BRM Reviews the 12/2/2019 Raw (good again)

[Big Red Machine]

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS THE AUTHORS OF PAIN IN THE PARKING LOT- meh
The first thing Charly does is explain to us how she knew to wait for them in the parking lot. Hooray for logic!
She asks them about that last. After trolling her by speaking in their native languages, one of them tells her that she looks pretty, then they leave.

Samoa Joe is back on commentary with Vic and King tonight.

SETH ROLLINS & KEVIN OWENS SEGMENT- decent
Seth comes out and apologizes to everyone for his actions last week, then asks for Owens to come out -so that he can apologize to him face to face. Owens is very skeptical. Owens got to say “bullsh*t” without being bleeped at about 8:05 pm. I wasn’t expecting that.
AOP came out and each spoke in their native languages. Samoa Joe is apparently fluent in both Albanian and Punjabi. Who knew?
AOP themselves translated things into English for us. They challenged Owens and Rollins to a tag match. Rollins says he’s in but Owens thinks this is just going to end in him getting beaten down three on one. Rollins gets annoyed at this and walks out on him, telling him he’s on his own. Seth goes to leave… and AOP part for him on the ramp instead of beating him up. Owens then cuts a promo daring AOP to come down and fight him, but they walk off. That part I didn’t like. The Owens/Rollins interactions were definitely the strength of this segment. Seth actually came off sympathetic here, which shocked me. I guess we’re going to draw his heel turn out for a while.

Owens says he’s ready to fight now so he might as well do so, and he issues an open challenge. We cut backstage to Lashley and Lana walking backstage and the announcers wonder whether Lashley will come out here to fight Owens. They don’t say one word about Lashley getting a heavy thing dropped on him and getting stretchered off last week. Lashley had a brace on his arm, but that was about it. Also, if you’re going to explain to me how Charly knew to be in the parking lot when AOP arrived, you’ve got to explain to me why the camera was backstage, in position to see Lashley and Lana walking.
When we got back from the commercial, Lana came out and posed for while. She finally started to talk, and Owens started to talk over her. We then got a prolonged period of them trying to talk over each other, and it was great because it felt real and natural. When was the last time people were allowed to talk over each other in WWE? This felt like real people having a shouting match, not two actors delivering a speech.
Lana emphasized that Rusev won’t be here tonight because she has another restraining order out on him. She then brought out Lashley to fight Owens, and only now did the announcers talk about his injury from last week. They were trailed by two “police officers.”

KEVIN OWENS vs. BOBBY LASHLEY (w/Lana)- 4/10
They wrestled for a bit, and then AOP came out and attacked Owens for the DQ. If you wanted to have these two beat Owens up, just do it in the opening segment. Don’t lessen the impact of last week’s Rusev/Lashley segment by having Lashley not miss a single week after being stretchered out, and don’t waste our time with an annoying DQ, especially when there are so many better things you could spend this time on.

Two notes about the wrestlers’ gear:
1. This “Stun, Owens, Stun” shirts need to go. “Fight, Owens, Fight” was a million times better, and doesn’t rub the “HE’S DOING STONE COLD’S STUFF SO THAT YOU’LL ALL CHEER HIM!” in your face so much.
2. Whichever idiot designed Lashley’s gear spelled it “all mighty” when it should be “almighty.”

