecting Sheamus from ringside because he suspects Sheamus has been interfering behind his back.
The match was actually going very well until Wade Barrett randomly showed up and attack Roman for the DQ. Roman (with the help of a chair) managed to make his own comeback and beat up both heels, as well as Sheamus when Sheamus tried to jump him.

Even with two very good matches, this was just an AWFUL show. I swear to G-d it’s like they saw that we had all been mostly enjoying Raw for the last few weeks and decided that this was something that needed to be fixed immediately.

[KILLdozer]

Sheamus and Rusev and Barrett have practically been their own quiet small unofficial stable for a small bit now-even I knew that-the guy that no longer watches wrestling-from reading all of your crap.

[Big Red Machine]

Sheamus and Rusev and Barrett have practically been their own quiet small unofficial stable for a small bit now-even I knew that-the guy that no longer watches wrestling-from reading all of your crap.

Wade and Sheamus teamed a few times. Rusev has only teamed with them once or twice.

[KILLdozer]

Good enough. BTW "Rusev jumps Rusev"? -way to many other similar non sense typos. Get it together lol.

[Big Red Machine]

Good enough. BTW "Rusev jumps Rusev"?

Whoops.

[cero2k]

I've been wishing for an all european stable for so long, but now that i have it, i don't know what to feel, i know they're just place holders in the main event because everyone else is injured.

[NWK2000]

I was extraordinarily confused as to why why everyone was hating on this Raw. Then I realized that, because I'd DVRed it, I somehow missed Henry vs Neville and the Titus/Stardust segment, which appeared to be the two killing jabs on this show.

Also, you're being unfairly rough with The New Day. Maybe they're not the "heels who think they're babyface" as they once were, they've just gone full heel. Which is fine in my estimation, because usually an act like this goes whitemeat babyface when creative realizes they're over

[KILLdozer]

Those mother fuckers rode GOT DANG HORSES and dressed like a child cowboy-no way! No got dang way!

[KILLdozer]

I can almost guarantee you that this would have been my exact reaction:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IaN84qE5--Q

[cero2k]

dammit, now i'm gonna be binge watching king of the hill all day

[Big Red Machine]

I was extraordinarily confused as to why why everyone was hating on this Raw. Then I realized that, because I'd DVRed it, I somehow missed Henry vs Neville and the Titus/Stardust segment, which appeared to be the two killing jabs on this show.

Also, you're being unfairly rough with The New Day. Maybe they're not the "heels who think they're babyface" as they once were, they've just gone full heel. Which is fine in my estimation, because usually an act like this goes whitemeat babyface when creative realizes they're over

The problem is that they're not funny and they're just wasting time. If the things they were saying were funny, maybe I could have excused this, but they're not funny. They're just wacky for the sake of being wacky. It's yet another example of creative (or maybe the wrestlers themselves, or a combination thereof) not realizing what it was that got someone over, and this time, them not understand why New Day got over has transformed what was once a great act into something that this actively annoying and embarrassing to be caught watching.