BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 13th, '18, 17:38

BATTLE ROYALE FOR RIGHT TO BE CAPTAINS OF RAW’S TAG TEAM DIVISION SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM: The Revival vs. The Ascension vs. the B-Team vs. Bobby Roode & Chad Gable vs. Heath Slater & Rhyno vs. Lucha House Party- DUD!
Why do the Lucha House Party get to have three guys in this match? That’s not fair. New Day didn’t get to have all three members in their “winners get to be the captains” match against The Usos on Smackdown.
The announcers were also arguing over this point when Braun Strowman came out and beat up the entire tag team division by himself. Yes, again.

BRAUN & STEPH SEGMENT- EXCELLENT!
Braun grabs a chair and sits down in the ring, telling everyone that the show will not go on until Baron Corbin comes out to “get these hands.” And then here comes Stephanie McMahon. Oh boy. But what’s she going to do here? Fire Braun? So what? He’ll just do what he did last time and threaten to murder Michael Cole and she’ll give him his job back.
Steph tells Braun that she sympathizes with him, but that he must instead channel his rage to the much more important task of beating Smackdown at Survivor Series, which is more important than getting revenge on someone who screwed you out of the Universal Title because… um… because Stephanie really doesn’t want to lose to her brother in what is essentially a scrimmage match with zero consequences.
Braun yells at her that he doesn’t care about Shane, and doesn’t care about “representing you at Survivor Series.” Braun got a huge pop for being able to ignore this stupid “brand loyalty” crap and concentrate on a thing he should actually be caring about. Steph, of course, got angry at this and told him that she is the commissioner and therefore “you and everyone else on this roster better give a damn, too!” Why, Steph? Are you going to threaten to fire them or something? Because not only would that be colossally stupid, but no one would even believe you because you told your team you would fire them if they lost in 2016 and then they lost and you didn’t fire them.
Braun continues to not care and demands that Steph bring Corbin out so Braun can destroy him. Steph then shocks me by doing the intelligent thing and making a deal with Braun. She will give him whatever he wants so long as he helps Team Raw at Survivor Series. Braun says he wants another shot at the Universal Title, and also a match with Baron Corbin where he gets to pick the stips, and for Corbin to sign a waiver where Braun won’t be held responsible no matter what he does to Corbin (I figured that would be standard in all match contracts but whatever). And Steph says that this is all “fine,” but only on the condition that Braun does not lay a hand on Corbin before the end of the Survivor Series match. Braun agrees, but warns Steph that if she reneges on this deal, he is going to go to Titan Towers and level the place (which I imagine him doing with his bare hands).
This segment was EXCELLENT! And the reason for that was that for the first time in a very long time, Stephanie McMahon acted like exactly what she claims to be: a businesswoman. Normally when Steph comes out in these situations she is the spoiled promoter’s kid/legacy-hire boss who always has to scream and yell and lord her power over everyone, and whose actions are not dictated by logic but through a combination of the needs of the plot and her own ego (whether kayfabe or not, I’m not sure, but at least in kayfabe it’s pretty clear that this is a genetic trait that Vince has passed on to both of his children).
Here, she came in and looked at the situation and figured out a way to get what she wanted out of it in a way that the talent involved feels is perfectly fair, and with pretty much ZERO loss to herself. After all, what Steph does care about Baron Corbin? He’s just a puppet. A loyal one, perhaps, but a puppet nonertheless, and thus replaceable. I’ll bet that 90% of the heels in the world would take Corbin’s job in a heartbeat. You occasionally have to book to help or hinder the people Steph wants helped or hindered, and you have to cater to her whims the one night every few months that she shows up, but other than that, you get basically dictatorial power over Monday Night Raw, including the ability to book yourself in any match you want? That sounds like a pretty good deal to me. And you could even say that this makes Steph come off as even more of a heel because she specifically isn’t rewarding Corbin’s loyalty with protection. The only thing about this segment I would change is that I would have had Steph insist that Braun doesn’t lay a hand on anyone else on Team Raw (he is feuding with Drew & Dolph, too, at the moment) until after Survivor Series in addition to just Corbin.

