BRM Reviews the 3/19/2018 Raw (The Ultimate Deletion)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 3/19/2018 Raw (The Ultimate Deletion)

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 19th, '18, 23:04

OPENING SEGMENT- bad
Kurt Angle comes out to tell us that Roman Reigns won’t be here because he got suspended. So did he do something between now and last night’s house show that he worked to get himself suspended again? (Seriously, if he’s supposed to be suspended, why wouldn’t you keep him off of the house shows?). Also, Kurt says that Brock isn’t here yet. This is going well so far.
Kurt tries to transition away to talking about what he’ll do about Braun winning last week’s tag team battle royale all by himself, but Roman Reigns hops the barricade and gets into the ring. No security attempts to stop him. Kurt points out to Roman that he is trespassing, to which Roman responds with a douchy “who cares?” Roman insists that “someone has to be here to represent the main event of WrestleMania.” No they don’t! That’s what video packages are for.
Roman came off like an entitled jerk while Kurt came off like a stooge. Roman finally (making sure to get a cheap pop by naming the town first) says that he’s taking the show hostage (of course they won’t use that phrase anymore) until he gets to fight Brock right now. Kurt finally gives up and sends some US Marshals out to arrest Roman. You know. Because that’s what always worked with Steve Austin.
Breaking news, everyone: Roman Reigns is not Steve Austin. Roman let the US Marshals put handcuffs on him, but when they tried to force him out of the ring, ROMAN REIGNS ASSAULTED DULY-APPOINTED OFFICERS OF THE LAW. The announcers barely uttered a word of criticism, with Cole saying “well… he’s had a frustrating few weeks,” as if that makes it okay to go assaulting innocent people. Personally, though, I think Roman realized what happened the last time he was in Dallas and that there might well be charges for attempted vehicular homicide out against him.
Anyway, Brock’s music played, and I said “Thank goodness that Brock Lesnar is here to save these brave officers from this evil psychopath!” I’m pretty sure that’s not the way WWE wanted me to feel, though. Brock destroyed Roman. Roman did a stretcher-job… and Brock came back and flipped the stretcher.
Yes, it’s heelish Brock to assault a man who can’t defend himself, but I have no sympathy for Roman here, either. Most people in the crowd didn’t seem to have any sympathy for Roman, as they cheered Brock destroying him. Kurt Angle wasn’t wrong earlier when he essentially told Roman to just chill out and he’ll get his chance to fight Brock at WrestleMania. I guess I really just don’t understand what Roman was hoping to get out of this that he wouldn’t have gotten by waiting until Mania. He’s already made his point several times over the best few weeks, so what did he hope to gain by fighting Brock here tonight (or any other recent week)?

When we get back from the first commercial break, we see Roman getting loaded into an ambulance. No one showed up to flip the ambulance, nor run a truck into. Because no one else ever seems willing to praise Coach no matter what, I will point out here that while Cole went into overdramatic mode and said that this was the most premeditated, most violent, most vicious, most horrible, and most six other adjectives attacks that had ever happened on Raw, Coach took the smarter and less extreme approach and merely said “in a long time” rather than “ever.”

ALEXA BLISS! PROMO- good heel stuff.
She buries Nia Jax and says she just used Nia, and other, meaner things. I assume this means that Nia will run in here and cause a double DQ so no one has to do a job in this stupid, illogical, pointless match.

ASUKA vs. ALEXA BLISS! (w/Mickie James)- 6.75/10
It’s been an entire week now and still no one has explained why Asuka is even allowed to be on Raw, never mind wrestle. They had some timing issues, but seemed to try to make for it a bit later by really laying stuff in. I think there was a shoot hair-pull in there which pissed Alexa off. She wasn’t wrong to complain to the referee about it, either, because hair-pulling is illegal and thus Asuka should be disqualified! #AlexaShouldHaveJustBrokenTheStreak.
PICTURE PERFECT GLITTER BLIZZARD for a nearfall!
Alexa walked out after being caught in an ankle lock. It was clear that she was just using this as an excuse to walk out because when Nia came out, Alexa had no problem running away. Mickie took the bullet, but Nia kept going and chased Alexa away. What was the point of having Asuka wrestle here and beat Raw’s champion?
During this match we learned that Coach has not seen Mean Girls.

