BRM Reviews the 5/23/2016 Raw (great)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 5/23/2016 Raw (great)

Post by Big Red Machine » May 24th, '16, 17:02

OPENING SEGMENT- great
Seth Rollins comes out, and the fans erupt in a rapturous applause for the second coming of Cross-fit Jesus.
We all know Byron is useless, but it really hit me on an extra level here. Seth comes out and JBL talks about how Seth is coming back for the title he never lost. Cole points out how Seth is so great and so dedicated that he came back from his injury three months before he was expected to and what a big surprise this was, and he went after Roman to “make a statement.” Byron followed their statements up with the following “insight”:
“I’m still shocked that Rollins is here, and you’re right. A clear statement: “I’m back for one thing, and that’s the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.”
So basically he just repeated what they said. If you don’t have anything useful to say, don’t say anything at all.

Anyway, Seth immediately goes heel on the fans, cutting an AWESOME promo on them, calling them hypocrites for only supporting him once he got hurt even though they had been booing him for over a year before that. The best part of this was when he said that he didn’t event open the letters fans sent him while he was recovering from his injury. He just put them right in a big garbage bag and set it on fire.

Roman came out to confront Set but Seth just started walking away. I guess Roman really isn’t so anxious to get his hands on the guy who jumped him from behind and laid him out with a devastating wrestling move after he had been through a hellacious Last Man Standing match.
Shane comes out and tells Seth to get in the ring, saying “I think we can have an adult conversation here.” What was the point of that? They weren’t throwing punches. Hell… they weren’t even shouting at each other. It was just put in there so a McMahon could belittle the superstars. You know… the people who actually make the McMahons their money.
Shane gives us a completely unnecessary lecture about Seth’s history… and I say it was completely unnecessary because between Seth’s promo and the announcers’ exposition at the beginning, we already heard 99% of it. It was made even worse by the fact that the guy explaining all of this to us was a guy who, in storyline, watched absolutely none of this happen… and here he was “explaining” this to us… 99% of whom already know all of it.

Shane books them as the main event of Money in the Banks. Then we got the announcement of four Money in the Bank qualifying matches all taking place tonight, which means that after tonight they will have almost completely shot their wad on the build to a PPV that will take place in just under four weeks, so we’ll be doomed to weeks of the same wrestlers interacting in matches whose results will mean absolutely nothing for the few weeks. That should be fun.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS SHEAMUS- they say “new era” a lot. His promo was pretty good aside from the “he’s not even from this country” bit. I am sick and tired of some being turned into either an idiot or a hypocrite just because they’re a heel.

MONEY IN THE BANK QUALIFYING MATCH: Sheamus vs. Sami Zayn- 6.5/10
I thought this match would have worked a lot better if they went like 20-25 minutes instead of just ten and had a lot more of Sheamus beating on Sami. I think those are the types of matches that get Sami over the best.
I liked Cole’s comment about how this is a “change of fortunes for Sheamus.” Having the guy who won MITB and successfully cashed it in last year lose the very first qualifying match is a good way to illustrate the fact that Sheamus’ career has really been in quite the tailspin since he lost the title, so props to Cole for bringing it up. Hopefully this is intended to be the start of something for Sheamus, whether it is focus on a losing streak that eventually drives him to do something heinous out of frustration or something dastardly out of desperation, or the start of him “rededicating” himself and being motivated to win more (and possibly turning babyface in the process). I think Sheamus is hugely underrated (as you can probably tell by my fantasy booking) and I’d LOVE to see them do a lot more with him.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS APOLLO CREWS- Sheamus assaults Crews backstage. He’s sick and tired of hearing about the “new era.” See. I guess he knows how we all felt about the Divas Revolution.
I didn’t think it was smart that they went out of their way to point out that Jericho just went through a grueling Asylum match last night while Crews didn’t, thus putting Crew at a big advantage, but Sheamus attacking him does mitigate this.

THE NEW DAYS vs. WHAT THE F*CK?!
Lilian introduces the New Day saying that “the following six man tag team match is scheduled for one fall…” but when they get to the ring, there’s a big cake on a table in the middle of it. HOW THE F*CK ARE YOU GOING TO START A MATCH WITH A F*CKING CAKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RING?!

NEW DAY PROMO- they have a birthday cake for Raw because this is the 1,200th episode. Okay… that’s not a birthday. A birthday is the anniversary of your birth. For Raw, that would be January 11th. They pick up the cake, and a like a huge douche, Big E. picks it up and teases smashing it in the faces of several people, including JBL, Byron Saxton, and some fans at ringside, including small children.
Then I noticed someone running down the ring to put a stop to this idiocy and I got excited. It turned out that these saviors were… the Social Outcasts. So let the record show that the May 23, 2016 Raw, for the first time in history, BRM was happy to see the Social Outcasts. I was almost immediately made to regret this decision, as after beating up Kofi and Xavier, they started skipping around the table in the ring.