RONDA ROUSEY & STEPH SEGMENT- TERRIBLE!
Braun disappears. Steph begins to introduce Ronda to the crowd, but Ronda snatches the microphone out of her hand like a gigantic asshole. She proceeds to cut a promo about how she has been waiting since she came to WWE for a challenge the likes of Becky Lynch. You’d think Ronda would be excited about this competition or something, but apparently she’s pissed off, as she seemed a lot more angry with Becky for trying to hype up a fight than she was with the Bellas for BETRAYING AND ASSAULTING HER. She says she is eager to show “the man” (meaning Becky Lynch. How the hell has WWE’s uber-controlled environment let that nickname stick?) how to properly rip someone’s arm off.
The fans all start to chant for Becky, at which point Ronda suddenly muses “or maybe I don’t have to wait” and then she turns threateningly to STEPH. What the f*ck?! I thought when Ronda said she was going to show Becky how it’s really done she meant “you think that you are going to rip my arm off at Survivor Series, but in reality it will be me who rips your arm off!” but apparently what our babyface meant was the much more literal “I’m going to give a demonstration on how to properly hurt someone, and I’ve decided to use this nearby innocent as my unwilling dummy.” What the f*ck is Ronda’s problem?!
Thankfully, Baron Corbin showed up to save Steph from a completely unprovoked assault by Ronda Rousey. Also, he got cheered because this is his home market. This all really happened.
Oh. Wait. There’s Braun. He has apparently been standing in the ring this whole time, about two feet to the left of the camera frame. Corbin implores everyone to channel their aggression towards Smackdown. He gives a pathetically-scripted pep-talk insists that this is a “must-win situation.” No it’s f*cking not! A “must-win situation” requires there to be some sort of bad thing that happens to you if you don’t win, and there is NOTHING ON THE LINE HERE.
They keep insisting (as Corbin did here, and Steph did earlier) that Shane “embarrassed” Raw when he “stole” the WWE World Cup, but the fact of the matter is that that’s not what happened. He didn’t embarrass them; he screwed them. They should be talking about how ANGRY they are at Shane and how they’re tired of his bullsh*t. The promos should be “Shane, you pathetic, cheating, piece of sh*t; we’ve had it with your crap. Every year we try to have a nice friendly competition, and you’ve got to go and pull some f*cking busllsh*t stunt that turns it into Rangers-Devils. We wanted to win before, but now you’ve gone and made us ANGRY, and we’re going to make sure we win just to spite you!”
But instead they take this supposed “embarrassment” situation and rather than play off of that situation itself, they talk about it as evidence that they have somehow lost and must now regain this abstract concept of “brand supremacy” and “prove that Raw is the dominant brand” and all of that other buzzword-filled sh*t soup they love so much.
Anyway, in the course of his pep-talk, Corbin puts his hand on Ronda’s shoulder, which she responds to with violence. This came across like an overreaction, yes, but it is one that could have been excusable, except for the fact that Ronda had just been about to assault Steph for absolutely no reason, so it instead goes down as more evidence that Ronda Rousey is an unlikable violent lunatic. Yes, Corbin is a moron for putting his hand on the shoulder of someone so clearly in a foul and violent mood, but it doesn’t mean that Ronda isn’t still overreacting.
On the bright side, Ronda’s judo toss saved us from any more of Corbin’s speechifying. Ronda walked off, then Corbin and Braun had a stare-down where Steph got between them and urged Braun to remember their deal. Braun let Corbin go, but not before threatening to cut his testicles off after Survivor Series.

NIA & TAMINA YELL AT PEOPLE BACKSTAGE- Yes, we now have a second group of women who go around backstage being mean to Valued Backstage Crewmembers™ for no reason.

EMBER MOON vs. TAMINA (w/Nia Jax)- 4/10
Tamina no longer has her “TA-MI-NA!” music, which was pretty much the only thing she had going for her.
F*cking Michael Cole wants me to believe that Ember Moon, who has been wrestling for over decade, “came up in this this business idolizing Nia Jax,” who made her professional wrestling debut three and a half years ago. There is lying, and then there is stupid pointless bullsh*t, and this is the latter. It’s not enough that they are good friends and Nia turned on Ember. No. Now Ember also has to have “idolized” Nia, even though the f*cking math doesn’t even come CLOSE to matching up. F*CK YOU!
Now Cole is trying to tell me that Ember “trained with” Nia. Even if we subscribe to Cole’s screwed-up timeline, how the hell did Ember come to idolize Nia Jax if they were both in the same training class? Or does Cole want me to believe that Nia Jax helped train Ember Moon?
Anyway, the story of this match was Ember using her speed to dominate most of it, with Tamina only getting control after Nia would distract Ember. This made Tamina look bad, even though she was the one who picked up the win. Nia then beat Ember up after the match.

COREY GRAVES INTERVIEWS SETH ROLLINS IN THE RING- decent
Rollins demands that Ambrose come out and give everyone an answer as to why he did “what he did to me, what he did to Roman, what he did to all of us.” At this point it occurred to me that Vince has actually done something I didn’t think was possible at this point. As some of you might remember (though at this point I wouldn’t blame you for not doing so), right before Dean turned on Seth, they won the Raw Tag Team Titles together, but with the way this whole thing has been framed, the tag titles might as well have not been on the line. Everything has been “how dare Dean turn on Seth the night Roman told everyone he had cancer.” With this angle, Vince has managed to find a new and innovative way to bury the tag titles.
Anyway, Seth says Dean knows why he did it but isn’t “man enough” to tell everyone. Dean somehow takes over the TitanTron. He’s sitting on the hood of his car, keeping warm via burning oil drum. Dean said he didn’t owe anyone an explanation, then proceeded to annoy everyone by giving several before getting around to telling us all that he did it because “The Shield made me weak.” Burning the flak jacket was cool and Dean’s verbiage was actually pretty great, but I think this would have worked better as a video Dean sent in himself rather than him magically taking over the TitanTron. That way you could actually advertise (and deliver on) “Dean Ambrose finally answers why he turned on Seth Rollins!”
That being said, the whole “The Shield/having to watch your back made me weak” thing is the kind of thing that I think a heel needs to at least be able to point to some kind of evidence for. Hopefully I will soon get the free time to be able to show the right way to do this in my “BRM Books Raw 1,000 and Beyond” fantasy booking thread which I swear I have not given up on (as that is a big part of where I am actually headed with my Rollins/Ambrose split that I have been building to for years).

