BRM Reviews the 2/27/2017 Raw (BORING!)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- very good
Going into tonight my thoughts on the Owens vs. Goldberg match were just crossing my fingers and hoping that Jericho would cost Owens the title so that Owens would at least be a little bit protected, but after Goldberg’s promo I’m thinking it might actually be possible for Brock to cost Goldberg the title as revenge for what Goldberg did to him at No Way Out 2004 so that Owens could actually leave with the belt.
Owens came out and cut a great promo, too. Then they did the clichéd old deal where they tease a match but the heel backs out so they don’t deliver. I can’t believe that anyone bought that we were going to get to see these two have a street fight tonight, even for a moment.

So after that very good opening segment with two badasses talking about how they were going to kick each other’s asses and try to win a coveted championship, we cut to New Day horsing around backstage while Byron Saxton said that “the cheese state is about to make a positive transition into Booty-O country.” The saddest part about all of this is that WWE’s philosophy seems to be that they should be having more of this and less of Owens vs. Goldberg-type feuds.

NEW DAY PROMO- a huge waste of time.

THE SHINING STARS vs. THE NEW DAY (w/)- Or not. Apparently The Shining Stars are facing Big Show later tonight. They didn’t bother to tell the Shining Stars, or the announcers, or the New Day about this. Everyone found out when someone ran out to deliver to the New Day an envelope that contained this information because apparently, just this one time, they decided that after booking Raw they would seal this one match in an envelope to be opened live on the air, even though doing so makes absolutely no sense.
Okay everyone, dig in:
As I said above, this makes absolutely no sense on multiple levels. But ignoring for the moment that this is a completely random departure from the standard, more efficient way of doing things, and assume that, for some reason, they absolutely HAD to do something different for this match, doing it this way would STILL be a terrible idea because:
1. As WWE loves to remind us, “this is live TV” and anything can happen. Well, as we learned at the Oscars, sometimes that anything can include a screw-up, so why would you go with a method that could screw up like this, especially given that we all just saw exactly how such a screw-up might occur last night at the Oscars.
2. New Day specifically said that this shouldn’t reflect on their ability to host WrestleMania. While this might not be New Day’s fault, SOMEONE in WWE had to screw up in order for this mix-up to happen, so all this (especially with New Day’s comment) does to me as a viewer is let me know that there might be some sort of f*ck-up at WrestleMaina. F*ck-ups are generally frowned upon and taken as evidence that you can’t make things run as smoothly as you should (hence why we call them “f*ck-ups” and not “good jobs”). No one is putting PricewaterhouseCooper over for doing such a good job at the Oscars because of their f*ck-up.

In conclusion, this was typical WWE, where they’re desire to be seen as culturally relevant has caused them to bend over backwards so far in order to do so that they stuck their heads up their asses, and as a result couldn’t see how stupid this made them look.
And really… what is behind WWE’s desire to be so culturally relevant? Has that ever gotten them any praise or any more viewers or anything? Are there really people out there who wouldn’t watch WWE if not for stupid sh*t like this or JBL shoving football or cricket scores into every conversation or whatever? I really hope those people don’t actually exist, but whether they exist or not, WWE shouldn’t be catering to them.

THE NEW DAY (w/Kofi Kingston) vs. JINDER MAHAL & RUSEV (w/Lana)- 4/10
Cole reminds us that New Day will be hosting WrestleMania, saying “I can only imagine the antics that New Day will have planned for WrestleMania.” Remember when you used to build WrestleMania around the exciting wrestling matches rather than “what wacky antics will these goofballs get up to?”
Of course, the fact that they’re hosting WrestleMania means that they won’t be wrestling on the show so there is no reason whatsoever to keep them strong, and yet New Day still win here. Jinder is unhappy that Rusev was distracted and thus couldn’t save him. Maybe this would feel like it mattered if these two had ever won, but because all they ever do is lose it’s just two losers being angry at each other.

CASS & ENZO BACKSTAGE- Enzo is annoying. Cass cut a good promo that actually made me start to care about their quest. Then Enzo was annoying as hell and made me not care about.

