BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

Post by Big Red Machine » Apr 17th, '18, 09:57

OPENING SEGMENT- bad
Kurt comes out to open the show but is interrupted by Sunil Singh who announces that Jinder is on Raw now. I guess Sunil comes as a bonus because he’s not his own person, apparently. One assumes, then, that Samir Singh is on Raw now as well, but they won’t even mention that until he’s healed. You know… like how in a major sports league when an injured player gets traded and they keep it a secret until the guy is ready to come back. This company infuriates me.
Cole referred to Jinder as the “first pick” in the Superstar Shakeup even though we were explicitly told last week that the Superstar Shakeup would consist of “trades” between the two shows. This means that either 1) Cole is an idiot (always possible) or 2) they couldn’t go one single week without changing their minds, or 3) no one in the company knows the difference. You’d think with all of the former professional football players floating around there that someone would have explained it to them. And, of course, if #2 is true and there really is a “draft” with guys just picking wrestlers from the other show, that means that KURT & STEPH ARE F*CKING IDIOTS FOR PICKING JINDER MAHAL FIRST WHEN THEY COULD HAVE PICKED AJ, BRYAN, CENA, CHARLOTTE, ORTON, ETC.
Jinder is the US Champion, so that already tells you that either Rollins is headed to Smackdown or losing the belt to Miz at Greatest Royal Rumble, so they’re either ruining a surprise or a PPV finish. That being said, I think this was probably best for Jinder because he was stale as hell on SD.
Jinder says that he’s the best and Raw is now the “A show.” Shane’s probably having a f*cking conniption and/or plotting an invasion. Watch out, Kurt.
Jinder is framing thing as if this was a “decision” that Kurt made (he even used that word), so at the moment, any of our three theories are still viable.
Jinder complains about not being brought to the arena in a limo. Kurt says “we never agreed on a limo.” WHO GIVES A SH*T?!
Jinder demands “the same perks” that Brock gets. Less Jinder on my TV? I’m fine with that. I don’t mind him talking but his matches are still mostly blah.
Kurt says that Jinder should e-mail him instead of complaining about this stuff on TV. Sunil asks for Kurt’s e-mail address, so Kurt starts to give it to him then yells at him. Kurt is an asshole. If Sunil is a member of the roster then he should have Kurt’s e-mail address in case he needs to get into contact with him, right? Kurt then tells Jinder “I don’t know who they do things over on Smckdown, but on Raw we settle it in the ring.” What is there to settle? Are we going to get Angle vs. Jinder where if Jinder wins he gets extra time off and a limousine?
Nope. Kurt is just making Jinder defend his title, which won’t settle anything. Apparently Jeff Hardy gets the title shot by virtue of being the first guy out so we get a…

WWE UNITED STATES TITLE MATCH: Jinder Mahal(c) (w/Sunil Singh) vs. Jeff Hardy- 6/10
Cole lists off all of Jeff Hardy’s singles accolades, including his three world title reigns and four IC Title reigns. Cole described Jeff as a “good singles competitor.” Yeah. Multiple time world champion, but just “good.”
Jeff won the belt, so Jinder comes to Raw, acts all braggadocios, and is immediately made to look like a loser. Good job there, WWE.

SOMETHING TO WRESTLE WITH IS COMING TO THE WWE NETWORK- For those of you who couldn’t get enough of Bruce Prichard being overly defensive of WWE, now you’ll get it with Bruce being produced by WWE as well. He claims he’ll “talk about the things they don’t want me to talk about,” but until they say something like “Chris Benoit,” “Donald Trump,” or some other highly taboo subject, I’m not going to believe them.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS JINDER MAHAL- he cuts a good angry “I wasn’t ready!” heel promo. He wants his rematch at the Greatest Royal Rumble. This all would have been fine except that they decided to have No Way Jose and his conga line walk through. The problem is that Jose’s music was playing the whole time. Neither Jose nor any of his party people were holding a boom-box so apparently the music is just magical. More correctly, it’s being produced from the truck… and this time the f*cking idiots had it on WAY too loudly too early so they turned it down and thus it was quieter when Jose was there than it was when he was far away. This is the sort of thing that really irks me because not only is it more over-produced WWE crap, but if they had just spent the money to get Jose’s entourage a boom-box then not only would this make more sense, but you would also prevent that sort of screw-up from happening.
Jose tells Jinder to be positive, then asks Renee to dance away with him. She does. Doesn’t she have a job to do?