DREW MCINTYRE (& DOLPH ZIGGLER) PROMO-
After a long recap of last week’s Angle vs. McIntyre match, they played Angle’s music to troll the crowd before the heels came out. Drew then cut a promo calling Kurt pathetic for supposedly crying when Drew beat him last week, and claimed he was taking over Raw. I’m not really sure how he justifies that second part.
Finn Balor comes out to interrupt, at which point Drew McIntyre reminds us all that he attacked Balor after Balor’s match for no good reason last week. Balor then proceeds to cut a promo on Drew for… humiliating Kurt Angle. Shouldn’t Finn be upset that Drew ASSAULTED HIM?
Drew then steered the conversation back to said unprovoked assault and holy sh*t he actually had an explanation for the dumb Russo Swerve they did last week. He wanted to show that Balor was weak and gullible and would assume that Drew was saving him from Rush and Lashley due to some kind of silly ideal of European solidarity, a ridiculous thought that would only come to someone who is pathetically obsessed with their own feelings rather than with winning.
Finn reminds us to B.A. Star by vowing to stand up to Drew the big mean bully and challenging him to a match, right here, right now. Drew seemed to accept, but then told us that Balor would wrestle Ziggler instead, and that if Finn could beat Dolph, “maybe I’ll consider lowering myself to your level.” Balor then turned to look at Dolph, leaving an opening for Drew to floor him with a headbutt.
This whole thing reminded me of something Jim Cornette said in his ROH “Secrets of the Ring” shoot interview where he was giving an example of a problem with teaching wrestlers only to do scripted promos. Cornette’s example was that Wrestler A comes out and tells Wrestler B that he is going to take his title as scripted, but then goes off script and also says “and I f*cked your wife last night,” and then Wrestler B responds via the memorized script vowing to not let Wrestler A take his title, and completely ignores the “and I f*cked your wife last night” part. This segment felt similar to me, where Drew is talking about how he assaulted Balor last week to prove that Balor is a pathetic loser and Balor responds by saying “how dare you disrespect Kurt Angle!” while completely ignoring that this guy came out and kicked him in the face last week for no good reason.

Anyway, when we got back from commercial, it was time to start the apparently official…

FINN BALOR vs. DOLPH ZIGGLER (w/Drew McIntyre)- 7/10
Great match. Balor won clean via roll-up.

STEPH, BALOR, & CORBIN BACKSTAGE- meh
Steph puts Balor over and asks him to be on the Raw men’s Survivor Series team. Corbin doesn’t like this, but before he can say too much, Drew shows up and wants to fight Balor. Steph orders them all to work together at Survivor Series, puts them over, gives them a pep-talk, then tells them that if they want to beat each other up, they can wait until afterwards to do.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS RONDA ROUSEY- bad
This was Ronda responding to Becky Lynch’s promo on Smackdown. She said that she didn’t mean to offend Becky when she talked about Becky’s past or make fun of Becky’s path to becoming a champion. Then Ronda proceeded to cut the same f*cking promo. Then she followed it up by burying Becky for being an oversensitive emotional Millennial… which was basically what Drew McIntyre did to Finn Balor earlier and DREW IS THE HEEL!
Ronda then continued on to talk about how hard she has worked said that she is “not some trust-fund baby golden child,” but the problem is that, in a way, she really is, and doesn’t see that. In my opinion, Ronda’s position here is similar to that of a professional chess player who began as a child prodigy. No one is saying she didn’t work extremely hard to get to where she is or that she isn’t extremely talented (as a kayfabe fighter, I mean. Her actual working ability is certainly disputable but isn’t relevant here), but the way those gifts were honed and her particular situation have, in fact, made things a lot easier for her than for others. Not everyone gets pulled out of school to be able to train for the Olympics, and not everyone gets free judo lessons from mommy, and rarely do any of us get to be trained by a world class judoka without paying for it.
In mocking Becky for having these other jobs, Ronda comes across as out of touch and like someone who doesn’t seem to understand that other people’s careers don’t work out perfectly for them. That some people have to sometimes take other jobs because their dream job doesn’t work out, or they can’t get that dream job- or even anything resembling it- right away. Nothing Ronda said here made me want to see Ronda win. All it did was increase my desire to see Becky beat a dose of reality into her.

Nia and Tamina showed up at the end to wish Ronda good luck, and so Cole could remind us that Nia is due a title shot at Ronda after Survivor Series.

RIOTT SQUAD PROMO- Ruby Riott did all of the talking. This was the standard fake crying heel promo that you can see coming a mile away. Ruby then proceeded to say mean things about Nattie’s dead father. Nattie’s music played, but this just a distraction so she could attack Ruby from behind. When Logan and Morgan realized what happened and got back to the ring, they all beat the crap out of Nattie. No one came out to help Nattie, despite Sasha Banks and Bayley being friends with Nattie and engaged in a seemingly-endless feud with the Riott Squad. The Riott Squad then laid Nattie out with the Hart Attack, and apparently our advertised match isn’t going to happen.

BATTLE ROYALE FOR RIGHT TO BE CAPTAINS OF RAW’S TAG TEAM DIVISION SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM-: The Revival vs. The Ascension vs the B-Team vs. Bobby Roode & Chad Gable vs. Heath Slater & Rhyno vs. Lucha House Party- 2/10
The match was the usual boring battle royale until the final two- Roode & Gable vs. The Ascension- which was good. Roode & Gable one-upped MCMG by hitting a variation of Skull & Bones with a moonsault instead of a Frog Splash.
After this match ended, we went to a commercial. When we got back from the commercial, they already had a graphic up announcing that the Raw team would be everyone in the match other than Rhyno & Slater. First of all, how was it determined that Slater & Rhyno wouldn’t be on the team? Second of all, why are THREE members of Lucha House Party in the graphic? Is this actually doing to be eleven vs. eleven, with all three members of New Day wrestling as well? Because that’s now what they’ve done in previous years, and you’d think that if something were different, it’d be important to tell us.
Meanwhile, their graphic says this will be a “Traditional Survivor Series 5-on-5 Tag Team Match.” NO! A traditional Survivor Series match has four or five wrestlers per side and everyone is eliminated individually, not five units of varying size that get eliminated as groups!


