BRM Reviews the 10/24/2016 Raw

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- bad
It seems there is a list-thief about and Chris Jericho is very unhappy about it. So unhappy, in fact, that he won’t budge from the ring until he gets his list back. Owens comes out. He says he didn’t take it, but he will help Jericho find it… but only after they take out Seth Rollins in their triple threat match. Somehow, I have the feeling that they’ll be killing two birds with one stone. Jericho refuses to wrestle until he gets the list. Steph comes out and tries to prevent this man from ruining her main event.
Rollins came out. He stole the list and is acting like a jerk about it. If you want to sew dissension between Jericho and Owens (and also Jericho and Steph as they seem to want to do), I think Bryan Alvarez’s suggestion for how to do it was MUCH better.
Rollins continued to cut a lame, stupid “grand speech” of a promo. This felt like a return to the “usual twenty-minute opening promo” that we used to get for years. Maybe they have been doing it recently and it just hasn’t felt like it, but what matters is that this time it felt like it. This is a very negative change.

STEPH & SETH BACKSTAGE- this bullsh*t is so annoying. The stuff Rollins said at the end here is what the focus should be on. Not this stupid list.

PRE-MATCH SEGMENT- very good
They’ve given Enzo & Cass their own stupid gimmick mics which I assume they’re also selling at the gimmick table. As I’m sure you can imagine, the biggest pop of the night from me so far was for them actually explaining how Gallows & Anderson were able to mess with the sound system. Anderson & Gallows’ promo was good, and I thought that Enzo and Cass getting to do their thing at the end with the crowd basically acting as their mic made them come off like HUGE stars.

ENZO AMORE (w/Collin Cassady) vs. KARL ANDERSON (w/Luke Gallows)- 2/10
Short match with a bad finish. Enzo won after Cass interfered. I guess I’m supposed to buy Sunday’s PPV to see the heels get the revenge on the cheating babyfaces.

RUSEV PROMO- great babyface promo by the heel Rusev. The plain back background looked really lame, though. It would have been better to just have him cut a regular backstage promo with the usual set.

NEW DAY PROMO- you shut up, New Day! I want to see Sheamus!

CESARO & SHEAMUS vs. NEW DAY (w/Xavier Woods)- 6.75/10
What do you know? They did manage to get a finish right.

JERICHO LOOKS FOR HIS LIST BACKSTAGE- surprisingly good. It let three undercard acts get their gimmicks over, and Jinder’s facials were great.


DANA BROOKE vs. BAYLEY- apparently this is an arm wrestling match. Why did Mick Foley not bother to inform the announcers or the ring announcer? And even more importantly… why didn’t he inform Bayley? The crowd hated this, but I thought it was great.

JERICHO & STEPH BACKSTAGE- bad, but at least there will now be some consequences for Jericho if he refuses to wrestle.

CURTIS AXEL PROMO- good…

BO DALLAS vs. CURTIS AXEL- 3.25.10
But you knew an undercard WWE babyfaces was going to get humiliated in his home town.

RICH SWANN VIDEO PACKAGE- good

MORE BACKSTAGE JERICHO SH*T- Braun Strowman is now holding the list. He is unhappy because Sami Zayn’s name isn’t on the list. I was dead sure Sami had publicly been added at one point, but instead of a continuity gaffe, I’ll be nice to the writers and assume that the issue here is that Braun Strowman can’t read. Also, Braun Strowman is much less scary when you realize he has a Superman tattoo.
So Jericho got his list back just like that. That was a huge waste of time.

ROMAN REIGNS PROMO- fine (although he definitely came off like the heel after Rusev’s earlier promo).

GOLDEN TRUTH (w/Mark Henry) vs. THE SHINING STARS (w/Titus O’Neil)- DUD!
A meh match with the important part of the finish looking very hokey.

WWE WOMEN’S TITLE HELL IN A CELL CONTRACT SIGNING- yeah… I skipped this as soon as Mick started talking about glass ceilings and all of that stuff. We don’t need this damn lecture every week. Hell… most of us have been pushing for this for much longer than WWE has. The line that really set me off was Foley talking about the “traditionalists” who opposed women getting the chance to be treated equally. While WWE might be championing this now, that’s not going to make anyone forget that they spent two decades as the villains. Yes, Darth, you’re a good guy now because you killed the Emperor, but do you really expect to be forgiven for the millions of innocent people you helped kill?

EMMALINA VIDEO- no. You lost your right to claim this was coming “soon” two weeks ago.

BRIAN KENDRICK vs. RICH SWANN- 6/10
TJP was on commentary. Good match, but why did Kendrick lose clean going into his title shot?

KEVIN OWENS PROMO- AWESOME! This is how HIAC should be portrayed! The response of fans and announcers to the booking of a Hell in a Cell match should not be “Oh cool!” It should be “Oh my G-d.”

BRAUN STROWMAN vs. SAMI ZAYN- no rating, good segment.

KENDRICK & TJP BACKSTAGE- sob-story Kendrick wants TJP to let him win the title so he can feed his family and put a roof over their heads. What? Does WWE not pay him enough? This was stupid.

HEYMAN/LESNAR PROMO- meh.

OWENS & JERICHO BACKSTAGE- good, but mostly for Owens trying to look over Jericho’s shoulder at the end.

CHRIS JERICHO vs. SETH ROLLINS vs. KEVIN OWENS- 7.25/10
They did a good job with their story, but the post-match segment made it all feel like it went nowhere. It also would have been better if they cut the post-match segment in half to give the match another two or three minutes. If Rollins is getting laid out at the end, that’s all you need.

A disappointing show from WWE. I guess it hit most of the necessary notes for a go-home show, but they got most of the finishes wrong.

[NWK2000]

Just reading your review of the Brian Kendrick/TJP segment makes me think Kendrick was being cartoonishly disingenuous on purpose, but I'm sure actually watching Raw would indicate that this was not continually written into his character. Am I in the wrong on either claim?

[Big Red Machine]

Just reading your review of the Brian Kendrick/TJP segment makes me think Kendrick was being cartoonishly disingenuous on purpose, but I'm sure actually watching Raw would indicate that this was not continually written into his character. Am I in the wrong on either claim?

It didn't feel out of character, but it did come across just a smidgen like he was being disingenuous so that the audience could know that he was. My mocking of this segment was more to mock the concept than the actual execution.