Coles tells us that we have to wait until tomorrow to find out who is going to Smackdown. That’s bullsh*t. When a player in a professional league is traded, he or she is no longer available to be used by his or her previous team. Players have even been pulled out of games they were in the middle of playing because they got traded. The reason for this is that it’s not fair to the team receiving the player if they make a deal for a healthy player who then gets hurt while playing for someone else. What if someone (let’s say The Miz, because he’s definitely going to Smackdown) were to get injured on Raw tonight and be out for a long time before he ever gets to wrestle on Smackdown. That would be horribly unfair to Smackdown, which either makes Shane & Paige stupid for agreeing to it, or makes WWE seem biased towards Raw, which shouldn’t kayfabe happen.

BAYLEY vs. SASHA BANKS- 4.5/10
They were having a meh match that ended when The Riott Squad ran out to beat them up, meaning that this feud continues to tread water. Coach basically pointing this out did not help my mood much at all. The Riott Squad beat up both babyfaces. Running in and attacking people feels like the only thing these women have done in their five months on the main roster.

HEATH SLATER & RHYNO vs. THE AUTHORS OF PAIN- 2/10
The babyfaces attacked the nominal heels before the match. AOP won anyway.

MIZ TV WITH SPECIAL GUESTS & NEW RAW SUPERSTARS KEVIN OWENS & SAMI ZAYN-
THIS MAKES NO F*CKING SENSE ON ANY LEVEL!
1) They don’t work for SD so they can’t be traded to Raw.
2) Last week Kurt Angle told them he only had one spot on the roster, so how does he now have room for two guys?
Is it really that f*cking hard to have your sh*t make sense?! I hate this f*cking show with a passion right now.
This was too much for Michael Cole as well, as he starts shouting about how “you can’t trade for someone who isn’t employed by WWE!” Coach claims this is a “free agent signing” and Graves says similar, which still doesn’t explain how they are suddenly enough spots open (while it’s possible that more people might go over to SD than join Raw, the fact that we don’t know who is going yet means that they shouldn’t yet have another open spot. And, of course, that presumes that Raw will actually end the night with a net loss of one contract excluding Owens & Zayn, but I highly doubt that will happen because the very fact that I am having this freak-out is due to the fact that WWE pays no attention to such details). And wasn’t their firing a magical “also, you can’t go to Raw” firing? I could have sworn that was brought up at some previous point to explain why they couldn’t just sign with Raw.
Miz brags about they’re the best group of talent ever assembled, etc. He runs down Shane & Paige, so you know he’s going to SD tomorrow (plus all of the other obvious reasons). Then Kurt comes out and says that he never signed them. So have they just been walking around backstage all day and Kurt didn’t do anything about it even though they’re not supposed to be there? And did Kurt really let Miz go on TV without any knowledge of who his guests were going to be?
Apparently Steph sent an e-mail out just now in which she says that Kurt was wrong not to sign them last week, so she has signed them to Raw. She didn’t tell Kurt about it until right now, just to be a bitch. This still leaves open both of the issues I raised above, while also meaning that…
Last week they wanted to do an Owens vs. Zayn match so they concocted this situation where there was only one open roster spot so that they would have to fight over it. They then booked a match with the stipulation that the winner would get hired. They gave that match a non-finish. Then they shat on last week’s stipulation and just ignored last week’s contrived situation in order to hire them this week in a way that makes Kurt, the babyface authority figure, look like a total f*cking idiot by not hiring these guys when apparently he was able to do so and all of the fans thought he should have.
The fact that the morons who write this show are allowed to do such a piss-poor job of something that most people watching would leap at the chance to do for free and a chunk of us would do a much better job makes me physically ill.
Kurt’s response to this is to make fun of Steph for having a professional combat athlete assault her for no reason whatsoever. Again, Kurt is an asshole.
Kurt announces that Miz is going to Smackdown so Bryan can beat him up. But Cole said we wouldn’t know who goes to Smackdown until tomorrow. Except apparently where the segment requires it, in which case we get told right now. I hate this show.
So Miz is going to Smackdown, which means that Curtis & Bo are essentially being drafted to Main Event. Kurt then books a ten man tag team main event, pitting Falor, Lashley, Braun, Rollins, and a mystery person who is “making his Raw debut” against Bo, Axel, Owens, Zayn, & Miz. Yes, Miz… even though Kurt just told us that Miz has been traded to Smackdown.