PAUL HEYMAN & BROCK LESNAR PROMO- decent

HEYMAN, LESNAR, & JINDER MAHAL SEGMENT- yes, really
Jinder and the Singh Brothers came and interrupted Heyman as Heyman was winding down. Jinder used his experience last year to caution Brock not to underestimate AJ. Jinder offered to teach Brock to meditate.
Heyman was dismissive, but Brock seemed to welcome Jinder’s input. So much, in fact, that he insisted that it was something Heyman needed to hear as well, saying “you should really hear this. After all, you are Jewish.” I’m missing the connection here, Brock. Heyman and the announcers were stunned as well. Brock, of course, beat Jinder and the Singh Brothers up. Not only did this serve no purpose, but it was actually counterproductive. If they want Brock to be the heel, then the best thing do is to have him run-down the town and then leave without doing anything. Obliterating some obnoxious comedy heels is only going to make Brock a babyface.

LASHLEY POSES WHILE LIO RUSH PUTS HIM OVER- mostly good
My fear is that Lashley’s disrespectful mooning is going to somehow get over with today’s wrestling fans. The Drifter appeared and cut a HILARIOUS promo on them pretending to call CPS. Lashley challenged The Drifter to fight him, which is going to happen anyway because they already have a match booked against each other tonight and we’re running out of time on the show. After a Drifter guitar riff, catchphrase, and commercial break, we got…

WINNER GETS TO BE ON THE RAW MEN’S SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM: “The Drifter” Elias Sampson vs. Bobby Lashley- DUD!
They had a very short match that ended when Lio Rush grabbed The Drifter’s foot from under the ring to prevent him from breaking a ten-count on the floor. After the match, The Drifter managed to beat up Rush and get the best of Lashely as well. Why not just put The Drifter on the f*cking Survivor Series team. Star power be damned, I do not want to have to listen to Lio Rush run his mouth for thirty straight minutes while I wait for Lashley to be eliminated!

ALEXA BLISS! COMES OUT TO ANNOUNCE THE RAW WOMEN’S SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM- They kind of killed most of the suspense of her announcement by having her just come out with Mickie James, Nia Jax, and Tamina, so that’s three out of the five right there. Alexa tells us that “Survivor Series is personal,” because at Survivor Series “it’s all about proving that Raw will always be the A show and Smackdown will always be the B show.” That sounds like it’s the opposite of personal.
She said that Nattie is on the team, but isn’t here because Alexa told her to go home and refocus all of her rage from the Riott Squad to Smackdown. She told us that, as we figured, Nia, Tamina, and Mickie would be on her team, and did at least acknowledge her history with Nia. She then says that the final member of her team will be the winner of…

WINNER GETS TO BE ON THE RAW WOMEN’S SURVIVOR SERIES TEAM: Sasha Banks vs. Bayley- 5.5/10
Because we haven’t seen this match enough. When Sasha came out, Renee Young insisted to us that Sasha Banks is “no stranger to fighting for what she believes in.” That might be true, but I fail to see how it is relevant to the current situation. Meanwhile, Michael Cole proved himself to be too dumb to pick up on Alexa’s comments about the need to put everything aside, “even friendship” in order to win, so he did not figure out the moment the words left Alexa’s mouth that Sasha would be wrestling Bayley.

Graves did his usual burial of Sasha’s ability to put the group before herself, and Renee agreed with him. Cole incredulously asked Graves if he thought Nattie would have any easier a time working with Mickie James “with all the problems they’ve had!?” I honestly don’t can’t remember Nattie and Mickie ever feuding.
When Cole put over Survivor Series for being the second-longest-running WWE PPV and thus something Bayley and Sasha both really want to be a part of, Renee Young said “we know how important nostalgia is to all of these women.” Yes she really said that as if it was something I should take seriously.
Anyway, Sasha and Bayley wrestled their main event match and it started to get good… and then Mickie, Nia, and Tamina all ran in for the double-DQ. After that, Alexa announced that instead of them, she was going to pick Ruby Riott to be on her Survivor Series team. Ruby Riott, as you might recall, is currently engaged in a heated and very personal feud with Nattie, who Alexa also added to her team. Is Alexa stupid? Why the f*ck would she do this?
And more importantly, why would WWE book this? What purpose did it serve? They 1) made Alexa look like an idiot 2) booked a double-DQ in a main event, in which they 3) gave us a match and then didn’t deliver on the advertised stipulations (in spirit), all so they could… what? Swerve us. Good job, then, Creative. You made us think that either Sasha or Bayley would be on the team but instead it turned out to be Ruby Riott. You sure fooled us. Now explain to me how that makes anybody want to watch Survivor Series?

Why did we have to do this f*cking stupid sh*t? You have a heel in charge of picking the Raw team, and with Mandy Rose’s seeming turn last week, the Smackdown team are now all babyfaces, so why can’t you just have the heel pick only other heels and then give us a Survivor Series match where we have an actual reason to root for one team (the Smackdown team are virtuous babyfaces) and against the other (the Raw team are all mean cheaters)? No. Instead they had to give us a f*cking swerve, waste all of our time, and make one of their top female stars look like an idiot.

