BRM Reviews the 5/16/2016 Raw (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- could have bee much better
The show starts off with AJ Styles coming out and Cole telling us that “it’s all about hashtag Extreme Rules.” And that right there is the f*cking problem. Because it shouldn’t be all about “hashtag Extreme Rules.” It should be about “Extreme Rules.” The PPV. But in WWE, everything is about what sh*t they can get to trend on Twitter and not about building matches with some f*cking heat to them!
(And for anyone defending Cole by saying “well he has to get the hashtag out there,” he really doesn’t because IT’S ALREADY IN THE CORNER OF THE SCREEN! People should not be inserting “hashtag” into sentences unless you are instructing someone how to tag something on Twitter. That’s it.

Then we got a replay of the post-match interaction between AJ and Roman with the chair last week on Raw. We got the very same thing on last Thursday’s Smackdown. In that case I have to ask: if all you were going to focus they on was this bit between AJ and Roman, why the hell did you book the match as a handicap match and have Gallows, Anderson, & the Usos get beaten when you could have accomplished the same thing in a non-elimination six-man tag?

So AJ comes out and says he is unhappy with people not believing him that The Club hasn’t come together for the purpose of helping AJ take the title from Roman, and he shows some evidence that people don’t believe him by showing us some tweets… except that all of the tweets were just “OMFG IT’S SO COOL THAT THE CLUB IS IN WWE!” It would have been a lot more effective to have him show tweets that actually had people saying that they don’t believe him and they think Gallows and Anderson will screw Roman out of the title and AJ will be in on it. Or even better, show the (worked) results of a WWE.com poll (which would actually be a great idea as doing so would make everyone who actually does believe AJ feel more passionate in their support of him as it will make them feel like they are in the minority and thus need to make their voices count more).
Evidence aside, AJ’s delivery was pretty damn great. Then Roman Reigns came out and gave an obnoxious, almost condescending speech. Then he finished it off by saying that AJ, Gallows, and Anderson will “find out the hard way that The Bloodline is stronger than The Club.” How the f*ck did that line get okayed for TV? That was so lame it was laughter-inducing.
AJ got to respond where he sounded like a real person and his “I’m going to kick your ass” speech far outshone Roman’s. Then Gallows and Anderson’s music hits so we cut to the ramp to watch them come out… and then when we cut back to the ring all of a sudden the Usos are standing there right next to Roman like they’d been there the whole time. It didn’t feel like “the Usos have come out in response to this new threat.” It felt like there was some sort of editing mistake or something.

These Extreme Rules graphics are the least “extreme” thing I have ever seen.

SAMI ZAYN vs. CESARO- no rating, very annoying segment.
Miz & Maryse are on commentary because this is the only way WWE knows to build up a match. And Kevin Owens, too. They started brawling, which spilled into the ring and we got a double DQ. Then Shane came out and booked a tag team match, playa… although at least when Teddy Long did it, he did sh*t that made sense. Instead, Shane books Miz & Owens vs. Zayn & Cesaro, despite the fact that
1) Miz & Owens were ones who started brawling with each other that led to the DQ
2) WE JUST DID THIS MATCH ON SMACKDOWN, and
3) in that match, Owens & Miz didn’t get along, just like every single time they’ve teamed together for the past two months.
Based on all of these factors, plus the fact that neither Cesaro nor Zayn did anything to cause the DQ, wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to have Owens and Miz ejected from ringside and just restarted the regularly scheduled match?
But no. Instead WWE chooses to do the thing that makes absolutely no sense, is a thing I just saw on Smackdown, and is a bait-and-switch taking away a match I actually want to see. But no. Their booking is SO F*CKING STAGNANT that they HAVE to give me this f*cking tag team match AGAIN. I wasn’t even excited for the Zayn vs. Cesaro match from the moment Miz came out to do commentary because I was certain this guaranteed us a DQ, but this is even worse. As good as the build to Payback was, the road to Extreme Rules has been a complete 180.
AHA! Here comes Steph to save me! It turns out that unlike Shane, Steph has actually watched Smackdown this week, so she comes out and changes it to… Miz & Cesaro vs. Owens & Zayn… which also makes no sense because those were the pairings that these guys broke off to brawl in just now. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to book Zayn & Miz vs. Owens & Cesaro? But no. I guess we just have to hear all three announcers ask “but how can these two possibly work together?” over and over and over again.
(And, for the record, even with these changes, my rant about the stagnation of the product and bait-and-switch still stands, as nothing really has moved forward at all in most of the other feuds, either).
Oh. And Steph told Owens that he’ll be kicked out of the title match if walks off on his partner tonight. I wonder why they never said that at any point in the last eight months? Well… better late than never, I guess.

KEVIN OWENS & SAMI ZAYN vs. CESARO & THE MIZ (w/Maryse)- 5.25/10
Zayn gets the win after Miz and Cesaro can’t get along. Owens superkicks Zayn after the match.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS CHRIS JERICHO- okay.

THE SHINING STARS vs. TWO JOBBERS- squash.
They’re still calling them “Primo & Epico,” so why even rebrand them?
They cut a pre-match promo in which they were heels. I think?
Don’t worry. I’m sure the WWE booking team will definitely get them over this time. After this grand victory over two jobbers, Michael Cole declared that they have “put the tag team division on notice.”

