BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 9th, '18, 21:19

TRIPLE H & HBK PROMO- very good
They challenged Kane & Undertaker to a match at Crown Jewel. Shawn was great, though Hunter was a little over the top. I don’t like HBK being able to come out of retirement simply because it’s not an issue of him “giving The Undertaker his word.” There was a legally binding contract, and thus Shawn should not be allowed to wrestle again. (That being said, the match is taking place in Saudi Arabia, far away from the control of the Arizona State Athletic Commission, but still there should be some penalty assessed to WWE here for allowing this to go on. After all, we want promotions to adhere to their promises, don’t we?)
Anyway, HBK is officially coming out of retirement. If he is going to come out of retirement, I hope we get more than just this pointless legends tag. Why not give us HBK vs. Dragon or HBK vs. AJ, too?

They’re having a rematch of both the big men’s and women’s six-person tags from Super Show-Down, meaning that even after the big show, we apparently still can’t move on.

KEVIN OWENS vs. BOBBY LASHLEY (w/Lio Rush)- 5.75/10
They gave Lio Rush a mic so he could talk during the match. He was extremely annoying despite the fact that he’s supposed to be a babyface. Or maybe not, as this entire match was worked with Owens as the babyface and Lashley and Rush as the heels. Oewns hurt his knee and Lashley worked it over and got the win, then went back after the match and attacked Owens’ knee some more. If this was intended to be a double-turn, they did a great job with it.

THE ANNOUNCERS TELL US ABOUT THE WWE WORLD CUP- this is an eight-man, single elimination tournament that will take place at Crown Jewel, so I would expect it to mean just about as much as the Greatest Royal Rumble wound up meaning. The purpose of this tournament is “to determine who is the best in the world.” Um… isn’t that what the top title in each division is for?
We were told there would be four entrants from Raw and four from SD. Then they announced that the first entrant is John Cena… who is a free agent attached to neither show, so which side does he count as? Then they announced that Big Show will be in a qualifying match tomorrow night on Smackdown. Isn’t Big Show part of the Raw roster? To confirm this, I did some checking on the internet, which not only confirmed that I was right but also informed me that Big Show’s opponent in this qualifying match will be Randy Orton. They told us that Cena doesn’t have to qualify because of his various accolades, but Randy really isn’t that far behind Cena, so Cena not having to qualify due to his accolades becomes exposed as Cena not having to qualify because he isn’t going to be around at TV to do so. Will there be any aspect of this tournament other than the actual in-ring wrestling matches that won’t be a total clusterf*ck?

We’ll find out a second entrant tonight in “Acting General Manager” Baron Corbin’s Global Battle Royale. If you’re wondering why I put “Acting General Manager” in quotes, the answer is because that’s what they did on the graphic. If you’re wondering why they put “Acting General Manager” in quotes, join the club.

They have announced a Charlotte vs. Becky rematch for SD but with the added stipulation that if Becky gets disqualified, she will lose the title. You see that there? That’s called moving the story forward in a logical manner. I’d like to see a lot more of it from the main roster as a whole and from Raw in particular.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS TEAM B & B- okay
“Team B & B” are apparently what they are calling Bayley and & Balor’s Mixed-Match Challenge team. They’re even selling shirts, of which I predict a grand total of zero to be sold to anyone who isn’t some sort of obsessive Finn/Bayley shipper. They said they would win because they were on the same page while Jinder and Alicia are not. They were so annoying that I was actually happy when Lio Rush and Bobby Lashley showed up. They stole the interview, and made a relatively valid point that Kayla should be interviewing Lashley instead of these two goofs because unlike Finn & Bayley, Lashley has actually something relatively interesting recently.