ALEXA BLISS! & KURT ANGLE BACKSTAGE- terrible
Apparently Nia just gave up chasing Alexa at some point during the commercial break. Alexa demands that Nia be arrested for her conduct. Kurt says that this won’t happen. Not because Alexa’s request is unreasonable or anything, but just because “I’ve had enough arrests tonight.” So if any of you wrestlers are off committing insurance fraud or something tonight, it’s okay if Kurt finds out because he’s too lazy to have you arrested.
Kurt is also furious at Alexa for her hurtful comments last night because, as the Raw Women’s Champion, she should be a role model for young girls everywhere. Alexa has been saying mean things about other women on the roster (never mind the fans) since the day she came to Raw! In fact, I have vivid memories of Kurt setting up a segment where the other women were forced to stand there and listen as Alexa literally elevated herself on a pedestal above them so that she could talk down to them! Why is Kurt only angry now? Is he trying to say that body-shaming is wrong, but other things Alexa has done (like ageism or being a sore winner) are okay? Actually, that doesn’t even work, because, while Alexa was engaging in ageism, Mickie was body-shaming Alexa right back and Kurt never said sh*t. So is the message that it’s only okay to body-shame thin girls? Because that doesn’t seem fair at all.
Or, more likely, WWE’s desire to show how good and progressive and empowering of a company they are has combined with their horrific laziness to once again shoot their product in the foot.
Anyway, Kurt announces that he’s going to give Nia a shot at the title at WrestleMania. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: Nia Jax is getting a title shot at WrestleMania… BECAUSE SOMEONE HURT HER FEELINGS. I think we’ve hit a new low.

BRAUN STROWMAN, SHEAMUS, & CESARO SEGMENT- Apparently an announcement was made off-screen that Braun has to pick a partner to team with him to get a title shot at WrestleMania. Braun says he doesn’t need to stink’ tag team partner. Sheamus & Ceasro came out and were amusing. Braun claims to have a partner, and also that Kurt said that he could have a match against either Sheamus or Cesaro right now. That’s kind of douchy for Kurt to not tell Sheamus & Cesaro about this. Sheamus tricked Cesaro into getting into the ring so we got…

BRAUN STROWMAN vs. CESARO (w/Sheamus)- 6.5/10
They had a pretty good match, but I definitely found my attention slipping by the end because the only possible outcome other than Braun winning clean was a DQ, and I knew the result wasn’t in any way important.

ULTIMATE DELETION PROMO- as someone who saw their TNA stuff, this was boring and redundant. I get why they had to do it, but that didn’t make it easy to sit through. Also, if Matt has invited Bray to come have this match with him, then telling Vanguard 1 to treat Bray like an “intruder” really isn’t fair. Dick move, Matt.

THE REVIVAL vs. TITUS WORLDWIDE (w/Dana Brooke)- 2/10
Part of me wants to see Dana Brooke determine that The Revival are statistically more likely to win and try to join them, just due to the humorous potential of her attempts to prove her value to them when they have no interest in a statistician, but I don’t trust WWE to do it without it sucking. The match was short, but at least The Revival won, and cleanly, too.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS THE REVIVAL- dumb.
They vowed to become the first tag team to win the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royale. Are they stupid? Do they not understand that only one person can win? And is Charly stupid, too? She was standing there and nodding along as if what they said made perfect sense. Do you know who’s stupid? This company, that’s who. How do you waste talent like this?

MARK HENRY IS GOING INTO THE WWE HALL OF FAME- He’s more deserving than most of the recent inductees.

SASHA TRIES TO GET ON THE SAME PAGE WITH BAYLEY- Am I the only one who found Sasha’s attitude to be heelish and almost condescending here?
Yeah… after this promo by Bayley, I’m totally on Team Bayley here. Bayley is right. It’s not what Sasha did; it’s how she did it that makes it so heelish. Paige interrupted them before too much could be said.

SASHA BANKS & BALYLEY vs. ABSOLUTION (w/Paige)- 4/10
I laughed at Mandy Rose still doing her whole entrance even without the music. That was great. Numerous things happened to create discord between the two babyfaces. Bayley didn’t even stick her hand out when Sasha was the babyface in peril. The New Paige Outlaws picked up the win. Unfortunately, it seems to me like WWE wants Bayley to be the one to turn heel, which really isn’t the right choice based on everything we’ve seen.