TAG TEAM ELIMINATOR FINALS: The Revival vs. Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt- 4/10
Sheamus & Cesaro are on commentary. Cole immediately engaged in obnoxious bickering with them. The guys whose gimmick is that they say goofy sh*t beat the best tag team in the world. F*ck this company.

To drive home the fact that PPVs will now be dual-branded (even though they’ve been telling us that for weeks now)- something Michael Cole described as “the rebirth of WWE Pay-Per-Views as we know them”- they had a music video of a bunch of wrestlers singing in a studio. And not together, either. They were all separate, aside from the tag teams. This was pointless, and it appalls me that they wasted money on it, and even more that they wasted the wrestlers’ time on it.

SHEAMUS, CESARO, & THE FASION POLICE BACKSTAGE- dumb.
Also, the Fashion Police are now on Raw.

We got a bunch of graphics for wrestlers who have come to Raw over the past two weeks.

KURT & RONDA BACKSTAGE- Ronda basically says that Steph had it coming last week for thinking that Ronda was just going to hug her. Yeah. How dare Steph try to make peace?! Where does she get off thinking she could try to be friends with someone without assuming that she’d get attacked for no reason even after receiving a hug? How dare that Stephanie McMahon do such a thing!
Kurt warns Ronda that “Stephanie isn’t just going to go away quietly.” Yeah. Ronda destroyed any chance of that happening when she attacked Steph for no reason last week!
Kurt continues his warning by saying “who knows what she has planned in the Superstar Shakeup,” because apparently in this segment the way the Superstar Shakeup works is that Steph just omnipotently makes unilateral decisions.
There is a knock at the door, and Kurt whispers to Ronda that he has a surprise. The camera seemingly tries and fails to turn far enough to right, so we wait awkwardly for a moment or two before Nattie steps into the frame, so score one more for the predictability of WWE’s booking.
Ronda runs over and hugs Nattie like they’re best friends, even though Nattie is a total heel. Actually, Ronda’s an asshole, too, so I guess they would be friends. And Baszler is also an asshole. And their friend Marina Shafir is married to Roderick Strong and he’s an asshole, too. This is starting to make some sense.
Anyway, Ronda Rousey giggles like a teenage girl. Because that’s what we needed to get her over. Kurt is shocked that they know each other, to which Ronda replies “we train together.” How the f*ck did this not come up when Ronda and Kurt were preparing for their match at WrestleMania?
Nattie apparently “campaigned to be on Raw.” HOW THE F*CK DOES THIS STUPID SH*T WORK?!
Nattie says she’s the best there is, best there was, and best at repeating her uncle’s catchphrase because G-d forbid we give her a character of her own. She’ll be wrestling tonight.

EMBER MOON vs. MICKIE JAMES- 4/10
Nia Jax and Alexa Bliss! were supposed to be on commentary for this match but Alexa never showed up. Instead she got to interrupt the match with an inset promo on Nia. At one point we had one half of the split-screen on Alexa and the other half on Nia, completely ignoring the match. She says Nia is a bully for making her feel bad. In Alexa’s defense, Nia was given a title shot simply for crying, so I don’t blame Alexa for trying to see what she can get out of being sad on TV.
The match was not as good as I hoped it would be. Mickie took a bump for the Eclipse was the equivalent of The Rock’s goofy bumps for the Stone Cold Stunner (yes, there was a flip involved).

OWENS & ZAYN BACKSTAGE- why are they sad about being in the main event?
They are trying to come up with a strategy. Miz shows up and asks “what about Shane? What’s he like these days?” Well, Miz, I’ve got quite a few Smackdown reviews for you to read.
It turns out Bo & Axel are also there. Miz is being self-centered. Snore.

WHO IS THE NEWEST RAW SUPERSTAR- Speaking of snoring, Dolph Ziggler is back on Raw. He cut the same usual stupid Dolph Ziggler promo about how he steals the show and he’s the best and blah blah blah. Mercifully, he was interrupted by Titus O’Neil. Being a comedy goof, Titus is too stupid to recognize that Dolph’s career is a dead end so he tries to sign him.
This Titus Worldwide association has managed to make Dana Brooke look shockingly unattractive.
Anyway, Dolph lets everyone know that he didn’t come to Raw alone. Then Drew McIntyre comes out from the crowd and jumps Titus Worldwide. I guess Drew is a heel now?
Realistically, being in a tag team is definitely the best trying to do with Dolph at the moment, and guy who wants titles to prove himself and but has a chip on his shoulder so he’s willing to take shortcuts to get them is definitely an interesting angle to approach Drew McIntyre from right now, but I will admit that my initial reaction to this was “Oh poor Drew. He’s stuck in a team with Dead End Dolph.” This was a good destruction, but they need to get rid of Dolph’s music for when they enter as a team (and, really, just get rid of it in general).