CHARLY CARUSO INTERIVEWS LASHLEY & LANA- TERRIBLE segment
Charly asks them what they know about AOP attacking Owens. They say they don’t know anything. They were great heels. Rusev jumped the barricade and attacked Lashley, then ran away. Lana rightfully berated the supposed police officers for not making one move to stop Rusev once they knew where he was.
Lashley also yelled at the cops. One of the cops defended their inaction by saying “I’m a WWE fan,” and that “we do things differently” here in Tennessee. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Even if you’re going to let Rusev attack Lashley, you still should have immediately gotten between Rusev and the woman who has a legally valid restraining order out against him. Lashley kept yelling at the cops, so they decided to arrest him. Hopefully when Lashley tells the judge what happened and shows them the footage from Raw, the judge will set him free and open an investigation into these two dorks for dereliction of duty.
Lana then yelled at and slapped one of the cops, and got arrested as well. That one I have no sympathy for. She literally just saw that yelling at a cop got Lashley arrested and decided to go one farther and slap a cop, too? Really?
This was a horrible segment. It felt like they came in with the idea of Lashley and Lana getting arrested this week and decided that they had to do it even though there was no good way to set it up that didn’t make everyone involved look bad. Even Rusev looks bad here, as he didn’t actually get one over on the heels so much as get lucky that the cops were willfully incompetent. This was Attitude Era stupidity as its finest. I have half a mind to donate to the crowdfunded pool of bail money that Samoa Joe proposed.
They also showed us R-Truth and the Street Profits watching this, entertained. That was not only pointless, but arguably in bad taste.

DREW MCINTYRE vs. AKIRA TOZAWA- 2/10
All but a squash.

DREW MCINTYRE CALLS OUT RANDY ORTON- F*CKING AWESOME!
Drew is furious because last week he and Randy were engaging in a strong-style chop battle but instead of throwing his second chop, Randy just poked Drew in the eye, like a total heel. Orton eventually came out and they had FANTASTIC confrontation that was eventually interrupted by the OC coming out. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed to see AJ Styles on a wrestling show before.
The OC cut a promo on Randy. Drew decided that this wasn’t his problem and left. The OC advanced on Orton and tried to surround him (as well as you can with only three guys in a four-sided ring). Randy came out to fight them and got beaten down. Ricochet came out to try to make the save and got beaten down. Ditto Humberto Carrillo. Eventually Rey Mysterio came out and turned the tide for the babyfaces.

RANDY AND THE THREE HIGH-FLYING BABYFACES BACKSTAGE- good
Rey asks Randy if he is alright. Randy tells them “I appreciate the assistance…but I didn’t need it” and walks off.

TONY NESE vs. ALEISTER BLACK- 4.5/10
An excellent match for the time it got. There was lots of athleticism, but it never felt spots because so much of it was shown off with them dodging cool moves instead of hitting them and kicking out. Black won. Buddy Murphy was shown watching backstage.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS BUDDY MURPHY- good promo on Aleister Black

ERIC YOUNG vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS (w/Zelina Vega)- 4.75/10
I was shocked that they gave EY so much offense.

THE 24/7 GEEKS RUN THROUGH THE RINGSIDE AREA- Two NASCAR dudes who were sitting at ringside helped hide R-Truth. Then one of them revealed that he was wearing a referee’s shirt and the other rolled R-Truth up to win the title.

THE STREET PROFITS SCHILL MERCH TO US… THEN GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE TO NO WAY JOSE’S CONGA LINE- snore

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS KEVIN OWENS AS HE TRIES TO LEAVE THE BUILDING- good
She asks Seth why he didn’t help Owens earlier if Owens (and the rest of the roster) is part of his “family” as he had said in his promo. She then asked him about people questioning the sincerity of his earlier apology. Rollins was great for both of these. He is clearly getting annoyed at these criticisms, but we can completely understand why he feels this way.

VIDEO PACKAGE OF REY’S US TITLE WIN- good

ERICK ROWAN TALKS TO HIS MYSTERIOS PET- weird

ERICK ROWAN vs. NO WAY JOSE (w/his Conga line)- squash
Samoa Joe about Jose’s Conga line- “I’m just amazed he can find so many people with zero rhythm in every city, every single time he does this.” I was rolling with laughter.
Rowan beat up the Conga line for looking into the cage. The announcers pushed hard that this infuriates Rowan. Apparently last week’s jobber did this, too.

They plugged Rollins appearing on WWE Backstage tomorrow to explain himself. This should be an interesting mix of kayfabe and not.

