BRM Reviews the 10/23/2017 Raw
Posted: Oct 24th, '17, 01:37
KURT RUNS DOWN THE CARD FOR SURVIVOR SERIES- it’s a bunch of Raw vs. SD champion vs. champion matches. A few issues here:
1. So we’ve got a whole night of either non-finishes or champions doing jobs that will never lead to a title shot.
2. It’s a PPV where noting will actually be on the line.
3. Brock vs. Jinder, Miz vs. Corbin, and Alexa vs. Nattie are all heel vs. heel.
4. Because of the way WWE books things, this means that no challengers will be built up or any stories involving champions will move forward for an entire month.
5. Brock vs. Jinder feels like a giant waste of Brock, Corbin vs. Miz sounds TERRIBLE, and the quality of Alexa vs. Nattie feels almost entirely dependent on the amount of time they give it, which probably won’t be much because we’re also getting elimination matches for the men and the women.
But WWE is certain that this Raw vs. Smackdown crap will somehow make people care simply by the announcers and authority figures repeating it over and over and over again.
KURT & SOME HEELS SEGMENT- Miz, Axel, Sheamus, & Cesaro came out and Miz cut a promo on Kurt saying that he abuses his power and should resign. Kurt refused, so the heels surrounded the ring like The Shield, which predictably led to Seth & Dean coming out to help Kurt. They came out from the crowd because I guess they were at the concessions stand getting some hot dogs when the show went on the air rather than backstage where the wrestlers normally are.
Kurt books Miz, Cesaro, & Sheamus vs. Seth, Dean, & AJ Styles, who apparently just “decided to stay an extra night.”
AJ STYLES, SETH ROLLINS, & DEAN AMBROSE vs. THE MIZ, SHEAMUS, & CESARO (w/Curtis Axel)- 7.5/10
Fun.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Kane showed up and faced off against the three victorious babyfaces. He knocked each of them down, and then the other heels came out and pounced on them as well. Because we’ve got to build Kane up for his match with Strowman so we want him to beat up top guys, but we don’t want to hurt our top guys, either, so we’ll do this, where no one looks good.
WWE’s big hook for Survivor Series is that it is “the one time of year when Raw and Smackdown Superstars go head-to-head.” That’s their idea and that’s their branding phrase so they’re going to keep saying it over and over, even as I am watching AJ Styles, from Smackdown, wrestle against Raw Superstars for the second night in a row, and Survivor Series is almost a month away. And, of course, even if they hadn’t brought AJ over from Smackdown, this would still be wrong because we got two Raw vs. Smackdown matches at Payback earlier this year. And also the Royal Rumble match. That seems like a pretty big thing to ignore, doesn’t it?
KANE PROMO- bad
He started it off with the following line: “Through hellfire and brimstone I heard the stories.” They want us to believe that when he’s not at the arena, Kane just sits around, literally in hell, waiting for the next time he’s supposed to show up to a WWE booking. Just f*ck off.
He beat around the bush about it, but he said things that are definitely designed to make us think that Braun is dead. No explanation of how the lever was pulled, though. Kane did all of this because he was upset that Braun was calling himself a “monster” and Kane wants to be the only monster.
Kane demands competition, and out comes Finn Balor so we get…
FINN BALOR vs. KANE- 6.25/10
Kane just beat Finn Balor clean.
SHANE MCMAHON SHOWS UP TO ENGAGE IN TERRIBLE, FORCED BANTER WITH KURT- Get ready for four weeks of this sh*t on both shows, because WWE thinks this will make people care about one show beating the other.
ASUKA vs. EMMA- 5.5/10
Yes, again. They’re having a rematch because Emma is upset that she lost. Well… at least someone is caring about the result of a match. This entire match felt like I was watching a recap of last night’s match.
ALEXA BLISS! PROMO- Great general heel stuff, especially the stuff directed at the fans. She got like actual, real heat. She’s the best. Mickie James eventually came out and kicked Alexa in the stomach (while wearing these ridiculous heels, no less), then nailed Alexa with a Mickie-D-T onto the title belt, so I guess this feud will continue until December.