ROMAN REIGNS PROMO- Roman gets booed. He starts to talk, then gets interrupted by Samoa Joe. Joe’s promo was very good, but it feels like he is just standing in for Paul Heyman now. Why the hell would Samoa Joe introduce a video package on Brock Lesnar beating Roman Reigns up? Roman challenged Joe to come fight him and Joe teased doing so but didn’t. This was a pointless, boring, and stupid segment.

NATALYA vs. MANDY ROSE (w/Sonya Deville)- no rating, good squash
Nattie was doing a lot of ground-n-pound type of stuff to set up for the inevitable Ronda feud. Also to set up for that feud, Femolition attacked Nattie after the match so Ronda came out to scare them away. MMA Fighter Sonya Deville tried to step to Ronda but was laughed off and then quickly obliterated, destroying any value she might have had.

BARON CORBIN IS COMING TO RAW- Way to go, Kurt. You’ve gotten yourself Nattie and a bunch of midcard dorks.

Oh. And also these comedy jobbers.

TYLER BREEZE & FANDANGO vs. SHEAMUS & CESARO-
The moment said that Sheamus & Cesaro “don’t like to me made fun of,” you knew they were losing. And yes, the comedy dorks beat the guys going into a tag title match. Has there been a stupider episode of Raw in recent memory? Maybe that one where Steph demanded that Foley summon The Undertaker last winter?

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS THE DRIFTER-
He cuts a promo on Lashley and buried the town of the week (Hartford, CT). Then things got creepy.
He said that just because he won’t play for the people of Hartford doesn’t mean he won’t play tonight. He then told Renee “you took this interview because you’re a huge fan of Elias” and told her he would give her “a private concert,” but first “I need you to do a few things for me.” Thankfully the things he told Renee to do were just silence her cell phone, hold her applause until the end, and shut her mouth, rather than asking her to, like, blow him or something. Renee cut him off and pitched it back to the announcers. I like to think that the moment the red light went off, Renee ran as far away from The Drifter as possible.

BROCK & HEYMAN WILL BE HERE NEXT WEEK- good. Then Joe won’t have to look like someone else’s stand-in.

KEVIN OWENS, SAMI ZAYN, THE MIZ, CURTIS AXEL, & BO DALLAS vs. SETH ROLLINS, FINN BALOR, BRAUN STROWMAN, BOBBY LASHLEY, & BOBBY ROODE- 4.5/10
Yes, Bobby Rode is now on Raw, leaving poor Rusev all alone on the Smackdown midcard. The match went on for a long boring, time. It climaxed (and I use that term very loosely) when Bo & Axel refused to let Miz tag them in, setting up a feud that will now never be able to actually take place, and making the babyfaces’ victory less clean. For no reason.
Corey Graves accidentally said “Bullet Club” instead of “Balor Club,” so his ass is probably in some hot water. He also said “you know that Paige is going to restock her roster after losing some big-time stars tonight,” which makes it seem like first Kurt got to take a turn picking whoever he wanted from Smackdown and then Paige is going to get to do the same with Raw tomorrow night.

At one point during this match, Cole and Coach had the following exchange:
Coach- “There are no rules. Anything could happen.”
Cole- “There are rules, Coach. There are parameters.”
At this point I screamed “Really, Cole? Then what the f*ck are they?!”

That conversation was immediately dropped and the announcers’ volume seemed to have been temporarily turned down, so I would suspect someone backstage was scolding Coach for pointing out the logical flaws in their dumb gimmick. If you don’t want people to point out logical flaws in your dumb gimmicks then MAKE SURE YOU EXPLAIN AWAY ALL OF THE LOGICAL FLAWS.


The internet tells me that WWE announced online that Chad Gable, The Ascension, and Mike Kanellis have all also been moved to Raw. The fact that WWE didn’t feel it necessary to make any mention of this on TV makes these guys look like total jobbers. Also, Mojo cut some sort of promo saying he's on Raw but I haven't seen that confirmed by WWE anywhere. This confusion should not be happening.