CESARO & SHEAMUS BACKSTAGE- good. Then Joe showed up and was a douche and Sheamus stood up for Cesaro. Cesaro and Joe proceeded to have a great segment.

STEPH & FOLEY BACKSTAGE- meh
First Steph yells at a random stagehand. You know… so we know that she’s a heel, because the talking-down-to she’s about to give Foley won’t be enough. Then Steph “apologizes” to Foley by completely burying him, and you know what? Steph’s not wrong in her criticism at all. The Mick Foley we’ve gotten since the brand split HAS been weak, pathetic, and whiny.

KENDRICK PROMO- fine

AKIRA TOZAWA vs. NOAM DAR (w/Alicia Fox)- 3.75/10
Short. Apparently seeing Dar get beaten this quickly by Tozawa was supposed to make me want to see Tozawa & Swann vs. Kendrick & Dar on the PPV. They had Kendrick attack Tozawa before the match to build up to this tag match… so why not just have him attack DURING the match for the DQ to both protect Dar and let Swann come out to make the save? They’ve shown with the main event scene that they have no problem booking DQs, so why not book one when it actually makes sense to do so?

FOLEY & JOE BACKSTAGE- a completely pointless confrontation. Foley claims that Joe does whatever Hunter says, but we’ve only seen that happen ONCE, which was when he debuted. Foley books Joe vs. Cesaro.

WOMEN’S SEGMENT- booooo! I thought we were going to get a wrestling match now not more talking.
Michael Cole wants us to keep the number sixteen in mind, presumably because that is the number of times he is going to bring up Charlotte’s PPV streak over the course of this night.
Charlotte’s promo was fine and all, but I’m sick and tired of talking. Also, Bayley needs to have a good response to any of this, but she is yet to give one. Also, who at Forbes did WWE have to blow in order to get Forbes to have a list of “top female athlete in the WWE?”
Ah. Here comes Bayley. Charlotte calls her a cheater, to which Bayley responds “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘champion.’” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a heel respond to that same accusation with that same answer.
Bayley points out that she isn’t a “one-hit wonder” because “if memory serves me correctly” she has beaten Charlotte “three times.” It’s actually four, but I guess we’re just supposed to forget about that one back in September on account of it being a whole five months ago. Bayley fails to address the fact that she did not win the title cleanly. Instead she says that her next dream is “to walk into WrestleMania as the WWE Women’s Champion.” Shouldn’t her dream be to walk out of WrestleMania as the champion?
Big sister Sasha has to come out and defend Bayley because they’ve got a match later tonight and therefore Sasha MUST be a part of this talking segment. Charlotte immediately shifts to a completely transparent attempt to stir up trouble between the babyfaces. Sasha responded by telling Charlotte that she was “exhausted from looking at your stupid face.” Yes, she actually said that.
They all happen to be in their gear, so Sasha says “hey, let’s have our match right now,” but Charlotte says that her partner isn’t Dana: it’s Nia Jax. So does Charlotte now have booking power or did Foley and/or Steph make a change to the card without telling either the announcers or most of the wrestlers involved in the originally scheduled match?
So Nia comes out and Graves says “you’ve got to wonder what Dana Brooke thinks about this.” Then, immediately after that Michael Cole says “you’ve got wonder what Sasha and Bayley thin about this.” If Vince gives so much of a sh*t about the announcers saying what he wants them to say in his exact words then why doesn’t he just cut out the middleman and do commentary himself?
In this segment there was absolutely nothing new said, but we managed to waste almost ten minutes talking, all to set up a set up a (supposedly) dramatic reveal that we were falsely advertising a match all night long. But, you know, I’ve guess we’ve got to justify those writers’ salaries by giving them something to write instead of saving the company money by firing them and just letting the wrestlers wrestle (and delivering on the match we advertised).


SASHA BANKS & BAYLEY vs. NIA JAX & CHARLOTTE FLAIR (w/Dana Brooke)- 5.75/10
This match really dragged to me. I think it was more of a function of the amount of talking on this show so far as opposed to anything these four (or five) women actually did wrong. If we had scrapped the talking segment and this match had gone twenty-five minutes, I would have loved it.