KURT & SOME WOMEN BACKSTAGE- Sasha and Bayley walked into Kurt’s office to put him over for his performance last night. Apparently the Survivor Series team needs a captain for some reason, so Kurt wants it to be one of them. Alicia Fox shows up and thinks she should be the captain. Comedy was unsuccessfully attempted. A triple threat match for the meaningless captaincy of a team to compete in a meaningless match on a meaningless PPV was booked. Hooray for WWE “Creative.”
“THE DRIFTER” ELIAS SAMSON SINGS- Jason Jordan was messing with the sound in the production truck because he’s just kind of a douche now. He is also apparently scheduled to face The Drifter again tonight. So far tonight we’ve seen two rematches, one segment designed to continue a feud despite someone winning completely cleanly, and the opener, in which five sixths of the match had been involved in a match last night on the same teams against each other, plus we’ve got Fox and Sasha scheduled in the same match again, although with a third woman this time.
JASON JORDAN vs. “THE DRIFTER” ELIAS SAMSON- 3/10
The match was boring. The Drifter got DQed for hitting Jordan with his guitar. Booker T claimed that Jordan was “using illegal tactics,” a claim which was literally laughable, as it caused Corey Graves to burst out with laughter at how absurd it was. They did a good job with Jordan’s injury, though.
PAUL HEYMAN (& BROCK LESNAR) PROMO- AWESOME!
There was a girl who appeared to be somewhere between the ages of nine and eleven, dressed up in Bayley gear, including those strands that hang from her arm, holding up a big sign that said “I came for Brock.”
CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS KALISTO- he wants his rematch tomorrow night on 205 Live. Tonight is about a ten-man tag they’re having tonight where Enzo and his heel friends from next week will face off against Kalisto, Gran Metalik, Mustafa Ali, Cedric Alexander, & Rich Swann.
WINNER GETS TO BE CAPTAIN OF THE RAW WOMEN’S SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM: Sasha Banks vs. Alicia Fox vs. Bayley- 5.75/10
First the two babyfaces ganged up on the heel. Then the heel made her comeback and fought both of them off. Then the babyfaces took over again only because the heel got struck by an ill-timed fit of the crazies. Then the babyfaces fought each other for a few moments until the heel came back and took them both out and won. These babyfaces are really pathetic.
KALISTO, MUSTAFA ALI, GRAN METALIK, CEDRIC ALEXANDER, & RICH SWANN vs. ENZO AMORE, TONY NESE, DREW GULAK, NOAM DAR, & ARYEH DAIVARI- 6/10
Enzo came out wearing an eye-patch to mock Kalisto. They had Gulak read a prepared statement from Enzo (who had suffered a “vocal cord injury”), which made things quite funny. They didn’t really have enough time to do a great ten-man tag main event so they just did stuff. Kalisto pinned Enzo to build up to tomorrow night’s title match.
KURT REVEALS THE RAW SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM- Before he could even get started, Shane’s music interrupted him and Shane came down through the crowd with all of the people on his roster who actually matter all wearing Smackdown shirts. At this point I just hit fast forward until the end of the show to see if there would be a schmoz because I don’t give one single sh*t about this Raw vs. Smackdown stuff. I don’t care who is going to be on which team because none of the matches are going to matter.
What did happen? Well…
Shane sent his posse- all thirty or so of them (basically everyone other than AJ, Owens, Zayn, Randy, and Jinder)- backstage, where they came upon Titus O’Neil and Apollo Crews, who were doing nothing but minding their own business, and they assaulted them and beat the hell out of them.
The next person they saw was a random production worker with a headset on. Corbin walked up to him, grabbed him, and threw him across the room… and the rest of the Smackdown roster- INCLUDING THE BABYFACES- all cheered Corbin on for assaulting this poor innocent man. They went around kicking over camera equipment and terrorizing people and assaulting everyone and wreaking havoc and I know I’m going to be in the extreme minority here, but I HATED this.
On the one hand, what WWE did here was them actually doing an invasion/interpromotional angle right. This would have fit in perfectly at the height of the ROH-CZW feud. The problem, however, is that Raw and Smackdown are not at the height of the ROH-CZW feud. This “feud” went from zero to about ninety-three million in the span of two hours, in which we saw absolutely nothing happen to precipitate it even going from zero to one.