THE NEW DAY vs. THE SOCIAL OUTCASTS- pointless squash.
After the match, New Day smashed the cake in Slater’s face. Didn’t they already do some sort of angle with Slater where he got cake in the face and kept trying to get revenge but it always wound up backfiring, or did I hallucinate that?

MIZ & MARYSE PROMO- perfect for what it was

MONEY IN THE BANK QUALIFYING MATCH: Cesaro vs. The Miz (w/Maryse)- 6.75/10
Good story with Miz working over Cesaro’s shoulder. The clean win over the IC Champion should set him up for a shot at that title on the July PPV as well.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS SETH ROLLINS- just a set-up for…

SETH & STEPH BACKSTAGE- she’s a face now (or at least pretending to be) so she won’t hug him. She tells him that “our business relationship has changed” and offers him a handshake instead. He accepts her handshake.
I get what they were going for, but was definitely a better way to do this. Maybe have Seth going to Steph to try to get a stip added to favor him and then have her tell him that things have changed. Some sort of story-driven set-up for this (seemingly important) storyline moment rather than this isolated “it’s an important storyline moment for Steph to tell Seth she isn’t a heel anymore so let’s write a backstage segment in which Steph tells him that.”

MONEY IN THE BANK QUALIFYING MATCH: Chris Jericho vs. Apollo Crews- 6.5/10
Crews comes out here all smiling and happy despite the earlier backstage attack from Sheamus. He should have been selling. Jericho has a bunch of band-aids on him because of the thumbtacks from last night and Crew is apparently working over these small cuts. That’s dumb. The match got better when they stopped focusing on that, but doing that combined Crews not selling Sheamus’ attack totally undermined the protection Crews was supposed to have for this clean loss.

BOB BACKLUND/DARREN YOUNG STUFF- horrid.

JOJO INTERVIEWS BARON CORBIN- Dolph shows up. Now that they’ve had a bunch of matches over the past two months and just had a No Disqualifications match last night, Dolph now challengers Corbin to a “technical wrestling match.” Yeah. That’s how that works.
Corbin was pretty good here. He buried everyone who loved wrestling as a kid and grew up dreaming of being WWE World Heavyweight Champion. Dolph told Corbin his should watch his match against Ambrose tonight. Then he killed everything by defiantly telling Corbin that he would “do something you could never do: steal the show!” Who gives a sh*t if you have an awesome match in a non-main event spot? It’s f*cking WINNING that matters! GAAAAAHHHH!
Also, why does Dolph have an MITB qualifier and Corbin doesn’t when Corbin was the guy who won last night?

CASS… & ENZO PROMO- Enzo’s back! He cut a promo on the Dudleys. It was good. Well… maybe Enzo got a bit too hyper at the end.

BUBBA RAY DUDLEY (w/Devon Dudley) vs. COLIN CASSADY (w/Enzo Amore)- 2.5/10
Slow match. Cass beat Bubba up in the ring while Enzo wound up getting the best of Devon outside of the ring even after being jumped from behind.

WOMEN’S TITLE SEGMENT- weird
Ric rambles on about how proud he is of his daughter. This is babyface stuff. Also, he’s Ric Flair, so the people WHOOOO the whole way through him praising the top heel in the women’s division who hasn’t won fairly in any of her previous three title defenses. He also compared Dana Brooke to Arn Anderson. That made me laugh. Then he said “without Charlotte Flair, there is no Dana Brooke.”
Charlotte also took credit for the win. Dana was playing a suck-up to Ric. Charlotte cut a good promo that ended in her saying she didn’t need Ric anymore. I guess they finally figured out that having Ric out here with Charlotte is preventing her from getting over as a babyface so their solution is to turn Ric babyface. I’m not saying that this direction is worse than what they had been doing- in fact, it will probably be more effective- but if they put Ric with a babyface woman to have her get revenge on Charlotte, then Ric will overshadow her, too.
So while the Flairs had this big emotional moment, Dana Brooke just stood there awkwardly in the background. I was pretty sure that Dana’s earlier line (her only one in this entire segment) was going to set up her attacking Charlotte for disrespecting Ric, but that didn’t happen. She just stood there and celebrated with Charlotte after Ric walked off.
This was a very well done segment in isolation, but between everything that happened last night (and, to a lesser extent, the things that have happened over the past few years), it feels really out of place.
As I said above, this definitely felt like it came out of left field, but after thinking about it for a while, I think I understand what they are trying to get at: The last night’s stip was that “Ric is banned from ringside,” and Charlotte won the match without Ric’s help, which made her realize that she doesn’t need Ric anymore. I think this would have come across a lot better if they had let Dana be more involved. If my line of thinking is correct, Dana is a replacement for Ric. Instead of Ric helping her win, she now has Dana (her Arn Anderson). The problem is that they didn’t say this- or even allude to it- in any way.
The second problem with this was the whole “I thought I needed you to do this” bit. The problem with that is that after NXT Takeover all the way through last December, she didn’t have Ric out there with her… and this included a long reign was the NXT Women’s Champion as well as her Divas Title victory and first bunch of successful title defenses. I guess we’re just not supposed to remember anything that happened before that last turn.