DEAN AMBROSE CALLS CHRIS JERICHO OUT TO TALK- they yelled at each other. The end result of this was Dean telling Jericho that their match at the PPV would be some sort of Russoian monstrosity called an “Asylum Match.” It was a regular steel cage with some ropes hanging from the things that connect the cage to the cage-lowering mechanism, and attached to these ropes are such things as a straitjacket, a barbed wire-covered 2x4, a fire extinguisher, and a… plastic bucket?
Dean cut a way over the top promo with goofy flashing lights and I could have sworn the music from Psycho was playing. This was such sh*t.

DANA BROOKE BACKSTAGE- did they just entirely change her personality? And her voice?

DANA BROOKE vs. BECKY LYNCH- 3.75/10
Dana beat Becky on Smackdown because of Emma. Now that Emma is injured at isn’t here, will the result be different? Simple booking. Why can’t we have this on the rest of the card?
Holy sh*t Dana won clean! I like Dana just fine, but I think that when you take Emma’s injury into account, the best thing for everyone here would have been for Dana to lose and quietly go back down to NXT.

DARREN YOUNG/BOB BACKLUND THING- I skipped it.

SHANE & STEPH BICKER BACKSTAGE- who gives a sh*t?
The Dudley Boys showed up to give this segment some merit. Never mind. They just want to beat up jobbers. Instead, one of them will have to face Big Cass. Then Shane started stealing Cass & Enzo’s catchphrases.

GOLDEN TRUTH vs. TYLER BREEZE & FANDANGO- 1.75/10
Golden Truth lost because Truth accidentally kicked Goldust and Goldust was annoyed at Truth, which means they are going to drag this out even more.

TRUTH & GOLDUST BACKSTAGE- see above. I hope every single person in the arena who was cheering for the concept of Golden Truth gets multiple flat tires on the way home tonight. And not all at the same time. I want multiple stops.

NEW DAY GO IN A “TIME MACHINE”- f*cking horrendous, but at least they got their asses kicked in the end.

KARL ANDERSON & DOC GALLOWS (w/AJ Styles) vs. THE USOS (w/Roman Reigns)- 7/10
So the match on Smackdown in which AJ and Roman were barred from ringside got so out of control that the ref declared it a double DQ… and WWE’s solution to this is not to book a rematch with stips that will prevent a DQ, but rather to book the same match but allow additional unstable elements at ringside. Yeah. That makes sense.
The Usos won clean on the go-home show while the announcers told us that all of the momentum in the AJ vs. Roman feud now favors Roman. Isn’t that pretty much the opposite of what you want on your go-home show?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Gallows & Anderson attack the Usos and we wind up with a brawl. AJ tries to use a chair on Roman but Roman gets the better of him. Then Roman beats up Anderson and Gallows and then AJ beats up Roman with the chair and hit him with a Styles Clash on the chair. The AJ-Roman stuff was great but why would you have Anderson and Gallows get beaten by the Usos and then beaten up by Roman going into the PPV?

BIG CASS PROMO- good, but it would be SOOOOO much better if he would just use a normal cadence instead of starting and stopping so much like a bad Shatner impression.

COLIN CASSADY vs. DEVON DUDLEY (w/Bubba Ray Dudley)- no rating. Almost a squash, but they really made it feel like a big win for Cass.

KALISTO vs. ALBERTO DEL RIO- 6.5/10
Sin Cara wasn’t at ringside for this match like usually would be because he had to be away from Kalisto so that Rusev could jump him backstage. Ignoring, for the moment, why we at home would see this (why did they even cut to him watching the match in the first place?), why the hell would it be up on the TitanTron? Why? Because apparently Del Rio wanted to force him to watch, which makes it sound like Rusev and Del Rio are working together here, even though their stable just broke up. While Del Rio was “making Kalisto watch” he had him in the ropes for at least thirty seconds but the ref didn’t call for a DQ.
After they wrestled for a few more minutes, Rusev brought Sin Cara out to ringside and started kicking him around. If you’re going to do this, then what is the point of risking damaging people’s suspension of disbelief by cutting backstage to the attack?
Del Rio won off of Rusev’ distraction, pinning the US Champion clean, but I’m sure he’ll never get a title shot out of it. Rusev beat Kalisto up after the match and put him in the Accolade a lot.

They announced Corbin vs. Ziggler in a No DQ’s match for the PPV because I guess this match needs a stip, too, even though they already have two No DQs matches on this PPV, including one in a cage.

WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH CONTRACT SIGNING- horrible.
Nattie cut a boring, overly scripted speech. This was pretty bad. Nattie put some feeling into it, but the words were so clearly written by someone else.
Shane adds a stip saying that if Ric shows up at ringside on the PPV, Charlotte will forfeit the title. Fine. The problem, though, is that Shane specifically said that this was “because of what happened last week.” If I remember correctly, didn’t Ric’s presence cause Charlotte to LOSE last week?
Then Shane called security, and Steph declares that if they don’t sign the contract with this new stipulation, Charlotte would be stripped of the title. As my sister pointed out, this contract is now being signed under duress and thus should be null and void!
So sh*t happened with Steph and Ric, and then Charlotte charged at Nattie but Nattie double-legged her and put her in the Sharpshooter. If Charlotte is the heel, why the hell would you do this in Greensboro? And why would you have Charlotte go out of the way to encourage this. And why would you have Steph, the heel, be the one to get into it with Ric Flair?
WWE is probably all proud of themselves for giving the women the main event spot, not realizing that they actually made the entire segment (and the entire feud) about Ric. Typical WWE.

Another bad Raw, but at least there were two good matches on it.