It’s rare that we see this kind of vicious beating in WWE in a feud where the wrestlers hate each other’s guts, and you want me to believe that the entire Smackdown roster can put aside their various mutual dislikes in order to all go to Raw and viciously assault people they have no quarrel with, all in the name of “brand supremacy?” Hell no!
And do you want to know why? A big part of it is the fact that this idea of “brand supremacy”- that Raw and Smackdown are engaged in some sort of heated rivalry- or even a cold one- is something only ever mentioned for a grand total of one month a year: the month from the Raw after the second October PPV until either the Monday or Tuesday after Survivor Series when the winning show’s authority figure(s) give(s) his/her/their victory speech. Then everything just goes back to normal, and that’s exactly what will happen this year, too.
And therein lies the problem because THIS cannot go back to normal. Shane did more than take his army across the Rubicon; he just bombed Pearl Harbor. No matter what the f*ck happens in some stupid little matches at Survivor Series, a state of war needs to exist between Raw and Smackdown. That’s certainly what would happen if you took the brightly-colored shirts away, so that’s what should happen with the shirts on.
But it won’t. Because this is WWE, and they’ve spent the whole night telling us that “Survivor Series is the one time of the year where Raw and Smackdown Superstars go head-to-head,” and that means that once they’re not actively going heads up against each other anymore, everyone is supposed to forget that any of this ever happened. I’m just supposed to ignore the fact that I saw top babyfaces like The New Day and Nakamura and Charlotte and Becky viciously assaulting people in a f*cking gang-beating for no reason other than that they wanted to win some wrestling matches with nothing on the line. Sorry, but I don’t work that way, and neither should anyone else who cares about proper storytelling or character development.
This show started out feeling like a re-run and culminated in a sign that, just like last year, I can tell that this Survivor Series build is going to drive me up the wall. I think the best I can hope for at this point is for the World Series and some strong Monday Night Football games to make WWE just give up on trying anything else fancy for their Survivor Series build.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Booker T tried to tell me that AJ Styles was fighting “at a disadvantage” due to JETLAG when the other five men in his match were twenty-one hours removed from a TLC match that went over thirty-five minutes.
1. So we’ve got a whole night of either non-finishes or champions doing jobs that will never lead to a title shot.
2. It’s a PPV where noting will actually be on the line.
3. Brock vs. Jinder, Miz vs. Corbin, and Alexa vs. Nattie are all heel vs. heel.
4. Because of the way WWE books things, this means that no challengers will be built up or any stories involving champions will move forward for an entire month.
5. Brock vs. Jinder feels like a giant waste of Brock, Corbin vs. Miz sounds TERRIBLE, and the quality of Alexa vs. Nattie feels almost entirely dependent on the amount of time they give it, which probably won’t be much because we’re also getting elimination matches for the men and the women.
But WWE is certain that this Raw vs. Smackdown crap will somehow make people care simply by the announcers and authority figures repeating it over and over and over again.
KURT & SOME HEELS SEGMENT- Miz, Axel, Sheamus, & Cesaro came out and Miz cut a promo on Kurt saying that he abuses his power and should resign. Kurt refused, so the heels surrounded the ring like The Shield, which predictably led to Seth & Dean coming out to help Kurt. They came out from the crowd because I guess they were at the concessions stand getting some hot dogs when the show went on the air rather than backstage where the wrestlers normally are.
Kurt books Miz, Cesaro, & Sheamus vs. Seth, Dean, & AJ Styles, who apparently just “decided to stay an extra night.”
AJ STYLES, SETH ROLLINS, & DEAN AMBROSE vs. THE MIZ, SHEAMUS, & CESARO (w/Curtis Axel)- 7.5/10
Fun.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Kane showed up and faced off against the three victorious babyfaces. He knocked each of them down, and then the other heels came out and pounced on them as well. Because we’ve got to build Kane up for his match with Strowman so we want him to beat up top guys, but we don’t want to hurt our top guys, either, so we’ll do this, where no one looks good.