THERE IS A COMMOTION BACKSTAGE-
A camera runs to the women’s locker room (it’s funny how most of the time we’re supposed to pretend that the camera doesn’t exist, but this time the camera isn’t in place because this totally isn’t scripted), where Becky Lynch has Ronda Rousey locked in the Disarm-Her and is making Ronda scream in pain. Adam Pearce and a referee come and chase Becky off… and apparently Becky ran right through the Gorilla position and no one f*cking stopped her, but they did make sure to hit her music because she was coming out to the ring. Becky is in her Smackdown shirt because having the announcers scream at us that “THAT’S SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S CHAMPION BECKY LYNCH!” isn’t enough of a clue. And it’s not like Becky has spent the entire build to her match Ronda Rousey at Survivor Series wearing a t-shirt sporting a slogan that both of them have been basing their promos around, right?
Becky saunters down the ramp, having no fear of getting thrown out of the building. She does this to distract all of the Raw women so that the rest of the female Smackdown roster (the vast majority of whom, including all five members of the Survivor Series team are babyfaces) can come out of the crowd and attack the Raw heels from behind like cowards. A giant schmoz ensues, with wacky-colored hair flying left and right (although I will admit that with all of the SD women wearing the same shirts, everyone having color-coded hair did make it easier to keep track of who was where). Becky Lynch is bleeding all over the place. I’m not sure why, but the internet said Nia Jax broke her nose, and I can totally believe that because Nia has a history of not being very careful with her opponents. Dana Brooke and Alicia Fox ran out to help the Raw side. Do you know who didn’t come out to help clear the invaders? SECURITY! A.K.A. the people whose entire job is to clear invaders from unauthorized areas!
Finally, out comes Raw’s savior… a one-armed Ronda Rousey. Becky runs away, while the rest of the Smackdown team immediately transform into bad video game AI, and decide to only attack Ronda one at a time. Ronda still beats a bunch of them up, even with a bad arm. In the background we see Lana, Sonya, and Charlotte, standing there, apparently just waiting for their turn to run at Ronda. And standing right between Lana and Sonya as if she was a part of the group- although she sticks out as not being one because she’s not wearing a bright blue shirt- is Team Raw member Nia Jax.
Becky comes back with a chair and takes Ronda out. Asuka levels Ruby with a kick to the head, while Naomi chopblocks Tamina’s knee. Everyone else throws Nia and Tamina around while Becky gets some more chairshots in on Ronda. The crowd chants “ONE MORE TIME!”
Team Smackdown starts to leave, and only then do the referees come out to try to shoo them away. We then got what felt like several minutes of camera cuts between Becky posing on the stairs and Ronda being hurt and angry in the ring, with the occasional cut to the other SD women climbing the stairs in the crowd, or Alexa standing at the top of the stage, being angry. But Alexa is totally unharmed, of course, because she is out with a concussion. Of course, they haven’t said this on TV, and I think they have only actually confirmed that she was “injured” at Evolution to explain why she wasn’t wrestling her in her major match as advertised, so if you didn’t see the PPV or don’t remember, you’d have no idea why she didn’t help her team or why the SD women made no effort to get her. Your best explanation is that the SD women are just too lazy to try to get her (any claim that they don’t want to aggravate her injury is completely belied by… well… everything else they did in this segment). And WWE could have rectified this so easily by just HAVING ALEXA RUN BACKSTAGE. But no. We had to have her on the stage at the end so we could get shots of her being angry, because that’s good drama, and they’re “making movies.”
This segment was everything I f*cking DESPISE about the way WWE does Survivor Series nowadays. The build around Survivor Series revolves around two points. The first- probably about fifteen percent of their pitch- is that Survivor Series is “historic” and “traditional” and therefore, in their minds, it is by definition important. This is, of course, completely flawed. Survivor Series has been important when it has been made to be such by the build to the show. Something is not important simply because it will happen at Survivor Series. WrestleMania is the place where Hulk Hogan slammed Andre The Giant to end Andre’s ten-year unbeaten streak and retain the WWF World Heavyweight Title, but it’s also the place where Test & Albert beat Head Cheese, and those two matches are not of equal importance. That’s what set me off about them calling their ridiculous tag division elimination match a “traditional 5-on-5 Survivor Series Tag Team Match” or Renee Young putting over that “nostalgia” is very important to Sasha and Bayley, or a comment of Cole’s about how Sasha and Bayley want to be on the Survivor Series team because they want to compete at such a “historic” event. WWE seems to think that all they have to do is say something is “traditional” or “historic” and all of a sudden we will just accept that it is therefore important rather than them actually having to put in work to make it feel important. And speaking of WWE not putting in work…
The combination of this traditional Survivor Series format with WWE’s assumption that fans have some sort of rooting interest in Raw vs. Smackdown has, for the past two years, led to some of the most pathetically lazy wrestling television I have ever seen. Even when TNA has been the utter sh*ts, I never felt like they were lazy. Sure, it felt like their job was to put an astronaut on the moon and instead of building a rocket they were digging a deep hole in the ground, but at least they were working hard at making that hole as deep as possible in an attempt fulfill their cockamamie and surely-doomed plan.
What WWE does in the build-up to Survivor Series is as follows: Champion vs. Champion matches, one elimination match per division, people wrestle to see who gets to be on the teams and/or bicker over who gets to be almost totally ceremonial captain, promos about brand loyalty, brand supremacy, not letting Shane/Steph down, throw in a schmoz towards the end. Cool! We just wrote three weeks’ worth of TV in ten minutes. Anyone got any paint to huff?