THE DRIFTER SINGS- He was fine. Then he was randomly interrupted by Ronda Rousey coming out, followed by a cut to commercial. Apparently it was time for…

THE RIOTT SQUAD vs. RONDA ROUSEY & THE BELLA TWINS- 2.5/10
Michael Cole claimed that Total Divas in the middle of its “record-braking eighth season.” What record did it break?
Renee Young repeated the line form a few weeks ago that the Riott Squad don’t like the Bellas because they think the Bellas care more about their reality show than about wrestling. Two things here:
1. It’d be nice if we could actually hear the Riott Squad say this.
2. They kind of have a point. They each took well over a year off from wrestling recently, during which WWE continued to plug their reality shows, which were (and are) still on-going.
Cole also told us that Ruby Riott “wants to be women’s champion one day.” Don’t all of the women want to be the champion?
Ignoring the announcing for a moment, this match was not good, either. Brie as the babyface in peril was a poor choice, all things considered, and the finish was painfully bad. Ronda made Ruby tap out to the armbar (for the second week in a row), but she waited FOREVER to actually lock the move in because apparently it was imperative that each member of the Riott Squad try to break it up but be held back by a Bella, but no one was in position and it looked like crap.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- They celebrated for long enough that you knew something was going to happen, and that something turned out to be the Bella Twins turning on Ronda. Ronda made a short comeback but got run into the most and then beaten up some more while the referees did a poor job of pulling the Bellas off. Ronda Rousey’s Friend Natalya was nowhere to be found, nor was Trish Stratus, who had previously backed Ronda up and who was also in the building. One guy tried to start a “CENA LEFT NIKKI!” chant but it didn’t catch on. Nikki went full-on heel, even knocking a fan’s sign out of her hand and celebrating about it (which got good heat, as did this whole segment).
Okay, so you’ve turned the Bella Twins heel for the Ronda vs. Nikki match at Evolution. Good. Now answer me the following: Why didn’t you do this in Australia? You know… do the big angle on the big show? That way you could have more time to build up the real issue at hand (as opposed to having the Bellas explain themselves in a YouTube video that I never would have seen if F4WOnline hadn’t linked to it) and not completely killing the Riott Squad by beating them yet again here tonight?

Renee Young said the following: “It’s apparent that the Bellas expansion here is not going to be including ‘the baddest woman on the planet.’” This might sound like English, but it’s not.

MIXED TAG TEAM MATCH: Finn Balor & Bayley vs. Alicia Fox & Jinder Mahal (w/Sunil Singh)- 4/10
The babyfaces cheated by having Bayley give Jinder a kick and a hurricanrana. The announcers pushed that Jinder & Fox were not on the same page.

DOLPH ZIGGLER, DREW MCINTYRE, & BRAUN STROWMAN BACKSTAGE- fine
Dolph is trying to give them a pep talk in his stupid, over the top manner. Drew was apparently just as sick of it as I was and he told Dolph as much. He also (rightly) blamed Dolph for their loss last night. Braun yelled at both of them.

BARON CORBIN & HEATH SLATER BACKSTAGE- Slater wants to be in the Global Battle Royale but Corbin tells him he can’t be in it because he sucks at wrestling. Corbin is correct.

GLOBAL BATTLE ROYALE- no rating, fine segment
There were a bunch of oddly-dressed goofs in the ring, including a knock-off Conquistador, so you should already be suspicious. Corbin came out and talked up the WWE World Cup, which he told us would be “prestigious.” Corbin says that he is going to prove his worthiness for the WWE World Cup by qualifying for it by winning this match. Corbin introduced the competitors, the competitors names were nowhere near as funny as I had hoped they were (although I did pop for Hombre Sin Nombre).
Corey Graves basically gave away what was going to happen by reminding everyone of the time Edge & Christian impersonated Los Conquistadors to win the tag titles in a match they themselves were barred from having. Corbin eliminated everyone other than the Conquistador, who then hit Corbin with a bunch of Kurt Angle’s signature moves, and then unmasked himself as Kurt Angle. This was a fun little segment that was also a good way to get Kurt into the tournament despite his kayfabe “forced vacation” from TV, as well as to start something up between Kurt and Corbin to blow off the Corbin as acting GM storyline.

MIXED MATCH CHALLENGE PROMOS- The match is AJ & Charlotte vs. Truth & Carmella. Truth thought Charlotte was Ric but was interrupted by Carmella, who corrected him. I thought it would have been much funnier if they had just let Truth cut a promo on the team of Ric Flair & AJ Lee while Carmella just walked around shaking her head in the background.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS KURT ANGLE- He tells her that “technically, I’m still on vacation” and just walks off into the night.