WWE’s big hook for Survivor Series is that it is “the one time of year when Raw and Smackdown Superstars go head-to-head.” That’s their idea and that’s their branding phrase so they’re going to keep saying it over and over, even as I am watching AJ Styles, from Smackdown, wrestle against Raw Superstars for the second night in a row, and Survivor Series is almost a month away. And, of course, even if they hadn’t brought AJ over from Smackdown, this would still be wrong because we got two Raw vs. Smackdown matches at Payback earlier this year. And also the Royal Rumble match. That seems like a pretty big thing to ignore, doesn’t it?
KANE PROMO- bad
He started it off with the following line: “Through hellfire and brimstone I heard the stories.” They want us to believe that when he’s not at the arena, Kane just sits around, literally in hell, waiting for the next time he’s supposed to show up to a WWE booking. Just f*ck off.
He beat around the bush about it, but he said things that are definitely designed to make us think that Braun is dead. No explanation of how the lever was pulled, though. Kane did all of this because he was upset that Braun was calling himself a “monster” and Kane wants to be the only monster.
Kane demands competition, and out comes Finn Balor so we get…
FINN BALOR vs. KANE- 6.25/10
Kane just beat Finn Balor clean.
SHANE MCMAHON SHOWS UP TO ENGAGE IN TERRIBLE, FORCED BANTER WITH KURT- Get ready for four weeks of this sh*t on both shows, because WWE thinks this will make people care about one show beating the other.
ASUKA vs. EMMA- 5.5/10
Yes, again. They’re having a rematch because Emma is upset that she lost. Well… at least someone is caring about the result of a match. This entire match felt like I was watching a recap of last night’s match.
ALEXA BLISS! PROMO- Great general heel stuff, especially the stuff directed at the fans. She got like actual, real heat. She’s the best. Mickie James eventually came out and kicked Alexa in the stomach (while wearing these ridiculous heels, no less), then nailed Alexa with a Mickie-D-T onto the title belt, so I guess this feud will continue until December.
KURT & SOME WOMEN BACKSTAGE- Sasha and Bayley walked into Kurt’s office to put him over for his performance last night. Apparently the Survivor Series team needs a captain for some reason, so Kurt wants it to be one of them. Alicia Fox shows up and thinks she should be the captain. Comedy was unsuccessfully attempted. A triple threat match for the meaningless captaincy of a team to compete in a meaningless match on a meaningless PPV was booked. Hooray for WWE “Creative.”
“THE DRIFTER” ELIAS SAMSON SINGS- Jason Jordan was messing with the sound in the production truck because he’s just kind of a douche now. He is also apparently scheduled to face The Drifter again tonight. So far tonight we’ve seen two rematches, one segment designed to continue a feud despite someone winning completely cleanly, and the opener, in which five sixths of the match had been involved in a match last night on the same teams against each other, plus we’ve got Fox and Sasha scheduled in the same match again, although with a third woman this time.
JASON JORDAN vs. “THE DRIFTER” ELIAS SAMSON- 3/10
The match was boring. The Drifter got DQed for hitting Jordan with his guitar. Booker T claimed that Jordan was “using illegal tactics,” a claim which was literally laughable, as it caused Corey Graves to burst out with laughter at how absurd it was. They did a good job with Jordan’s injury, though.
PAUL HEYMAN (& BROCK LESNAR) PROMO- AWESOME!
There was a girl who appeared to be somewhere between the ages of nine and eleven, dressed up in Bayley gear, including those strands that hang from her arm, holding up a big sign that said “I came for Brock.”
CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS KALISTO- he wants his rematch tomorrow night on 205 Live. Tonight is about a ten-man tag they’re having tonight where Enzo and his heel friends from next week will face off against Kalisto, Gran Metalik, Mustafa Ali, Cedric Alexander, & Rich Swann.
WINNER GETS TO BE CAPTAIN OF THE RAW WOMEN’S SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM: Sasha Banks vs. Alicia Fox vs. Bayley- 5.75/10
First the two babyfaces ganged up on the heel. Then the heel made her comeback and fought both of them off. Then the babyfaces took over again only because the heel got struck by an ill-timed fit of the crazies. Then the babyfaces fought each other for a few moments until the heel came back and took them both out and won. These babyfaces are really pathetic.