And so we get segments like this. All history is completely ignored so that everyone is suddenly able to put their dislike of each other aside for the sake of “brand loyalty,” a concept that is so unimportant as to almost never be mentioned, except from the time the PPV before Survivor Series goes off the air to the week after Survivor Series is over, during which times it becomes THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER, and is a force so strong that if Jesus showed up and was wearing a Raw t-shirt but 1996 Christian preacher Jake Roberts was on Smackdown, Jake would have no qualms about punching Jesus right in the face.
The whole thing is a concept that makes almost no sense when you look at how the WWE product as a whole and the brand split in particular are presented. We see almost no evidence that the brands are in any way competing with each other or that the authority figures are acting like general managers of a sports team trying to craft the best roster possible by aggressively signing people they think have potential to be on their brand, or trading wrestlers they think are on the down-slide to the other show for wrestlers they think have untapped potential. Both the Superstar Shake-up and NXT call-ups feel like they are determined by the whims of some mysterious cosmic force rather than Kurt and Paige making trades with each other or negotiating contracts with people ready to be called up from NXT. So unless there is an authority figure actively trying to hinder a wrestler’s career, there doesn’t seem to be any real reason why, for example, The Miz, should be such a patriot for Smackdown when he owes Smackdown nothing. He’s on Smackdown this year and was on Raw last year. What has been done to give him such feelings of loyalty every year?
In fact, people seem to occasionally just show up the other show sometimes and no one bats an eyelash at it. Kane did it three times over the course of a year. Tamina just did it last month, and yet none of her former Smackdown colleagues have said a single word about this. But in this particular month, if someone even f*cking questions the whole idea and says he/she really doesn’t care about representing Raw or SD, everyone would scream at that person and tell everyone he/she has more betrayal in his/her pinky than Benedict Arnold and Vidkun Quisling cheating on their spouses with each other.
In fact, so strong is this force of brand loyalty that absolutely everything is forgotten. That big, heated feud Becky and Charlotte were having just fifteen days ago that tore apart their friendship? A thing of the past. They couldn’t be in the same f*cking room without fighting, but now they’ll sit down together and plan a commando raid. Mandy Rose insinuates to Naomi’s face that she is going to seduce Naomi’s husband for no reason other to be a jerk and they have a big fight just six days ago? Water under the bridge. Naomi and Tamina might be family, but they’re on different shows, so Naomi has no problem running the shoulder that Tamina had surgically repaired a few months ago right into the barricade as hard as she can.
And all of these things had to happen, plus all of the logical issues I addressed above, so we could have The Schmoz™, and have it play out in the way they wanted it to visually, even if that required creating major logic holes. This is actually the THIRD straight year they’ve done the invasion schmoz with the women. Yes, they did one in 2016 as well. Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember it. I doubt I would have if 1) I hadn’t been there live, and 2) it hadn’t resulted in the completely mind-f*cking sight of BAYLEY on the attacking side of a Horsemen-style beat-down.
And because we have to have one of these every year, EVERY YEAR no one learns a f*cking thing from the year before. You’d think that after the big deal they made out of last year’s Smackdown total heel move invasion of Raw, that there would be some f*cking security here, but apparently not (at least we saw Steph yelling at Corbin about this, but it’s still inexcusable).. Hell, after the big deal they made out of everything last year, you’d think that the moment Tamina showed up on Raw in early October, everyone would have run around screaming in panic of another Smackdown invasion, and they would have all subdued her, tied her to a chair in a broom closet with a lightbulb swinging over her head and been began interrogating her as to where the others were hiding.
But nothing like that happens because in the lazy world of WWE- just like in the world of stupid indy comedy bullsh*t- intelligent thought and creative effort take a back seat to “I want to do my spot,” no matter how little sense the spot makes in context, and they’re not willing to put in the effort to find a way to make it make sense in context (for example, if security is guarding the entrances then find a way for SD to lure the Raw women into the parking lot to beat them up). And this Survivor Series build is just one type of laziness piled on another and another and another.
And really it pisses me off. I give A LOT of my time to this company. I watch every wrestling product they put out that isn’t Main Event. That’s NINE HOURS A WEEK (3 Raw, 2 SD, 1 205 Live, 1 NXT, 2 NXT UK). This week, I will be watching at least an additional six or seven between TakeOver and Survivor Series, for a total about SIXTEEN HOURS. That’s AN ENTIRE WAKING DAY devoted just to WWE. And the reason I do that is because I want to have a full understanding of the storylines so that I can get the maximum enjoyment out of the product. And for the past two weeks, everything on Raw or SD that wasn’t last week’s Angle vs. McIntyre match, the Ronda and Becky promos, last week’s SD main event, the stupid, forced crap with Nattie’s sunglasses, and tonight’s segment with Braun and Steph, has been pointless filler with no real impact on the storylines. I could have just tuned in to Survivor Series and seen who was on which team and I’d understand everything just as well. When we got that double-DQ in Sasha vs. Bayley and Michael Cole said “then why even have the match?” he was echoing my feelings, because like Cole, I felt like my time was not just wasted, but like my time was taken advantage of. This was a pathetic and frustrating end to another sh*tty Raw. Watch Braun and Steph’s segment, then do yourself a favor and shut the show off.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by NWK2000 » Nov 13th, '18, 21:38