EMBER MOON vs. NIA JAX- 0.75/10
Wait… what the f*ck is AJ Styles doing here?! Oh. It’s a thing for the video game. Maybe don’t do that during a match, okay?
They had a short match in which Nia totally dominated Ember with her size, but then lost by count-out when Ember dodged a tackle and Nia hit the LED screen on the ring skirt and thus couldn’t make it back in time to avoid getting counted out. They hugged after the match.

TRISH STRATUS, ALEXA BLISS!, & MICKIE JAMES SEGMENT- good, but…
Trish came out to addresses Alexa’s comments from last week, saying they were BS. Alexa and Mickie then came out. Trish did, in fact, point out what I pointed out last week: Alexa’s story must be fake because the match doesn’t add up. So good job there, WWE. I’ll give you credit for that one. Alexa cut a big promos saying that if she competed in Trish’s era, Trish would have been a total afterthought. Trish invited Alexa to prove that assertion right here and now. Alexa and Mickie headed down to the ring but Mickie told Alexa that the people of Chicago don’t deserve to see her fight Trish. Mickie suggests that Trish face both her and Alexa at Evolution. Trish said she would have Lita be her partner, and lo and behold Lita appeared.
Lita came down to the ring and a brawl broke out. Alexa ducked out of the ring and the babyfaces laid Mickie out. Lita went up for the Litasault but Alexa pulled Mickie to safety. This was all good mechanically, but I’m quite iffy on the match change.
On the one hand, adding Mickie will clearly make the match better, and Lita hopefully won’t hurt it, either (she didn’t look good in her time in the ring at Royal Rumble this year). But the best outcome here for the company is Alexa pinning either Trish or Lita, because if they’re not going to use this to put Alexa over then what is the point of it other than a nostalgia pop? But if the goal is to put Alexa over then it seems to me that a singles win over Trish is the best way to do it, so why isn’t his a singles match?

SHIELD PROMO- They’re passing a camera around backstage like the old days. This promo was pretty good.

KONNOR PROMO- fine
The announcers pushed that Konnor seems to be breaking out as a singles competitor with his recent wins in this feud.

BOBBY ROODE & CHAD GABLE vs. THE ASCENSION- 3.5/10
Again. This is now the sixth straight week that these two teams have faced off, with the story not going anywhere and the matches not meaning anything. Renee Young claimed that Roode has been a mentor to Gable. We have not seen him do anything of the sort.
They had a short match. The babyfaces won when Gable tagged himself in and hit Viktor with Chaos Theory. Roode was not happy about this.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- The Authors of Pain showed up and destroyed everyone.

MIXED MATCH CHALLENGE PROMOS #2- This was for the Balor & Bayley vs. Ember & Strowman match. They said some stupid, goofy team catchphrases, making no mention of the fact that this is a match-up between two undefeated teams. Even f*cking MICHAEL COLE managed to get that point in, but not the people in the actual match, because WWE decided that rather than build up the match, it would be better to have these guys all say stupid catchphrases.

PAUL HEYMAN PROMO- dull
Don’t get me wrong; Paul’s delivery was fine. He just didn’t really say anything new or important. It was build for Crown Jewel, but basically the same stuff we’re been hearing Heyman say throughout his feud with Roman.

THE SHIELD vs. BRAUN STROWMAN, DOLPH ZIGGLER, & DREW MCINTYRE- 7/10
They did stuff. There was a moment where the heels all got angry at each other, but they wound up winning anyway when McIntyre pinned Dean. Dean then walked to the back on his own, leaving Seth and Roman in the ring. Didn’t we answer this question at Super Show-Down.

This was a much-needed show from WWE where it felt like stuff actually happened, and it was a lot easier to sit through than the usual episode of Raw. That being said, I did have one MAJOR issue with the show (aside from the lack of good wrestling, of course) which was the fact that if you exclude the stuff in the legends match (which already feels totally disconnected from the rest of the product), then basically nothing that happened at Super Show-Down actually mattered on tonight’s show. The fact that they did rematches of the two big six-person tags and did angles after them here tonight made Super Show-Down feel like the “glorified house show” that people have accused it of being (at least on the Raw side). That’s not a good approach to take if you want us to keep watching these things.
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KILLdozer
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Re: BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

Post by KILLdozer » Oct 10th, '18, 06:12

Probably because Alexa Bliss still has an arm injury. Also-she can't pull this type of match off by herself lol.
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Big Red Machine
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Re: BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 10th, '18, 07:59