FOLEY & STROWMAN BACKSTAGE- bad
Foley tells Braun “I can’t give you any competition tonight.” Why not? Why can’t Mick just book a match for Braun?
Anyway, instead of his usual demand for competition, Braun wants a contract to be signed for the already announced and promoted match between himself and Roman Reigns at Fastlane. Look… the whole question of signing contracts vs. authority figures just being able to announce matches on the fly is a big can of worms, but it is exactly because it is a can of worms that it is best to avoid segments like this that kind of beg that question. I think this could have been fixed by instead of having Braun being worried that Roman wouldn’t show up (because the reason for this was, of course for Foley to put Roman over as fearless and unbreakable, no matter what Braun does to him), I would have had Braun want a contract signed because he doesn’t trust Foley and Steph to not finally give him the match with Roman he has been demanding, so he wants a contract signed in advance to ensure that the match takes place.

KARL ANDERSON (w/Luke Gallows) vs. COLIN CASSADY (w/Enzo Amore)- 2.25/10
Predictable but mindless, and not given the time to feel like it matters. Add to this the fact that the tag titles have been booked so poorly, and this really just felt like a mandatory win for the challengers heading into the PPV that was just one step away from being filler rather than anything that really build to a PPV match and possible babyface title win.

TITUS O’NEIL vs. SHEAMUS- DUD!
Titus claiming to be Irish via his last name amused me. Their segment on Facebook to set this up was almost amusing. The match itself was entirely pointless. They tried to push that Titus was very aggressive, but even though he jumped Sheamus before the match, he still got beat by one freakin’ move.


COREY GRAVES INTERVIEWS SETH ROLLINS- Didn’t like it.
Seth came off of as way too introspective. It felt like he was giving his mea culpa for his heel turn months too late. Then Hunter came out and cut a promo that destroyed any chance of the mea culpa being effective. Then we finished off with this set-up that should make a match at Mania impossible because, barring a miracle, the doctors won’t clear Rollins in time.

HANDICAP MATCH: The Shining Stars vs. Big Show- DUD!
Big Show squashes two men on his own with absolutely no effort and for absolutely no reason. I am amazed that Primo and Epico have not yet quit WWE to go work for their father.

NEVILLE & NESE BACKSTAGE- bad.
This was one of those annoying Vince Russo segments where we have completely pointless tension between tag team partners.

AUSTIN ARIES VIDEO PACKAGE- finally something to get excited about.

TJ PERKINS & JACK GALLAGHER vs. TONY NESE & NEVILLE- 0.75/10
Come watch the exciting Cruiserweight Division! The action is so fast-paced you might blink and miss the entire match. We couldn’t even let them all have their own entrances. TJ Perkins: from face of the division to total afterthought in less than six months. The Cruiserweights are just the Divas at this point.
I know they think this is booking, but it’s not. It’s just killing time, and the quick losses hurt the guy taking the fall a lot more than they help the guy getting the win. If you’re not going to give them the time they need to have good matches on Raw then they need to be off of Raw immediately. Make 205 Live Network Exclusive and built up to a Cruiserweight PPV every two or three months like you do with NXT.

Tomorrow on 205 Live “Neville will deliver his ‘State of 205 Live’ address.” Oh goody. More talking.

BETH PHOENIX IS GOING INTO THE HALL OF FAME- I think I’ve made my dislike of this pretty clear in the news thread.

SASHA, BAYLEY, & STEPH BACKSTAGE-
Sasha offers to be at ringside for the Women’s Title match. Then Steph shows up to ruin the segment. Bayley just started to ask Sasha to be in her corner before Sasha said (paraphrasing) “don’t worry about it. I’ve got your back.” Why does Steph think that her comments here will possibly stir up dissension between them? And perhaps more importantly, why does Steph even care?
Anyway, Steph books Sasha vs. Nia for the PPV as if 1) it was some sort of big revelation that this was going to happen, and 2) it is somehow a big deal (we just saw it last month). It felt like Steph was turning what should have been a simple video package that you play before the Sasha vs. Nia match into some sort of promo that she felt the need to deliver, except she did it like a Steph promo so it had this heel sliminess all over it that doesn’t in any way make me feel excited for this match.
Steph’s involvement in this feud has completely dragged it down. It also really feels like she figured that she is a woman and therefore should be seen on TV with the top women so she has somehow inserted herself into the top women’s feud on the brand in this horrifically unnatural way.