On a semi-related note, have you seen Nia punch the shit out of Becky? That looked intentional as hell
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 13th, '18, 22:43

The Hulu version of this felt like it had hardly ANY real wrestling on it. We saw the *opening battle royal* , Ziggler and Balor, Lashley and Elias, and ...Bailey v Sasha. I can almost pretty much tell you that's 20 minutes or less...and the only one with ANY real amount of actual time was Ziggler and Balor-which still wasn't that long even.

Unacceptable Hulu. Unacceptable!
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 14th, '18, 00:22

CageMatch.net doesn't have times listed for the opening battle royale or Drifter vs. Lashley, for everything else it has a total time of thirty-three minutes even.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by Bob-O » Nov 14th, '18, 06:31

NWK2000 wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 21:38 On a semi-related note, have you seen Nia punch the shit out of Becky? That looked intentional as hell
They HAVE to do something, right? There's potatoing somebody on accident, then there's breaking their nose and giving them a concussion two days before a ppv. Becky joins some pretty nice company! Add her to the list of Charlotte, Alexa, Asuke, Zelina, and Baily... people Nia has injured. Baily missed Summerslam, and now she's breaking the nose of half the Main Event of Survivor Series in what should have been a simple schmoz... THAT'S why all those people are out there! So it can look cool while NOT punching the star in her face. But Vince gets Charlotte on the show now, so who knows... but, c'mon... the Bella thing was one thing, but she mostly was trying to kill herself.

I'm firmly on board the Nia to NXT bandwagon. Beyond helping her get better, atm, Nia would actually fit right in to their mix really well! Nia Jox/Lacey Evans program would be a lot of fun, Candice/Nia would be even better, and Nia vs Shayna has a Hogan/Andre feel to it - it'd be crazy to see Shayna do some throws on her.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by NWK2000 » Nov 14th, '18, 07:15

Bob-O wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 06:31 I'm firmly on board the Nia to NXT bandwagon. Beyond helping her get better, atm, Nia would actually fit right in to their mix really well! Nia Jox/Lacey Evans program would be a lot of fun, Candice/Nia would be even better, and Nia vs Shayna has a Hogan/Andre feel to it - it'd be crazy to see Shayna do some throws on her.
One is an accident, two is a coincidence, three's a pattern. And plus, it'd be one thing if she was just hurting girls and needed polishing. When you injure a CHAMPION, you're actively interfering with the company's drawing power. Fire her before she injures Ronda that's what I say.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 14th, '18, 08:08

I'm more on board with the "send Nia to NXT UK" bandwagon where she'll have to work with Rhia Ripley, Killer Kelly, Toni Storm and others whose response to getting their nose broken from a potato will be "oh. So that's how it's gonna be, is it?" and just break Nia's face right back, and such things will keep happening until Nia learns to work safely.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 14th, '18, 08:30

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 08:08 I'm more on board with the "send Nia to NXT UK" bandwagon where she'll have to work with Rhia Ripley, Killer Kelly, Toni Storm and others whose response to getting their nose broken from a potato will be "oh. So that's how it's gonna be, is it?" and just break Nia's face right back, and such things will keep happening until Nia learns to work safely.
Except she's not UK so that kinda wouldn't work within kayfabe...
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 14th, '18, 08:34

KILLdozer wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 08:30
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 08:08 I'm more on board with the "send Nia to NXT UK" bandwagon where she'll have to work with Rhia Ripley, Killer Kelly, Toni Storm and others whose response to getting their nose broken from a potato will be "oh. So that's how it's gonna be, is it?" and just break Nia's face right back, and such things will keep happening until Nia learns to work safely.
Except she's not UK so that kinda wouldn't work within kayfabe...
Neither is Killer Kelly or any of the Aussie/Kiwi crew, and no one has batted an eye at them being there.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 14th, '18, 09:12

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 08:34
KILLdozer wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 08:30
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 08:08 I'm more on board with the "send Nia to NXT UK" bandwagon where she'll have to work with Rhia Ripley, Killer Kelly, Toni Storm and others whose response to getting their nose broken from a potato will be "oh. So that's how it's gonna be, is it?" and just break Nia's face right back, and such things will keep happening until Nia learns to work safely.
Except she's not UK so that kinda wouldn't work within kayfabe...
Neither is Killer Kelly or any of the Aussie/Kiwi crew, and no one has batted an eye at them being there.
Well that's all mostly European and foreign still one way or another....Nia Jax is still out because she simply doesn't fit the criteria.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by cero2k » Nov 14th, '18, 09:53

It's pretty common and Red and I disagree on 90% of wrestling, but this may be the first that I like something from WWE and he didn't. I loved the ending. In a bubble, i thought it was awesome, mostly the portrayal of Becky Lynch, she's definitely the top superstar in WWE right now. I loved when she came out straight up confronting the whole RAW team, that was the most guts I've seen in WWE since Bryan ran the gauntlet or something. Then she gets her face all bloodied up and she just looks tough. Spoilers, but no wonder they're now thinking Becky vs Ronda at WM instead.

I did LOL when she had the disarmher on Ronda and the ref just calmly and respectfully took a knee next to becky and asked politely to let her go.

Aside from that, this whole survivor series build up has been almost nonexistent, and what is actually there, it's been meaningless. More of this on the Smackdown review...
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 14th, '18, 09:58

Hey....crazy idea...what if the Becky injury was on purpose or slightly exaggerated just so they don't have to do Becky and Rhonda now and the armbar in the back also serves to further everything?
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by cero2k » Nov 14th, '18, 10:12

KILLdozer wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 09:58 Hey....crazy idea...what if the Becky injury was on purpose or slightly exaggerated just so they don't have to do Becky and Rhonda now and the armbar in the back also serves to further everything?
I've seen Lesnar bust open Randy the hard way. I've seen KO bust open old man McMahon the hard way. I wouldn't be surprised at all, but I'm sure that if that was the plan, Jax would had botched it and not injure Becky at all at the end.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 14th, '18, 10:19

cero2k wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 10:12
KILLdozer wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 09:58 Hey....crazy idea...what if the Becky injury was on purpose or slightly exaggerated just so they don't have to do Becky and Rhonda now and the armbar in the back also serves to further everything?
I've seen Lesnar bust open Randy the hard way. I've seen KO bust open old man McMahon the hard way. I wouldn't be surprised at all, but I'm sure that if that was the plan, Jax would had botched it and not injure Becky at all at the end.
Maybe the concussion isn't even real and it's actually worked because of change of plans?
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 14th, '18, 11:07