SARAH SCHREIBER KEEPS ASKING ERICK ROWAN “WHAT’S IN THE CAGE?”- I guess she hasn’t been paying attention to the show.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS THE KABUKI WARRIORS- Asuka spoke a lot of Japanese and Kairi laughed. Lawler asked Joe what they said and Joe said it was stuff he couldn’t repeat on “network television.” Umm… Joe? Raw is on cable.

HANDICAP MATCH: The Kabuki Warriors vs. Charlotte Flair- 7/10
Charlotte was a valiant babyface and the match was quite exciting, but I also felt that it went on for WAY too long to not make the Kabuki Warriors look bad, even in victory.

THE VIKING RAIDERS vs. TWO JOBBERS- squash… but if I see one more of these, I’m going to start calling them DUDS on principle. They’re already the tag champs. We shouldn’t need to see them kill jobbers every week. We ALREADY KNOW they’re impressive. They wouldn’t be the tag champs if they weren’t.

MAIN EVENT BABYFACES BACKSTAGE- Richochet’s “superheroes can be real” stuff needs to stop immediately. Other than that, this was good. Rey even called wrestling a “sport.”

OC PROMO- fine

THE OC vs. REY MYSTERIO JR., HUMBERTO CARRILLO, & RICOCHET- 7/10
Gallows & Anderson’s trophy from winning the tag team turmoil match in Saudi Arabia was brought to ringside. Joe referenced “Red Neck King Fu.” There was a lot of great action in this match, but nothing special. AJ pinned Ricochet with an Avalanche Styles Clash. Then Orton showed up and RKOed AJ.


Another good episode of Raw. When was the last time we had two in a row? The wrestling wasn’t as good as last week was, but the storylines moved along well and the stuff with Orton and Drew was AMAZING. The only negative was the Rusev/Lashley/Lana stuff.

[KILLdozer]

Yeah Charlotte had waaayyy too much offense and it was CONSTANT. She'd take 3 moves in a row and then turn around and hit another. Take a double team and then immediately hit 2 of her own. 4 moves in a row and then counters or dodges and hits another. Would you please fuckin' sell for 2 minutes please? Thank you.

[Big Red Machine]

And the champ has now been missing for two weeks and ni one has said a word about it, even though she was the one standing tall at the end of the PPV.

[KILLdozer]

All this Raw talk-I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts about SD and The "new firefly funhouse friend"...which was teased all show but never delivered upon.

[Big Red Machine]

All this Raw talk-I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts about SD and The "new firefly funhouse friend"...which was teased all show but never delivered upon.

I can't believe people wrte excited that the world champion promised to show us a new f*cling puppet.

[KILLdozer]

All this Raw talk-I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts about SD and The "new firefly funhouse friend"...which was teased all show but never delivered upon.

I can't believe people wrte excited that the world champion promised to show us a new f*cling puppet.

I can't believe someone still is surprised that people are into something new and fresh.

[Big Red Machine]

All this Raw talk-I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts about SD and The "new firefly funhouse friend"...which was teased all show but never delivered upon.

I can't believe people wrte excited that the world champion promised to show us a new f*cling puppet.

I can't believe someone still is surprised that people are into something new and fresh.

What's new about it?

[Bob-O]

All this Raw talk-I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts about SD and The "new firefly funhouse friend"...which was teased all show but never delivered upon.

I thought the stupid redesigned belt was his new friend...

I can't believe people wrte excited that the world champion promised to show us a new f*cling puppet.

Being over is a crazy thing... WWE fans aren't used to it. At least he's not trying to wrestle the f*cking thing...

[KILLdozer]

All this Raw talk-I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts about SD and The "new firefly funhouse friend"...which was teased all show but never delivered upon.

I thought the stupid redesigned belt was his new friend...

I can't believe people wrte excited that the world champion promised to show us a new f*cling puppet.

Being over is a crazy thing... WWE fans aren't used to it. At least he's not trying to wrestle the f*cking thing...

So did I...until they kept hyping it up after that lol.

[Bob-O]

So did I...until they kept hyping it up after that lol.

I must've missed it. I thought they were still gushing over ruining customizing his title belt.