I did not like this show at all, and yes, a large part of that is because of the completely contradictory explanations for how the Superstar Shakeup works. Sometimes they say it’s trades, sometimes they say guys just get picked, and sometimes NXT guys get called up as part of it despite the fact that no one goes down to NXT in exchange so how the hell does that fit in?

I bring this up because this whole “Superstar Shakeup” business suffers from the fact that even WWE doesn’t seem to have an understanding of what this brand split is. Everything we’ve been told is that Raw and Smackdown are essentially supposed to be competing promotions (although both being owned by WWE means that WWE will force them to, say, plug the other’s PPVs). The problem is that this then requires those promotions to act like they are in competition with each other, and that means trying to get the best of each other in terms of trades and other roster moves. You can’t have one side just letting someone who is now on their team wrestle for the other team for no reason when he might get hurt, or have guys pass up on top stars to instead pick comedy losers or midcard dorks. And yet, with no explanation of how any of this happens, that appears to be exactly what is happening.
The other possibility is that these are two components of the same team, but with different heads. Think of WWE as a football team and the head coach takes a guy who had been playing wide receiver and tells him he wants him to play cornerback now, so instead of working with the offensive coordinator he now goes to work with the defensive coordinator instead. This scenario is the one that feels more accurate to me based on what we have been shown (no kayfabe rhyme or reason for when NXT wrestlers are called up or why they go to the show they go to, no one bats an eyelash when Kane switches shows with no explanation, and a “Superstar Shakeup” where it feels a lot more like guys are being moved to a place they will be less stale than it does like GMs are making blockbuster trades with each other- Coach even flat out explained to us last week that the Superstar Shakeup is basically a mechanism to shuffle up the rosters after Mania). The problem is that everything we are told makes it seem like this is not supposed to be the case, and the shows are supposed to be opposing sides with GMs trying to outfox each other.
This all creates problems like we saw last year with Survivor Series when all of a sudden I was supposed to think that these were warring promotions even though they never acted like it, and that New Day have reason to be angry for being “cast aside” by Raw when it never for a moment looked like that was the case. WWE needs to figure out what this thing is going to be and stick with it. And if that means that the answer is simply going to be that they are both branches of WWE being controlled by the same forces and that even within kayfabe the brand split only exists to create ways to keep match-ups fresh and have extra titles then that’s fine. But they need to settle on one or the other, not try to switch back and forth depending on the needs of the moment.
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Re: BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

Post by NWK2000 » Apr 17th, '18, 10:43

I propose the name of Dolph and Drew's tag team, at least for the purposes of your review be "The 2010 boyz"
NWK Reviews is closed for business for now.

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Re: BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

Post by Big Red Machine » Apr 17th, '18, 11:13

NWK2000 wrote: Apr 17th, '18, 10:43 I propose the name of Dolph and Drew's tag team, at least for the purposes of your review be "The 2010 boyz"
I'd call them that if I didn't have such high hopes for Drew. I'm pretty sure I'm going to start using "Dead End Dolph" more, though.
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Re: BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

Post by cero2k » Apr 17th, '18, 13:51

Guys. McIntyre, Mahal, and Slater are all on RAW! 3MB reunion imminent!
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Re: BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

Post by Big Red Machine » Apr 17th, '18, 13:57

cero2k wrote: Apr 17th, '18, 13:51 Guys. McIntyre, Mahal, and Slater are all on RAW! 3MB reunion imminent!
Now I hope Slater winds up on Smackdown.
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Re: BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

Post by KILLdozer » Apr 17th, '18, 14:47

That sucked Riot Squad ruined Sasha v Bailey...I was really hoping to finally see big real progress.

And not in a good heel " oooooohhhh arrrrgggghhh those heels Riot Squad ruined that match I'd been waiting for!"

, because I don't really feel that way about them because they don't do much but gang attacks and then lose lol. Why was Liv's tongue blue btw?
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Re: BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

Post by Big Red Machine » Apr 17th, '18, 17:53

KILLdozer wrote: Apr 17th, '18, 14:47 Why was Liv's tongue blue btw?
She didn't have time to repaint it after finding out she was being moved to Raw.
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Re: BRM Reviews the 4/16/2018 Raw Superstar Shakeup Part 1 (BAD)

Post by cero2k » Apr 18th, '18, 08:20

Big Red Machine wrote: Apr 17th, '18, 17:53
KILLdozer wrote: Apr 17th, '18, 14:47 Why was Liv's tongue blue btw?
She didn't have time to repaint it after finding out she was being moved to Raw.
She's George The Animal Steele's daughter
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