JOHN CENA PROMO- this was very long and boring. And, quite frankly, if Taker says he’s retired, it’s a dick move for Cena to come out here and keep bothering him.
Eventually Kane showed up. Everyone seemed to leap to the conclusion that Kane bore a message from The Undertaker with no evidence of this. Kane just chokeslammed Cena. Cole finally got a brain in his head and asked if this was just Kane’s way of trying to get a match against Cena.

MATT HARDY TALKS TO GEORGE WASHIGNTON THE GIRAFFE- this was entirely pointless.

MIZ PROMO- a long, boring rant. He tried to catch our attention by using Balor and Rollins’ indy names. Then Balor, Gallows, & Anderson came out. Then Rollins came out to do commentary. This whole bit of entrances and talking (plus Matt and his giraffe) was all we got from one commercial to the next. BORING!

THE MIZ & THE MIZ-TOURAGE vs. THE BALOR CLUB- 5/10
Balor pinned Miz in an unspectacular match. Miz-tourage attacked them after the match and beat them up. Rollins eventually decided to make the save. Then he and Balor had a stare-down.

MATT HARDY TAKES SKARSGARD OUT FOR A ROW ACROSS THE LAKE OF REINCARNATION- Once again, this felt like it was intended for no other purpose but to introduce you to Skarsgard and the lake, and that mere factor made it feel forced. Compare this to our original introduction to Vanguard One and Senor Benjamin in the built-up The Final Deletion. One flowed naturally from the events of the story, the other did not (mostly because THERE IS NO STORY!)

RONDA ROUSEY VIDEO PACKAGE- boring. I already know who she is. If you were worried people didn’t know who she is, maybe you could have played this BEFORE you kicked off your big angle with her?

THE ULTIMATE DELETION-
Bray shows up and is ordered to “follow the music.” He walks to the ring. The fact that we have a ring this time indicates that it should at least be better than the ones with Decay. Matt says “Bray Wyatt, I knew you’d come.” I feel like they’re just rehashing TNA stuff.
The referee calls for the bell, and they begin to… circle each other while making their signature noises. This is insufferable. Matt uses the distraction of a Vanguard 1 fly-by to take the advantage, like a heel. They proceeded to have a boring match with nauseating camerawork.
Bray floors Matt with a big clothesline, then rolls out of the ring to get… a regular old steel chair. In a freakin’ Broken Matt Hardy scenario? LAME!
Matt hardy orders Vanguard 1 to set off some fireworks, scaring Bray, and Matt grabs the chair and takes the advantage. They brawled away from the ring, and we got more of the pointlessly dark picture that helped doom WWE’s first attempt at this with the Wyatts and The New Day two years ago. Bray kicked Matt’s ass near a building until Matt told Bray to look around and asked him “does this remind you of anything?”
Bray was then brought to tears of joy and fell to his knees because the shack they were fighting near happened to looked similar enough to Bray’s old compound that Randy Orton burned down last March. Or maybe Matt got some help from Orton to figure out what it looked like and built a replica. Either that, or Bray is triggered by the sight of every wooden building he sees. Bray had flashbacks of memories to earlier times, when he was actually an interesting character and not a total joke everyone just wishes would go away. Matt Hardy knocked Bray out of this joyful reverie by hitting him with a Kendo stick.
Bray eventually got hold of the Kendo Stick… then once again got triggered by the thought of Randy Orton burning his shack down last year so Matt got away. Annoying camera effects happened, and then we cut over “The Land of Obsolete Men.” I know that’s what it was called because a painfully WWE-style graphic on the bottom of the screen. It was a different font and different colors, but it still felt very WWE-style. This was a clever name for a Broken Matt Hardy cemetery, but the WWE-style graphics hurt the appeal of this thing, which is to be different. Matt hid like a little wuss while Bray engaged in his own combination of a Scooby Doo hallway chase scene and a game of Whack-a-Mole.
Violence started to happen again until Bray threw Matt into the door of his barn. The door opened, and the graphics now told us we were in the “Dome of Deletion.” The action now started to get better, while the action music in the background got much worse. Then the action stopped so Matt could struggle between the choice of the “chair of wheels” and the “mower of lawn.” The camera would shoot back and forth between them, and Matt would say “chair of wheels!? Mower of lawn!?” over and over, interspersed with shots of Matt’s goofy, almost euphoric face… all with The Nutcracker playing in the background.
Matt finally chose the mower of lawn and went to RUN BRAY OVER WITH IT but he stopped and Bray got up and Matt just paused so Bray could get some shots in. Bray hit some moves, then we got a nearfall, all ruined by their stupid intrusive music and sound effects. Bray wasn’t able to pin Matt, but did have Matt weak enough that he could drag him around with no resistance. Bray said “let’s go home, Matt,” so at least it’s going to be over soon. Bray dragged Matt to the Lake of Reincarnation. I hope to G-d that this ends with them both tumbling in there and Matt emerging as normal Matt hardy and Bray emerging as Husky Harris and none of this every being spoken of again.
Bray was about to hit Matt with Sister Abigail onto Skarsgard the dilapidated boat, but Vanguard 1 distracted him so Matt could escape. Bray managed to grab Vanguard 1 and could easily have destroyed it, but chose to just let it go instead.
Matt was gone and Skarsgard was upside down so Bray flipped it over looking for Matt but instead found Senor Benjamin underneath it. He threw Bray a globe. Bray caught the globe, and Senor Benjamin started singing “he’s got the whole world in his hand.” Jeff showed up for a moment to start singing, too, to further distract Bray. Mat then hit the Twist of Fate for the pin. Mercifully ending this crap. Bray insisted that it wasn’t over, but Matt said that it was, then used an oar to knock Bray into the Lake of Reincarnation. He ordered Senor Benjamin to retrieve Bray’s body but Senor Benjamin said there was no body. Matt said that Bray had been deleted and that The Great War was over. Thank G-d.