KILLdozer wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 10:19
cero2k wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 10:12
KILLdozer wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 09:58 Hey....crazy idea...what if the Becky injury was on purpose or slightly exaggerated just so they don't have to do Becky and Rhonda now and the armbar in the back also serves to further everything?
I've seen Lesnar bust open Randy the hard way. I've seen KO bust open old man McMahon the hard way. I wouldn't be surprised at all, but I'm sure that if that was the plan, Jax would had botched it and not injure Becky at all at the end.
Maybe the concussion isn't even real and it's actually worked because of change of plans?
No. It's real. The "broken face" part is apparently a work as it's just a broken nose, but I can't see them changing the card on a match they've been going so hard on, especially when there is no guarantee Becky will be this hot in a month or two. The punch was bad, but I do think the visual of the blood and her basically just ignoring it really helped Becky come off as even tougher and cooler than before.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 14th, '18, 11:10

Unless somehow they figured out they booked themselves into a corner, realizing they just didn't wanna have either lose. Then again it's probably just another Nia Jax thing.

In a slightly similar but also different note, why did they change up everything to do with the WWE title so much so suddenly?
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 14th, '18, 11:31

cero2k wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 09:53 It's pretty common and Red and I disagree on 90% of wrestling, but this may be the first that I like something from WWE and he didn't. I loved the ending. In a bubble, i thought it was awesome, mostly the portrayal of Becky Lynch, she's definitely the top superstar in WWE right now. I loved when she came out straight up confronting the whole RAW team, that was the most guts I've seen in WWE since Bryan ran the gauntlet or something. Then she gets her face all bloodied up and she just looks tough. Spoilers, but no wonder they're now thinking Becky vs Ronda at WM instead.

I did LOL when she had the disarmher on Ronda and the ref just calmly and respectfully took a knee next to becky and asked politely to let her go.

Aside from that, this whole survivor series build up has been almost nonexistent, and what is actually there, it's been meaningless. More of this on the Smackdown review...
I, too, thought this was all tremendous for Becky, but nothing exists in a bubble, and it's another example of WWE's willingness to sacrifice logic and the extremely laziness of their current Survivor Series concept, which shows a lack of understanding of how to get people interested in matches. The Ronda-Becky stuff has all been the promos, and 95% of what they've said doesn't feel like stuff that was written for them, and Ronda-Becky was really the only thing anyone gave a sh*t about for Survivor Series.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 14th, '18, 11:46

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 11:31
cero2k wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 09:53 It's pretty common and Red and I disagree on 90% of wrestling, but this may be the first that I like something from WWE and he didn't. I loved the ending. In a bubble, i thought it was awesome, mostly the portrayal of Becky Lynch, she's definitely the top superstar in WWE right now. I loved when she came out straight up confronting the whole RAW team, that was the most guts I've seen in WWE since Bryan ran the gauntlet or something. Then she gets her face all bloodied up and she just looks tough. Spoilers, but no wonder they're now thinking Becky vs Ronda at WM instead.

I did LOL when she had the disarmher on Ronda and the ref just calmly and respectfully took a knee next to becky and asked politely to let her go.

Aside from that, this whole survivor series build up has been almost nonexistent, and what is actually there, it's been meaningless. More of this on the Smackdown review...
I, too, thought this was all tremendous for Becky, but nothing exists in a bubble, and it's another example of WWE's willingness to sacrifice logic and the extremely laziness of their current Survivor Series concept, which shows a lack of understanding of how to get people interested in matches. The Ronda-Becky stuff has all been the promos, and 95% of what they've said doesn't feel like stuff that was written for them, and Ronda-Becky was really the only thing anyone gave a sh*t about for Survivor Series.
Maybe that realized that and that's why they changed Styles and Lesnar to Lesnar and Bryan.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 14th, '18, 18:54

KILLdozer wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 11:46
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 11:31
I, too, thought this was all tremendous for Becky, but nothing exists in a bubble, and it's another example of WWE's willingness to sacrifice logic and the extremely laziness of their current Survivor Series concept, which shows a lack of understanding of how to get people interested in matches. The Ronda-Becky stuff has all been the promos, and 95% of what they've said doesn't feel like stuff that was written for them, and Ronda-Becky was really the only thing anyone gave a sh*t about for Survivor Series.
Maybe that realized that and that's why they changed Styles and Lesnar to Lesnar and Bryan.
People aren't going to care anywhere near as much with Bryan as a heel, and not with absolutely zero build, which is what we have now.
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Re: BRM Rants at the 11/12/2018 Raw (TERRIBLE)

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 14th, '18, 21:32

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 18:54
KILLdozer wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 11:46
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 14th, '18, 11:31
I, too, thought this was all tremendous for Becky, but nothing exists in a bubble, and it's another example of WWE's willingness to sacrifice logic and the extremely laziness of their current Survivor Series concept, which shows a lack of understanding of how to get people interested in matches. The Ronda-Becky stuff has all been the promos, and 95% of what they've said doesn't feel like stuff that was written for them, and Ronda-Becky was really the only thing anyone gave a sh*t about for Survivor Series.
Maybe that realized that and that's why they changed Styles and Lesnar to Lesnar and Bryan.
People aren't going to care anywhere near as much with Bryan as a heel, and not with absolutely zero build, which is what we have now.
Ha! Of course! The answer is obviously the classic and usual..."ok then, yeah fuck it, do it...why not?" !!!
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