SAMOA JOE vs. CESARO- 4.75/10
Cole thinks Joe should be unhappy to have been booked in this match. Why?
Joe has a 50-50 match with Cesaro, and that is with Cesaro having slipped and hurt himself early on. This is not what Joe should be doing right now. We couldn’t have even at least had Joe do something to cause the injury?

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS SAMOA JOE- I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve seen Charly all night. Joe’s promo was good. Then Sami Zayn jumped him from behind and they had a brawl. This was the first thing on this show since the opening segment that I would call a good go-home segment.
(Or not, because it turns out that that match wasn’t even technically announced yet.)

ROMAN-STROWMAN CONTRACT SIGNING-
Mick Foley comes out to bore us with more talking. Thankfully his droning was interrupted by Braun Strowman coming out. He wants Mick to leave, but Mick won’t shut up. No one respects you anymore, Foley. Your recent months of waterworks over Charlotte, Sasha, Sami, Sheamus, and Cesaro have seen to that. Braun says he doesn’t respect Foley, either. Mick screams that he’s a legend and stuff. Braun laughs at Foley, and I laughed right along with him. Mick all of a sudden gets scared because he knows Braun could kick his ass.
Roman finally shows up and he and Strowman brawl. It’s a good brawl. Roman temporarily wins and goes to sign the contract. Braun makes a comeback and throws Roman into the turnbuckle so hard it breaks. I guess this was supposed to look impressive, but between Evolve and WCPW I’ve seen so many ropes break recently when it didn’t look like they took that much force that this just seemed kind of weak.
Wait, no apparently Roman didn’t sign it before but he does sign it now because he’s so tough and all.

This was a really, really, REALLY boring show from WWE. Almost everything felt pointless, with lots of dull promos and go-nowhere matches that felt like they were just booked to kill time rather than to matter. There was a total of 38:59 minutes of wrestling on this show. That’s just under forty minutes out of OVER THREE HOURS! Only the women’s tag match made it past the eight mark (it went 11:30). Only three matches (that, the New Day match, and Joe vs. Cesaro) made it past three minutes. I don’t know what they put on such a sh*tty show tonight, but they did absolutely nothing to get me excited in any way about anything for the PPV other than the Universal Title match, and I’m already going into that one with the assumption that I’m probably going to come out of it annoyed because Owens will be getting squashed.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. After the wholes stupid Oscars thing, Michael Cole said that “what sucks for The Shining Stars is that they have to face Big Show later tonight.”
So basically what Michael Cole is saying that it would be easier to beat New Day in a two-on-two match than to beat Big Show two-on-one. This not only buries New Day, but actually the entire tag team division, as you’ll recall that New Day are the longest-reigning tag champs of all time in WWE.

[KILLdozer]

I figured you would say "awh yeah I've seen them break the ring like this plenty times with all the independents I watch.", But you're also not a strong body building type like me, who just loves see stuff forcefully destroyed in this manner. Hm.

[KILLdozer]

Also...Or maybe your independent shows just don't have very fortified ring ropes which is why they fall apart so easily. Obviously.

[cero2k]

I figured you would say "awh yeah I've seen them break the ring like this plenty times with all the independents I watch.", But you're also not a strong body building type like me, who just loves see stuff forcefully destroyed in this manner. Hm.

i'd would give you this one if Strowman had just ripped it apart, but it looked worked, it reminded me of the Ambrose/Wyatt match with the monitor

[Big Red Machine]

I figured you would say "awh yeah I've seen them break the ring like this plenty times with all the independents I watch.", But you're also not a strong body building type like me, who just loves see stuff forcefully destroyed in this manner. Hm.

i'd would give you this one if Strowman had just ripped it apart, but it looked worked, it reminded me of the Ambrose/Wyatt match with the monitor

Right. It looked like something set up so that Roman could pull it down when he took the bump.