This was, quite frankly, a pathetic, pale imitation of the good TNA versions of this (by which I really just mean the original one, and maybe parts of Total Non-stop Deletion). This was slower, more boring, had more intrusive music and graphics rather than relying on setting and atmosphere to get the mood across (a very WWE problem) and didn’t really add anything we couldn’t have otherwise seen other than the stupid drone. The weapons that were used here were a chair, a ladder, and a Kendo stick. There was nothing cool like the Roman candles, or nothing just plain goofy but fit in with the atmosphere. This was WWE trying to do someone else’s thing and sucking at it. It was dull and watered down, and had not one iota of the sense of fun that this had when TNA was able to do it well. I hope they kill these characters after this and never do this crap again.


Another dull episode of Raw on the way to WrestleMania. Wheels continue to spin, except in the situation they care about (Roman vs. Brock) or situations where they made things even worse (like the women’s title match). Ronda wasn’t on the show YET AGAIN despite their assurances that she would be, and I’ll bet you that not one single person is going to criticize Ronda for it the way we’re supposed to cheer Roman for criticizing Brock. Well… at least I can look forward to a Shane-free Smackdown tomorrow night.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Michael Cole claimed that “Roman was defenseless when this attack first started.”
Defenseless? He was in the middle of beating up three trained US Marshals all by himself!
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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Earth Child
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Re: BRM Reviews the 3/19/2018 Raw (The Ultimate Deletion)

Post by Earth Child » Mar 20th, '18, 01:52

Can I just say, as a female that grew up with Mean Girls, I really appreciated Corey Graves reference to it during the Bliss Asuka match.

It literally made me laugh out loud. It's lines like this that make me like his commentary more and more

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cero2k
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Re: BRM Reviews the 3/19/2018 Raw (The Ultimate Deletion)

Post by cero2k » Mar 20th, '18, 06:46

Ultimate Deletion was like trying to make a horror parody out of the Scary Movie franchise. WWE doesn't understand art, even in the wrestling sense

I'm also reading that it was cut from the Hulu version, and considering that Cole apology, I don't think Vince really wanted to do it but figured they could get some buzz from it. I really don't think we'll see another on RAW again
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KILLdozer
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Re: BRM Reviews the 3/19/2018 Raw (The Ultimate Deletion)

Post by KILLdozer » Mar 22nd, '18, 20:28

Yeah, I DID NOT see that deleting the obsolete Bray Wyatt on Hulu....in fact, even the cutscene segments were cut. I kinda forgot all about it and had been interested in seeing it...I know they cut different shit every week, but wow lol.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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