KILLdozer wrote: Oct 10th, '18, 06:12 Probably because Alexa Bliss still has an arm injury.
Good point
KILLdozer wrote: Oct 10th, '18, 06:12 Also-she can't pull this type of match off by herself lol.
A singles match against Trish Stratus? I think she'll be fine, thanks.
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Re: BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

Post by XIV » Oct 11th, '18, 10:54

My thinking throughout the whole Alex/Mickie and Trish argument.. was all the way through it I could see what was coming... and then it annoyed me just how conveniently Lita was backstage and the production crew knew to hit her music to set up the tag match. There should have been a better build up with that or somehow a better reveal.
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Big Red Machine
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Re: BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 11th, '18, 11:04

XIV wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 10:54 My thinking throughout the whole Alex/Mickie and Trish argument.. was all the way through it I could see what was coming... and then it annoyed me just how conveniently Lita was backstage and the production crew knew to hit her music to set up the tag match. There should have been a better build up with that or somehow a better reveal.
Yeah. They've got several weeks to build this so building up "who will Trish find to be her tag team partner" for one week would have made sense. I think the problem was that they had already announced Lita vs. Mickie, which made it obvious who the partner was going to be. Then again, maybe we could say that Trish asked Lita to come to the show to be her back-up because she figured Alexa and Mickie would try to double-team her. In hindsight, it would have been better to have never announced the Lita vs. Mickie match.
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Re: BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

Post by cero2k » Oct 11th, '18, 11:34

Big Red Machine wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 11:04
XIV wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 10:54 My thinking throughout the whole Alex/Mickie and Trish argument.. was all the way through it I could see what was coming... and then it annoyed me just how conveniently Lita was backstage and the production crew knew to hit her music to set up the tag match. There should have been a better build up with that or somehow a better reveal.
Yeah. They've got several weeks to build this so building up "who will Trish find to be her tag team partner" for one week would have made sense. I think the problem was that they had already announced Lita vs. Mickie, which made it obvious who the partner was going to be. Then again, maybe we could say that Trish asked Lita to come to the show to be her back-up because she figured Alexa and Mickie would try to double-team her. In hindsight, it would have been better to have never announced the Lita vs. Mickie match.
was it ever announced? i thought it was just leaked
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Re: BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 11th, '18, 12:05

cero2k wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 11:34
Big Red Machine wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 11:04
XIV wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 10:54 My thinking throughout the whole Alex/Mickie and Trish argument.. was all the way through it I could see what was coming... and then it annoyed me just how conveniently Lita was backstage and the production crew knew to hit her music to set up the tag match. There should have been a better build up with that or somehow a better reveal.
Yeah. They've got several weeks to build this so building up "who will Trish find to be her tag team partner" for one week would have made sense. I think the problem was that they had already announced Lita vs. Mickie, which made it obvious who the partner was going to be. Then again, maybe we could say that Trish asked Lita to come to the show to be her back-up because she figured Alexa and Mickie would try to double-team her. In hindsight, it would have been better to have never announced the Lita vs. Mickie match.
was it ever announced? i thought it was just leaked
It was official:
http://www.wrestleview.com/wwe-news/113 ... famer-raw/
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Re: BRM Reviews the 10/8/2018 Raw

Post by XIV » Oct 12th, '18, 04:56

Big Red Machine wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 12:05
cero2k wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 11:34
Big Red Machine wrote: Oct 11th, '18, 11:04

Yeah. They've got several weeks to build this so building up "who will Trish find to be her tag team partner" for one week would have made sense. I think the problem was that they had already announced Lita vs. Mickie, which made it obvious who the partner was going to be. Then again, maybe we could say that Trish asked Lita to come to the show to be her back-up because she figured Alexa and Mickie would try to double-team her. In hindsight, it would have been better to have never announced the Lita vs. Mickie match.
was it ever announced? i thought it was just leaked
It was official:
http://www.wrestleview.com/wwe-news/113 ... famer-raw/
They've just decided to put the two matches together which is a shame, I think a Trish vs Alex match would have been good fun, but they've obviously decided a tag match might hide some of the ring rust that may exist.
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