KALISTO, MUSTAFA ALI, GRAN METALIK, CEDRIC ALEXANDER, & RICH SWANN vs. ENZO AMORE, TONY NESE, DREW GULAK, NOAM DAR, & ARYEH DAIVARI- 6/10
Enzo came out wearing an eye-patch to mock Kalisto. They had Gulak read a prepared statement from Enzo (who had suffered a “vocal cord injury”), which made things quite funny. They didn’t really have enough time to do a great ten-man tag main event so they just did stuff. Kalisto pinned Enzo to build up to tomorrow night’s title match.
KURT REVEALS THE RAW SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM- Before he could even get started, Shane’s music interrupted him and Shane came down through the crowd with all of the people on his roster who actually matter all wearing Smackdown shirts. At this point I just hit fast forward until the end of the show to see if there would be a schmoz because I don’t give one single sh*t about this Raw vs. Smackdown stuff. I don’t care who is going to be on which team because none of the matches are going to matter.
What did happen? Well…
Shane sent his posse- all thirty or so of them (basically everyone other than AJ, Owens, Zayn, Randy, and Jinder)- backstage, where they came upon Titus O’Neil and Apollo Crews, who were doing nothing but minding their own business, and they assaulted them and beat the hell out of them.
The next person they saw was a random production worker with a headset on. Corbin walked up to him, grabbed him, and threw him across the room… and the rest of the Smackdown roster- INCLUDING THE BABYFACES- all cheered Corbin on for assaulting this poor innocent man. They went around kicking over camera equipment and terrorizing people and assaulting everyone and wreaking havoc and I know I’m going to be in the extreme minority here, but I HATED this.
On the one hand, what WWE did here was them actually doing an invasion/interpromotional angle right. This would have fit in perfectly at the height of the ROH-CZW feud. The problem, however, is that Raw and Smackdown are not at the height of the ROH-CZW feud. This “feud” went from zero to about ninety-three million in the span of two hours, in which we saw absolutely nothing happen to precipitate it even going from zero to one.
It’s rare that we see this kind of vicious beating in WWE in a feud where the wrestlers hate each other’s guts, and you want me to believe that the entire Smackdown roster can put aside their various mutual dislikes in order to all go to Raw and viciously assault people they have no quarrel with, all in the name of “brand supremacy?” Hell no!
And do you want to know why? A big part of it is the fact that this idea of “brand supremacy”- that Raw and Smackdown are engaged in some sort of heated rivalry- or even a cold one- is something only ever mentioned for a grand total of one month a year: the month from the Raw after the second October PPV until either the Monday or Tuesday after Survivor Series when the winning show’s authority figure(s) give(s) his/her/their victory speech. Then everything just goes back to normal, and that’s exactly what will happen this year, too.
And therein lies the problem because THIS cannot go back to normal. Shane did more than take his army across the Rubicon; he just bombed Pearl Harbor. No matter what the f*ck happens in some stupid little matches at Survivor Series, a state of war needs to exist between Raw and Smackdown. That’s certainly what would happen if you took the brightly-colored shirts away, so that’s what should happen with the shirts on.
But it won’t. Because this is WWE, and they’ve spent the whole night telling us that “Survivor Series is the one time of the year where Raw and Smackdown Superstars go head-to-head,” and that means that once they’re not actively going heads up against each other anymore, everyone is supposed to forget that any of this ever happened. I’m just supposed to ignore the fact that I saw top babyfaces like The New Day and Nakamura and Charlotte and Becky viciously assaulting people in a f*cking gang-beating for no reason other than that they wanted to win some wrestling matches with nothing on the line. Sorry, but I don’t work that way, and neither should anyone else who cares about proper storytelling or character development.
This show started out feeling like a re-run and culminated in a sign that, just like last year, I can tell that this Survivor Series build is going to drive me up the wall. I think the best I can hope for at this point is for the World Series and some strong Monday Night Football games to make WWE just give up on trying anything else fancy for their Survivor Series build.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Booker T tried to tell me that AJ Styles was fighting “at a disadvantage” due to JETLAG when the other five men in his match were twenty-one hours removed from a TLC match that went over thirty-five minutes.