MONEY IN THE BANK QUALIFYING MATCH: Dolph Ziggler vs. Dean Ambrose- 6.5/10
A good, solid, clean, wrestling match. Of course, this kind of makes Dolph look like a huge dork in his feud with Corbin.

SAD RIC FLAIR WALKS AROUN BACKSTAGE- Uh oh! Titus and Ryder had better hope they don’t get fined or suspended for accidentally being in the background of a backstage segment.
Flair hugs Arn. Then Renee gives him a chance to publically respond to Charlotte, but he doesn’t. Then we walks through a door that is clearly in the middle of the arena but we’re supposed to believe it’s the exit because someone printed out a sign that says “exit” on it and taped it to the door.

THE SHINING STARS PROMO- they want us all to go to Puerto Rico.

We are two and a half hours into the show and the US Title match (including the title change), The Usos, or Gallows & Anderson have all not been mentioned once. I think Nattie has been shown in a replay, but I don’t think she was ever actually mentioned.

AJ STYLES PROMO & SEGMENT WITH GALLOWS & ANDERSON- pretty great
AJ says he wants to beat Owens on his own. Anderson & Gallows come out and are unhappy about this. Everything that has been building between them comes to a head. It was all very well done. I assume they’re going to come back out and screw AJ later. With that being the case, I think they missed an opportunity here by not pushing the fact that Owens was the guy who eliminated AJ from the Royal Rumble. They could have taken that fact and focused on it and built this up as AJ looking for some redemption (especially coming off of his loss last night). Then not only would Gallows and Anderson be screwing AJ out of the title, but they’d also be taking something else away from AJ (and this also sets up for a big AJ vs. Owens match later down the line which AJ could win).

MONEY IN THE BANK QUALIFYING MATCH: AJ Styles vs. Kevin Owens- 8/10
AJ hit his Phenomenal Forearm finisher to Owens on the floor. All JBL could talk about was why Cole had called Kevin Owens “Kev.” Why is he still allowed to do this job?
HOLY F*CK OWENS JUST WON COMPLETELY CLEAN!
I guess this does build the Gallows & Anderson in a slightly slower way, but I was completely surprised by this as building things slowly generally isn’t WWE’s M.O. (unless it’s dumb comedy with Goldust & R-Truth, of course).

After the match, Cole pointed out to us “all of the rivalries” in the MITB match: both Owens & Zayn are in, and so are both Jericho and Ambrose. This was WAY too blunt. You might as well have had Cole say “look at the way we booked this!”

This was a pretty great show by 2016 Raw standards. Not following up on the US Title change, the Usos vs. Guns & Gallows match, or the dirtiness of the Women’s Title match finish wasn’t good, but I really liked the fact that every segment made its point and moved on, and that they didn’t keep pointlessly coming back to things with unnecessary segments. Shane made the Rollins vs. Reigns match in the opening segment, then we never saw Roman again and only saw Seth for the Steph segment (which was inelegant but did have a point). They let the announcers handle it in recaps and that was it… which is how it should be.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Vince McMahon JBL tells us we saw “an absolute classic last night by Roman Reigns.”
Right. It was just Roman in that match and no one else. Who does Vince even think he is fooling with this? Marks are going to say “AJ also had an amazing showing,” casual fans understand that it takes two people to have a match and think it’s odd that JBL didn’t say the more obvious and natural thing praising the match that Roman and AJ had, and hardcore fans are going to get annoyed because this sounds like Vince is implying that ROMAN REIGNS CARRIED AJ STYLES.

2. Cole says that cashing in MITB on The Undertaker “completely changed Edge’s professional life.”
Um… no. Actually that would be his cashing in on Cena that did that (along with the whole Edge/Lita/Matt thing). I’m not sure if this is Cole being an idiot or a directive from Vince to protect Cena by forbidding any mention of him losing (even in a manner completely designed to protect him), but either way it comes across terrible.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
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Big Red Machine
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Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

Re: BRM Reviews the 5/23/2016 Raw (great)

Post by Big Red Machine » May 25th, '16, 08:43

This just occurred to me now: Why, exactly, are we supposed to be angry at Charlotte? A lot of the things she said were criticisms of her father that, while perhaps a little unfair , do mostly paint Charlotte in a sympathetic light. Ric might have been an absentee father because he was out providing for his family but he was absent nonetheless, and that can cause understandable resentment in a child.
Also... isn't dumping Ric something that the babyfaces have been telling her to do for months now? Aren't we supposed to want to see her stand on her own? You can say that she is being hypocritical because she's using Dana instead of her father, but they didn't push that on TV at all. Charlotte never said it, and all the announcers were saying was "poor Ric. How dare his daughter treat him like that and say those hurtful things to him."
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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KILLdozer
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Re: BRM Reviews the 5/23/2016 Raw (great)

Post by KILLdozer » May 25th, '16, 08:59

I just felt that whole thing was nothing more than the same old poor taste of actually having to do something like that...well, like that.
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